EC-MEA May 2020

COVID-19 AND REGIONAL IT INDUSTRY

PA G E S 6 8 VOLUME O7 | ISSUE 10 M AY 2 0 2 0 WWW.EC-MEA.COM

T SERVERS

DA

RANSFORMING ACENTRES

ManageEngine boosts IT responsiveness at BAS

Mohamed Khalifa Al-binjassim, Bahrain Airport Services

Risk is like cholesterol, has good and bad kinds Matt Shinkman, Gartner

Uncertain times require empathy, kindness, courtesy Pat Wadors, ServiceNow

SonicWall boosts channel with MSSP programme Luca Taglioretti, SonicWall

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Ten top executives from leading datacentre solution vendors give their perspective about the ongoing transformation and future form factors.

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Planning the bounce back

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

The global pandemic has temporarily demolished nation economies and industries. The regional ICT industry is no exception as well. While business continuity and disaster recovery have been much talked about in the past, many regional and global organisations are unable to function, due to their emphasis of working on-premises and having few or none, activated cloud or remote access applications.

In this edition, more than twenty top executives share their experiences of how their businesses are coping with the challenges and their recommendations on how to go forward. Points out Nutanix’s Aaron White, to battle the pandemic you need to modernise the core. Enterprises today have a better chance of enduring the pandemic situation if they have already modernised their core data centre infrastructure.

Fadi Kanfani at NetApp, explains due to the pandemic many organisations are seeing production systems used at a scale or growth trajectory that is beyond normal expectations. The ongoing challenges include migrating desktops from on-premises, supporting cloud users from region to region, vendor lock-in, and hybrid VDI requirements.

Maximising network and application performance is therefore a critical success factor for business continuity and remote working, according to Riverbed’s Mena Migally. Enterprises need to reduce risk by increasing their visibility into hybrid and multi-cloud environments and supporting workers. The focus is on enabling customers to optimise networks and manage surge in the number of work-from-home employees.

Explaining the challenge, Mohamad Abdallah at SonicWall says, the remote user group is much larger than ever imagined. As the global workforce shifts to the new normal, virtual private networks are more critical than ever before, with an increase of 1,700+% QoQ. The capability of an organisation to deploy its workforce remotely is now both a short-term and long-term goal. Just a few weeks ago, about one-third of GCC firms planned to shift to remote work, but after the pandemic that figure is surely higher now, says Praj Calthorpe at Condo Protego.

Guiding an organisation through this crisis is also the responsibility of the top management, says Raj Sabhlok at ManageEngine. The leadership of an enterprise must demonstrate situational awareness. When the operating model of the company changes to working remotely, attack surfaces will increase drastically for security incidents.

Sandrine El Khodry at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, explains an innovative use case for patient care, using virtual boundaries to self-isolate during pandemic. Tracking patients and healthcare assets can be facilitated by cloud-based solutions, helping businesses get through difficult times.

And in our regular feature section, we delve into the new architectures of modern-day, data centres.

Explains Jeroen Schlosser at Equinix, direct cloud interconnect will be the next driver of data centre transformation.

In these challenging times, fostering a sense of well-being towards ourselves and others is critical. As leaders, workers, social citizens, look for these opportunities, more than before.

Best wishes in your business rebound in days ahead. ë EVENTS EXECUTIVE Lhodith Ann ann@gecmediagroup.com

MANAGING DIRECTOR Tushar Sahoo tushar@gecmediagroup.com EDITOR Arun Shankar arun@gecmediagroup.com

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CONTENTS M AY 2 0 2 0 | V O L U M E 0 7 | I S S U E 1 0

11-15

SPECIAL COVID NEWS

06

RISK IS LIKE CHOLESTEROL, HAS GOOD AND BAD KINDS MATT SHINKMAN, GARTNER.

16-18

CLOUD NEWS

RUNCERTAIN TIMES REQUIRE EMPATHY, KINDNESS, COURTESY PAT WADORS, SERVICENOW

08

FOUR TIPS ON HOW TO ENABLE REMOTE WORKER ACCESS ROB SMITH, GARTNER.

09

CHECKLIST FOR TELECOM AND NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS GUNTER REISS, A10 NETWORKS..

CHANNEL NEWS

22-23

SECURITY NEWS

24-37

39

SPECIAL SECTION COVID-19, IMPACT ON THE REGIONAL IT INDUSTRY

COVER FEATURE TRANSFORMING DATACENTRES

25

40

26

41

27

42

BOOSTING MOBILITY THROUGH VIRTUAL INTRANET ACCESS

CLOUD INTERCONNECT WILL DRIVE NEXT TRANSFORMATION

28

43

MAXIMISING NETWORK AND APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

AGE OF CHOICE WHERE CLOUD AND ON-PREMISES COEXIST

29

44

REMOTE USER GROUP MUCH LARGER THAN EVER IMAGINED

SERVICES FOR EDGE-CENTRIC ENTERPRISES ARE PRIORITY

30

47

PIVOTING FROM LIVE TRAINING TO 100% ONLINE TRAINING

SPEED OF BUSINESS DRIVING COMPUTING TO EDGE

32

48

REMOTE WORKING, BOTH SHORTTERM AND LONG-TERM GOAL

DRIVING EFFICIENCY OF THE ON-DEMAND PUBLIC CLOUD

33

50

LEADERSHIP MUST DEMONSTRATE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

AI, BIG DATA, CLOUD, 5G, DRIVERS FOR DATA CENTRES

34

51

VIRTUAL BOUNDARIES TO SELFISOLATE DURING PANDEMIC

SCALE-OUT, FLASH, SOFTWARE DEFINED, TRANSFORMING DCS

35

52

SUPPORTING GLOBAL SOCIETY IN FLATTENING THE CURVE

SIMPLICITY AND CUSTOMISABILITY KEY DC TRANSFORMERS

36

54-61

TO BATTLE PANDEMIC, YOU NEED TO MODERNISE THE CORE

PRODUCTION SYSTEMS USED AT SCALE BEYOND NORMAL

07

19-21

PROTECTING REMOTE WORKERS THROUGH CLOUD SOLUTIONS

37 TACKLING PANDEMIC BY FUNDING AND PARTNERING GLOBALLY

LARGER AND COMPLEX WORKLOADS DRIVING TRANSFORMATION

THE RUNAWAY STORY OF DATA IN THE DATACENTRE

GUEST COLUMN

65

CHANNEL STREET SONICWALL BOOSTS CHANNEL WITH ENHANCED MSSP PROGRAMME

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05

VIEWPOINT

RISK IS LIKE CHOLESTEROL, HAS GOOD AND BAD KINDS An organisation with rules of escalation for business challenges is more likely to withstand a pandemic, explains Matt Shinkman at Gartner.

MATT SHINKMAN,

Practice Vice President, Gartner.

INSIGHTS Research shows an agile response occurred more often when clear processes already existed to escalate issues. n

A proactive Enterprise Risk Management team had already set the threshold for escalation quite low for extensive consequences. n

The key to delivering Enterprise Risk Management is to ensure that business executives contribute to defining the risk appetite. n

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Many companies pay lip service to Enterprise Risk Management, but the COVID-19 pandemic shows the clear business benefits of managing risk from an enterprise-wide perspective.

As the coronavirus spread beyond China, some organisations responded swiftly to news of even one or two cases among employees, suppliers or clients; others took a more waitand-see approach. The disparity likely stems, at least in part, from different approaches Enterprise Risk Management — and reaffirms the business case for methods, processes, response thresholds and actions to protect enterprise goals, earnings and capital.

For many companies, Enterprise Risk Management has become a check-the-box activity during the decade-long period of economic growth, but the coronavirus pandemic clearly shows the need for attention and rigor.

The biggest problems with a pared-down, formulaic approach to Enterprise Risk Management often does not emerge until it is too late. Complicated flowcharts and in-depth policy manuals intended to guide escalation decisions during a crisis are often difficult and time-consuming to follow; they are not a substitute for an effective Enterprise Risk Management function.

Gartner research shows that the most effective Enterprise Risk Management programs require: An agile impacts-based approach to create crisis escalation procedures.

A business leader responsible for monitoring for a specific type of risk who gives clear, simple guidance about when it is appropriate to escalate risk information to the crisis management team.

Coronavirus may have drawn executive attention on Enterprise Risk Management, but it is crucial they understand that the business benefits extend far beyond.

In this scenario, the threshold for escalation is too high because it relies on a trigger where operations have already been badly affected.

Better-prepared companies responded to

news of minimal spread and rapidly drafted contingencies before the situation deteriorated much further.

Gartner research shows that an agile response occurred far more often when clear processes already existed to report and escalate absences or issues due to infectious diseases.

In other words, a proactive Enterprise Risk Management team had already set the threshold for escalation quite low to account for the potentially extensive consequences of the risk if no action occurred. Line management also felt empowered to raise the issue and this led to swift and effective mitigation.

The key to delivering effective Enterprise Risk Management is to ensure that business executives contribute to evaluating and defining the enterprise risk appetite. This also ensures that Enterprise Risk Management can assign risk ownership at the highest level of organisational decision making.

This view clarifies and formalizes the enterprise position that certain risks, such as a pandemic, are threats to strategic objectives like business growth. Leaders can then agree in advance that however remote a risk might seem - its emergence will trigger decisive and quick action to mitigate the effects — driven by a predetermined team of owners and actions.

Risk is like cholesterol, there are good and bad kinds. The bad kind manifests in wrongdoing or poor decisions, but the good kind helps an organisation to take bigger, riskier growth bets, which is the single biggest differentiator of profitable growth.

Effective risk management is also closely correlated with several other important business outcomes. For example, initiatives with timely risk management are more than twice as likely to completely satisfy senior stakeholders or be completed ahead of schedule.

Moreover, they are almost twice as likely to come in 5% or more under budget.

Coronavirus may have drawn executive attention on Enterprise Risk Management, but it is crucial they understand that the business benefits extend far beyond avoiding a crisis. ĂŤ

VIEWPOINT

UNCERTAIN TIMES REQUIRE EMPATHY, KINDNESS, COURTESY

During challenging times, leaders need to use different set of skills that are more around feelings than work, describes Pat Wadors at ServiceNow. our co-workers. Laugh when the cat jumps into the frame during your call with C-staff, and wave when someone’s child does the same.

Or politely ignore my dogs barking in the background!

Empathy means being kind to ourselves, as well. For those of us on work-from-home duty, that means:

HYDRATE It is easy to get busy and forget the simple things that make a huge difference.

PAT WADORS,

COMMUNICATE If you are facing any kind of obstacle, if you need to adjust your working approach, no matter what is coming up for you, keep an open line of communication with your manager and your colleagues. Communication is a two-way street.

BE BRAVE Encourage everyone to think a little differently. This helps develop everyone’s leadership capabilities, even in challenging times.

FUEL UP

GET CREATIVE

Make sure you eat. Block time on your calendar and eat healthy to stay energised!

Assume everyone is in the same boat… because we are. People managers model the behaviors they want their teams to live, too.

They can encourage team members to take mental wellness time, particularly for those juggling caregiver responsibilities or less-thanideal work-from-home infrastructure.

This is a pivotal moment in our lifetimes. I remember where I was for tragedies like the Challenger disaster and 9/11. In the same way, I think this pandemic will shape our lives, our work, how we travel, and more for years to come. In times like these, leaders will emerge in unlikely ways.

Uncertain, anxious times are not often a buyers’ market when it comes to talent acquisition. Far from putting talent appreciation efforts on the back burner, however, it is even more essential to engage employees in the values that define great companies. Find new ways to encourage and inspire your workforce as a whole. ë

MOVE

Chief Talent Officer, ServiceNow.

Now more than ever is the time to stay active.

Step outside for some fresh air. Even taking three deep breaths can have a huge impact.

Take that meeting on the phone – while walking around the block!

I have two big dogs that have gotten used to having me home. Sometimes they even block the exit from my home office! And, from what I have seen on social media over the past week, not only are lots of dogs happy to hang out on video calls, but plenty of cats are more than willing to warm up their humans’ keyboards.

But what about the human element? How are we all doing in these times of uncertainty, and how can we be sure to care for ourselves, our families, and our communities, while practicing all the safe social distancing and other health guidelines, of course.

I encourage fellow leaders to lead with empathy, solidarity, kindness, and courtesy as we work together through these uncertain times. Let us be flexible with colleagues who may be working alternate schedules or need a different kind of partnership than usual.

Let us also normalise working from home and acknowledge that it can be messy. In many ways, it is a glimpse into the personal side of

Make time to connect with your colleagues.

Organise a virtual yoga class, a digital happy hour, or just spend 15 minutes on a Zoom chatting about the best #WFH meme you have seen.

CONNECT

EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY For leaders, ensure your remote workforce has the full support of technology behind them in this new era. For employees, communicate what you need to stay productive.

INSIGHTS I encourage fellow leaders to lead with empathy, solidarity, kindness, and courtesy as we work through uncertain times. n Let us be flexible with colleagues who may be working alternate schedules or need a different kind of partnership than usual. n Let us also normalise working from home and acknowledge that it can be messy. n

M AY 2 0 2 0

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07

VIEWPOINT

FOUR TIPS ON HOW TO ENABLE REMOTE WORKER ACCESS

A once dusty corporate VPN may no longer be the solution for today’s massive work from home demand, while Gartner’s Rob Smith suggests four tips.

ROB SMITH,

Senior Director Analyst, Gartner.

INSIGHTS Corporate VPN is an aging technology as organisations shift to more cloud-based services. n

Companies are realising they have to fundamentally change the way they work. n

This means grappling with the best course of action to solve challenges of modern remote access. n

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COVID-19 is changing the way employees work and allowing remote access to make a comeback for security and risk management leaders. Over the past two decades, remote access became a stable, but often neglected, technology. Now, coronavirus COVID-19 changed the way employees need to work.

Organisations now have old virtual private network technologies lacking the required licenses, updated features and adequate bandwidth to support all users working remotely and simultaneously.

If there is an existing, workable product in place today, it still may not be optimal for providing the best experience for all users Corporate VPN is an aging technology as organisations shift to more cloud-based services. However, in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic, companies are realising they have to fundamentally change the way they work. For security and risk management leaders, this means grappling with the best course of action to solve the challenges of large-scale modern remote access.

As companies support more work-fromhome employees, they must have the right technology in place to avoid poor performance and ensure secure access. Ask these four questions before deploying modern high-volume remote access products.

#1 WHO IS THE USER, AND WHAT IS THEIR JOB FUNCTION? All users are not equal. Some require more bandwidth than others, like executives or mission-critical employees with above-average data analysis needs. A user’s job function needs to be considered when defining any remote use case.

Employees who simply check email will have different demands from those downloading and analysing large sets of sensitive data. Even if there is an existing, workable product in place today, it still may not be optimal for providing the best experience for all users.

#2 WHAT KIND OF DEVICE IS BEING USED, AND WHO OWNS IT? Usability and security vary widely across the spectrum of available remote devices, like laptops and mobile devices. A corporate-owned PC is much easier to secure than a personally owned smartphone on which users are conducting concurrent activities and accessing websites that are potentially out of policy.

Remote workers must ensure the same, if not a greater, level of security for all company networks and data access, documents or otherwise confidential information that might be displayed on a home office computer screen, says Smith. If security requirements prohibit storing data on individual personal devices, virtualisation is an ideal option.

#3 WHAT KIND OF APPLICATIONS AND DATA DO USERS NEED TO ACCESS? From a performance perspective, employees using dedicated cloud applications and having an always-on VPN to the corporate network would not make as much sense as using a cloud access security broker. The way in which users access applications and data — either through on-premises or via the cloud — makes a difference when choosing remote access services.

#4 WHERE IS THE USER LOCATED? Data security, labor and privacy laws differ across countries and local jurisdictions, which creates an added layer of complexity when choosing offline data storage choices, and thus the remote access solution.

After determining use cases and technology, build an end-user remote access policy with buy-in from all business units. If this is an urgent issue, like COVID-19, the policy must be escalated to legal counsel. Ensure that simple and local language is used, and stress the importance of employees physically signing the policy document as soon as possible. ë

VIEWPOINT

CHECKLIST FOR TELECOM AND NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS

The pandemic is creating a stressful situation for service providers with high demand for Internet and network performance, says Gunter Reiss at A10 Networks.

GUNTER REISS,

Vice President Worldwide Marketing, A10 Networks.

As the shelter-in-place orders spread across the country and around the world, it has placed a huge burden on businesses of all sizes and the service providers that serve them and millions of their customers around the globe. While a massive shift to working from home is an obvious consequence of these orders, it has likely taken most by surprise as bandwidth requirements skyrocketed within a few short weeks.

At the very same time, we are grappling with the reality of schools being closed, in-person events being cancelled and social distancing becoming the new black. It has been a shock to say the least.

The global crisis is affecting organisations in many different ways. We are not dealing with the more anticipated worldwide spikes in Internet use caused by the World Cup or the Olympics for which service providers can plan.

In fact, streaming services are being asked

to throttle their services back so the Internet does not break now that consumers are not only home working but home gaming and watching programs. And business services like video conferencing and SaaS applications are experiencing unprecedented use for work, school work and connecting with others.

For businesses facing these issues, it is critical that your application services can meet the new levels of demand. Can you handle peak loads or does infrastructure need to be upgraded? Can cloud-bursting help alleviate the challenges caused by dramatic spikes in use? Can traffic or web workloads be split to quickly deploy new virtual application delivery instances for failover and continuity?

What about staffing shortages when employees must shelter-in-place or worse, fall ill? In these types of scenarios, it is critical that your infrastructures employ automation and cross-infrastructure visibility via a Polynimbus secure application services strategy.

INSIGHTS Do you have sufficient IP addresses in your IPv4 or IPv6 pools and sufficient capacity? n

Is your network protected against DDoS attacks? n

Can you effectively steer more critical services or temporarily give them higher priority? n

Cybercriminals are launching websites with domain names related to Coronavirus and COVID-19. n

If early reports are any indication, cyber attackers are finding renewed motivation and new targets to launch distributed denial of service attacks. These days, attackers may find themselves with extra time on their hands.

Embracing artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation can help find known and unknown attacks in realtime. Combining these capabilities with actionable threat intelligence is especially important with the ongoing shortage in security expertise. This may become compounded by the disruption to personnel for COVID-19 preparedness.

There are mixed indicators as to whether the pandemic will speed the adoption or slow it down due to the global economic fall-out. However, one thing is for certain, shelter-in-place orders are having a dramatic impact on how people are connecting with each other. What were once in-person exercise classes, religious services and cocktail hours are moving to virtual.

What must service providers consider during these times? Do you have sufficient IP addresses in your IPv4 or IPv6 pools and sufficient capacity to handle the increased demand in traffic and subscribers? Is your network protected against DDoS attacks? Can you effectively steer more critical services or temporarily give them higher priority?

Not surprisingly, cyber criminals are using the global crisis to launch new attacks at new targets. Since the start of the pandemic in late 2019, we have seen different attacks, ranging from attackers targeting the World Health Organisation WHO to steal information to mass phishing email and spam campaigns targeting remote workers.

We have even seen cases where cybercriminals are launching websites with domain names related to Coronavirus and COVID-19, exploiting people’s curiosity or worry to eventually launch ransomware attacks. Í

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09

SPECIAL

ServiceNow pledges no-layoffs for 11,000 plus workforce

BILL MCDERMOTT, PRESIDENT AND CEO, SERVICENOW.

ServiceNow announced it is committing to protect the jobs of its 11,000plus global workforce through 2020 despite the economic uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company also expects to keep hiring for new jobs worldwide this year. In addition, ServiceNow expects to continue to protect the jobs and salaries of several hundred support staff and contractors who are not working while ServiceNow’s offices remain closed.

ServiceNow has continued to hire and onboard new employees throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company expects to create and fill more than 1,000 new jobs in the US, and more worldwide, by the end of 2020. Additionally, this summer the company will welcome approximately 360 college interns from around the world to work across its business. As a digital workflow company, ServiceNow has been able to quickly pivot to a digital internship programme, maintaining the ability to provide college interns valuable career experience, even if employees continue to operate in a work-from-home environment.

ServiceNow’s employees worldwide have been working from home since mid-March and expect to continue to do so until June 1. ServiceNow and its employees also have committed $1.5 million in cash donations to help Covid-19 response efforts.

Trend Micro says GCC hit by Covid- themed cyberattacks

During Q1 2020, the GCC recorded 8,984 email spam attacks, the 4th-highest in Asia; 772 URL attacks, the 6th-highest in Asia; and 17 malware threats detected, the 8th-highest in Asia. The UAE led all GCC countries with 3,259 COVID19 attacks, including 2,979 email spam attacks, 276 URL attacks, and 4 malware threats detected. Saudi Arabia recorded 2,555 COVID-19 attacks, including 2,345 email spam attacks, 204 URL attacks, and 6 malware threats detected. Figures are based on cyberthreats blocked

by Trend Micro.

Worldwide, Trend Micro blocked more than 907,000 spam messages, recorded more than 48,000 hits on malicious URLs, and detected 737 malware threats all related GCC countries have recorded 9,773 email, URL, and file threats to COVID-19 coronavirus. In related to the COVID-19 coronavirus in Q1 2020, according to threats related to COVID-19, URL new research from Trend Micro. As the COVID-19 coronavirus attacks increased 260x and email continues to spread, the topic is being used in many malicious spam attacks increased 220x from campaigns, including email spam, business email compromise, February 2020-March 2020. The malware, ransomware, and malicious domains. Fraud activity is United States leads in all COVIDstill on the rise as communities remain in quarantine.

19 attacks.

Condo Protego on how UAE sectors are dealing with COVID-19

ANDREW CALTHORPE, CEO, CONDO PROTEGO.

In the face of COVID-19 coronavirus, the UAE’s banking and finance, education, and retail sectors are accelerating digital transformation to deliver business continuity, customer happiness, and smart services. The Dubai Department of Economic Development recently mandated 80% of private sector employees to work remotely. As a result, the BFSI, education, and retail sectors have led in innovation, argues Condo Protego, a UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider.

The UAE’s banking and financial sector has already been using Big Data, AI, and machine learning to personalise customer services. Now, the challenge is moving desk-bound employees to remote working. Firms have had to purchase hardware, secure access to data and applications, and adopt collaboration platforms.

About 1.1 million public and private school students have moved from the classroom to e-learning platforms such as Google Classroom, ClassDojo, and Seesaw, with distance learning now through the entire Spring 2020 academic term. Supporting remote learning, over 42,000 educators received e-learning qualifications from the UAE Ministry of Education and Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University.

As UAE malls have closed for the foreseeable future, retailers and restaurants are re-orienting to deliveries and developing plans to launch virtual malls. Personalised customer shopping offers, geo-location services, and targeted marketing are delivering the goods and services that maintain business and society.

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SPECIAL

du and Cisco collaborate to support remote working

In support of driving productivity for enterprises in the UAE, du has announced its collaboration with Cisco that will enable enterprise customers to access Cisco WebEx to collaborate with teams while working remotely. du is committed to supporting the needs of enterprise customers to ensure that operations continue as normal while employees work from home during this period.

The agreement with Cisco will put du as the only local service provider in the UAE that offers its enterprise customers Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution, combined with Cisco Webex allowing them to benefit from a complete work from home experience. This will also provide them access to a full set of integrated communication tools that enable enterprises to stay

in touch with their business teams from multiple devices anywhere.

Cisco Webex is an enterprise solution for video conferencing, online meetings, screen share, and webinars. Comprising of a cloud-based suite of productivity tools, including Webex Teams, Webex Meetings, and Webex Devices, it empowers teams to remain connected as it merges the web conferencing platform with Cisco’s team collaboration tool. du enterprise customers who would like to use Cisco Webex can contact their account managers for more details. Availing customers will also receive a complimentary 90-day license that will be activated once they subscribe to the platform, which can be used to schedule and join meetings for work teams in the UAE.

SANS reports increased risk to companies using RDP

DR JOHANNES ULLRICH, SANS FELLOW AND DEAN OF RESEARCH AT THE SANS TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE.

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SANS Institute, the global leader in cyber security training and certifications, has identified a 30% increase in attacker interest in Remote Desktop Protocol, RDP, servers during the month of March 2020. This increase coincides with a significant increase in exposed RDP servers, as measured

by Shodan, the search engine that allows users to search the internet for connected devices.

The findings for March are concerning, as they also coincide with the massive surge in companies worldwide that needed to close offices and quickly enable employees to work from home to comply with social distancing restrictions due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. The concern is that, in order to quickly and inexpensively enable employees to work from home, some organisations have implemented RDP, which can expose confidential systems to the public Internet.

RDP is a protocol developed by Microsoft, which provides users with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection.

It is an inexpensive and simple way for companies to enable remote working for employees. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose, while the other computer must run RDP server software.

ESET Foundation to finance 100,000 COVID-19 kits and tests Scientists from the Slovak companies MultiplexDX, Lambda Life and ProScience Tech have joined forces with virologists from the Biomedical Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, BMC SAV, to develop a reagent kit according to World Health Organization protocols for reliable SARS-CoV-2 detection. In the first phase they plan to produce and make available 100,000 PCR tests. The ESET Foundation supported the development of the kit and will finance the first 100,000 tests to be offered as an in-kind gift to the Slovak Republic.

Key components have been brought to the project by MultiplexDX, a company dedicated to developing and manufacturing various innovative molecular diagnostic reagents. The Slovak PCR test is currently being validated in cooperation with a team of scientists from the BMC SAV. Preliminary results of the new test not only show nominal functionality, but also good sensitivity compared to currently used diagnostics.

The ESET Foundation supported the development of the test and provided funding for the first 100,000 units from its fund to support the effective diagnosis and prevention of COVID-19.

These tests will be offered as a gift to Slovak state institutions. Production capacity, including the first 100,000 tests, will be available primarily to diagnostic laboratories on the Slovak market

RICHARD MARKO, CEO OF ESET.

SPECIAL

ACE Insurance Brokers warns COVID-19 is amplifying scams

SIMON FISHER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GULF, ACE INSURANCE BROKERS.

HPE launches initiatives for business continuity

As cybercriminals prey on global fear, business and economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus outbreak is amplifying scams and attacks, companies and individuals must be extra vigilant to the increasing threats online, warns ACE Insurance Brokers. With countries worldwide implementing lockdowns, work from home initiatives, social distancing and other precautionary and preventative measures, governments and businesses are disseminating more information than ever before via digital platforms, a situation cybercriminal are exploiting, says Simon Fisher, Executive Vice President, Gulf, ACE Insurance Brokers.

Impersonation attacks are also on the rise, added the ACE Insurance Brokers’ cybersecurity expert. With people searching for up-to-date information on the virus, hackers map authentic websites claiming to show trackers of the virus spread when they are, in fact, infecting users’ devices with malware.

Malicious app developers have begun to take advantage of the situation and are using coronavirus-related keywords in their app names or descriptions to drop malware or commit theft of financial or personal data for a user’s smartphone.

Working from home is challenging on many fronts and organisations are not properly prepared, particularly when it comes to security, with their security tools not providing coverage outside their corporate facilities. While many are successfully retrofitting operations to support remote working, the human element must be addressed.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, has announced a series of initiatives to help customers and support business continuity in the wake of COVID-19. Recognising the growing need to deploy or scale remote workforce infrastructure to meet stay-at-home and social distancing policies, HPE is releasing a more powerful virtual desktop infrastructure solution, and offering flexible financing terms and new preconfigured solutions to increase flexibility and accelerate delivery for customers.

HPE’s range of VDI solutions, advisory services and financing enable customers to rapidly design and tailor their VDI rollouts to meet users’ needs, keep their network secure and conserve capital.

Available now, HPE Financial Services is offering new, innovative financial and asset lifecycle options including short-term rentals and 90-day payment deferrals on VDI solutions. HPE VDI solutions are also available as-a-Service through HPE Greenlake to support customers who require financial flexibility in their remote workforce roll out.

HPE is also offering new, pre-configured VDI solutions to support small, medium and enterprise customers. Built on either HPE ProLiant or HPE Synergy servers, these solutions can start as small as 80 users and scale to over 2,000 remote workers and are designed for Citrix and VMware environments. HPE also announced a new, higher-performing VDI solution to support power users working remotely.

D-Link ME urges regional channel industry to stand strong

SAKKEER HUSSAIN, DIRECTOR, SALES AND MARKETING, D-LINK MIDDLE EAST.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the Coronavirus, in almost all countries around the world, D-Link Middle East urges the regional channel community to stand strong and to come together during this crisis to think innovatively.

Coronavirus has caused havoc across the world, with hundreds of causalities and bringing normal life to a standstill.

Businesses may be adversely affected, impacting several sectors, including the electronics and commodities market as goods coming in from China and other manufacturing markets could be delayed.

However, it is not all doom and gloom, because in every adversity, there lies an opportunity. The crisis is compelling businesses to invest in remote working solutions assisted by apps and online IT support. This opens up infinite prospects for regional channel partners because for effective remote working solutions, high-speed and uninterrupted Internet connections are essential.

The regional channel community can take advantage of D-Link Middle East’s innovative portfolio of routers, access points and mesh networks to successfully capitalise on market prospects.

With D-Link Middle East’s extensive portfolio of globally recognised routers and access points, partners have an opportunity to double down on remote working solutions. They can bundle these solutions together with remote work systems to truly provide customers with a comprehensive value-added offering.

THE NEW HPE PROLIANT M750 SERVER BLADE. M AY 2 0 2 0

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SPECIAL

Cisco commits $225 million to global COVID-19 response Cisco Chairman and CEO, Chuck Robbins has announced the company’s efforts to combat the impact of COVID-19, by supporting a range of global and local initiatives. Cisco is committing $225 million in cash, in-kind, and plannedgiving to support causes and is also rallying its 77,000-strong employee network to work alongside community partners on the frontlines during the time of need.

Of the total sum, $8 million in cash and $210 million in product is going directly towards global COVID-19 response efforts, with a focus on delivering resources to key sectors, including health, education, government response and critical technology. Part of this number will also go towards the United Nations’ COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, supporting the World Health Organisation’s focus on preventing, detecting and managing the spread of COVID-19.

Through its Country Digital Acceleration programme, partnerships with local stakeholders to fast-track national digitisation agendas, Cisco is also providing funding for heads of state, government agencies and businesses to rapidly deploy COVID-19 related technology solutions.

Cisco’s CDA programme is currently running in select countries, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where the company is working closely with the government and local institutions to transform industries, including healthcare.

JENS MONRAD, FIREEYE’S HEAD OF MANDIANT THREAT INTELLIGENCE, EMEA.

REEM ASAAD, VICE PRESIDENT, CISCO MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA.

PhishRod offers free toolkit to boost COVID-19 awareness

SYED ABID ALI, CO-FOUNDER AND CCO, PHISHROD.

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FireEye warns of coronavirus-themed disinformation campaigns

PhishRod is offering a free toolkit that contains awareness content and work from home policy template, along with free access to Policy Compliance Manager amid rise in phishing attacks related to coronavirus.

Corona is the name that is flooding on every social and main stream media for the last few weeks. Since its outbreak in late December 2019, it has been literally the talk of every town. Being a respiratory virus, it is transmitted through respiratory droplets where the infected person develops symptoms of cold, flu and cough.

While the world is struggling to control the virus, there are opportunists around trying to cash in the opportunity.

Hackers are no different. As the curiosity grows amongst end users to know more about Corona, there is a sudden increase in the websites related to Covid-19. A few definitely are serving the good cause, but majority of them are being used for phishing attacks and to lure end users to click a link or download an attachment to trigger a cyber-attack.

PhishRod, a global anti-phishing solution provider, is contributing to the cause of awareness by providing a cyber security awareness toolkit amid Corona related phishing attacks. The toolkit contains awareness posters that can be shared with the end users. The content can be customised based on your organisation branding guidelines.

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RICHARD MARKO, CEO OF ESET.

Due to the wide interest in COVID-19, both criminal and espionage threat actors have been distributing malicious documents themed around the pandemic. FireEye expects to see continued use of coronavirus themed lures by both opportunistic and targeted financially motivated attackers due to the global relevance of the theme.

Jens Monrad, FireEye’s Head of Mandiant Threat Intelligence, EMEA observes that since January, FireEye has noticed both cybercriminals and state-sponsored espionage campaigns using COVID-19 or coronavirus themed lures in phishing emails. These are typically in the form of email attachments and links that look like they are genuine, but are in fact malicious.

This activity has increased since January as more nations are dealing with infections. Some of the malware campaigns FireEye has observed are responsible for a large volume of spam and phishing emails as well as being used to deliver ransomware like Emotet, Trickbot, Nanocore, AZORult, FormBook, Remcos RAT and AgentTesla.

The lures vary from claiming to be from widely known healthcare sources like the World Health Organization to being very specific and relevant to a small audience. FireEye has also observed cybercriminal activity on forums where sellers have put out advertisements for selling items/ kits designed to exploit the current situation. This could either be malicious virus tracking maps or other malicious code used in COVID-19 campaigns.

SPECIAL

SophosLabs tracks significant uptick in COVID-19 scams

CHESTER WISNIEWSKI, PRINCIPAL RESEARCH SCIENTIST, SOPHOS.

SophosLabs is tracking how the use of COVID-19 and coronavirus in domain names, spam, phishing attacks, and malware is skyrocketing. The findings suggest that the volume of COVID-19 and coronavirus email scams have nearly tripled in the past week.

Attackers are also increasingly impersonating the WHO, CDC and Prevention, North America and the United Nations, as evidenced in scams tracked by SophosLabs.

Sophos Principal Research Scientist Chester Wisniewski explains that cybercriminals are wasting no time in shifting their dirty, tried and true attack campaigns toward advantageous lures that prey on mounting virus fears. It’s easy to see, for example, that the attackers behind a new Chloroquine scam are the same as those behind a recent herbal Viagra scam.

With global spam volumes estimated to be in the hundreds of billions, for 2-3% of those to be COVID-19 themed is significant. Similar to A/B testing of advertisements and web pages, criminals often dip a toe in the water when there is a new or sensational topic in the news. If the new topic proves a more effective lure than the previous scam bait they begin switching to new lures.

Huawei offers extended warranty, free pickup and drop

Huawei users are being offered extended warranty on a range of products as a precautionary measure to prevent the COVID-19 outbreak. The offer includes Huawei’s wide range of products including smartphones, notebooks, tablets, smart wearables and other terminal products for which the warranty has expired during the period of 24.03.2020 to 29.06.2020. If a customer’s product meets the required conditions the warranty period will be automatically extended to 30.06.2020, so they have their devices repaired under warranty and stay connected.

Customers who are practicing a social distancing and staying at home can now take advantage of Huawei’s free courier services and have their device collected and returned by courier once it is repaired and sanitised.

In addition, Huawei has taken further steps to ensure the health and safety of customers and staff at its service centres with the adoption of a series of precautionary measures. Customers in service centres will receive free temperature measurements and be provided with hand sanitiser while mobile phones that have been repaired and undergo UV light disinfection. The centres will also be fully disinfected and cleaned three times a day.

Users are also being advised by Huawei to use the pre-installed Support App to troubleshoot the issue with smart diagnosis or connect with the online customer service and get remote service.

Consumers can also contact the Huawei Customer Service Hotline on 80066600 from 9AM to 6PM, online customer service, or email via the official website if there is a problem with their mobile phone.

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Etisalat CloudTalk Meeting now supports 50 participants Etisalat has announced it is expanding its CloudTalk Meeting by enabling 50 concurrent participants to join an online meeting and discussion, in response to the high volume of requests and growing demand for the service. The three months’ free access to Etisalat’s unified communication and collaboration platform CloudTalk Meeting launched recently was well-received by the market, with numerous businesses and government entities coming on board to use the service and streamline their operations while they work remotely.

Etisalat’s CloudTalk Meeting will now allow up to 50 concurrent participants to join meetings and discussions simultaneously, with an added feature of a moderator to personalise and manage the meetings.

With this scale-up, a greater number of users will be able to communicate using advanced features such as HD quality video and voice conference, instant messaging, group chats, draw schemas, and use the whiteboard, and much more.

HPE announces general availability of Container Platform Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, has announced that the HPE Container Platform, unveiled in November 2019, is now generally available. The HPE Container Platform is the industry’s first enterprise-grade container platform designed to support both cloud-native and non-cloud-native applications using 100% open source Kubernetes running on baremetal or virtual machines, VMs, in the data

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centre, on any public cloud, or at the edge. In addition, HPE is introducing new professional services to ensure faster time-to-value and several new reference configurations for dataintensive application workloads such as AI, machine learning, deep learning, data analytics, edge computing, and Internet of Things.

Many organisations started their container journey with stateless workloads that are easier

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RICHARD MARKO, CEO OF ESET.

to transition to a cloud-native microservices architecture. However, the majority of business applications today are monolithic, stateful, and non-cloud-native workloads that live throughout the enterprise. Organisations seek to modernise and containerise these applications without significant refactoring, while ensuring production-grade security and persistent data storage.

While some early on-premises Kubernetes deployments used containers with VMs, this approach is no longer necessary. Running containers on bare-metal provides significant advantages to organisations seeking to modernise and run containers at scale in the enterprise. These include: reducing unnecessary overhead, avoiding lock-in with a proprietary virtualisation format, and eliminating vTax licensing costs.

The HPE Container Platform dramatically reduces cost and complexity by running containers on bare-metal, while providing the flexibility to deploy in VMs or cloud instances.

This allows businesses to embrace a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud approach to deploying Kubernetes with enterprise-class security, performance, and reliability. Organisations seeking greater cost savings, efficiency, utilisation, and application performance can eliminate the need for virtualisation and expensive hypervisor licenses, by running containers directly on bare-metal infrastructure.

CLOUD

Infor builds community for CloudSuite EAM users in ME Infor has announced it has officially launched a customer user community for Infor CloudSuite EAM in the Middle East.

Infor has enjoyed spectacular success with its user community’s initiative globally, with thousands of customers joining the platform and forming user groups to enhance their learning, share best practices, and maximise the benefits of their Infor solutions The company expects to replicate this success with its new user community in the Middle East, where EAM software is a fast-growing segment. Indeed, organisations across the region are keen to maximise their efficiency and improve their services by using their assets more intelligently.

The global enterprise asset management market is expected to reach a value of $8.2 billion by 2024, up from $5.1 billion in 2019 and representing a CAGR of 10%, according to Markets & Markets. This growth means there is a huge hunger for learning and dialogue among CloudSuite EAM customers.

Infor has seen enhanced satisfaction among customers that engage with user communities globally. These groups, which are set up and administered by enthusiastic users of Infor solutions, encourage members to engage in open dialogue about the solutions they are using: from great ways to use new features to overcoming any technical or adoption challenges.

In turn, this dialogue also presents rich customer feedback for Infor, which gains new insights into how its solutions are being used in the field, thereby empowering the company to enhance its solutions further.

Infor previewed its Middle East EAM user community at its recent EAM Summit in Dubai. The company has seen a significant increase in interest in Infor CloudSuite EAM with organisations that includes Mazad, Nakheel, RAK Wastewater Agency and the American University of Beirut among its customers in the Middle East.

Nutanix finds 97% of UAE orgs think hybrid cloud is ideal

AARON WHITE, GENERAL MANAGER METI, NUTANIX.

Nutanix has announced the UAE-specific findings of its annual Enterprise Cloud Index. The latest Index shows that the majority of enterprises in the United Arab Emirates, 97%, agree that the hybrid cloud model, which will ultimately afford dynamic choice about where to run each workload, is the ideal IT environment going forward and that it is also viewed as the most secure option.

UAE, though, has one of the lowest percentages of hybrid cloud usage today, and its projections of hybrid cloud growth 24 months out lag EMEA and global expectations. UAE respondents, however, report plans to catch up with the rest of the world within three to five years, when they project hybrid cloud penetration of 51%, well in line with what

Wipro expands its enterprise cloud services portfolio

BHANUMURTHY BM, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, WIPRO.

Wipro, a global information technology, consulting and business process services company, has announced the launch of its Microsoft Business Unit. The unit will focus on the development and evangelisation of solutions leveraging Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services. This initiative is an outcome of Wipro’s expanded global alliance with

companies in other countries expect to be running at that time.

Perhaps as an interim step to hybrid cloud, UAE companies currently deploy far more workloads and applications on private cloud than any other platform and do so more than most other countries. UAE has one of today’s lowest penetrations of traditional data centres, 40%, in the world. This may actually be a positive since companies in the region will have less far to go in decommissioning data centre’s in favour of more attractive IT models such as hybrid cloud.

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index is based on research conducted by Vanson Bourne to learn about the state of global enterprise cloud deployments and adoption plans. The research surveyed 2,650 IT decision-makers in 24 countries around the world, exploring where organisations currently run their business applications and where they plan to run them in the future. It also questioned respondents on their cloud challenges and where their cloud initiatives sit against other IT projects and priorities.

Microsoft to accelerate cloud adoption and digital transformation for its customers across sectors.

Wipro’s Microsoft Business Unit consists of a team of trained and certified Azure consultants and specialists. The new unit will offer domain-based solutions and solution accelerators, including the following: * Wipro’s Cloud Studio which delivers migration for different workloads on Microsoft Azure, Data, Microsoft Dynamics 365. The studio is an ‘as-a-service’ model for cloud transformation with standardised tools, technologies and processes. * Wipro’s LiVE Workspace solution which leverages Microsoft’s Modern Workplace, Microsoft 365 as well as LUIS and the Power platform to help customers unbox an intelligent, future-ready workplace where apps and data can be accessed from anywhere, anytime and on any device. * Wipro’s Data Discovery Platform empowers customers with actionable insights by exploring varied data sources through sophisticated techniques such as pattern discovery, Auto ML, visual sciences and storytelling to simplify interpretation and decision-making. The core of this platform brings together the Wipro HOLMES Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft Azure.

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10-year anniversary of Veeam Cloud Provider programme

JIM KRUGER, CMO AT VEEAM.

Veeam Software has celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Veeam Cloud and Service Provider programme, with the release of programme discounts and updates, and the release of NEW Veeam Service Provider Console v4. Veeam Service Provider Console v4 includes new capabilities that make it easier for service providers to remotely manage and monitor their customers’ Veeam environments and is offered FREE to VCSP partners.

Launched in March 2010, the VCSP programme enables service providers to leverage Veeam software to offer reliable, revenuegenerating Backup as a Service and Disaster Recovery as a Service offerings. Driven by more than 25,000 cloud and service Provider partners, the VCSP programme reported an annual recurring revenue increase of 33% yearover-year for Q4’19. A decade after launching, Veeam continues to add value and innovation to its VCSP programme.

To mark the 10-year anniversary, Veeam is releasing the new VCSP programme discounts and updates for 2020, including: * Point reduction for Enterprise Plus: Bring Veeam’s top features to market and build competitive BaaS and DRaaS offerings without eating into margins, as the result of a 15% price reduction on Veeam Backup and Replication Enterprise Plus edition. * Volume rental agreement discounts: New

Microsoft brings FastTrack for Azure programme to the UAE Microsoft has announced its FastTrack for Azure programme that will enable enterprises across the UAE to further accelerate their digital transformation journeys by migrating to the cloud.

FastTrack for Azure is a customer success programme that enables the rapid, effective design and deployment of cloud solutions.

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With tailored guidance from Microsoft’s Azure engineers, customers will now be able to migrate to the intelligent cloud with agility and ease, receiving support for Windows Server, SQL Server and SAP, as well as the modernisation of enterprise apps and the delivery of advanced data analytics.

The move comes in less than a year after

VCSP VRA tiers help super-charge margins by rewarding new partners ready to commit to Veeam and our long-time high-consumption partners. * Veeam Universal Licensing for rental: Leverage all Veeam features with a simple pay-as-you-grow programme that makes it easy to create or expand any Veeam-powered BaaS and DRaaS offering, without needing expensive CapEx to build from. * VCSP pulse: EMEA and APJ partners will now be able to join the 6,000+ North America VCSP partners that are able to connect with Veeam and their Aggregator on a single, purpose-built platform, offering the simplicity and reliability needed to build Veeampowered BaaS and DRaaS solutions at scale.

In addition to new discounts and tier changes for the VCSP programme, Veeam is launching NEW Veeam Service Provider Console v4. Formerly Veeam Availability Console, the product now includes remote monitoring and management capabilities directly integrated with ConnectWise Automate. This integration consolidates client data into a single, proactive and centralised user interface, reducing resources and enabling faster response times. As a result, service providers can invest more time in growing their business and less time with administrative tasks.

Microsoft launched two data centres in the UAE, one in Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai, to serve the Middle East market’s increasing appetite for digital transformation.

Many UAE enterprises, across sectors, have already begun taken advantage of FastTrack for Azure. These include Abu Dhabi Department of Municipalities and Transport, Al Yahsat- A Mubadala company, Department of Culture and Tourism, Dubai Tourism, Dubai South among others. The availability of FastTrack for Azure in the UAE signals Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to the economic growth of the country.

The Microsoft intelligent cloud has been at the heart of the company’s efforts to form numerous partnerships with private and public bodies to boost skilling and job creation, enhance healthcare, education and public safety, and drive societal change, in line with the long-term vision of government leaders.

CHANNEL

3Lateral selects NetApp to help create realistic human characters

MATT WATTS, CTO EMEA AT NETAPP.

NetApp has been selected by 3Lateral to help deliver a data-driven approach for the creation of incredibly realistic human characters for video games, movies, and wider industrial and AI applications. 3Lateral, part of Epic Games, has pioneered the concept of digital humans for over a decade with its work featured in award-winning game, and film.

Behind the realistic models that can be controlled in real time is a data-driven approach which requires the studio to collect data with a unique facial scanner, soon to be peaking at 1 PB per scanning session. Multiple teams at 3Lateral using both custom software and cloud environments use this data to generate realistic models and scenes. The data pipeline has to integrate with multiple project requirements for a variety of unique hardware, software and synthesise technologies.

3Lateral and NetApp developed a data fabric based on AFF and FAS platforms that could follow up the immediate challenges, which also meets the needs for further development, stor-

age capacity demands and workflow changes.

The data fabric allows seamless access to petabytes of data that spans multiple technology foundations. In preparation for the massive performance requirements of the future, the teams are experimenting with enhancing their data fabric with NetApp Memory Accelerated Data. The integration could then be extended with a NetApp Hyper Converged Infrastructure and NetApp Kubernetes Services, enabling the studio to further simplify and accelerate their development environment.

The teams at 3Lateral predict an increase in data density and Mastilovic aims to develop a framework which enables people to create new applications in industries beyond the entertainment sector. A wide range of applications in medicine, biometrics and research are possible. For this purpose, Mastilovic considers scaling up the cloud capacities of 3Lateral to cover further spikes. According to him, a data fabric strategy offers the necessary gateway to the cloud.

Bulwark and CyberCyte partner for cyber security solutions Bulwark Technologies has announced a new partnership with CyberCyte. The partnership is to set out the basis for business cooperation for the purpose of developing a mutually beneficial relationship through which they can leverage their respective knowledge, experience, capabilities and products to identify, explore opportunities with regards to cyber security solutions in the region. Both parties intend to increase the technology, capability and capacity to deliver a stronger vision in cyber security.

CyberCyte is a UK based cyber security company providing a framework of solutions based on the concept of Circle of Zero Trust utilising identity management, network access control and DNS security. They offer products like network access control, where remote users could connect securely, maintaining the company’s access policies. This is the need of the hour considering the current situation.

JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES.

CyberCyte products has become the preferred technology in major international banks, enterprises and government agencies to protect their users and digital assets seamlessly with minimum operational overhead.

Identification of cyber espionage, malicious data exfiltration and zero-day attacks are the key focus areas of CyberCyte threat protection

platform.

Bulwark will work closely with the vendor’s sales and marketing and support teams to ensure its channel partners receive strong pre-sales, marketing, implementation and post-sales services. The specialised VAD is currently celebrating 20 successful years of cyber security excellence in the region.

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CHANNEL

Trend Micro, CyberX partner to boost cybersecurity awareness

Spectrami signs distribution deal with PhishRod for META

SYED ABID ALI, CO-FOUNDER AND CCO, PHISHROD.

RASHEED ALODAH, COUNTRY MANAGER, TREND MICRO, SAUDI ARABIA.

Trend Micro Incorporated has announced a partnership with CyberX, a governmentbacked initiative, to drive Saudi Arabia’s cybersecurity awareness. Showing the strong need for cybersecurity, Saudi Arabia ranked as the most-attacked GCC country for malware and banking malware in 2019, with Trend Micro’s 2019 Security Roundup Report recording 2,352,570 malware attacks and 4,731 banking malware attacks.

Trend Micro will serve as Strategic Technology Contributor of CyberX, a Saudi community initiative under the umbrella of Attaa initiative to raise awareness of cyber security threats in society.

Being a non-profit platform, CyberX’s goal is to enrich the readable and audible Arabic content in the field of cyber security through a set of products such as: podcast, 60 seconds, Meet the specialists, CyberX awareness, Infographics and CyberX videos for awareness and educational content designed to cover multiple topics for several categories.

In addition to educational content presented in various forms that are appropriate to the nature of the content, CyberX is characterised by renewed ideas that are analysed by experts in the field in which they discuss key security topics, concerns, and how to tackle them.

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Spectrami, a regional Value-Added Distributor announced signing of a distribution agreement with PhishRod, a global anti phishing solution provider. The partnership would leverage on the best of breed phishing defence capabilities of PhishRod with strong technical and value-added services from Spectrami across the region.

PhishRod recently launched their Automated Phishing Defence and Orchestrated Response platform that will allow organisa-

tions to instantly analyse suspicious emails through built-in intelligence feeds, quarantine and ultimately delete them from the end user mailboxes through an orchestrated response.

The capability to thwart phishing attacks along with modules for Phishing Simulation, Security Awareness Automation and Policy Compliance is completely in-line with PhishRod vision to provide pre-emptive defence capabilities against phishing attacks by integrating people, processes and technology.

Pure Storage, SAP partner on mission-critical workloads

MICHAEL SOTNICK, VICE PRESIDENT, PARTNERS, ALLIANCES AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, PURE STORAGE.

Pure Storage has announced that it has achieved the platinum level in the SAP PartnerEdge programme and is an SAP global technology partner. Pure Storage’s FlashArray product, certified for SAP HANA, provides significant value to customers and service providers running mission critical SAP workloads.

This expansion of Pure’s partnership with SAP will help customers drive better business outcomes through joint technical support, competency centres and deeper technology integrations between the two companies in areas of intelligent enterprise, SAP S/4HANA, cloud computing, storage and virtualisation.

CHANNEL

Koch Industries announces completion of Infor acquisition Koch Industries announced that it has completed the acquisition of the remaining portion of Infor from Golden Gate Capital. Infor has been a key component of Koch’s technological transformation. Koch companies have made more than $26 billion in technology-related investments in the past six years, transforming a global portfolio of businesses spanning multiple industries.

In addition to being an investor since 2017, Koch has been a key customer, implementing Infor solutions across its businesses in areas like enterprise resource planning, human resources, supply chain, asset management and finance.

The acquisition brings new key capabilities to Koch to accelerate digital transformation, while providing Infor with resources and industry knowledge to continue growing its expertise in mission critical software for indus-

KEVIN SAMUELSON, CEO OF INFOR.

tries like manufacturing, retail and distribution, among others. Additionally, Infor’s industry-leading Healthcare Operations Platform and Interoperability Solutions extend Koch’s involvement in healthcare, where Koch companies are already engaged in connected device manufacturing, medical product purification, and hospital supplies.

Infor is now a standalone subsidiary of Koch Industries, and continues to operate under the company’s current management team from its headquarters in New York City. The acquisition positions Infor as one of the most well-capitalised companies in technology. Infor has invested approximately $4 billion in product design and development to deliver industry-specific CloudSuites that solve the most challenging operational issues for over 68,000 customers around the globe.

Palo Alto, Telekom Security partner on digitisation services Palo Alto Networks has announced a strategic partnership with Telekom Security, the managed security services business of Deutsche Telekom, to help enterprise customers stay secure through their digitisation journey.

Together, the companies will develop and offer customers state-of-the-art managed cybersecurity services for cloud and network security, as well as security operations.

The portfolio of managed security services will be built and run by the two companies and powered by Palo Alto Networks solutions. The portfolio includes: * Managed virtual next-generation firewalls for private and public clouds powered by Strata: The VM-Series, a virtualised form factor of the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall, will be available for deployment across both private and public cloud computing environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and VMware NSX. VM-Series is also enhanced through infrastructure-as-code automation for deployment and configuration, which reduces complexity for customers. * Comprehensive cloud security based on Prisma Cloud: The new service will utilise

Prisma Cloud, the only Cloud Native Security Platform that delivers best-in-class capabilities in all key areas: visibility, governance and compliance; compute security; network protection; and identity security. Prisma Cloud empowers businesses to integrate security early and throughout the application lifecycle, delivering prevention, detection and response from build to run. * Managed secured remote and mobile access based on Prisma Access: Customers will benefit from the service’s use of leading secure access service edge networking and security from Prisma Access to secure organisations’ remote locations and mobile users globally.

This will be done through Palo Alto Networks scalable, cloud native architecture, blending enterprise-grade security with a globally scalable network. * Managed threat detection and response based on Cortex: The service will use Palo Alto Networks Cortex security operations suite to run the Telekom Security managed security operations centre, enabling rapid threat detection and response for customers through orchestration, automation and machine learning. Cortex XDR will provide customers with an advanced detection and response platform

CHRISTIAN HENTSCHEL, PRESIDENT, PALO ALTO NETWORKS EMEA.

that natively integrates network, endpoint and cloud data to detect and mitigate sophisticated attacks. Complementing this will be Cortex XSOAR, extended security orchestration, automation and response, which significantly simplifies incident management and response to help organisations run more efficient SOCs.

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SECURITY NEWS

Mindware strengthens portfolio to meet cybersecurity needs

NICHOLAS ARGYRIDES, GENERAL MANAGER, GULF AT MINDWARE..

Mindware, a Value-Added Distributors, VADs, in the Middle East and Africa, has extensively strengthened its security capabilities and portfolio. This will enable its channel partners to address the growing cyber security needs of enterprises across the Middle East and Africa region. Following the acquisition of Arrow ECS, Mindware inherited a large portfolio of security vendors. Among others, the revamped portfolio now includes Barracuda Networks, Forcepoint, McAfee, RSA, and Trend Micro.

Mindware has been steadily building out its security team and, by now, has a healthy spread of security specialists installed in every key country across the region. They work with partners to ensure that the various security vendors in Mindware’s portfolio are well-represented and promoted. The team comprises of product managers assigned to the various security vendors. These product managers work closely with the vendors to plan and implement strategies to increase market penetration.

In addition, there is a parallel team of certified and highly skilled pre-sales engineers. These engineers are not only proficient in helping partners conduct proof of concepts but, upon request, also supporting when it comes to the actual implementation. This is especially helpful for those partners that are yet to develop their skillsets for particular solutions or technology verticals.

The distributor has also developed robust capabilities in conducting demos and PoCs pertaining to every single one of its security vendors, always in conjunction with its system integrator partners.

The Cloud team at Mindware is currently working to identify and add relevant security solutions to the recently launched Mindware Cloud Marketplace in order to create co-sell opportunities for partners using the platform. These solutions are typically those that complement the Microsoft products currently available on the Marketplace and can be sold as a bundle.

Mindware also has agreements with its various security vendors to act as their Authorised Training Centre. The company regularly conducts training and certification programmes across the region for end customers as well as channel partners.

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UL says collaboration is the key to preventing cyberthreats Authority of Saudi Arabia recently that will see the two organisations collaborate toward building a more secure cybersecurity system in Saudi Arabia.

Hamid Syed, Vice President and General Manager for UL in the Middle East, said that it Is essential for organisations, and especially governments, in the Middle East to work holistically to improve their overall cybersecurity in order to ultimately help in making the world a more secure place.

HAMID SYED, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAs well as providing their expertise to busiAGER IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR UL nesses, UL has co-authored more than 25 UL has advised authorities in the cybersecurity standards and frameworks including Middle East to continue stepping strategies and evaluating and certifying security up their efforts to help protect the products and devices. Among UL’s growing list region from cyberattacks. With the of IoT security solutions are their Supplier Cyber widespread use of technology and Trust Level, Cybersecurity Assurance Programme with the Middle East establishing and the IEC 62443. itself as a key market for trade and As a global standard for the Industrial tourism, countries are facing constant Control System networks, the IEC 62443 helps challenges to stop cyberattacks. organisations to reduce both the risk of failure and UL has been playing an important exposure of ICS networks to cyberthreats. These role in supporting organisations and frameworks are helping provide businesses with businesses across the Middle East to more security and Syed emphasised that cybersehelp stop potential threats. UL signed curity cannot be overlooked as just an ordinary IT a MoU with National Cybersecurity issue.

Qualys releases vulnerability detection and response tool

Qualys has announced the immediate availability of Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response, VMDR. It provides an all-in-one, cloud-based app that automates the entire vulnerability management cycle, significantly accelerating the ability for companies to respond to threats, and prevent breaches while drastically reducing licensing and operating cost.

What sets VMDR apart from other offerings on the market is that it unifies the entire IT and security workflow into a single cloud application to identify any device that connects to the network in real-time. From there, it allows users to create and easily maintain an always up-to-date global IT asset inventory and asset groups, detect vulnerabilities in real-time, prioritise these with a state-of-the-art prioritisation engine that also takes into account misconfigurations and digital certificate security exposures, and finally mitigate and remediate vulnerabilities across the entire global hybrid IT environment, which includes on-premises devices, endpoints, cloud, mobile, containers, web apps, and APIs. As such, Qualys VDMR provides the foundation for a comprehensive risk-based vulnerability management programme that does not solely rely on CVE-based vulnerabilities and arbitrary risk scores, which can give a false sense of security.

PHILIPPE COURTOT, CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF QUALYS.

SECURITY NEWS

Fortinet reports MSSPs are leveraging Secure SD-WAN

JOHN MADDISON, EVP OF PRODUCTS AND CMO AT FORTINET.

Fortinet has announced increasing global momentum with managed security service providers, MSSPs, including Node4, Zain Jordan and Liquid Networx, leveraging Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution to provide customers additional high-value services. SD-WAN provides organisations reliable and cost-effective connectivity to support their digital innovation goals. Recent research from IDC found that the SD-WAN infrastructure market is poised to reach $5.25 billion in 2023.

As an increasing number of businesses look to deploy SD-WAN, many are turning to MSSPs to fill skill shortages and other gaps within their teams. MSSPs can fill this growing need by creating value-added services for customers that want to enhance user experience and reduce WAN complexity and cost, while securing their distributed networks.

Recognising this opportunity, Node4, Zain Jordan and Liquid Networx join a growing number of MSSPs who have chosen Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to deliver new managed services to their customers.

Fortinet’s Security-Driven Networking approach to SD-WAN integrates both networking and security functionalities in one offering, enabling MSSPs to offer advanced security across their WAN infrastructure with a significantly lower total cost of ownership. Below is an overview of how three of Fortinet’s partners are utilising Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to benefit their customers.

Sophos analyses Marriott data breach that impacts millions

JOHN SHIER, SENIOR SECURITY ADVISOR, SOPHOS.

The hotel chain says it uses an application to help provide services to its guests. Beginning mid-January this year, the login credentials of two employees at a franchised property were used to access guest information on this app.

When the breach was discovered at the end of February, Marriott International says it disabled those login credentials and began its investigation.

Marriott says it believes the following information may have been involved although the entries were not there for every guest: Contact details, name, mailing address, email address, and phone number Loyalty account information: account number and points balance, but not passwords Additional personal details: company, gender, and birthday day and month Partnerships and affiliations: linked airline loyalty programs and numbers Preferences: stay, room preferences and language preferences Marriott says there is currently no reason to believe the information accessed included Marriott Bonvoy account passwords or PINs, payment card information, passport information, national IDs, or driver’s license numbers.

Kaspersky finds 41% Arab users do not use security solutions

EMAD HAFFAR, HEAD OF TECHNICAL EXPERTS FOR META AT KASPERSKY.

Kaspersky conducted a recent survey in collaboration with popular Arabic technology news portal, AITnews. The survey aims to understand how knowledgeable online users are about threats and the best ways to respond to them.

The survey revealed that 56% of Arab respondents from across the world believe that their personal data is not secure, while more than a third, 41% do not use a security solution to protect themselves online even though experts urge all internet users to have a security solution installed regardless of whether they believe their data is safe online or not.

When asked about what kind of security solutions they use, 71% of the respondents said that they use free solutions. Although authentic free security solutions are capable of tackling a range of threats, paid security solutions have more comprehensive capabilities to effectively respond to emerging and complex attacks.

On a positive note, respondents are taking steps to protect themselves from internet threats. The majority, 71%, use complex passwords while 44% use anti-virus softwares and 43% use two-factor authentication.

Although users are taking the necessary steps to protect themselves on the internet, there is no foolproof way of ensuring that you are safe from all online threats. If you have been hacked, it is crucial to take the required steps to ensure the least amount of damage.

Most of the respondents surveyed said that closing their affected account and all associated profiles is what they do in case of a breach while 45% said that they would attempt to delete or close the sources of the attack.

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Aaron White, Nutanix

Maher Jadallah, Tenable

Mena Migally, Riverbed Technology

Jacob Chacko, Aruba HPE

Ned Baltagi, SANS Institute

Sandrine El Khodry, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

Fadi Kanfani, NetApp

Mohamad Abdallah, SonicWall

Raj Sabhlok, ManageEngine

Praj Calthorpe, Condo Protego

Thierry Nicault, Salesforce

Zakaria Haltout, SAP

Werno Gevers, Mimecast

Kamel Heus, Centrify

Harish Chib, Sophos

15+ top industry executives describe the impact of the pandemic and which IT solutions can help business users to recover.

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TO BATTLE PANDEMIC YOU NEED TO MODERNISE THE CORE

Enterprises today have a better chance of enduring the pandemic situation if they have already modernised their core infrastructure.

AARON WHITE,

Regional Director Middle East, Nutanix.

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irst and foremost, Nutanix top priority is to protect the health and safety of employees, customers, partners, and communities. Nutanix is assessing the situation daily, keeping the well-being of all of Nutanix stakeholders’ safety top of mind. As a company, Nutanix are following the guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation and local, regional and country guidelines to guide Nutanix actions.

At the start of the crisis, Nutanix immediately began the implementation of Nutanix business continuity plan, which is driven by a small group of global executives representing all of the critical functions inside Nutanix.

Nutanix has also implemented a number of precautionary measures to ensure uninterrupted service to Nutanix customers and partners and the continued safety and productivity of Nutanix employees.

In an effort to protect the health of Nutanix employees and visitors, it has implemented work-from-home procedures for Nutanix global workforce and ensured employees have access to laptops, VDI infrastructure, adequate internet bandwidth, and expanded VPN capabilities.

As a global IT company, Nutanix current infrastructure was designed to support remote work, with half of Nutanix global workforce already working remotely in their day-to-day roles. Nutanix were already well prepared to continue running Nutanix business and focusing on Nutanix customers during a crisis.

As an additional step, Nutanix have conducted a supply chain analysis and created contingency plans with Nutanix key suppliers.

Based on current information, Nutanix do not anticipate any immediate supply constraints, though the situation is obviously fluid and could change.

Nutanix worldwide support teams and other key functions remain up and running and ready to attend to all customer and partner needs. Based on the analysis Nutanix has done to assess both hardware and software support capabilities, Nutanix have contingency plans in place to allow us to continue to provide 24x7 worldwide support to Nutanix customers at this time.

Nutanix solutions, for example, virtual desktop with Nutanix partner Citrix or desktop-as-a-service with Nutanix product Frame, can help organisations adapt to this rapidly-evolving situation by allowing them to support their employees to work productively from remote locations.

Nutanix have many customers in different

Capitalising on Nutanix own technologies and business continuity plan, Nutanix remains open for virtual business around the world.

verticals, including government entities and educational institutions and it is a chance to help organisations quickly provide viable work- or learn-from-home options. Nutanix have seen an accelerated interest in solutions like this.

Enterprises will stand a better chance of enduring the situation if they have already modernised core infrastructure. They will be ready to meet the challenges of the current environment - or any other challenges for that matter.

Organisations need to look to modernise their IT infrastructure by doing the following: l increase automation l increase self-service l greater use of cloud and mobile platforms l optimise data In the old way of working, company employees are tethered closely to a desktop or laptop PC for much of their work. A digital workspace provides greater flexibility, so that employees can access the applications and data they need— from any device and any location.

This is a much better fit for the way many businesses, across many industries, operate today. Instead of running on a local device, the applications and services of the digital workspace run in a datacenter and output is transmitted quickly and securely to the user across a network.

Many organisations across the Middle East are dealing with the reality of needing to set up all their employees to work remotely, while still maintaining access to the same tools and applications they require to be productive.

To help organisations deal with this challenge, Nutanix announced a new offer called FastTrack for VDI to support companies anywhere in the world quickly deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure solution. Setting up and provisioning desktops, something that used to take weeks, will now be done in record time. ë

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PRODUCTION SYSTEMS USED AT SCALE BEYOND NORMAL Challenges include migrating desktops from on-premises, supporting cloud users from region to region, vendor lock-in, and hybrid VDI requirements.

FADI KANFANI,

General Manager and Managing Director, Middle East, NetApp.

C

OVID-19 has changed the way businesses across the globe maintain business continuity.

NetApp put measures in place to continuously keep our teams safe. This includes requiring the workforce to work from home using digital collaboration tools to resume conducting business. NetApp has also postponed travels, events and in-person meetings at briefing centers and NetApp is shifting to digital delivery wherever possible.

NetApp has taken and continues to take several measures to keep communities safe, help minimise the spread of COVID-19 and deliver on our business commitments to stakeholders.

NetApp put together a company-wide crisis management team to execute our business continuity plan and prepare to mitigate COVID-19 impact in January. Putting our plan into action enabled us to continuously deliver products and services and minimise any disruptions that could impact customers.

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As business continuity plans are rolled out to support work-from-home initiatives, many organisations are seeing their production systems used at a scale or growth trajectory that is beyond normal expectations. Left unchecked, these systems could encounter various unexpected impacts, ranging from higher IO latencies, to inability to spin up new workloads, or even to downtime.

The NetApp Active IQ digital advisor uses AIOps to simplify and automate proactive care and optimisation of your NetApp environment. Continuous risk assessments, predictive alerts, and automated case opening helps prevent problems before they occur, leading to improved system health and higher system availability.

NetApp is ready to help customers to enable business continuity and progress during these disruptive times. We can support remoteaccess workers, ensuring the availability of data and applications, and help prepare for—and avoid—the next wave of potential disruptions.

In line with this, NetApp are seeing an accelerated demand for cloud storage solutions to support End User Computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure applications as these are crucial to enable remote working.

In addition, NetApp can help proactively protect and optimise customer’s hybrid cloud infrastructure with a range of tools that can give visibility into complete infrastructure—

NetApp is seeing demand for cloud storage solutions to support End User Computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

both on the public cloud and on-premises.

NetApp understands the requirements of setting up remote-work infrastructures with end-user computing and virtual desktop infrastructure applications.

For customers who need to get up and running quickly, NetApp provide cloud-based EUC and VDI applications like Windows Virtual Desktop and Citrix to support thousands of users with just a few clicks. Azure NetApp Files and Cloud Volumes Service helps manage shared storage resources across cloud vendors and regions, so that businesses can overcome challenges associated with the cloud.

These challenges include migrating persistent desktops and home directory data from the company’s premises, supporting roaming users from cloud region to cloud region, vendor lock-in, and hybrid VDI requirements.

For customers who need to reliably support thousands of users, NetApp deliver FlexPod VDI developed by NetApp in partnership with Cisco. This on-premises solution includes all the hardware components needed to support virtual desktop and learning environments.

FlexPod VDI is a simple, secure platform used by many large organisations to support remote workers. Large businesses can start with a solution to support 500 concurrent users and then scale up to support the entire organisation.

For customers who need to support a complex environment and advanced applications, NetApp HCI delivers scalable VDI resources with flexible compute GPU and CPU and storage options block, file, object and dynamic QoS for multi-app environments to avoid noisy-neighbor issues. This solves the challenge of having a diverse range of user types task users, knowledges users, power users, 3D applications like CAD or medical imaging, or unpredictable workloads with huge spikes in activity. ë

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BOOSTING MOBILITY THROUGH VIRTUAL INTRANET ACCESS

Aruba Virtual Intranet Access provide secures access to the corporate network while an end-user is on-the-go connected to a public or personal network.

JACOB CHACKO,

Regional Business Head Middle East, Saudi and South Africa, Aruba HPE.

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PE Aruba has a robust business continuity plan in place across all functions, including Research and Development, Technical Assistance Center, and supply chain management. Some of the highlights of the business continuity plan are below, and new programs will be rolled out in the coming weeks.?

Aruba TAC and R&D functions are fully equipped to work remotely, and still have access to critical products and test labs to ensure that customers get the timely support and resolution they need for critical issues.

Aruba is committed to supporting customers as Aruba always have.

Aruba is monitoring and optimizing its supply chain on a daily basis to ensure that Aruba can support the critical needs of as many customers as possible. Aruba are working with freight carriers to expedite shipments so that Aruba can get high-demand products into the hands of our customers who need them most.

Aruba will also be announcing shortly where the vendor endeavors to help partners to focus on their return to growth and therefore

suspending some of the requirements of our worldwide renowned partner program as well as other special initiatives in support of business continuity in the wake of COVID-19.

Aruba has seen high demand for its remote connectivity and software-as-a-service solutions, spanning our Remote Access Point and Aruba VIA VPN client technologies.

Remote Access Points are affordable, enterprise-grade remote wired and wireless equipment used to securely connect end-users to applications and services hosted within the corporate network. With easy plug-and-play, end-users get instant access to the same corporate SSID, Intranet services, and other line of business resources while no configuration is required. You can even plug in a VoIP phone and make calls as you would in the office.

Aruba Virtual Intranet Access VPN clients provide secure and instant access to the corporate network while an end-user is on-the-go– connected to a public or personal network.

Available on Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, and Windows, Aruba VIA provides easy access to private cloud and on-premises services.

In today’s challenging times, business continuity and resiliency have tested the endurance of end-user and IT teams. Here are some key recommendations and considerations as you move your business forward:

ACCELERATE YOUR CLOUD AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION This improves your resiliency and maintains survivability in nearly any business scenario

EMBRACE A MOBILEFIRST APPROACH TO NETWORKING Utilize Wi-Fi as the primary mode of connectivity and VPN for remote connectivity to help maintain employee productivity no matter how or where a user connects to your network

UPDATE YOUR SECURITY AND QOS POLICIES AS VIDEO CONFERENCING GAINS TRACTION Whether you deploy Zoom or Teams, provide appropriate protections for your end-users and your network to maintain privacy and compliance. Also ensure you provide the right priorities

ENABLE BYOD FOR YOUR END-USERS When inventory of end-user computing is limited, ensure employees can maintain productivity by using the smartphones or other Internet-connected devices.

ADOPT A ZERO TRUST SECURITY FRAMEWORK

Aruba will help partners to focus on their return to growth and suspend some requirements of its partner programme.

Use identity-based, role-based access controls to help improve your security posture – enabling network access on a “need to know” basis.

EVALUATE CYBER CATALYST DESIGNATED SOLUTIONS To help reduce cyber security risks, look to technologies that have been evaluated by leading cyber insurance carriers. ë

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MAXIMISING NETWORK AND APPLICATION PERFORMANCE Riverbed aims to help enterprises reduce risk by increasing visibility into hybrid and multi-cloud environments and supporting workers.

MENA MIGALLY,

Senior Director MENA, Riverbed Technology

C

OVID-19 has changed the way businesses across the globe maintain business continuity.

NetApp put measures in place to continuously keep our teams safe. This includes requiring the workforce to work from home using digital collaboration tools to resume conducting business. NetApp has also postponed travels, events and in-person meetings at briefing centers and NetApp is shifting to digital delivery wherever possible.

As a company Riverbed have always focused on accelerating the performance and visibility for networks and applications, which includes software-based solutions that specifically optimise remote working, Riverbed is fortunate that Riverbed can leverage its own technology so that our employees can continue to be highly productive and the performance and access to the networks and applications remains unprecedented wherever they work in order to continue to support our customers business.

Riverbed has been encouraging its teams across the world to increase the use of collaboration tools, with more conference calls, and particularly the use of video, so everyone can see and interact with their work colleagues on a regular basis.

Currently, Riverbed’s focus has been on enabling customers to optimise their networks and efficiently manage the surge in the number of work-from-home employees while ensuring

SECURING YOUR SAAS AND VPN VULNERABILITIES In the first instance it is recommended that security teams collaborate closely with IT to secure all softwareas-a-service applications via cloud access security brokers for configuration, security and data loss prevention.

Alongside this it will save time, and reduce headaches, integrating all SaaS solutions into one central identity and access management solution.

Also consider limiting access to Virtual Private Networks, which might seem nonsensical, but these can create potential bottlenecks for distributed workforces.

Instead, restrict direct network access to only the most critical functions. Also, single sign-on identity management facilitates ease of use and ongoing maintenance, MAHER JADALLAH, while multifactor authentication provides additional Regional Director Middle East, security.

Tenable.

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they are equipped to be productive. A large part of this centres around ensuring the performance and security of digital services, even as employees move from local network access to remote network access models.

In the long term, it is unlikely that the way people work will return to normal – in fact, Gartner has predicted that by 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30% due to Gen Z fully entering the workforce.

As organisations adjust to this new norm, Riverbed will work to empower partners and customers to refocus on the future.

Riverbed will do so by helping them maximise network and application performance to support all workers - anywhere, anytime, and via any delivery method. At the same time, Riverbed aim to help them reduce risk by increasing visibility into their hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

In recent weeks, Riverbed have seen a 6x increase in web traffic to its Client Accelerator webpage in less than a month and over 350 Client Accelerator 90-day trial requests from enterprise customers.

This solution has consistently demonstrated its ability to optimise at-home network connections to achieve up to 99% data reduction while delivering 10x faster, reliable performance of cloud, on-prem, and SaaS applications.

Moreover, in response to the challenge’s businesses are facing, Riverbed is offering complimentary 90-day Riverbed Client Accelerator trial licenses to all our existing customers worldwide.

Riverbed have witnessed an increased momentum from government and public sector organisations, as well as large private organisations in UAE, Saudi, Qatar and Egypt. This interest largely stems from organisations within the Oil and Gas, Banking and Finance, Energy and Utilities, and Education sectors. ë

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REMOTE USER GROUP MUCH LARGER THAN EVER IMAGINED

As the global workforce shifts to the new normal, virtual private networks are more critical than ever before, with an increase of 1,700+% QoQ.

MOHAMAD ABDALLAH,

Regional Director Middle East, Turkey and Africa, SonicWall.

T

here has only been a moderate impact as historically SonicWall workforce has largely been based remotely. SonicWall already have the infrastructure and policy needed to ensure that SonicWall employees are working securely outside the safety of the corporate network perimeter.

Even in such challenging times, SonicWall has seen a lot of opportunities within SonicWall installed base where organisations are investing in new technologies to adapt to the changing climate. SonicWall are continuing to monitor the situation and are prepared to help SonicWall customers in these challenging times.

Given SonicWall’s large remote workforce, SonicWall already have a sound security strategy in place that includes a scalable secure mobile or remote access solution and a proactive endpoint protection or next-generation antivirus that mitigates attacks before, during

and after they execute. In an age of anywhere, anytime, hyper-distributed business, SonicWall believe that protecting operational integrity while mitigating risk starts from within.

As the global workforce shifts to the new normal, organisations are operationalising a much larger group of remote users than ever imagined, making virtual private networks more critical than ever before. In fact, SonicWall has seen a 1,766% increase in VPN-SSL customers quarter-to-date.

SonicWall addresses this new challenge with the scalability and flexibility of its Secure Mobile Access series, which has experienced a 2,348% increase of user licenses since February 2020, and adds both security and performance characteristics in its latest release.

SonicWall is also helping users leverage the economic and operational advantages of cloud platforms by launching their own virtual instances in private clouds based on VMWare or Microsoft Hyper-V, or in AWS or Microsoft Azure public cloud environments.

SonicWall is also seeing a demand in SonicWall Cloud Application Security solutions which provide real-time security for users and data within cloud applications example, Office 365, G-Suite, including email, messaging, file sharing and file storage as well a rise in Sonic-

SonicWall addresses this new challenge with Secure Mobile Access series, which has experienced a 2,348% increase of user licenses.

Wall Capture Client product line - SonicWall endpoint protection against next-generation malware, ransomware and encrypted threats which includes automatic rollback of infected machines.

As corporate networks extend beyond the firewall, security remains an ever-present concern, especially as malicious actors look to exploit fears over the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic is also placing new demands on IT infrastructure, especially networks and datacenters. In addition, the explosion of exposure points has not only increased the attack surface area of organisations but has also taxed IT departments.

SonicWall is combining 28 years of experience, data and technology with SonicWall partner-led culture to deliver what SonicWall call Boundless Cybersecurity platform. The platform delivers seamless protection that stops the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points and increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled workforces.

SonicWall are helping organisations be prepared for an influx of cyberattacks, and are giving participating partners, both regionally and globally, a competitive edge. SonicWall recently unveiled an enhanced version of SecureFirst Managed Security Service Provider Programme to provide the licensing models, resources and tools needed to help MSSPs mitigate the rapidly growing threat volume.

To help organisations cost-effectively implement VPN technology for their rapidly expanding work-from-home employees, SonicWall is making its remote access products and services available to both new and existing customers at deeply discounted rates. Enterprise and SMB customers in the Middle East can avail free Secure Mobile Access virtual appliances along with 50% discounts on SonicWall Cloud App Security and Capture Client endpoint protection when paired with SMA. ĂŤ

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PIVOTING FROM LIVE TRAINING TO 100% ONLINE TRAINING

While the pandemic caught organisations by surprise, SANS has been ready since 2003, when the Institute launched its online training with SARS outbreak.

A

NED BALTAGI,

Managing Director, Middle East and Africa, SANS Institute.

t SANS Institute, the current environment required us to shift from live class-room based training to conducting 100% of our cybersecurity courses through our online modalities. Although the pandemic caught a lot of organisations by surprise, SANS has been ready since 2003, when the Institute launched its online training platforms as a result of the SARS outbreak.

Having online training platforms and expertise ready, enabled SANS Institute to pivot to providing students with the same quality cybersecurity training they have come to expect from SANS. SANS Institute did alter the products in a way they meet the new normal and people’s new work-from-home lifestyle. SANS Institute have expanded its offer to provide training spread across 1, 2, 3 or even 6 weeks so people can choose the right pace of training for them.

Next to our standard course offering, SANS Institute have also improved and expanded much of the products that were already web-based.

SECURING AND PROTECTING YOURSELF DURING COVID-19 Ensure all Internet facing services are protected with multi-factor authentication l Patch remote access services, particularly VPN and terminal service gateways. l Monitor phishing reports and get your operations team or MTR service to hunt for associated IOCs. l Check remote clients are still receiving their endpoint security updates. l Ensure your OS, browser, email client and software commonly used to open attachments is set to update automatically. l Disable browser plugins such as Java, Flash and Acrobat. l Use identity federation to ensure all cloud services are accessed with corporate credentials. l

HARISH CHIB,

VICE PRESIDENT MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, SOPHOS.

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SANS Live Online is a product that comes as close as possible to the experience of a live training event.

SANS Institute are now able to offer CTF’s, NetWars tournaments and challenges, CyberStart solution for youngsters and much more.

SANS Institute have made sure SANS has got a training solution for anyone looking to improve their skills in these challenging times.

SANS OnDemand product was already an up and coming product as it allows people to train at their own pace over the course of 4 months. But with the introduction of SANS Live Online, we have created a product that comes as close as possible to the experience of a live training event.

It offers live interaction with the instructor, live chat features with fellow students, access to hands-on labs and other challenges and other networking opportunities. All aspects SANS Institute know are very important to customers when they attend a SANS training event.

As we are living in unprecedented times, there is a lot of uncertainty in the way we work and how long this will last. But at SANS and with our customers, we are seeing one trend: cybercriminals are not stopping. And with a large part of the workforce working from home at the moment, this has increased the risk of breaches and attacks significantly.

So, cybersecurity training is more important now than it was before. And not just training your security teams on defense measures or the latest attack techniques, ensuring your entire staff knows how to work from home safely is equally important. ë

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

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REMOTE WORKING, BOTH SHORTTERM AND LONG-TERM GOAL Just a few weeks ago, about one-third of GCC firms planned to shift to remote work, but after the pandemic that figure is surely higher now.

C PRAJ CALTHORPE,

Deputy General Manager, Condo Protego.

ondo Protego has always been a digital-first and cloud-first organisation. Even before the lockdown, our workforce has accessed business data and applications remotely from mobile devices, especially as our sales and technology consultants have been in the field to meet with customers.

Since coronavirus, the main changes have been in hosting virtual internal and customer meetings. Nothing can replace face-to-face meetings, even when these are held through platforms such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom.

As coronavirus develops, we also need to keep our customers constantly updated on sudden changes in travel and supply chain for

KAMEL HEUS,

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

TAKE EXTRA MEASURES IT IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL Centrify’s business continuity plan has been in place for years. One of our operational philosophies is that all of our employees should be equipped to work remotely from anywhere in the world to deliver support and operational services in a secure and efficient manner.

As a cloud-based company, Centrify’s operations teams have the necessary remote access and communications technologies to perform their jobs and to ensure availability of cloud services.

Centrify cloud services have always been built with availability and redundancy as part of the core platform.

Most companies have focused on securing remote access for their employees, and rightfully so.

Centrify is working with customers and prospects to secure remote access specifically for users like IT administrators, who typically have enhanced entitlements and privileges that make them high-value targets for hackers.

Oftentimes these are outsourced third-parties, which makes them even more at risk. Centrify’s Privileged Access Service has secured remote access built-in, not as a separate product or license. Furthermore, Centrify have a version available as a subscription on the AWS Marketplace where any organisation can try it for free on up to 50 systems.

First, recognise that it is definitely not business as usual. Take any and all extra measures to secure your organisation and employee access, and do not forget to make cybersecurity training an ongoing priority. Do not forget that it is not just remote access for employees that you need to secure, but also outsourced IT and other third parties.

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product deliveries.

Secure access to business applications and data is key for Middle East organisation to deliver business continuity, customer happiness, and smart services in the coronavirus era.

The UAE’s banking, financial, and insurance, education, and retail sectors are taking the lead in delivering digital innovations.

BFSI firms have had to purchase hardware and adopt collaboration platforms to move desk-bound employees to remote working. Educators now teach about 1.1 million students with e-learning platforms.

With malls closed, retailers and restaurants are using Big Data, geo-location services, and targeted marketing to personalise customer shopping offers and develop plans to launch virtual malls.

Only a few weeks ago, about one-third of GCC firms planned to shift to remote work.

That figure is surely higher now. Middle East organisations should turn to knowledgeable and experienced channel partners to align strategic business goals with information management tactics in hardware acquisition, IT infrastructure, and business software.

In the UAE, Condo Protego is seeing strong demand for Dell Technologies’ secure mobile workforce solutions for working on the go, and RSA SecurID identity and access management suite with two-factor authentication.

Long-term remote working can also leverage VMware’s virtual desktop infrastructure, for hosting cloud-based desktop environments and business applications.

While many Middle East organisations have remote work plans, many need to implement them rapidly.

Remote work is both a short-term goal, in the face of the coronavirus, and a long-term goal. With remote working, organisations can support a happier and more engaged workforce, which leads to higher productivity and ROI. As Millennial and Generation Z workers come to dominate the workplace, they frequently argue that work is less about location and more about tasks, which can be done as effectively at home. ë

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LEADERSHIP MUST DEMONSTRATE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS When the operating model of the company changes to working remotely, attack surfaces will increase drastically for security incidents.

RAJ SABHLOK,

President, ManageEngine.

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anageEngine, and parent company Zoho, are in an envious position as they adjust to a work-from-home mode.

ManageEngine runs on the cloud using both Zoho and ManageEngine services, so not only do we develop and market state-of-the-art tools to operate from anywhere, those same tools are used to manage our business.

While technology has been a net positive for our operations, ManageEngine certainly feels the economic and psychological impact of the pandemic. The economic downturn has been sudden and dramatic, and many companies are struggling to survive the pandemic. As an employer, it is important for us to proactively help our employees cope with the stress and psychological impact of this virus. As a vendor, ManageEngine needs to be empathetic

to what our customers are going through.

Reporting on goals and KPIs becomes even more important in the current environment.

Vendors no longer enjoy daily, face-to-face interactions with colleagues, so it is more critical than ever to chart progress towards goals and KPIs, for the company and for individuals.

ManageEngine has to make this information readily available to the right people at the right time. As a result, IT and lines of business are focusing on business intelligence and analytical tools to ensure ManageEngine have its finger on the pulse of the business.

Working from home brings new data security risks, especially the risk of unintentional and malicious data exfiltration. ManageEngine have seen most of our customers extend their evaluation licences for Desktop Central and Password Manager Pro, which help manage and secure endpoints and passwords, respectively.

With the launch of sophisticated phishing attacks, organisations must keep a close watch over user accounts. For instance, it is vital to monitor users who log on from multiple locations simultaneously or who access multiple resources in a short period of time.

Therefore, more enterprises are turning to new-gen SIEM solutions like Log360, which includes user and entity behavior analytics UEBA capabilities, and our privileged access management solution, PAM360.

A major portion of the workforce is now working remotely and security leadership must take the following protective measures: l Make sure employees are trained on basic information security

Working from home brings new data security risks, especially the risk of unintentional and malicious data exfiltration.

ManageEngine have seen customers extend their evaluation licences for Desktop Central and Password Manager Pro. Ensure employees understand their responsibilities l Enable multi-factor authentication for all information systems l Set up comprehensive auditing and surveillance for all user sessions When the operating model of the whole company changes to working remotely, leadership must demonstrate situational awareness, realise their attack surface will increase drastically for security incidents, plan all operations meticulously, and prepare for around-the-clock incident response.

Under this work-from-home scenario, the onus falls on IT teams to facilitate a secure remote working environment, which not only enables safe connection to remote devices, but also facilitates routine activities without sacrificing cybersecurity. And our tools make this possible, for ManageEngine and the rest of Zoho Corporation as well as for our customers.

To give remote employees the access they need to exclusive information within the corporate network, organisations must provide secure remote access. Considering the distressing situation faced by businesses, especially those in the small and medium segment, ManageEngine is making fully-functional versions of Remote Access Plus and Access Manager Plus available to organisations of every size, free of charge till July 1, 2020. ĂŤ l

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VIRTUAL BOUNDARIES TO SELF-ISOLATE DURING PANDEMIC Tracking patients and healthcare assets during the pandemic can be facilitated by cloud-based solutions, helping businesses get through difficult times.

SANDRINE EL KHODRY,

Vice President MEA, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

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OVID-19 has changed the way businesses across the globe operate.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has taken necessary measures to ensure the safety of its employees and ensure business continuity for our customers. As a company, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise have always been focused on digital solutions and products and implemented it progressively into its own infrastructure the last 3 to 5 years.

Therefore, all its employees were already well equipped with the necessary tools to be able to maintain the business continuity and continue serving our customers and partners from everywhere. The main challenge on the onset of COVID-19 was the security of employees and how to maintain the motivation to work from home to continue delivering our engagement.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise leadership has put in place a task force to continuously communicate with its employees to support

them and share a real time communication and guidance. The measures are also in place to detect any dysfunction and act quickly to reduce the escalation time and put in place the right support. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise are also closely monitoring the situation to ensure the safety of our stakeholders.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise have taken necessary measures to support customers and partners to help maintain their business continuity. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise launched free end to end connectivity and communication solution to support customers and equipped our technical teams with the necessary tools to be able to support and to maintain its technical engagements.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has decided several years ago to put its focus and products at the services of digital transformation, end to end solutions connectivity, WiFi and communication with a special focus on cloud solutions.

During COVID-19, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is seeing an increased adoption of its cloud-based communication and collaboration platform, Rainbow, which is helping business get through this difficult time by providing them with the services that enable staff to work remotely from safe locations.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise recommend that its customers prepare for a new era of doing business based on reliability and efficiency during any circumstance. Businesses need to reinforce their infrastructure to support working from anywhere with a reliable infrastructure.

At this time, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has a particular emphasis on enabling the healthcare institutions and hospitals that are

OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking is particularly important to help hospitals keep patients and clinicians safe.

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treating COVID-19 patients and helping frontline healthcare workers by assisting in finding patients and equipment in a chaotic environment.

The Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking is particularly important here to helping hospitals keep patients and clinicians safe, and quickly locate the equipment they need, when they need it. This is one way that Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise healthcare solutions can help in the fight against COVID-19. The OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking is an unobtrusive way to keep track of COVID-19 or any other patients and with the utmost dignity.

Instead of locking patients into their rooms, frontliners can set up virtual boundaries so the ones that can, are able to move about within specific areas and if a boundary is crossed when it should not be, the Stellar Asset Tracking solution can provide programmed notifications to clinicians directly to their smart phones and they are immediately aware of the situation and can act accordingly.

For the education sector, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise are focusing on enabling continuity of learning. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise are helping institutions create remote learning and collaboration spaces using the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise our cloud-based communication and collaboration platform, Rainbow.

For the public services and governments, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise are helping with providing simple and effective remote working and collaboration solutions that are easy to deploy and scale will help them remain operational.

An immediate solution is to deploy secure plug-and-play platforms that facilitate remote communication, teamwork and video collaboration as well as secure connectivity to your network. An essential longer-term option to ensure services continuity in the future is to work on improving operational procedures today. ĂŤ

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SUPPORTING GLOBAL SOCIETY IN FLATTENING THE CURVE Salesforce continues to look forward, to find ways to help, to look for hope and are humbled by those who have committed to doing the same.

THIERRY NICAULT,

Regional Vice-President for Enterprise Business Unit, Middle East, Africa, Central Europe, Salesforce.

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alesforce remains committed to flattening the curve. Aligned with various local and national government guidelines, Salesforce have extended office closures in North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM to early May. The top priority remains the physical and mental health of our employees and their families. Salesforce is offering virtual workouts and meditations. Salesforce is hosting guest speakers to discuss how to manage anxiety and help our children and families through this difficult time.

Supporting our employees, Salesforce is providing technology and content for WideOpenSchool.org, a new free online resource from Common Sense Media to support families and educators transitioning to remote learning as a

result of COVID-19.

These times remind us to be more connected than ever. Salesforce continues to look forward, to find ways to help, to look for hope and are humbled by those who have committed to doing the same. Salesforce continue to support our local communities at the local, national and global levels.

Salesforce has donated $3 million to UCSF’s COVID-19 Response Fund, the CDC Foundation’s Emergency Response Fund and San Francisco’s Give2SF Fund, and matching employee donations.

Salesforce announced it is expanding support for those affected by donating $1.5 million to organisations like the Italian Red Cross, Madrid Food Bank and New York COVID-19 Emergency Fund. The funds will support mitigation and direct relief for vulnerable populations.

Salesforce is supporting a collective effort to get healthcare professionals the critical personal protection equipment they need by sourcing 50 million PPE including masks, gowns, suits, and face shields for hospitals in the United States, India, and France. Salesforce will continue to work, in alignment with the priorities and efforts of government emergency management agencies, to protect those protecting us.

Salesforce announced Salesforce Care Small Business Grants to provide resources for the businesses at the heart of our communities.

As coronavirus deepens, more than 3,500 organisations worldwide are using Salesforce Care solutions across customer contact centers, emergency response, small business

Salesforce is supporting a collective effort to get healthcare professionals, personal protection equipment

support, and work from home. Salesforce and AWS are giving Salesforce Care customers free access to Amazon Connect for deploying virtual contact centers in minutes. Salesforce is also supporting re-skilling with a surge in our Trailhead content.

Supporting Middle East organisations in their move to online shopping and deliver, Salesforce is launching 3 Quick start packages from our Commerce Cloud portfolio to accelerate e-commerce transformation, and delivering service continuity from physical to digital commerce with Quick Start packs.

Organisations need to adopt a crisis response strategy upfront called from breakdown to breakthrough to become stronger 18 months later than if the crisis had not happened.

CEOs should adopt 5 points: Collaborate with the community and turn them into allies; Exceed customer expectations in unexpected ways; Listen for the customer-driven single source of truth and share data-driven insights; Plan for the new normal – and start the transformation now with a team that works solely on post-crisis projects; Brand values should guide your daily problem-solving and serve communities and the world as human beings.

CEOs should rethink expectations; reconsider what consumers value differently; evaluate the biggest threats to business; consider the new providers, models, business models, and ecosystems; and evaluate which capabilities, relationships, and assets are more important in these worlds.

Business priorities have shifted from playing offense to defense. It is a critical time to focus on helping new and existing customers to extract value from products and services.

COVID-19 has changed the way Salesforce do sales forever. Nearly everyone is now a virtual, remote seller, and that will remain mostly true even when it is safe for us to go back to the office. ë

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PROTECTING REMOTE WORKERS THROUGH CLOUD SOLUTIONS

From a security and business continuity perspective Mimecast were setup to continue operating from remote locations without any challenges.

WERNO GEVERS,

Cybersecurity Specialist, Mimecast.

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s a technology and more specifically a cloud company, Mimecast were well equipped to make the move to a remote working environment. Mimecast is also a global organisation who collaborates effectively across multiple offices, so working from various locations was nothing new to Mimecast.

The big difference was not being able to have face-to-face time with our customers, which is important to Mimecast. But considering this is now the new norm for everyone, Mimecast have quickly adapted to servicing customers virtually.

Video conferencing has become an essential tool for Mimecast. They were already using it extensively for meetings across regions, but now that Mimecast no longer have any face-to-face meetings, the usage has increased dramatically. Now all internal and customer

meetings are done virtually.

Mimecast has increased security controls given the recent concerns about this platform.

From a security and business continuity perspective Mimecast were setup to continue operating from remote locations without any issues.

Mimecast internal security teams ensured that all staff are aware of the risks associated with working from home. Awareness and education during this time has been a key measure as employees are more vulnerable.

Ensuring that employees are protected while accessing Internet and email from home, without overloading our VPN, was another important factor.

The majority of Mimecast’s products have become increasingly relevant in this new world. For starters, there has been a major increase in COVID-19 related cyberattacks, which means Email Security, Web Security, Brand Exploit Protect and DMARC solutions have become incredibly important when it comes to protecting organisations and their customers from these threats. Many organisations have also found they are not equipped for remote working environments.

Web security keeps the web safe and consistently secures employees even when they are off the company network. With a distributed workforce and an abundance of scams doing the rounds, the cost of human error escalates, so organisations need to take steps to adequately prepare employees to spot these threats. Awareness training is becoming increasingly important.

Finally, backup and archiving solutions are ready to restore access to critical business data should there be any unplanned downtime.

Majority of Mimecast’s products have become increasingly relevant in this new world.

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Ensuring employees are protected while accessing Internet and email from home, without overloading the VPN, was another important factor.

The recent rise in Emotet ransomware, puts organisations at increased risk and they will need to ensure they have continuity until the crisis passes.

Organisations need to have layered security that protects all attack vectors, including endpoint, web and email. Data Leak Prevention is also vital to secure data, especially as employees are likely to be distracted and not always paying attention to what information they are sharing. The email threat landscape has changed and requires security professionals to evolve from a perimeter-based discipline to a more pervasive discipline.

Effective security controls must include protection from external threats at the email perimeter and internal threats within the network and organisation. They then need tools that extend beyond the company’s security perimeter - such as DMARC and brand exploit protection - to help identify when their brand is being abused by impersonators seeking to exploit customers, employees and partners.

As adoption of cloud-based business applications grow in the wake of forced lockdowns around the globe, companies need to ensure they have the tools to recover in any situation.

This includes a data management strategy that combines archiving, backup and data protection capabilities to allow for quick restoration of critical systems and applications in the event of disruption. ë

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TACKLING PANDEMIC BY FUNDING AND PARTNERING GLOBALLY Corporate social responsibility teams can provide infrastructure and accelerate new ways to engage through virtual volunteering and pro-bono consulting.

S ZAKARIA HALTOUT,

Managing Director, SAP UAE.

SAP is exploring investment in TrackYourBed, a web-based solution that indicates hospital bed availability in real time.

AP is committed to maintaining visibility with its customers and partners. Across MENA, SAP has moved completely to remote working to support its customers’ digital transformation journeys in this time of need.

Supporting the health, safety, and well-being of employees, SAP are neither hosting nor participating in any in-person events scheduled to occur in April, May, and June 2020.

In particular, 2020 SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference are moving from an in-person event to an online experience for customers, partners, and guests.

In order to support students, professionals and anyone wishing to continue to learn during this challenging time, SAP recently announced a new digital learning initiative offering innovative, interactive educational content.

SAP is currently exploring investment in TrackYourBed, a responsive, web-based solution that indicates hospital bed availability in real time, as well as many other ideas that have emerged through COVID-19 sprint in the SAP One Billion Lives initiative, the company’s social intrapreneurship program.

The SAP Corporate Social Responsibility team is providing infrastructure and accelerating new ways to engage through virtual volunteering and pro-bono consulting, offering more than 50 projects to date.

SAP has also established a €3 million COVID-19 Emergency Fund to support the urgent needs of the World Health Organisation, the CDC Foundation, and smaller nonprofits and social enterprises that work on the front lines serving local communities in crisis.

SAP has established a €3 million COVID-19 Emergency Fund to support the urgent needs of the World Health Organisation.

To help manage the impact of the pandemic, EY, SAP, and Qualtrics have collaborated on providing agencies with a comprehensive set of services and solutions to meet the initial urgent and critical needs of governments, globally.

The services and solutions are provided in 8 languages – English, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, and Greek – through EY implementation and enablement services.

These solutions include: l Qualtrics COVID-19 Pre-Screening and Routing, an online, guided pre-screening questionnaire. l Qualtrics COVID-19 Dynamic Call Center Script to help local governments set up call centers. l Qualtrics Healthcare Workforce Pulse to monitor healthcare providers and frontline healthcare workers. l Critical care protocol solution for governments and ministries of health to early identify critical care and high-risk patients.

The Middle East is a global leader in managing coronavirus, with organisations using real-time insights solutions to re-design supply chain, procurement, and travel, pre-screen for health issues, and enhance remote working and staffing.

Frontline industries of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, research, and public security need to access information, address citizen sentiment, and accelerate reaction time. Retail, banking, education, insurance, and entertainment need to enable digital channels.

Wholesale distribution, retail, consumer, and oil and gas need to provide supply chain flexibility, ensure last mile delivery, and access to sources of supply and finance.

For fields directly hit, such as sports, entertainment, travel, transportation, evens, and construction, and for companies experiencing demand spikes, such as telco and gaming, they need to evaluate viability.

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SERVERS

TRANSFORMING DATACENTRES Ten top executives from leading datacentre solution vendors give their perspective about the ongoing transformation and future form factors.

Azz-Eddine Mansouri, Ciena

Florian Malecki, StorageCraft Technology

Jeroen Schlosser, Equinix

Muna Issa, HPE

Patrick Smith, Pure Storage

Paulo Pereira, Nutanix

Richard Wilcox, Lenovo

Sanjay Kumar Sainani, Huawei

Savitha Bhaskar, Condo Protego

Walid Issa, NetApp.

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COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

LARGER AND COMPLEX WORKLOADS DRIVING TRANSFORMATION Next five years to see more datacentres at the edge, driving more content and applications to end users over shorter fibre and network hops.

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nternet of Things, 5G, connected cars, telemedicine, e-learning, 4K video or emerging virtual reality applications are all poised to add more demand to the network. All of the content and information generated by these applications, as well as by end-users, are stored in data centres and transported across the networks that interconnect them.

To successfully manage these high bandwidth operations, telco operators and service providers need to be able to not only increase their capacity, but also to understand where to store data Edge vs data centres and how they can optimise their networks with AI-driven software to achieve this.

One of the pain points for CIOs is related to the fact that data centre managers are being called to run much larger, more complex workloads that are often very different from one another. Hardware requirements can vary widely from workload to workload and may also change over the course of a day or even an hour.

Other challenges include the provision of hardware for new applications, identifying where there is available power capacity, facilitating the automation of the data centre to minimise headcount, maximize uptime and more.

FUTURISTIC DCS The growth in artificial intelligence and IoT will lead to the increasing demand for edge computing and edge data centres as well as an increase in modular data centre construction and investments.

Over the next five years, as applications shift to the edge, a new breed of data centres will crop up around the globe. Looking ahead a decade, there could be orders of magnitude more data centres sending content and apps to users over shorter lengths of fiber and

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network hops. This edge cloud will be a unique ecosystem of open and interconnected data centres, including data centre operators and carrier partnerships.

To support this, Ciena and its Blue Planet software brings a wealth of AI-enabled analytics, enabling real-time resource sharing from the core to the edge and distribution across an ecosystem of operators, enabling the rapid spin-up of applications in real time.

The data centre market is projected to grow in the Middle East at a CAGR of around seven percent between 2018 and 2024, backed by the government and private sector initiatives.

With the smart city advancements taking place in UAE and Saudi Arabia and the ever-increasing adoption of cloud computing services, Cienna will continue to see a high up-take of co-location spaces across existing and upcoming data centres.

Additionally, as technology becomes more intelligent, automated, software-defined and modernised, data centre resiliency will also improve.

PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS Ciena’s DCI solutions are based on fieldproven coherent optical processing technologies to carry mission-critical traffic and on software to automate the provisioning of this traffic. Globally, Ciena has deployed more than 320 million kilometres of coherent networking solutions.

Cienna combines the best-in-class optics and web-scale IT to deliver massive multi-terabits per second capacity and programmability while providing power and space efficiency—simpler to use, scalable, and tailored to each customer’s needs. This enables Cienna to deliver highly reliable networks that support data centre operators to eliminate concerns about network failures and

AZZ-EDDINE MANSOURI,

General Manager Sales, Ciena Middle East.

Data centre managers are being called to run larger, complex workloads, often very different from one another.

capitalize on high availability as a competitive differentiator.

Ciena’s Blue Planet helps data centre providers to automate cloud exchange services.

For instance, Blue Planet Multi-Domain Service Orchestration MDSO is an open and vendor-agnostic software solution that allows for shorter time-to-revenue and lower costs by simplifying and automating service delivery across data centres and cloud. ë

COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

THE RUNAWAY STORY OF DATA IN THE DATACENTRE

Tomorrows datacentres will need to cope with the challenge of runaway structured and unstructured data as well as securing and managing it.

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he proliferation of data is reaching epic proportions, just when companies are discovering that they cannot simply upload it all into the cloud. What they need is a new approach to storage infrastructure that can manage their data growth and, at the same time, secure all of their unstructured data, wherever they put it.

StorageCraft provides data management and protection solutions for the next-generation hybrid data centre, be it on-premises or in the cloud. We assure modern business continuity with innovative, smarter and reliable enterprise-class IT solutions for businesses, serving organisations of all sizes, with millions of servers protected and several petabytes of data under management.

StorageCraft solutions provide complete data protection, industry leading recovery and scalability for seamless business continuity. It is incredibly easy to deploy and manage, ensuring secure data protection, reduced downtime and improved productivity to organisations struggling with management, complexity, cost and risk associated with ageing legacy storage infrastructures.

Let us put the data growth problem under a magnifying lens. When people look at data, they are mostly conscious of the mission critical data – because, well it is mission critical.

These require ultra-high performance with low-latency. Typically, they are databases or applications layered over databases.

However, this typically represents only 10-20% of an enterprise’s data. The rest of the 80% is mostly made up of unstructured data.

There are multiple data sources and typically are housed in different point solutions leading to complexity and poor utilisation of resources.

CIOs are looking for technologies that allow them to support and embrace the business initiatives. This also means solving the following pain points:

Storage and data resilience Inefficiency and limited budgets l Business capacity l Growth and recoverability requirements l Data sovereignty compliance l Managing assets l Risk minimisation The proliferation of data is reaching epic proportions, just when companies are discovering that they cannot simply upload it all into the cloud. What they need is a new approach to storage infrastructure that can manage their data growth and, at the same time, secure all of their unstructured data, wherever they put it.

Choosing the right storage system for the new reality of cloud repatriation gives organisations peace of mind. It assures them that they can cost-effectively manage their increasing data volumes and gives them the confidence that their data is always securely at their fingertips. ĂŤ l l

FLORIAN MALECKI,

Senior Director of International Product Marketing, StorageCraft Technology.

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CLOUD INTERCONNECT WILL DRIVE NEXT TRANSFORMATION Dedicated interconnection between network and cloud providers and users and data, will bypass hackers and performance risks of public Internet.

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he world is digitising at a rapid pace as major macro, technology and regulatory trends are mandating a business shift to the digital edge. Building a digital business requires the ability to reach strategic global destinations on demand, to access everyone that matters, and to bring people, clouds, data and things together.

The rise of innovation in cloud technology, edge computing, colocation and hosting services, and adopting SD-WAN, SDN and APIs for implementing a multiconnected environment, are transforming the future of data centre.

According to the Gartner analyst report, by 2025, enterprise data centers will have five times more computational capacity per physical area square feet than today. The number of micro data centers will quadruple, due to technological advances, such as 5G, new batteries, hyperconverged infrastructure HCI and various software-defined systems SDx. Futuristic datacentres Whether it is fuel cells, cooling or largescale energy battery storage, so much work is happening to develop the technology that will power a redefined future of the data centre in our always-on society. With the immense potential of 5G, the proliferation of connected devices, and download speeds, the levels of data being consumed are set to grow even further.

For these huge data sets to move around the world, there needs to be a robust, secure and scalable digital infrastructure that interconnects dispersed locations, allowing this traffic to be transferred reliably and cost-effectively.

Scaling digital transformation is a pressing priority but, in order to realise this potential, businesses need to enable themselves to transform. They must establish new metrics, realign organisational structures, rearchitect

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technology platforms and develop greater digital capabilities.

One of the ways businesses can use the cloud more securely is through direct, dedicated interconnections between network and cloud providers and users and data, bypassing the hacking and performance risks of the public internet.

As an Equinix global report shows, interconnection is key to ensure full digital transformation and for this, businesses will need to grow their interconnection bandwidth capacity and data exchange capacity. Every MENA business must understand and leverage Interconnection Bandwidth to compete in the digital age. This will require a regional drive among IT chiefs to re-architect their companies’ IT platforms.

Products and solutions Equinix’s Platform Equinix is a global interconnection platform that enables customers to implement Interconnection Oriented Architecture strategies. This approach to interconnecting people, locations, clouds and data integrates the physical and virtual worlds where they meet. This shifts the fundamental delivery architecture of IT from siloed and centralised to distributed, interconnected and co-located.

Currently, the global footprint of Platform Equinix spans more than 200 IBX data centres across 55 markets and 25 countries, providing data centre and interconnection services for nearly 10,000 customers. Its position as a leading meeting and interconnection point for ecosystems of networks, clouds, and enterprises, give it a unique and holistic lens to view critical digital infrastructure trends and solve for customer requirements. ë

JEROEN SCHLOSSER,

Managing Director, Equinix MENA.

This shifts the fundamental delivery architecture of IT from siloed and centralised to distributed, interconnected and co-located.

This approach to interconnecting people, locations, clouds and data integrates the physical and virtual worlds where they meet.

COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

AGE OF CHOICE WHERE CLOUD AND ON-PREMISES COEXIST

In the age of choice, common storage layer, will allow applications and data to move freely between clouds and multi-cloud platforms.

P

ure Storage, helps customers to put data to use while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure Storage delivers a modern data experience that empowers organisations to run their operations as a true, automated, storage as-a-service model seamlessly across multiple clouds.

Pure Storage is the only vendor that has made all of its core products available as a service under one full, integrated portfolio.

This represents the simplest on-ramp to the cloud for customers and is aligned with how the modern customer wants to buy.

Artificial intelligence, analytics, cloud and software defined are the four major technologies or trends that are impacting the datacenter market in the region. From this perspective, cloud is a particularly big driver for the simple fact that most CIOs have now moved beyond all on-premises or all cloud strategies to realise that both are powerful tools in delivering on their IT strategies.

They are opting instead for a hybrid IT approach with a real commitment to using both, on-prem and cloud driven through API’s providing developers with differentiated efficiency and faster release cycles.

We are seeing increased adoption of hybrid cloud. However, effective hybrid IT architecture requires bridging a cloud divide that exists at the application, management and storage layers. While significant technological strides have been made toward standardising at the orchestration layer, the challenge remains at the storage layer.

This requires businesses to look harder to find solutions that unify cloud and deliver a common set of data services across onpremises and cloud, enabling consistent storage capabilities, APIs, and resiliency so that applications can be built once and run anywhere in the hybrid cloud.

The accelerated adoption of machine learning and AI technologies means data will shift from an informational asset to the core of innovation. As a consequence, IT teams will have to make strategic decisions based on data types and will need to have the ability to quickly and seamlessly move an application born in the cloud to an on-premise environment, or vice-versa.

This will drive the datacentre market in 2020, ushering in the age of choice where public and on-premise worlds can now co-exist, bridged seamlessly with a common storage layer, so applications and data are free to move between clouds.

Businesses will increasingly demand reliable, high-performing, agile and cost-effective technology services that are simple to manage at scale. That scale will continue to increase to support growing datasets and real-time insight allowing businesses to stay ahead of the competition.

We will see more adoption of multi-cloud, delivering increased agility, mitigation of supply-side risk and the capability to scale workloads in line with business needs. As a result, businesses will be able to host their services optimally — choices will include Software-as-a-Service providers, the public cloud and on-prem or hosted datacenters.

Having the flexibility to optimise across these environments will be essential. ë

PATRICK SMITH,

EMEA Field CTO, Pure Storage.

Businesses will increasingly demand reliable, high-performing, agile and cost-effective technology services that are simple to manage at scale.

We will see more adoption of multi-cloud, delivering increased agility, and capability to scale workloads in line with business needs.

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SERVICES FOR EDGECENTRIC ENTERPRISES ARE PRIORITY Enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloudenabled, and data-driven, which will be provided to the customers as a service.

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he major trends powering the edge to cloud data era are mainly managing hybrid data centres efficiently, taking into consideration that application deployment is migrating to containers where workload and data are shifting to the edge and consumption-based models are emerging as a preferred option.

Enterprises want to accelerate everything – their apps, data, and innovation. This requires the ability to efficiently manage traditional bare-metal and virtualisation applications, while also supports containerised applications and cloud stacks with software-driven automation, and a fluid pool of resources that they can flexibly custom fit to the specific needs of applications.

Most customers want to go to an environment where they have a single environment for all of their applications. Where they can maximise utilisation by composing and recomposing resources for different applications—without disruption.

It is no secret that in this day and age, customers want more. They want more choice, more agility, more security, and more simplicity, but they also want less. Customers want less waste, less up-front investments, and to free their IT team to do more business-focused work.

HPE knows that customers do not want to be sold services that are not benefiting their bottom line – they want solutions that are tailored to driving their business outcomes and without the typical waste. HPE has listened to their wants and needs and decided that it was the time to invest in growing and differentiating the HPE GreenLake ecosystem with more choices than ever before. HPE GreenLake has defined a new category in IT services.

It is a pay-per-use IT and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Consumption-based, choice-centric hybrid

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choices business models are the future of IT services and products. Most enterprises see hybrid clouds—their ecosystem of workloads deployed across public clouds, private clouds and on-premises—as the computing platform of their future. Managing data effectively across hybrid cloud computing environments is the next frontier for IT. Furthermore, the market is demanding and consuming more and more IT infrastructure as a Service. In 2019, IDC estimated that the enterprise spend for IT infrastructure as a Service would exceed that for standalone products.

HPE believes the enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and datadriven provided to the customers as a service.

HPE sees the Edge as the next frontier, so it is the top strategic priority.

Antonio Neri, CEO and President, HPE, mentioned, in the next three years HPE will be a consumption-driven company and everything delivered to you will be delivered as a service. You choose what you want, where you want it, and only pay for what you consume.

And we are proud to be the company who can best help our customers connect all of their data, wherever it lives.

MUNA ISSA,

Channel and Distribution Sales Lead, HPE, Middle East and Africa.

HPE knows that customers do not want to be sold services that are not benefiting their bottom line.

Consumption-based, choice-centric hybrid business models are the future of IT services and products.

COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS

Managing data effectively across hybrid cloud computing environments is the next frontier for IT.

HPE Data Centre infrastructure solutions comprise of secure and agile servers, storage, networking, management, and services that provide a consistent experience and economic control across hybrid cloud data centre infrastructure. HPE offers unique capabilities of composability and intelligence. Together, these technologies can simplify and automate hybrid cloud computing environments, creating tomorrow’s autonomous infrastructure.

In November 2019, HPE announced combined intelligence and composability offerings by integrating its artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven HPE Primera storage platform with the composability in HPE Synergy and HPE Composable Rack, helping customers rapidly deliver new apps and innovations to propel their businesses forward.

This combination allows customers to deliver services on an intelligent cloud platform, offering the flexibility to support any application and service level agreement SLA with cloud-like agility, extreme resiliency, and seamless scalability.

PANDEMIC IMPACT HPE is using its technology and talent to support customers in addressing the crisis globally, from enabling medical clinics to supporting telework and remote education to powering scientific research. In this time of uncertainty customers still need to invest in technology to ensure their business can continue to move forward.

Now more than HPE needs to let customers know that they have the solutions through HPEFS to help them acquire technology today and pay for it in the most efficient way.

Business looks a bit different these days.

During the COVID-19 crisis, all companies worldwide are adapting to new and unique challenges. Working from home being a new reality most of the business owners focused on solutions to connect seamlessly and securely with their teams like HPE’s pre-configured VDI solutions, virtual desktop infrastructure, which supports small, medium, and enterprise customers and provide secure and mobile access to employees virtually.

Managing servers securely from anywhere is another key priority for business owner. One immediate way to help partners and customers, HPE is making Integrated Lights-Out free for the rest of 2020.

During this challenging time, HPE is focused on protecting team members while continuing to obsess over customers and supporting the communities where we live and work. HPE globally continues to deliver technology to enable both breakthrough and routine experiences in the face of COVID-19 HPE announced new initiatives to support customers that need to deploy or scale remote workforce infrastructure in the wake of COVID-19 starting with innovative financial and asset lifecycle options including 90-day payment deferrals on VDI solutions from HPE Financial Services.

Pre-configured VDI solutions to support small, medium, and enterprise customers.

Built on either HPE ProLiant or HPE Synergy servers, these solutions are designed for Citrix and VMware environments.

A new, higher-performing VDI solution that supports power users, HPE Moonshot now ships with the new HPE ProLiant m750 server blade, delivers more than a 70% performance advantage, according to Login VSI for VDI performance testing, and consumes 25% less power than the previous generation. ë

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THE VALUE OF

Partnering with NetApp NetApp is committed to being the data authority in the evolving landscape with our partners.

DID YOU KNOW?

42% By the end of 2019, digital transformation spending will reach $1.7 trillion worldwide, a 42% increase from 2017.

Empower Customers - Flash - NetApp HCI - Cloud

NetApp Delivers a Data Fabric Built for the Data-Driven World NetApp Data Fabric simplifies the integration and orchestration of data for applications and analytics in clouds, across clouds, and on-premises to accelerate digital transformation. Cloud connectivity is one of the core tenets of our portfolio, whether it’s cloud connected, or cloud-connected flash, or NetApp® HCI. And the underlying technology for that connectivity is the NetApp Data Fabric. The Data Fabric is what glues together your customers’ on-premises world with hyper-converged partners, whether it’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We enable customers to choose their hyperscaler and connect to it with Data Fabric.

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COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

SPEED OF BUSINESS DRIVING COMPUTING TO EDGE

Speed is critical to the success of a customer’s business operations and there is continuous shift towards edge computing solutions and services.

T

he most pertinent pain point facing CIOs now is where to turn relating to the current situation in supporting their business and employee’s needs. Currently, all vendors are fighting for an equal share of voice in the market as to who is providing the best solutions to suit this current scenario.

At Lenovo, and because Lenovo is software agnostic, the approach is very different. Instead of expecting the CIO to respond to marketing campaigns about working from home, Lenovo is approaching the situation from a consultative angle to understand the key business challenges facing customers as they endeavor to provide a fully functional remote workforce.

We are seeing that these pain points relate to application compatibility or performance and even user satisfaction and adoption.

As more and more companies transition to operational expense structure, Lenovo see great demand from CIOs looking to scale up their operations using regional data centre facilities by hyperscalers such as Microsoft.

Products and solutions With that in mind, Lenovo has expanded its portfolio of IT infrastructure solutions by launching the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX1021 and ThinkSystem DM7100. Also, for enterprises building end-to-end applications that leverage Microsoft Azure, the new Lenovo ThinkAgile MX1021 and ThinkSystem DM7100 provide validated solutions for cloud tiering.

Lenovo sees that the enterprises will increase their adaptation of the OpEx model as it gives them more control on their IT expenditure and allows them to scale their operation based on demand. Additionally, IT decision makers in the UAE have been facing a dilemma of storing company data while abiding with the nation’s strict data residency laws.

Therefore, hyperscalers will work on

establishing a bigger presence in the region to provide companies with the opportunity to scale up their business without having to store data outside the country they reside in.

Lenovo has been rolling out a wide portfolio of innovative products that delivers cost-effective, reliable, and scalable data centre solutions by combining industry-leading technology and the world’s best software-defined offerings.

Earlier in 2017, the company unveiled the ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile family which was a success in server offerings.

Lenovo launched the ThinkSystem DE and DM Series through its partnership with NetApp. Lenovo’s diversified offerings also focus on edge to cloud solutions as seen in our recent launch of the ThinkSystem SE350.

Furthermore, as hyperscalers deploy regional data centres, Lenovo introduced the ThinkAgile MX1021 which harnesses the power of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI at the edge to reduce latency and analyse data where it’s produced.

Speed is critical to the success of customer business operations; therefore, Lenovo sees a continuous shift towards edge computing solutions. Lenovo is witnessing a strong demand for solutions such as the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX1021 or Lenovo ThinkSystem DM7100.

For customers that do not require timesensitive solutions, Lenovo’s ThinkAgile cloud portfolio remains popular. As part of this portfolio, Lenovo continue to offer a wide range of answers to cater to the needs of customers through private cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud or customised cloud solutions. ë

RICHARD WILCOX,

Regional Director, Middle East, Lenovo DCG.

Hyperscalers will work on establishing a bigger presence in the region to provide companies with the opportunity to scale up their business.

IT decision makers in the UAE have been facing a dilemma of storing company data while abiding with the nation’s data residency laws.

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COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

DRIVING EFFICIENCY OF THE ON-DEMAND PUBLIC CLOUD

Public cloud has changed how organisations pay for and consume IT services and expensive, overprovisioned infrastructure is no longer tenable.

T

oday, IT leaders struggle to manage the complexity across their IT environments. This includes not only core datacenter infrastructure, but remote and branch offices, disaster recovery sites and more. This complexity makes it difficult for the business to pursue new markets, develop advanced products & services, and tackle strategic initiatives, such as digital transformation projects.

Much of the challenge stems from legacy infrastructure, constructed with discrete resource silos, such as storage, server, virtualisation, networking and security. This fragmented design makes it difficult and time consuming to provision new IT environments to run critical business applications. Additionally, these architectures have multiple points of failure, creating a fragile IT system that is susceptible to unplanned downtime.

Managing this IT complexity demands significant process overhead for executing even basic tasks, such as adding additional capacity or upgrading software – adding unwanted friction to IT operations and slowing the business.

Legacy architectures also impose financial burdens, with large upfront capital purchases required even for small-scale deployments.

This undeniable complexity has a profound impact on already-stretched IT teams. It requires the tight coordination of multiple IT specialists to handle simple operations, and – most importantly – leaves little time for true innovation.

This keeps us spending a disproportionate amount of our time on tending to infrastructure. Although the infrastructure is the underlying foundation, business partners care only about the applications and services that run upon them and because the infrastructure is complex and keep us focused on the speeds and feeds, it is no wonder that according to a Nutanix survey, 57% of developers circumvent instead of collaborate with IT.

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To align ourselves with the needs of the business, we need to provision resources, deploy applications and help them go to market faster.

This requires us to focus on delivering services rooted upon SLAs that go across technology silos and optimises utilisation across a shared infrastructure. This is why public cloud is becoming increasingly popular.

The adoption of public cloud services has reset expectations of what enterprise IT must deliver. Internal IT consumers need infrastructure provisioned in minutes, not weeks or months. Otherwise, the business will circumvent IT teams in favor of public cloud services, creating shadow IT challenges.

Public cloud has changed how organisations pay for and consume IT services. Expensive, overprovisioned infrastructure is no longer tenable. The business expects pay-as-you-grow economics, where IT services are provided only when needed, and paid for only when used.

Solutions that are simple to deploy, manage and scale – with one-click operations for common workflows. Continuous innovation with new features and capabilities incorporated into production environments continuously, non-disruptively and with no maintenance windows. Failure to adapt to elevated expectations poses risks to the business, and makes IT teams less relevant.

To meet a diverse and expanding set of IT requirements, organisations are leveraging multiple cloud environments to power their workloads and manage valuable customer and business data.

100% software-defined architectures provide significantly more flexibility and agility than those based on specialised hardware devices, which quickly become obsolete and depreciate in value.

Application-centric datacenters provide IT infrastructure services that adapt and respond to the needs of the application. The datacenter serves the application, not vice versa. ë

PAULO PEREIRA,

Director, Systems Engineering, Emerging Markets and Eastern Europe, Nutanix.

Legacy architectures also impose financial burdens, with large upfront capital purchases required even for small-scale deployments.

COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

AI, BIG DATA, CLOUD, 5G, DRIVERS FOR DATA CENTRES

Data centres will become more efficient with modular construction, artificial intelligence and digital technologies, as well as sustainable power sources.

D

ata centres currently account for around 3% of the world’s total power consumption and this will continue to increase as more facilities come into use. The use of clean energy and waste heat is a step in the right direction to reduce emissions and increase energy savings and therefore, cause long term sustainability and increase the sector’s growth.

Huawei foresees a strong acceptance and growth of prefabricated modular data centre facilities which cut the construction period in half and allows a high degree of flexibility and scalability, thus leading to better CAPEX management and improved ROCE. Data centres will benefit as more digitalisation gets embedded across the DC life-cycle from planning and construction to O and M, energy management, and resource optimisation. Artificial intelligence will be widely applied throughout the data centre facility to achieve efficiency and a higher degree of autonomous operation and life-cycle management.

Digital services growth rate has been phenomenal resulting in data and traffic demands to rise sharply. There is race to scale and acquire customers and pressure to improve RoCE and RoI. Therefore, data centres must be rolled out quickly.

PAIN POINTS While data centres have grown immensely in size, they have also become more complex.

High-density ICT infrastructure is now gaining favor, and this brings new challenges that must be overcome. Data centres are facing challenges such as difficulty to obtain construction resources, long construction period, and high energy consumption. In addition, data centres also face many challenges in terms of architecture flexibility and O and M. At Huawei, our experience in offering turn-

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key data centre facility buildup has allowed us to work through many of these technical demands. Throughout the build process—from concept, planning, design, engineering, construction, and operation and maintenance—we have seen how important it is to implement innovative technology. This must be supported by tested best practices, flexible architecture, and efficient systems in order to build data centres that are intelligent, efficient, and sustainable across their life-cycle.

Data centres have undergone massive growth and discernible evolution, from humble beginnings as computer rooms for ICT to massive facilities to host cloud-based platforms. Rapid development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, and 5G will bring a new golden era, and market demand for data centres will increase dramatically.

Globally in the next five years, we are expecting data volumes to increase from the 40 zettabytes recorded in 2019 to 180 zettabytes by 2025—representing growth of more than 400%. As such, data centres will evolve to become more digital and intelligent, with artificial intelligence being widely applied.

It will also be fully modular to address the problems of slow construction and high initial investment costs. Moreover, green data centres will be more common with the aim to save resources in an ever more discerning economy.

PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS Huawei has the complete range of products and solutions to help clients build a futureproof Data Centre Facility. At the top end of the portfolio is FusionDC, a comprehensive Modular Data Centre configured and customised to suit diverse scenarios including Prefabricated Data Centre Facility with state-of-the-art Power, Cooling and artificial

SANJAY KUMAR SAINANI,

SVP and CTO, Huawei Global Data Centre Facility Business.

High-density ICT infrastructure is now gaining favor, and this brings new challenges that must be overcome. intelligence Enabled DCIM. Fusion DC ranges from a Single Cabinet solution to multi-cabinet integrated solutions for existing Building structures or Green-field building deployments. The Power offering includes Modular UPS from 100 KVA1.6MW, Modular PDU’s, SmartLi – Li Ion Battery solution.

The cooling portfolio includes INROW, INROOM, FANWALL, IDEC, AHU’s supporting high temp chiller water and DX modes to suit diverse cooling architectures. Enterprise grade artificial intelligence-enabled DCIM introduces game-changing capability for an Autonomous DC operation. ë

COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

SCALE-OUT, FLASH, SOFTWARE DEFINED, TRANSFORMING DCS

Flash solutions, cloud-enabled infrastructure, scale-out storage, and software-defined infrastructure, will be key components of modern data centres.

C

ondo Protego, as one of the region’s leading specialised data centre systems integrators, has seen strong success in offering customers the Dell EMC and VMware entire stack of modern data centre solutions, from storage to security and analytics, along with hybrid cloud solutions.

As converged and hyper-converged infrastructure, which can be complicated to install properly, Middle East organisations should rely on specialised, knowledge, and experienced channel partners for installing pre-engineered and modular infrastructure systems. Channel partners increasingly need to move from being generalists to being value-added resellers and systems integrators, especially for modern data centres.

As Middle East organisations digitally transform, they are also facing more complex business requirements, higher performance, and more applications generating more data, especially as more firms move to remote working in the COVID-19 coronavirus era.

As a result, CIOs are facing a turning point in their data centre modernisation. Data centres have moved from a cost centre to a profit centre. Modern data centres, with softwaredefined solutions and storage virtualisation, are vital for scaling up as organisations grow.

Vendors of data centre solutions are educating CIOs that one of the main factors in data centre modernisation is business resiliency, with public and private sector employees, customers, and citizens expecting around-theclock availability of services.

Business resiliency is especially vital in the COVID-19 coronavirus era, and we expect a continued shift in business continuity procedures and policies to help organisations remain robust moving forward.

Organisations need to work with channel partners to ensure that they have the redun-

dancy in place to deliver application and resource availability, with strict RTOs and RPOs. Redundancy applies to every industry vertical and use case, from aviation through autonomous vehicles.

The future of the Middle East enterprise data centre is in organisations moving to a hybrid cloud model, in which business applications and workloads are hosted within both the public cloud and local private clouds. Customers increasingly want to move between clouds to optimise costs, performance, risk, and scalability.

Worldwide, a Veritas survey shows that organisations are using 4 or more cloud providers, which in turn requires effective multi-cloud management. Channel partners can also help organisations to navigate the challenges of data migration between clouds and the potentially costly and time-consuming issue of cloud vendor lock-in.

By 2025, Middle East organisations will have largely adopted modern data centres, with elements including: Flash solutions, which can significantly reduce floor space, power consumption, and cooling requirements, optimising costs and delivering consistent and predictable low-latency performance.

Cloud-enabled infrastructure, which can deploy, manage, and extend information and applications from their data centre to a public or enterprise cloud provider, to achieve agility, speed, and efficiency Scale-out storage, with a modular approach to scaling out the infrastructure delivering low-cost of entry and few resources.

Software-defined infrastructure, which can leverage APIs and software for a more agile, flexible, and programmable approach across storage, servers, networking, SD-WAN, and cybersecurity. ĂŤ

SAVITHA BHASKAR,

COO, Condo Protego.

Customers increasingly want to move between clouds to optimise costs, performance, risk, and scalability.

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COVER FEATURE DATACENTRES

SIMPLICITY AND CUSTOMISABILITY KEY DC TRANSFORMERS

Vendors will need to offer flexible technologies with choice of how to consume so that customers can keep pace with evolving business models.

N

etApp provides products and services that satisfy a broad range of workloads across different data types and deployment models. The All-Flash Array transforms everything with the most cloud-connected, fully NVMe-enabled all-flash solutions. It features deep integration with critical business applications allowing our customers to quickly provision storage and connect to more clouds for more data services and automatic data tiering.

In addition, HCI solutions accelerate transformation with the highest performing, lowest cost all-flash hyper converged infrastructure.

It helps customers build their private cloud bringing public cloud on-premises and develop anywhere, on any cloud with one experience.

Last but not least, NetApp cloud portfolio fuels business growth with extreme performance and advanced data management in the cloud for Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

Data is the currency of the new digital economy, and NetApp’s expertise, portfolio, and partnerships are essential in helping customers succeed in a rapidly changing technology landscape. Hybrid cloud solutions are the most common trend these days. For a successful hybrid cloud strategy data management is critical, especially when using multiple clouds.

In a true hybrid environment, enterprises should have the flexibility to move applications across different public and private environments based on their business requirements and cost considerations. Business applications are relatively stateless and can be brought up and down in various environments easily.

However, data must be managed differently because it has its own unique characteristics.

Mastering a strong, stable IT operation that is able to move as fast as business demands is key to the design and performance of data

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centre solutions in a hybrid cloud environment. With the adoption of this model, CIOs everywhere are under pressure to modernise their infrastructure and to deliver tangible business value around data-intensive applications and workloads.

NetApp predicts that a demand for simplicity and customisability will be the number one factor driving CIO decisions in 2020.

Therefore, vendors will need to offer modern, flexible technologies with the choice of how to use and consume those technologies so that customers can keep pace with their evolving business models.

The future of the enterprise data centre relies on having a solid data management strategy and architecture. Where data is hosted is critical. It defines choices and options of an enterprise as its cloud footprint grows. To provide IT with the maximum benefit of cloud services, a data management strategy should take into consideration the following aspects: - Secure control and governance of data regardless of its location - Access to data where and when applications need it to satisfy business use cases - Flexibility to migrate data and applications between different cloud providers, to avoid vendor lock-in - Data compliance with company requirements and the ability to satisfy audit and other governance processes Data centres will be more dynamic to keep pace with the ever-expanding growth in data which is driven by AI and data analytics. This dynamic approach should be able to address critical enterprise challenges to reduce costs, mitigate risk, and help IT teams succeed in the face of increasing budget constraints.

The NetApp Data Fabric vision combines a strong architecture that simplifies scaling and activation of applications with a defined services management framework that takes

WALID ISSA,

Senior Manager, Pre-Sales and System Engineers Middle East Region, NetApp.

The future of the enterprise data centre relies on having a data management strategy and architecture.

the guesswork out of operating an enterprise environment for maximum operational efficiency.

It enables customers to respond and innovate more quickly because data is free to be accessed where it is needed most. In this case, customers can realise the full potential of their data and make the best decisions for their business. ĂŤ

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GUEST COLUMN

EXPLOITING THE WEAKEST LINKS, EMPLOYEE DEVICES Cloud solutions allow teams to see devices on a dashboard, helping them get an informed view of their vulnerability, says Hadi Jaafarawi at Qualys.

P

rior to the emergence of COVID19, technical teams across the region would have likely been planning for a year in which they addressed the finer points of cloud computing — what it meant for their organisation and how to leverage it to facilitate cost management and business agility.

Cybersecurity professionals would have been occupied with how they adjusted their threat postures to accommodate new architectures. Curiously, now that the pandemic has forced governments to keep us safe by imposing lockdowns, CISOs and their teams have more or less the same challenge in front of them. Keep data and infrastructure safe under a completely different office dynamic.

With remote working becoming increasingly widespread, team members need to find new ways of collaborating, to defend against a threat landscape that shows no compassion for our shared challenge.

Crises always demanded shifts in priorities.

We must now protect ourselves and others from harm by working in new ways. These necessities are likely to persist, and we must adapt to ensure that our isolation does not yield secondary crises, such as the many economic ones that I am sure occupy your mind as you read this.

From a cybersecurity perspective, we can be certain bad actors will look to exploit the fact that new, unprotected endpoints have now suddenly been thrust upon many corporate

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GUEST COLUMN

INSIGHTS Employee private devices must be recognised for what they are, weak links in security chain. n

Every time someone initiates a session with a remote applications host, they are fodder for attackers. n

Any time data is in transit, it is vulnerable to hijackers. n

Many of the challenges presented by such approaches will centre on the large numbers of new devices. n

Bandwidth may also be a challenge, as will verification and enforcement. n

With the right approach, remote working need not mean vulnerable to cyberattack. n

HADI JAAFARAWI,

Managing Director, Middle East, Qualys.

domains. An important element of control has been obliterated by necessity, even as it has given rise to new efficiencies. After all, many have argued for some time that working from home has the potential to increase productivity and talent retention.

But we need to beware. Employees’ private devices must be recognised for what they are: weak links in the security chain. Every time someone initiates a session with a remote applications host, they are fodder for attackers.

Any time data is in transit, it is vulnerable to hijackers.

The first thing security teams need to do is to take control of the new devices. Whether by bulletin, or by one-to-one communication, they must instruct employees how to patch and update operating systems and install security tools that meet with corporate standards. Such work needs to be monitored and verified to ensure that the weak links have been sufficiently shored up.

Many of the challenges presented by such approaches will centre on getting to grips with large numbers of new devices, understanding their vulnerabilities and clearly communicating the necessary steps to fix such issues to non-technical employees.

Bandwidth may also be a challenge, as will verification and enforcement. And consider that such patching must occur periodically, which means that verification and enforcement are also ongoing. Every day, the cybercriminal discovers more software vulnerabilities to exploit, and security teams — and under the new work paradigm, those teams extend to every remote worker — need to be equal to their cunning.

Normally, IT teams curate patches from the larger vendors to deploy in a single dose. While this simplifies the task, it works better when technical teams have tight control over devices, to allow compatibility testing, and rollbacks if necessary. Under remote-working conditions, IT has the challenge of first establishing what other software is installed and vetting configurations to ensure a smooth patching process. These are not simple tasks when being performed over the wire.

These challenges still exist for those enterprises that had the foresight to bring

employee devices up to code before lockdowns were enforced. Because of ever-emerging vulnerabilities and the volatile nature of today’s regional threat landscape, up-to-code devices are unlikely to remain so for long.

So, is there a simpler way to manage all of this? Under the new remote-working model, can teams get single, unified views of device ecosystems in a way that allows them to take action in an informed and targeted manner on a device-by-device basis? Is there a way to automate updates?

Yes, yes and yes. Cloud services provide a useful platform for an IT team to get a bird’s-eye view of all devices on their network.

Dashboards allow at-a-glance assessment of the level of preparedness of each machine, and other cloud services deliver the means to automate patching with adherence to a regular schedule. Tools also allow for granular control over prioritisation that matches any mechanism previously used in the on-premises environment.

Through platforms such as this, we start to address many of our remote-working challenges as they relate to security: complex monitoring is taken care of; verification is delivered through automation; and enforcement is a given. And so, we return to the controlled ecosystem we enjoyed previously, courtesy of the cloud.

And because we can guarantee the same measure of protections as previously, businesses that rise or fall on their ability to remain compliant with a range of national, regional and international regulations, can continue to operate unabated. Unified insights into every corner of the corporate network are key to business continuity, as is the ability to replicate previous environments where practical and necessary.

Through the cloud, isolation need not mean the same as it used to. Control endures, along with the means to support employees and allow them to remain productive as we work through the challenges ahead. With such capabilities in place, businesses keep thriving and growing as before. Economies survive. And all of us can take some little comfort that when we emerge from the crisis, a return to normal will follow swiftly. ë

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GUEST COLUMN

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, AROUND REMOTE ACCESS

The best tools for securing remote access provide audit trails for service desks teams as they trouble shoot, writes Karl Lankford at BeyondTrust.

KARL LANKFORD,

DIRECTOR SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING, BEYONDTRUST.

A

s the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the world, organisations are closing offices and mandating remote working.

This has created an increase in the demand for online or remote support tools due to the need to protect employee health, as well as ensuring business continuity while mitigating the virus spread.

For example, the recently declared global health emergency by the World Health Organisation WHO, states that most of China

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has been forced to work remotely — as at least 24 of the country’s 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, including Beijing and Shanghai, have told businesses not to reopen.

Also, in other countries, like Singapore, the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition, color-coded framework has implemented the Orange status that shows the current disease situation. This status effectively forces organisations to mandate remote working for employees, and review corporate travel policies in an effort to contain the spread.

Such an approach is placing immense pressure on IT infrastructure and systems as employees turn to remote working en masse, generating a need for flexible remote support technology that scales, adapts, and continues to meet rigorous security requirements.

During such challenging times, choosing the right remote support software is pivotal to the productivity and security of your service desk.

Organisations need a remote support solution that can cover an expansive list of use cases, while making the entire service desk

GUEST COLUMN

INSIGHTS Choosing the right remote support software is pivotal to productivity and security of your service desk. n

A remote support solution must be easy to use, reliable, and secure. n

As remote work has increased, so too has the number of data breaches through point-to-point remote access tools. n

Limited use cases for these tools are frequently stretched beyond what is safe or efficient and should be a red flag. n

Many service desk teams share and store credentials in plain text. n

Regulations demand to identify and record who, what, where, and when around remote access activities. n

These are questions only the best enterprise-class remote support tools are purpose-built to answer. n

Even amongst enterprise tools, there can be substantive differences in security maturity and capability completeness. n Whether subject to PCI, ISO, GDPR, NIST, the right solution should help produce detailed attestation reports to prove compliance. n

experience better and keeping connections secure.

Some important use cases include: l Helping users inside and outside the traditional network perimeter l Remotely accessing servers and workstations, and other unattended systems l Maintaining network devices switches, routers l Supporting several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Mac systems l Supporting a wide variety of mobile devices running iOS and Android l Facilitating remote access for vendors and other third parties l Fixing off-network devices, such as robots, machines, and any other device that aren’t connected to the Internet However, no matter who or what you are supporting, remote support technology users agree on a few things; a remote support solution must be easy to use, reliable, and secure.

Here is what to consider when making your decision: Modern remote support solutions should enable support reps to provide support regardless of their platform or the end-user’s platform. When support reps are on the go, they should be able to seamlessly provide support via their mobile device. Sometimes, support technicians need to quickly connect through a modern web browser, such as Chrome. In these instances, having an HTML 5-based console can be particularly beneficial.

The broader the platform compatibility, the better you will be able to standardise support using a single tool to improve incident handling time, technician productivity, and reap other efficiencies.

As remote work has increased, so too has the number of data breaches through point-topoint remote access tools like PCAnywhere, RDP, VNC, and free non-secure access tools.

The limited use cases for these tools are frequently stretched beyond what is safe or efficient and their security features or lack thereof should be a red flag.

Problems with these tools are manifold. The most pressing shortcomings are the dangerous lack of visibility into remote access sessions and the inability to apply the principle of least privilege for access.

Service desk technicians are often required to use admin credentials with elevated privileges to resolve support issues. Although

privileged account credentials are a common target for hackers, credential management best practices are commonly sacrificed trying to quickly resolve issues.

In fact, many service desk teams share and store credentials in plain text. It is imperative to provide technicians with the credentials and authentication they need quickly for expedited access to IT systems, while always enforcing credential management best practices.

Today’s threat environment and regulations demand that enterprises be able to identify and record the who, what, where, and when around remote access activities. These are questions only the best enterprise-class remote support tools are purpose-built to answer. Yet, even amongst enterprise tools, there can be substantive differences in security maturity and capability completeness.

Whether you are subject to PCI, ISO, GDPR, NIST, or other stringent regulations, the right solution should help you easily produce the detailed attestation reports to prove compliance. Security features that support those measures include advanced encryption, least privilege enforcement and granular control of access to sensitive data such as PII, audit logs, and recordings of all sessions.

Seek out a solution that offers the deployment and licensing options to best fit the needs and requirements of your organisation.

Common deployment options include cloud subscriptions as well as physical and virtual appliances. Some vendors may offer only a single option. Other vendors may offer several options.

However, sometimes capabilities and features may vary or be lacking across different deployment scenarios from the same vendor, so verify that the deployment model you choose includes the features and capabilities that you expect.

The virus is affecting everyone from the CEO down to the office manager. But no matter who or what you are supporting, remote support technology users want a solution that is easy to use, reliable, and secure. The right remote support solution enables users to quickly access and fix nearly any remote device, running on any platform, located anywhere in the world. It should also provide absolute visibility and control over internal and external remote access, secure connectivity to managed assets, and a complete, unimpeachable audit trail for compliance. ë

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VENDORS MUST BE AMBULANCE DRIVERS, NOT CHASERS

The cyber security industry is likely to be challenged with the lack of any cash, and the future has any possible scenarios, says Sam Curry at Cybereason.

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SAM CURRY,

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER, CYBEREASON.

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he security industry has used biological models as an analogy for what is happening on networks and in computers for decades, which is why we have the notion of a computer virus to begin with. It is ironic then, that the security industry is being dramatically affected by a real, biological virus and that what is happening in the world of biology is affecting cyber conflict and cyber markets.

It is important to realise there is, however, a massive degree of general market uncertainty at the moment as we all shelter in place and practice social distancing and sometimes more extreme forms of quarantine.

Given the market instability, risk is soaring and many companies are responding by shrinking from investments, preserving capital and hibernating. The big question before us all is what will be the ultimate fate of the economy?

Examining that first then leads to a better understanding of the likely evolution short, medium and long term for the cybersecurity industry.

The cybersecurity industry is not all the same. It has several different sub-markets — it has its blue-chip brands many of whom were struggling before the current situation and it has its new vulnerable startups and disruptors.

In the short term, while the novel coronavirus is assured to be running amok, the companies that will do well are those that have solutions that minimise disruption and help to protect customers who now are radically expelled from the reassuring perimeters on networks tied very physically to their corporate offices.

Keep in mind that many customers will be slapping controls in place to control the outflow of money; but they will still spend for things that will help them stave off existential crisis and keep critical services running, especially around remote work.

If a cybersecurity vendor is asking compa-

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nies to do significant heavy lifting — such as ripping-and-replacing things that do not deal with the existential threats of suddenly being remote, is confusing users by requiring them to use tools they are not familiar with or that could significantly interrupt the organisations’ operations and SLAs — they should back off and hibernate too.

If, however, they can help with things like awareness, strong authentication, protecting layer 8, detecting the start of those kill chains, stabilising remote access and so on, they can potentially do well; but they still need to watch their own profit and loss, since the free flow of cash is still going to be slow.

In the next phase, cyber companies will begin to wither just like any others if the macro crisis is not resolved. No one is immune, and the free flow of capital is essential to all members of the economic ecosystem. Like a land turned suddenly arid due to environmental change, when there is no more water, there is a die-off that is merciless and relatively quick.

However, in this phase, a new economy will be emerging. Whether or not a recession is under way in the classic sense of a quarter of negative growth, some companies will be spending; and those who reach equilibrium will start to consider more complex security solutions. If you are one of those cyber companies that weathered the first phase and

INSIGHTS Keep in mind that many customers will be slapping controls in place to control the outflow of money. n

In the next phase, cyber companies will begin to wither just like any others if the macro crisis is not resolved. n

Like a land turned suddenly arid due to environmental change, when there is no more water, there is a die-off. n

n

This will not be a boom or a new heyday for cyber.

It will start to become evident who has money and who does not, who has new risks beyond existential continuity. n

can reduce real risks and the emergent threats that will come from the adversary’s R&D and adaptation, you will find the start of new opportunities.

To be clear, this will not be a boom or a new heyday for cyber but rather, it will start to become evident who has money and who does not, who has new risks beyond existential connectivity and continuity.

In the final phase, looking six months and beyond, we have two possible outcomes. We all hope for the first where we exit quarantine and beat COVID-19 and fight to rebuild the economy. In this world, we see hope for inoculation in the future against future coronavirii, and the cyber sector recovers quickly in a narrowed field having seen some companies fail.

It will be a while until things boom, but acquisitions and mergers become likely and a new crop of solutions will emerge even as many old names die because they have gone into bankruptcy or simple stagnation.

In the second scenario, we still fight the virus and as with any devastating economic extinction event, new life emerges and adapts in a less rich and booming world for a while.

Here is where we learn to live with Coronavirus and find a hoped-for stasis and a slow path to recovery, which is not a new spring for the cyber industry. No one wants to consider a third scenario where no one does well, and things become completely unpredictable.

In the end, there is no one outside the realities of the macro economic conditions and there is very little certainty in future performance of companies, cyber or otherwise. Our values are being tested and our species is at war with a tiny-in-some-ways but huge-in-otherways threat. How you behave now will tell the world a lot about what your company stands for with employees, customers and the wider community.

We need to remember that we must all try to help ourselves as our corporate culture is tested: that means we must tighten our spending as humanely as possible; we must try to help where possible and do no harm in anything we seek to protect; we must seek to be relevant; and we must be ambulance drivers, not ambulance chasers as we heal ourselves and our economy. ë

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SCHOOLS NEED ESPORTS, INTELLIGENT NETWORKS, WI-FI 6

For remote classrooms, schools need to improve capabilities in esports, intelligent networks, Wi-Fi 6, writes Maan Al-Shakarchi at Extreme Networks.

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MAAN AL-SHAKARCHI,

REGIONAL DIRECTOR META AND SOUTH APAC, EXTREME NETWORKS.

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he beginning of 2020 has been an unprecedented time for the education sector. Schools and universities were among the first institutions to feel the impact of the COVID-19 crisis as governments across the Middle East made the tough decision to suspend classes as a measure to control the spread of the virus.

While the safety and well-being of students is undoubtedly paramount, enabling the ongoing education of students has also justifiably been a top priority. As a result, we have witnessed a rapid roll-out of distance learning initiatives that have used digital technologies as an essential foundation for their success.

While current events have further emphasized the need for educational institutions to utilise digital technologies, the trend towards digitally-oriented classrooms were already in motion long before the coronavirus made these considerations so necessary. In 2015 the global eLearning market was worth $107 billion.

By 2025, however, it is estimated to grow over three-fold to $325 billion. This rapid growth may be due in part to how digital solutions and practices like remote-working and paperless workspaces have enhanced how modern businesses operate, incentivising schools and universities to follow suit.

Given that the average student has extensive day-to-day exposure to smart devices – tablet computers, smartphones, smart TVs and virtual assistants – they are more likely to expect and benefit from a technology-driven learning experience. This is a boon for educational organisations who benefit from catering to a generation of tech-natives whose preference and familiarity with smart technologies make them the perfect candidates to take advantage of digital innovations.

When information-rich media such as videos and interactive tutorials are just a click or swipe away, it is easy to see why pen-andpaper and other traditional learning tools

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INSIGHTS This is a boon for educational organisations who benefit from catering to a generation of tech-natives. n

Preference and familiarity with smart technologies make tech-natives perfect candidates to take advantage of digital innovations. n

1 in 5 schools around the world currently already have an esports programme. n

71% are considering or might consider adding an esports program in the future. n

In the face of the pandemic, most of them have been able to continue regular matches. n

Building upon a digital foundation is a good way to ensure continuity in times of crisis. n

fail to capture the attention of today’s young minds. Replicating some of these engaging experiences through the use of new integrated tools and technologies can greatly enhance student experiences, leading to better engagement, interactivity and content assimilation and retention.

Being a tech-native generation, we have seen today’s students interact with technology in unprecedented ways. One such example is esports. Just like any other sports club, esports has become a respected extracurricular activity that supports a student’s academic pursuits. This is true of all education levels up to university where there are esports umbrella organisations.

1 in 5 schools around the world currently already have an esports program while 71% are considering or might consider adding an esports program in the future. Even in the face of the current pandemic, most of them have been able to continue regular matches, demonstrating that building upon a digital foundation is a good way to ensure continuity in times of crisis.

As drones, chatbots, video collaboration tools, eLearning platforms, 3D printers and even esports make their way into educational institutions, there is bound to be an increased strain on institutions’ existing IT networks. Just as the inclusion of these digital learning assets improves student engagement and learning outcomes, so too does the reliable performance of these devices.

Throttling bandwidth, unreliable connections and poor performance can hinder some of the benefits these solutions provide. As such, it is just as important that the right networking investments are in place to support even the most ambitious digital learning initiatives.

Having the most suitable network infrastructure will both ensure optimal performance of existing investments and enable institutions to rapidly embrace new technologies.

For the legacy network infrastructure common to many schools, the bandwidth requirements to host just one smart device per student can throttle performance or lead to unreliable service. When we consider the additional requirements to support future learning tools such as smartboards, 3D printers, chatbots and digital assistants, it is clear that existing wired or wireless networks are not up to the task.

This should encourage educational organisations to look to the latest of networking

solutions, such as Wi-Fi 6, that will be able to keep up with this rapidly growing demand.

Security is another prime consideration – within the bounds of its network, an educational institution should be able to safeguard the privacy of its students while maintaining sufficient controls to protect them from distraction or otherwise malicious content. With campus-wide wireless and wired network access being granted, it is also crucial to ensure sensitive information and systems are appropriately siloed.

For example, applications and data meant for staff should be out of bound for students.

Here efficient and effective network segmentation proves to be invaluable. Segmentation is also important for restricting lateral movement in the event that a malicious actor is able to get through a network’s defenses.

If skeletal in-house IT teams in education institutions are tasked with ensuring smooth operation and constant availability of vital digital assets, they could find themselves with little time for value-on initiatives, such as implementing new technologies to the network.

Thankfully, proven solutions are already helping organisations minimise the management overheads associated with providing a powerful and robust network and allowing IT teams to spend less time firefighting.

Artificial Intelligence or, more specifically, self-driving networks are one among these.

By leveraging AI and machine learning to create a self-driving network, the burden for IT teams is reduced, allowing them to devote their time to high-value initiatives that improve IT services for students. Likewise, self-driving networks are capable of independently monitoring the network environment to automatically optimise performance, increase economies of scale and decrease operating costs.

Self-driving networks also have a hand to play in improving security. By automatically identifying anomalous behavior, threats can be detected quickly, even at scale, and trigger alerts for the security team to take action.

While currently, distance learning technologies are rightfully where institutions are currently focusing their modernisation efforts, it is essential that they keep in mind that the success of all digital transformation initiatives will ultimately be determined by the network.

Giving due importance to networks today, will benefit educational institutions as they build the connected classrooms of the future. ë

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Pix for representation only, courtesy Swissport.

MANAGEENGINE BOOSTS IT RESPONSIVENESS AT BAHRAIN AIRPORT SERVICES By implementing ManageEngine’s ServiceDesk Plus and OpManager, help desk has been transformed from manual to self-service, boosting process efficiency.

B

ahrain Airport Services, was established at a time when there was a need for an independent ground handling services agent for Bahrain International Airport. When his Royal Highness, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister gave his blessings to a proposal by the late Yousuf Al Shirawi, Minister of Development and Industry at that time.

Bahrain Airport Services emerged from Aircraft Services Gulf Limited, ASGUL owned by Gulf Aviation. It was built through an alliance between Gulf Air and six travel agencies namely, Kanoo Travel, World Travel, Jalal Travel, Dilmun Travel, Al Qusaibi Travel and Bahrain International Travel.

Today, Bahrain Airport Services has secured itself a well-established strategic role in the operations of Bahrain International Airport; the first airport in the GCC region. Bahrain Airport Services has established a reputable name as an accredited company, winning international recognitions for its success, which in turn puts Bahrain in a position to exhibit its capability of setting the standards for high performance and taking a leading place in the aviation services sector.

Bahrain Airport Services has also managed to become an active contributor to Bahrain’s economy; it attracts international airlines with the high-quality services offered at competitive rates, in addition to the magnitude of its local commercial activities and the fact that it creates thousands of jobs to Bahraini nationals.

Bahrain Airport Services, has a 42-year long track record of continuous service and has been the sole operator of ground handling services at the Bahrain International Airport since its establishment in 1977. It is also a trusted name in the world of airport services and as a company is certified by the Air Transport Safety Audit Program of the International Air Transport Association.

Bahrain Airport Services offers a number of activities including: aircraft and passenger handling services, cargo services; aircraft engineering and maintenance services; catering services; specialised ground handling services training; aircraft engineering training; airport lounge management

IT ENVIRONMENT The IT environment in Bahrain Airport Services is built upon in-house applications developed for the

MOHAMED KHALIFA AL-BINJASSIM, MANAGER TECHNICAL SUPPORT AT BAHRAIN AIRPORT SERVICES.

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have reflected positively by saving helpdesk office time while getting the requests in paper or phone call.

Implementing ServiceDesk Plus in Bahrain Airport Services has enabled the self-service portal to raise tickets and issues, in addition to approval work flow and change management.

Previously these were performed manually using the traditional way of book logging, paper forms, email to get an approval from each department head or system owner.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

purpose of supporting major departments such as human resources, finance, procurement. The inhouse applications also support other aviation applications used for airport operations, such as provided by SITA, Airport Systems and Amadeus to comply with the airports needs and to communicate with other airports across the world.

Before implementing ManageEngine’s products, Bahrain Airport Services faced pain points like managing and controlling the help desk tickets, measuring the technician performance, limited ability to rectify issues within time limits of the predefined SLA, and complying with ISO 20000 requirements.

BENEFITS AND GAINS Bahrain Airport Services has implemented ServiceDesk Plus and OpManager. Bahrain

Airport Services is currently implementing AD Manager Plus and ADSelfService Plus.

Op Manager has changed the response of the IT organisation to problems from a reactive to proactive approach based on the readiness of its infrastructure. With this implementation and control of processes, Bahrain Airport Services has been certified with the international standard of service management, namely ISO20000, Says Bahrain Airport Services’ Mohamed Khalifa Al-binjassim, Manager Technical Support, “We always believe that what we cannot measure we cannot control. Manage Engine gave us the ability to measure and control several items such as time, performance, tickets, violation, assets and projects. It also provided new features for users like self-service to raise unique IT requests and issues, which

Digital transformation is enabling new business opportunities for Bahrain Airport Services such as airport lounge booking and meals entitlement for transfer passengers. “Like any other big organisation, we look forward to minimising both cost, efforts, and time. We have made good progress in digital transformation at Bahrain Airport Services with multiple success stories,” says Al-binjassim.

In addition to the administration process, Bahrain Airport Services has also launched iBAS service. This is an interactive service provided to employees to ensure access, without the need for manual intervention.

This solution has also received the Bahrain eGovernment Excellence Award.

With these initiatives around ManageEngine and other application platforms, Bahrain Airport Services is boosting the capability of its IT organisation to support business services and drive efficiency and productivity of its in-country and global customers. ë

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I n t h i s h o l y m o n t h , let us a l l p r a y to t h e a l m i g ht y for g l o b a l we l l b e i n g a n d safet y

Wishes

R A M A DA N K AREEM

Stay Blessed! S t a y S a fe

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CHANNEL STREET

SONICWALL BOOSTS CHANNEL WITH ENHANCED MSSP PROGRAMME

With enterprises struggling with business continuity and outsourcing security services, Luca Taglioretti, Vice President, Global MSSP and Carrier Sales, SonicWall, explains the vendors enhanced MSSP programme.

How do tools like machine learning, AI, analytics, algorithms from SonicWall boost the productivity and profitability of the MSSP partners

Please describe in brief which products and solutions from SonicWall supports MSSP channel partners Full Software and Cloud Solutions portfolio is available for MSSP as an Annual or Monthly pricing model. The monthly pricing model supports Cloud SaaS Solutions- essentially Capture Client, CAS and HES. The Annual model extends to SonicWall’s Cloud SaaS, Firewall Management and Secure Remote Access solutions whereas the monthly option supports the Cloud SaaS Solutions only. We will be announcing further enhancements in the upcoming months.

How does SonicWall strive to make its MSSP channel partners and the partner programme unique in the security market SonicWall has enhanced its SecureFirst MSSP Programme to empower MSSPs with the resources and tools they need to protect their customers while improving their operational efficiency and profitability. The programme allows partners to access SonicWall’s robust set of threat intelligence solutions in a monthly or annual subscription pricing model that matches the way their customers want to consume their services.

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, there has been an explosion of exposure points that have increased organizations’ attack surface area. This has not only made more organizations vulnerable to cybercriminals but, has also taken a toll on IT departments that are increasingly turning to MSSPs to help mitigate potential attacks. We utilize Machine Learning - SonicWall data gathered over 28 years, with deep learning algorithms and block files until a verdict is rendered. This gives us 99% effectiveness at that first layer.

Please describe in brief the monetary model for SonicWall’s MSSP partners After being in close communications with our MSSP partners, we’ve been working around the clock to develop a strong programme.

The SonicWall MSSP Programme is layered with our highly successful SecureFirst partner programme that caters to the specific needs of over 21,000 current partners around the world.

The SonicWall MSSP Programme has four pillars of value to partners in terms of flexible pricing, operations and UI, technical support and go-to-market collaboration.

Flexible Pricing Options offers pricing options that match the way MSSPs do business. It offers volume discounts based on the programme tier, lowest tiered pricing for Powered Plus tier, and exclusive access to monthly and annual subscription pricing.

Simplified Operations includes automated provisioning, billing and license management, MySonicWall Myworkspace; a unified visibility across customers’ security environment, Capture Client Platform, and pre-defined threat analytics, reporting and workflows, MySonicWall Myworkspace.

Priority Technical Support model offers direct access to Level 3 technical support

engineers, dedicated Services Account Manager for Powered+ tier, and access to support Knowledgebase.

Go-to-Market Collaboration allows assigned account manager and sales engineer for partner development and co-selling, assigned Solution Architect for Powered Plus only, MSSP-specific training for sales and technical staff. It also enables Noconflict co-selling, deal registration, access to proposal-based MDF, and 5% accrued MDF for Powered + tier.

What are the minimum conditions a channel partner must fulfill to be part of SonicWall’s MSSP programme The programme has been designed to supplement the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Programme. Participating MSSPs will continue to be required to meet annual revenue requirements, have an operating NOC or SOC with Help Desk L1, L2 Support capabilities, as well as sales and technical staffing criteria. Authorized MSSPs will need to be established in the SecureFirst programme at the Silver level or above.

What are the various levels of partner certification in the MSSP partner programme and are there any formal education programmes for MSSPs Our MSSP programme tiers are: l MSSP Protect l MSSP Powered l MSSP Powered Plus Participant partners, in addition to receiving real-time cyber threat intelligence, also receive education regarding today’s threats and the SonicWall solutions that address them through SonicWall University.

The programme provides an accreditation and certification capability that significantly increases partners’ effectiveness and success rate. To date, more than 285,000 hours of training — or almost 7,000 weeks — have been completed and over 575,000 successful exams administered. ë

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PEOPLE

Secureworks appoints Nader Baghdadi as Middle East Regional Sales Director

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENTS

Nutanix promotes Dave Gwyn to Worldwide Sales COO

Nutanix has announced it has promoted Dave Gwyn to Worldwide Sales Chief Operating Officer and Keith Moran to Senior Vice President of Sales for the Americas, both effective May 1, 2020. The role of Senior Vice President of Sales for the Americas was previously held

by Chris Kaddaras, who was promoted to Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales in February of this year. The role of Worldwide Sales Chief Operating Officer is a new position.

Moran joined Nutanix almost 6 years ago as a Regional Sales Director, most recently serving as the Vice President of Sales for the Central Region. He has more than 20 years of technology sales experience, including leadership positions at NetApp and Simplivity. He holds a BA from the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

Secureworks, a global cybersecurity company that protects organisations in a digitally connected world, has appointed Nader Baghdadi as its new Middle East Regional Sales Director, focusing on the Gulf Cooperation Council markets. Baghdadi joins Secureworks from network security specialist Fortinet, where he served as Senior Regional Sales Director and was instrumental in delivering the organisation’s regional year-on-year growth aspirations.

Baghdadi will lead the growth and development of Secureworks in the GCC and Middle East, with a focus on verticals including government, finance, education and energy. Baghdadi has 27 years’ experience in the Middle East’s security and IT industries. At Fortinet, Baghdadi was responsible for meeting the company’s year-on-year growth targets, new customer acquisition, and competitive displacement across markets including the UAE, Oman, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Terry He appointed as CEO of Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia

Huawei has announced the appointment of Terry He as CEO for Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia effective immediately. Based in Riyadh, He will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of Huawei’s Saudi operations and for guiding the company’s work as a strategic partner in accelerating digital transformation in Saudi Arabia. Previously, He held the position of President of Huawei Middle East Enterprise Business Group where he oversaw the development of the group across the region.

In that role, he worked closely with organisations in various industries such as government, oil and gas, education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, and construction to embrace emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and more. As a seasoned industry expert in the Middle East, He has more than 10 years of experience working across multiple Huawei offices in the region. This includes being Chief Operation Officer of Huawei in Pakistan and more recently Managing Director of Huawei in Kuwait.

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Red Hat names Paul Cormier as President and CEO

Epicor appoints Paul Stoddart as Chief Marketing Officer

Red Hat has announced that it has named Paul Cormier as President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat. Cormier, who previously served as Red Hat’s President of Products and Technologies, succeeds Jim Whitehurst, who is now President of IBM. Since joining Red Hat in 2001, Cormier’s leadership and vision have driven major strategy shifts and expansion of the company’s portfolio of products and services.

Cormier is credited with pioneering the subscription model that transformed Red Hat from an open source disruptor to an enterprise technology mainstay, moving Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the industry’s leading enterprise Linux platform that today powers more than 90% of Fortune 500 organisations.

Epicor, a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth, has announced the hiring of a new Chief Marketing Officer, Paul Stoddart. In his new role, Stoddart is responsible for overseeing Epicor’s global marketing strategy, including corporate marketing, field marketing, and tele-prospecting. Stoddart brings more than two decades of marketing experience leading global technology organisations.

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

WebSummit Schedule MAY 20, 2020

MAY 21, 2020

Workforce Transformation CIO Rethink & Reprioritize

MAY 22, 2020 Workforce Re-Skilling And Transformation

Creating Inner-Self Transformation Shifts

MAY 24, 2020 Cloud Migration Much Needed Than Ever

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June 15, 2020 Collective Defense The Next Generation Of Cybersecurity