EC-MEA July 2022

DASHBOARDS FOR

HYBRID ENTERPRISES

As enterprises embrace cloud and IoT, integrated dashboards that demonstrate the health of networks, systems, sensors, in a simplistic manner are now in demand.

Helmut Binder, CEO Paessler AG.

NETWORK MONITORING

BRILLIANT OP TICS. AMA ZING DESIGN.

Increase in video meetings in 20201

Information workers who rarely or never use video in meetings3

Growth of UC meetings with video from 2019 to 20202

Information workers who use video at least once a day3

ADVANTAGES OF R ALLY BAR

Superior Audio and Video: A video bar engineered for midsize rooms, featuring a motorized PTZ lens, adaptive beamforming mics, support for two

Flexible Deployment Options: Run meetings in appliance mode without a computer for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, GoTo, Pexip, or RingCentral Or, connect to a computer or laptop and use with any software.

Simple Setup and Cable Management: Place on a table or credenza, or add a wall or TV mount for a sleek space-saving set up Integrated cable management keeps connections tight.

Easy to monitor, manage, and support: Stay informed and ahead with metrics like people count.

MAKE EVERYONE LOOK AMAZING.

Medium room solution with Logitech Tap for Microsoft Teams Rooms.

Energy prices, datacentre, cloud

The conflict in the European theatre may not have an immediate impact in the region, but it is changing the global landscape into a multipolar one. For technology players operating across multiple regions, the fallouts will gradually start to pick up speed.

Energy prices are spiralling upwards and sooner or later they will start impacting datacentre and hosting service costs. Gartner advises end users to review budgets for energy usage, inflation on general products, services, supply chain disruption and other ancillary impacts that will affect use of cloud investments as planned.

Create a budget reserve for new cloud requirements to cover any cloud cost overruns and ensure that cloud terms and conditions cover inflation of cloud costs. Adoption of virtualisation and Kubernetes is a means of hedging against price increases or any longterm infrastructure or ecosystem impact.

According to Gartner advisories, public cloud will be impacted but likely not as acutely as traditional data centre services. It is important for enterprises to reduce their dependence on a single cloud service provider and consider, multiple cloud service providers.

Another point of escalation is the regional onslaught of cyberwars with possibility of spill overs based on polarity and support of associated countries. Enterprises should demand cloud cybersecurity roadmaps and statements of liability as a hedge against resultant cyberattacks against consolidated infrastructure.

End users should also demand statements of expected impact from cloud providers during contract negotiation. Customers have a right to know what the cloud providers believe will happen.

Turn these pages for more about advisories and diligence when negotiating afresh with cloud and hyper scalar services.

In our lead feature, we have a deep dive discussion with Helmut Binder, CEO of German network and IoT monitoring, solutions company, Paessler. Binder points out with the convergence of IT and OT worlds he sees the need for an enterprise solution that can provide network and device transparency into both the worlds for end user administrators.

Paessler is working closely with both IT and OT vendors to include their device footprints and other handshaking protocols inside its flagship products. Creating a technology alliance partnership is a boon for Paessler’s channel partners who can build their value services through deep end user engagement around the alliance vendor’s footprint.

In our real-life section we look at how Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait has integrated its various web applications into one platform to improve interoperability and data exchange. A service layer was created in Liferay server to service all types of insurance products from a single and secure repository.

The unified solution is now able to integrate with core insurance applications and other key technologies. With the assistance of Liferay Platinum partner, DPS Kuwait, the implementation went live in four phases.

Happy summer vacations wherever you are.

Enjoy that well deserved break. ë

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CONTENTS

CHANNEL STREET

24-25

Qualys: Moving channel partners to cloud security

SPECIAL REPORT

32-35

Impact of the European conflict on cloud services and enterprises users

GUEST COLUMN

48-49

What is driving ransomware and what you can do!

50-51

Top trends in managing data and analytics for AI

52-53

The challenge of digital debt and shadow IT

54-55

SOCIALLY SPEAKING

57-58

EXECUTIVE APPOINTMENTS

TIME TO CONSIDER EVERYTHING AS A SERVICE FOR IT

Adopting as a service model and paying only for resources used makes running variable workloads more effective while optimising infrastructure utilisation.

IDC predicts that by 2024, more than 75% of infrastructure and applications and more than half of data centre infrastructure will be consumed as a service. Thus, striking the right balance of CapEx and OpEx to run an agile business. In today’s cloud computing era, there are numerous reasons to take an as-a-service approach in any company’s modernisation efforts.

#1 Saving capital and innovating

Since the beginning of the pandemic companies have had to reshape budgets quickly and drastically, with many having to reduce overall spend. When a company can consume IT on an as-needed basis, via an as a service model, it’s easier to track which projects are or aren’t working according to plan. With an as-a-service model, the company more easily can approve spending for successful projects without making a case for a large capital expenditure.

#2 Data at the edge

From digital healthcare in hospitals to smart manufacturing, edge deployments are incredibly diverse and increasingly common. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed at the edge – outside of a traditional, centralised data centre or cloud Companies finding value in the data they access outside of their data centres are also trying to figure out how to make the most use of it. With as a service, companies can put their infrastructure where they get the most value from it and utilise only the resources they need.

#3 Variable workloads

It is common for companies to have workload variability. Some workloads will follow a daily work schedule like virtual desktop infrastructure VDI, HR systems and identity access and management systems, which are utilised most during employee working hours. On the other hand, log processing tends to happen at night when employees are offline. Another variable workload is cyclical utilisation, where systems recognise trends around weekly, monthly or yearly cycles. In both cases, average utilisation is well below ideal.

Adopting an as a service model and paying only for the resources used makes it more effective running variable workloads while optimising infrastructure utilisation. It takes the guesswork out of planning and the risk of being wrong.

#4 Agile IT, agile business

Managed services help IT free up resources to innovate and work on new projects that benefit customers. With infrastructure as a service IaaS, IT can minimise environmental impact, meaning that IT teams don’t have to deal with decommissioning old hardware as the service provider owns the hardware. Having the ability to map computing resources to projects accurately helps eliminate much of the routine keep the lights on work IT experiences and makes it easier to scale teams.

It’s safe to say that as a Service model is the future of the modern enterprise. With enterprise IT spending in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region set to top $40 Billion in 2022 according to IDC, we will continue to see increased adoption of as a Service in business strategies over the next decade as companies focus on what matters most for their business: delivering better outcomes and value-added services to customers. ë

MARTIN UCHYTIL Regional Sales Director META, Dell Financing.

75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed at the edge

CYBERSECURITY IS A BUSINESS RISK AND NOT JUST AN IT PROBLEM

To shift towards shared responsibility, be proactive and work with your board to establish governance models that share responsibility with business.

Shared responsibility for cybersecurity and its impacts will come about when CIOs and CISOs equip the business to actively participate in decision making.

The past two years have seen a drastic uptick in major cybersecurity events, from Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds to the JBS meat production company. Given the high cost and high frequency of cyberbreaches, 88% of boards of directors now acknowledge that cybersecurity is a business risk and not just an IT problem — up from 58% just five years ago.

Yet organisations have not changed the culture of accountability to reflect these updated views. The CIO or CISO still carry primary responsibility for cybersecurity in 85% of organisations that responded to the Gartner View From the Board of Directors Survey 2022.

CIOs must rebalance accountability for cybersecurity so that it is shared with business and enterprise leaders. They are thought of as the ultimate decision maker and authority for protecting the enterprise’s security, but really, business leaders make decisions every day that impact the organisation’s security. They should share accountability.

To facilitate the shift toward a shared responsibility model for cybersecurity, be proactive and work with your board to establish governance models that share responsibility, and with business leaders to create a program of controls that balances protection with business needs. Begin with a short-term exercise of assessing the current state of cybersecurity as a business issue, followed by a longer-term set of actions to define a new shared-accountability governance model.

Here are five questions to assess the current state of cybersecurity as a business issue. These questions can give you an initial sense of how prepared the business is to share responsibility with IT for cybersecurity:

#1 Can the organisation make risk-informed decisions without facilitation from security personnel?

#2 Can IT explain the business value of each security control?

#3 What do the metrics related to the organisation’s security controls reflect: the levels of protection technology perspective or the operational functions business perspective?

#4 What proportion of time on security decision making is spent on fear, uncertainty and doubt compared with business goals?

#5 Is the security programme defensible with customers, shareholders and regulators?

With clarity about how ready your organisation is to share cybersecurity

accountability; you can take steps to involve other business leaders in decisions and trade-offs.

Share cybersecurity decisions

Present the available options related to cybersecurity approaches and investments, and include the risks and costs associated with each. Providing information and involving business leaders in the decision makes them more likely to accept responsibility.

Optimal balance of risk, value, cost

Help prioritise cybersecurity investments by measuring the amount of value each business unit produces in relation to their readiness to address known risks, as well as the cost of doing so. Create a visual matrix to enable fast, cross-business-unit comparisons.

Credibility to motivate accountability

Focusing on shared goals will go far in fostering communication and collaboration with business side partners. ë

PAUL PROCTOR Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

CIOs must rebalance accountability for cybersecurity so that it is shared with business and enterprise leaders

THREE CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT FUTURE OF WORK

Here are three cloud-powered digital workplace technologies to serve employees in a distributed enterprise and support the future of work.

The pandemic has strained on-premises digital workplace solutions, accelerating the shift to cloud-hosted technology and services. As infrastructure and operations leaders look toward technologies that support the future of work, they are increasingly investing in cloud-powered technologies that can deliver services to employees in any location.

The shift to hybrid work affords I&O leaders an opportunity to deliver meaningful changes in the ways that services are delivered and increase their focus on employee experiences. Cloud-powered workplace technology enables work from anywhere while also optimising costs, improving processes and increasing technology performance.

Here are three cloud-powered digital workplace technologies that you will increasingly rely upon to serve employees in a distributed enterprise and support the future of work.

Digital employee experience tools

With remote and hybrid work, employees predominantly interact with peers, vendors and customers through technology. This demands deeper visibility into and management of the end-user experience.

Digital employee experience, DEX tools are an evolution of digital experience monitoring, unified endpoint management UEM, and remote monitoring and management tools. DEX tools offer new capabilities, including the collection of employee sentiment data, integration of team and organisational structure data, and actionable insights driven by improved analytics and machine learning ML engines. These new capabilities have exponentially increased the use cases supported by DEX tools.

Gartner expects DEX adoption to rapidly increase in the coming years: By 2025, 50% of IT organisations will have established a digital employee experience strategy, team and management tool, an increase from 5% in 2021.

Unified endpoint management

UEM provides the ability to manage a broad range of devices, the policies applied to those devices, and the distribution of applications, patching and updates from a cloud solution. This is critical for maintaining device security and compliance across the enterprise, no matter where employees are located.

UEM simplifies endpoint management by consolidating disparate tools and streamlining processes across devices and operating systems. UEM

has expanded beyond management to offer deeper integration with identity, security and remote access tooling to support a zerotrust security model that enables the anywhere workforce. Leading UEM tools are also using analytics and ML to enable intelligencedriven experience automation to reduce IT overhead and improve employee experience.

According to the Gartner Employee Impacts of Anywhere Operations survey, 87% of organisations plan to maintain or increase UEM investment. By adopting UEM, you can streamline operations and improve endpoint management in the distributed enterprise.

Desktop as a service

Hybrid work requires an increased focus on security and more endpoint flexibility. Desktop as a service DaaS provides a virtual desktop or application in the cloud, enabling you to increase security by removing the need to store applications or data on endpoints. It also allows rapid increases in the number of users without the need to provision high-specification, enterprise-owned endpoints.

DaaS has found a niche among organisations that want to enable distributed work without the need for data to reside on endpoints in the home. As such, Gartner forecasts DaaS spending to more than double by 2024. However, lack of skills and complexity remain a significant barrier to DaaS adoption. When selecting a DaaS vendor, balance the level of configuration available, the services offered by the DaaS vendor and the desktop virtualisation skills available in-house. ë

STUART DOWNES Senior Research Director, Gartner.

ATTACKS ON CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE CAN BE PREVENTED

This requires a holistic view of both IT and OT environments, the interdependencies that exist and where weaknesses and vulnerabilities exist.

Five years ago, cyberattacks impacting critical infrastructure were considered a relatively rare occurrence. There had been a couple of instances of attacks in Ukraine, where attackers impacted energy supplies, but few considered mass outages impacting any and all organisations. That has now changed.

In the last few years, we have seen numerous organisations crippled by ransomware attacks, such as those that impacted JBS Foods and the Colonial Pipeline last year. The frightening reality is that the threat to critical infrastructure operators has increased rather than dissipated.

Threat actors recognise the impact they can have by affecting these environments and rely on this to monetise their attacks, with growing accuracy and frequency. Far from being over, these attacks have continued with KP Snacks experiencing outages earlier this year in February, following an attack on its IT systems. And even whole regions can be impacted as demonstrated by the attacks targeting Costa Rica, with the country declaring a state of emergency.

These attacks are evidence that the threat is far from over nor trivial. But how can critical infrastructure operators adequately defend themselves from these persistent threats?

Critical infrastructure relies upon operational technology used to control physical devices. These systems are increasingly connected and even controlled by IT systems.

Attackers have capitalised on these converged networks IT and OT to move laterally from one system to another, making the compromise of just one device dangerous with an attack on an IT system rendering OT systems inoperable.

A major factor is that the tools and processes of yesterday are still being used to solve today’s problems, built and designed for the old era when the attack surface was a static laptop, desktop or on-premises server.

The harsh truth is that the vast majority of attacks are preventable.

To stem the tide and prevent ransomware continuing to run amok, organisations need to determine the risks that exist within the infrastructure. This requires a holistic view of both IT and OT environments, the interdependencies that exist for critical functionality and determine where weaknesses and vulnerabilities exist. When it comes to physical OT environments, there are a myriad of hidden systems, tucked away in a closet or hidden under a desk, that were temporarily installed, promptly forgotten, and left under protected.

Once a holistic viewpoint is established, the next step is to identify what

would cause theoretical versus practical damage. From this stance steps can be taken to remediate the risks where possible, or monitor the assets related to the risk for deviations, to nullify attacks.

Knowing where to start can seem insurmountable, but there are a number of resources at hand. There are global initiatives, such as the joint cybersecurity advisory from key cyber agencies in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States that underscores a key trend regarding the most routinely exploited vulnerabilities.

The reason advisories and guidance such as this are vital for organisations is it provides strong intelligence about which threats bad actors are actively exploiting. If organisations fix these flaws, the vast majority of attack paths will be closed off, preventing compromise, malware infiltration and/or exfiltration of data.

Most ransomware leverage weaknesses created from misconfigurations and known but unpatched vulnerabilities in systems, meaning these incursions could have been prevented. However, when it comes to critical infrastructure that is not always a simple exercise. These systems are often complex, and in the case of industrial environments they are built on legacy equipment and protocols that were not designed with security built in, nor external connectivity considered. Yet this is today’s reality. ë

BERNARD MONTEL EMEA Technical Director and Cybersecurity Strategist, Tenable.

The harsh truth is that the vast majority of attacks are preventable

CONTROL AND CHOICE ARE AT THE HEART OF PRIVACY

Organisations need to prioritise centre of design along with data security and understand that a privacy-centric approach can exist in harmony with innovation.

In a recent survey commissioned by VMware, two thirds 66% of consumers admitted to not knowing who has access to their personal data or how it’s used.

Whether people will change their behaviour is another matter. The same research reveals that 58% of consumers are worried third parties can see where they travel, where they shop and what they buy, and nearly half 48% are paranoid that organisations are recording what they do on their devices. Yet despite these concerns, 43% admit to having personal profiles on social media which could compromise their privacy.

This gap between intent ‘I want to stream movies via a service that knows my tastes in film and protects that data’ and behaviour ‘I don’t want the hassle of ticking boxes or reading a consent form about how the service uses my data’ presents a privacy challenge that organisations need to engage with.

Being conscientious stewards of personal information is arguably a responsibility and an opportunity that all organisations share. Surely it is only right that we work towards a state where customers of all organisations are confident their data is secure and being used responsibly.

So, what action can companies take to create the trusted relationship they need with customers?

Firstly, data security is key. Organisations must mitigate cyberthreats and inadvertent misuse of data through comprehensive data security policies covering people, processes and digital services.

Resting on this foundation of strong cybersecurity controls is data privacy—the second pillar of customer trust. In the past, privacy centred on the idea of transparency. Companies would consider their obligations met if users were notified about how their data was going to be used when they signed up for a service. Indeed, this was the basic premise underlying GDPR in Europe.

But today that level of transparency is not enough. Many consumers understandably feel the take it or leave it privacy notices on apps and websites don’t provide any meaningful choices or control—after all, if they don’t agree, they might not be able to use the service. This lack of control is reflected in the same survey—well over a third of people 40% admit to blindly accepting all cookies on websites without further investigation to save time. Again, the intent versus behaviour dilemma.

Control and choice, as well as transparency, are now at the heart of the privacy issue. Organisations—particularly those in the technology industry—need to prioritise them, put them at the centre of design decisions

AHMED AUDA Vice President and General Manager, Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, VMware.

along with data security and understand that taking a privacy-centric approach can exist in harmony with innovation.

Re-evaluating how to connect with customers in a privacy-centric way is something that businesses of all stripes owe their customers. If not, they risk losing them all together. But technology companies have obligations that are bigger than that.

Focusing on security, privacy-by-design and transparency is not only the right thing to do for customers and for society, but it will also raise the bar for our entire industry. It is this collective responsibility in building trust among consumers that will bring digital economies to the next frontier. ë

66% of consumers admitted to not knowing who has access to their personal data or how it is used

Aruba and Zscaler partner for round table in Doha

The event targeting IT and network decision makers focussed on how to secure the network edge using a Zero Trust approach.

porting SD-WAN. The executive from Aruba touched on Aruba Central and the move away from a hub and spoke network topology towards a modernised WAN architecture.

Brought into focus was Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise and how it can manage and deploy a unified SD-WAN network fabric. An important takeaway was the fact that successful digital transformation requires transformation in both network and security infrastructure and solutions.

HPE Aruba and Zscaler jointly conducted a round table briefing session for IT and network decision makers in Doha on 14 June at Mondrian Doha Hotel. The focus of the roundtable discussion was about how to secure the network edge using a Zero Trust approach.

The requirement of the roundtable discussion was assessed because of the need to adopt a Zero Trust approach using modern network and cloud-hosted security services to fulfil the promise of the Secure Access Services Edge.

The event was attended by 15+ top executives from Regency Group, Gulf Drilling International, McDonald’s Qatar, Ministry of Interior, Ooredoo, Qatar Media Corp, Qatar Engineering and Construction, Doha Film Institute, amongst others.

The event begun with a short introduction about HPE Aruba in Qatar.

The attendees were then given an understanding about the concept of the intelligent edge and the various Aruba solutions sup-

Wissam Saadeddine, Regional Director MEA, Zscaler began his presentation with two important fundamentals. Mobility is a powerful enabler of digital transformation and traditional infrastructure is an inhibitor to digital transformation. Previously, traditional network and security architecture worked well in a premobile world.

Amongst the other points Saadeddine presented were securing users and applications connectivity makes the network de-emphasized. Private Applications needs to be invisible from the Internet. And users should never gain network access when using private applications. Application segmentation is necessary to eliminate lateral movement.

Gartner predicts that 80% of organisations that implement Zero Trust Network Access will choose a consolidated Security Service Edge, rather than a stand-alone offering by 2025. Saadeddine also compared the benefits of Zero Trust network architecture with legacy network and security architectures.

In the end Saadeddine pointed out that Zscaler operates out of 150 datacentres all over the world.

In the last session, there was a demonstration on how Zscaler can coexist and interoperate with Aruba’s SD-WAN solutions including Aruba Orchestrator and Aruba EdgeConnect. The main takeaway here was that the network edge is the pivot point for WAN and security transformation. The presentation was also a hands-on approach on how to set up Zscaler and manage it using the Aruba platform.

The round table discussion was interactive with attendees asking questions during the course of the presentation, as well as at the end. Key takeaways and recommendations were shared with the attendees by the speakers at the end.

“Modern network security must accommodate an ever-changing, diverse set of users and devices, as well as much more prevalent threats targeting previously trusted parts of the network infrastructure,” said Jacob Chacko, Regional Director - Middle East, Saudi Arabia, South Africa at Aruba HPE.

JACOB CHACKO Regional Director Middle East, Saudi Arabia, South Africa at Aruba HPE.

WISSAM SAADEDDINE Regional Director MEA, Zscaler.

Google Cloud hosts Qatar Partner Executive Exchange from partner ecosystem in Qatar

Google Cloud hosted the first edition of the Qatar Partner Executive Exchange event, a flagship event that brings together over 30 CXOs from Google Cloud’s partner ecosystem in Qatar, highlighting the company’s commitment to supporting the growth of its partners through the Partners Advantage Programme.

Under the theme of Full Speed, the Qatar Partner Executive Exchange event aims to demonstrate the potential that the strong network of technology partners and IT professionals in Qatar can leverage, when joined under Google Cloud’s Partners Advantage Programme, to empower and drive the country’s digital transformation roadmap in the coming years.

The event which brought together a suite of thought leaders, featured

speakers from Google Cloud, Dell, SAP and VMware to name a few. The panels during the event expanded on the power of technological partnerships in helping companies address and solve their biggest and business critical challenges with the support of digitisation.

Google Cloud has revamped its partner programme in 2019 as the Google Cloud Partner Advantage programme and has grown its channel partner programme over the last few years, emphasising the importance of delivering successful outcomes for customers along with partners. A highlight of the event included an activation where executives got to test drive McLaren cars at the Lusail Circuit, as part of McLaren’s ongoing collaboration with Google globally.

Proven Consult to launch Intelligent Business Automation Solutions for insurance in East Africa

Proven Consult has partnered with prominent insurance company headquartered in Nairobi, and operating in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The partnership aims to accelerate digital transformation in the insurance industry in Africa through the implementation of Proven Consult’s latest technologies and marks the beginning of a series of projects for Proven Consult in Africa, signalling towards the company’s readiness to provide essential business services and play an integral part in the automation journey of its African clients.

The insurance provider will be deploying Proven Consult’s Intelligent Business Auto-

mation Solutions to automate repetitive and otherwise time-consuming tasks, allowing employees to work on insight-driven activities and increase business efficiency. As part of their agreement, Proven Consult will assist in the automation of thirty Business processes to deliver the most effective business benefits.

The implementation of Intelligent Automation processes over a manual system will enable the company to enhance its customer satisfaction, achieve operational excellence, and increase employee engagement. Consequently, this will also refine data quality, accuracy, and overall process improvement.

With over a decade of experience, Proven Consult, has successfully partnered with global companies implementing Intelligent Automation solutions such as process automation for banking reconciliation and insurance onboarding automation solutions, by utilising the UiPath Platform.

Mindware has been recognised as 2021 Partner of the Year by Juniper Networks

Mindware, has been recognised as a 2021 Partner of the Year by Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, AI-driven networks. Each year, Juniper Networks recognises partners that have demonstrated innovative solutions to driving new business, exceptional attention to customer experience and have overachieved financial goals. Mindware was recognised in the category of Emerging Distribution for its ability to promote, distribute and provide implementation services support across the Middle East for Juniper’s innovative data centre and cloud-integrated network solutions.

Partner of the Year Awards are part of the Juniper Partner Advantage Programme. The programme not only recognises partners for their outstanding performance, but also focuses on partner development through specialisations, certification and Enterprise Plus and Deal Registration programs that aim to drive opportunity in the AI-driven enterprise.

Schneider Electric to recognise partners with sustainable operations, sustainable solutions

Schneider Electric, announced the launch of the inaugural Schneider Electric Sustainability Impact Awards, the first initiative from the Partnering for Sustainability Programme, to recognise the critical role that Schneider’s partners play in delivering a more resilient and sustainable electric world.

The Partnering for Sustainability programme is a continuation of Schneider’s initiatives to empower its extensive ecosystem of partners to move toward a more sustainable future. It includes comprehensive education and training, a simplified product portfolio, an open

and collaborative support ecosystem and access to expertise and resources on digital transformation.

Designed to empower partners to become more sustainable in their own practices and support their customers on the path to netzero, the programme provides four easy steps that partners can follow to future-proof their businesses.

l The Schneider Electric Sustainability Impact Awards will recognise a wide range of partners in two categories:

l Sustainability: Impact for my company:

for partners who exhibit sustainability leadership in decarbonising their operations,

l Sustainability and Efficiency: Impact for customers: for partners who demonstrate sustainability leadership by helping customers to achieve their decarbonisation goals.

Entries will be carefully assessed on how they are leveraging energy and automation digital solutions to electrify operations, reduce energy supply, increase operational efficiency and embrace circularity across the value chain. Eligibility requirements

The Awards will be open to all organisations worldwide that work with Schneider Electric to enable efficiency and sustainability. Partner organisations need to be one of the following business types to take part in the programme:

l Homebuilders

l IT Partners

l Partner Builders

l Design Firms

l Contractors

l System Integrators

l EcoXperts

l OEMs

l Industrial Automation System Integrators

l Machine Integrators

l Industrial Automation Distributors

Cloudflare wins Security Software Innovator award in Microsoft Security Excellence Awards

Cloudflare, announced it has won the Security Software Innovator award in the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards ceremony. Cloudflare’s achievements have helped it rise to the top of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA, an ecosystem of independent software vendors and services that have integrated their security products and services with Microsoft’s. Award winners demonstrated excellence across security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy during the past 12 months.

Cloudflare’s deep integrations across Microsoft 365 and Azure have supported many of the largest Fortune 500 companies on their Zero Trust journey, enabling customers to support security and performance needs simply and easily with faster performance.

At the Microsoft Security Excellence 2022 Awards on June 6, 2022, Microsoft announced award winners in 10 categories honouring partner trailblazers, solution innovators, customer and technology champions, and changemakers. Formerly known as the Microsoft Security 20/20 Awards, the awards were given to Microsoft partners for the second year. The Security Software Innovator Award, given to Cloudflare, celebrates an independent software vendor ISV that has developed innovative solutions with disruptive and transformative technology in collaboration with Microsoft.

CyberKnight announced financial results for H1, ending June 30th, 2022. In its third year of operation, CyberKnight processed more than $26 Million of orders in the first 6 months of 2022, observing a 100% increase over the same period last year.

CyberKnight processes $26M orders in 1H 2022 demonstrating 100% YoY

(Left to right) Avinash Advani, Founder and CEO at CyberKnight; and Vivek Gupta, CoFounder and COO at CyberKnight.

Help AG partners with Cribl to enable data flow, data interpretation, management tools

Help AG announced a partnership with Cribl, a vendor in observability ecosystems and unified data pipelines. The partnership will enable customers of Help AG in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to adopt cost-effective data flow management tools and drive higher efficiency in secure data interpretation across their services.

The partnership between Help AG and Cribl will leverage the expertise of both companies to enhance data fidelity for threat hunting and compliance through smart routing technology. Through its bouquet of three core products, Cribl will support Help AG’s mission in making sure customers in the UAE and KSA are getting the fastest detection of any security threats through managed data flow, while equipping them with the most optimised and efficient managed security services MSS.

The key component of the partnership will be Cribl Stream, a streaming data processor which reshapes, enriches and routes data to manage logs from Help AG’s security information and event management SIEM and security orchestration, automation and response SOAR solutions more efficiently.

Additionally, Cribl’s other two core products – Cribl Edge and AppScope – will deploy vendor-agnostic agents to send observability data to any destination and enable the collection of advanced system metrics and data from Help AG client endpoints.

The easy-to-use Cribl interface will not only simplify the data onboarding process for the industry leading SIEM platforms for Help AG customers but also comes with the out-of-the box capability to remove the “noise” from client data and drastically reduce the license cost of chosen data platforms.

Seagate and Enterprise Strategy Group propose a unique Multicloud Maturity Model

Today’s multicloud is a mix of clouds that don’t communicate well. As multicloud complexity and the related costs are on the rise, the friction leads to data lock-in—and the resulting loss of business value. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says a new industry report.

The Multicloud Maturity Report from Seagate - demonstrates that it is crucial and possible to both minimise data costs and maximise data-driven innovation in the multicloud. The report also provides steps organisations can take to level up.

Drawing on an original global survey of senior IT and business leaders, commissioned by Seagate and conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group, the report constructs a unique Multicloud Maturity Model. The model shows how organisations navigate the growing multicloud complexity. It reveals that the most multicloudmature companies derive the greatest business benefits.

Multicloud-mature organisations—ones that best manage cloud costs and foster innovation with the cloud—outperform their peers at business. Among other results, they:

l Beat their revenue goals by nearly twice as much as their less mature counterparts.

l Are 6.3× more likely to go to market months or quarters ahead of their competition.

l Are almost 3× more likely to report that their organisation is in a very strong business position.

l Are more than 3× more likely to expect their companies’ valuation to increase fivefold over the next 3 years.

In its report, Seagate offers a data-centric lens on the multicloud. Invariably, companies that scale successfully are the ones that put data at the core of all they do. The most mature multicloud strategies are data-centric strategies. In many ways, innovation is about eliminating friction that slows down and locks in data—whether it’s cost- or access-related friction. Multicloud is, for many organisations, a given. Its many sources of friction are optional.

(Left to right) Hash Choudhuri, General Manager EMEA at Cribl; Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG.

Mindware to distribute Acronis’ cyber security, data protection cloud in

Levant, GCC, Pakistan

Acronis announced its partnership with Mindware, one of the leading Value-Added Distributors VADs in the Middle East and Africa, as they have signed an agreement together. Mindware will offer the Acronis’ innovative cloud solutions ranging from cyber security to data protection, to enterprises in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, UAE, and Pakistan. The partnership will further Mindware’s ambitions as a ‘Cloud Distributor’ with Acronis’ strong value proposition in the Cloud protection space.

Acronis offers antivirus, backup, disaster recovery, endpoint protection management solutions, and awardwinning AI-based anti-malware and blockchain based data authentication technologies through service provider and IT professional deployment models. These solutions protect data, applications, and systems in any environment.

Acronis Cyber Protect, the company’s flagship product, is the first cyber protection solution that integrates backup, disaster recovery, next-generation anti-malware, antivirus, vulnerability assessment, patch management and remote management tools into a single console.

It addresses all Five Vectors of Cyber Protection — ensuring the Safety, Accessibility, Privacy, Authenticity, and Security of data SAPAS in the data centre, cloud, and edge devices. The solutions have open APIs for developers to operate full integration of the platform to the other tools they might be using.

Yegertek promotes customer loyalty workshop in partnership with QuickBrownFox Consulting

Yegertek, a Dubai-based solutions provider in brand engagement and customer loyalty, announced sponsorship of QuickBrownFox Consulting for a Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional workshop. The only recognised professional certification in the loyalty education industry, CLMP is offered by Loyalty Academy, which has an exclusive regional partnership with QuickBrownFox Consulting.

Yegertek, whose founders are CLMP-certified from the first MENA batch, will be sponsoring the upcoming Summer 2022 workshop, where successful candidates will earn Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional credential, thus joining an association whose members include some of the leading loyalty marketers across the globe.

The Summer 2022 workshop is an opportunity for discerning professionals to achieve the distinction of Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional at once. The workshop includes interactive exercises, pertinent discussions, and networking opportunities, after which those who clear the final examination and present a business case for a loyalty programme will earn the coveted credential.

True to its form, the CLMP workshop will touch upon core principles of loyalty marketing and delve deeper into customer relationships, financial objectives, design practices, segmentation, funding, communications, data analytics, and ROI, among other aspects associated with successful strategies.

(Left to right) Ziad Nasr, General Manager Middle East at Acronis; Silmi Khanfir, Director of Cloud and XaaS at Mindware.

(Left to right) Sajid Azmi, CEO and Co-founder of Yegertek; Chayya Bassi, Co-founder and Chief Loyalty Consultant at QuickBrownFox Consulting.

Khazna Data Centers

completes ten years as region’s largest wholesale datacentre company

Khazna Data Centers celebrates its 10th anniversary this month since its establishment in 2012. Khazna has been at the heart of digital transformation, contributing to the blueprint of the United Arab Emirates’ progression into an international technology hub, bolstering its efforts to create a digital economy.

Khazna Data Centers, the leading wholesale data centre provider in the region, was formed with the vision to harness the power and potential of data, to enable customers and stakeholders to accelerate the reach and performance of their business and to open-up a world of new business opportunities.

Khazna was crowned the region’s largest wholesale data center company following the successful merger of G42 and e&’s data center businesses. Khazna announced its partnership with Dubai Internet City in 2022 to establish two state-of-the-art facilities to further support enterprises of all sizes by enabling the integration of technology across all business functions.

The company also kicked off construction of its second data center in Masdar, Abu Dhabi – a new 31.8 megawatts MW of IT power capacity facility garnering the continuous expansion of the Khazna’s footprint in the UAE. Khazna is also setting up a builtfor-purpose data center consisting of state-of-the-art and modern infrastructure which was awarded the Tier III certification of Constructed Facility by Uptime Institute.

With its proven experience, Khazna Data Centers now operates a total of 12 data centres, has 13 data centres under construction with a further 3 in the pipeline, amounting for a total of over 300-megawatt planned capacity by end of 2023 across its sites in the UAE.

Khazna is committed to realising its strategic growth by enhancing the data center business proposition with new investments and planned expansions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Egypt.

Cybereason names StarLink as preferred distributor for Zero Trust security go to market

Cybereason, the XDR company, named StarLink as its preferred Value-Added Distributor for the Middle East and Turkey regions to empower organisations to deliver Zero Trust security agendas, secure their rapidly growing number of connected endpoints and enhance their overall threat posture.

Under terms of the agreement, StarLink will represent Cybereason

across the region and introduce security leaders to the Cybereason Defence Platform and the Cybereason services portfolio. Capitalising on StarLink’s extensive MET partner network along with its market experience and skilled workforce, security analysts will have access to the Cybereason Defence Platform to swiftly investigate and remediate threats.

(Left) Hussam Sidani, Regional Vice President, Middle East, and Turkey, at Cybereason and (right) Ahmed Diab, Chief Operating Officer at StarLink.

HASSAN ALNAQBI CEO of Khazna Data Centers.

AVEVA survey finds analytics, IIoT, oil and gas, top opportunities for channel

Nearly three-fourths 74% of respondents in a recent AVEVA channel survey said end customers are seeking technologies that provide predictive analytics to support sustainability goals. A similar majority 76% said the industrial internet of things IIoT and edge computing are of paramount importance for their end customers.

The survey revealed that respondents view the oil and gas sector as being most ‘ahead of the curve’ and one primed to adopt subscription offerings 14.1%, closely followed by mining and metals 12%, and infrastructure 10.9%.

AVEVA’s global channel partners reported an active focus on growing and supporting these segments as industrial enterprises rapidly seek to connect and integrate field devices. The online survey polled 108 different AVEVA partner companies including distributors, solution providers and system integrators in

every major region Asia Pacific, Latin America, North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa. The findings represented a significant opportunity for subscriptions growth.

Increasing emphasis on flexibility and agility to quickly ramp up or down usage with minimal upfront barriers is driving customer interest in subscription offers. The financial gains of embracing subscription models are clear: customers report 65% lower upfront costs in the first year.

The AVEVA channel survey mirrored this market trend, highlighting untapped opportunities for partners to promote and cross-sell subscription software solutions. The survey revealed that end customer organisations with revenues of $50 million or less are most actively looking at subscription software solutions 44%, but companies of all sizes showed indicators of interest in subscription-based solutions.

e& enterprise partners with DataRobot to launch Enterprise AI as a Service

e& enterprise, has entered into a strategic three-year alliance with DataRobot, a US-based leading Artificial Intelligence platform provider, to launch an Enterprise AI as a Service, AIaaS offering to support government and private companies in their digital transformation journey.

The Enterprise AI as a Service AIaaS is an end- to-end cloud offering for building, training, deploying, and managing AI and Machine Learning solutions and scaling the AI life cycle at a fraction of the cost compared to in-house AI capabilities . AIaaS enables governments and private enterprises to implement use-case-driven AI solutions and create business value with minimal investments in AI expertise.

To further accelerate the successful adoption of AI, e& enterprise and DataRobot will also establish a first-of-its- kind AI Center of Excellence AI CoE. The AI CoE, a centralised expert’s group, will ensure continuous capability building, deliver best AIaaS practices and guarantee value creation by overseeing the implementation of organisation-wide AI projects.

Through this collaboration, customers of e& enterprise will be able to adopt the AIaaS offering, powered by a locally deployed DataRobot platform, where fully scalable and use-case-driven enterprise AI applications can be implemented. Customers will benefit from the digital footprint and managed

KERRY GRIMES Head of Global Partners at AVEVA.

The findings indicate that while IIoT and edge scenarios are already strong subscription candidates, plant floor and control room software solutions are at the start of their transitions. About 64% of survey respondents said that the vast majority of their customers 90% are still using legacy software contract models.

AVEVA channel partners can leverage AVEVA Operations Control to address IIoT, cloud, remote edge management, and multisite supervisory control, thanks to the AVEVA Flex subscription programme. These solutions provide a comprehensive suite of tools for plant, field, control room, and enterprise teams to accelerate operational excellence. The AVEVA Operations Control software subscription allows end customers to utilise the solution they need, when and where they need it.

AVEVA is the only industrial and infrastructure software vendor to offer full portfolio coverage under subscription, with the flexibility to maintain perpetual licensing in the deployment mix.

services expertise of e& enterprise, coupled with DataRobot’s AI platform capabilities.

DataRobot is one of the most widely deployed and proven AI platforms globally, delivering over a trillion predictions for leading companies around the world. As a unified platform designed to democratise and accelerate the use of AI across industries, DataRobot helps businesses harness the power of AI to drive transformative growth.

(Left to right) Salvador Anglada, CEO, e& enterprise; Dan Wright, CEO of DataRobot.

Redington Gulf announces multi-year agreement with AWS to accelerate cloud adoption

Redington Gulf, a value-added distributor across Middle East, Turkey and Africa, announced a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services. The expanded collaboration with AWS builds on an existing relationship that Redington Gulf has as an accredited AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and AWS Distributor.

The new multi-year agreement is designed to advance the adoption of cloud solutions as well as develop innovative new services and products. By strengthening its partnership with the cloud leader, Redington Gulf will work closely with its extensive channel network to develop competencies and be a true consultant for customers’ end-to-end cloud journeys. The distributor will double down on investments with respect to personnel, partner enablement, trainings, and workshops as well as cloud-based services to help partners leverage AWS solutions to drive customers’ cloud adoption.

The distributor’s CloudQuarks platform for cloud subscriptions, renewals and billing will play a central role in enabling partners operating across the region to bring solutions to market quickly and efficiently. Partners can optimise the unique prospects created by Redington Gulf, from Cloud Center of Excellence, new business models to bespoke tools and specialised services.

In addition, the company will implement AWS-specific enablement paths – including business maturity assessment, training and solution development – that will provide partners with the tools, knowledge and

resources in order to quickly accelerate their AWS cloud practices.

Redington is committed to helping businesses of all types and sizes design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS on a global basis, accelerating their journey to the cloud. Through the expanded partnership, AWS and Redington Gulf along with its partner community, will educate customers on modernising their technology stacks and offer genuine value-add and support to help them build strong cloud capabilities.

Additionally, Redington India announced that it has been chosen as an official distribution partner for Amazon Web Services in India. Through a Strategic Collaborative Agreement with AWS, Redington will enhance its cloud readiness, upskill its workforce and strengthen its capabilities to deliver Cloud solutions to Enterprises, SMBs and Public Sector, through its partners.

Omnix, Abu Dhabi Municipality, Autodesk organise education events on BIM

Omnix, has taken the lead in highlighting the importance of Building Information Modelling. This comes at a time when BIM is ready to be mandated by the Abu Dhabi Municipality across all infrastructure projects irrespective of size, stage or discipline. Over the past few months, Omnix along with Abu Dhabi Municipality and Autodesk have developed and conducted several online as well as an inperson panel discussion and roundtables that have provided Architecture, Engineering and Construction customers with deeper insights into making the smooth transition to BIM.

BIM tools, such as Autodesk’s Revit and BIM 360, automate time-consuming tasks such as quantifying and applying costs, allowing estimators to focus on higher value factors, such as identifying construction assemblies and factoring risks. BIM 360 not only connects BIM data

and 3D models into construction management workflows, but it also ensures everyone has the latest plans and updates, shares information,

and notifies the right people when issues are detected, or change orders are made.

Omnix has successfully organised a total of five BIM education events, three in the UAE and one each in Bahrain and Oman. The events have been successful with high number of attendees including several government entities.

BIM is an intelligent 3D model-based process that gives architecture, engineering, and construction AEC professionals the insight and tools to plan, design, construct and manage buildings and infrastructure more efficiently. BIM collaboration software makes the construction process more accessible by putting models into the hands of the entire project team in a coordinated fashion to accelerate reviews and identify and resolve challenges earlier.

This eliminates many inefficiencies in the planning phase, saving costs during the construction process. McKinsey found that 75% of companies that have adopted BIM reported positive returns on their investments.

(Left to right) Vittorio Sanvito, EMEA Director of Partner Development at AWS and Rajiv Srivastava, Managing Director at Redington Group.

SIMRAN BAGGA Head of Engineering, Omnix International.

AmiViz completes roadshow across Doha, Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai with Your Security, Our Passion theme

AmiViz, the Middle East region’s first enterprise B2B marketplace announced it has successfully concluded its series of roadshow that was held in Doha, Cairo, Riyadh and Dubai under the theme, ‘Your Security, Our Passion.’ AmiViz aligned with leading names in the cybersecurity business like Tenable, ZeroFox, LogRhythm, Onapsis, Picus, Check Point, Silobreaker, BlackBerry, Galaxkey, Algosec and Ivanti to create a series of roadshows that was well received and attended by hundreds of CIO’s, CISOs, IT Heads, and senior executives from various enterprises hailing from Banking, Oil & Gas, Retail and Government sector.

Majority of the attendees appreciated the well thought out programme and enjoyed the interesting topics that were presented to them during the roadshow. Besides highlighting the latest innovations and updates in their product portfolio, the rich line of speakers touched base with the most

relevant concerns of today’s business that has been impacted by cybersecurity in various ways. Speakers also shared best use cases and suggested how best enterprises in each country can counter the cybersecurity risks and overcome vulnerabilities to strengthen their organisations’ security posture.

AmiViz shared the benefits of its marketplace, and how the Customer Experience Center CEC Lab with a setup of over 25 technologies integrated with one another. This helps the customers to experience the demo remotely either of a single technology or integration of multiple technologies and understand how it works in their own unique environment.

The company also took this an opportunity to unveil its Customer Loyalty Programme and introduced the key features of the loyalty programme to all the customers attending the roadshow in all the 4 countries.

Moro Hub partners with global consultancy Perform IT for Business Observability Solutions

Moro Hub, a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, the digital arm of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, announced its partnership with Perform IT, a global IT consultancy company specialising in Business Observability Solutions, Professional and Managed Services. In line with this partnership, Moro Hub will be able to deliver advanced IT solutions to its clients, mainly focusing on Business Observability Solutions.

Perform IT’s Business Observability Solutions will enable Moro Hub’s clients to move beyond traditional monitoring into full-stack observability using best-in-class technology. It will provide clients visibility into every layer of the IT stack, from cloud-based applications to infrastructure and everything in between. With Business Observability added to their

profile, Moro Hub will support businesses in fixing systems accurately. Furthermore, the new solution will help Moro Hub’s clients investigate properties and patterns not defined in advance.

With Perform IT’s integrated Business

Observability Solutions, Moro Hub will be able to offer clients full-stack observability, application performance monitoring, end-user monitoring, application and business insights, application security and more.

Elitegroup Computer Systems and ASBIS strengthen partnership for Mini PCs at partner event

Elitegroup Computer Systems and ASBIS Middle East strengthen commitment in successful partner event on 19th June 2022, in Dubai. ECS has been dedicated in providing its professional, innovative, high-quality and competitive design and product globally to meet the everchanging consumer computer trend.

The new partnership combines the two companies’ passion for experienced performance and will continue to lead the market for Mini PC in Middle East. Year by year ASBIS Middle East has grown solid collaborative relationships with the top worldwide vendors and suppliers of Consumer Electronics, IT products and solutions.

CNS partners with Mendix to offer visual modelling to build business applications without code

CNS has added another key set of digital assets to their comprehensive portfolio of digital transformation portfolio through a partnership with Mendix, a leader in the application delivery Platform-as-a-Service market. The partnership highlights the growing interest from customers for low code technologies that can provide the end user with a unified customer experience.

Mendix enables organisations with the ability to respond to new opportunities and adapt to new business requirements quickly. The platform utilises visual modelling to build business applications without code and a social collaboration application to facilitate end user involvement and agile project management. The resulting applications are easily modified, extended, and integrated to satisfy ever-changing business requirements.

CNS Middle East, established in 1987, has been a digital innovation partner for the world’s largest technology brands and leading enterprises delivering mission-critical technology to ensure customer delight. Adopting the Mendix platform will enable CNS Middle East to boost their reach with highly agile rapid application delivery.

Microsoft Gold Partner Mindware launches Azure ISV Hub programme for start-ups

Building on its status as a Microsoft Gold partner, Mindware, one of the leading Value-Added Distributors in the Middle East and Africa, announced the launch of its ‘Azure ISV Hub Programme’. The initiative provides independent software vendors, including young start-ups or any enterprise having a unique intellectual property, with a go-to-market strategy and a pool of other benefits that can be unlocked when their

solutions are powered on Microsoft Azure.

Azure’s global infrastructure includes 60+ regions and is growing fast. It has a significant set of security and privacy certifications and more than 90 compliance offerings. With 3,500 security experts monitoring to safeguard data and a billion dollars a year spent on security alone, Azure is one of the most trusted cloud Platforms.

HATEM HARIRI Managing Director at CNS Middle East.

DON BOSMAN Channel Sales Director at Mendix.

AT THE END OF A DAY

l I admire any vendor that has a clearly defined partner strategy.

l Making a positive impact on an individual partner is what makes my job worthwhile.

l Excellent sales and partner leaders can identify and deliver what is needed.

SUZANNE SWANSON Senior Vice President of Global Partners.

Qualys

MOVING CHANNEL PARTNERS TO

CLOUD SECURITY

The cloud has changed how customers consume technology and what value they need from partners and are demanding solutions that deliver business outcomes.

Digital transformation has drastically accelerated the need for organisations – across every industry – to migrate to the cloud. But this is easier said than done, and as companies look to digitally transform their businesses, utilising solutions that deliver complete business outcomes is a focus.

This creates a window of opportunity for strategic partnerships. That being said, this is all happening during a time where bad actors are growing increasingly sophisticated, and organisations are facing an explosive number of threats. Organisations are desperate for the ability to prevent exploitation and keep up in today’s increasingly tumultuous threat landscape.

Partners can leverage the new programme to increase their security expertise and develop unique service offerings that differentiate them

MSS OR SOC PROVIDER?

Combination of market dynamics are driving channel partners to evaluate expansion to MSSP, SOC services. The avenues for customers to purchase software have expanded from traditional VARs to cloud marketplaces, bundled in a managed offering or as a service.

As a result, the margin opportunity for more traditional software sales and implementation is under pressure. At the same time, customers are struggling to find the skilled resources they need to manage the complexity of cyber security solutions. As such, they are looking to partners to help them.

Becoming an MSSP enables a channel partner to deliver high-value services to their customers and expand their revenue opportunity.

The cloud has changed how customers consume technology and what value they need or expect from partners. The old days of installation and break-fix services are gone, as customers migrate more of their estate offprem. Customers are demanding solutions that deliver business outcomes – not specific technologies.

This means that partners must understand the business that their customers are in, and how they can help them achieve their goals. Partners must develop new sets of sales and technical skills to stay relevant to their customers in their digital journey.

Qualys is committed to the creation and distribution of meaningful integrations with technology partners across the ecosystem to reduce risk and accelerate the path to continuous security for modern enterprises. With this mission in mind, the program has been uniquely designed to foster close collaboration and enable partners to realise significant value when leveraging the power of the Qualys Cloud Platform.

The competitive advantage gained is through the ability to provide clients and customers of all sizes with access to enterprise-grade security controls. With the power of the Qualys Cloud Platform, implementing and executing security measures will far exceed the industry norm. Partners can also leverage the new Qualys program to increase their security expertise and develop unique service offerings that differentiate them and accelerate time to value for their customers.

The new additions to the program work to further Qualys’ investment into the partner ecosystem. The biggest addition is a more enriched structured benefit and protection program for partners who identify new opportunities. Additionally, Qualys will be offering new technical certifications and opportunities to deliver value through professional and consulting services.

The program is expanding drastically and welcomes a variety of partner types to enable access to a broad set of companies and market segments – example MSSPs, MSPs, VARs, distribution partners and vendors throughout the cybersecurity space. ë

EXPECTED SKILLS FROM

l Strong engagement and a joint business plan with vendor field sales teams

l Strong technical skills for multi-vendor solution design and implementation.

l Accelerate time to value with vendor solutions

l Consultative sellers that collaborate with vendor and the customer to build and implement their cyber security plans

IMPACT OF THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT ON CLOUD SERVICES AND ENTERPRISES USERS

The invasion in Eastern Europe is a humanitarian catastrophe. The catastrophe is leading to significant uncertainty for businesses and government agencies worldwide. Gartner is taking the assumption that we will live in a multipolar world, in contrast to a globalised world. The invasion is a further step in this direction.

Cloud customers will double down on what they already have. If they are cloud, they will stay there. If they are not cloud, they will stay there. Those on the fence will be forced to choose. Sovereignty fears may cause customers to shy away from US- based cloud deals, especially in the Russian sphere of influence.

De-platforming of Russia may slow cloud growth nearly 30% CAGR in 2022 and over $2.0 billion in revenue for Russia of dominant cloud providers, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, and increase use of Russian providers such as Yandex and mail.ru.

Cyberattacks could chase customers away from cloud as the fear of

attacks on concentrated computing resources grows. Cloud security practices illustrate how effective cloud service providers are at detection and response at scale.

Sustainable energy efforts will blunt the impact of energy cost increases brought about by the invasion of Ukraine. Hydraulic power, solar and other mechanisms will be used for cloud region construction. Upstream disruption and fears drive power costs up by multiple factors.

Semiconductor and supply chain disruption will reduce availability of semiconductors for data centers and cloud regions and, in turn, increase cost of cloud infrastructure. For example, 70% of upstream neon gas production for semiconductor manufacturing is produced in Ukraine.

Tier-1 buyers, example cloud providers will get priority in ordering chips and, unless panic buying sets in, they have enough supply for the next six months to a year. Shortages have been demand-driven. This will continue. However, extended length uncertainties may change this.

Gartner analysts Sid Nag and Daryl Plummer list the impact on the hyper scaler and cloud provider eco system.

Advice for end-users

l Public cloud will be impacted but likely not as acutely as traditional data center services.

l Accelerate the shift to using cloud services as a supplement to data center services as the downstream impact of upstream disruption becomes clearer.

l Consider multiple cloud service providers.

l Create a budget reserve for new cloud requirements to cover any cloud cost overruns and ensue that cloud terms and conditions cover inflation of cloud costs.

l Double down on virtualisation and Kubernetes adoption as a means of hedging against price increases or any long-term infrastructure or ecosystem impact.

l Demand clear cloud cybersecurity roadmaps and statements of liability as a hedge against resultant cyberattacks against consolidated infrastructure.

l Review budgets for energy usage, inflation on general products, services, supply chain disruption and other ancillary impacts that will affect use of cloud investments as planned.

l Demand statements of expected impact from cloud providers as input to potential contract negotiation. Like with COVID-19, customers have a right to know what the cloud providers believe will happen.

Recommendations for hyper scalers

l Evaluate ramifications and contract obligations of current and potential future sanctions. Are terms and conditions robust enough?

l Clarify the direct and indirect impact to customers of sanctions that can potentially force de-platforming of an entire country.

l Clarify how billing ongoing and retroactive is handled for sanctioned customers who are cut off or limited in access.

l Reinforce how to deliver security, backbone and DDOS in the cloud ecosystem.

l Go to market that the ecosystem is less vulnerable.

l Avoid any carry-on effect to the invasion that may impact nonNATO countries nearby that have a cloud region.

l Plan for negative perceptions that the Ukraine invasion may cast for possible similar actions elsewhere, such as an invasion of Taiwan.

Recommendations for SaaS, PaaS, ISVs

l Embrace multiple cloud providers as a hedge against regional disruption.

l Identify customers at risk of being de-platformed, as well as applications designed or supported by developers in the Ukraine or Russia.

l Simplify exit-strategy planning from directly impacted cloud regions or providers.

l Evaluate legal terms and conditions applying to customers potentially de-platformed in response to government mandates or mandates to underlying hyperscale cloud providers and data centers.

l Clarify legal obligations to enforce de-platforming mandated on customers.

l Evaluate ramifications continuously throughout the invasion and resultant mandates, sanctions, or other activities.

l Evaluate how fast you can respond to sanction demands or to restore customer access.

Excerpted and adapted from the Gartner report: Potential Impact on Cloud Service Providers Due to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, by Sid Nag and Daryl Plummer.

CLOUD-ECOSYSTEM

Tier-1 buyers will get priority in ordering chips unless panic buying sets in

Cloud security practices will illustrate how effective cloud service providers are at detection and response

Hydraulic power, solar and other mechanisms will be used for cloud region construction

Cyberattacks could chase customers away from cloud

Semiconductor and supply chain disruption will reduce availability for data centers increasing cost of cloud

Sustainable energy efforts will blunt the impact of energy cost increases brought about by the invasion

Consider multiple cloud service providers

Image: Shutterstock

Create a budget reserve to cover any cloud cost overruns

Ensure that cloud terms and conditions cover inflation

Double down on virtualisation and Kubernetes as a means of hedging against price increases

Extended length uncertainties may change many assumptions

Customers have a right to know what the cloud providers believe will happen

Review budgets for energy usage, inflation on services, supply chain disruption and other impacts

Demand cloud cybersecurity roadmaps and statements of liability

Captions adapted from Gartner report: Potential Impact on Cloud Service Providers Due to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

NETWORK MONITORING

HYBRID ENTERPRISES

DASHBOARDS FOR

As enterprises embrace cloud and IoT, integrated dashboards that demonstrate the health of networks, systems, sensors, in a simplistic manner are now in demand.

BY ARUN SHANKAR

Paessler is a German software company, that has been financially independent since its beginning. “We are not part of a private equity, financed or global group. The core product’s goal was always to make it easy for IT administrators to monitor their network. That was the original idea of our founder, and basically his main task was to make it easy to use the product,” says Helmut Binder, CEO Paessler AG.

Paessler’s flagship product PRTG Network Monitor was originally designed for small and medium businesses; it is feature rich and meant to work through easy installation procedures. Binder calls the product an all-in-one tool which is easy to implement and use.

The feature set of the product has been growing over the years and it now covers the requirements of large enterprises as well. Two years ago, Paessler launched the PRTG Enterprise

Monitor, with the same concept, and an all-inone product for large enterprises.

Licensing

Paessler follows a perpetual licensing model, whose price point is decided by the number of monitored parameters or sensors. This represents the actual information that is being collected by PRTG about the devices and applications being monitored, not the number of devices or interfaces.

The pricing includes all the modules of the product, and as long as there is an active maintenance contract, the enterprise receives the upgrades as well.

Since the licensing cost is decided by the scale of the monitoring itself, the pricing increases with the business scale of the enterprise. This allows the associated channel partner to also earn with the growth of the customer’s busi-

ness, both in terms of licensing cost and annual maintenance contract.

“Basically, it is one product, and all the add-ons are already included. And if you are growing, you will very easily just upgrade your license. You do not have to change the license key, and you do not have to buy different options, it is already included,” says Binder.

Technology alliances

In the face of large-scale adoption and awareness of digital transformation and cloud adoption, Paessler has also increased its value integration with technology vendors both in the IT and OT space. Paessler has integrated select technology vendors, who are part of its Uptime Alliance Programme, into its PRTG solution.

The alliance programme started on the IT side and is being expanded into the OT side as well.

“No product can solve every customer problem. We have launched what we call the Uptime Alliance Programme, and that brings the additional value to the customer,” says Binder.

Paessler’s PRTG solution is usually sufficient to meet the use case requirements of both small and large businesses and large enterprises. The integration of alliance vendor partners with PRTG is mostly to meet the requirements of special use cases such as in-depth VOIP quality analysis or industrial edge analytics in the OT space.

Through this alliance programme, Paessler is adopting a best of breed approach. “The customer is selecting the best monitoring infrastructure pool, and then for different monitoring areas, we would propose specific vendors to them from our Uptime Alliance,” explains Binder. “We have a service-oriented dashboard, where we are able to display application monitoring features.”

PRTG capabilities have also been extended into the cloud with cloud sensors that work in a hybrid environment.

Entering the OT space

Another initiative by Paessler is to extend monitoring of the IT network into the ecosystem of sensor networks or Internet of Things, IoT in the production network of manufacturing plants and medical devices in healthcare institutions.

“That is the way we are growing the use cases of our product significantly, and because it is still one product, we are helping our customers to integrate different use cases,” explains Binder.

The vision is to make a bridge between

Since the licensing cost is decided by the scale of the enterprise, the pricing increases with the business scale of the enterprise

HELMUT BINDER CEO Paessler AG.

OVERVIEW OF PAESSLER IN THE REGION

The Middle East and Africa region is growing in the fields of IT, OT and IoT. Paessler’s PRTG product portfolio comes into play to cover the needs of small and medium-sized companies as well as large enterprises to monitor IT infrastructures, data centres, industrial OT environments, hospital networks with clinical devices, physical security and buildings as well as IoT networks.

Adding to that, Paessler’s product portfolio features a hosted monitoring solution, which offers flexibility while eliminating hardware needs. Paessler’s flagship solution is PRTG Network Monitor, and the offering for large networks is PRTG Enterprise Monitor.

Paessler’s PRTG monitoring products help detect flaws as early as possible and thus avoid problems, damage, and breakdowns. This refers not only to classic IT infrastructures, but also to environmental factors, especially important for data centres, like overheating and leaks in air conditioning systems, or physical security, like the monitoring of complex CCTV setups.

Paessler PRTG augments multivendor solution stacks by offering APIs that allows for integration with other specialised tools. On this note, it is important to mention that Paessler not only offers the possibility to integrate PRTG with other solutions, but also actively fosters technology alliances that add value for our customers. Rittal, for monitoring data centre infrastructures, and Soffico, for deeper insights into medical and industrial networks, are just two examples of Paessler’s about 40 technology alliance partners.

The IT infrastructure, networking and security partner community is a good fit for Paessler’s product portfolio. The monitoring solutions work for businesses across all industries and all sizes, from small and large businesses to large enterprise customers through the channel partner ecosystem. Also, partners who help industrial companies digitise their factories and manufacturing workflows are a good addition.

One of the capabilities of Paessler’s PRTG is to provide monitoring of both the IT and the OT world. With PRTG it is possible to monitor medical equipment such as scanners and imaging devices using DICOM and HL7 protocols and bring those devices into the central monitoring view.

For customers with complex or large infrastructures, PRTG Enterprise Monitor offers an OpEx-based cost model that scales with the customers’ networks, an exclusive ITOps Board to provide an overview across multiple PRTG servers, all while enabling easy customisation and integration. Paessler competes with monitoring solutions that have a more general approach but lack technical depth in certain aspects.

In the region, Paessler serves customers of all verticals, especially in energy, government, healthcare, and telecommunications. Immediate benefits are user-friendliness, being cost effective and being easy to deploy. Enterprises usually start their subscription of PRTG Enterprise Monitor with a basic set of sensors and, after the initial implementation phase, scale their monitoring and add new sensors to their set-up as their infrastructure grows. Regional enterprise customers include Abu Dhabi University and AXA.

It is important for channel partners to have knowledge of Paessler’s PRTG products, so they can advise customers in the best way possible.

Inside the region, the expectation is growing for a broad customer base with a vertical focus, especially in industrial and IoT segments, physical security, building management and healthcare.

Paessler is investing in the region to train channel partners through physical and virtual training sessions and webinars and to improve sales through account maps and sales incentive programmes.

In the medium to long term, Paessler sees a continuing convergence of IT and OT environments. Industrial control systems permitted SNMP access historically, but many also only provide access through Modbus TCP, MQTT or OPC-UA. PRTG offers sensors for these industrial interfaces and will continue development in this field.

With a focus on data centre monitoring, combining Paessler PRTG with Rittal consulting and components, customers gain a detailed overview of their data centre energy consumption.

Paessler’s innovation team is focussed on IoT solutions that will ultimately help to reduce resource consumption and thereby improve its contribution to global sustainability.

UPTIME ALLIANCE PROGRAMME

In 2018, Paessler announced its global Uptime Alliance, a technology partner programme designed to help include network monitoring functionality in vendor offerings through the PRTG Network Monitor.

With Paessler’s PRTG solution suite, system administrators can monitor the health and performance of their infrastructure, including networks, systems, hardware, applications and devices - all in real time. The Uptime Alliance builds on PRTG’s capabilities and fosters collaboration with technology partners to provide integrated solutions.

With more than 300 pre-configured sensors, PRTG monitors the overall health of the network infrastructure to granular details like the performance and temperature of individual devices and the revolutions per minute of the fans within them.

Custom sensors are integrated with PRTG and enable IT leaders to embrace pivotal computing trends like the Internet of Things with confidence.

Paessler is a member of the Cisco Solution Partner Program, HPE Technology Partner Program, NetApp Alliance Partner Program and VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner program, amongst others.

Charter members of the Uptime Alliance include: AppSphere, Check Point, Kentix, MachineShop, NetBrain, Plixer, Savision, SonicWall, UVnetworks, and WatchGuard.

The use cases delivered by the technology partners include datacentre, infrastructure, Internet of Things, manufacturing IIoT, networking, security, services management, and special purposes.

operational technology, OT and information technology, IT, and to create one IP-based product that can see and monitor the complete infrastructure under one dashboard. Binder believes this has real value for Paessler’s customers.

In order to do this Paessler had to understand how its products have to integrate with various OT protocols; understand which OT parameters need to be displayed; and the design of the OT dashboards to display those parameters.

The use cases, templates and the parameters being displayed for OT users are vastly different from those displayed for IT users. For examples, hard disk storage space consumed in GB has little relevance for OT administrators, but an out of storage space message has relevance for IT administrators.

Data collected by PRTG in the OT environment can be displayed on the integrated PRTG dashboard for small and medium-sized users. However, in the case of large enterprises this data can be made available for the on-premises hosted SCADA and HMI systems, typically available in large enterprise ecosystems.

“It can be used only as a data collector, but it can also be used as the front end for monitoring. Both are possible,” says Binder.

Channel partners

With the licensing model followed by Paessler, its channel partners earn through the software purchased by their customers and annual service contracts. As the customer’s business expands in operational scale, that is the number of devices being monitored by PRTG, as well as the enterprises’ IT maturity, the opportunities for the channel partner to engage also increase.

However, the primary opportunity for Paessler channel partners to build their business model with the vendor is through professional services for their customers. The Uptime Alliance Programme and the PRTG use cases are an opportunity for the channel partner to offer services in deep value areas.

Another area of growth for channel partners is when the usage of PRTG switches over from the IT side to the OT side inside an enterprise. However, one challenge that Paessler’s IT channel partners would face in the short term would be that IT and OT worlds inside an enterprise are still very often silos. However, channel partners who are already working inside vertical markets and with OT solutions, would not face this challenge. They are probably the right choice to take Paessler’s PRTG solutions into the OT space inside those enterprises.

Binder also points out that the network monitoring and IT infrastructure diagnostic capability of PRTG is also being leveraged by managed services partners as well. And that is another business opportunity for channel partners in today’s rapidly expanding services market. ë

Paessler’s PRTG solution is usually sufficient to meet the use case requirements of both small and large businesses and large enterprises

Group-IB announces Unified Risk Platform using information from 60 sources of intelligence

Group-IB, headquartered in Singapore, unveiled the Unified Risk Platform, an ecosystem of solutions that understands each organisation’s threat profile and tailors defences against them in real time. Every product and service in Group-IB’s now consolidated security suite is enriched with information from a Single Data Lake, which contains 60 types of sources of adversary intelligence. The Unified Risk Platform automatically configures your Group-IB defences with the precise insights needed to provide the best possible defines against targeted attacks on the infrastructure and endpoints, breaches, fraud, brand and IP abuse.

At the heart of the Unified Risk Platform is a Single Data Lake which has the most complete and detailed insight into threat actors. Group-IB has collected the industry’s broadest range of adversary intelligence, with 60 types of sources across 15 categories.

The data is gathered by and exclusive to Group-IB, providing custom-

ers with unprecedented visibility of threat actors’ operations. The raw data is enriched with context, converted into actionable intelligence, and added to Group-IB’s Single Data Lake. The patented technology is continuously refined by state-of-the-art research, science and modelling conducted by Group-IB’s dedicated analyst teams spanning 11 cybersecurity disciplines.

The modular architecture of the Unified Risk Platform allows additional capabilities to be easily activated, providing increased protection from cybercrime without friction. A range of out-of-the-box integrations and flexible APIs enable the Unified Risk Platform to easily enhance any existing security ecosystem. When organisation’s need specialist support, Group-IB’s comprehensive suite of services is available for any purpose, from one-off red teaming exercises or incident response to in-life managed detection and response.

Lenovo begins manufacturing servers, storage, workstations in Hungary for EMEA customers

Lenovo opened the doors to its first in-house manufacturing facility in Europe. Based in Ullo, Hungary, the factory focuses primarily on building server infrastructure, storage systems and high-end PC workstations used by customers throughout the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region.

Extending Lenovo’s international manufacturing operations, the investment represents

significant economic potential for both the private and public sectors in Hungary, with increased production capacity, greater potential for collaboration with local vendors, and the creation of new job openings. The site already employs over 1,000 full-time staff in a variety of engineering, management & operational roles, with numbers continuing to increase as the facility moves towards full capacity.

Synology announces 5-bay Synology DiskStation

DS1522+ with scalability for 10 additional drives

Synology announced the new 5-bay Synology DiskStation DS1522+, the latest compact solution in its Plus line of all-in-one storage devices that help users of all sizes protect data, IT infrastructure, and physical assets professionally and securely, while supporting a host of business, IT administration, and productivity applications.

DS1522+ integrates well as the primary storage solution for smaller setups or as an edge node for multi-site deployments. Powered by DiskStation Manager DSM 7.1, it features robust data management capa-

Strong infrastructure, skilled labour and a location at the centre of Europe made Hungary the natural location for Lenovo’s first European in-house manufacturing facility. In addition, part of Lenovo’s investment has been supported with local government incentives through the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency HIPA.

Covering almost 50,000 square meters across two buildings and three floors, the new site is one of Lenovo’s largest manufacturing facilities. The production line can produce more than 1,000 servers and 4,000 workstations a day – each one built specifically to customer requirements.

The Hungary facility is part of Lenovo’s global manufacturing and supply chain strategy that serves customers in 180 markets from 35+ manufacturing sites around the world –including Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Mexico and the USA. Lenovo is widely recognised for its global hybrid manufacturing model that includes a mix of both in-house and contract manufacturing. A key source of competitive advantage for the company, it provides greater efficiency and control over product development and supply chain operations, enabling customer needs to be responded to more effectively.

bilities, comprehensive file sharing, collaboration, and video surveillance capabilities.

Scalable up to 15 drive bays with two DX517 expansion units, a fully expanded DS1522+ can reliably host massive amounts of data while taking up minimal desktop or shelf space. A new network upgrade slot enables anytime 10GbE upgrades, while two built-in M.2 2280 NVMe slots can be used to speed up storage performance significantly.

Pure Storage extends benefits of Evergreen across full portfolio through Evergreen//Flex

Pure Storage reaffirmed its commitment to deliver simple, reliable and scalable storage with the introduction of Evergreen//Flex, a new fleet-level Evergreen architecture, which extends the power of Pure’s Evergreen technology to the full Pure portfolio. By unlocking and moving stranded storage capacity to where it is needed most, Evergreen//Flex enables unrivalled storage efficiency and grows Pure’s portfolio of Evergreen-based subscription services.

The inflexible, labour-intensive delivery of traditional storage has long challenged organisations embarking on transformation – from high costs, short technology refresh cycles, forklift upgrades, and storage rebuys to unplanned downtime, high-risk data migration and overall data storage complexity.

Global enterprises, however, are on a path to embrace flexible, consumption-based operating models, and are increasingly investing in modern technologies and services that optimise for stronger value over time. To support customers in this journey, Pure redefined the antiquated business models underpinning traditional storage infrastructure, enabling enterprises to bring data storage capacity where it is needed most, ultimately driving flexibility and

efficiency across the industry.

Pioneered in 2015, Pure’s subscription-based Evergreen Storage program paved the way for the new era of IT ownership by delivering a true subscription to innovation. Evergreen prioritises cost efficiencies, a longer, sustainable technology lifecycle, and modernisation without disruption. Since launch, the program has successfully delivered over 10,000 non-disruptive controller upgrades to more than 3,000 customers. Recognising the need for further flexibility and transparency across storage, Pure launched the first true consumption-based service model for storage, Evergreen//One, formerly Pure as-a-Service, in 2018.

To advance its unrivalled leadership in delivering Storage-as-a-Service while supporting customers where they are in the journey to embracing flexible delivery models, Pure is expanding its broad portfolio of Evergreen offerings:

l Evergreen//Forever formerly Evergreen Gold: Evergreen//Forever offers organisations traditional appliance ownership with a subscription to software, ever-modern hardware, and a world-class customer experience. Evergreen//Forever ensures

Juniper Networks adds Cloud Access Security Broker, advanced Data Loss Prevention to Edge solution

Juniper Networks announced the expansion of its SASE offering with the addition of Cloud Access Security Broker and advanced Data Loss Prevention capabilities to its Juniper Secure Edge solution. When combined with Juniper’s unique SD-WAN solution driven by Mist AI, Juniper Networks is the first in the market to offer a full-stack SASE solution with visibility into both the edge and the data centre.

By building on its Secure Edge solution, Juniper Networks provides customers with a highly secure and an operationally efficient way to adopt a SASE architecture, regardless of where they are in their SASE journey. Additionally, customers can connect their SASE architecture at the edge to their Zero Trust data centre architecture under the same management UI and single-policy framework, eliminating breaks in visibility and gaps in security posture while

organisations are benefiting from an always-modern infrastructure subscription to support a system that gets better over time.

l Evergreen//Flex: A new fleet-level Evergreen architecture, offering users an unprecedented way of running storage efficiently, while saving power. Evergreen//Flex provides the flexibility and adaptability to move performance and stranded capacity to where data and applications need it most, with the security and control that comes from ownership. The latest model brings the modernisation of Evergreen//Forever beyond the box and is the most efficient way to run a fleet of storage enabled by an asset utilisation model.

delivering on the promise of Juniper Connected Security strategy. Juniper Networks delivers CASB and DLP to secure SaaS applications and help prevent unwanted access, malware delivery and distribution, and data exfiltration. Both capabilities are part of Juniper’s Secure Edge cloud-delivered security solution managed by Security Director Cloud, which secures remote users and on-premises users alike. It easily manages Zero Trust and SASE architectures through one management portal using a single-policy framework.

PRAKASH DARJI General Manager, Digital Experience Business Unit, Pure Storage.

(Left to right) Sudheer Matta, Group VP of AI-Driven Enterprise, Juniper Network; Samantha Madrid, Group VP of Security Business & Strategy, Juniper Networks.

Cisco announces launch of AppDynamics Cloud which correlates cloud telemetry at massive scale

Cisco announced the launch of AppDynamics Cloud at Cisco Live. AppDynamics Cloud enables delivery of exceptional digital experiences by correlating telemetry data from across any cloud environment at massive scale. It leverages cloud-native observability to remediate application performance issues with business context and insights-driven actions.

AppDynamics Cloud maximises business outcomes and customer experiences by continuously optimising cloud-native applications. It accelerates detection and resolution of performance issues, before they impact the business or the brand, with intelligent operations. Investment protection is derived from continuous data integrations with OpenTelemetry standards and technology partnerships with cloud solutions and providers.

The platform enables collaboration across teams including DevOps, site reliability engineers SREs, and other key business stakeholders to achieve common benchmarks like service-level objectives SLOs and organisational KPIs. While many organisations still run their mission-critical and revenue-generating systems with traditional applications, modern business apps are increasingly built using DevOps initiatives and must support distributed architectures and services.

AppDynamics Cloud seamlessly ingests the deluge of metrics, events, logs, and traces MELT generated in this environment—including network, databases, storage, containers, security, and cloud services—to make sense of the current state of the entire IT stack all the way to the end user. Actions can then be taken to optimise costs, maximise transaction revenue, and secure user and organisational data.

Synology updates DiskStation Manager with bare-metal backup and shared folder aggregation

Synology announced general availability of DiskStation Manager 7.1, a significant feature expansion that introduces two major feature updates among a plethora of smaller ones: the long-awaited ability to perform complete, bare-metal level backups of the entire system and shared folder aggregation — letting multiple Synology NAS, SAN under different logins access the same shared folders.

Core storage enhancements

DSM 7.1 brings key improvements to the storage management experience. Sharing data between multiple Synology NAS/SAN in different locations is now significantly easier. Shared folder aggregation uses SMB DFS to create symbolic links between shared folders on multiple Synology units, displaying multiple Synology SMB file servers on your network as one big Portal Folder.

Full system protection

DSM 7.1 introduces complete, bare-metal level backups of the entire system. Powered by Synology Active Backup for Business, the ability to image and replicate the entire Synology system greatly accelerates recovery time objectives RTO in the event of a total site failure. Full system restoration capability also introduces a quick and convenient way to deploy identically configured systems.

UI updates and performance improvements

The new user interface introduced in 7.0 has been further optimised by consolidating background tasks into an administrator-friendly overview. This provides greater transparency into what is happening on the system, even across different user accounts. For Synology High Availability SHA clusters, users can now

AVEVA announces Unified Operation Centre for Water and Renewables

AVEVA, announced two new industry templates for customers to accelerate the deployment of enterprise visualisation. The AVEVA Unified Operations Centre for Water and AVEVA Unified Operations Centre for Renewables solutions underline the company’s continuous efforts in supporting global customers’ sustainability initiatives and objectives.

The adverse effects of climate change are demanding greater industrial sustainability and compelling organisations to reimagine and align operations towards environmental, social and governance ESG frameworks. Recent AVEVA research reveals that 89% of industrial companies are investing in digital solutions to achieve their sustainability goals, with a focus on collaboration tools, real-time data, and predictive analytics.

view and manage drives on both systems from a single instance of Storage Manager for easier maintenance and management.

On the performance side, DSM has long supported flash caching to boost random I/O performance cost-effectively. This new version will further economise SSD caching with the ability to speed up multiple storage volumes at the same time.

Ecosystem-wide improvements

Synology is also launching several major enhancements to applications and services.

l Active Backup for Business: bandwidth control, expanded monitoring and reporting capabilities, and support for DSM backups

l Active Insight: centralised login activity and Hyper Backup task status monitoring, plus the ability to update monitored systems in batch

l Synology C2 Hybrid Share: C2 server-side snapshots in addition to local file versioning provided by Synology Drive for easier restoration

l Directory Server: support for read-only domain controllers to improve deployment security and flexibility

l Synology Drive: expanded indexing capabilities, revamped mobile user experience, and improved monitoring/auditing capabilities

l MailPlus: Virtual DSM support, expanded management options, and importing/ migration improvements

l Virtual Machine Manager: storage I/O performance improvements and QoS capabilities

Digital tools have a significant role to play in today’s dynamic business environment. They offer the potential to drive 20-30% productivity gains and can unlock more than $100 billion in value, according to McKinsey estimates. In addition, digital tools support customers in making the complex decisions required in today’s business environment. Gartner data shows that 65% of decisions are more complex today than just two years ago. AVEVA’s software for enterprise visualisation responds to this growing need.

RASHESH MODY Senior Vice President, Monitoring and Control Business Unit, AVEVA.

Pure Storage announces AIRI//S, next generation AI-ready infrastructure built with NVIDIA

Pure Storage announced AIRI//S, the next generation of its AI-ready infrastructure, developed by Pure Storage and NVIDIA. AIRI//S provides enterprises a simple, on-demand infrastructure that accelerates AI initiatives at any scale.

Pure Storage, in collaboration with NVIDIA, launched AIRI in 2018, the first AI-ready infrastructure reference architecture, purposebuilt to enable organisations to achieve better utilisation and uptime, and ultimately scale their AI and data science investments without complexity.

Pure announced the next step in its collaboration with NVIDIA with the release of AIRI//S, powered by FlashBlade//S, NVIDIA DGX A100 systems and end-to-end networking, based on NVIDIA Quantum and Spectrum networking platforms. AIRI//S provides enterprises with a proven, simple, and scalable infrastructure for all stages of the AI data pipeline.

The first solution to include Pure’s revolutionary new FlashBlade//S, AIRI//S delivers significant advancements in non-disruptive performance, density, power efficiency and scale, resulting in optimal alignment to the

industry-leading AI training performance and parallelism gains that DGX systems deliver. Since launch, AIRI has supported hundreds of AI workloads across customers ranging from start-ups to national security departments to multinational technology conglomerates, and every type of data-driven industry in between. Critical benefits of AIRI//S include:

l Ease of Use: AIRI//S can be set up, deployed and managed quickly and seamlessly as an end-to-end AI pipeline solution. Not only does AIRI//S ensure that infrastructure teams are not overwhelmed by growing AI requirements, but also that data teams remain productive and spend more time delivering insights and less on worrying about their infrastructure.

l Performance at Any Scale: AIRI//S is optimised out-of-the-box to deliver multidimensional performance for all stages of the AI data pipeline, and can seamlessly scale storage and AI compute capabilities, allowing organisations to start their AI journeys at any scale and grow as needed.

l Agile AI Platform: As the AI data science landscape and customer requirements evolve, enterprises can now adapt their AI

infrastructure to accelerate time to competitive advantage with faster responses to fluctuating market dynamics.

l Sustainable, Efficient AI Infrastructure: AIRI//S is the first to include Pure Storage’s revolutionary new FlashBlade//S, which enables more powerful, highperformance AI infrastructure in the same footprint by delivering high density, reduced power consumption, and unmatched data centre efficiency.

Pure Storage introduces FlashBlade//S with modular architecture that disaggregates compute from capacity

Pure Storage announced the FlashBlade//S family of products with a new modular architecture built on uniquely co-designed hardware and software. The new platform leverages a nearly scalable metadata architecture, offering more than double the density, performance and power efficiency of previous versions. The platform evolves over time in alignment with customer requirements.

In 2017, Pure Storage rewrote the rules for scale-out storage by introducing FlashBlade as a unified fast file and object platform – the first high performance storage solution for modern data. Pure also architected its software and created DirectFlash technology to anticipate the future need for flash across a wide spectrum of workloads.

Pure revolutionises the market again with FlashBlade//S by introducing a modular architecture that disaggregates compute from capacity. Storage, compute and networking elements can be upgraded flexibly and non-disruptively, delivering a highly configurable and customisable file and object platform to address the broadest set of modern workloads. It can deliver both the highest levels of performance and capacity optimi-

sation with Pure’s proprietary all-QLC architecture without the need for expensive caching solutions.

According to IDC, disaggregation of storage platforms provides more flexibility in creating highly efficient IT infrastructures. It not only enables administrators to assemble the right balance of IT resources for a given workload to minimise costs, but it also allows them to perform upgrades on different resources independently as needed.

Security professionals hungry for recognition, 36% feel lack of acknowledgement, finds Trellix

Trellix, conducted new research into the talent shortage afflicting the cybersecurity industry. Among the key findings, 85% of those surveyed believe the workforce shortage is impacting their organizations’ abilities to secure increasingly complex information systems and networks. Of the current workforce, 30% plan to change professions in the future.

Cybersecurity is Soulful Work. The survey found the vast majority 94% believe the role of those working in cybersecurity is greater now than ever before and a similar amount 92% report cybersecurity as purposeful, soulful work that motivates them. However, cybersecurity professionals are hungry for recognition, with 36% noting they feel a lack of acknowledgement for the good done for society. Of those looking to leave the field, 12% say it is due to lack of feeling appreciated. The survey discovered:

l More than half 52% report working within cybersecurity because it’s progressive, evolving and they enjoy exploring challenging new trends.

l 41% report cybersecurity is continuously growing in relevancy and roles will always be accessible as a reason for staying in the profession.

l Around one in five 19% note they value doing something to help society for the greater good.

More Education is Needed. As threats from nation-state actors and cybercriminals grow in volume and sophistication, the worldwide shortage of cybersecurity professionals grows as well. While some countries like Russia and China invest deeply in nurturing cybersecurity talent through state-funded education, many nations are without dedicated programs. Trellix sought to understand education levels and found over half 56% believe that degrees aren’t needed for a successful career in cybersecurity. The survey also found:

l Support for development of skills 85% and the pursuit of certifications 80% were selected as highly or extremely important factors for the industry to expand the workforce.

Acceleration of hybrid IT increasing network complexity reports SolarWinds in Annual Trends Report 2022

SolarWinds released findings of its ninth annual IT Trends Report today. This year’s report, The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2022—Getting IT Right: Managing Hybrid IT Complexity, examines the acceleration of digital transformation efforts and its impact on IT departments. The report found the acceleration of hybrid IT has increased network complexity for most organizations and caused several worrisome challenges for IT professionals. Hybrid and remote work have amplified the impact of distributed and complex IT environments. Running workloads and applications across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure can be challenging, and many organizations are increasingly experiencing—and ultimately hindered by—these pain points.

According to a report by IDC, as more and more mission-critical workloads move to connected cloud architectures that span public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, enterprises recognize they need to invest in the tools that will help them ensure consistent policies and performance across all platforms and end users. However, they simultaneously face challenges such as budget, time constraints, and barriers to implementing observability as a strategy to keep pace with hybrid IT realities.

l Employers could be doing more to encourage community mentoring programs with a presence in K-12 schools 94%.

l Areas most likely to attract people to cybersecurity included efforts to promote the soulfulness of cybersecurity careers 43%, encouragement of STEM students considering cybersecurity careers 41%, and more financial support for students in cybersecurity career paths 39%.

BRYAN PALMA CEO, Trellix.

Bourne

A new study from Salesforce and Vanson Bourne reveals business demand for automation has surged and now spans multiple departments in a bid to accelerate efficiency and productivity due to macroeconomic uncertainty. However, existing technology architectures are slowing progress, and 80% of organizations are concerned supporting automation is likely to compound technical debt. Automation done right can fuel efficient growth. By tapping into the combination of integration and API management, however, companies are successfully scaling automation and reaping the benefits.

With macroeconomic uncertainty — across markets, hiring, costs, and more — now firmly top of mind, CEOs and leaders across the business are focused on efficient growth, cost savings, and increased productivity. As a result, companies are turning to automation more

than ever to drive immediate value across all parts of the business, from technical to nontechnical departments like sales, customer service, marketing and commerce.

To understand how IT is approaching these demands and some of the challenges they face, Salesforce commissioned a global survey of 600 CIOs and IT decision makers.

AUTOMATION, YES BUT NOT AT ANY COST

The vast majority 91% of respondents report that demand for automation from business teams has increased over the last two years. Looking in more detail, the highest demand for automation came from four departments:

l Research and development 39%

l Administrative, operations 38%

l Customer service 33%

l Marketing 26%

Humans rather than technology represent greatest risk says Lance Spitzner SANS Security Awareness Director

With an unprecedented number of employees now working in hybrid or fully remote environments, compounded by an increase in cyber threats and a more overwhelmed, COVID-19 information fatigued workforce, there has never been a more critical time to effectively create and maintain a cyber-secure workforce and an engaged security culture.

After analysing the data of more than 1,000 security awareness professionals worldwide, SANS Security Awareness, the global leader in providing security awareness training, has released its seventh annual SANS Security Awareness Report. The 2022 report establishes updated global benchmarks for how organizations manage their human risk and provides actionable steps to making improvements with key metrics in the Security Awareness Maturity Model Indicators Matrix to measure progress.

KEY FINDINGS:

l Workforce: More than 69% of security awareness professionals are spending less than half their time on security awareness. The data shows that security awareness responsibilities are very commonly assigned to staff with highly technical backgrounds who may lack the skills needed to effectively engage their workforce in simple-to-understand terms.

l US Compensation: The average salary reported was $110,309 USD for security training professionals, an increase from 2021. However, those dedicated full-time to awareness were paid on average only $86,626, while those who are part-time averaged $117,584 – $30,000 difference. This difference is because people dedicated part-time to security awareness have

The survey also reveals that existing technology stacks are impacting the speed at which IT teams are able to meet automation demands from the business.

Nearly all 96% respondents said that modifying and rebuilding automations is a challenge as systems and business requirements change. In addition, 4 in 5 respondents said restructuring existing application and data landscapes to support automation would likely compound their organization’s technical debt.

“Organizations across every industry want to automate processes and customer experiences as quickly as possible. However, if they try to go fast with the wrong tools and techniques, they’ll actually impede true innovation,” said Matt McLarty, Global Field CTO and VP of the Digital Transformation Office, MuleSoft. “It’s vital that organizations become more adaptable to technological change, enabling them to build automations and connect data and applications in a holistic manner. Without taking a more composable approach, organizations risk compounding rather than reducing their technical debt.”

their compensation based on their other responsibilities, which are usually more technically focused.

l Global Compensation: Security awareness professionals in Australia/New Zealand had the highest average annual compensation $121,236, while South America had the lowest $56,960. In North America, the higher the maturity level of an organization’s security awareness program, the higher the salary for the awareness professionals who work there.

80% organisations concerned automation likely to compound technical debt finds Salesforce,

Vanson

LANCE SPITZNER SANS Security Awareness Director and co-author of the SANS Security Awareness Report.

MATT MCLARTY Global Field CTO and VP of the Digital Transformation Office, MuleSoft.

Forrester finds OutSystems low-code platform paid for itself in less than 6 months with 506% ROI

OutSystems, announced the results of the new Total Economic Impact of OutSystems, a commissioned study from Forrester Consulting on behalf of OutSystems. The study reports that the OutSystems high-performance low-code platform paid for itself in less than six months and delivered a 506-percent return on investment over three years. These findings come on the heels of the Forrester Wave: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021 report recognizing OutSystems as a leader in low-code development platforms and the “developers’ choice” platform.

The Total Economic Impact of OutSystems examined the benefits achieved by four enterprise organisations that previously relied on traditional frameworks for software development before deploying OutSystems. While OutSystems serves companies of all sizes and industries, the study calculated the financial benefits based on a composite organisation, which represents the value achieved by the

organizations Forrester interviewed.

Overall, the study found significant quantifiable cost savings when comparing the time and expense of creating and maintaining internal custom software development versus deploying the OutSystems platform. The analysis revealed a net present value for OutSystems of $14.77 million over three years by calculating the platform’s financial benefits versus costs. This included:

l $5.5 million in cost savings for application development as well as continuous changes and maintenance 31% of total benefits

l $4.6 million in incremental income from revenue-generating business initiatives 26% of total benefits

l $6.7 million in cost savings from improved operational efficiency 38% of total benefits

The study showed that OutSystems improved developer productivity by enabling teams to deliver more applications with the same

Nutanix finds financial services trailing global average by 10% in multi-cloud adoption

Nutanix announced the financial services findings of its global 2022 Enterprise Cloud Index ECI survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption in the industry. The research showed that fewer financial services organizations have adopted multicloud than any other industry surveyed, trailing the global average by 10%. However, adoption is expected to nearly double from 26% to 56% in the next three years, in line with the global trend of evolving to a multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds.

Among financial services ECI respondents, 31% are still operating non-cloud-enabled three-tier datacentres as their only IT infrastructure. They also reported having the lowest deployment of all industries surveyed in public cloud usage, with 59% using no public cloud

number of developers and deliver applications in a shorter time frame. Customer findings also revealed that OutSystems simplifies the ongoing maintenance of and changes to those applications, which can make a major impact on the bottom line. A director of software engineering and technology initiatives at a pharmaceutical company noted that OutSystems projects were 25% to 50% less expensive than comparable prior projects, while a director of custom development projects at a manufacturer reported a 2x development time savings in the first year.

services compared to 47% globally, likely due to substantial existing legacy investments in applications and the highly regulated nature of the industry.

The complexity of managing across cloud borders remains a major challenge for financial services organizations, with 84% of respondents agreeing that success requires simpler management across multicloud infrastructures, and 50% citing security concerns as a challenge to the multicloud model. To address top challenges related to security, interoperability, and data integration, 82% agree that a hybrid multicloud model, an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between, is ideal.

Financial services survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges, how they’re running business and missioncritical applications now, and where they plan to run them in the future. Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent, current, and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it.

PAULO ROSADO CEO of OutSystems.

OMAR MALAEB Regional Sales Manager, Enterprise at Nutanix.

CONSOLIDATING WEB APPLICATIONS TO Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait

BOOST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The enterprise needed to improve its digital presence, because the custom web portal, native mobile apps, website, all used different platforms.

The largest insurance company in Kuwait, Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait offers insurance products and services to different sectors including automotive, marine and aviation, property and accident, engineering and obviously life and health insurances. In cooperation with major international insurance companies, Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait strives to meet the needs of their customers.

Since it interacted with multiple partners and customers, the legacy application stack was a core insurance application with database level functions exposed for consumption by multiple web applications which were .net based. There was no central user, customer repository, and three separate and independent web applications were developed based on their customer requirements. They also had IoS and Android apps available which were functioning independently and not linked with other web applications.

Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait needed to improve their digital presence, in part because their custom-built web portal, native mobile applications, and website, all used different platforms.

The lack of consolidation contributed to numerous problems including:

Delayed time to market

Developing and publishing changes and updates for so many platforms cost Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait time and valuable additional resources.

Limited online functionality

The team did not have the bandwidth or platform capability to make more than a few products available online. Additionally, the customer portal had no claim submission or endorsement option.

DINA TAREK Customer Success Manager, Liferay Middle East.

medical insurance application and life insur-

The new stack was seamlessly integrated with Gulf Insurance Group’s customer care system to give a holistic view of customers interactions with Gulf Insurance Group and to best serve and resolve customer queries and concerns. A service layer was created in Liferay server to service all types of insurance products from a single and secure repository.

Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait benefited from the implementation in the following ways that led to business and IT efficiencies:

entralised content management reduced to time required to add, update contents on multiple channels.

odification of rates, adding discounts was added as additional feature instead of change requests and additional coding.

educed maintenance cost and efforts down to 30% as IT’s job was eased to manage only DXP from Liferay instead of 5 different apps, that is 3 web and 2 on

SNAPSHOT

l Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait needed to improve their digital presence, because their applications used different platforms.

l With the assistance of Liferay Platinum partner, DPS Kuwait, the implementation went live in four phases.

l The unified solution is able to integrate with core insurance applications and other key technologies.

l A ser vice layer was created in Liferay server to service all types of insurance products from a single and secure repository.

l Post implementation, the end user has become the first insurance company in the region to issue multiple insurance policies online.

l Time to market and TCO decreased not only because of streamlined quote functionality using Liferay’s Form feature.

l Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait plans to create a B2B portal for corporate customers under Liferay’s recommendation.

Business benefits

l Improved time to market after product changes. Quicker responses to customer queries.

l Improved customer satisfaction due to a single repository of customers information and history of different products.

l Reduced physical footsteps on Gulf Insurance Group premises due to improved processing of online claims submission and disbursement.

l Significantly increased revenue for Motor department with the online availability of comprehensive motor insurance products. Going through a step-by-step customer journey, users can now leverage the solution to purchase a new insurance policy or, for a more complex need, request a quote. With Liferay DXP, Gulf Insurance GroupKuwait has become the first insurance company in the region to issue multiple insurance policies online and provide an online health claims approval system.

Since implementing their Liferay solution, Gulf Insurance GroupKuwait has experienced the following benefits:

30% customer increase

Because of new online features like single sign-on, claim submission, and

endorsement capabilities, the overall customer base has increased, with digital engagement also improving.

Adaptability during challenging times

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that physical offices and branches had to close, but Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait was able to make 100% of their insurance products available digitally to continue serving customers.

Reduced time to market and TCO

Time to market and total cost of ownership decreased not only because of the new unifying solution and the ease of identifying process bottlenecks, but also because of streamlined quote functionality using Liferay’s Form feature.

Building off from the success of Liferay’s implementation of DXP, Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait plans to create a B2B portal for corporate customers under Liferay’s recommendation. The B2B portal will allow branches, brokers, and agents to issue policies directly via Liferay instead of using complex core insurance applications. Adding this solution will support Gulf Insurance Group-Kuwait as they continue to provide highquality products and services to their customers. ë

WHAT IS DRIVING RANSOMWARE AND WHAT YOU CAN DO!

We all know ransomware attacks pose a serious - sometimes even fatal - threat to businesses. Big name attacks have dominated headlines, but the scale and depth of the problem is perhaps less clear to some.

In a major survey of 2,200 IT decisionmakers, CrowdStrike discovered that more businesses than ever - 32% of all those surveyed - were attacked multiple times in 2021 alone, with a further 25% having been attacked just once in the same period. Only 23% said they have not yet experienced a ransomware attack. This untouched proportion is down a massive 10% since the same questions were asked in 2020.

Industry pundits are often quick to blame Covid-19 - emergency changes to protocols, ungoverned devices and remote working - for the ransomware crime wave. That made sense 12 months ago, comparing 2020 with 2019 and indeed bore some responsibility for the cyber-crimewave in that period. But the difference in working conditions between 2020 and 2021 were relatively small. One would expect businesses to have achieved some maturity in dealing with remote connections and offsite security.

In fact, the pandemic did provide an opportunity for cybercriminals to grow in experience and sophistication. That growth has led to continued confidence and development in criminals’ tradecraft moving forward. Thus, acceleration in cybercrime has become decoupled from the pandemic, having achieved its initial boost. Meanwhile, organisations have frequently failed to catch-up, and the range of threats has expanded.

This increased confidence is reflected in the size of the ransoms asked, which has increased by 63% in a single year to an average of $1.79 million, according to the survey. Similarly, the likelihood of multiple attacks against the same targets has increased, either through separate breaches, or further extortion attempts beyond the initial ransom.

Paying up the ransom might sometimes seem the only available option: but it is almost always the wrong choice - 96% of organisations that pay an initial ransom are extorted for further sums equating to $792,493 each, on average. New forms of attack - particularly those conducted through third-party software and its components - supply chain attacks - have become more and more prevalent, thanks to the efficacy with which it has often managed to side-step conventional defences.

So how should businesses respond in this ever-bleaker threat landscape?

The first part of the response should be a reassessment of the company’s technology armoury. Old school, signature-based antivirus applications have not been a viable countermeasure for some time. It is entirely ineffective against the targeted, malware-free types of attack that have become most prevalent in recent years.

Next-generation tools will still detect these types of attacks, but the focus has moved on to detecting characteristics, behaviours and mining vast amounts of data in the cloud for anomalies and spreading events.

Alongside endpoint detection and response tools, organisations need to deploy a suite of connected tools that complement these and fill in the gaps in their capabilities. We know, for example, that many attacks begin with legitimate, but stolen, credentials and are undetectable as hostile using conventional means. Thus, authorisation based on usernames and passwords are inherently suspect.

People-driven policies are still vital to surviving attacks, passwords need to be safe and secured, devices need to be physically secured.

Truly vital alerts need urgent action from a human administrator

Companies should thus be investing in MFA and taking this further with Zero Trust architectures and solutions. Every user and agent on the network remains under scrutiny even after initial authentication. A bad actor with stolen passwords might lie low for months after gaining access, but systems need to be ready to react immediately when they break cover.

Similarly, endpoint detection and response needs to be extended to cover everything that is not an endpoint - cloud servers, connected printers and screens, mobile devices and so forth. This calls for both cloud-specific security solutions and an implementation of eXtended Detection and Response XDR. But these added technologies need to work together. A plethora of notifications and reports from different solutions will not improve an organisations’ security posture, but rather compromise it because it becomes too hard to see the one, truly vital

alert that needs urgent action from a human administrator.

And finally, speaking of humans, we should never disregard their importance in maintaining cybersecurity and creating resilience in organisations. The current state of advanced cybersecurity technology is largely very good, and considerable automation is available. But, even as a technology supplier, we are honourbound to say over-reliance on technology is always a mistake.

But the survey shows organisations are becoming slower to respond to threats than has historically been the case. It seems that this over-reliance on technology, creating an expectation that nothing bad will happen, is to blame here - but it is turning serious security issues and events, which should be manageable, into full-blown crises.

Trained and experienced people still under-

pin everything. On the vendor side, human experts continually feed and refine artificial intelligence models, conduct threat intelligence analysis, respond in person to events and test systems for their vulnerabilities. At organisations, people-driven policies and processes are still vital to avoiding and surviving attacks: passwords need to be safe and secured; devices need to be physically secured; disaster response and recovery need to be tested rigorously, emulating the conditions likely after an attack.

While cybercrime has evolved and become stronger, so have our range of defences: but the full range of security and resiliency practices need to be rigorously and proactively implemented by organisations for it to be effective. ë

ROLAND DACCACHE Systems Engineer Manager META, CrowdStrike.

96% of organisations that pay an initial ransom are extorted for further sums equating to $792,493 on average

TOP TRENDS IN MANAGING DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR AI

Gartner

Adaptive artificial intelligence systems, data sharing, and data fabrics are among the trends that data and analytics leaders need to build on to drive new growth, resilience and innovation.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added a geopolitical crisis to the enduring global pandemic and managing consequent and persistent uncertainty and volatility will be a key focus for data and analytics leaders this year.

Now is the time to anticipate, adapt and scale the value of your data and analytics strategy by monitoring, experimenting with or aggressively investing in key data and analytics technology trends based on their urgency and alignment to business priorities.

This year’s trends in data and analytics relate to three imperatives:

l Activate diversity and dynamism. Use adaptive artificial intelligence systems to drive growth and innovation while coping with fluctuations in global markets.

l Augment people and decisions to deliver enriched, context-driven analytics created from modular components by the business.

l Institutionalise trust to achieve value from data and analytics at scale. Manage artificial intelligence risk and enact connected governance across distributed systems, edge environments and emerging ecosystems.

Gartner has identified data and analytics trends that represent business, market

and technology dynamics that enterprises cannot afford to ignore. These trends also help prioritise investments to drive new growth, efficiency, resilience and innovation.

Adaptive artificial intelligence systems

As decisions become more connected, contextual and continuous, it’s increasingly important to reengineer decision making. You can do so by using adaptive artificial intelligence systems, which can offer faster and flexible decisions by adapting more quickly to changes. However, to build and manage adaptive artificial intelligence systems, adopt artificial intelligence engineering practices. artificial intelligence engineering orchestrates and optimises applications to adapt to, resist or absorb disruptions, facilitating the management of adaptive systems.

Data-centric artificial intelligence

Many organisations attempt to tackle artificial intelligence without considering artificial intelligence-specific data management issues. Without the right data, building artificial intelligence is risky and possibly dangerous. As such, it is critical to formalise data-centric artificial intelligence and artificial intelligencecentric data. They address data bias, diversity and labelling in a more systematic way as part of your data management strategy — including, for example, using data fabric in automated data integration and active metadata management.

at

Always share data

While data and analytics leaders often acknowledge that data sharing is a key digital transformation capability, they lack the know-how to share data at scale and with trust. To succeed in promoting data sharing and increasing access to the right data aligned to the business case, collaborate across business and industry lines. Consider adopting data fabric design to enable a single architecture for data sharing across heterogeneous internal and external data sources.

Context-enriched analysis

Context-enriched analysis builds on graph technologies. The information on the user’s context and needs is held in a graph that enables deeper analysis using the relationships between data points as much as the data points

Institutionalise trust to achieve value from data and analytics

scale

has identified data and analytics trends that represent business, market and technology dynamics that enterprises cannot afford to ignore.

themselves. It helps identify and create further context based on similarities, constraints, paths and communities. By 2025, context-driven analytics and artificial intelligence models will replace 60% of existing models built on traditional data.

Business-composed data and analytics

Business-composed data and analytics builds on this trend, but the focus is on the people side, shifting from IT to business. Businesscomposed data and analytics enables the business users or business technologists to collaboratively craft business-driven data and analytics capabilities.

Decision-centric data and analytics

The discipline of decision intelligence, which is careful consideration of how decisions should be made, is causing organisations to rethink their investments in data and analytics capabilities. Use decision intelligence disciplines to design the best decision, and then deliver the required inputs.

Skills and literacy shortfall

data and analytics leaders need talent on their team to drive measurable outcomes. However, virtual workplaces and the heightened competition for talent have increased the lack of data literacy — the ability to read, write and communicate data in context — within the workforce.

As the cost of investing in data literacy and employee upskilling is constantly rising, start inserting claw-back or payback clauses into contracts with new hires to recover costs in the event that an employee departs your organisation.

Connected governance

Organisations need effective governance at all levels that not only addresses their existing operational challenges, but is also flexible, scalable and highly responsive to changing

market dynamics and strategic organisational challenges.

Artificial intelligence risk management

If organisations spend time and resources on supporting artificial intelligence trust, risk and security management, they will see improved artificial intelligence outcomes in terms of adoption, achieved business goals and both internal and external user acceptance. Gartner expects far fewer artificial intelligence failures, including incomplete artificial intelligence projects, and a reduction in unintended or negative outcomes.

Expansion to the edge

More data and analytics activities are executed in distributed devices, servers or gateways located outside data centres and public cloud infrastructure. They increasingly reside in edge computing environments, closer to where the data and decisions of interest are created and executed.

Gartner analysts estimate that by 2025, more than 50% of enterprise-critical data will be created and processed outside the data centre or cloud. ë

RITA SALLAM

Distinguished

VP Analyst, Gartner.

As such, it is critical to formalise data-centric artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence-centric data

Without the right data, building artificial intelligence is risky and possibly dangerous

THE CHALLENGE OF DIGITAL DEBT AND SHADOW IT

A report from Deloitte estimated UAE public sector’s digital debt to be $2 Billion, with low virtualisation, end-of-support hardware, scarcity of integration.

Agility and flexibility have become the golden operational principles for many organisations. They certainly help to get the job done, especially in IT, but they also could induce poor decision-making, with teams focusing more on short-term fixes that offer quick results rather than pursuing a cohesive digital strategy.

With time, this could create an inefficient build-up of solutions, often too costly to change or even update, with a hidden, negative impact on the overall business. This is the essence of digital debt, a concept that describes the real cost of shortcuts in software development and infrastructure rollouts.

Digital debt is not a new problem. It has been a challenge for some time, but the pandemic has exacerbated it by forcing an overnight move to the cloud and adding complexity. A pre-pandemic report from Deloitte estimated the UAE public sector’s digital debt to be at least $2 billion, citing low virtualisation ratios, a high incidence of end-of-support hardware, and a scarcity of integration options that impacted scalability and reuse.

A similar but distinct trend emerges when looking at the single end-users. Under pressure to deliver results or unable to get timely support from overloaded IT teams, end users may try to find solutions by themselves, for example using cloud solutions to automate

tasks, installing smartphone apps to collaborate with colleagues while on the road, or leveraging online platforms to speed up debugging.

All these solutions create the so-called shadow IT since they are unknown to the company IT teams. Most of these services are provided by reputable companies but there could be incompatibility issues unknown to the users.

And there’s more. Both digital debt and shadow IT can become particularly insidious when the person who implemented a quick fix or autonomously installed a solution moves to another organisation without informing anyone about those tools or leaving any documentation.

Digital debt and shadow IT on their own are problematic enough, but together they constitute a considerable risk to the business, as ageing legacy stacks – with a lack of transparency, automation, and integration – combined with the absence of IT oversight drastically increase the attack surface.

It is clear, then, that IT departments must think strategically, shifting from point solutions to feature-rich technologies that grow with the business, enhance worker productivity, and add value over time.

Remote and hybrid work

Cloud tools and services are necessary to support daily work in remote and hybrid environments, and some of these will be new to employees. When the pandemic struck, many knowledge workers found themselves working from home for the first time and many were

unprepared for the change. To adapt, they used unvetted tools such as SMS messages and they shared data in ways that were not inherently secure. Compromising these users is easy and can lead to significant damage if they have privileged access to sensitive applications and data. Attackers can use such accounts to elevate their privileges or exfiltrate critical information.

Unmanaged browsers

Internet browsers are often used to run apps or gain access to sensitive elements of the environment. Problems arise if these browsers are not managed by the organisation itself. Browsers commonly store login credentials and other sensitive data, and attackers could easily conceal malicious code in a browser extension to gain access to critical information and systems.

Most of these services are provided by reputable companies but there could be incompatibility issues unknown to users

Productivity apps

While working from home, users may install third-party productivity apps to supercharge their daily output. Even if they are from a known company, they may not have critical security controls or be updated as frequently as mandated by company policy. Additionally, apps may store company data in unencrypted formats and in repositories that are unknown to users.

Fast production cycles

No matter the industry or business, DevOps teams are in a race to release the next great iterations in digital experiences. Whether for customers or for employees, these updates are rushed to production status and security is traded in for speed. This leads to shortcuts and more shadow IT. Coders may, for example, establish instances in the cloud that are allowed to disappear without due regard for the data

they create or copy. This data may live on in the cloud environment, hidden from IT and security teams.

Policy to the rescue

Employees under pressure to make deadlines will find a way to deliver. If they do not have the tools, they believe best fit their purposes, they will go looking for a workaround and it is tempting to provide them with a quick fix. It is therefore incumbent upon IT teams to provide employees with secure tools that allow them to get things done and are also compliant with long-term plans.

IT departments should also start using security tools that can reliably detect suspicious applications, both during initial clean-up and during subsequent monitoring. Such tools will also identify, and display passwords stored in browsers.

Policies about installation and use of

applications should also provide tools that enable automatic checks on the apps users want to use, comparing them with lists of trusted and suspicious solutions, rather than imposing a long authorisation process. These tools could also quarantine untrusted downloads into sandboxes for further study before they are cleared for use.

IT leaders can greatly help reduce shadow IT and technical debt, by taking a holistic, longterm approach to security and collaborating with all other business units to identify the best possible balance between protection and productivity. Only then organisations will see shadows fading away. ë

JOSEPH CARSON Chief Security Scientist and Advisory CISO at Delinea.

This could create an inefficient build-up of solutions, often too costly to change or even update

What’s trending

Kerry Koutsikos moves from Automation Anywhere to join Infor as GM and VP for MEA

Infor has appointed Kerry Koutsikos as vice president and general manager for the Middle East and Africa region. Koutsikos will drive Infor’s business growth and strategy in the region and ensure customer success through agile delivery of Infor’s industry-specific cloud solutions.

Koutsikos brings more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry, including almost 25 years in the UAE where he has been responsible for opening and growing regional operations for several multinationals, including Micromuse, Amdocs, and Nuance. More recently, he was the area vice president at Qlik covering emerging markets of EMEA and later VP of sales at Automation Anywhere.

Koutsikos began his career as solutions engineer with Computer Associates in Sydney, Australia, focusing on the APAC region. He later joined BMC Software looking after sales in APAC before relocating to Italy to run the company’s channels in Southern EMEA. He then moved to the UAE to oversee BMC Software’s MEA expansion, opening the firm’s offices in Dubai and Johannesburg.

Koutsikos has broad business knowledge and skills encompassing areas including developing corporate strategies, financial planning, operational optimisation, sales and marketing, and new market penetration. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Koutsikos has a bachelor’s degree in business computing from the University of New South Wales, and a master’s in international business from the University of Cumbria.

OutSystems, announced the appointment of technology industry veteran Mark Quigley as its new Chief People Officer. He will lead HR and change management strategy for the OutSystems team, which consists of more than 1,700 employees serving customers in 87 countries across 13 offices and a growing global, hybrid workforce.

Quigley is a seasoned enterprise-technology executive who has spent more than 20 years guiding organisations through rapid growth and transformation. He has held leadership positions at EMC, Nuance, Acoustic, and PTC. In various leadership roles over two decades at EMC, Quigley was SVP of HR, where he led talent acquisition, and leadership and employee development. Quigley also served as the Executive Sponsor for the company’s diversity and women leadership forums.

Mohammad Alrehaili moves from Mobily to join HPE as MD for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait

Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, announced the appointment of Patricia Murphy to the position of VP Ecosystems, Partners and Strategic Alliances for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Latin America. In this role, Murphy will lead Palo Alto Networks’ Ecosystem organisation for EMEA and LATAM, and serve as a key member of EMEA & LATAM CEO Helmut Reisinger’s executive team.

Bringing over 25 years of experience in the technology industry, Murphy will focus on driving consistent engagement with partners including MSSPs, enhancing Palo Alto Networks’ representation of these key partners and ensuring a diverse and high-performing ecosystem. Murphy joins from Apple in France, where she held the position of Executive Managing Director Enterprise. During her tenure, Murphy successfully steered Apple France into a digital transformation partner with a focused approach on developing a strategic ecosystem of VARs, SPs, SIs and MSPs.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that Mohammad Alrehaili has been appointed as Managing Director of HPE in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, including Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. He will start with immediate effect and will work across HPE’s offices in the Kingdom. Under his direction, HPE will enable customers in the region to accelerate outcomes and unlock value from their data, while leveraging cloud-like flexibility with optimised edge-to-cloud solutions.

An accomplished Information and Communication Technology expert, Mohammad brings over 15 years of experience working in the technology industry in both the public and private sectors. He joins from Mobily, where he served as a Senior Vice President for Business Sales and was responsible for leading a major transformative sales strategy across government, private, and SME sectors in the Kingdom, successfully growing Mobily’s B2B sales unit.

Prior to this, he worked at Cisco Systems in Riyadh, where he has held several roles including channel sales and business development for Saudi Arabia, Gulf, LEVANT, and Turkey markets.

Mohammad’s priority is to raise HPE’s profile by addressing the requirements of the region and spearheading this next phase of growth from infrastructure services to hybrid and multi-cloud services in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

After two decades at EMC, Mark Quigley moves to OutSystems as Chief People Officer

Patricia Murphy moves from Apple France to Palo Alto as VP Ecosystems, Partners, Alliances

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