EC MEA June 2020

INSIDE

l

RACKPSACE

l

TRENDS IN BACKUP FROM VEEAM

PA G E S 6 0 VOLUME O7 | ISSUE 10 JUNE 2020 WWW.EC-MEA.COM

PARTNER PROGRAMMES

SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL OF THE CHANNEL

New data centres five times more computing Prem Rodrigues, Siemon

How to energise your remote workforce Brian Kropp, Gartner

Application performance, infrastructure allocation Erwan Paccard, AppDynamics

Well-designed networks for digital biz Arafat Yousef, Nexans Cabling

AD-ECMEA-102020

The pandemic brought IT purchasing to standstill and arrested the regional sell-through process. Now vendors are incentivizing, supporting, rewarding the channel.

Arrival of the hybrid workplace

So powerful has been the impact of the pandemic, that digital transformation, itself has been disrupted.

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

A recent global briefing by Automation Anywhere, a leading vendor in robotic process automation, pointed out that very soon business is going to exist in a hybrid world of work. Some parts of an organization will operate through virtual places of work and other parts will operate in the real world. This hybrid way of working will give us an opportunity to reimagine the concept of work.

So powerful has been the impact of the pandemic, that the most powerful disruptive factor prior to the pandemic, that is digital transformation, itself has been disrupted. How resilient is a business, as the global economy begins to restart in fits and bursts, will now be a dominating consideration in the post-Covid world, that will be better prepared for the next onslaught of global crises.

In this month’s cover feature we look at how the regional IT industry’s partner programmes, driven by technology vendors, has adjusted to the global disruptions of the supply chain. Most vendors have waived revenue targets that decide channel partner classifications. Credit terms of payments have been extended. Availability and access to capital has been increased. Service support for customers has been enhanced and free to use licensing options for 90 days are now part of a vendor’s mainstream go to market activities.

According to HPE’s Dimitris Kourlas, the vendor responded quickly by suspending revenue targets required to maintain status in the partner Ready Programme. HPE further extended payment terms to distributors until 31 July 31, to improve working capital and cash positions. Another important motion was to inject a capital of $2B though HPE Financial Services. HPE also made facilities available virtually, for example with demos and tours of the briefing centers and access to experts.

According to NetApp’s Maya Zakhour, the vendor has seen significant demand for VDI solutions by customers who require increased capacity. Maya also feels relationships have grown stronger with partners and distributors during this time of global crisis. NetApp is also seeing customers opt for a consumption model as it helps them manage costs better. Maya is advising channel partners to move to a more service-oriented model to be profitable.

SAP’s Mohamed Khan, points out, channel partners that offer cloud solutions have 5x market higher valuation. And those that develop their own IP have 10x higher market valuation.

For other vendors, especially cyber security vendors, the dispersion of the global workforce into remote modes of operation have allowed them to scale up various solutions, including managed security services. According to Mohamed Abdallah at SonicWall, the vendor introduced an enhanced version of its SecureFirst Managed Security Service Provider Programme. The vendor expects managed services to grow, and made significant enhancements to its MSSP programme.

Turn the pages to read more about vendor initiatives.

Stay safe as in the next few months we go #BackToWork and more importantly #BackToProfit. ë

EVENTS EXECUTIVE Lhodith Ann ann@gecmediagroup.com

MANAGING DIRECTOR Tushar Sahoo tushar@gecmediagroup.com EDITOR Arun Shankar arun@gecmediagroup.com CEO Ronak Samantaray ronak@gecmediagroup.com

SALES AND ADVERTISING Ronak Samantaray ronak@gecmediagroup.com Ph: + 971 555 120 490

DESIGNER: AJAY ARYA ASSISTANT DESIGNER: RAHUL ARYA

DESIGNED BY

EVENTS EXECUTIVE Shriya Nair shriya@gecmdiagroup.com

AL GHURAIR PRINTING & PUBLISHING LLC. MASAFI COMPOUND, SATWA, P.O.BOX: 5613, DUBAI, UAE

PRODUCTION, CIRCULATION, SUBSCRIPTIONS info@gecmediagroup.com

GLOBAL HEAD, CONTENT AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES Anushree Dixit anushree@gecmediagroup.com GROUP SALES HEAD Richa S richa@gecmediagroup.com

PRINTED BY

PUBLISHED BY ACCENT INFOMEDIA MEA FZ-LLC PO BOX : 500653, DUBAI, UAE 223, BUILDING 9, DUBAI MEDIA CITY, DUBAI, UAE PHONE : +971 (0) 4368 8523 31 FOXTAIL LAN, MONMOUTH JUNCTION, NJ - 08852 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PHONE NO: + 1 732 794 5918

SUBSCRIPTIONS INFO@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM SOCIAL MARKETING & DIGITAL COMMUNICATION YASOBANT MISHRA yasobant@gecmediagroup.com

A PUBLICATION LICENSED BY INTERNATIONAL MEDIA PRODUCTION ZONE, DUBAI, UAE @COPYRIGHT 2013 ACCENT INFOMEDIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WHILE THE PUBLISHERS HAVE MADE EVERY EFFORT TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY OF ALL INFORMATION IN THIS MAGAZINE, THEY WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ERRORS THEREIN.

J U N E 2020

MEA

03

Why Should You Partner with NetApp to Help Customers Achieve a True Hybrid Multicloud Experience?

350+ customers

The only one

NetApp multicloud products are proven, with more than 350 customers and more than 200PB deployed to date.

NetApp offers the only hybrid cloud infrastructure in the market today.

Why HCI?

0 3x

lock-in: NetApp products are open and flexible storage performance more than others

22% 59%

more efficient use of compute performance lower TCO: much less to implement/manage

What customers say?

87% of customers report that hyperconverged has made their organization somewhat or significantly more agile.

Contact Ingram Micro today to know more about NetApp solutions Tel.: +971 4 369 7111 | Web: ae.ingrammicro.com

CONTENTS JUNE 2020 | VOLUME 07 | ISSUE 11

06

WHY CYBERSECURITY LAGS BEHIND THE REAL WORLD IN READINESS KAMEL HEUS, CENTRIFY

PARTNER PROGRAMMES

SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL OF THE CHANNEL

07

The pandemic brought IT purchasing to standstill and arrested the regional sell-through process. Now vendors are incentivizing, supporting, rewarding the channel.

WELL DESIGNED NETWORKS CRITICAL FOR DIGITAL BIZ ARAFAT YOUSEF, NEXANS CABLING SOLUTIONS.

08

PANDEMIC DRIVING NOT INHIBITING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CHRIS BEDI, SERVICENOW

11-13

CLOUD NEWS

14-17

CHANNEL NEWS

37-42

INNOVATION UNBIASED GLOBAL CLOUD PARTNER FOR HYPERSCALERS

19-21

44-47

48-51

52

SECURITY NEWS

GUEST COLUMN

PRODUCTS NEWS

PEOPLE

PANDEMIC, 5G DRIVING INVESTMENT INTO DATACENTRE

09

CREATING A VIRTUAL CYBER SECURITY OPERATIONS ROOM RYAN TROST, THREATQUOTIENT

ROLE OF DATA AND BACKUP IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION NEW DATA CENTRES TO HAVE FIVE TIMES MORE COMPUTING

J U N E 2020

MEA

05

OPINION

WHY CYBERSECURITY LAGS BEHIND THE REAL WORLD IN READINESS

Rules of operational readiness followed by first responders around the world seem to be lacking inside cyber security, writes Kamel Heus at Centrify.

T

here could not be something simpler than this common sense approach to safety whether in real life or whether in the realm of cyber security. You grant privileges to someone as long as they need it, and not as long as they would like to keep it around themselves.

Another common sense practice would be to give anyone the minimum privileges to get a job done, rather than shower them with an extravagant amount. Once the job gets done, wrapped up and polished, you bring down the privileges to near ground zero again, the lowest possible state of stable operations.

Why would you keep any operational parameter in the highest state of readiness if it is not operational, is not being used, and if it is not functional? Standing down is a very common and effective part of any operation to control overuse and over-fatigue, whether in the armed forces, in civil services, or in any operational environment.

You trust no identity and you manage all privileges in real time continuously by enhancing and lowering them soon after. You apply multiple approaches to verify the real or digital identity of a user when they make any request to change their privileges.

This is the basis of a Zero Trust approach to Privileged Access Management in the realm of cybersecurity.

Here is a simple step-wise check list!

#1 Who is requesting access: which human or machine or robotic user?

#2 What is the context of the request: why do they want access?

#3 Risk of the access environment: where and when are they at the time of the request

06

MEA

J U N E 2020

#4 Multifactor authentication: verify is the identity who it claims to be

#5 Grant least privilege access: what are the minimum privileges required to complete the task

#6

KAMEL HEUS,

Regional Director, Northern, Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Centrify.

The keys to security policy, with repository of user identities and privileges, needs to be protected in a vault.

Ground zero: Revert all privileges to previous normal once task is completed so there are zero standing privileges The key to an organisation’s security policy, with repository of user identities and privileges, needs to be protected in a vault. The organisations’ very existence is now protected inside this vault.

You verify and reverify every request to dip into this vault and change existing privileges through multifactor authentication. While organisation’s will layer themselves with elaborate tools to protect access to their financial controls, like bank accounts and cash, the very technology tools that enable that secure access to happen smoothly, may sometimes be left gaping and wide open.

52% of organisations do not have such a password vault, according to global surveys.

This is one of the basic steps in Privileged Access Management. If over half are not even vaulting privileged passwords, that means that passwords are being scribbled down somewhere or neatly entered into shared spreadsheets.

Three out of four organisational breaches abuse privileged access, making it the leading attack vector globally. Global research company Gartner named privileged access management a Top 10 Security Project in both 2018 Strangely, tried and tested, common sense rule of operational preparation that work so well in the real world, do not seem to be applied in the critical arena of cybersecurity and organisational readiness. ë

OPINION

WELL DESIGNED NETWORKS CRITICAL FOR DIGITAL BIZ

Distance between nodes, and different protocols and standards, can degrade the quality of networks, explains Arafat Yousef at Nexans Cabling Solutions.

T

oday, it is more important than ever that networks can scale up easily, with regards to footprint as well as number of users. There are many reasons you may need to scale up networks.

You might need to accommodate a large number of new devices to support IoT or edge computing applications. Or business might be booming and you might need to introduce a large number of new employees – and if this is required for a temporary project, you will need to scale down again.

Scalability could be described as the ability to handle increased workloads by repeatedly applying a cost-effective strategy for extending a system’s capacity. Scalability refers to how well a hardware or software system can adapt to increased demands. For example, a scalable network system would be one that can start with just a few nodes but can easily expand to thousands of nodes.

Scaling up a LAN, for example, is a lot more complex than simply adding new devices to the network. There are factors to consider related to compatibility, interoperability, management, security and maintaining bandwidth and latency. When adding a large number of ports, to accommodate more devices, or cover a larger area, any delay between server and end user, caused by the network’s reserves being stretched, can result in system-wide delays, or even unavailability.

When nodes or resources are moved further apart, a node or resource might freeze up while it awaits a response from another, thus hogging system resources. It is also important to remember that although a Wireless Access Point may be theoretically capable of supporting a vast number of devices, the average bandwidth per user drops with each new device. If a very large number of devices are connected, available bandwidth can become so diluted that it becomes unusable.

Ideally, you will not want to mix different

Scalability could be described as the ability to handle increased workloads

ARAFAT YOUSEF,

Managing Director Middle East and Africa, Nexans Cabling Solutions.

If a very large number of devices are connected, available bandwidth can become so diluted that it becomes unusable

devices, standards, protocols and so on, as even the smallest incompatibility may introduce issues related to management, operation and security.

Of course, in business-critical or medical environments, this is to be avoided at all costs.

In an environment offering, for example, patient care, reliability and redundancy levels can never be high enough.

An ideal solution would offer maximum flexibility for expansion and a long useful life, though multiple technology upgrades. However, simply adding ports every time you need to scale up presents challenges related to cost, downtime and network management.

Investment costs and networking needs should be balanced in a pay as you grow model, allowing you to avoid making enormous and costly expansions and ending up with underutilised capacity.

One approach to making LAN scalability in critical environments easy is following a Fibre To the Office, FTTO solution. This provides Gigabit Ethernet to end user devices by combining passive fibre cabling and active switches. Floor distributors are not required and distances of over 100 metres can be covered seamlessly.

FTTO offers high bandwidth reserves and availability of a single fibre bundle with up to 144 connections ensures readiness for future growth.

Short link lengths, 3-5M, between switch and end devices, and the absence of cable bundles, reduce power and heating losses. FTTO grows with user needs and may easily be adjusted to new technologies and applications, combining fibre’s long operational life expectancy with copper’s practical, cost-effective aspects. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

07

OPINION

PANDEMIC DRIVING NOT INHIBITING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Digital transformation offers real alternatives to reductions in workforce strength through automation, explains Chris Bedi at ServiceNow.

A

mid the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a single company across the globe that is not rethinking its short and long-term strategies.

Companies can survive the current crisis by doubling down on digital transformation.

Now is a great time to experiment, overcome corporate inertia, and get rid of sacred cows.

Meanwhile, companies like Amazon and Disney are weathering the storm, and in some cases prospering, because they already have digital business models based on subscription revenues. As the pandemic blows apart traditional value chains, companies around the world need a digital strategy to help them retain customers and unlock new growth.

Research suggests that companies with digital foundations and effective digital business models will be poised to succeed in global markets.

However, you cannot create a transformative digital business model unless you first build a digital foundation that enables smooth, efficient workflows in every part of the enterprise. Because digital transformation enables business continuity, it can help companies weather the storm and position themselves for future growth.

When business leaders face economic headwinds and uncertainty about top line revenue, their bias is to protect margins. A very natural motion is to reduce costs as a percentage of revenue across operational as well as G&A functions. Yet leaders cannot afford to let service levels drop.

Companies have little margin of error when it comes to serving customers. If your service goes down, customers may not have the patience to wait for it to come back up.

After all, if their only interaction with you right now is digital, there is no human factor to help smooth over rough spots.

Quality checks are not optional. Orders still need to go out on time. And compliance

08

MEA

J U N E 2020

Companies have little margin of error when it comes to serving customers

CHRIS BEDI,

CIO at ServiceNow.

If their only interaction with you is digital, there is no human factor to help smooth over rough spots obligations must still be met. Given all these requirements, it can be very tempting to rapidly cut labor costs.

When you quickly slash your labor force, the productivity of the remaining workers immediately drops because they are focused,

understandably, on their own survival. At the same time, operational and compliance risk increases because you have more organisations trying to do the same job with less capacity.

Over time, those short-term cost gains usually disappear. As shadow organisations emerge, the costs just show up in a different cost center.

Here’s a better way: Double down on creating digital services to create top line growth and remove the requirement for labor to focus on routine, repetitive work. The goal is to optimise your business by digitising every process and function to the maximum extent possible.

Digital services can accelerate work and boost productivity in every department, from IT to customer service, finance, and HR. Instead of reflexively cutting labor costs, companies should focus on maximising the productivity of their existing employees by automating every possible process. As work moves to digital platforms, the labor required for routine work diminishes, operational risk decreases, and compliance costs go down.

At the same time, you are creating the right digital foundation for increasingly remote workforces.

Do not waste this crisis. By doubling down on digital transformation today, you vastly increase the chances that your company will survive the pandemic and thrive in the emerging digital economy. ĂŤ

OPINION

CREATING A VIRTUAL CYBER SECURITY OPERATIONS ROOM

With security workforce also working remotely, creating a virtual control room for the organisation is a good choice, writes Ryan Trost at ThreatQuotient.

P

rior to the global health crisis, the most recent survey from Global Workplace Analytics found that only 3.6% of the employee workforce works from home half-time or more. Clearly that percentage is surging as government guidelines mandate people work from home, self-quarantine and use social distancing.

Without the ability to catch up with co-workers in person, go out to lunch or grab a cup of coffee, you might think employees would be more focused. The reality is that most are distracted for a variety of reasons. The situation is evolving quickly, and our email traffic is growing exponentially.

Based on our experience with previous industry or region derived large-scale events, opportunistic attacks are to be expected, but the current situation is different. It is global and evolving with no clear end in sight – a new reality we all must navigate for the foreseeable future. Attacks will continue and employees’ mindfulness will erode further.

Security teams are on high alert, having to protect a shifting infrastructure from threat actors looking for low hanging fruit, yet they too are working remotely. Security Operations Center analysts and Incident Response team members cannot lean across the desk to compare data and analysis or walk down the hall to check in with a threat intel analyst.

And managers of security teams cannot tap an analyst on the shoulder to assign them a task or get an update on an investigation.

Despite being geographically dispersed, security analysts and managers must be able to work effectively with team members and across teams.

To improve security operations when everyone is working remotely, organisations need a single, online collaborative environment that fuses together data, evidence and users. At its core is a central repository that contains all the

RYAN TROST,

Co-founder and CTO, ThreatQuotient.

Organisations need a single, online, collaborative environment that fuses together data, evidence and users

organisation’s global threat data, augmented and enriched with context from internal threat and event data.

Individual team members and different security teams can access the intelligence they need to do their jobs as part of their workflow and can actively share learnings or directly communicate with each other.

Working in the virtual, cybersecurity situation room, they can accelerate their understanding of threats and improve collaboration. Should the number of incidents increase as threat actors ramp up campaigns, they can quickly divvy up tasks to focus on blocking and tackling. Rather than conducting investigations in parallel, all team members involved in the investigation process can automatically see the work of others and understand how it impacts and can benefit their own work.

Managers of security teams can benefit from this collaborative environment as well.

They can oversee investigations remotely, observing the analysis as it unfolds and directing action when and how they need to.

With a virtual shoulder tap they can break down and assign tasks to specific individuals, coordinate tasks between teams, and monitor timelines and results.

With online collaboration embedded into security operations, managers can ensure that security analysts, wherever they are physically located, are able to work together efficiently and effectively to accelerate detection and response.

At a time when threat actors are looking for low hanging fruit and potential weaknesses in our new normal, a virtual cybersecurity situation room lets teams work together using the right data to take the right actions faster and strengthen security posture. Even when their analysts are working from home, security managers can continue to coordinate investigations and remediation. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

09

CLOUD NEWS

SAP is now a Level-3 Cloud Service Provider in Saudi Arabia

AHMED AL-FAIFI, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, SAP MIDDLE EAST NORTH.

SAP has announced that the Communications and Information Technology Commission, CITC, has awarded the global software manufacturer as a Level 3 cloud service provider. Level 3 certificates offer the highest level of operations compared to Level 1 and 2 certificates, giving organisations greater confidence in embracing the cloud.

Public cloud is vital in Saudi Arabia where organisations, especially the government and public sector, are ramping up their cloud investment. For example, one recent YouGov survey shows that most Saudi organisations have increased their cloud spend over the past year, 59%, and are comfortable on the public cloud, 66%.

SABIC, a global leader in petrochemicals headquartered in Riyadh, has digitally transformed 24 human resources processes with SAP SuccessFactors running on the SAP cloud data centre. The company’s human resources digital transformation on SAP’s cloud data

centre is uniting legacy processes to deliver personalised, authentic, and unified experiences for more than 35,000 employees across more than 40 countries.

The Red Sea Development Project, which aims to become one of the world’s most ambitious tourism and hospitality projects, has also digitally transformed on SAP’s cloud data centre. The enterprise now has the most advanced cloud services and real-time insights to integrate customer and operational experiences, to ensure strict data security to meet government standards, and to scale up as the development grows.

Level 3 certification includes ISO 9001/2015 for large enterprises, ISO, IECs 27001, 27017, and 27018 for individuals and small- and medium-sized enterprises, and Cloud Security Alliance STAR Certificate. Additional technical features ensure high availability, flexible scalability, strict security, and sustainability.

Amazon’s AWS Outposts launched in the UAE and Saudi Arabia Amazon Web Services, AWS, has announced the general availability of AWS Outposts in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. AWS Outposts delivers fully managed and configurable compute and storage racks built with AWS-designed hardware that allow customers to run compute and storage on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to AWS’s broad array of services in the cloud.

AWS Outposts brings native AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility. With AWS Outposts, customers can use the same AWS APIs, control plane, tools, and hardware on-premises as in the AWS cloud to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience.

Customers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia who have workloads that require low latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing, or local data storage can benefit from AWS Outposts. These include applications that may need to generate near real-time responses, need to communicate with other on-premises systems, or control on-site equipment, for example factory floor equipment, health management systems, and retail point

of sale systems.

Customers can also use AWS Outposts to securely store and process customer data in countries where there is no AWS Region.

This is important for organisations in highly regulated industries and countries with data sovereignty requirements.

AWS Outposts delivers pre-configured racks of compute and storage to bring AWS services, AWS designed infrastructure, and operating models on-premises. The infrastructure is the same as is used in AWS Regions. With AWS Outposts customers can choose from a range of compute, storage, and graphics-optimised Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances, both with and without local storage options, and Amazon Elastic Block Store volume options.

Customers can then easily run a broad range of AWS services locally, including Amazon Elastic Container Service, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Amazon Relational Database Service, and Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and can connect directly to regional services like Amazon Simple Storage Service buckets or Amazon DynamoDB through private connections.

J U N E 2020

MEA

11

CLOUD NEWS

INTRODUCING APPSON

Dell EMC PowerStore boosts storage infrastructure flexibility Dell Technologies has announced Dell EMC PowerStore, a modern infrastructure platform built from the ground up with superior technology and expertise to address the challenges of the data era. Organisations can accelerate decision making, data access and application performance with PowerStore, which is designed for six-nines, 99.9999%, availability.

Machine learning and intelligent automation allows for faster delivery of applications and services with up to 99% less staff time to balance volumes.

PROGRAMMABLE INFRASTRUCTURE

Streamlines application development and reduces deployment timeframes from days to seconds, with VMware integration and support for leading management and orchestration frameworks including Kubernetes, Ansible and VMware vRealise Orchestrator.

AUTONOMOUS INFRASTRUCTURE

Built-in machine learning automates labor-

intensive processes like initial volume placement, migrations, load balancing and issue resolution.

INFRASTRUCTURE INSIGHTS

Dell EMC CloudIQ storage monitoring and analytics software combines machine learning and human intelligence for realtime performance and capacity analysis and historical tracking for a single view of Dell EMC infrastructure. Dell Technologies will integrate CloudIQ across the full Dell Technologies infrastructure portfolio for even greater insights.

PowerStore transforms data centre operations and allows organisations to evolve their infrastructure in lockstep with ever-changing business needs:

CONTAINER-BASED ARCHITECTURE

PowerStoreOS, the system’s container-based software architecture, enables feature portability, standardisation and rapid time-to-market for new capabilities.

The only purpose-built storage array that includes a built-in VMware ESXi Hypervisor, administrators can deploy apps directly on the array for greater flexibility. An industry-first, AppsON is ideal for data-intensive workloads in core or edge locations and infrastructure applications.

EASE OF MIGRATION

New native tools within the PowerStore Manager wizard allow customers to automate entire migrations in fewer than ten clicks.

Customers can take advantage of a number of non-disruptive options to migrate from existing storage like Unity, SC, PS Series, VNX and XtremIO.

DELL TECHNOLOGIES ON DEMAND

With DTOD, PowerStore customers can respond to workload spikes and new service requests with elastic capacity and cloud economics. Organisations can choose between two flexible pay-per-use consumption models with short-and-long term commitment options, including a new one-year term for flexible consumption. Global support, deployment and managed services can be included to help simplify IT infrastructure management.

Adobe, ServiceNow connect marketing to customer service

Adobe and ServiceNow have announced the availability of its partnership integration, delivering an industry-first solution connecting data from Adobe Experience Platform and ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management workflow product to enable more seamless, connected customer experiences. In today’s experience economy, where digital-only is our reality, marketing and customer service organisations must be aligned around a datadriven, customer-first approach.

Connecting Adobe Experience Platform, the industry’s first purpose-built Customer Experience Management platform, and ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management product empowers brands with a more complete view of the customer.

The integration leads to seamless workflows between Adobe Experience Platform and ServiceNow, enhancing Adobe’s Real-time Customer Profiles with rich customer

12

MEA

J U N E 2020

data and improving personalisation of customer experiences across all touchpoints. Additionally, leveraging this ServiceNow and Adobe Experience Manager integration, brands can now deliver enhanced customer service capabilities.

Through this integration, Adobe and

ServiceNow joint customers can establish context to drive brand loyalty: Enterprises are often challenged by navigating internal silos of data pertaining to interactions with their customers. This integration creates seamless data workflows that removes those barriers and connect marketing and customer service organisations.

CLOUD NEWS

IBM launches AI-powered services to help CIOs automate

ROB THOMAS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CLOUD AND DATA PLATFORM, IBM.

The challenges facing today’s Chief Information Officers are more complicated and critical than ever before, as these leaders look to help their businesses recover and restart in the wake of a global pandemic. To that end, IBM has announced a broad range of new AI-powered capabilities and services that are designed to help CIOs automate their IT infrastructures to be more resilient to future disruptions and to help reduce costs.

Market intelligence firm IDC predicts that, by 2024, enterprises that are powered by AI will be able to respond to customers, competitors, regulators, and partners 50% faster than those that are not using AI.?

To that end, IBM is unveiling IBM Watson AIOps, a new offering that uses AI to automate how enterprises self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time. Unforeseen IT incidents and outages can cost businesses in both revenue and reputation. Market research firm Aberdeen pegs an outage at about $260,000/hour.

Watson AIOps enables organisations to introduce automation at the infrastructure level and is designed to help CIOs better predict and shape future outcomes, focus resources on higher-value work and build more responsive and intelligent networks that can stay up and running longer.

The new solution is built on the latest release of Red Hat OpenShift to run across hybrid cloud environments and works in concert with technologies at the centre of today’s distributed work environment, such as Slack and Box. It also works with providers of traditional IT monitoring solutions, such as Mattermost and ServiceNow. As part of the rollout, IBM is also announcing the Accelerator for Application Modernisation with AI, within the IBM’s Cloud Modernisation service. This new capability is designed to help clients reduce the overall effort and costs associated with application modernisation.

It provides a series of tools designed to optimise the end to end modernisation journey, accelerating the analysis and recommendations for various architectural and microservices options. The accelerator leverages continuous learning and interpretable AI models to adapt to the client’s preferred software engineering practices and stays up-to-date with the evolution of technology and platforms.

In addition to automating IT operations, IBM is announcing a series of new and updated capabilities designed to give CIOs a playbook for operating in this new environment.

Datacentrix becomes a Master Partner of Nutanix

Datacentrix, a high performing and secure ICT solutions provider, has attained Master-tier status with enterprise cloud computing solution provider, Nutanix, reaching the highest rank within the Nutanix Channel Charter programme.

This achievement, based on maintaining multiple technical and sales certifications and meeting performance goals as a partner in good standing, makes Datacentrix one of only four Master Partners in South Africa.

In addition, becoming a Nutanix Master Partner verifies that Datacentrix is in the top tier of local partners closing business in South Africa.

Datacentrix’ business strategy has always been to represent its technology partners at the highest level, Marx reveals, ensuring that it develops the right skills to deliver leading solutions that support clients along their technology transformation journeys.

SHAWN MARX, DATACENTRIX BUSINESS UNIT MANAGER FOR CONVERGED SOLUTIONS.

J U N E 2020

MEA

13

CHANNEL NEWS

Ingram Micro draws partner attention to spurious customer orders In a letter sent to its partners, Ingram Micro has drawn attention to the fact that fraudulent sales orders are on the rise. The company has also offered practical advice that will help mitigate the risks from such orders. Here is the advisory Ingram Micro sent out.

DEAR VALUED INGRAM MICRO PARTNER,

Please be aware and take action: Fraudulent sales orders are on the rise. As our channel partner, we would like to share practical advice that will help mitigate this behaviour to protect our company, your company, and your clients.

We’re seeing instances of fraud experienced by our partners from their long-term Existing customers who have had their email breached as well as from new customers that are 100% fraudulent.

To help your company and your employees identify and stop what may be fraud, we would like to share the following advice.

YOUR NEW CUSTOMERS

If an order comes in from a new customer, is unsolicited, and seems too good to be true, then it probably is. Other potential fraud signals that we’ve seen from the frontlines include: l If the new customer is pressed for time and okay with any price you give them. l If the customer is ordering something that is not your core area of focus.

JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES.

If the new customer wants you to overnight a large order with no concern for cost. l If you suspect a fraudulent order from a new customer, what should you do? l As a best practice, perform an internet search on the company name and check their email address against the known company domain. l Google Earth any address given to you as a ship-to and see the locations and its surroundings.

Warehouses in desolate areas or nondescript office parks and freight forwarder addresses are all common ship-to addresses for scammers.

They have been known to transpose street numbers or zip code numbers on their ship-to location to look very similar to actual end user addresses. l

YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS

If you suspect a fraudulent order from an existing customer what should you do? l Check the email address sent to you for the request carefully. A common trick is when an email address has one character off from the actual company or entity domain name or will use a .net instead of .com or .org. l Check if the ship-to location is different than the location you usually ship to, example, a different city, a completely different address or an unlikely address for that company or entity. l Perform an internet search on the company

PAVIN VARUGHESE, COUNTRY MANAGER AT HEIMDAL SECURITY.

Bulwark Technologies to distribute Heimdal Security products Bulwark Technologies, a specialised ValueAdded Distributor, VAD, for Information Security products in the Middle East region, has announced that it has signed a distribution partnership with Heimdal Security,

14

MEA

J U N E 2020

which specialises in edge endpoint protection.

Unparalleled vulnerability management, automated patch deployment, perimeter level DNS Security along with endpoint admin privilege management and advanced email

MARC KASSIS, DIRECTOR, CYBER SECURITY DIVISION, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA AT INGRAM MICRO.

and check the domain website against the domain email address. l Pick up the phone and call your client to verify. l Take a quick inventory.

If the existing customer is buying unusual product than what they typically purchase and are buying in fairly extraordinary quantities, STOP and call them via the phone number YOU have on file for them, not the one in the email sent to you with the request.

Let’s work together to eliminate fraudulent orders.

Signed, Marc Kassis, Director, Cyber Security Division, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Ingram Micro.

security makes it a holistic security platform for all sectors of business.

Heimdal Security protects users and companies from cyber-criminal actions, by keeping critical information and intellectual property safe. The proactive approach and smooth patch deployment offered by Thor Foresight is now strengthened by Thor Vigilance’s strong reactive protection with 100% detection.

Bulwark will provide the following Heimdal Security products: l Darklayer Guard and VectorN l MailSentry l Thor AdminPrivilege l Thor for Banks l Thor Foresight Enterprise l Thor Premium Enterprise l Thor Vigilance Enterprise l X-Ploit Resilience and Infinity Management

CHANNEL NEWS

Wipro, Nutanix streamline database delivery and management Nutanix and Wipro have announced the launch of Wipro’s Digital Database Services, DDS, powered by Nutanix Era and Nutanix HCI software. This offering will enable enterprises to efficiently manage databases optimising time and effort of IT teams.

As the data landscape shifts, businesses face constant pressure for innovation resulting in strain on the company’s IT departments. With legacy infrastructures, databases can be one of the components hindering time to value and linear scalability, preventing rapid scaling of operations such as transaction processing in which business can lose valuable transactions or insights that directly impact their revenue or decision-making capabilities.

Wipro’s DDS, built on Nutanix solutions for Databases including Nutanix HCI software and Nutanix Era, allows enterprises and users to provision and manage databases just-in-time, without prior knowledge of hardware, database software and associated configurations. The result is accelerated application release time, allowing database administrators to focus on new innovation instead.

The DDS offering from Wipro, powered by

Nutanix, empowers customers to consolidate their database workloads onto a shared infrastructure to manage database sprawl. It drives efficiency, agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability across the enterprise by automating and simplifying database administration.

Additional benefits delivered by the joint solution include:

COST REDUCTION

Reduction of acquisition and operating costs of database, consolidation and effective utilisation of resources (control sprawl, better lifecycle management), better utilisation of database administrators’ time by allowing them to focus on innovations and optimisations

RAPID PROVISIONING

Delivering of services in minutes as compared to days; business lines, database administrators, or non-IT users can consume services through a self-service portal, reducing overall time

INNOVATIVE PRICING

The as-a-service model makes cost predictable and easily dispersed to business units, ensuring

BALA KUCHIBHOTLA, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, NUTANIX ERA AND BUSINESS CRITICAL APPS, NUTANIX.

service quality and customer satisfaction

REUSABILITY

The solution integrates with other third-party cloud management platform and orchestration tools to help reuse existing investment

SUPPORTABILITY

Support for multiple database technologies and versions

AUTOMATION

Enabling of greater efficiency and faster change delivery with better quality and predictability

SAP awards MENA companies for digital transformation The UAE’s innovators Al Ain Distribution Company, Emirates Fast Food Co, Emirates NBD, Ittihad International Investment and Majid Al Futtaim have been recognised for excelling in the Middle East and North Africa’s digital transformation market, which is estimated at $2.4 billion in 2020.

As the region embraces the Experience Economy, organisations are digitally transforming with real-time platforms to enhance customer and employee experiences. Future Market Insights predicts that MENA’s digital transformation market will more than double from $1 billion in 2014 to $2.4 billion in 2020.

The SAP MENA Quality Awards recognise the region’s top digital transformation initiatives.

Judges ranked winners based on realised business benefits across four categories: Business Transformation, Cloud Transformation, Fast, and Innovation. In the Cloud Transformation category, Ittihad International Investment with Tyconz, and Majid Al Futtaim with Rolling

Arrays, deployed the SAP SuccessFactors human management experience suite to transform experiences for tens of thousands of employees.

In the Innovation category, the winners deployed real-time business platforms to optimise operations, costs and customer experiences. Winners include Al Ain Distribution Company with Clariba on the SAP HANA in-memory platform, Emirates Fast Food Co with Seidor MENA on the S/4HANA cloud real-time business suite and SuccessFactors, and Emirates NBD with SAP Field Services as the first global banking deployment of the SAP Financial Services Data Platform on the SAP HANA platform.

In the Fast category, the GCC Interconnection Authority, Gulf Marketing Group, and ENGRO in Pakistan all won awards. Gulf Marketing Group, with Clariba, used the SAP Extended Warehouse Management solution in its new Mega Distribution Centre to optimise

SERGIO MACCOTTA, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SAP MIDDLE EAST SOUTH.

order cycles, operations, costs and inventory.

In the Business Transformation category, the winners include Saudi Ground Services with BaasKaar IT Company, Industrial Development Fund with Al-Bilad Arabia, and Hilal Foods with Siemens Pakistan.

J U N E 2020

MEA

15

CHANNEL NEWS

CyberKnight to distribute IronNet’s products in Middle East

EHAB DERBAS, VP SALES AT CYBERKNIGHT.

According to Gartner, the global cost of cybercrime will increase and worldwide spending on cybersecurity is estimated to hit $133.7 billion in 2022. The coronavirus outbreak has exacerbated the threat as organisations are faced with the challenge of keeping as many businesscritical functions running as possible, while maintaining adequate security in a completely new environment. In fact, 68% of business leaders admit their cybersecurity risks are growing, which increases the need for organisations to work together to leverage joint resources and collectively defend against common threats.

To address threat detection challenges faced by enterprise and government customers in the region, CyberKnight has partnered with IronNet Cybersecurity, a provider of Collective Defence and Network Traffic Analysis, NTA. IronNet’s unique and innovative Collective Defence functionality, called IronDome, allows organisations of all sizes to share behavioural threat data anonymously, at network speed, to increase visibility of incoming cyber-attacks.

Combined with higher-order behavioural analytics, Collective Defence allows customers to leverage a wider pool of cybersecurity expertise and threat visibility to detect and respond to sophisticated threats.

At the heart of IronNet’s threat detection capabilities is IronDefence, IronNet’s NTA platform, which delivers largely scalable behavioural analysis and integrated packet-level cyber hunting capabilities. The solution leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to detect advanced threats often missed by existing commercial cybersecurity solutions.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) RAN LEWINSKI, VP OF SALES, APAC, CHECKMARX AND NATHAN CLEMENTS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST OF EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS.

Exclusive Networks ME, Checkmarx offer app security testing

Exclusive Networks ME has announced that it has partnered with Checkmarx to deliver Checkmarx’s Software Security Platform to customers. With this, the distributor will expand its cybersecurity portfolio and business scope, providing application security testing solutions to empower organisations to remediate vulnerabilities found throughout the software development lifecycle more efficiently and effectively.

16

MEA

J U N E 2020

The addition of Checkmarx to the Exclusive Networks ME portfolio was a simple decision for the distributor, as Checkmarx meets all the stringent criteria the specialist usually looks for when adding a new solution to its vendor ecosystem. Checkmarx’s partner programme is designed to enable resellers and distributors to offer comprehensive software security solutions, helping customers release more secure software at scale to meet fast-operating

DevOps environments.

Checkmarx leads the industry in delivering automated security scanning as part of the DevOps process. The Checkmarx Software Security Platform integrates SAST, IAST, SCA, and developer application security awareness and training solutions, enabling organisations to elevate their software security postures. The solution is available on-premises, in the cloud, or for hybrid environments.

CHANNEL NEWS

RSA selects UAE-based Condo Protego as a Platinum Partner RSA has named Condo Protego, a UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy, as among the Middle East’s elite Platinum Partners, supporting new levels of enterprise security. Showing the strong market opportunity, the Middle East and North Africa’s cyber security market is growing at an 11.9% CAGR to $23.4 billion by 2023, according to a recent report by Research and Markets. Worldwide, RSA secures more than 30,000 organisations, manages more than 50 million identities, and protects more than 2 billion customers.

The Platinum tier of the RSA SecurWorld partner programme nominates channel partners that are experts in their fields. The Platinum partners present a strong focus on institutional capabilities, resources, and expert-level certifications.

The RSA Business-Driven Security Portfolio provide customers with the visibility, insights and actions they need to thrive in an uncertain, high-risk world. RSA solutions include the RSA Arche Suite, the RSA Netwitness Platform, the RSA SecurID Suite, the RSA Fraud and Risk Intelligence Suite, and the RSA Risk and Cyber Security Practice.

ESET signs Credence Security as distributor for Southern Africa

GARRETH SCOTT, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CREDENCE SECURITY.

Credence Security, a regional distributor of specialised solutions in cybersecurity, forensics, governance, risk and compliance, has announced a new partnership with award-winning global endpoint and perimeter-protection vendor ESET, to cover southern Africa. In selecting a partner to expand its footprint in southern Africa, ESET was attracted to Credence Security’s regional reach as a Dubai-based distributor with offices in London, Nairobi, Noida and Johannesburg.

And the industry leader believes that Credence Security’s portfolio will be significantly enhanced

by ESET’s solutions, particularly its encryption, and endpoint-protection products.

The development of ESET’s unique offerings is driven by its global research labs, which incorporate multi-layered technologies that go far beyond the capabilities of basic endpoint protection. ESET customers commonly cite simple implementation and the wide choice of configurations as procurement draws. Among its many globally recognised clients is Google, which uses ESET technology to protect Chrome users against malware.

ANDREW CALTHORPE, CEO CONDO PROTEGO.

Kodak Alaris’ annual Partner Summit goes virtual this year

Over 200 partners joined Kodak Alaris at its first virtual Partner Summit. The global information capture specialist had planned on holding its annual partner conference for the EMEA region in Vienna, but in light of the current Covid-19 crisis, decided to make it a virtual event.

Kodak Alaris President and General Manager Don Lofstrom confirmed that despite the challenges presented by the current global pandemic, Kodak Alaris’ performance in the financial year ended March 31 was strong overall. In his address to partners, he provided an update on the impact of Covid-19 on the business and the marketplace over the past four months, as well as steps Kodak Alaris has taken to minimise disruption to its customers.

Lofstorm noted that employee safety and supply chain management have been at the forefront of the company’s focus. The supply chain is now intact and strong, manufacturing sites in China are up and running at nearly full capacity. Scanner production is over 95% capacity now compared with 40% in March. Secondary supply chain partners are also beginning to normalise.

Whilst March brought some delays and slippage to orders, Lofstrom said that this month has seen increased demand from a number of sectors including healthcare and logistics. Work from home mandates are also creating market needs for digitisation and remote collaboration solutions that involve our digital capture and software offers.

The company has increased use of remote monitoring and service to keep customers up and running, and to continue to provide essential on-site service in locations where government mandates allow.

66% of partners who attended the virtual event said that Covid-19 had considerably changed their business and that they were looking to change their business strategy. Lofstrom said that Kodak Alaris is thinking outside the box, looking for opportunities to offer expertise to help partners overcome these new challenges.

DON LOFSTROM, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, KODAK ALARIS.

J U N E 2020

MEA

17

SECURITY NEWS

SECURITY NEWS

eSIM-capable devices. It also lets them benefit from the reliability of Google Cloud’s carbon neutral technology. eSIM adoption is being fuelled by a new generation of smartphones, tablets, wearables

and new IoT use-cases. Thales’ subscription management expertise not only ensures seamless remote activation of a vast number of devices, but also provides data analytics and protection of the subscriber’s data.

With telecom operators facing the combined challenges of rapid digital transformation and a drastically growing eSIM ecosystem, Thales has responded by creating a public cloudbased version of its proven eSIM Remote Subscription Platform. In this initial deployment, the platform will run on Google Cloud, which is available in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe.

Thales has implemented first-class security standards specifically designed to meet the requirements of GSMA certification in a public cloud environment. Telecom operators can also benefit from the Thales subscription management solution which offers unprecedented levels of operational flexibility, both in terms of auto-scaling and capacity management. As a result, enterprises will be able to take full advantage of subscription business growth in the years ahead.

the name SilverTerrier. From January 30 to April 30, Unit 42 observed three SilverTerrier actors or groups launch a series of 10 Covid-19 themed malware campaigns. These campaigns have produced over 170 phishing emails seen across our customer base. While broad in their targeting, these actors have exercised minimal restraint in terms of targeting organisations that are critical to Covid-19 response efforts.

Specifically, it is alarming that several of these campaigns recklessly included targets at government healthcare agencies, local and

regional governments, large universities with medical programmes or centres, regional utilities, medical publishing firms, and insurance companies across the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

None of the malicious campaigns were successful in infecting their intended targets.

Palo Alto Networks security service offerings, URL Filtering, WildFire, and Threat Prevention, detect and classify all samples and associated infrastructure as malicious.

Thales selects Google Cloud as eSIM management solution Thales has deployed the world’s first GSMAcertified eSIM activation solution on Google Cloud. This solution will offer telecom operators secure and highly scalable support to manage increases in mobile subscriptions for

Unit 42 warns Covid-themed BEC schemes are on the rise

According to the recently released annual report from the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, IC3, the FBI observed a record 23,775 Business Email Compromise, BEC, attacks in 2019. Significantly greater than all other categories of cybercrime over the same period, these attacks resulted in an estimated $1.77 billion in global losses.

With the global impacts of Covid-19, an unprecedented number of corporations are expediting their cloud infrastructure migrations, all while transitioning to a largely remote workforce that is understandably interested in all topics related to the virus. Given this trend, it should come as no surprise that BEC actors are seizing opportunities to exploit the situation through tailored phishing campaigns related to Covid-19.

Focusing on one of the most active subsets of the global threat landscape, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 tracks Nigerian cyber criminals involved in BEC activities under

J U N E 2020

MEA

19

SECURITY NEWS

Cybersecurity lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic The real world is fragile. It is unnerving, to say the least, to see how a virus can cause such massive disruptions across the globe. The digital world is fragile as well, as rampant cyberattacks have shown us. It is no coincidence that some of the language we use to describe cybersecurity threats is taken from the biological world, specifically terms such as viruses and infections. The similarities are striking.

Coronavirus, like many computer viruses, was a zero-day attack. There was no forewarning, no minor outbreak where it could be contained before proliferating. Then it spread quickly, with no treatment or mitigation, causing enormous devastation.

It spread surreptitiously, with many individuals being infected before they showed any symptoms. Coronavirus is transmitted by individuals when they interact in person, mimicking the spread of computer viruses within a network. All of these attributes mirror certain types of computer malware.

As my Palo Alto Networks colleague Ryan Olson notes: “The earliest examples of computer viruses would write extra code into another executable file and change the entry point to start execution at their code. This is nearly identical to a biological virus, which can’t live on its own and must attach to a host

cell to survive and reproduce.”

Another important similarity is the need for an antivirus vaccine. Classic antivirus computer solutions work in a way that is similar to how our immune systems fend off viruses. They contain a small piece of the virus and create files to identify virus-infected files.

The immune system in the body actually does the same thing by saving a small section of the virus and using that as a way to identify infected cells, which it then destroys.

In the real world, we all could have been better prepared for Covid-19, with adequate supplies of critical equipment such as testing kits, masks and ventilators. But few countries were willing to accept a risk model for something that seems abstract. Many voices of warning were ignored because of concerns about costs.

In cybersecurity, you can use segmentation to build controls around key assets and use policies to limit the ability of malware or zeroday attacks to enter that environment. You can build in controls that limit the ability of viruses to infect other parts of your environment.

Segmenting keeps sensitive data and assets apart from each other, so an infection won’t spread. The approach is like what we are doing with social distancing. It’s also similar to using

ThreatQuotient enhances its enterprise security portfolio

ThreatQuotient now offers consulting services that range from an initial assessment of current threat intelligence capabilities, to more indepth and long-term process development.

The ultimate goal is to mature a programme to the point that a team can confidently address specific use cases like spearphishing, threat hunting and vulnerability management.

ThreatQuotient’s services can educate new cyber intelligence teams, refocus teams onto specific classes of threats, and operationalise an intelligence practice.

ThreatQuotient’s Professional Services also guide the development of a strategic plan, which embeds threat intelligence within all functions of security operations, by taking into account stakeholder analyses, risk identification and a one to three-year growth plan. In addition, ThreatQuotient enables security executives to leverage the application of global threat intelligence to communicate effectively with their business leadership.

ThreatQuotient has announced enhancements to their professional services offering, including new Assessment and Consulting Services.

First launched in 2017, ThreatQuotient’s global Professional Services team has continuously evolved to meet and exceed the changing needs of organisations at all levels of security operations and threat intelligence maturity.

By providing the core capabilities to assess, design and build a threat-centric security operations function, ThreatQuotient is enabling organisations to transition from traditional signature-based monitoring, detection and response to an external, threat-focused programme.

In addition to the current services of implementation, training and development,

20

MEA

J U N E 2020

JOHN KINDERVAG, FIELD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OF FICER AT PALO ALTO NETWORKS.

masks or self-quarantine to limit the spread.

And just as in the biological world, in cyber you can make prevention bidirectional, stopping infections from coming in and going out.

The Covid-19 and cybersecurity metaphor extend even further. With Zero Trust methodologies, you are taking the swabs, doing the testing, isolating and quarantining in real time, before there is any chance the infection will get into your system and infect others. With everything pre-tested and pre-validated, there can be no asymptomatic carriers spreading the infection surreptitiously.

JONATHAN COUCH, SVP STRATEGY AT THREATQUOTIENT.

ThreatQuotient will help organisations seamlessly deploy the ThreatQ platform into their ecosystem, however, companies do not have to be users of the platform to take advantage of ThreatQuotient’s services to mature their operations and learn how to implement threat intelligence.

SECURITY NEWS

2020. 86,600+ domains are classified as risky or malicious, spread across various regions.

The United States has the highest number of malicious domains, 29,007, followed by Italy, 2,877, Germany, 2,564, and Russia, 2,456.

Unit 42 researchers found 56,200+ of the NRDs are hosted in one of the top four popular

cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Alibaba.

During the research, Unit 42 noticed that some malicious domains resolve to multiple IP addresses, and some IP addresses are associated with multiple domains. This many-to-many mapping often occurs in cloud environments due to the use of content delivery networks and can make IP-based firewalls ineffective. Some important findings in this research are: l On average, 1,767 malicious Covid-19 themed domains are created every day. l Of the 86,600+ domains, 2,829 domains hosted in public clouds are found as risky or malicious. l Adversaries are disguising malicious activities such as phishing and malware delivery in the cloud. l The higher price and more rigorous screening/monitoring process is likely making malicious actors less willing to host malicious domains in public clouds.

Consumers have shown that it is not just their private information that they are worried about, but their loved ones’ too. For instance, the report reveals that 31% of consumers claim that their personal data or information about their family has become publicly available without their consent.

Such occurrences are pushing consumers into making conscious choices about how and where their personal data is stored, to stop it being viewed or used by others who do not

have permission to do so. A significant proportion of people apply additional measures when browsing the Internet, to hide their information from cybercriminals, 43%, the websites they visit, 40%, and other individuals accessing the same device, 44%. Additionally, some consumers remain wary about storing personal information on their devices. For instance, more than a fifth, 27%, also say they are concerned about personal data collected by the apps they use on their mobile devices.

Unit 42 finds malicious Covid-themed domains in the cloud Unit 42 has released new research on malicious Covid-19 themed domains hosted in the cloud that are targeting users with phishing and malware. Unit 42 researchers analysed 1.2 million newly registered domain names containing keywords related to the Covid-19 pandemic from March 9, 2020 to April 26,

Kaspersky finds 84% users tried to erase online private data New Kaspersky research has found that consumers around the world want to take more action to protect and maintain control over their personal privacy. As revealed in the company’s latest report, Defending digital privacy: taking personal protection to the next level, consumers are becoming more aware of where their personal data is available online.

In fact, 84% say they have tried to remove private information from websites or social media channels. However, a third, 33%, have no idea how to go about it.

These findings reveal how fundamental protecting the privacy of our personal data and interactions online is to make sure we all continue to benefit from technology. The report, which includes findings from a new consumer survey carried out in 23 countries, examines current consumer attitudes towards online privacy and what steps people are taking to keep private information from falling into the wrong hands.

J U N E 2020

MEA

21

COVER FEATURE

Azz-Eddine Mansouri, Ciena

Dimitris Kourlas, HPE Middle East

Emile Abou Saleh, Proofpoint

Maya Zakhour, NetApp

PARTNER PROGRAMMES

Mohamed Abdallah, SonicWall

Mohamed Khan, SAP

Praj Calthorpe, Condo Protego

Reem Asaad, Cisco Middle East and Africa

Sébastien Pavie, Thales

Vangelis Lagousakos, Dell Technologies

SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL OF THE CHANNEL

The pandemic brought IT purchasing to standstill and arrested the regional sell-through process. Now vendors are incentivizing, supporting, rewarding the channel.

Vlad Postelnicu, Software AG

Zacky Vaz, Fortinet

J U N E 2020

MEA

23

COVER FEATURE

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

REALIGNING SOLUTIONS AND PARTNER OPPORTUNITIES

Over the last one year and through the pandemic, rebates and incentives have been simplified, solutions and partner opportunities have been aligned.

BY ARUN SHANKAR.

O

ver the last one year, Dell Technologies has revamped its relationship with its channel partners through a number of initiatives.

The vendor has realigned the investments of its channel partners and their capabilities with its own solutions through a process of technical planning. This has enabled the partners to act autonomously in the market place.

Dell Technologies has simplified its rebate structure by moving away from quarterly targets and becoming more focused on their long-term relationship and business. “It is leading the partner versus managing the partner,” says Vangelis Lagousakos, General Manager, Channel Sales, Middle East, Russia, Africa and Turkey, Dell Technologies.

Dell Technologies has also reduced the number of global zones from 10 to 5, while making the rebate structure more relevant for all the countries in the same global zone.

The vendor has also streamlined the process of preparing quotes, pricing, and the configuration of ordering, making it easier for channel partners to do business. It has made deal registration more transparent in the pricing and front-end discount, improving the predictability and profitability of the partner.

In order for channel partners to grow faster, the vendor has added rebate multipliers into various offerings around digital transformation and the datacentre, including blade offerings, four-socket, and professional work stations.

According to Lagousakos, the number one priority for all channel partners is acquiring new business. “We are incentivising and this is a major priority for us.” With the focus around data, storage, and the data centre, there is also an incentive for channel partners to swap out competitive products from the data centre.

Other areas of innovation where channel partners are being encouraged to focus on are

24

MEA

J U N E 2020

workload support for artificial intelligence and machine learning, autonomous infrastructure, managing data at the edge, and advanced cloud innovation.

While Dell Technologies has a significant presence and share of technology across regional enterprise and commercial customers, there is still an opportunity for it to grow.

Lagousakos, indicates that there is also an opportunity to grow in the mid-market.

The arrival of the global pandemic and its impact on global supply chains was an industry wide challenge. Dell Technologies was also impacted in the short term. However, the process of recovery and bringing the supply chains back to normal was through prioritisation.

“In other words, providing a prioritisation to

VANGELIS LAGOUSAKOS,

General Manager, Channel Sales, Middle East, Russia, Africa and Turkey, Dell Technologies.

the community and to the customer, in a way that we are impacting the lives of people in this Covid situation,” says Lagousakos.

Through the pandemic crises, Dell Technologies has been close to its partners, helping them in the sellout process and identifying what kind of funding they can be provided through distributors of Dell Technologies. ë

PARTNER STIMULUS PACKAGE AND PAYMENT FLEXIBILITY PROGRAMME One-time cash payout for up to 50% of current partner Market Development Fund, Business Development Fund balance, for use towards future marketing activities.

Upon approval, partners will receive immediate payment up front, freeing cash flow, offering flexibility and providing the time value of money. n

For metaled solutions providers, offering fee-waived Services Deployment training for Unity XT, VxRail and DP4400, ensuring that eligible partners continue to build capabilities during this time. n

Introducing new team-based pricing options for solution providers to make all training more affordable for our partner teams. n

For distributors, removing 1H FY21 client solutions growth targets and increasing base rates to improve predictability of earnings. This is aligned with removal of target-based programmes for solution providers announced previously as an effort to simplify and improve earning predictability in the rebate structure. n

n

Extended unspent earned MDF and BDF, scheduled to expire March and July.

COVER FEATURE

PAYMENT FLEXIBILITY PROGRAMME FROM DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES n

Dell Technologies extends $9B in financing and 0% interest rates

n

Payment Flexibility Programme on the foundation of Dell Financial Services and Dell Technologies’ end-to-end portfolio.

n

0% interest rates for Dell Technologies server, storage and networking solutions.

n

Defer first payment up to 180 days on data center infrastructure and services to help manage cash flow.

n

Short term options for remote work and learning with 6 to 12-month terms and refresh options for laptops and desktops.

n

One-year term to flexible consumption offerings in the Dell Technologies On Demand programme.

Scale usage of Dell Technologies including converged, hyperconverged, hybrid cloud, storage and data protection solutions and pay for what you use. n

n

Flex on Demand is also available from three-to five-year term options.

n

Partner with VMware to deliver flexible payment solutions supporting digital transformation.

WORKING CAPITAL SOLUTIONS Partners are already familiar with the Working Capital Solutions programme, supporting more than 1,500 partners across 74 countries. n

Through Dell Technologies’ preferred financing vendors, resellers and distributors are offered most favorable payment terms, as well as increased credit capacity and simplification of partner accounts payable management. n

n

Working Capital Solutions complements Dell Financial Services.

Partners whose end customers use Dell Financial Services may receive payment in as quickly as two days. n

If partners are using Working Capital Solutions, partners who qualify can benefit from 60 to 90 days payment terms extension to pay their financing vendor. n

Working Capital Solutions offers flexibility for partners to extend up to 120 days from the invoice date, subject to financing vendor approval, for an incremental fee negotiated with the financing vendor, providing adaptive liquidity solutions. n

n

Working Capital Solutions enables partners to win bigger.

With Working Capital Solutions, partners can meet end user demand for longer invoice payment terms. With a range of 60-90 days for qualifying partners, the partner cash conversion cycle can be fully tailored to mirror the payment demands of their end user. n

DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES Dell Financial Services has been leading in technology payment solutions for the last 22 years. n

Dell Financial Services originations increased 16% year over year to $8.5B in FY20. n

Dell Technologies has been delivering flexible consumption solutions to customers and channel partners for more than 14 years. n

Dell Financial Services consumptionbased offerings are now approaching over $3.5B in assets under management. n

Dell Financial Services knows that customers need technology right now, but many organisations need flexible repayment terms, and partners may need help managing cash flow or end-user credit risk. n

J U N E 2020

MEA

25

COVER FEATURE

HPE

SOFTENING TARGETS,PAYMENT TERMS, CAPITAL INJECTION

HPE softened targets and payment terms, created virtual demo rooms, and injected billions of dollars of liquidity into the channel partner programme.

DIMITRIS KOURLAS,

Channel and Ecosystem Sales Leader, HPE Middle East.

B

y 2022 every product HPE sells will be available as a service. That is the pledge of our CEO Antonio Neri and our corporate vision. To support this perspective, we have enhanced the partner Ready Programme to help partners capitalize on our leading HPE GreenLake, consumption-based model. These programme updates optimize the partner experience with new competency curricula to go beyond validating their solution knowledge while empowering our partners to further accelerate engagement and growth with and exciting special pricing benefits.

Another breakthrough change is the evolution of our partner Ready Service Provider Programme and the Cloud28+ initiative, providing business knowledge, tools, marketing, financing support and a rich ecosystem of ISVs to MSPs, service providers and hybrid partners in building world class cloud offerings for their customers.

HPE responded quickly to the pandemic to remove stress from partners by suspending the revenue targets required to maintain status

26

MEA

J U N E 2020

in the partner Ready Programme. HPE have also extended payment terms to distributors until July 31 to improve their working capital and cash positions and support partners in the field as well as prioritizing orders related with customer supporting the fight against COVID-19.

Another important motion was to inject a capital of $2B though HPE Financial Services.

This stimulus financing package was made available to partners in the UAE at a time when revenue flow into many organizations is constrained. Despite the crisis we are going through, customers still need the flexibility to acquire needed technology without a major capital outlay to keep their business running and this is exactly how we are helping our partners to support the customers.

HPE also made more facilities available virtually, for example with demos and tours of the briefing centers and access to experts, so partners can still invite customers to see HPE products and continue to secure sales.

While the COVID-19 crisis escalated rapidly across the globe, directly effecting

INITIATIVES HPE responded quickly by suspending revenue targets required to maintain status in the partner Ready Programme. n HPE extended payment terms to distributors until July 31 to improve working capital and cash positions. n Another important motion was to inject a capital of $2B though HPE Financial Services. n HPE also made facilities available virtually, for example with demos and tours of the briefing centers and access to experts. n

manufacturing first and the supply chain immediately after, HPE was positioned to cope with the challenge and mitigate risks. Distribution partners in the region played a key role in this mission by maintaining stock levels in advance and quickly place re-stocking orders While confident in combined ability to flawless supply the market with the kits they need, it was a challenging experience that followed the announcement of the extended UAE sterilization Programme, discussing with distribution partners how to deliver equipment to partners.

The first challenge to deal with was the shock of the uncertainty, followed by cases of freezing or postponing certain projects related to business sectors impacted directly from the pandemic like hospitality, travel and retail.

Requests for extended or flexible payment terms was another challenge to rise quickly as well as demand to expedite orders related to the fight against COVID-19.

HPE’s immediate response to inject $2B into flexible financing, extending payment terms to distributors, good financial position of our partners and diversification of addressable market sectors, was key to mitigate the risk.

With remote working being a top priority, channel partners, being IT companies are uniquely positioned to share knowledge and experience with customers. But while technology is critical either if we work from home, the office or commuting what is really important is the ability to provide solutions based on consumption, flexible payment, smart financing like buy and lease back for example and the right mix of compute, storage and software. ĂŤ

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

COVER FEATURE

PROOFPOINT

PANDEMIC DRAWING ATTENTION TO VERY ATTACKED PEOPLE

The enhanced vulnerabilities raised by the pandemic is making channel partners deliver solutions to manage these threats as well as targeted communities.

EMILE ABOU SALEH,

Regional Director, Middle East and Africa, Proofpoint.

P

roofpoint is committed to its channel strategy and in fact, 100% of new business in EMEA is indirect.

Proofpoint operates an established partner programme with three tiers: Silver, Gold and Platinum. Currently Proofpoint has identified 20 partners in EMEA that are on fast-track acceleration through its partner programme, 14 Gold and 6 Platinum.

Indeed, there is a significant opportunity in EMEA for Proofpoint partners, and the vendor is investing in the region and adding resources to help grow the business. Proofpoint aims at continuing to expand to new markets, hence the investment in the Middle East market.

Underpinning Proofpoint’s ongoing commitment towards channel partners, Proofpoint invests approximately 20% of its revenue back into R&D, one of the highest rates in the industry, because it is the number one priority to deliver customer value through innovation.

Proofpoint solutions are built on the cloud and stop 99% of attachment-based attacks.

Proofpoint differentiator is that the vendor looks at cybersecurity with a people-centric

view and focuses on solutions that protect an organisation’s most targeted individuals.

Proofpoint channel partners and global customers can look to provide an unmatched level of insight into Very Attacked People as well as to protect them and the information they create from advanced cyberattacks and compliance risks and respond quickly when incidents occur.

As the trend of remote working looks set to stay, channel partners need to ensure organisations can strengthen their cloud-based architecture and people-centric security platform, enabling customers to better protect their people and the applications and data they access beyond the traditional perimeter.

In line with this, Proofpoint is providing free access to its Security Awareness Training content for organisations to share with employees, to ensure they are alert to the latest cyber threats.

Proofpoint is also offering all Proofpoint Enterprise customers free access to its clouddelivered secure remote access solution, Proofpoint Meta, to help relieve the pressure around

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

INITIATIVES Proofpoint invests approximately 20% of its revenue back into R&D. n Solutions are built on the cloud and stop 99% of attachment-based attacks. n Proofpoint differentiator is that the vendor looks at cybersecurity with a people-centric view. n

scaling access to applications and strengthen organisations’ cloud-based architecture.

As organisations continue to migrate from on-premise infrastructure into multiple environments as remote working increases and looks set to stay for some time, it is important to realise that threat actors are increasingly targeting people rather than infrastructure, and, with the increase of cyberattacks capitalising on the COVID-19 pandemic, the proliferation of cloud service accounts provides threat actors with a rapidly growing attack surface.

Organisations will encounter many unique challenges during this time. And Proofpoint and Proofpoint channel partners are on hand to support. Proofpoint recommends that security and IT teams keep in close communications with their home-based workforce.

These teams are dealing with a different security landscape from the corporate office, including home WIFI networks, VPNs, device sharing with spouses and kids, and the lack of proximity with co-workers who can validate any suspicious messages received.

The biggest challenge continues to be related to the protection of organisations’ Very Attacked People, with most employees now working remotely and cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated every day. Advanced security technology coupled with effective security awareness training is the strongest defense organisations have when it comes to stopping today’s increasingly specialised, socially-engineered cyberattacks.

Additionally, the cloud continues to be an area of both opportunity and challenge within the channel. As organisations move their businesses off premises and into the cloud, channel partners must help their counterparts rethink their overall security investments to ensure they are protecting themselves against an entirely new landscape of threats that are primarily targeting people, rather than infrastructure. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

27

COVER FEATURE

NETAPP

SIMPLIFIED DASHBOARD FOR PARTNER INCENTIVES, ENGAGEMENTS Along with measures meant to ensure profitability of partners, NetApp also launched its Defend, Extend, Attack, programme to gain market share.

MAYA ZAKHOUR,

Channel Sales Director MEA, Italy and Spain, NetApp.

N

etApp started its new fiscal year in May and in line with this, NetApp made some modifications to its partner programme and introduced new tools to incentivise partners with support and rebates. The new initiatives are deal-based incentives and designed to be simple, consistent, and stackable, and spans NetApp’s entire portfolio.

The New Account initiative is a global backend rebate system that allows partners with proven ability to close new accounts. The Run to NetApp Incentive rewards partners’ efforts when migrating customers from competitors to NetApp. The minimum deal size has been reduced, payouts increased, Partner Services Capabilities requirement removed, and the Certificate of Destruction requirement has been changed to Letter of Intent. This means that more partners can use this rebate and get paid more quickly.

The Tech Refresh Incentive is designed to encourage partners to replace their customers’ aging and End of Life NetApp FAS controllers with a new Flash HCI solution.

28

MEA

J U N E 2020

In addition to incentives, NetApp also has emphasis on providing its partners with proper training tools to ensure they know the solutions well. The company will host its first Virtual Partner Academy for Middle East in the second quarter June-July, starting with UAE and Saudi Arabia, and will share their latest roadmap with partners, along with a number of portal trainings and webinars.

A key initiative that NetApp has undertaken to help partners at this time of crisis is to not downgrade any of its partner’s tier levels.

NetApp is also launching a simplified tool that allows partners to manage multiple investments from NetApp, including MDF, rebates and at a later date, rewards, and more.

By moving to this new tool, partners will have a simplified experience, viewing all of their NetApp incentives in one single SaaS platform rather than utilising multiple tools and interfaces.

For its cloud partners, NetApp has a Cloud Data Services Incentive where NetApp expands support, tools and incentives for cloud partners around the world. There are

INITIATIVES NetApp is providing partners with access to continuous daily updates on business continuity. n NetApp has seen a significant demand for VDI solutions by customers who are witnessing increased capacity. n NetApp’s relationships have grown stronger with its partners and distributors during this time of global crisis. n NetApp is seeing customers opt for a consumption model as it helps them manage costs better. n

exclusive incentives for partners that meet the requirements for the new Cloud Preferred Partner level.

Additional rebates for Preferred Partners include rewards for marketplace transactions and success selling consumption-based solutions over four quarters.

The modified incentive programme is structured into three areas: # Defend - where partners are encouraged to consolidate NetApp’s leadership position by closing new accounts and strengthening its installed base; # Extend - where partners earn incentives and rebates on performing tech refreshes; # Attack - where partners earn rebates from acquiring customers with competing technology brands.

NetApp have a number of online trainings and webinars that partners can attend to upskill and maintain their tier level. The new incentive program will encourage partners to increase commercial and run-rate business and help cement its leadership, while ensuring that even the smallest partner gains.

NetApp is providing partners and all stakeholders with access to continuous daily updates on business continuity. NetApp has also seen a significant demand for VDI solutions by customers who are witnessing increased capacity and want a solution that can be implemented faster.

NetApp’s relationships have grown stronger with its partners and distributors during this time of global crisis. NetApp is also seeing customers opt for a consumption model as it helps them manage costs better. Channel partners will need to move to a more service-oriented model to be profitable and maintain a sustainable business. ë

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

Distance is NO BARRIER

Introducing D-Link Smart Wireless Solution for Point-to-Point Deployment

ESD Surge Protection

DAP-F3711-I Range: Upto 5 Kms Antenna Gain: 15 dBi High-Power Wireless 5Ghz 11ac Bridge

2x2 MIMO

ü

IP 65/66 Complied

Point to Point or Multipoint Application

Centrally Managed

TDMA+Polling Avoiding collision/ Interference between channels

DAP-F3704-I Range: Up to 5 Kms Antenna Gain: 10 dBi High-Power Wireless 5Ghz 11n Bridge

ACK Timeout adjustment Improves long distance Transmission

DAP-F3705-N Range: Up to 10 Kms Antenna Gain: 23 dBi High-Power Wireless 5Ghz 11n Bridge DAP-F3712-N Range: Up to 20 Kms Antenna Gain: 23 dBi High-Power Wireless 5Ghz 11ac Bridge

Intelligent Rate Control Improving stability of Bandwidth

Self Healing Useful in extreme noisy area

Connect to more |

COVER FEATURE

SONICWALL

DIGITAL DRIVING DEMAND FOR MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES

The vendor has introduced a partner programme that provides licensing and tools needed to help MSSPs manage threats from adoption of cloud, IoT, AI.

MOHAMED ABDALLAH,

Regional Director META, SonicWall.

S

onicWall is combining 28 years of experience, data and technology with its partner-led culture to deliver a boundless cybersecurity platform. The platform delivers seamless protection that stops the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points and an increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled workforce. SonicWall is helping organisations be prepared for an influx of cyberattacks, and are giving participating partners, both regionally and globally, a competitive edge.

In this difficult time, channel partners need the funding, support and flexibility to help customers make the right technology decisions for their organisations. Keeping this in mind SonicWall launched certain sales programmes and services Security-as-a-Service, Managed Services that work best for the solutions they are offering.

These schemes will also help partners deal with the business climate expected in the weeks ahead. SonicWall is also offering free training via the SonicWall University, with pathways for partners to be at the forefront of

30

MEA

J U N E 2020

today’s cyber security threats and solutions.

SonicWall recently introduced an enhanced version of the SecureFirst Managed Security Service Provider Programme that provides the licensing models, resources and tools needed to help MSSPs mitigate the rapidly growing threat volume from the adoption of cloud, IoT and AI environments.

In order to ensure right deployment, SonicWall have not only a number of skilled partners but also offer professional services delivered by partners. A simple starting point is the network health check, which is a standardised check of current settings and deployment of the security solution. From there, a SonicWall Solution Architect can help to draft the best possible security layout.

As the global managed services market continues to expand, SMBs in particular are moving their IT to managed services model as they very often lack the resources inhouse to keep up with the ever-changing cyber threat landscape. SonicWall expects the managed services market to further grow, and keeping this in mind, it has made significant enhance-

INITIATIVES SonicWall introduced an enhanced version of the SecureFirst Managed Security Service Provider Programme. n SonicWall expects managed services to grow, keeping this in mind, it has made significant enhancements to its MSSP programme. n MSSPs can mitigate the rapidly growing threat volume from the adoption of cloud, IoT, AI environments. n

ments to its MSSP programme.

SonicWall also have multiple global and regional initiatives to keep supporting partners during Covid-19. As an example, SonicWall are offering free extension of license depending on the needs. The company is also revising rebates, bundles and promo programmes to keep supporting its partners during this tough time.

SonicWall has been well prepared as soon as the Covid-19 situation began. The company revised and reviewed its regional supply chain to make sure it keeps supporting partners and customers. This has been supported by its manufacturing which kept operating at the same level. Delivery and collections have been seasonally challenging during to the change in movement schedule in a few of countries due to the severity of Covid-19 spread. However, SonicWall has ensured it keeps serving partners and customer with minimum disruption to the business.

As employees work remotely, there is a major change in operational processes and delays are inevitable. Most organisations have deferred their IT budgets and spending and that could have an impact on the channel business. There is an increased demand for remote access solutions and therefore a demand for specialised channel partners who can help their customers in this challenging time.

All businesses are being challenged by legacy systems, fragmented finance processes, unpredictable cost of delivery, and lack of resources and talent. Partners also need to adopt a service-oriented model to ensure high customer satisfaction levels, and maintain their productivity. ĂŤ

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

COVER FEATURE REEM ASAAD,

Vice President, Cisco Middle East and Africa.

SAP

RESKILLING AND UPSKILLING PARTNERS FOR CLOUD

SAP is supporting partners with payment terms, solutions for free, helping to gain services revenue, upskilling and re-skilling of partner ecosystem.

MOHAMED KHAN,

MENA Channel Head, Global Partner Organisation, SAP.

I

n the wake of COVID-19 coronavirus, Middle East organisations need to work closely with knowledgeable and experienced channel partners to adopt real-time solutions that can re-design supply chains and procurement, travel, health pre-screening, and remote working to maintain business continuity.

During COVID-19, channel partners need to deliver short time to value for their customers and outline clear benefits. SAP is also supporting channel partners with their main challenge of cash flow, and helping to enable partners with promotions and offers for upskilling and re-skilling across pre-sales, sales, and consulting.

The SAP MENA channel partner programme and the SAP Co-Innovation Lab in the UAE are supporting local partners to design COVID-19 solutions, including prototypes in grocery store stocking and in facial identification for remote workers.

In this era of business and industry uncertainty, SAP is supporting channel partners with extended payment terms, opening up solutions for free for end-user customers and supporting the channel partners to gain the services

revenue, and upskilling and re-skilling of the partner ecosystem where needed especially on cloud.

SAP continues to evolve the Channel Partner Programme to meet market needs, especially on educating channel partners on migrating customers to the cloud. Channel partners that offer cloud solutions have 5x market higher valuation, and partners that develop their own IP have 10x higher market valuation.

For the SAP Global Alliance PartnerEdge Programme, MENA has been a fast-evolving region, with 130+ channel partners training on SAP solutions. SAP is underlining the importance of the cloud and customer and employee experiences, especially in the COVID-19 era.

MENA channel partners are training on SAP HANA in-memory platform, SAP S4HANA real-time business suite, SAP C4HANA customer experience suite, SAP SuccessFactors human experience management suite, SAP Leonardo digital innovation system for IoT, AI, Machine Learning, and Blockchain, and SAP C4HANA customer engagement suite, Success Factors, along with Ariba, Concur, and Fieldglass. ë

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

CISCO CAPITAL TO PROVIDE $2.5B THROUGH BUSINESS RESILIENCY PROGRAMME

As part of Cisco’s commitment to help customers and partners globally navigate an evolving landscape, the company has introduced a new Business Resiliency Programme in the UAE. Offered through Cisco Capital, the vendor financing business within Cisco, and designed to help mitigate financial challenges resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, this programme includes $2.5 billion in financing.

Cash flow is a top concern for Cisco customers and partners in the current environment. The new Business Resiliency Programme offered by Cisco Capital includes an up-front 90-day payment holiday and allows a customer to defer 95% of the cost of a new product or solution until 2021, which in turn protects their business and increases their existing cash flow.

Starting in January 2021, customers would then make a monthly payment based on the total financed amount and the remaining term of the financing. All Cisco solutions are eligible for this programme, including hardware, software and services as well as up to 5% of partner provided services, such as installation.

The programme also offers support to Cisco’s 60,000-global partner ecosystem. The Business Resiliency Programme will help partners provide an additional solution to better serve customers, without any change to their own financial situation, in this challenging business environment. It will accelerate their sales cycles and allow partners to offer their customers payment solutions to better manage their cash flow.

In addition, Cisco Capital is supporting customers and partners through Cisco Refresh, the Cisco certified remanufactured product portfolio, to help with budget constraints. Cisco Refresh solutions are also eligible for the Business Resiliency Programme where 95% of the cost can be deferred until 2021. Cisco recently committed $225 million in cash, in-kind, and planned-giving to support both the global and local response.

J U N E 2020

MEA

31

COVER FEATURE

CONDO PROTEGO

REMOTE PROJECT INTEGRATION, REMOTE WORKING TOP CHALLENGES The company is educating customers on the business benefits of accelerating digital transformation and enabling more flexible and remote work options.

PRAJ CALTHORPE,

Deputy General Manager, Condo Protego.

W

hile the Middle East has developed strong visions around emerging technologies such as AI and IoT, mainstream business adoption is still in its infancy. One of the biggest Middle East technology trends is that organisations are moving from public clouds to private clouds or hybrid clouds. Amid Covid-19, Condo Protego is pleased to see that vendors are placing an enhanced focus on sales and technical resources and training.

Condo Protego continues to educate the market and develop its hybrid cloud offerings to ensure organisations can optimise their costs, business agility, and scalability during Covid-19 and beyond.

Amid Covid-19, Condo Protego is supporting the Middle East’s rapid shift to remote work, especially in sectors such as banking, financial services, and insurance, education, and retail. Condo Protego is leveraging the full portfolio of channel partner resources and is doubling down on training its consultants on the latest innovations to serve as a trusted

32

MEA

J U N E 2020

partner in digital transformation.

The company is educating customers on the business benefits of accelerating digital transformation and enabling more flexible and remote work options. During Covid-19, the biggest challenges for Middle East channel partners are remote project integration and remote working.

As a digital-first organisation, Condo Protego is already experienced in remote project deployment, remote working, and digital meetings on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom.

As coronavirus develops, Condo Protego is keeping its customers constantly updated on sudden changes in travel and supply chain for product deliveries. Condo Protego’s financial savviness has also enabled the company to weather the current environment and place it in a strong position for the future.

During Covid-19, Condo Protego is doing daily staff enablement across meetings, workshops, and skills development courses from vendors such as Dell Technologies, Secureworks, Veritas, and VMware. Over the

ALISTAIR BURTON,

Country Manager MEA at Criteo.

CRITEO LAUNCHES GLOBAL PARTNER PROGRAMME TO BOOST E-COMMERCE, DIGITAL MARKETING Criteo, has recently launched Criteo Partners, a global partnership programme dedicated to helping channel partners better utilise the company’s advertising platform, which is built on top of its extensive shopper data, to grow and expand their customer base. The new partnership programme is timely during this pandemic when brands have, more than ever, increasingly turned to digital media and e-commerce to engage their customers.

As more and more brands across MEA are focusing on utilising the full potential of digital media, Criteo Partners programme helps channel partners make the best decisions by providing e-commerce insights, tools, training, resources, as well as beta products, and rewards. Among the benefits that partners will receive from Criteo are training and certification access through Criteo’s Advertising Academy and access to global partner listing, rewards and resources.

past year, Condo Protego has continued to evolve its business to meet customers’ needs in ICT infrastructure and information management solutions as the foundation for digital transformation.

Middle East channel partners will need to further focus on skills and resources across ICT infrastructure and information management, especially in data storage, security, and analysis. Channel partners should align with the leading technology companies, and gain training on solutions across secure mobile workforce solutions, identity and access management, and virtual desktop infrastructure, along with evolving solutions across data storage and cybersecurity. ë

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

COVER FEATURE

THALES

CLOUD, REMOTE ACCESS, DATA PROTECTION, CHANNEL DRIVERS

Revamping the partner programme has created opportunities in cloud migration, remote access, data protection, on-premises and in-cloud, for partners.

SÉBASTIEN PAVIE,

Regional Vice President for Data Protection Solutions, Thales.

T

hales’ Cloud Protection & Licensing combines the industry-leading data protection, access management, and software protection portfolios of Gemalto and Thales eSecurity. Launched in February this year, the idea behind Thales Accelerate Partner Network is to bring two very strong vendor programmes under one unit, and to facilitate that, we have redefined partner benefits and levels of accreditations.

One of the most important aspects of the new programme are the benefits associated with registering the deals, which brings partners much closer to us and our sales force. As the partners start working on a deal, they register it with us via the partner portal linked to our CRM, granting them access to additional benefits and deal protection in a competitive market.

The new Thales Accelerate Partner Network offers generous margins and services opportunities to boost our partners’ profitability.

The revamped partner programme provides Resellers the required certification and enablement training to help partners build the skills

needed to successfully deliver our solutions.

Partners are provided access to free, online sales and pre-sales technical training for partner sales representatives and sales engineers.

From a marketing perspective, our network will have access to more tools for turnkey campaigns and content, such as our new partner webinar series. Additionally, there’s a new Thales CPL website, which will provide more recourses to the partner programme.

The whole idea for revamp is also to embrace one of the biggest market drivers that we see at the moment, especially in this part of the world, which is cloud migration. In terms of the models of delivery, our solutions, mainly Data Protection and Access Management, have also expanded into subscription type offerings.

We have seen that Access Management solutions have experienced an acceleration from Q1 onwards. The product is quite suited for remote working, as it is offered both on premise and as a service.

Thales Accelerate Partner Network, which was a rather timely introduction, offers training courses, campaign management tools,

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

INITIATIVES Thales Accelerate Partner Network brings two vendor programmes under one, with redefined partner benefits and levels of accreditations. n Thales Accelerate Partner Network offers generous margins and services opportunities to boost partner profitability. n The revamped partner programme provides resellers certification and enablement training to build skills. n Partners are provided access to free, online sales and pre-sales technical training for partner sales representatives and sales engineers. n

access to webinars and other content which has been supporting the network.

There have been situations where we have delivered on time, only to have been delayed by customs or couriers in some countries. The same rings true for collections where there have been a few isolated requests for changed terms or requests for extensions, but overall, these have been healthy and strong as well.

The main challenge has been dealing with the shift in priorities of companies. Suddenly, companies around the world have had to set up remote working facilities for their staff.

While most have had to build a secure workfrom-home network from scratch, others have had to extend their existing network to support the much larger work force. This change in priorities has been where Access Management has thrived to a large extent.

With the rapidly dynamic situation we find ourselves in right now, we have all had to evolve quite quickly. The Thales Accelerate Partner Network is specifically designed to support our partners as they transition to this new normal - to upskill and familiarise themselves with the new Thales products and features.

A key priority for us is to strengthen the partner network with trainings, messaging workshops, marketing tools and relevant content that will help our partners to further support their customer base through an accelerated digital transformation as they transition to cloud or hybrid cloud models. In Q3, we will be introducing more flexible and merged solutions so our partners and customers can stay ahead of the curve. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

33

COVER FEATURE

SOFTWARE AG

MOVE TO DIGITAL DRIVING BUSINESS TO CHANNEL PARTNERS

Pandemic has increased pressure on regional organisations to transform, thereby facilitating the engagement of Software AG partners with enterprises.

VLAD POSTELNICU,

Director Alliances and Strategic Partnerships, Software AG.

S

oftware AG partners have made significant breakthroughs over the last years and is witnessing growth in its partner-channel programme.

With an elevated demand from customers requiring expertise, innovative solutions and strong regional connections, Software AG partners continue to drive new opportunities to accelerate and simplify digital transformation needs.

Software AG’s Power Up Partner Programme continues to empower partners through online capabilities - Empower portal, Knowledge portal and the P360 portal which have been expanded with new courses, new solutions, demos, textbooks, profile management, to equip Software AG partners to help ensure business continuity.

These websites are updated from time to time to operate in real-time and towards the digital future with Software AG customerfocused strategy to assist Software AG partners in continuing to drive operational efficiencies for customers Software AG has stepped up its knowledge

34

MEA

J U N E 2020

platforms focused on Business Transformation, Integration and API and IoT and Analytics to support partners with added knowledge needed at these trying times to build better systems and processes.

These will be provided all through the year for Software AG partners. In addition, training programmes that were earlier in the form of in-person Boot Camps and now online, are constantly being conducted by global product teams to train personnel from partner organisations to continue empowering them in driving business continuity for customers through Software AG technologies.

Software AG’s partner ecosystem have ensured that the impact of COVID-19 is manageable. With Software AG’s Business as Unusual practice, the vendor has managed to switch in a matter of weeks to an online operating model, which was embraced by partners and customers.

Software AG partners have proactively developed an array of Integration, AI and IoT powered tracking and monitoring solutions for the healthcare segment. One of the salient

INITIATIVES Pandemic has forced organisations to invest in digital transformation, which is positive for Software AG. n Software AG partners continue to drive new opportunities to accelerate and simplify digital transformation needs. n Software AG’s Power Up Partner Programme continues to empower partners through online capabilities. n Software AG partners have proactively developed an array of Integration, AI and IoT powered tracking and monitoring solutions. n

solutions among these is COVIDASH, a patient detection and monitoring solution, developed by teams in Germany.

In addition, to showcasing Software AG solidarity and support to Software AG channel partners during this unusual period, the Boot Camp training programme for WebMethods and the scheduled API, IoT and Analytics are now online, over and above other training programmes, demos and technical support that is available at no cost till the end of 2020.

The fact that the pandemic has forced organisations to either invest in digital transformation or ramp up existing digital agendas, has come out positively for Software AG. The vendor is witnessing increased demand where companies are aggressively on the lookout for solutions that can optimise performances, more integration and IoT. The challenge and priority are now to maintain the pipeline in alignment with strong support from Software AG partners.

It is important for Software AG partners to keep investing and become as independent as possible without relying solely on Software AG’s expertise, and eventually be robust in the market as expert resellers.

Partners that can cover a full circle commercial relationship by identifying opportunities, driving through the sales process, cracking deals and closing the deal through successful implementation and delivery is the healthiest working model for a vendorpartner. From an expertise perspective on the channel front, investing in the right talent is paramount for success and Software AG has been witnessing high success rate with channel partners as well. ë

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

COVER FEATURE

FORTINET

RELOOK AT SPECIALISATIONS AND CONSUMPTION MODELS

The partner programme is providing benefits to partners, such as training and certification so partners can leverage a range of consumption models.

ZACKY VAZ,

Senior Regional Channel and Distribution Manager Middle East and Pakistan, Fortinet.

F

ortinet has recently transformed its partner programme to better prepare partners to effectively engage and succeed in today’s new security environment, taking advantage of digital innovations. The new Fortinet Engage Partner Programme provides partners with specialisations focused on growing markets, including SD-WAN and cloud, customised support and engagement flexibility to accelerate their business growth and expansion.

The new programme is based on three main concepts, including:

BUSINESS MODEL Fortinet support can be customised to partners unique business model. Specialised support is available for three different business models; Traditional Integrators primarily sell onpremise solutions; Market Place partners are cloud-certified specialists who secure customers using a different consumption model; and MSSP partners earn a significant portion of their revenue from selling managed services.

Partners can receive specialised support for any of these business models, or any combination of the three.

ENGAGEMENT

SPECIALISATION

Partners have the flexibility of determining their level of engagement with Fortinet. By selecting the kinds of expertise, the benefits and the revenue stream they want to develop, partners have more control than ever over their success with Fortinet. As a result, there are four new levels of partnership outlined in the programme ranging from Fortinet Advocate, Fortinet Select, Fortinet Advance and Fortinet Expert.

Partners are able to select an area of specialisation to receive additional support and benefits.

These specialisation areas include Dynamic Cloud, Secure Access and Branch, Secure SD-WAN, and Data Center.

Fortinet Engage partner programme is also designed to provide an expanded set of benefits to partners, such as training and certification so partners can leverage a wider range of Fortinet consumption models.

Stock pix added for illustrative purpose only.

INITIATIVES Fortinet has transformed its partner programme to better prepare partners while taking advantage of digital innovations. n The new Fortinet Engage Partner Programme provides partners with specialisations focused on growing markets. n Partners are able to select an area of specialisation to receive support and benefits. n

Fortinet is committed to partners not just through free trainings but also through existing functionalities embedded in Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. For example, existing Fortinet customers already have remote worker solutions embedded in their FortiGate firewalls that can be used at no additional charge.

To address today’s concerns around public health and human safety, businesses across the globe are in the process of transitioning to a remote workforce. However, the sudden, widespread use of teleworker solutions has highlighted several challenges for businesses from both an operational and security standpoint.

Fortinet is committed to helping customers quickly transition to an effective and secure teleworker strategy of their own without incremental costs. The vendor has also implemented measures designed to help ensure business continuity across all of our functional teams, including manufacturing and support.

And technical teams are available to provide IT teams with additional support or resources they may need.

Protecting digital assets is more important than ever. However, there is increasingly not enough available talent for organisations to adequately staff their security teams. The cybersecurity skills gap continues to pose a challenge to organisational success, which has only been compounded by a growing barrage of cyber threats.

To achieve success, service providers and partners must not only provide customers with exceptional products and service, but they must also develop the knowledge and expertise necessary to maximise security investments and create broad security defenses for their customers. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

35

INNOVATION

PANDEMIC, 5G DRIVING INVESTMENT INTO DATACENTRE

Datacentres have seen a need for flexibility as they move from virtualised systems to content delivery with events moving from the real world to virtual.

T

he demand for datacentre solutions is growing rapidly as consumers are used to a digital on-demand world, with 5G on the way and driving the need for edge computing, satisfying this hunger for data requires datacentres to keep up with technology trends.

These trends are developing the technology within the datacentres as faster storage is required so we are seeing the move to NVMe as part of U2 on both client and enterprise devices, and DDR4 3200MHz DRAM. With Coronavirus came new and unexpected pain points for datacentres, the demand for data was set to explode with 5G and Edge, but as the world moved to working from home in a very short space of time, this data explosion came at a pace that was very unexpected.

The need to work from home has required a rapid deployment for both companies and datacentres.

Datacentres have seen a massive need for flexibility as they move from virtualised systems to content delivery networks. As events have moved from the real world to virtual events, so datacentres requirements keep changing.

Enterprise datacentres have shown in the last few months that to survive they have to be flexible. Before Coronavirus, 5G and Edge computing would have been the main drivers for the demand of datacentres. The rapid deployment of working from home is still underway and we wait to see the long-term impacts this will have on datacentres and us all.

Kingston products will be tailored for whatever the next requirements of the datacentre.

Demand for datacentre and cloud spending is increasing in the Middle-East during the past few years which led companies like Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon Web Services and Oracle to open their own datacentres in the Gulf region.

We have also seen an increase in the amount of private datacentres in the region, specifically in oil and gas, public sector and large corporate accounts.

Datacentre technology must evolve with optimised storage capacity, faster servers, widespread use of hardware encryption and more effective compression. We are also seeing the emergence of 3D NAND: high performance, high capacity, high scalability, flash technology.

Kingston Technology has worked with datacentre partners for many years with DRAM products, a cornerstone of Kingston’s commitment to delivering memory modules.

Using these years of customer experience with SSD know-how, we have released a full range of SSD for datacentres and Enterprises.

The DC450R, DC500 and DC1000M and DC1000B have specifically focused features to deliver on the individual needs of the Data Centre. All of Kingston’s enterprise solutions are covered by our Ask an Expert service, Kingston care for free of charge post-sales support and Kingston’s first-class warranty support. ë

ANTOINE HARB,

Business Development Manager, MENA, Kingston Technology.

INSIGHTS The need to work from home has required a rapid deployment for both companies and datacentres. n Datacentres have seen a need for flexibility as they move from virtualised systems to content delivery networks. n Enterprise datacentres have shown in the last few months that to survive they have to be flexible. n The deployment of working from home is underway and we wait to see the longterm impacts this will have on datacentres. n We have seen increase in private datacentres in the region, specifically in oil and gas, public sector and large corporate. n

J U N E 2020

MEA

37

INNOVATION

In March 2020, Rackspace launched their regional office in Dubai.

RACKSPACE

UNBIASED GLOBAL CLOUD PARTNER FOR HYPERSCALERS

Rackspace has over 500 clients in region with service level agreements, who welcome service management, consulting and DevOps capabilities in the region.

R

ackspace is a multi-cloud technology services company which officially launched in the Middle East and Africa in March. Its nonbiased approach to cloud means it provides managed services for customers wishing to migrate to all the major hyperscalers includes AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Rackspace accelerates the value of the cloud during every phase of digital transformation, across applications, data, security, hybrid and multiple clouds worldwide. It provides cloud specialists with continuous modernisation and Rackspace Service Blocks.

In December 2019, Rackspace completed the acquisition of Onica, an Amazon Web

38

MEA

J U N E 2020

Services, Premier Consulting Partner. The addition of Onica to the Rackspace team expands the company’s professional and managed services portfolio, including expertise in Application Modernisation, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Containers, and Serverless Computing. Onica has a large delivery centre in Egypt.

Rackspace have started bringing over tools and datacentre assets from Europe and globally. Rackspace have a DevOps resource globally and a delivery centre in Egypt.

Rackspace partners with the hyperscalers and supports customers through providing managed services.

In March 2020, Rackspace launched their

GEORGE PAWLYSZYN,

General Manager, Middle East and Africa, Rackspace.

INNOVATION

Rackspace leadership team. regional office in Dubai, led by George Pawlyszyn. Rackspace are expanding resources in the region to further align to local customers. Rackspace have over 500 clients in region with service level agreements. Clients welcome establishment of Service Management and Consulting and DevOps capabilities in region.

Rackspace is top-tier certified with all the hyperscalers to provide services in-country from their centres. Where there is a specific in-country need that cannot be met by these solutions, Rackspace can provide hybrid solutions.

INITIATIVES Rackspace accelerates the value of the cloud during every phase of digital transformation. n In December 2019, Rackspace completed the acquisition of Onica, an Amazon Web Services, Premier Consulting Partner. n Rackspace have started bringing over tools and datacentre assets from Europe and globally. n Rackspace have a DevOps resource globally and a delivery centre in Egypt. n Rackspace partners with the hyperscalers and supports customers through providing managed services. n In March 2020, Rackspace launched their regional office in Dubai, led by George Pawlyszyn. n

Rackspace is platform agnostic and unbiased in its approach. Rackspace has top tier certifications and executes and manage some of the largest workloads for the hyperscalers as well as having a long heritage in delivering OpenStack cloud services.

Rackspace are a global and leading partner of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

The partnerships have value addition to clients and the hyperscalers welcome Rackspace as an enabler for managed services. Rackspace have been in the cloud business for over 21 years.

Rackspace have multiple partners with regard to software and services particularly with the hyperscalers and hardware and software providers. Rackspace will continue to explore local service partners where this adds value to clients.

Rackspace provide managed services for Microsoft, Google and AWS. Rackspace has strong partnership globally with Salesforce and SAP and supports Oracle Solutions.

Rackspace provide a wide range of e-commerce and web hosted applications as well as monitoring and security products.

Rackspace have a significant base in GCC, Turkey and Africa. Its customers span across various market segments and verticals. ĂŤ

J U N E 2020

MEA

39

INNOVATION

ROLE OF DATA AND BACKUP IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION While organisations are recognising that data management is critical in digital transformation, legacy IT and lack of skills are creating challenges.

V

eeam 2020 Data Protection Trends Report indicates global businesses are embracing digital transformation, but struggle with antiquated solutions to protect and manage their data.

Veeam commissioned Vanson Bourne, a technology sector research partner, to conduct an online survey of 1,550 business leaders and ITDMs across 22 different countries, in early 2020.

Almost half of global organisations are being hindered in their digital transformation journeys due to unreliable, legacy technologies with 44% citing lack of IT skills or expertise as another barrier to success. Respondents stated that data delivered through IT has become the heart and soul of most organisations.

Many organisations 40% still rely on legacy systems to protect their data without fully appreciating the negative impact this can have on their business. The vast majority 95% of organisations suffer unexpected outages and on average, an outage lasts 117 minutes, almost two hours.

Enterprises know they must continue to make progress with their IT modernisation and digital transformation initiatives in order to meet new industry challenges. The most defining aspects of a modern data protection strategy all hinge upon utilisation of various cloud-based capabilities.

Half of businesses recognise that cloud has a pivotal part to play in data protection strategy.

For a truly modernised data protection plan, a company needs a comprehensive solution that supports cloud, virtual and physical data management for any application and any data across any cloud.

40

MEA

J U N E 2020

INNOVATION

REGIONAL SNAPSHOT 54% of Middle East and African organisations have an availability gap between how fast they can recover applications versus how fast they need to recover them. n 51% of Middle East and African organisations have a protection gap between how frequently data is backed-up versus how much data they can afford to lose after an outage. n The most impactful data protection challenge in the Middle East and Africa, is the lack of ability to support DevOps or AppDev 27%. n 43% respondents in Middle East and Africa said lack of IT staff skills or expertise is preventing or has prevented their organisation to move forward with digital transformation. n 27% of global organisations’ data is backed up to the cloud by a Backup as a Service BaaS provider, compared to 28% of Middle East and African organisations. n 19% of Middle East and African organisations is not backed up, which is higher than the global average of 14%. n 43% global organisations plan to leverage cloud-based backup managed by a BaaS provider within the next two years, this is the same as Middle East and African organisations. n

J U N E 2020

MEA

41

INNOVATION

NEW DATA CENTRES TO HAVE FIVE TIMES MORE COMPUTING

Enterprise data centres will have to keep up with advances such as 5G, new batteries, HCI, SDx, becoming more intelligent, automated, and resilient

E

nterprise data centres are here to stay, but it will depend on the needs of the individual organisation, on costs and security aspects as to whether they will move to a cloud-based system or not. An enterprise data centre remains the ideal choice for companies that need a dedicated system that gives them full control over their data and the hardware itself.

Furthermore, since enterprise data centres are physically connected to the company’s local network it makes it easier to ensure that only people with company-approved credentials and devices can access stored apps and information. On the other hand, enterprise data centres take lot of planning, time and cost to build.

Over the coming years, enterprise data centres will have to keep up with technological advances such as 5G, new batteries, hyperconverged infrastructure HCI, and various software-defined systems SDx and they will have five times more computational capacity per physical area. As enterprise data centres become more intelligent, automated, softwaredefined and modernized by new technology, their resiliency will improve.

In Africa, the construction of enterprise data centres will continue. Brick and mortar data centres will continue to play a role in private and government entities in developing economies like Tanzania. There is a critical mandate by the government for data recovery sites for all major banks for example. In South Africa and Kenya, we can see a major cloud adoption, but this is not going to be the case in all African countries in the near future.

Data centre cabinets that are pre-configured and arrive on site with components preinstalled already, will allow for 30% faster installation time. Equally, pre-terminated cabling solutions can reduce installation time by up to 90% compared to individual field-

42

MEA

J U N E 2020

terminated fibre connections.

The rising number of IoT devices and the volume of data they generate has triggered a rise in edge computing and a subsequent rise in edge data centres which require infrastructure products and solutions that support fast deployment and high performance.

Since edge data centres are much smaller in size, they require cabling solutions that offer superior port density. Base 8 plug-and play fibre systems, such as Siemon’s LightStack 8, provide that density whilst also supporting a future-proof infrastructure to 400 Gig. CIOs expect products and solution that enable low-latency, high speed data transmission for reliable support of today’s advanced applications. A robust fibre cabling infrastructure with low-loss components will enable speeds of up to 400Gb-s for the data centre backbone.

CIOs also expect a scalable and futureproof IT infrastructure that’s fast to deploy.

Bringing new services online quickly means increased revenue. Here, preconfigured cabinets and pre-terminated cabling solutions will be a wise choice.

Risk mitigation and preventing unexpected costs are a major consideration. Intelligent Infrastructure Management systems monitor data centre assets in real-time, track moves, adds and changes MACS and in doing so add another layer of security to the data centre facility.

Siemon’s WheelHouse portfolio offers a complete range of advanced data centre solutions to support any size and type of data centre. It includes Z-MAX category 6A F-UTP and TERA category 7A high-performance twisted-pair copper cabling systems, LightHouse advanced fibre optic cabling, as well as high speed interconnect assemblies to support up to 100 gigabit applications and beyond. ë

PREM RODRIGUES,

Director Middle East, Africa, India SAARC, Siemon.

INSIGHTS Enterprise data centres will keep up with 5G, new batteries, HCI, SDx and will have five times more computational capacity. n As enterprise data centres become more intelligent, automated, their resiliency will improve. n In Africa, the construction of enterprise data centres will continue, with a critical mandate for all banks to have data recovery sites n

WHEN THREATS ARE LIMITLESS, YOUR DEFENSES MUST BE BOUNDLESS.

Over 1 Million

active security solutions trusted by more than 500,000 organizations in 215 countries.

SONICWALL BOUNDLESS CYBERSECURITY BRIDGES THE CYBERSECURITY GAP Leveraging our global threat intelligence, seamless real-time protection and scalable low TCO, SonicWall can bring you into the Boundless Cybersecurity era.

Learn more at sonicwall.com/boundless

PRODUCT NEWS

Schneider Electric, AVEVA target hyperscale data centres Schneider Electric and AVEVA have announced their expanded partnership to deliver innovative solutions for the data centre market. As hyperscale providers build data centres with an expanding fleet to meet worldwide demand, the complexities to operate and maintain these facilities are creating an unprecedented set of challenges.

Operating at this scale requires a different approach for mission critical facilities powering the globe’s digital infrastructure.

The combination of AVEVA Unified Operations Centre, scalable industrial software with Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for Data Centres control and monitoring capabilities enables both deep and expansive visibility to

CRAIG HAYMAN, CEO, AVEVA.

day-to-day operations.

The new joint solutions provide a homogenous view of engineering, operations, and performance across a heterogenous, legacy installed base. Hyperscale data centre providers will benefit from this partnership by connecting platforms and data sets that previously existed in disparate systems. They

PANKAJ SHARMA, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF SECURE POWER DIVISION AT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC.

will also be able to scale regardless of number of sites or global location. Data centre staff will be empowered to make faster, more informed decisions and optimise asset and operational efficiency throughout the data centre lifecycle. As a result, data centre providers can deliver a globally consistent experience to address the expanding digital infrastructure needs of their clients.

F5 offers solutions for enhanced application visibility

KARA SPRAGUE, EVP AND GENERAL MANAGER OF BIG-IP, F5.

44

MEA

J U N E 2020

F5 has introduced new solutions to provide enhanced application visibility and control throughout the application lifecycle. These solutions give customers end-to-end visibility into the health and performance of applications, along with integrated traffic, security, and API management controls to take action based on those insights, surfacing new ways to lower operational overhead and achieve faster time to market.

F5 is introducing three complementary offerings to deliver superior visibility, actionable analytics, and automated traffic management and security across an organisation’s entire app portfolio. F5’s BIG-IP and BIG-IQ solutions offer health, security, and performance analytics and deep troubleshooting tools for NetOps and SecOps teams.

NGINX Controller complements this with additional capabilities for AppDev and DevOps teams, providing API-driven visibility, analytics, and controls via ADC, API management, and application security services running on NGINX Plus.

Through integrations with BIG-IQ, NGINX Controller, and other F5 offerings, as well as a vast array of third-party integrations, F5 Beacon aggregates telemetry from across the application data path to offer a complete end-to-end view of applications as well as a holistic, enterprise-wide view of an organisation’s application portfolio for use by application owners, IT operations professionals, and line-of-business managers.

PRODUCT NEWS

Software AG and Microsoft bring webMethods.io iPaaS to Azure Software AG and Microsoft have announced that the webMethods.io Integration Platformas-a-Service, iPaaS, is now available for Microsoft Azure. This will allow enterprises to quickly and easily connect their critical applications, services and data in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment.

Applications can quickly and easily be integrated into the cloud environment using webMethods.io iPaaS, which accelerates migration to and adoption of Microsoft Azure. Crucially, it eliminates integration silos. In addition, Software AG’s solution helps organisations stay connected to their critical applications and information during the transition to the cloud or new operating environments.

Software AG’s webMethods.io iPaaS has a cloud provider-agnostic architecture, built on a Kubernetes and Docker foundation. It is designed to position customers for success as multicloud environments increase in enterprise adoption across the globe. Customers will be able to maximise their use of Azure, while integrating other applications or workflows that might currently sit on another platform. This provides faster access to information and applications, while reducing latency.

Intel’s new chips focus on productivity improvements Intel has introduced its new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, built to power the next generation of business computing innovation for the increasingly remote workforce.

The new mobile and desktop PC processors deliver increased productivity improvements, connectivity, security features, and remote manageability all to empower IT to deliver amazing experiences, helping employees stay connected, more productive, more secure and in the flow with minimal interruptions.

For more than a decade, the Intel vPro

platform has empowered IT to help businesses, large and small, keep employees productive, help secure company assets and simplify fleet management. That dedication continues to expand through the latest Intel vPro platform, powered by 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, to deliver uncompromised productivity, hardware-based security features, and a foundation for computing innovation.

Systems powered by the latest Intel vPro processors give workers the business-class performance and responsiveness they need

DR STEFAN SIGG, CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, SOFTWARE AG.

to be productive, plus, integrated Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, which is the best Wi-Fi technology for video conferencing, more reliable performance, and manageability technologies to address new and emerging challenges for IT and users.

All of this can be delivered on a range of form factors, from sleek, powerful, and modern devices based on Intel’s Project Athena innovation program to high-performing desktop designs.

Improvements in this generation include: Up to 40% better overall application performance compared with a 3-year old laptop. l Up to 36% better office productivity compared with a 3-year old laptop l Analyse and visualise data up to 44% faster compared with a 5-year old desktop l Nearly 3 times faster Gigabit speeds and improved performance in dense environments with integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6 for the best Wi-Fi technology for video conferencing. l Rapid responsiveness, worry-free battery life, and instant resume with Project Athenabased laptops. l For Internet of Things developers, 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors and Intel Xeon W-1200E series based on the Intel vPro platform, provides business-class performance, remote management, and more, ideal for applications in retail, banking, hospitality, education, healthcare, manufacturing, and more.

J U N E 2020

MEA

45

PRODUCT NEWS

Kingston sees high demand for SSDs from enterprises, OEMs Kingston Digital has announced its SSD business continues to grow at a strong rate following an astounding 2019. SSD demand through Q1 2020 remained high due to continued growth in the client, enterprise and OEM sectors. Since 2019, Kingston has broadened its SSD portfolio with three new client SSDs, five data center-specific drives, two of which achieved VMware Ready status, and launched its first U.2 NVMe PCIe solution.

Market share data for 2019 from analyst research companies Forward Insights and TRENDFOCUS showed Kingston in a strong leadership position. Forward Insights ranked Kingston in first place in

worldwide channel SSD shipments with 18.3% market share, ahead of semiconductor manufacturers Western Digital and Samsung, 16.5% and 15.1%, respectively. According to Forward Insights, almost 120 million SSDs were shipped in the channel in 2019.

TRENDFOCUS placed Kingston as the third-largest supplier of SSDs globally, with 10.4% market share, behind Samsung and Western Digital. In 2019, TRENDFOCUS reported that 276 million SSDs were shipped worldwide, an increase of 36% year over year. NAND consumption remained high as SSD shipments continued to surge in both units and average capacities throughout the year.

HPE introduces Micro Server subscription plan for SMBs Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, has announced it is making it easier for small businesses and remote office locations to focus on driving growth and make digital transformation a reality with new technologies that are simple to setup, highly secure and automated.

The latest HPE Small Business Solutions include the next-generation HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus, featuring industryleading automation, remote management, and

46

MEA

J U N E 2020

security capabilities, and Intel Pentium and Intel Xeon E processors.

The HPE MicroServer, which is as small as a typical hardcover text book, is significantly more economical compared to existing market offerings, costs as little as a streaming TV or movie subscription at less than $20/month, and is as easy to setup as a smartphone.

In addition to enhanced, enterprise-grade solutions, HPE is further accelerating digital

transformation for SMBs through its partner ecosystem that is equipped to enable impactful experiences to customers, and financial support provided by HPE Financial Subscription Services, a programme that delivers flexible payment services to customers to easily adopt HPE technologies at a predictable low monthly cost.

The new HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus weighs only 10 pounds and is a third of the size of existing server market offerings, allowing it to be light enough to carry and be placed in any-sized environment. Through a monthly subscription-based service, customers with any business goal can adopt it for less than $20 per month and gain the following capabilities that enable faster performance, data protection, automation and ease-ofmanagement tailored to small business needs and scale.

Partners and customers can select the new HPE MicroServer now as the entry point for the HPE Small Office Deployment solution, a small office-in-a-box solution, for complete small office technology foundation. These include the Aruba Instant On family of indoor, outdoor Wi-Fi access points for small businesses, and the HPE RDX Removable Disk System that easily scales for local file and storage backup, and recovery support.

PRODUCT NEWS

Kingston releases next-gen high-performance NVMe PCIe SSD Kingston Digital has announced KC2500, its next generation M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD for desktop, workstations and high-performance computing, HPC, systems. KC2500 NVMe PCIe SSD delivers powerful performance using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 controller and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. With speeds up to 3,500MB/s read and up to 2,900MBs write, KC2500 combines outstanding performance and endurance that improves workflow for desktop, workstation and power users.

KC2500 is available in capacities up to 2TB2 housed in a compact M.2 2280 form factor that saves space for other components while allowing users to take advantage of PCIe speeds. The self-encrypting SSD supports a

full-security suite for end-to-end data protection using AES-XTS 256-bit hardware-based encryption.

It allows the usage of independent software vendors with TCG Opal 2.0 security management solutions such as Symantec, McAfee, WinMagic and others. KC2500 has built-in Microsoft eDrive support, a security storage specification for use with BitLocker.

KC2500 is currently available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities with 2TB shipping soon. KC2500 is backed by a limited five-year warranty and free technical support.

NetApp introduces data services platform for Kubernetes NetApp has introduced Project Astra, a vision for a software-defined platform that is currently in development with the Kubernetes community. Project Astra will deliver the industry’s most robust, easy-to-consume, enterprise-class storage and data services platform for Kubernetes that enables both application and data portability for stateful applications.

Although companies everywhere are rapidly adopting Kubernetes, many organisations lack reliable data and application services, and have difficulty making application data as portable as the applications themselves are in Kubernetes. Yet to meet the standards that CIOs expect, IT teams and site reliability engineers must find a way to store, govern, protect, and

ANTHONY LYE, SVP AND GM, CLOUD DATA SERVICES, NETAPP.

replicate the data for both stateless and stateful cloud-native applications with enterprise-class cloud storage and data services.

Project Astra is being purpose-built for and in collaboration with Kubernetes developers and operations managers to help bridge the fundamental gap that exists between the popularity of containers today, the capabilities and user experience they require, and their ability to deliver true, comprehensive portability. NetApp’s vision for Project Astra is to enable companies to work seamlessly with their choice of Kubernetes distribution, on any cloud.

Project Astra leverages the underlying technology delivered through NetApp’s public cloud partners and enhances it through Kubernetes-native integration of data services with applications.

NetApp is working with the Kubernetes community to further develop technology that advances the user experience and extends the promise of Kubernetes to data-rich workloads.

Project Astra builds on NetApp’s experience in enabling customers to manage petabytes of container data with NetApp Trident and NetApp Kubernetes Services and adds a specific focus on the developers and operations managers who are innovating with containers today.

IBM, Red Hat launch new edge computing solutions for 5G era

DENIS KENNELLY, GENERAL MANAGER, IBM HYBRID CLOUD.

IBM has announced new services and solutions backed by a broad ecosystem of partners to help enterprises and telecommunications companies speed their transition to edge computing in the 5G era. This effort combines IBM’s experience and expertise in multicloud environments with Red Hat’s open source technology, which became part of IBM last year in one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time.

For organisations worldwide, the rollout of wireless 5G telecommunications networks, which bring blazing speed and extremely low latency, and minimal transmission delays, to mobile data, is designed to accelerate the utility of edge computing. With new edge services, IBM Business Partners and open multicloud solutions from IBM, enterprises will be able to tap into the potential of 5G to support crucial uses like emergency response, robotic surgery or connected-vehicle safety features that benefit from the few milliseconds latency saved by not having to send workloads to a centralised cloud.

IBM’s new offerings run on Red Hat OpenShift, the leading enterprise Kubernetes platform that runs everywhere, from the data centre to multiple public clouds to the edge.

They enable enterprises to overcome the complexity of managing workloads across a massive volume of devices from different vendors and provide telcos the agility they need to quickly deliver edge-enabled services to customers.

Clients across industries can now fully realise the benefits of edge computing, including running AI and analytics at the edge to achieve insights closer to where the work is done.

J U N E 2020

MEA

47

GUEST COLUMN

9 TIPS ON HOW TO ENERGISE YOUR REMOTE WORKFORCE

Remote workforces are constrained by a host of many factors that need to be recognised and managed by their employers, explains Brian Kropp at Gartner.

V

ast numbers of employees now work remotely, and it is too late to develop a set of remote-work policies if you do not already have one. But there are ways to make the remotework experience productive and engaging - for employees and the organisation.

#1 LOOKOUT FOR SIGNS OF DISTRESS Use both direct conversations and indirect observations to get visibility into employees’ challenges and concerns. Use every opportunity to make clear to employees that you support and care for them. To facilitate regular conversations between managers and employees, provide managers with guidance on how best to broach sensitive subjects arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, including alternative work models, job security and prospects, impact on staffing and tension in the workplace.

Provide opportunities to share successes and safety for potential failures. The confines of social distancing mean that when employees take a risk and succeed in improving their productivity, only a few connections can build on that success. Make an effort to highlight the value of employees’ continuing to scale their activities, and ensure that any risks are worthwhile.

#2 EQUIP EMPLOYEES Make sure employees have the technology they need to be successful, which may be more than just a mobile phone and laptop. For example, if you expect employees to attend virtual meetings, do they have adequate cameras?

Even if you do not have an extensive set of technology and collaborative tools available, you can equip employees to function effectively when remote. But do not just assume that people know how to operate with virtual communications — or are comfortable in that environment.

Acknowledge that virtual communications are different — and will not be perfect — but should still be professional and respectful of others. Be mindful that virtual communications may be less comfortable and effective for some, and coach employees on when and how to escalate ineffective virtual exchanges.

#3 PROMOTE DIALOGUE Two-way dialogue between managers and employees ensures that communication efforts help, rather than hurt, engagement. Gartner research shows that employees’ understanding of organisations’ decisions and their implications during change is far more important for the success of a change initiative than employees liking the change.

Two-way communication with managers

BRIAN KROPP,

DISTINGUISHED VICE PRESIDENT RESEARCH, GARTNER.

48

MEA

J U N E 2020

GUEST COLUMN

INSIGHTS Make sure employees have the technology they need to be successful. n Provide opportunities to share successes and safety for potential failures. n Acknowledge that virtual communications are different — and will not be perfect. n Do not assume people know how to operate with virtual communications or are comfortable in that environment. n During periods of uncertainty, employee misconduct increases by as much as 33%. n Role definitions may start to fall apart during disruptions, leaving employees unsure of where to focus. n Enable employees to complete their work in ways that are easiest and most productive for them. n Given the lack of visibility in a remote environment, try to improve your monitoring techniques and relationships with direct reports. n

and peers provides employees with the information and perspective they need, and enables them to express and process negative emotions and feel more in control. Managers can create opportunities for two-way dialogues that focus on a realistic picture of both the positive and negative implications of the current COVID19 outbreak.

#4 TRUST YOUR EMPLOYEES The best thing you can do as a manager right now is to suspend your disbelief and put utmost trust and confidence in your employees that they will do the right thing — which they will if employers provide a supportive structure.

Managers may be concerned and even frustrated to lose the constant visibility they once

had into their employees, but do not respond by micromanaging. That will only disengage and fatigue already stressed employees. Do not fixate on perceived performance problems; you will have plenty of time to lean on established performance management systems once the height of the crisis abates.

As a manager, you have to stop paying attention to the process and pay more attention to what things are getting done. Just talk to your team about what you want them to accomplish, says Kropp.

#5 REINFORCE ORGANISATIONAL VALUES

During periods of disruption, employees’ desire for being recognised for their contribution increases by about 30%.

Effective recognition not only motivates the recipient, but serves as a strong signal to other employees of behaviors they should emulate. Recognition does not need to be monetary; consider public acknowledgment, tokens of appreciation, development opportunities and low-cost perks. Managers at organisations facing a slowdown can take this opportunity to provide development opportunities to employees who normally do not have capacity.

Given the lack of visibility in a remote environment, try to improve your monitoring techniques and relationships with direct reports. Use simple pulse surveys to ask specific questions or track output to collect data and find areas of recognition.

By meeting with employees virtually and asking what barriers they have overcome or ways peers have helped them, you can identify elements to recognise, thank and share the accomplishments of teams and their members.

Even before this crisis, employers were increasingly treating employees as key stakeholders.

During this crisis, you can show employees that you plan to look out for them for the long haul. Make sure to reinforce these values with employees.

Also continue to model the right behaviors — and encourage employees to call out unethical conduct. During periods of uncertainty, employee misconduct increases by as much as 33%. Remind employees of the channels for reporting misconduct and highlight punitive measures for noncompliance. This will promote work well-being — which has a huge impact on feelings of psychological safety.

#6 OBJECTIVES TO CREATE CLARITY Role definitions may start to fall apart during the disruption, leaving employees unsure of where to focus. Focus on what employees should be accomplishing. Emphasise objectives over processes to create greater clarity for employees — and drive greater engagement levels.

One of the top engagement drivers for employees is seeing their work contribute to company goals. Employees who feel confident about the importance of their job to the success of the organisation feel less anxious about their job security.

#7 FOCUS ON OUTPUTS NOT PROCESSES In the remote landscape, where many people are juggling work and family commitments in their own homes, enable employees to complete their work in ways that are easiest and most productive for them.

Your 9AM team meeting may have to go or you may have to forgo a lengthy approval process. Schedule collaboration at a mutually agreeable time, and lean on virtual tools wherever possible. Providing flexibility empowers teams to complete their assignments in their own way.

#8 INCREASE RECOGNITION

#9 ENCOURAGE INNOVATION With businesses sheltering in place amid high levels of uncertainty, managers and employees may understandably become more risk-averse. There is a natural hesitancy among employees during disruptive times to be afraid to try something new.

But it is during such times that innovation and risk-taking become even more important for employee engagement and organisational success. The disengaging effect of constraints on innovation and risk-taking are particularly severe for high-potential employees, who tend to have a stronger desire for these types of opportunities.

Even when the organisation has constraints on new investments, managers can emphasise the need and provide opportunities for incremental innovation or process improvements. ë

J U N E 2020

MEA

49

GUEST COLUMN

APPLICATION PERFORMANCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE ALLOCATION

Bottlenecks can be resolved by matching performance with infrastructure to know where spend can be allocated, explains Erwan Paccard at AppDynamics.

T

he COVID-19 pandemic has meant that now, more than ever, brands must be able to effectively engage with their customers through digital channels. Whilst some countries are easing lockdown measures, restricted movement and working from home will remain the norm for many people and as a result, we are all increasingly reliant on applications and digital services to conduct our daily lives.

In recent weeks we have observed how

this impacts everything from online grocery shopping, to home working and collaborating with colleagues, to virtual exercise classes, to using video conferencing to chat with friends and family.

An insurance company that went from rocessing on average 12,000 claims a week saw those numbers surge to 300,000, a 25x increase, reporting over 100,000 on a single day. A grocery retailer that saw web traffic for online grocery shopping quadruple, whilst another

saw a 900% increase in concurrent users on its website.

No matter the size of business, the pressure is on to maintain availability of services, fulfill demand and orders, and provide a high-quality customer experience. The smooth running and performance of applications and digital services has become a priority for IT teams, and technology such as Application Performance Monitoring has become more business-critical than ever.

Here are five priorities for IT teams battling to maintain application health during unprecedented digital demand.

#1 FULL VISIBILITY INTO CRITICAL FUNCTIONS Certain functions within an application or website are more critical than others. For example, in a grocery shopping application, log-on, add to basket, book delivery slot and check-out are vital to a good user experience.

Referred as business transactions, these are mission-critical functions that reflect the operations most important to your application and business.

Current market conditions may mean that you need to refine your list of business transactions. This requires a solid understanding of the important business processes in your digital environment.

Identify the five to 20 most important operations in the application. These are the key operations that must work well for the application to be successful and for customers to complete their transaction and therefore drive revenue for the business.

ERWAN PACCARD,

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT STRATEGY AT APPDYNAMICS, PART OF CISCO.

50

MEA

J U N E 2020

#2 EMBRACE AI, MACHINE LEARNING TO TROUBLESHOOT When you are alerted to an anomaly in a mission-critical function in an application

GUEST COLUMN

INSIGHTS Certain functions within an application or website are more critical than others. n

The application and supporting infrastructure and services are not always to blame for poor digital customer experience. n

This can cause alert storms where one issue triggers a domino effect with multiple alarms. n

But in these unique circumstances, managing demand and keeping services up and running across websites and applications is critical. n

Customer experience is impacted by workload placement and capacity. n

With application complexity, it becomes more difficult to correlate outcomes with infrastructure allocation. n

Without a common view across infrastructure and application teams, inaccurate resourcing decisions are made. n

you will need to know where and why the issue is occurring in order to fix it quickly, ideally before it impacts the customer and the business.

With Application Performance Monitoring, IT teams can gain the necessary actionable insights they need into the application code, right through the tech stack, enabling them to pinpoint performance issues quickly and prioritise the remediations. With so much monitoring data coming into the IT Ops team, it is near impossible to process them manually, at speed, and take appropriate action.

actions, such as sending alerting emails or running remedial scripts.

But most businesses are not seeing normal usage patterns across their applications and digital services right now. Instead they are seeing huge and often inconsistent spikes in traffic and demand. This can cause alert storms where one issue triggers a domino effect with multiple alarms. Therefore, it is important to adapt health rules to reduce alert noise, in turn enabling teams to focus on priority issues.

#3 ARE EXTERNAL FACTORS TO BLAME?

#5 OPTIMISE INFRASTRUCTURE BEFORE IT IMPACTS SPEED

The application and its supporting infrastructure and services are not always to blame for poor digital customer experience. End-to-end visibility across the application helps to identify whether the issue is within the application, its supporting infrastructure and services or a specific external factor which is unique to the user.

Other issues could be hyper-localised to the individual user, perhaps they have other hungry applications running, starving their machine. Or the issue could lie with the performance of an external source e.g. a weather app that relies on third party information to supply its climate data.

Before racing to fix a problem, identify the faulty tiers and establish what is within your control and what is outside of your control.

End user monitoring and third-party monitoring will provide you with the necessary insights.

#4 REDUCE ALERT NOISE DURING HIGHER DEMANDS Now is the time to prioritise what is important and not be distracted. IT can set health rules and specify the parameters that represent what is considered normal or expected operations for an environment. The parameters rely on metric values, such as the average response time for a business transaction or CPU utilisation for a node.

When the health status of an entity within an application changes, a health rule violation event occurs. These events can also be used to trigger a policy which can initiate automated

Customer experience is constantly impacted by workload placement and capacity. But with mounting application complexity, it is becoming more and more difficult to correlate application outcomes with infrastructure resource allocation. Without a common view across infrastructure and application teams, inaccurate resourcing decisions are made.

A classic response to an application problem is to increase the infrastructure capacity to attain a normal level of user experience. But it is an expensive, unsustainable stop-gap solution. And in this heightened crisis situation, where IT teams are scrambling to keep services online and functioning, IT teams are more likely to increase infrastructure capacity as a knee-jerk reaction. This is an unnecessary cost.

The solution is workload optimisation technology, which enables IT teams to find the optimal intersection of application performance and infrastructure allocation so they know where IT spend can be more efficiently allocated.

An organisation’s applications and its ability to conduct digital business are more critical now than ever. In normal circumstances it is frustrating and disruptive when digital services do not work - companies risk loss of reputation and customers. But in these unique circumstances, managing demand and keeping services up and running across websites and applications is critical. Í

J U N E 2020

MEA

51

PEOPLE

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENTS Blue Prism appoints Fawwaz Qadan to head operations in MEA

Blue Prism announced the expansion of its investments in the Middle East and Africa Region with the appointment of Fawwaz Qadan as Middle East and Africa Region Executive. The strategic importance of the region to Blue Prism and the hypergrowth in the company’s business globally were key factors in the appointment of Qadan who will be taking immediate responsibility to lead the company’s focus and growth and oversee all Blue Prism’s go-to market operations including sales, field marketing, partner management, customer service and support.

Blue Prism’s continued investments in the Middle East and Africa Region follow the company’s global 83% yearon-year growth in revenues and an increase in its global customer base by 73% with a high net retention rate of over 143% for FY2019.

Blue Prism Digital Workers build a connected thread that runs from the top to the bottom of the business, giving digital-savvy employees and business leaders the opportunity to connect new technologies and business strategies with operations in a way that optimises processes and increases competitiveness.

Huawei appoints David Shi as Middle East Enterprise Business Group President

Driven by its commitment to help governments and industries with their digital transformation journeys across the Middle East, Huawei has announced the appointment of David Shi to the position of Regional Enterprise Business Group, EBG, President. The move is effective immediately and builds on the company’s plans to help shape the future of digital infrastructure using advanced ICT solutions.

Shi has more than a decade of experience working within the Middle East starting from 2007, and over 15 years of experience in the ICT sector, including technical sales, marketing, and business development.

Having been with Huawei since 2005, he has held several roles for the company based in the region, helping the Huawei Enterprise Business Group to support the digital transformation plans of its customers across various industries. Prior to his current position, Shi led Huawei’s Enterprise Group in Saudi Arabia as General Manager starting in 2017, driving the company’s continued success across Saudi Arabia. He has previously held the role of Marketing and Solution Sales Vice President for Huawei Middle East and CTO of Huawei Saudi Arabia.

BeyondTrust names Dee Dee Acquista as SVP of Global Channels and Alliances

BeyondTrust has announced that Dee Dee Acquista has been appointed SVP of Global Channels and Alliances.

Acquista brings more than 20 years of experience leading successful channel organisations. Her specialties lie in honing channel teams and programmes to ensure the highest level of performance for her organisation.

Dee Dee joins BeyondTrust from SentinelOne where she led the worldwide channel effort for more than 2.5 years. Prior to this, Dee Dee worked alongside BeyondTrust CRO, Carl Helle at Proofpoint where she developed and drove the worldwide channel strategy that yielded a 45% year-over-year growth trajectory for the organisation.

At BeyondTrust, Dee Dee will lead the global channel and alliances strategy, a key driver of the company’s leadership in Privileged Access Management, with a focus on expanding market share through their global partner ecosystem. BeyondTrust will continue to build on its partner-first approach, by how we engage and enable our partners, utilising our intellectual property, and helping our partners strategically and financially. These are attributes of a world-class channel framework, and critical to BeyondTrust’s partner-first commitment.

52

MEA

J U N E 2020

PEOPLE

Ahmad Alkhallafi appointed Managing Director for HPE UAE

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, announced Ahmad Alkhallafi has been appointed as Managing Director of HPE in the UAE. He will work across HPE’s Dubai and Abu Dhabi offices. Under his direction, HPE will continue to work closely with government bodies and private sector organisations to accelerate digital transformation and tech innovation across the country while leading the response to Covid-19 locally.

An accomplished senior leader, Ahmad brings to HPE over 14 years’ experience working in the UAE’s technology sector. He joins from Emirates Post Group, where he served as a board member in Electronic Document Centre while leading its large enterprise and nationwide government sales strategy and spearheading a major transformation initiative.

Prior to this he helped launch the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, du, where he led Enterprise Government sales and oversaw the design of new products, services and solutions for private cloud computing.

HPE Financial Services is designating more than $2 billion globally towards helping businesses deal with the financial challenges stemming from Covid-19 and receive the technology they need. Ahmad will oversee implementation of a number of initiatives based on this, including a Payment Relief Program to defer new acquisition costs and the expansion of secure remote work options to help with social distancing and work-from-home policies.

Born and raised in Dubai, Ahmad will continue HPE’s work helping the UAE achieve its Emiratisation goals to develop world-leading skills and capabilities in the country’s tech sector. Major recent initiatives, which Ahmad will oversee, include the establishment of a local internship program for promising graduates, investment in a Digital Knowledge Centre to provide next-generation skills, and the rollout of highly competitive workplace benefits and wellness programs for all UAE employees.

A key component of Ahmad’s role will be working with UAE government bodies to help the country realise its goals set out in the Vision 2021 and National Advanced Sciences Agenda 2031.

Nutanix promotes Christian Alvarez to SVP of Worldwide Channels

Nutanix has announced that it has promoted Christian Alvarez to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channels.

As the worldwide channel and partner sales leader, Alvarez will have oversight of the strategic direction of Nutanix’s channel partner ecosystem, fostering strategic relationships and developing global sales and distribution programmes for value-added resellers, distributors, original equipment manufacturers, global system integrators, and Telco, XSP partners.

Alvarez is an effective and accomplished channel leader with extensive experience developing impactful multinational strategies that directly support business objectives. He brings over two decades of experience to his role.

He joined Nutanix in September 2019 as Vice President of Channel Sales in the Americas to lead the team in that region. He was appointed interim Head of Worldwide Partner Sales in February 2020.

Since then, Alvarez has elevated Nutanix’s overall partner sales and go-to-market programmes to deliver greater business outcomes for customers and partners. As the Covid-19 pandemic struck global teams and the enterprise moved to the home, Nutanix VDI became paramount across the globe.

Alvarez helped lead the roll-out for partners of new solutions and offerings to help partners in the trenches deploy technology for end-users faster and more simply, including FastTrack for VDI and Xi Frame Test Drive. He also led the development of the Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Programme to offer immediate financial support to partners by helping to alleviate cash flow concerns and increasing financing flexibility.

J U N E 2020

MEA

53

A series of thought-provoking and leadership stirring conversations built around critical topics

WebSummit Schedule JUNE 11, 2020 Impact Of Indoor Air Quality: Now And In The Post-Covid World

JUNE 22, 2020 Workforce Re-Skilling And Transformation

JUNE 15, 2020 Collective Defense The Next Generation Of Cybersecurity

JUNE 24, 2020 Cloud Migration Much Needed Than Ever

AUGUST 03, 2020 The 5 Cultures Of Culture

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

ORGANIZED BY

JUNE 16, 2020 IT Automation Use Cases

JULY 06, 2020 Respone-ABLE Leadership – Everything You Do Matters!