EC-MEA October 2022

TAMER ODEH Regional Sales Director SentinelOne

DATA INTEGRATING DEVICES NETWORKS

Aruba and Zebra have built intelligent agents and interoperable OS to leverage accuracy of access points and networking data producing business insights.

JACOB CHACKO Regional Director Middle East and South Africa Aruba, HPE

HOZEFA SAYLAWALA Director of Sales Middle East Zebra

ARUBA, ZEBRA

Industry’s top digital solution vendors

n this month’s special feature, we present Enterprise Channels’ selection of Top 20 vendor companies. For each of these vendors, cloud, automation, artificial intelligence, security, data are an integral part of their digital solutions. In addition, every one of these vendors is committed to accelerate, enable, transform, the digital business of their end user enterprises.

Their solutions vary from powering up the front office with unprecedented customer experiences, accelerating and enabling the middle office dissolving silos, and building robustness, reliability, availability for the back office and datacentres.

These solutions mark the early days of digital transformation platforms for business and every day promises more innovation and more effective solutions for customers and

The solutions and top executives of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Dataiku, Dell Technologies, du, Equinix, Freshworks, HPE, Infor, Intel, ManageEngine, NetApp, Pure Storage, Red Hat, Riverbed, SAP, ServiceNow, Software AG, Trellix, Veritas, VMware, amongst others are driving digital transformation and innovation in the region.

In other lead features in this month’s Gitex 2022 special we look at how SentinelOne is expanding its solutions portfolio to prevent identity theft inside an enterprise, a CISO’s worst nightmare as threat actors laterally traverse the network unnoticed and unchallenged, looking for their next foothold. And how Zebra and Aruba are interoperating their solutions to build network intelligence and location positioning reducing the mean time metrics to identify, respond and repair.

Just like everyone in the industry, we look forward to an exhilarating Gitex 2022. Happy business returns and networking in October. ë

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WILL LINUX-BASED OS BE PART OF FUTURE VEHICLES?

Workloads are being consolidated, with edge systems replacing embedded systems and the change is coming from the open source sector.

Open source software and Linux platforms will gain in importance in the car. A central Linux operating system that has all the necessary safety-relevant certifications can be a central component of the modern vehicle. A key point here is that the traditionally discrete computing systems in vehicles are becoming increasingly integrated. This means that the various workloads are being consolidated, with edge systems replacing embedded systems. The ideas driving this change come from the open source sector.

The question is: Will Linux-based operating systems also be part of this future, especially with regard to existing standards for functional safety? The answer is clearly yes, as many initiatives and developments are already moving in this direction.

Vehicles are increasingly becoming mobile data centres with advanced driver assistance and infotainment systems. Development is also moving in the direction of highly automated and autonomous driving. In these changes, the underlying operating system plays a fundamental role in the emerging software stack.

Current automotive software is based on proprietary, functionally limited and rather slow components that minimise potential risks and errors. These solution approaches no longer meet the new requirements. This includes vehicle systems that offer real-time data processing and high computing power. This is the only way OEMs can meet new challenges in terms of connectivity, mobility as a service, or automated and autonomous driving.

The alternative to previous concepts is a Linux operating system certified for functional safety and specially designed for the automotive sector. It brings more flexibility to the automotive software ecosystem and enables vehicle manufacturers and their partners to focus on innovative applications, services and functionalities around the car of the future.

A Linux-based operating system in the vehicle must meet the following requirements in particular: workload orchestration, secure process isolation, regular updating and certification for functional safety.

The ELISA Enabling Linux in Safety Applications project addresses the challenges around the development and certification of safety-critical applications and systems.

This involves defining processes, tools and components that can be integrated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems in order to obtain safety certification. A central focus is also on software solutions for use in the automotive sector.

The ISO 26262 standard relates to the functional safety of a system with electrical and electronic components in motor vehicles. An implementation of the standard is relevant, for example, for electronic control units

ECUs. Complex systems such as Linux, however, are not covered by the standard so far. This includes open source applications such as a Linux operating system.

Modern cars offer customers a completely new driving experience, from the in-vehicle safety and infotainment systems to the operation of the vehicle itself. This development does not change the high requirements in terms of reliability and functional safety.

Such criteria have always been of critical importance to Red Hat. After all, the company provides solutions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux for security-critical workloads. The solutions already support a wide range of critical applications: from hospital information systems to global financial networks. The company’s stated goal is now to bring its expertise and the capabilities of its enterprise Linux platform to the automotive industry in the form of the first Linux-based, end-to-end certified operating system for automobiles. ë

HARALD RUCKRIEGEL Automotive Vertical Chief Technologist, EMEA, Red Hat.

Automotive software is based on proprietary, limited, slow components that minimise potential risks and errors

PROTECTING SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES FROM CYBER ONSLAUGHT

A key objective for public sector infrastructure is developing a cyber resilience strategy that can anticipate and quickly recover from significant disruption.

Cybercrime is showing no signs of slowing down, posing risks across all aspects of society. According to the WEF Global Cybersecurity Outlook report 2022, last year ransomware attacks were up 150% and more than 80% of experts say this growth is now threatening public safety.

These statistics demonstrate the gravity and prevalence of cybercrime today. The question is, as we focus on global recovery, and a new era of economic growth, how do we protect against cyber threats?

In recent months we have seen an unprecedented policy focus on the threat of cyberattacks and digital resilience though prominence in WEF’s Global Risk Report for 2022, and the G7 communique that saw a formal agreement for governments to work together to share expertise and minimise cyber risks.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises are the backbone of local economies and yet are highly at risk. SMEs are seen as a key facet to trade and logistics, partner networks, and digital ecosystems, however, increasingly find themselves the target of cyberattacks.

Research shows that 43% of cyberattacks are made against small businesses, up from 18% just a few years ago. Significantly, recent WEF reports indicate that 88% of respondents are concerned about the cyber resilience of SMEs in their ecosystem.

It is essential that we work to support and protect such businesses, particularly as we look to build more resilient, balanced societies. SMEs, unlike other businesses, often require and are entitled to greater government support and nurture. Helping these smaller organisations protect themselves against the ever-growing cybersecurity threat must be a priority for public sector recovery strategists, in the months and years ahead.

It is now more important than ever that public sector infrastructure empowers business resilience to help identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from a cyberattack. But even with strong cyber defences in place, it’s impossible for companies to avoid all cyber disasters and their resultant, adverse impacts upon data, privacy, and trust.

Therefore, another key objective should be developing a cyber resilience strategy that can anticipate and quickly recover from significant disruption. The real test should be how quickly and seamlessly organisations can return to business as usual.

One essential component of such resilience is to create and implement thorough cybersecurity training exercises amongst workforces. This not only prepares employees to identify security risks and lures, but also heightens awareness and reinforces the need for teamwork, skills, and collaboration across the whole organisation.

Cybersecurity should be at the forefront of public sector and business

MICHEL NADER Senior Regional Director, Data Protection and Cyber Recovery Solutions META, Dell Technologies.

leaders’ minds. A comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that works in alignment between governments and industry is a key component to recovery for businesses, national economies, and citizens around the world.

Cybersecurity is more than just an insurance policy against attacks. Cyber resilience, if implemented effectively, can help turbocharge long-term economic prosperity and innovation, and provide the digital defences crucial to our modern world.

In order to deliver on globally ambitious designs of digital inclusion, sustainability, improved health outcomes, defence, and much more for the economies of tomorrow; cyber resiliency is a key building block and enabler.

The adverse financial impacts involved with cybercrime are seismic, and unsustainable for economies to absorb long-term. It’s no secret that advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and IoT are the key building blocks for future progress, but perhaps ironically, it’s these same technologies that can present new opportunities for cyber criminals. The ultimate challenge will be securing such technologies and enabling more resilient, long-term solutions to the threats posed by cyber criminals. Economic rebalancing will only be equitable if these tools are accessible to all organisations and businesses. To make this vision a reality, the need for collaboration and support between the public and private sectors has never been more vital.

SME Cyber support vital for wider economy ë

The real test should be how quickly and seamlessly organisations can return to business as usual

Gitex 2022 gathers world’s leaders to collaborate in Web 3.0 economy

Dubai will transform into the ultimate digital epicentre of the world next month, as the UAE hosts the world’s largest technology show, converging the most advanced companies and best minds to deep dive into the making of the Web 3.0 economy.

From 10-14 October 2022 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, Gitex returns, featuring 5,000 companies spanning 26 halls and two million sq. ft of exhibition space, at an extraordinary 25 percent year-on-year increase, pushing its capacity limit at the venue.

XPENG, a leading technology company and EV manufacturer that designs, develops, manufactures and markets intelligent mobility solutions, has chosen Gitex 2022 to host an exclusive world’s first public flight of its pioneering eVTOL flying car X2 with the support of official partner, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

The avantgarde two-seater eVTOL flying car X2 is equipped with an intelligent flight control system and autonomous flight capabilities and is the latest generation of flying cars developed independently by XPENG’s affiliate XPENG AEROHT.

Dr Brian Gu, Vice Chairman and President of XPENG, said the X2 produces zero carbon dioxide emissions during flight, and is designed

with low-altitude city capabilities in mind, reaching a maximum flight speed of 130kms per hour.

The Gitex 3.0 edition features seven technology themes: North Star Dubai start-ups, Ai Everything, Future Blockchain Summit in association with VARA, Fintech Surge, Marketing Mania and two sell-out new launches of DevSlam and X-VERSE.

The five-day event’s record size and continued expansion mirrors the ambitions of the UAE and region’s digital transformation movement, as government initiatives such as the National Program for Coders, the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, and Next GenFDI propels the UAE to the forefront of the global digital economy.

This is amplified by new Gitex 2022 launches of X-VERSE sponsored by TMRW Foundation in collaboration with Decentraland, one of the world’s most immersive metaverse journeys featuring 28 experiential brands: and Global DevSlam, the Middle East’s largest ever coder and developer meetup, both of which sold-out to a global audience within two months.

UAE companies also held the lion’s share of a record-breaking $2.6 billion in start-up funding across the Middle East and North Africa in 2021, figures that underscore an additional hall

and 30 percent increase to 1,000 exhibitors at Gitex’s start-up event, North Star.

Gitex 2022 will welcome an unprecedented 52% new exhibitors this year choosing the show and the UAE as the first-choice partner in their market access strategies.

Technology Innovation Institute will have a significant presence at Gitex showcasing AI and Digital Science, Directed Energy, and Autonomous Robotics Research.

G42, a champion of AI and cloud technologies, will create a high-impact visitor experience showcasing powerful capabilities through its group of four companies.

e&, the region’s largest telecom operator is another prominent exhibitor.

The influx of global interest will see North Star hosting the biggest Unicorn meetup of the year in Dubai, with 35 Unicorns from 15 countries looking to explore new opportunities and expand in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.

The Africa Fast 100 programme presents the largest ever gathering of African start-ups to be hosted outside Africa, as the African technology companies have been touted as the next ones to watch by global investors.

Debut international exhibitors such as Binance, Ooku, AMD, Tencent, and ByteDance, are seeking to extend their brand reach to a global audience through Gitex, along with FTX Exchange, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a five million-plus global customer base and an average daily trading volume of US$12 billion.

Gitex unifies the participation of 250 government entities leading strategic digital projects and public-private partnerships, with Digital Dubai Authority and Abu Dhabi Digital Authority among the UAE government bodies advancing smart city and digital projects.

OPX America launches OPX Technology at BTX Road Show Asia in Delhi

On 16 September 2022, OPX America, a leading service provider with captive, private label business services that deliver from international delivery centres, launched OPX Technology at the BTX Road Show and Transformation Awards 2022 in New Delhi.

The launch event took place in the presence of Rajesh Samantaray, CoFounder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology; Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology; Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America, Ronak Samantaray, Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group and Sundip Sibal, Executive Director, GEC Media Group and Co-Founder, Business Transformation Asia.

OPX Technology also announced GEC Media Group as an official global marketing partner. OPX Technology is a global digital services and solutions provider, that enables its clients to transform at the intersect of domain expertise and emerging technologies to achieve real-world business impact.

Speaking at the event, Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology said, “OPX stands for Operational, Performance and Excellence. When I was working with large companies, we felt the need of being nimble, being fast and being focussed on some specific technologies. And we firmly believed to get operational, performance and excellence we will have to on the right side of technolo-

(Left to right) Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology; Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America; Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology; and Ronak Samantaray, Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group.

gies. And you know that is where we directed this company, which is focussed on cloud confirmation programs, cyber security, moving customers who have been in legacy ERP into cloud and getting the most out of data analytics, artificial intelligence. We have a bunch of data scientists who have been working on churning out data models.”

He added, “I have been on both sides. I think the key thing is how do you understand what the customer needs. You will always find a bunch of vendors, partners trying to push him that what they have. Then they are trying to map out like they have something that you need it. That is not how we are approaching it. We exactly know that we just need to solve problems. If you are able to solve problems for your customers, they will see you as a partner. In 18-19 years of my life, I have done that story my friend.”

Speaking on the new partnership, Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology said OPX Technology focuses on three core areas including cloud transformation, artificial intelligence and data security. OPX America is involved in all types of operations. They also provide processing services and business services as an extension for your company. OPX is offering services from small to mid-size businesses.

Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America said right now focusing on expansion in the new markets for the existing base. As we are expanded in our new market outside of the western India, we continue to look for the right people.

OPX Technology delivers its clients Operational Performance Excellence using innovative technologies to achieve transformational change – Faster, Intelligent, Effective and Secure. OPX Technology leads with its product engineering approach and leverages Cloud, Data, Integration and Automation technologies to transform client businesses into intelligent, high growth enterprises.

Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology.

Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America.

Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America.

SecureNet and Accedian launch Skylight Interceptor for network detection and response

On 22 September 2022, SecureNet and Accedian successfully launched Skylight Interceptor, the cloud-based Network Detection and Response solution at Conrad Dubai in Dubai. Skylight Interceptor is built on Accedian’s 17 years of experience in the network performance and analytics industry, managing the largest and most complex networks on the planet with precise, granular and contextual insight.

It will help major enterprises and service providers protect their networks by delivering prioritised, context-rich incidents that speed detection and response to security threats. It also enables organisations to identify the sophisticated zero-day threats that are often missed by traditional perimeter security solutions.

The launch event organised by GEC Media Group was joined by Saumya Tripathi, Business Development Manager, Cyber Security, SecureNet Distribution; Gerhard Auer, Vice President Sales, Accedian EMEA; Abhishek Hajra, Regional Director Middle East and Africa, Acce-

dian; Ramesh Reddy, Director, EMEA Solution Engineering, Accedian, as the speakers of the event and hosted by Gurleen Rooprai, Community Communications, GEC Media Group.

The SecureNet and Accedian team took the conversation ahead on “Bringing Converged Performance and Cybersecurity.”

Skylight Interceptor offers deep visibility into network traffic, capturing and correlating metadata from both north-south and east-west as it traverses the network, protecting from zero-day attacks that other security measures may miss. It also helps companies further extend their Zero Trust Architecture to include a vital new layer of contextual, real-time data integration. It adds a powerful new tool to enrich the speed and accuracy of their overall threat triage and evaluation process.

The last session included a short and interactive quiz session, where three attendees were awarded with a prize. The evening concluded with networking and dinner.

Gurleen Rooprai, Community Communications, GEC Media Group.

Saumya Tripathi, Business Development Manager, Cyber Security, SecureNet Distribution.

Gerhard Auer, Vice President Sales, Accedian EMEA.

Abhishek Hajra, Regional Director Middle East and Africa, Accedian.

Ramesh Reddy Director, EMEA Solution Engineering, Accedian.

CyberKnight partners with Owl Cyber Defense for hardware enforced protection of government

CyberKnight Technologies, announced a new partnership with Owl Cyber Defense, provider of hardware-enforced security solutions for military, intelligence and critical infrastructure organisations, strategically aimed at addressing cybersecurity threats impacting critical infrastructure and government ministries in the Middle East.

Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure providers globally are resulting in major disruptions to utilities and services, damage to equipment, or worse. Unfortunately, many systems within such organisations are dated and vulnerable, and restricted downtime means that patch windows are rare. To address these challenges in the Middle East, CyberKnight has enlisted the expertise of Owl Cyber Defense.

CyberKnight’s AI-driven Zero Trust Security framework incorporates emerging and market-

leading cybersecurity solutions that protect the entire attack surface, eliminating security gaps while enabling digital transformation with intelligent security for complex hybrid environments that protects user data across devices and applications no matter their location.

Owl Cyber Defense’s cross domain solutions play a critical role in CyberKnight’s Zero Trust architecture, providing hardware-enforced segmentation supported by extensive filtering that extends from low-level transport protocols up through the application layer. Cross Domain Solutions are specifically designed and accredited to provide boundary protection for the world’s most sensitive networks, far exceeding the protection provided by firewalls. This capability provides a strong foundation for Zero Trust architectures and an unsurpassed level of security for operational environments.

ColorTokens partners with FVC for autonomous Zero-Trust cybersecurity solutions

ColorTokens, a vendor for autonomous Zero Trust cybersecurity solutions, announced it has partnered with FVC, a provider of tangible solutions across enterprise computing: unified communications, unified collaboration, audio-visual, infrastructure and information security in the Middle East.

The partnership between FVC and ColorTokens offers comprehensive Zero Trust cybersecurity solutions, leveraging ColorTokens’ Xtended ZeroTrust Platform, which includes Xshield for Workload Visibility and Microsegmentation, Xprotect for Endpoint and Host Protection and Xassure for Zero Trust as a Service. The partnership helps security teams proactively protect endpoints, contain and respond to zero-day attacks while seamlessly integrating with existing security tools. And will also help organisations in the region achieve the strongest security for their data and be compliant with the national laws on data residency.

Through its award-winning solutions, ColorTokens simplifies, accelerates and automates security operations to defend against attacks on data centres, hybrid models, cloud-based applications, dynamic applications, endpoints, individual users, devices and more. The ColorTokens Xtended ZeroTrust Platform provides real-time visualisation and segmentation across the entire IT infrastructure, ensuring business resiliency to cyber threats across hybrid networks and edge while enabling operational flexibility.

(Left to right) Glenn Braverman, Vice President, International Sales at Owl Cyber Defense and Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder and COO at CyberKnight.

NADER BAGHDADI Senior Regional Director, MEA, ColorTokens

Trend Micro hosts attack and defend threat hunt workshop in partnership with Moro Hub

Trend Micro in partnership with Moro Hub, subsidiary of Digital DEWA, the digital arm of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority hosted a threat hunt workshop at the Sofitel Dubai

Jumeirah Beach, Dubai, UAE, aimed at fortifying the nation’s digital infrastructure and raise awareness of cybersecurity.

With 25 participants, the competition con-

sisted of two separate phases: Phase 1: Attack and Phase 2: Defend. The IT experts were given the opportunity to face simulated cybersecurity challenges, determine the best course of action, and demonstrate their capabilities for both hunting cyber threats and protecting digital assets. Contestants collaborated to develop and execute strategies to effectively detect and block attacks while competing against each other during the event.

Dr Ahmed Alketbi, Chief Information Security Officer of Moro Hub inaugurated the event with a welcome note, setting the tone for an exciting day of cyber challenges, and industryleading insights from an engaging session on cyber security.

Trend Micro’s Senior Sales Engineers conducted a session on Data Centre Security Strategy and Implementation, emphasizing the need to streamline operations with hybrid cloud security that delivers the automation and flexibility required to secure today’s modern data centres and journeys in the cloud. A multi-layered solution such as Trend Micro Cloud One is a purpose-built platform for deployments, delivering the operational efficiency required to support and protect various endpoints.

Cisco’s SaaS portfolio now available on Redington’s CloudQuark marketplace for East-West Africa

Redington Gulf strengthened its partnership with Cisco by integrating the vendor’s Softwareas-a-Service portfolio to its proprietary cloud commerce and cloud marketplace platform – CloudQuarks. With this announcement, Redington is empowering channel partners in countries within East and West Africa to help customers deliver on their cloud ambitions by offering Cisco’s SaaS solutions in line with global hyperscalers.

Onboarding Cisco’s SaaS portfolio, which includes – Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Secure Access by Duo, Cisco Secure Cloud Mailbox, Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Collaboration Flex, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics and Cisco DNA Centre – on the CloudQuarks platform offers Redington and its extensive partner network new revenue streams and optimised opportunities to cater to customer’s cloud demands. Partners can instantly capitalise on this offering and skip the traditional logistics and procurement

processes. They can now deliver Cisco’s SaaS solutions instantly with just a click of a button.

Redington’s vision is to play an essential role in simplifying customers’ cloud transformation journeys. Towards this, the distributor has made significant leaps with its cloud management and cloud marketplace portal CloudQuarks. Regional customers leverage industry best practices and global standards of consulting, professional and managed services on cloud technologies through this platform. The platform helps to simplify purchase, govern consumption, facilitate invoicing and promote adoption of distributed cloud services.

To enhance the integration, Redington will focus on expanding the geography and optimise the reach of Cisco’s SaaS offering to every potential market. The distributor will also undertake extensive upskilling initiatives for its partner network to drive Cisco’s SaaS sales on the platform.

SAYANTAN DEV President, Redington Value.

Omnix launches Centre of Excellence with managed services of SOC, NOC, OCC

Omnix, announced the launch of its state-of-the-art Centre of Excellence, an innovative managed service offering that was conceptualized to support businesses in their digital journeys. Omnix’s XOC includes a unique combination of a Security Operations Centre, Network Operations Centre and Operations Control Centre with managed services aimed to assist organisations accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and overcome challenges relating to security threats, network issues and performance, as well as operations-related tasks.

The XOC, equipped with the skilled resources and tools, will enable customers to identify cyber threats and analyse network performance, with the goal of enabling organisations across sectors to remain focused on turning their aspirations into reality. It is designed to provide a centralised and coherent view of the users’ network, security, and operations challenges.

With the Security Operations Centre SOC, Omnix can support businesses with event classification, alerts prioritisation and investigation, incident containment and recovery, remediation and mitigation, and attacks assessment and audits.

In addition, the Network Operations Centre NOC supports busi-

nesses with network performance monitoring, network event management and traffic analysis, network configuration and change management, network maintenance and incidents reporting.

The Operations Control Centre OCC offering supports businesses with proactive, pre-emptive predictive remote support for physical security systems system coverage: CCTV, ACS intercom, PMS, PGS, hassle free remote monitoring and support for audio and visual equipment and is located to monitor and stream any source of information to any screen for industrial automation systems such as SCADA.

Kyndryl recognised as Cisco Global Gold Integrator to sell, deliver, support solutions worldwide

Kyndryl announced it has achieved Cisco Global Gold Integrator status, the highest level available and a recognition of Kyndryl’s ability to deliver and support advanced solutions for joint customers around the world.

This partner status enables Kyndryl to receive Gold-level benefits and incentives and assures customers that Kyndryl’s expert resources and skilled practitioners are available in geographies supported by Cisco. The Global Gold status also is recognition of Kyndryl’s ability to sell, deliver and support Cisco solutions worldwide and to showcase Cisco Solutions to customers at global Cisco Experience Centres.

To become a Cisco Global Gold partner, Kyndryl’s engineers, architects and sales teams have demonstrated significant knowledge and expertise across a broad portfolio of Cisco technology, software, and services. To reach this level, Kyndryl also has demonstrated its ability to meet Key Performance Indicators KPIs and metrics around Cisco performance thresholds, global, regional, and local compe-

tencies, support centres and solutions, hybrid IT offerings, and customer satisfaction.

Kyndryl and Cisco recently announced a partnership to help customers design, build, manage and modernise mission-critical systems. The companies are developing private cloud services, network and edge computing and software defined networking SDN solutions and multi-network wide area network WAN offerings to enable digital modernisation and cloud acceleration via differentiated on-premises or edge solutions, and fully managed end-to-end cloud services.

TAMER ODEH

Regional Sales Director SentinelOne

SECURING ENTERPRISES WITH

IDENTITY SECURITY

According to recent security research, stolen credentials caused nearly 50% of all attacks and credential attacks have increased by 30% since 2017. These stolen credentials leave enterprises vulnerable and remain one of the most sought-after pieces of information for cyber-criminals.

Gartner states 50% of cloud security failures are a result of inadequate management of identities, access and privileges, and they project that this number will climb to 75% by 2023.

When cyber criminals manage to steal user credentials or infiltrate a network through attack vectors like social engineering attacks, identity access management solutions themselves will only provide limited protection for identity-based threats.

CISOs and IT professionals responsible for security strategy should make securing credentials and detecting when attackers have compromised them a central part of their cybersecurity strategy, regardless of their organisation’s size or maturity.

Being responsive to business needs while maintaining security is a constant battle that often leads to protection gaps or accounts being over-privileged.

Credentials increasingly transcend traditional security boundaries, and now commonly cover cloud entitlements, and directory systems that manage both human and machine access.

However, securing credentials and avoiding identity-related system misconfigurations can be a challenging task and many organisations struggle with this.

What is identity security

Identity security begins with basic security hygiene like strong password policies including periodic rotation, not reusing passwords and implementation of Identity Access Management.

In today’s threat landscape, a robust identity security programme must now go beyond granting proper access with identity access management and multi factor authentication to also include mech-

anisms to defend against identity misuse.

Although solutions such single sign on, multi-factor authentication can add another layer of security to an enterprise’s authentication process, only 22% of organisations today use multi-factor authentication for additional security in the authentication process.

While Identity Access Management focuses on enabling employees, services and machine identities to access applications in a secure manner through conditional and adaptive access and the use of multi-factor authentication, it does not address credential misuse.

When cyber criminals manage to steal user credentials or infiltrate a network through attack vectors like social engineering attacks, identity access management solutions themselves will only provide limited protection for identity-based threats.

Singularity identity

“In May 2022, SentinelOne became the first Extended Detection and Response provider to natively include identity security for endpoints, Active Directory identity infrastructure, and cloud environments with its acquisition of Attivo Networks,” says Tamer Odeh, Regional Sales Director, SentinelOne.

“Singularity Identity is a suite of security capabilities installed onto endpoints and Active Directory domain controllers that prevents credential theft and covert movement throughout the environment,” continues Odeh.

Amongst SentinelOne’s products, Singularity Hologram is a network-based threat deception that lures in-network adversaries and insider threat actors into revealing themselves as they engage with the operating system and application decoys that mimic production assets.

Another product, Ranger Active Directory Assessor makes it harder for adversaries to target exposures in a customer’s identity attack surface by uncovering misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in their Active Directory and Azure Active Directory infrastruc-

SentinelOne’s Singularity Identity is helping organisations improve their identity posture while providing real time alerts and deception capabilities.

TIPS FOR CHANNEL PARTNERS

Singularity Identity would be better presented as part of a bigger solution as it compliments and enriches other security solutions within an Extended Detection and Response platform.

It can also be positioned in isolation as part of an enterprises’ cybersecurity transformational journey since it also has capabilities to detect and prevent attacks early on in the kill chain cycle.

SentinelOne will be showcasing the complete Singularity Platform that encompasses our Extended Detection and Response and Identity Threat detection and Response solution.

XDR, ITDR, IDASM SNAPSHOT

• Modern adversaries use advanced identity-based attacks to compromise high-value assets.

• If an attacker can shift left, it means that they can simply steal your credentials.

• In May 2022, SentinelOne became the first Extended Detection and Response provider to natively include identity security.

• A mature Identity Threat Detection and Response solution helps teams detect attacks earlier, that is further left in the attack chain.

• Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions address attacks with concealment, misinformation, and misdirection.

• A decoy bait misdirects attackers away from production assets, while disinformation prevents attackers from mapping Active Directory identities.

• Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions look for attacks targeting identities.

• Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions also provide incident response assistance by collecting forensic data.

• Extended Detection and Response is not complete without Identity Threat Detection and Response.

• Identity security systems play a critical role in Zero Trust architectures.

• Identity Attack Surface Management looks to reduce the identity attack surface to limit the exposures attackers can exploit.

• Identity Threat Detection and Response and Identity Attack Surface Management solutions are key contributors to any enterprise’s Zero Trust eXtended programme.

• Complementary nature of EDR and Identity Threat Detection and Response fit perfectly thwarting an attacker’s efforts.

• Identity Attack Surface Management, Identity Threat Detection and Response provide detection of credential misuse, privilege escalation.

• Identity Attack Surface Management, Identity Threat Detection and Response, part of the Singularity Identity solution, are new security categories.

ture. Ranger Active Directory provides highly specific recommendations on how to harden the Active Directory and reduce its attack surface.

The extra intelligence that modern Extended Detection and Response solutions provide can make a significant difference in helping defenders identify and respond to suspicious or attack-related activity quickly before adversaries can significantly infiltrate the network. However, as Peter Firstbrook from Gartner has stated, Extended Detection and Response is not complete without Identity Threat Detection and Response.

Augmenting Extended Detection and Response with identity security and cyber deception can further enhance the effectiveness of this critical modern cybersecurity tool, improving the efficiency and capabilities of an already indispensable resource.

“As time goes on and attackers continue to grow more sophisticated, Extended Detection and Response, Identity Threat Detection and

Response, and the adversary intelligence that deception technology provides will go a long way in preventing attackers from completing their mission successfully,” says Odeh.

Shifting left

Attackers are shifting left. What does this mean? If an attacker can shift left, it means that they can simply steal your credentials, gain some sort of access, and then move laterally to other systems, skipping the age-old step of sending you malware or tricking you with an exploit. If an attacker has your credentials, they already have everything they need.

Using one set of stolen credentials, a malicious actor performs reconnaissance to exploit these weaknesses to access assets. By getting hold of privileged credentials and further compromising the Active Directory, bad actors can launch larger-scale cyber-attacks to exfiltrate sensitive data and

cause damage across endpoints, networks and clouds.

Therefore, as attackers shift-left and focus on using identities to attack an organisation, security teams need to adapt as well. Today’s comprehensive defenders, complement identity governance with Attack Surface Management controls designed to identify and fix Active Directory misconfigurations and excessive credentialing as well as real-time identity threat detection and response security to gain visibility into misuse. Both of the latter are designed to address the attacker shift-left issue.

“A mature Identity Threat Detection and Response solution helps teams detect attacks earlier, that is further left in the attack chain,” says Odeh. Identity Threat Detection and Response provides visibility when a bad actor attempts to steal credentials or mine Active Directory for data with unauthorised queries. It protects sensitive or privileged local and Active Directory credentials and objects by hiding them from the attacker and responds by presenting decoy credential bait and query results in their place.

The decoy bait misdirects attackers away from production assets, while the disinformation prevents them from accurately mapping Active Directory identities and entitlements. It also identifies activity on the Active Directory domain controllers indicating that an attack is underway. Identity Threat Detection and Response can then respond by initiating quarantine functions to stop the attack or redirect it to decoy systems for further engagement.

Identity security systems play a critical role in Zero Trust architectures. Identities are the first pillar and call out the need for continuous monitoring for exposures and vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit.

Identity security combines with Zero Trust through the following:

l Protection of credentials

l Visibility to exposed credentials and Active Directory objects

l Detection of unauthorised queries to Active Directory

l Insights into indicators of compromise on Active Directory

l Live attack detection on domain controller attacks

l Protection of domain controllers from all endpoints

Ultimately, Identity Threat Detection and Response and Identity Attack Surface Management solutions are key contributors to any enterprise’s Zero Trust eXtended programme, allowing security teams to manage access to their key digital assets and devices, get the behavioural visibility they need to detect and respond to threats inside and outside their ecosystems.

Benefits for CISOs

Organisations run periodic security assessments such as penetration tests and red team engagements. A popular target with these assessments is the enterprise Active Directory, and they almost always generate findings that the organisation’s Active Directory administrators must research and address to reduce their risk of attack.

Identity Attack Surface Management solutions help manage identitybased risks through continuous monitoring as opposed to the annual red team event. Identity Attack Surface Management makes finding Active Directory exposures more efficient and more consistent by identifying new exposures as they arise and providing remediation guidance continuously.

Modern adversaries use advanced identity-based attacks to compromise high-value assets resulting in the crippling loss of intellectual property. Bad actors rely on social engineering and Active Directory reconnaissance to acquire targets and identity-based information for privilege escalation and laterally move.

An Extended Detection and Response platform with Identity Threat

Detection and Response capabilities can detect common identity-based attacks, Active Directory reconnaissance aimed at acquiring other highvalue targets followed by privilege escalation and subsequent lateral movement to these targets. Identity Threat Detection and Response and Extended Detection and Response together provide coverage for identity infrastructure misuse as well as traditional attack vectors like malware and fileless exploits.

“By combining the two, CISOs gain a wider aperture of protection,” says Odeh.

Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions address these attacks with concealment, misinformation, and misdirection. As a threat actor conducts their reconnaissance, the Identity Threat Detection and Response solution provides decoy identity data to their Active Directory queries while concealing the privileged objects and detecting their attempts to move laterally.

For example, as attackers query for members of the domain administrator group, the Identity Threat Detection and Response solution provides decoy admin accounts, then detects when they attempt to use these results to access a production server.

Benefit of engaging with SentinelOne

Singularity Identity provides essential visibility into credentials stored on endpoints, Active Directory misconfigurations, and cloud entitlement sprawl. Identity Attack Surface Management and Identity Threat Detection and Response, part of the Singularity Identity solution, are new security categories designed to protect identities and the systems that manage them.

These solutions complement and operate in conjunction with Endpoint Detection and Response, Extended Detection and Response, Network Detection and Response, and other similar solutions.

Identity Attack Surface Management looks to reduce the identity attack surface to limit the exposures attackers can exploit. The fewer exposures, the smaller the identity attack surface. For most enterprises, this means Active Directory, whether on-premises or in Azure.

While Endpoint Detection and Response is a robust solution that looks for attacks on endpoints and collects data for analysis, Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions look for attacks targeting identities. Once an Identity Threat Detection and Response solution detects an attack, it adds a layer of defence by providing fake data that redirects the attacker to an authentic-looking decoy and automatically isolates the compromised system conducting the query.

Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions also provide incident response assistance by collecting forensic data and gathering telemetry on the processes used during the attack. The complementary nature of EDR and Identity Threat Detection and Response fit perfectly together to achieve a common goal – thwarting an attacker’s efforts.

Identity Attack Surface Management and Identity Threat Detection and Response solutions provide detection of credential misuse, privilege escalation, and other tactics that attackers exploit or engage in within the network. They close critical gaps between identity access management and endpoint security solutions, stopping cybercriminal attempts to exploit vulnerable credentials to move through networks undetected.

“These continuous assessments will certainly help the organisation remain compliant to any identity-related regulatory or audit requirements and make the auditors themselves happy that the organisation is taking proper, proactive steps to securing the identity infrastructure,” says Odeh. ë

ARUBA, ZEBRA

DRIVING OUTCOMES INSIDE NETWORKS

Aruba and Zebra have partnered to drive business outcomes and build powerful user experiences for end customers through the convergence of intelligent networks, data interoperability, and mobile computing devices.

Aruba and Zebra are market leaders in their respective technologies. Aruba leads the global industry in wireless networking, while Zebra is the global leader in enterprise class mobile computing. The combination puts accessibility and availability of business critical information into the hands of frontline workers across various industry segments.

To make data available at the edge of the enterprise not only requires combination of robust devices, such as mobile computers that can capture information, but it also requires highly available network capability to enable transmission of this data. “The coming together of global leaders, Aruba and Zebra can benefit customers through better integration and interoperability of their technologies,” says Hozefa Saylawala, Director of Sales Middle East, Zebra Technologies.

“Mobile devices need to have a seamless infrastructure as an underlay, which is Wi-Fi in this case. Handhelds are continuously talking to the backend applications, and the coming together of Zebra and Aruba addresses a particular need in the market,” adds Jacob Chacko, Regional Director, Middle East and South Africa, Aruba HPE.

Challenges of mixed vendor systems

When mixed systems are working together, any glitch, especially in an enterprise class warehouse or healthcare institution or sprawling retail hypermarket, for example, means that identifying the problem is prolonged process. And if the problem is not identified in time, this impacts critical workflows and loss is multiplied.

The coming together of Aruba and Zebra is all about how to give customers the best of both worlds, have a great Wi-Fi infrastructure, have a great mobile computing solution, and give customers complete visibility of what is happening. This has created a symbiotic relationship.

Once mobile computers are being used at the edge of the enterprise, where critical data flows into hands of the end user for them to make business critical decisions, data has to be secured. Also data has to have high availability. For this purpose, Zebra is using Zebra Wireless Insights in order to ensure availability of data and quality of data, for business processes. “However more often than not, when vendor solutions work in isolation, this leads to passing the ball,” says Saylawala.

Resolution of outages in such mixed environments becomes challenging when there is a limitation in end to end visibility. For example, Zebra Wireless Insights is often able to pinpoint the reasons for an outage inside mobile computing devices and associated business applications, but the challenge in the past has been fault identification inside wireless networks.

“The lack of synergy between wireless providers and our technology would mean that isolation of the problem would be in the hands of the end customer who would be unable to get a resolution from the parties,” points out Saylawala.

Amongst the challenges would be - no visibility in terms of the performance of network and the performance of application on the network. As an example, inside industries like healthcare which use extensive voice communication for preparing automated transcribed medical patient records, lack of visibility into the performance of voice applications, can slow down their back office functions.

The larger the enterprise and the structure of its assets, embedded within business processes, the more challenging it can become to resolve outages, and captured through various indices such as mean time between failures, mean time to fix, and meant time to resolved.

Interoperating the two platforms

In May 2021, Aruba, announced the availability of an embedded solution for mobile devices that delivers real-time visibility into roaming user experiences and application performance. Developed in partnership with Zebra Technologies, Aruba User Experience Insight, UXI’s artificial intelligence software agent gets embedded inside Zebra mobile computers and analyses real-time voice and data traffic.

This agent proactively flags issues that could affect application, Wi-Fi connectivity, roaming, and voice performance. The early warning provided by Aruba UXI informs remedial actions so that business-critical applications and end user experiences are not impacted. The result is higher up-time, increased productivity, and more expeditious problem remediation.

Aruba’s artificial intelligence-based UXI agents’ network and application testing capabilities work in concert with Zebra’s Wireless Insights to expose a device-level view and pre-analysed insights of the network. The results are displayed on Aruba’s intuitive UXI dashboard.

The joint solution enables IT teams to automate the collection, analysis, and remediation of performance issues in real-time using data observed from devices that are being impacted. Historical data alone simply cannot provide the same level of accuracy as live data. For example, connectivity and voice performance might vary considerably while standing at floor level, moving on a forklift, or while picking at the top of a storage rack. The real-time nature of data collection means that even transient events that might otherwise go unnoticed are captured and analysed.

Vast amount of data generated by Zebra mobile computers and other IoT machines can be meaningfully collected, analysed, and acted upon by leveraging artificial intelligence. Aruba has pioneered the application of artificial intelligence to automate network and application performance monitoring. Aruba UXI, a component of Aruba’s AIOps suite, is artificial intelligence-powered and its Incident Detection feature baselines application performance over time and automatically identifies and alerts when it detects service-impacting changes in behaviour.

The cloud-based service allows IT to proactively resolve issues before they impact operations, and minimise alert fatigue, often without ever stepping foot on the site being monitored. AIOps runs as a service within Aruba Edge Services Platform, a cloud-native platform designed to automate, unify, and secure the Edge.

Aruba’s Chacko points out that resolution of these challenges in realtime has now become relatively easy through Aruba’s UXI that can be downloaded from Google or Apple Store onto a Zebra mobile compute

If a Zebra customer is using Aruba in its environment and has the UXI capability, then Aruba UXI automatically extends as a soft arm on Zebra’s mobile computers

HOZEFA SAYLAWALA

Director of Sales Middle East, Zebra Technologies.

EMBEDDING AI AND PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS INTO ZEBRA’S PRODUCTS

In October 2021, Zebra Technologies announced it had completed its acquisition of antuit.ai, a provider of provider of demand forecasting and planning, allocation and replenishment for retail, consumer and CPG industries using SaaS artificial intelligence. The acquisition has improved Zebra’s Enterprise Asset Intelligence by expanding its growing retail and CPG software portfolio.

Antuit.ai, was owned by a consortium led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and utilizes AI and machine learning algorithms to ensure its customers have the right product in the right place, at the right time, at the right price based on the current state of the supply chain, store inventory, and consumer demand.

Incorporating Antuit.ai into Zebra’s SaaS portfolio will enable retailers and consumer products companies to combine planning and execution to optimise margins and drive revenue growth. Antuit.ai enables retailers to deliver on their omnichannel strategy by increasing margins with effective prices and promotions, as well as optimising inventory allocations and order fulfilment.

device. Another plus point is the usage of 802.11c by Aruba’s access points, that accurately triangulates the position of the Zebra mobile compute device inside the Wi-fi network. Hence accurate positional identification of a fault inside an Aruba network, in real-time, has now become possible.

Aruba and Zebra’s integrations are designed to help improve employee experience across industry verticals, where productivity is dependent on usage of mobile computers and robust connectivity to drive business critical data. “It is actually the integration of Aruba UXI and Zebra’s Wireless Insight that is present on Zebra’s enterprise class mobile computers, which takes this synergy to the next level,” says Saylawala.

Benefits of interoperability

If a Zebra customer is using Aruba in its environment and has the UXI capability, then Aruba UXI automatically extends as a soft arm on Zebra’s mobile computers.

“The customer gets the same capability that they would have got using Aruba fixed sensors, which are now on Zebra mobile computers, which are turned into moving sensors for the end customer. End users in logistics, healthcare, and retail are able to take productivity to the next level with the help of Zebra mobile computers carrying an embedded mobile sensor,” says Saylawala.

The interoperability between Aruba UXI and Zebra wireless insights has been achieved through synergy between the two vendors in the following areas:

l Visibility into roaming behaviour

l Location context improving business outcomes

l Automated access policies for enhanced security

l D ynamic segmentation for Zebra devices for enhanced security

l Voice traffic prioritisation and visibility with Zebra devices

l Colourless ports for wired Zebra devices simplifies set-up

l Certified interoperability across the product portfolios

l Validated reference designs for voice, data, location aware deployments

l Direct support escalation for faster problem resolution

As technology leaders the idea is to make it as simple as possible. How do we give visibility? If you give visibility through an artificial intelligence powered dashboard, that makes life easier for the customer. They are able to identify the problem, resolve the problem, and it is business as usual for them. “When you look at the business outcomes that is associated with this, it is huge for customers,” says Chacko.

Opportunity and challenges for partners

Channel partners need to drive business outcomes and can no longer focus on stand-alone systems. This is true whether in the computing, networking industry, or mobile handheld industry where Aruba and Zebra operate. Next channel partners need to pick best of breed solutions available in that industry, build an end to end package, and then take it to the customer.

The reason why vendors like Aruba and Zebra are coming together is to address the business outcome. Channel partners also needs to look at multiple product portfolios and how to address their customer needs.

“We have common channel partners who are proficient in Zebra and who are proficient in Aruba solutions, and they can do a good implementation for customers. When the solution gets a bit complex, we put in

JACOB CHACKO

ARUBA AND ZEBRA PARTNER FOR LOCATIONAL SERVICES INSIDE US BASED HOME DEPOT

In June this year, Home Depot selected Aruba Edge Services Platform, ESP delivered via HPE GreenLake for Aruba networking, to power advanced customer and associate experiences across its US stores. The Home Depot expanded its partnership with Aruba to architect a network foundation that provides speed, scale, flexibility. The HPE GreenLake for Aruba network as a service, NaaS offering provides a compelling solution with agility and flexibility for The Home Depot.

Maintaining strong connectivity in stores will help provide Home Depot associates with the ability to deliver a great customer experience. The Home Depot is rolling out Zebra Technologies’ TC52ax handheld devices, allowing associates to check pricing and inventory in hand or from more than 40 feet away, which is helpful when serving customers and locating products in overhead storage. The Home Depot’s network will streamline IT management and operations. Aruba Central cloud with AIOps capabilities allows the company to proactively monitor network health and address issues before they negatively impact performance. The Home Depot’s wireless solution includes Aruba location services via WLAN APs, which provide zero-touch determination of AP location, continuously validate and update location, and provide a set of universal coordinates that may be transposed on any building floor map or web mapping platform.

direct resources to help implement those solutions,” explains Chacko.

“Business outcomes are changing the ballgame for channel partners. If I have to drive business outcomes for the customer, then I have to look at a wider range of offerings for the customer because today no one product can drive a definitive business outcome,” says Saylawala.

“I pick up a business problem, and then to address that business problem, I will need a combination of different products, services, and solutions. If you look at the way channel programmes are designed today, every vendor organisation has their niche, have their products available, and a channel partner is specialised in those products,” Saylawala continues.

Channel partners will also be able to deliver better outcomes for their end customers through the integration of artificial intelligence by both Aruba and Zebra. A key improvement that the integration of Aruba UXI and Zebra Wireless Insights brings is the usage of artificial intelligence. So what does artificial intelligence actually mean for the customer? It is not an end product and is actually a horizontal layer embedded in the business application and is about how intelligent your systems become.

An artificial intelligence embedded system can predictively tell you about a possible issue and how to resolve the problem. “The same glitch two years ago, would have taken a lot more time to get resolved. Artificial intelligence is playing a critical role in this industry and especially while working with Zebra on the UXI integration,” says Chacko.

“Aruba is quite advanced in terms of artificial intelligence powered applications, because we have been in this industry for a long time,”

adds Chacko.

By bringing in an artificial intelligence layer, it allows the customer to have enhanced capabilities around analyses of incoming data and a predictive output after that analysis. The artificial intelligence layer also starts looking at what actions to be taken. “With predictive analysis, I know what the potential failures could be, and now artificial intelligence should be able to automatically drive tasks to avoid those failures. So it is not a final product, it is actually a horizontal layer that sits across the system,” explains Saylawala.

The only way predictive analysis can happen is when the system is automatically collecting historical data and analysing it. What artificial intelligence will do on top of all of this, is to drive actions without human intervention.

What is the road ahead for both Aruba and Zebra?

“All our roadmaps are based on the user’s experience and how to make it as seamless as possible, while driving, better and more meaningful business outcomes. All our integrations will surely and purely be based on that,” reflects Chacko.

“I would say, we have exciting times ahead. We are in a region, where there is a boom in retail, healthcare, hospitality industries and mega smart city projects are lined up in Saudi Arabia. Zebra and Aruba are partnering to take these solutions across to customers based on user experience and driving meaningful business outcomes. That is the roadmap I see,” summarises Saylawala. ë

Regional Director, Middle East and South Africa, Aruba HPE.

• Dataiku

• Freshworks

• HPE

• Infor

• Intel

• ManageEngine

• NetApp

• Pure Storage

• Red Hat

• Riverbed

• SAP

• ServiceNow

• Software AG

• Trellix

• Veritas

• VMware

ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

DIGITAL AGE NETWORKING, COMMUNICATION, CLOUD SOLUTIONS

ALE’s solutions use artificial intelligence to meet specific needs of these industries - healthcare, government, education, transportation, and hospitality.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise provides communication, cloud and network solutions to businesses of all sizes, from small to large enterprises. The vendors solutions help connect people and allow them to communicate and collaborate in a secure and reliable way. The IT solution we offer is end-to-end secure and geared towards digital transformation. To make this transformation possible, communication and collaboration, connectivity and secure cloud solutions are the main pillars.

Technology that is here today is paving the way for the future. However, for digital transformation to succeed, and for the technology to be an enabler, businesses must first have a clear picture of what they are trying to achieve. Secondly, the right mindset is crucial, because if you are trying to create a revolution which might be too disruptive and therefore with no appetite from your teams, it won’t work.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise connects everything by delivering digital age networking, communications and cloud solutions tailored for its customers’ success, in the cloud, on premises or hybrid. As a primary provider of technology, we are part of a large ecosystem. Some of these technologies are fundamental,

such as switches, access points and phones. However, our hybrid solutions encompassing LAN, wireless LAN, security, unified communication, and collaboration enable the technology to be truly transformational. With our suite of solutions and equipment, AlcatelLucent Enterprise is playing a key role in this evolution and does this by working with an ecosystem of business partners who are on the frontline of the acceleration of digitalisation.

With 100 years of innovation, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has established itself as one of the world’s leading innovators in technology. In

out are innovation, flexibility, adaptability, and expertise.

We work primarily through an indirect sales model. Business partners are major players in our overall go-to-market. We have a strong and loyal ecosystem of partners since the last 20 years for many of them, so the majority has the full understanding of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Technologies and are all having a high-level certification on our products

The Enterprise Partner Programme drives expertise and recognition of business partners to ensure the highest level of quality to sell,

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, we have a focus on five main sectors, and we have designed endto-end solutions for each of these sectors. Our end-to-end solutions use artificial intelligence to meet the specific needs of these industrieshealthcare, government, education, transportation, and hospitality. The reasons why we stand

deploy and support our solutions through a profitable model. The programme offers a flexible and scalable framework which allows business partners to meet their business goals now and in the future with a long-term mutually beneficial relationship

ALE has a strategy for new technologies that

An organisation’s network infrastructure has a critical role to play in mitigating these risks

SANDRINE MOUSTAFA EL KHODRY

Vice President Middle East and Africa, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

TOP EXECUTIVE

Sandrine joined Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise three years ago as VP of direct-touch sales across Europe and the South. In January 2020, Sandrine was appointed as VP for the MEA region. Sandrine has a master’s degree in enterprise strategy from FEDE Federation Européenne des Ecoles in Geneva, Switzerland, and is preparing a business Ph.D. at Geneva Business School, Switzerland. With extensive 27-year experience in the technology and telecom industries, Sandrine has held several senior executive roles including General Manager Vertical in British Telecom EMEA and APAC and as Regional Head, South Europe, Switzerland, and France in Eunetworks.

DREAM ROLE

My dream work environment is one where everyone has their fair chance to achieve their potential and scale their careers based on skills and knowledge not based on gender, religion, origins, colour. Everybody must feel that their contributions have a real impact and that their voice is heard and taken into consideration. A place where difference and diversity are respected and accepted and where everybody supports each other. On top of which, where the success of one person is the success of the team and the whole company in which we operate.

ROLE MODEL

driving the network evolution. An organisation’s network infrastructure has a critical role to play in mitigating these risks while allowing businesses to take full advantage of increased mobility and connected devices. ALE has a strategy to address these challenges and opportunities.

The strategy is supported by three pillars – to deliver secure mobile and IoT networks - ALE is a technology leader in secure mobile and IoTenabled networks, backed up with sophisticated analytics and management systems; deliver network business services that align with our customer’s business objectives and their investment strategies; and deliver a verticalized connected experience for our customers by providing value-added solutions and dedicated integration and capabilities designed for specific industry ecosystems in healthcare, education, transportation, government and hospitality.

ALE equipped one of the busiest airports with networking and communications solutions. Also equipped one of the well-known hospitals in the region with end-to-end healthcare solutions for improved efficiency and time management. ë

My Father is my role model. He has passed away, but I still remember real life values he taught me all along - like how to respect other, that nothing in life should be taken for granted, that you need to have a target in life and to work hard to obtain it. He said that we are on earth to leave a positive impact. My father achieved a respectful place in the society and had a valuable impact in the medical field with some innovation that until today, after almost 8 years of his death, people still speak about and how much he impacted their lives. I am trying to follow the same path and I hope that he is proud of me today.

OFFLINE

I love traveling as it gives me a break from daily life and rejuvenates. It inspires me to see, taste, and try new things. While traveling, one can learn new things, get chances to meet and engage with different people and specially discovering new cultures which is enriching for me. Friends and loved ones can share meaningful experiences with each other. I love reading success stories and biographies. It gives insight into how successful people handled their crises and solved problems. Everyone can gain so much from reading other people’s stories and experiences and how to overcome difficult situations. They open our eyes to the world and help us make better decisions.

DEMOCRATISING DATA SCIENCE, EMPOWERING THROUGH DATA

Dataiku was built from ground up to support usability in every step of the data pipeline and across all profiles, from data scientist and cloud architect to analyst.

Dataiku DSS is one of the world’s leading AI and machine learning platforms, democratising access to data and enabling enterprises to build their own path to AI. Dataiku believes that those companies who succeed in deploying, and scaling AI will do so by ingraining a culture of working with data throughout the enterprise instead of siloing it into a specific team or role.

Dataiku provides one simple UI for data wrangling, mining, visualisation, machine learning, and deployment based on a collaborative and team-based user interface, accessible to anyone on a data team — from data scientist to beginner analyst — and therefore appeals to all organisations across a myriad of industries.

Dataiku allows enterprises to create value with their data in a human-centred way while breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration. One of the most unique characteristics of Dataiku’s product, Data Science Studio, DSS, is the breadth of its scope and the fact that it caters both to technical and non-technical users. Through DSS, Dataiku aim democratise data science and empower people through data.

Dataiku DSS is:

l End-to-end with one simple UI for data wrangling, mining, visualisation, machine learning, deployment, and monitoring.

l Collaborative, with a team-based user interface accessible to anyone on a data team, from data scientist to business analyst.

l Operationally ready, with the ability to go from design to production smoothly.

At its core, Dataiku believes that in order to stay relevant in today’s changing world, companies need to harness Everyday AI as a

in between.

Dataiku was built from the ground up to support usability in every step of the data pipeline and across all profiles — from data scientist and cloud architect to analyst. The commitment to openness and flexibility in Dataiku doesn’t stop there. Because each company’s path to Everyday AI looks different, Dataiku supports the creation of a spectrum of applications, whether that means building out a self-serve analytics platform or fully operationalised AI integrated with business processes.

Finally, Dataiku’s focus on project and cus-

widespread organisational asset instead of siloing it into a specific team or role. To make this vision a reality, Dataiku is the only platform on the market that provides one simple UI for the entire data pipeline, from data preparation and exploration to machine learning model building, deployment, monitoring, and everything

tomer success is the real difference. The company is committed to ensuring that customers achieve positive business outcomes through their engagement and interaction with Dataiku’s product, and their customer success team does this by interacting regularly with and understanding each individual enterprise’s unique needs. ë

Dataiku provides one simple UI for data wrangling, mining, visualisation, machine learning

TOP EXECUTIVE

In his role as Regional Vice President and General Manager for the Middle East and Turkey, Bhatia works strategically with data-driven public and private sector entities in the region that are committed to gathering data concerning all aspects of the business in an effort to make information-based decision-making a cornerstone of their competitive advantage.

Bhatia has been the driving force behind Dataiku’s tremendous success in the region. Under his stewardship, the company has quickly become the platform of choice for approximately 50 of the largest organisations in Middle East. Bhatia brings years of leadership, management and enterprise sales experience to his role, having worked exclusively in the Information Management and Analytics space with companies like IBM, Cloudera and Sybase SAP, prior to joining Dataiku in early 2020.

Bhatia has established himself as a prominent regional sales leader having consistently exceeded performance and budget goals by aligning field efforts with organisational objectives. Under Bhatia’s stewardship, the Middle East has been one of Dataiku’s fastest growing regions for the past ten quarters with record breaking YoY increase in revenues. Having had to set up the Dataiku operations from scratch something he has done previously with other companies, Bhatia is especially proud of the high-performing, tech savvy and motivated team he has put together in region.

DREAM ROLE

Bhatia believes in executing strategies that produce results by leveraging a mix of visionary, strategic, technical, sales, operations and analytical expertise. He is passionate about leading and motivating by example and fostering an energetic, collaborative and democratic culture. According to him, effective leaders have major impacts on not only the team members they manage, but also their company as a whole. Employees who work under great leaders tend to be happier, more productive and more connected to their organisation – and this has a ripple effect that reaches the business’s bottom line.

ROLE MODELS

Bhatia draws inspiration from two well know Indian-American business executives - Pichai Sundararajan, better known as Sundar Pichai, who serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet and Satya Narayana Nadella, Executive Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. Bhatia goes on to say that dream roles are not as important as a dream team to execute your vision – with hard work, dedication and strategic planning and right people you can lead your team to success.

OFFLINE

A self-professed learner Bhatia enjoys participating in Leadership Forums and Start-Up workshops. When he is not hard at work, Bhatia can be found relaxing with his family or out on the golf course.

SIDDHARTHA BHATIA Regional Vice President and General Manager, Middle East and Turkey, Dataiku.

HARNESSING THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

Dell has the industry’s broadest infrastructure portfolio, and is positioned to deliver software-driven, secure and multi-cloud ready storage experience.

Dell Technologies is among the world’s leading technology companies helping to bring together the end-to-end IT and trusted partnerships organisations need to accelerate their digital transformation. From hybrid cloud solutions to high-performance computing to ambitious social impact and sustainability initiatives, what Dell does impacts everyone, everywhere.

Some of the key technology sub-segments that Dell caters to include and are not limited to, Data Protection, Data Storage, Servers and Networking, Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Laptops, PCs, Monitors and more. In the region, customers look to Dell Technologies for its market leading Cloud, Edge, Infrastructure, Security, APEX as-a-service and Workforce Solutions.

Dell Technologies has the technology expertise, end-to-end solutions, world-class services and relentless spirit that will stop at nothing to help organisations harness the transformative power of technology. With the pace of transformation accelerated, progress can only be made when organisations strive to relentlessly innovate, improve and advance.

Transformation is just as much about people, process and culture as it is technology. Dell Technologies focuses on harnessing the transformative power of technology so businesses can build the secure digital foundation needed to be ready for what’s next.

Dell focuses on what customers need: innovations across the tech portfolio, with a broad portfolio of innovation, growth initiatives, strong track record of strategic and operational execution and durable competitive advantages like supply chain. Dell Technologies goes beyond competitors to provide complete strategies that give businesses the tools to succeed in an unpredictable business climate.

Dell has the industry’s broadest infrastructure portfolio, and is uniquely positioned to deliver software-driven, secure and multicloud ready storage experience across a broad set of solutions desired by customers.

Dell Technologies is incredibly committed to and invested in the channel. The 2022 Program incorporated enhancements that have streamlined the partner experience, enabled

These changes were put forth to enable partners to focus on positioning the best solutions for their customers, while earning consistent, lucrative incentives, regardless of route to market. This update unlocks massive opportunities for the future by delivering a single tier across partners’ engagement with Dell Technologies.

Dell Technologies APEX also represents a revolution for Dell Technologies’ partners. It gives them the opportunity to use smart infrastructure offerings that simplify IT management and accelerate business outcomes through the delivery of consistent services customers can rely on. Partners can offer more complete IT services on demand – delivering the ease and experience of cloud and as-aService models.

business transformation and growth. Whether a partner is a Solution Provider, Cloud Service Provider, an OEM partner or any combination of these tracks, there is one incentive structure with regional rebates that are consistent across tracks, and one set of requirements that will now combine their revenue and training.

Dell Technologies will continue to evolve and lean into growth areas when and where they arise. Dell sees enormous opportunity to drive growth and subsequently create value for stakeholders by focusing on three key areas: Consolidating, growing and modernising the core businesses of PCs, servers and storage.

Transformation is just as much about people, process and culture as it is technology

VANGELIS LAGOUSAKOS

Senior Director and General Manager

Channel Sales, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Dell Technologies.

TOP EXECUTIVE

In his current role, Vangelis is responsible for developing and enabling a robust partner community across Dell Technologies lines of business in META. Along with his team, they continue to build on the successes of the Dell Technologies partner program by providing partners and distributors with a clear roadmap and investing in skills enablement and training that help them compete and grow in an evolving, digital marketplace – all with the aim of building a self-sufficient and enabled channel community. Vangelis reports to Anwar Dahab, Senior Vice President Channel, EMEA.

Vangelis joined Dell EMC in 2002 as Sales Director for Large Corporate Accounts in Greece and continued to grow within the company, where he held various senior leadership roles spanning different countries in EMEA. In his current role as the General Manager for Channel Sales in META, Vangelis continues to develop a cohesive ecosystem for the channel partners where they can take advantage of Dell Technologies’ end-to-end technology leadership.

An enabled and empowered channel that loves working with us, that loves working with our people and programs! Our channel partners are an extension of our business family. Together we are one and we are unbeatable.

DREAM ROLE

Dell also leans into high value growth opportunities, like with hybrid and private cloud, edge computing, telecom and data management. Dell seeks to innovate, integrate and partner to build the technology ecosystem of the future. This builds on the philosophy of customer-driven innovation and choice.

Dell is extending the multi-cloud ecosystem to give customers flexibility and freedom of choice, with services that protect against cyber threats, partnerships to help unlock the data’s full potential and previewing how Dell will bring storage’s advanced data services and capabilities to public clouds.

We are seeing IT play a critical role in long-term growth to support economic productivity, so we serve customers across all segments and verticals of the economy. These include sectors spanning Government, Telecom, Banking, Energy, Automobile, Healthcare, Education, Transport and Logistics and more. At Dell Technologies, we aim to assume the role of a trusted advisor for organisations, as we work towards helping businesses succeed in the digital era. ë

Vangelis is very passionate about the channel, about the integral role it plays in the success of Dell Technologies and for our customers. He envisions success in the future as in developing a fully enabled channel ecosystems that our customers will value in exactly the same way they value Dell Technologies and by being the preferred partner of choice for their business.

ROLE MODEL

Michael Dell beyond any doubt! He simply stands out as the most visionary leader in the technology industry, with an amazing track record of taking the right decisions for the future of his company and enabling human progress. He has transformed Dell Technologies from a PC company to an end-to-end solutions powerhouse that is one of the most ethical and admired companies to do business.

OFFLINE

He values spending time with family and makes sure to put in the quality time with his wife, son and daughter. He also enjoys being with friends, having good food and listening to music. Traveling to new countries is a great interest of his as he enjoys experiencing and learning different cultures, as is being on the racetrack from time to time.

BUILDING PLATFORMS TO INTEGRATE AND ORCHESTRATE DATA

du is committed to enabling innovation end-to-end, from digital infrastructure and cybersecurity through to innovative customer experiences and operations.

du offers mobile and fixed telephony, broadband connectivity and IPTV services to individuals, homes and businesses. The company also provides innovative solutions, carrier services for businesses and satellite up, downlink services for TV broadcasters. Products and services promoted by du include Business Plans for Postpaid Plans and Prepaid users. This also includes services such as Closed Business User Group free calling, and preferred International Destinations.

du’s AI solutions help to future-proof operating models and support business challenges as organisations navigate a digital revolution, ensuring maximum value generation in customers’ AI adoption journey. The telco’s UAE hosted Blockchain Platform on ‘Dubai Pulse’ also transforms and empowers organisations across the UAE.

Organisations across the UAE are engaging in digital transformation projects, with most accelerating their efforts after the pandemic. Most companies say that their major challenge is integrating their core and external IT.

Around 60% of UAE CIOs have multiple digital technologies that are separate from their core IT platform, which creates silos of innovation

and inhibits organisations from scaling up their digital transformation.

du helps organisations build digital platforms to seamlessly integrate, optimise processes and orchestrate data between their core and external IT. With an intelligent core, the telco constantly enriches its data and creates actionable insights, analytics, artificial intelligence and data lakes.

Digital transformation is more than moving applications and data to the cloud. It is about enabling your organisation to securely adopt new technologies, facilitate visualisation, inte-

selling and serving potential and existing du customers. Our channel partners have sales expertise in the service industry and have a large enterprise clientele with more than 15 staff members.

Through e-Procurement, du is connected with suppliers and business partners electronically on 24x7 basis. Further, du has a corporate policy to prioritise all Emirati Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs supplier companies registered with Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development and Dubai SME.

As a digital telco, du is committed to

grate data and processes, and integration of data and insights between internal and external processes seamless, supported by three foundational pillars, an ecosystem of partners and a comprehensive capability framework.

du works together with competent business owners or start-ups who are interested in

enabling innovation end-to-end, from digital infrastructure and cybersecurity through to innovative customer experiences and operations. In the future, Artificial Intelligence will drive breakthrough ideas and applications, future-proof operating models and support business challenges.

50% of UAE CIOs have multiple digital technologies that are separate from their core IT platform

Further, companies will increasingly rely on blockchain to accelerate the adoption of technology during a digital revolution and focus on their business needs. And cloud management, data centre solutions, enhanced enterprise connectivity will help increase agility, enable optimisation and visualisation reduce risk and simplify a complex ICT ecosystem.

Over the past 12 months, du has been working with key government entities such as the Department of Economy and Tourism, DET in Dubai in officially opening the Smart Business Hub, which will enable entrepreneurs to access a variety of du services and mobile telecom solutions that will enable businesses to launch their companies swiftly and pursue ideas through a comprehensive digital portal to achieve successful outcomes.

This important project with DET aligned with the UAE’s vision of providing support to companies and institutions across various business sectors, so that Dubai remains at the forefront of the list of preferred destinations for establishing and maintaining businesses regionally and globally. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Al Hassawi is responsible for overseeing telecom operations of du and Virgin brands’ digital lifestyle and innovation divisions, overseeing infrastructure development, technology and network investment, and continued 5G rollout. He is committed to driving innovation, accelerating digital transformation, and creating a fearless and industry-led telecommunications organisation.

Al Hassawi has been with EITC since 2006 in various capacities including Chief Commercial Officer at du and Deputy CEO of EITC overseeing telecom operations, including du and Virgin brands. He assumed the role of Acting Chief Executive Officer in September 2020 and guided the organisation into consistent growth.

Al Hassawi is leading du into the next phase of growth and expansion, ushering in a new accelerated phase of digital transformation. He spearheads an ambitious transformational mandate from the inside-out, directed at driving a purpose and performance driven culture, a faster go-to-market approach, and deeper and personalised customer experience.

Al Hassawi is inspired by the UAE’s culture and commitment to innovation. He relates to unique individuals and people who are passionate about work. The cumulative effect of many people working together and supporting each other is intrinsic to who he is as a person and as a leader at du.

With a background in Human Resources, Al Hassawi plays a key in empowering peers and team members by helping them overcome obstacles, celebrating their wins when they achieve high expectations, and engaging in open dialogue.

FAHAD AL HASSAWI CEO du.

INTERCONNECTION IS CENTRAL TO DIGITAL ECONOMY

By interconnecting with partners and customers across their distributed digital footprint, businesses can become both suppliers and consumers.

Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company bringing businesses together and providing them with the ability to interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, Equinix provide a globally consistent platform of vendor neutral data centres with physical and virtual offers that are interconnected via secure, software defined Equinix Fabric which enables technology and industry ecosystems to blossom and scale. We have the most dynamic, interconnected ecosystem of nearly 10,000 companies within the industry’s largest global footprint of over 240+ data centres across more than 66 metros in 27 countries on 5 continents.

Interconnection is emerging as central to the digital economy. It enables private, dedicated connectivity between businesses and their partners or customers, helping them ensure reliability, low latency, data security and privacy. By interconnecting with partners and customers across their distributed digital footprint, businesses can become both suppliers and consumers.

This helps them create a network effect that continuously compounds their value over time.

Platform Equinix is home to innovative digital services, a global colocation footprint, and an unmatched digital ecosystem of partners and service providers. With Equinix’s leading portfolio of interconnection services it makes it easier to tap into the digital services that fuel your business transformation.

All data centres deliver space, power, cooling, and connectivity. Beyond that, data centres vary widely in quality, the type of space they provide and even in their business models. Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company, and

and network routes to improve data centre performance; it enables them to reduce costs; and gives customers the option to change providers and services as business needs change.

The extensive range of partners in the Equinix ecosystem includes technology, network and cloud service providers, managed service providers, systems integrators, and valueadded resellers. As businesses strive to establish their digital presence and transform experiences at the edge, their reliance on technology, services and delivery through partners is cru-

its International Business Exchange IBX is a designation that Equinix created to define a world-class data centre.

Equinix’s data centres offer a wide selection of networks, compute and storage services IaaS and IT service partners on site. It gives customers more flexibility to mix and match services

cial to success.

With the Equinix partner ecosystem, businesses can choose specific providers based on expertise relevant to specific projects and initiatives. At the centre is Platform Equinix, with its powerful vendor-neutral digital infrastructure that helps businesses get closer to

Equinix interconnected ecosystem has nearly 10,000 companies within global footprint of 240+ data centres

prospective partners across the world. In addition, Equinix Fabric makes it quick and easy for customers to interconnect with the partners they need, on-demand.

Equinix brings together the building blocks of digital infrastructure with the company’s technical expertise, commitment to innovation and the large and diverse ecosystem of customers and partners. Equinix Fabric establishes a globally connected footprint of services that enables digital leaders to transform their businesses as they connect to everything and everyone that matters to their business.

Equinix Fabric continues to support hybrid multicloud connectivity and helps customers access network services in minutes, integrate bare metal servers from Equinix Metal, and connect virtual devices from Network Edge.

Arab Financial Services, the leading digital payment solutions provider and fintech enabler in the Middle East and Africa, has relocated its UAE data centre operations to Equinix Dubai International Business Exchange facilities in Dubai. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

As Managing Director of Equinix in the MENA region, Kamel oversees and is growing Equinix’s business portfolio in the region. Kamel helps the business to define its strategy for markets in the Middle East whilst continuing to engage and collaborate with the world’s leading clouds, networks, and service providers, supporting companies across the digital economy.

Kamel has 25 years’ experience in the IT industry in the Middle East region having worked with major corporations like NCR, EMC and Oracle, where he served in multiple senior leadership positions. Kamel has led large-scale projects across business functions and companies, leveraging leading business and technology practices to deliver effective ways of working, whilst driving ongoing scale and growth.

Kamel has driven Equinix’s move towards being the Middle East region’s go-to resource for digital infrastructure and innovative solutions, building the digital pathways for private sector companies and public sector organisations alike. Kamel is leading the development of a new International Business Exchange IBX Salalah in partnership with Omantel. Once operational the data centre will become a key interconnectivity point for traffic

KAMEL AL-TAWIL

Managing Director, Middle East and North Africa, Equinix.

REINVENTING CX WITH AI AND CHATBOTS

Freshworks was born of its founder’s desire to build software that people love to use as he could not understand why technology had to be so complicated and expensive, and why users disliked using the software so much. The mission was, and remains, to massively simplify business software, designing first and foremost for the front-line user, then for the team, and then for the managers.

This is a message that has resonated strongly with businesses of all sizes and the soundness of Freshworks’ mission and vision was validated not only by its hugely successful IPO, but by the fact that today, the company is trusted by over 58,000 customers in 120 countries.

Freshworks prides itself on listening to its customers and solving their business needs. What the company has heard from a broad spectrum of customers in the region is the need for conversational engagement. Consumers no longer want to wait around for resolution from businesses – they want instant resolution.

Given the limitations to how many human customer service resources a business can commit to addressing this customer requirement, the logical way forward for the customer service industry is the use of chatbots. AI, chatbots, and other human-effort saving

integrations are a key focus for Freshworks and the company is working to reinvent CX in industries ranging from financial services to utilities.

With the Freshworks chatbot, organisations can offer 24x7x365 customer service, and improved satisfaction for customers and employees, while simultaneously increasing efficiency and cost savings.

Freshworks makes it fast and easy for businesses to delight their customers and employees. The company does this by taking a fresh approach to building and delivering cloud software that’s affordable, quick to implement, and designed for the end-user.

Unlike legacy SaaS software, Freshworks

ence in ITSM, HRMS.

In the Middle East and Africa, Freshworks has enjoyed success with both enterprises and SMB customers across a broad range of industries. Notable customers in the region include BitOasis, Swvl, The Landmark Group, Fine Hygienic Holding, Wadi Degla, and Multichoice.

Key solutions offered by the company include:

Freshdesk: This omnichannel support solution offers the fastest time-to-value, enabling more meaningful conversations and the ability to turn service agents into customer champions.

Freshchat: This solution helps businesses offer anytime, personalised conversational customer support powered by AI bots and human assistance across convenient and familiar channels.

builds technology that works for everyone, making it easy for IT, customer service, sales, marketers and HR to do their job and delight their customers. More than 58,000 companies use Freshworks’ SaaS to enable a better customer experience, CRM and employee experi-

Freshservice: This is a cloud-based IT Help Desk and service management solution that enables organisations to simplify their IT operations. The solution offers features that include a ticketing system, self-service portal, and knowledgebase. ë

Given limitations of how many human resources a business can commit to addressing customer requirement, the logical way forward is use of chatbots.

More than 58,000 companies use Freshworks’ SaaS to enable a better customer experience

With Freshworks’ chatbot organisations can offer 24x7x365 customer service

TOP EXECUTIVE

As Freshworks’ Head for the Middle East and Africa, Manish leads the company’s sales, operations, channel, and marketing efforts in the region with an objective of providing top notch and affordable products to consumers so that they in turn can have customers for life. His efforts have led Freshworks to achieve remarkable growth in the MEA region with some of the marquee customers across the Gulf countries, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and Israel.

With over 20 years of industry experience, Manish has been instrumental in building Software Products, Services and Consulting business across APAC, Europe, India, ME, UK and US with an extensive background in Sales, Marketing and Operations.

Prior to joining Freshworks, he has worked in global technology, IT companies in leadership positions setting up the HCL Technologies business in Dubai and grew the region to considerable heights, headed and scaled TechMahindra and L&T Technology business across APACMEA. Manish holds a Bachelor in Electronics and Communication Engineering and Masters in Business Administration.

Manish was promoted to the role of Senior Director and Regional Head of the Middle East and Africa markets at Freshworks. In his current role, he leads the growth and customer facing functions for the company and is directly responsible for the revenue generation for Freshworks in the region.

Manish is currently working to build on Freshworks’ momentum by investing heavily in MEA and has plans in place to establish a presence across the region to place the company even closer to its prospects and customers.

DREAM ROLE

Manish aspires to be the Head of Business or CRO Chief Revenue Officer of a world class organisation like Freshworks. He derives pleasure from helping businesses get the most out of their business software and wants to continue working towards that in the region and globally.

ROLE MODELS

Jeff Bezos and his work in turning Amazon into a globally recognised brand is Manish’s inspiration. He loves how Bezos kept Amazon innovating at scale and how he pushed the business forward while also inspiring his team to look for larger avenues to play in.

OFFLINE

Manish is an avid reader and is currently reading Straight from the gut by Jack Welch and finished Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. He also plays squash and loves spending time with his kids taking them horse riding and swimming on his days away from work.

MANISH MISHRA Head MEA, Freshworks.

GREENLAKE REPLACING OBSOLETE PRIVATE CLOUDS

Traditional private cloud offerings have failed to deliver on their promise, due to complexity, manual processes, lack of visibility and governance.

HPE’s latest flagship offering for enterprise customers is the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. It enables customers to accelerate data-first modernisation and provides over 70 cloud services that can run onpremises, at the edge, in a colocation facility, and in the public cloud.

HPE GreenLake has 65,000 customers and over one exabyte of data under management with customers worldwide. These organisations benefit from one control plane from which to automate, orchestrate, and run their hybrid cloud strategy.

Recently, HPE announced additional cloud services for HPE GreenLake, including a reimagined modern private cloud that provides a cloud-native experience. Channel partners and enterprise customers across industries are embracing modern private clouds as part of their hybrid, multi-cloud, and digital transformation strategy.

However, traditional private cloud offerings have failed to deliver on their promise, due to complexity, manual processes, lack of visibility and governance, and narrowly focused solutions that cannot scale to meet the needs of the enterprise. HPE GreenLake addresses

these issues and provides unique customer experiences to expand their business, helping customers and partners to position themselves as market leaders.

HPE GreenLake and its industry-leading catalogue of cloud services clearly distinguishes the vendor from competitors as it enables customers and partners to drive data-first modernisation for all their workloads, across edge to cloud. This combined with HPE’s elaborate partner programme enables our partners to participate more fully across the entire customer lifecycle and evolve their business needs

their capabilities and expertise

HPE sees a huge opportunity for partners to become the service providers for their customers, evolving their own role from just a reseller of someone else’s cloud offerings to a fully-fledged strategic service provider. Not only will this make partners more relevant, but it will also be significantly more profitable as it includes the infrastructure and all the service consumption on top of it, allowing partners to add their own services.

In line with this development, HPE recently launched its new HPE Partner Ready Vantage

to accelerate their growth and enable their success.

The HPE Partner Ready Vantage Programme for example addresses the different business models of our channel community – globally and here in the UAE – directly, while nurturing, promoting and elevating partners based on

Programme. Designed to support customers to achieve their highest potential, it focuses on partners with as-a-service practices and recognizes and develops partner expertise. The programme is organised into three tracks: Build, Sell, and Service. Under these tracks, partners have access to focused Centres of Expertise

HPE Partner Ready Vantage Programme addresses different business models of its channel community

COEs, offering tailored enablement, training, goto-market initiatives, and sales tools. These help our partners meet their customer’s needs while providing flexibility to identify and pursue new opportunities and strengthen customer relationships.

At HPE we continue to invest in improving and introducing tools for partners to easily configure and price the right solutions, allowing them to expertly advise and service our shared customers – creating new value. At the same time, HPE will expand and make advancements on its existing service portfolio, helping partners making the jump to a strategic service provider.

This includes key technological capabilities like High performance Computing HPC and Artificial Intelligence, delivered as-a-Service. As a leader in the HPC market, HPE helps customers reach significant milestones in supercomputing, demonstrating powerful exascale capabilities. One example is the new supercomputer for the National Center of Meteorology that advances weather forecasting and overall climate research for UAE.

In June 2022, Taeknizon, a private cloud service provider focused on Asia and the Middle East, selected the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to expand its operations in the UAE. Through this partnership, HPE will support the local cloud provider company achieve its vision to become a specialised provider of multi-cloud HPE solutions, data management, data security, Internet of Things IoT, and Artificial Intelligence. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Since joining HPE, Ahmad Alkhallafi has encouraged the organisation to achieve its Emiratization goals, in support of the development of the country’s technology sector capabilities. Major recent initiatives he has overseen include the establishment of a local internship programme for promising graduates, investment in a Digital Knowledge Center to provide next-generation skills, and the rollout of highly competitive workplace benefits and wellness programs for all UAE employees. Ahmad Alkhallafi role requires him to work alongside UAE government bodies to help the country realise the goals set out in the Vision 2021 and National Advanced Sciences Agenda 2031.

Ahmad Alkhallafi has over 16 years’ experience working in the UAE’s technology sector. Before taking over as Managing Director at HPE, he worked with Emirates Post Group as a board member in Electronic Document Center and led its large enterprise and nationwide government sales strategy. Prior to this, Ahmad Alkhallafi helped in the launch of the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company du, where he was leading Enterprise Government sales and oversaw the design of new products, services and solutions for private cloud computing.

Ahmad Alkhallafi is working closely with UAE government bodies to help the country realise goals set out in the National Advanced Sciences Agenda 2031. He also works closely with the HPE team on expanding channel presence, teams, and expertise.

Ahmad Alkhallafi believes he is in the right position, where he can work towards aspirations that are aligned with HPE’s, to help the UAE and partners from the private sector achieve digital transformation agendas and to accelerate digital transformation and implement technology innovations to achieve great success.

DREAM ROLE

Dubai Government under the leadership of His Highness

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai is a true model of dedication and persistence. Over the past decade, Dubai has achieved a track record of successes across several industries, which are attributed to the country’s wise leadership and vision.

OFFLINE

Outside of work, he often goes out for fishing in summer, and engages in falconry during the winters. Falconry is deeply rooted in our culture as this sport teaches patience, strength and how to overcome opponents through intelligence.

AHMAD ALKHALLAFI Managing Director UAE, HPE

PROVIDING MULTI-TENANT SAAS SOLUTION ON AWS

Infor is only company in its peer group to provide multi-tenant SaaS with AWS as its sole hyperscaler and all applications integrated with each other.

Infor, the industry cloud company, specializes in industry-specific cloud software solutions to help industrial manufacturing and distribution customers in the Middle East automate and simplify complex systems and prepare for the future.

Infor’s smart, pre-configured cloud solutions, feature built in industry functionality to enable customers to simplify complexity, transform business processes, accelerate time to value, and put their end users at the centre of the experience.

Infor’s software is helping to drive this type of holistic innovation in industrial manufacturing and distribution by connecting organisations to their customers, supply chain network, plant and equipment, which enables employees to drive predictable revenues.

By embracing powerful cloud-based software and a culture of continuous innovation, organisations can turn many of their current challenges into advantages, bringing simplicity where there was complexity, gathering and using data to maximum effect, and enhancing their ability to work in tandem with suppliers and partners.

Infor’s solutions are pre-configured with built in industry-specific functionality, to enable customers to reduce complexity, transform business processes, and accelerate time to value. Infor built these specific configurations from the ground up so organisations get a solution fully configured for their sector from

day one. It makes a vast difference compared to generic, out-of-the box ERP solutions.

Infor is the only company in its peer group to provide a true multi-tenant SaaS solution. Infor teamed up with AWS as its sole hyperscaler a decade ago and all its applications are in the multi-tenant cloud and seamlessly integrated with each other.

Infor works with a number of strategic partners in the Middle East who help to market and implement Infor solutions. In the next 18 months Infor plans to expand its channel partnerships in key markets including the GCC, Turkey, South Africa, and Egypt.

Current partners include SNS, which recently implemented projects including Infor WMS for Mooneh, a third-party logistics storage and distribution provider operating on

delivery. ITWare worked closely with the Infor team during the entire presales cycle and is leading the implementation efforts.

ITWare is also leading on a deployment of Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise for Geminite Cement Industries, one of the Middle East’s leading players in building materials production and distribution.

Moving to the cloud is one of Infor’s vital moves, which sets the next phase in the revolution of Infor. The company has also invested significant resources in research and development to build and deliver business processes out-of-the-box, a move to which Soma Somasundaram, Infor Chief Technology Officer, refers as the next step of innovation for industries and micro-verticals.

Another key differentiator for Infor is its

behalf of leading international pharmaceutical corporates.

In March, Galva Coat Industries, a landmark plant in the industrial area of Abu Dhabi that produces a wide range of steel products, selected Infor CloudSuite Industrial, to enable the digitalisation of the production process and

next-generation cloud operating platform, which acts as the foundation for its solutions and transformational initiatives—Infor OS. The platform gives customers more than just flexibility. It is a toolbox packed full of in-context content, analytics, a connector, a homepage, an AI model, and more, ready at Infor’s fingertips,

Moving to the cloud is one of Infor’s vital moves, which sets the next phase in the revolution of Infor

KERRY KOUTSIKOS

VP and GM, Infor Middle East and Africa.

TOP EXECUTIVE

Kerry Koutsikos is responsible for leading Infor’s growth and development across the MEA region, including developing and executing the strategy, and building and developing the team.

Kerry Koutsikos is accomplished at building and developing businesses from start-up and growth stage to maturity, transition and succession, with a career spanning more than 30 years across the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Prior to joining Infor in June 2022 Koutsikos held senior executive roles at companies including Alteryx, Automation Anywhere, and Qlik.

Since joining Infor in June, Koutsikos has wasted no time in assessing the MEA business for strengths and areas for improvement and developing a strategy to propel the business to greater heights. Koutsikos recognised the need to position Infor as a boutique software solution provider targeting industrial manufacturing and distribution, develop new channel partnerships, and focus on value proposition.

Soma

enabling businesses to react quickly to changes and establish a competitive advantage.

Recent projects include Mooneh, which implemented Infor WMS,

Geminite Cement Industries LLC, the first Fibre Cement Boards production plant in the UAE; Abudawood Logistics, the KSA-based subsidiary of Abudawood Group and the exclusive distributor for Proctor and Gamble, Ferrero, Quaker Oats; and Supertech Group, the UAE-based supplier of industrial products and services.

Infor also works with other major customers including Al-Jazira Equipment Co. Ltd. AutoWorld, Zahid Tractor, Asry Shipyard, Metito, SACO, and Al Malki Group. ë

DREAM ROLE

Kerry Koutsikos is an entrepreneur who enjoys taking on new challenges, particularly business transformation and turnaround. With a degree in business computing and a Masters’ degree in international business, Koutsikos takes an analytical, datadriven approach to developing business strategies. As such, Koutsikos considers any future assignment that draws on this expertise to be a dream role.

ROLE MODEL

Koutsikos recognizes Richard Branson as a very important role model. Koutsikos said that creating a company such as Virgin and taking it into global markets is not just about expanding a business but creating a lifestyle brand that transcends sectors, catering to retail, media, travel and more. Richard Branson proved that you can be successful and continue to enjoy what you do, while at the same time demonstrating that people who love what they do will be successful.

OFFLINE

Outside of work, Koutsikos likes to spend time with his wife and daughter pursuing activities such as boating, jet skiing and travelling, including visiting historical sites. He also likes to support his wife’s passion for working to support charitable foundations.

CTO

Somasundaram refers to this as next step of innovation for industries and micro-verticals

#1 PROVIDER OF ACCELERATED COMPUTE THROUGH GRAPHICS

Intel is the only company with depth and breadth of software, silicon, platforms, packaging, process manufacturing at scale with its internal foundry.

Intel is at the forefront of developing new semiconductor technologies, products, and solutions as building blocks for an increasingly smart and connected world across a broad spectrum of markets.

Furthermore, to address and meet the new digital world, Intel has expanded its product offerings to provide end-to-end solutions, scaling from edge computing to 5G network, cloud, and the emerging fields of AI and autonomous driving.

Intel’s long-standing history as an industry leader for more than five decades aims to create world-changing technology, thus enabling global progress and enriching lives. Built on years of experience and expertise, the company’s advanced test and packaging technologies are unmatched.

Intel plans to become the number one provider of accelerated compute through graphics, GPU and HPC and become the number two foundry provider this decade. In addition, the company continuously works to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address the greatest supply-chain challenges.

Intel is the only company with the depth and breadth of software, silicon, platforms, and packaging to process manufacturing chips at-scale with its internal foundry, giving the company a key competitive advantage

that enables product optimisation and innovation and to serve customers globally.

Under the leadership of CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel launched a torrid pace of innovation and execution model and plans to launch five process nodes in the next four years. In addition, the company also plans to introduce Intel 4, followed by Intel 3, in 2023.

Earlier this year, the company shared details on its product and process technology roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including:

The Datacentre and AI business unveiled its roadmap for next-gen Intel Xeon products from 2022 to 2024, including Sapphire Rapids on Intel 7, bringing its most feature-rich

E-core-based Xeon processor will be launched in 2024.

Future generations of Xeon will have a dual-track roadmap of products based on Performance-cores and Efficient-cores, moving from two optimised platforms into one common, industry-defining platform; and Granite Rapids – the next-generation P-core Xeon product will be updated and launched in 2024, reinforcing the company’s confidence in the health of the Intel 3 process node.

Next-generation client products include Raptor Lake; Meteor Lake built on Intel 4; Arrow Lake – the first Intel product using Intel 20A tiles, as well as tiles made using an external process. All these products will offer

Xeon to market with significant performance improvements across a range of workloads; Emerald Rapids – the next-generation Xeon processor on the Intel 7 process node with improved performance and extension of the memory and security benefits from the existing platform; Sierra Forest – a revolutionary new

a huge step forward on XPU improvement, with integrated AI and tiled GPU architecture that provide discreet graphics-class performance. Meteor Lake will ship in 2023 and Arrow Lake will follow in 2024. In 2024, the company will enter the Angstrom era, with an objective to move from Nanometre to Angstrom.

Next-generation client products include Raptor Lake, Meteor Lake built on Intel 4

TOP EXECUTIVE

Taha joined Intel in 1995 in the US HQ and moved to the region in 2006. He is now leading the Client Computing Group as the sales director of the EMEA territory. He is responsible for working with HQ and the local teams on the Client strategy in the region to continue Intel’s growth trajectory and drive innovation and the launch of new products and solutions.

Taha started in the US in 1995 as a senior software engineer. He then assumed key managerial roles in engineering, strategic planning, and product marketing before returning back to the Middle East in 2006. He managed the Middle East Channel business and became the MENA General Manager in 2012 before assuming the dual role of CCG sales director and GCC country manager in 2017.

Taha leads the Client business on a growth trajectory in the region leading the team on key products, services, and solutions launch in the Middle East. He is leading Intel’s biggest initiative in the Middle East Project Mustakbal which is the key framework for Intel’s engagement with the government and ecosystem in the Middle East.

DREAM ROLE

Establishing the Middle East as a hub for growth and Innovation for Intel and creating centres of excellence on key leading technologies leading the digital transformation including AI and 5G.

ROLE MODELS

Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s current CEO, is a great role model for me personally. He represents the Intel’s culture of innovation, data driven discussions, and open door. His energy, charisma and torrid pace is of special inspiration to all employees.

OFFLINE

Taha enjoys sports in his spare time. He is training for a triathlon running, swimming, biking. He also enjoys travelling and spending time with his family specially. He is passionate about mentoring and coaching.

TAHA KHALIFA Client Computing Group Sales Director, EMEA Territory, Intel.

VENDOR, PARTNER & RESELLER’S VERTICAL- SPECIALITY EVENTS.

PLATFORM LAUNCH EVENT. PRODUCT LAUNCH EVENT. DIGITAL EDUCATION. CHANNEL NETWORKING EVENT IN EGYPT & KSA.

SERVICEDESK PLUS, ENDPOINT CENTRAL, TOP PRODUCTS

The vendor’s tools help IT teams with service management, operations management, endpoint management, IT security, data analytics, on-premises and in cloud.

ManageEngine offers a large suite of enterprise-ready solutions for IT teams of all sizes and in all industry verticals. It takes no time at all to implement our solutions. On top of that, they’re easy to configure and use. We also provide fully integrated solutions that give tremendous value to IT teams, so they can break free from working in silos and can enjoy a seamless experience while managing their organisation’s IT. Last but not the least, all our products are available at very affordable prices and provide a great ROI for our customers.

The changes in ManageEngine’s partner programme mostly involve upgrading the skills of our partners as our products keep evolving. This happens through continuous training of our partners in all areas, such as sales, pre-sales, implementation, and postsales support.

ManageEngine’s best-selling products in the Middle East are ServiceDesk Plus our ITSM solution, Endpoint Central our unified endpoint management tool, and our Active Directory management solutions.

The vendor covers the entire spectrum of IT management, allowing customers to be nimble as they navigate digital transformation. The vendor’s tools help IT teams with service management, operations management, endpoint management, IT security, and data analytics. The tools are available both on-premises and in the cloud.

With inherent flexibility, customizability, and extensibility, ManageEngine’s suite of products allows customers to start small, add more products as their needs grow, and integrate these solutions along the way to create an efficient technology management layer that spans their entire infrastructure and meets their specific requirements. ë

The vendor covers the entire spectrum of IT management, allowing customers to be nimble as they navigate digital transformation

ManageEngine

TOP EXECUTIVE

Manoharan is the regional sales director for the Middle East market. He is responsible for development and execution of ManageEngine’s channel and business distribution strategy in this region.

In the past 18 years, he had the opportunity to build business from the ground up to establish ManageEngine as a strong brand in the region. Manoharan helped build a strong partner network that has produced excellent results and he believes will serve customers well for years to come. Manoharan has donned several hats, from the lone warrior to heading a team of several dozen, which is what he is doing currently.

His biggest achievement has been creating a team that not only continues the channel-driven business model created 18 years back, but also continuously evolves to serve customers even better.

DREAM ROLE

Our company believes in empowering societies through ground-level initiatives, such as developing the skills of young people in rural areas. The company encourages employees to take the lead and organise programs like these. I look forward to being part of such activities.

ROLE MODELS

Manoharan cannot think of anyone other than CEO Sridhar Vembu. Sridhar Vembu used his vision and management style to navigate the company, helping to establish it as a strong player in the industry. He continues to inspire me and, may I say, several thousands.

OFFLINE

Manoharan is passionate about volleyball, watching and playing it.

NIRMAL KUMAR MANOHARAN Regional Sales Director, ManageEngine.

LEVERAGING THE TRIO OF STORE, MANAGE, PROTECT

With data fabric, NetApp has a unique offering in the market with consistent data services integrated across on-premises, hybrid, public cloud.

NetApp is a global, cloud-led, datacentric software company that empowers organisations to lead with data in the age of accelerated digital transformation. The company provides systems, software and cloud services that enable them to run their applications optimally from data centre to cloud, whether they are developing in the cloud, moving to the cloud, or creating their own cloudlike experiences on premises.

With solutions that perform across diverse environments, NetApp helps organisations build their own data fabric and securely deliver the right data, services, and applications to the right people—anytime, anywhere. NetApp partners with the world’s leading cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to deliver native solutions in their clouds.

To address data challenges, gain competitive edge, and thrive in the digital transformation era, NetApp data fabric solutions help enable our customer’s digital transformation journey in this complex, hybrid cloud world. From award-winning cloud backup solutions to synchronizing and securing data seamlessly between clouds and on-premises solutions, NetApp has focused on enabling our customer’s digital transformation journey.

NetApp continues to help customers suc-

ceed with a winning combination of technology and expertise–and racking up awards in the process. At NetApp, it’s all about using data as a differentiator, regardless of where it resides. This is all built on the trio of store, manage, and protect. With the data fabric, NetApp has a unique offering in the market with consistent data services integrated across their choice of on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud.

The NetApp Unified Partner Programme clearly differentiates partners in ways that are relevant to customer priorities and recognizes how partners contribute to the business, regardless of their sales motion. It is a flexible Partner Programme that encompasses all partner types, roles, selling motions and regional

and creating relevant solutions. The company has a strong track record of innovation and is responsible for many industry firsts for example, unified storage, deduplication, and FC, NVMe, as well as industry-leading innovation.

As a cloud specialist, NetApp is for example collaborating with VMware to help thousands of customers solve their multi-cloud challenges by effectively managing their enterprise workloads in any environment. By delivering powerful new solutions that help companies optimise their virtual data centres, modernise

differences to develop an ecosystem of partners differentiated based on skills and rewarded based on contributions.

At NetApp, people are specialists with an unwavering desire to innovate. NetApp coinnovates with partners and customers by listening carefully, anticipating tech trends,

their applications, and provide cost-efficient, enterprise-class data management services to VMware Cloud, NetApp are helping meet customers anywhere they are on their cloud journey.

Spot by NetApp is also a quickly expanding portfolio that helps businesses operate and

At NetApp it is all about using data as a differentiator, regardless of where it resides

optimise cloud infrastructure for applications in the public cloud. NetApp continues to invest in the Spot CloudOps portfolio, adding features such as intelligent traffic flow and extending stateful Elastigroup to Microsoft Azure, as well as developing Ocean Insights to provide insights into Kubernetes cluster efficiency, and identify performance and cost optimisations.

When it comes to data mobility, NetApp solutions play a huge role in the AI area. A data fabric powered by NetApp uses the data easier and faster, wherever and whenever it’s needed and closes the gap between different data locations. It also gives users increased flexibility in moving from one setting to another.

Moving from cloud to edge or from on premises to cloud, the data fabric accelerates your journey without bothering you about the details. This flexibility is especially crucial in building an environment with a federated learning setting that needs to take care of different enterprises or individuals, which probably use different environments to store their data.

TOP EXECUTIVE

In her current role, Maya manages NetApp’s regional Channel, Distribution and Alliances landscape and focuses on growing channel coverage across Eastern Europe, META, Iberia and LATAM. She not only works on building a strong partner ecosystem in the region but also leads the teams’ efforts in applying partner and pathways strategies. Additionally, Maya focuses on developing the company’s services business through partners as well as overseeing the commercial and velocity business.

Maya is an accomplished, result-driven sales professional with more than 20 years of channel and sales experience at leading international companies, including B2B high tech enterprises. Maya has served in several senior positions and supervised major organisational operations with some of the region’s top companies. Prior to joining NetApp in 2017, she was Channel Director for the Middle East at Fortinet, Strategic Alliance Manager at Dimension Data as well as Channel Development Manager and Partner Account Manager for UAE at Microsoft.

DREAM ROLE

An environment that encourages creativity and the freedom to communicate is two things I highly appreciate in a work environment. Maya prefers working in a group where the team encourage each other and there is a healthy exchange of ideas. My ideal workplace must also foster a culture of monitoring and grooming the next leaders. Maya also looks for growth, personal and professional.

OFFLINE

Maya enjoys spending time with her family when she is not busy travelling for work. Maya also has craving for adventure and enjoys travel to exotics places.

MAYA ZAKHOUR

Director Channel Sales, Eastern Europe, META, Iberia and LATAM, NetApp.

FOCUS ON INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

By combining simplicity of the cloud operating model with on-demand consumption and back-end provisioning, Pure Storage aims to make hardware truly invisible.

Today companies are migrating to the cloud at breakneck speed, but the cloud is not a destination, it is a fundamentally different way of working, and customers want the cloud experience from their on-prem infrastructure. Companies are overwhelmingly turning to hybrid cloud approaches that combine the ease and simplicity of the public cloud with the performance and control of the private cloud and this is what Pure enables.

By combining the simplicity of the cloud operating model with on-demand consumption and back-end provisioning, Pure Storage aims to make hardware truly invisible, as it is in the cloud.

Pure’s founding and enduring vision has been to bring simplicity and reliability to enterprise storage. Through the portfolio and services, Pure’s proven that storage is dynamic; can deliver a cloud experience; be consumed on-demand; and be responsive to application needs.

Pure has a constant focus on innovating and also supports customers’ sustainability efforts

with infrastructure which saves energy use, up to 80%.

Key differentiators include:

l Evergreen, Pure’s subscription service which eliminates refresh cycles and forklift upgrades: no competitor has been able to replicate it.

l A comprehensive container strategy following Pure’s integration of Portworx to enable modern cloud-native applications

l The entire portfolio can be delivered asa-Service with no lock-in, complete flexibility and comprehensive Service Level Agreements

l A focus on solutions which are services driven and delivered as code, through the

announcement of Pure Fusion.

As mentioned, Pure has a constant focus on innovation and bringing solutions to market which meet customer’s evolving needs. As-aService solutions remain a key customer driver and are growing quarter on quarter.

Pure is constantly evolving the partner programme to enable growth. As a 100% channel organisation, partner success is imperative. Earlier this year Pure announced a series of updates to empower partners with flexibility and support for multiple routes to market. Recently, Geoff Greenlaw joined as VP Channel, EMEA, based out of Dubai. His focus is on driving the four P’s in Pure’s channel programme:

l Partner: ensuring profitability

Pure has announced a series of updates to empower partners with flexibility and support for multiple routes to market

l Programme: ensuring partners have what they need to deliver Pure’s portfolio

l Process: making it easy for partners to work with Pure

l People: ensuring great collaboration and teamwork

Pure’s solutions recently announced:

l FlashBlade//S is a revolutionary new platform that addresses the demands of unstructured data and modern application growth.

l Evergreen//Flex; a new fleet level architecture that enables customers with flexibility and adaptability to move performance and stranded capacity to where their data and applications need it most

l FlashArray//X is the world’s first 100% all-flash end-to-end NVMe and NVMe-oF array.

l Portworx Data Services, the industry’s first Kubernetes Database-as-a-Service DBaaS Platform ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Omar leads Pure Storage across the Middle East and Emerging Africa including a team of highly professional sales, presales and after sales support. He reports into the Emerging Market leader.

Akar started his career with MDS group in Abu Dhabi before moving to EMC Saudi Arabia and then Huawei. In an era of digital disruption and evolution, Akar wanted to expand his experience into digital technologies and join a high growth and innovative company, joining Pure this year.

He has expanded Pure reach in key markets including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. He has consolidated local go to market strategy to better serve customers. He has enriched Pure’s regional channel partner eco-system and deepened existing relationships. He achieved 60.5% growth in Q2 according to IDC enterprise storage tracker.

DREAM ROLE

Akar’s aspiration is to enable Pure to become a leading provider of next generation modern data services and to have a major contribution and impact on the digital upgrade agenda of enterprises in MEA. He would also like to expand into new markets and become a top industry executive.

ROLE MODEL

Regional Vice President, Middle East and Emerging Africa, Pure Storage.

Akar finds role models to be those who disrupt an industry, people who view the world in a different way. Those who come up with revolutionary ideas and then execute on them. Planning but also promoting teamwork and customer centricity. Steve Jobs is one of those people.

OFFLINE

Akar is passionate about teamwork sports such as volleyball and Padel.

OMAR AKAR

80% ENTERPRISES PLANNING TO INCREASE USE OF OPEN SOURCE

Increasing use of enterprise open source extends to new technology workloads, such as digital transformation, AI, ML, edge computing, Internet of Things.

Red Hat is a provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered development approach to engineer reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualisation technologies to support our customers digital innovation journeys. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that engineer IT systems to support growth, innovation and prepare customers for the future of IT.

Red Hat provides storage, operating systems, hybrid cloud capable container platforms, middleware, applications, management products, and support, training, and award winning consulting and training services.

As the largest open source company in the world, Red Hat uses an open development model to help create more stable, secure, and innovative technologies for enterprise IT. Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to

many free software projects and fully engineers, hardens and supports the software for production use.

It has acquired several proprietary software product codebases through corporate mergers and acquisitions and has released such software under open source licenses. This ensures that the best software that creatively addresses cus-

applications, delivering a truly flexible cloud experience with the speed, stability, and scale required for digital innovation and business transformation.

Fully supported and security hardened, with support services, professional services and training the customer can be confident of building digital business capability.

tomers’ challenges is built for the enterprise and supported, leading to IT that supports innovation for business and customers.

Red Hat technologies for building IT infrastructure to support Open Hybrid Cloud is the recommended strategy for architecting, developing, and operating a hybrid mix of

The Red Hat partner ecosystem is an integral part of how Red Hat develops and delivers business and technical value to customers. It provides a fully certified and trained community to solve customer challenges, build integrated solutions, and establish and grow deep relationships—all built around Red Hat’s world

Red Hat uses an open development model to help create more stable, secure, technologies for enterprise IT

RED HAT

leading enterprise open source solutions.

The increasing use of enterprise open source extends to important new emerging technology workloads, with 80% of IT leaders globally planning to increase their use of enterprise open source in areas such as digital transformation, AI, ML, edge computing, and Internet of Things IoT, according to the State of Enterprise Open Source 2022 report.

As digital transformation and cloud become mainstream, demand for supported open source solutions and skills will intensify. Bringing technologies from the open source community and engineering and hardening them for the enterprise benefits many open source communities and companies that are adapting to meet the needs of modern digital business.

Red Hat has been selected by Riyadh Bank in Saudi Arabia to implement a hybrid cloud strategy built on Red Hat’s portfolio of open hybrid cloud technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat’s open innovation is a keystone of the bank’s drive to speed up innovation and time-to-market of digital services and products. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Based in Dubai Andrews has been with Red Hat for over 13 years and is the Vice President and General Manager of the CEMEA business region for Red Hat. He is responsible for sales and services for Red Hat technology in 90 countries.

Before moving to Dubai, Andrews led the Red Hat Asia Pacific Enterprise business for 5 years servicing the largest Red Hat clients in the region. Prior to this Andrews led the Northern and Eastern European Sales, Services and Marketing organisation with responsibility business covering UK and Ireland, the Nordic Countries, European Eastern Europe and Russia CIS.

Andrews is a thought leader on digital transformation, open innovation, vertical stories and overall Red Hat’s one hybrid cloud story. He also has a strong understanding of Red Hat’s business, its ecosystem landscape, regional presence and its synergy with IBM.

OFFLINE

Andrews enjoys time with family and his 7 year old twins, playing guitar, playing golf and riding a very large BMW motorbike.

PHILIP ANDREWS

Vice President and General Manager, CEMEA Region, Red Hat.

CAPTURE EVERY PACKET FLOW, TRANSACTION ACROSS MULTI-CLOUD

75% of business decision-makers say their organisations struggle to glean actionable insights from data that is generated by their technology infrastructure.

Riverbed offers a unique approach to unified observability that is comprehensive, unified and easyto-operate. Alluvio unified observability solutions help customers find that gold as fast as possible, turning actionable insights into business value so companies can stay competitive, productive and satisfy users’ fierce appetite for seamless digital experiences.

Together, with the Acceleration portfolio, Riverbed helps customers first illuminate and then accelerate every interaction – and ultimately empower the experience for users everywhere.

Riverbed has two industry leading solution areas – The Alluvio Unified Observability portfolio and Riverbed Acceleration. Alluvio, the company’s Unified Observability portfolio, provides IT with a unified view to see through massive complexity, and transform data into actionable insights across the entire digital ecosystem and enable automated self-healing.

The company’s Acceleration solutions provide fast, agile, secure acceleration of any app over any network to users, whether mobile, remote, or on-premises. Riverbed’s industryleading acceleration portfolio delivers cloud, SaaS, client and eCDN applications at peak

speeds, overcoming network latency, congestion, and suboptimal last-mile conditions to empower the hybrid workforce.

Additionally, Riverbed’s enterprise SD-WAN provides best-in-class performance, agility, security, and simplified management of hybrid WAN networks.

According to Riverbed’s recently conducted Hybrid Work Global Survey, 75% of business decision-makers say their organisations struggle to glean actionable insights from data that is generated by their technology infrastructure. Furthermore, IT still relies on siloed tools to

than capture everything leave IT blind to potential issues or opportunities for proactive improvement. Even so-called full-stack observability solutions fail to capture all relevant user, network, and application telemetry to effectively troubleshoot problems at scale for today’s complex, hybrid, and distributed infrastructures.

Riverbed’s vision of the Alluvio unified observability portfolio is to capture every packet flow, and end user transaction across multi-cloud and on-premises networks, applications, and user systems at full fidelity; and

manage performance and user experience and are overwhelmed by massive amounts of disparate data and alerts that provide little context or actionable insights.

Observability is meant to solve these problems, but current solutions fall short. Observability tools that limit or sample data rather

then apply intelligence through machine learning and artificial intelligence and automated investigative workflows to help IT quickly identify and resolve business-impacting issues so organisations can maintain productivity and deliver on user experience expectations.

In September, Riverbed announced its first

Riverbed experienced 48% YoY growth in project bookings through 2021

unified observability service, Alluvio IQ. Alluvio IQ solves the challenges of siloed IT monitoring tools which flood network teams with massive volumes of data and alerts on single metrics or interfaces that fail to provide context or actionable insights that IT needs to resolve performance problems quickly.

Future innovation will provide visibility into hybrid work use cases and predictive analysis to identify trends. Riverbed will also focus on user sentiment, did you know experience insights, and desktop remediations. As for Riverbed Acceleration, the company will continue to enhance and add new capabilities to the products and solutions within that portfolio.

In the Middle East, Riverbed has continued to prove itself as a key technology partner to leading enterprises particularly in the banking, energy, oil and gas, and public sectors. Some publicly referenceable regional customer wins the company has had in the last 18 months include Shelf Drilling, Ghabbour Auto, Halkbank, and ELARABY. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Mena Migally leads a team across the region who are helping local organisations modernise their IT environments by introducing unified observability and acceleration solutions to enhance performance, agility, and flexibility.

An industry veteran of 19 years, Mena has been a part of the Riverbed team since 2014 and during this time, he has played a key role in expanding the company’s customer and partner base. Prior to joining Riverbed, Mena spent six years in a variety of roles at IBM, most recently as Storage Sales Manager for Saudi Arabia, Levant and Pakistan. He has also held positions at Lenovo and Sanofi.

Under Migally’s leadership, Riverbed has excelled at enabling organisations in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, to transform and navigate the uncertainties and challenges of the post-pandemic world successfully digitally. As a result, the company experienced 48% year-on-year growth in project bookings through 2021.

DREAM ROLE

In every professional endeavour he has undertaken, Migally has strived to infuse tangible value into all engagements that the role entails – be it with colleagues, customers, or partners. With this serving as one of the key metrics by which he evaluates his personal success, he states that he feels blessed to have been able to accomplish this daily.

ROLE MODEL

While Migally holds several organisations and executives in high esteem, a common trait they all share is the ability to envision and communicate a clear strategy and subsequently create a corporate culture based on trust, transparency and accountability that empowers and encourages team members actively contribute to making the ‘big picture’ a reality. This is something Migally has both experienced and worked to propagate through Riverbed over his last eight years at the company.

OFFLINE

Migally is an avid collector of classic cars – primarily BMWs – and finds the process of restoring them both relaxing and rewarding. He is also passionate about music and plays both the bass and rhythm guitar. When he’s not spending time with his family or indulging his hobbies, Mena enjoys socialising and spending quality time with friends and colleagues.

MENA MIGALLY Regional Vice President META, Riverbed.

Some regional customer wins the company has had in the last 18 months include Shelf Drilling, Ghabbour Auto, Halkbank, and ELARABY

HELPING BUSINESSES BECOME INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES

SAP’s digital solutions address challenges namely building resilient supply chains, creating sustainable enterprises, transforming in the cloud.

Innovation is at the heart of everything SAP does, and its solutions are constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of its customers and governments. In addition, its solutions evolve based on its continued focus on sustainability as well as global networking to provide solutions to the world’s current challenges.

Aside from enhancing existing offerings, some exciting areas of future development are in quantum technologies, blockchain, artificial intelligence, composable enterprises and cryptofinance, among many others.

SAP has comprehensive cloud, on- premises and hybrid solutions aimed at running a business better, faster, and simpler, and which cover all business processes across all industries. Flagship products include S4HANA, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning solution; SuccessFactors, a talent management and engagement solution; SAP Ariba e-procurement and supply chain management solutions; and Concur Expense, a cloud-based and mobile system to manage the entire expense process.

In addition, SAP offers RISE with SAP to support its customers who want to leverage the benefits of cloud computing to run their business-critical processes quickly, securely and flexibly in the cloud.

SAP is focused on helping companies become ‘intelligent enterprises’, that is, enterprises that apply advanced technologies and

best practices within integrated, agile processes. SAP’s comprehensive range of digital solutions address the main challenges businesses face today, namely, building resilient supply chains, creating sustainable enterprises and transforming in the cloud.

RISE with SAP is a step-by-step holistic offering that supports companies’ digital transformation and is tailored for each company’s complexity and starting point. The aim is to go beyond a technical migration to the cloud, and instead enable companies to truly transform their business, realising a faster time-to-market for new capabilities and applications, and allowing for ongoing transformation.

Amongst the top differentiators are the comprehensiveness of SAP solutions, which cater for the needs of companies of all sizes across

the world are SAP customers, while 97 of the 100 greenest companies in the world run SAP. Businesses are increasingly realising, first, that sustainability should be built into all business processes, and second, that to react to global changes in an agile way, they need 360-degree visibility over all areas of operations – both of which SAP delivers.

A few recent UAE wins and projects in 2022 include the following:

• The Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development signed an MOU with SAP to leverage SAP’s UAE cloud offering.

• Moro Hub, a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, and SAP partnered to enhance intelligent automation at government and private organisations.

• Dubai’s Museum of the Future signed a

all industries; SAP’s focus on cloud computing, meaningful analytics and innovation; and the robust business ecosystem of skilled consultants and partners supporting SAP customers.

In addition, SAP’s focus on sustainability and its globality are appealing to customers.

In fact, 99 of the 100 largest companies in

strategic partnership with SAP and are collaborating on an ongoing basis.

• SAP partnered on two separate projects – with Dubai Government Human Resources Department and with ENOCto develop Emirati talent through its Young Professionals Programme.

SAP offers RISE with SAP to support its customers who want to leverage the benefits of cloud computing

TOP EXECUTIVE

Zakaria is responsible for SAP’s in-country presence and growth strategy including sales and marketing operations across the UAE. In this role, he works closely with SAP’s regional and global teams.

Zakaria has more than 20 years’ experience as a business leader and IT executive. He began his career at Siemens and Oracle, before joining SAP in October 2008. At SAP, he held different leadership positions before becoming Managing Director for SAP UAE. The most recent was Vice President of Global Channels and General Business, SAP MENA, responsible for defining and executing the GTM Strategy across MENA for both the Sales and Channel teams while developing business in emerging territories.

SAP has formed several significant partnerships in the UAE over recent years. Zakaria says that SAP’s ongoing partnership with Museum of the Future; SAP’s role in supporting the training of Emiratis through the Young Professionals Programs, and SAP’s immense involvement in EXPO 2020 are three particular highlights. He adds that visitors flocked to SAP House Dubai, established at EXPO, which successfully served as a hub to inspire lively discussions and to showcase how SAP solutions help businesses and governments drive resiliency, profitability, and sustainability.

DREAM ROLE

Zakaria hopes to continue to hold a position where he is able to nurture and develop talent, whether it is in his own team or helping to create a sustainable workforce in the UAE that will support the UAE’s role as a global hub of technology.

ROLE MODELS

Zakaria admires organisations and people who focus on innovation with a purpose. This, of course includes SAP and its CEO Christian Klein, but Zakaria stresses that the UAE leadership and a plethora of people across businesses and universities also serve as examples, as do organisations such as the Dubai Future Foundation, The Museum of the Future and the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology.

OFFLINE

Zakaria enjoys watching sport, spending time with family and friends, and has a keen interest in anything related to new developments in technology.

ZAKARIA HALTOUT Managing Director, SAP UAE.

REINVENTING WORK WITH THE NOW PLATFORM

ServiceNow offers a unified foundation for enterprise digital workflows, allowing customers to maximise technology investments and connect siloed systems.

Companies in the Middle East today are saying they want to keep their operation secure; they want to give employees a great experience and win the talent war; they want to go direct to consumer and rethink the ways customers relate and predict their next needs; they want to build the applications of the future in minutes and days, not months and years. These organisations need a platform like ServiceNow which does all of this, on a single platform.

The Now Platform is a platform for the workflow revolution. While there are vendors on the market that offer solutions for specific systems — ITSM or HR service delivery, for example — ServiceNow is the only vendor on the market that offer a single, unified foundation for all enterprise digital workflows, allowing customers to maximise value of existing technology investments and connect siloed systems, department and processes.

Since the Now Platform is built in the cloud, customers that choose to implement ServiceNow can be up and running in a matter of weeks rather than months or years that it would take with competitors.

The Now Platform is a single, unified foundation for all enterprise digital workflows. Key solutions for IT, employee, customer and creator workflows include:

IT workflows

IT Service Management ITSM, IT Operations Management

ITOM, IT Business Management, IT Asset Management, DevOps, Security Operations, Governance, Risk and Compliance GRC

Employee workflows

HR Service Delivery, Workplace Service Delivery, Legal Service Delivery, Procurement Service Management, Safe Workplace Suite

Customer workflows

Customer Service Management, Field Service Management, Connected Operations

Creator Workflows

App Engine, Integration Hub, ServiceNow App Store

Over the next few years, ServiceNow will continue to expand its portfolio of industry solutions and partnerships, in order to help companies in specific industries address their unique digital transformation challenges and create value at scale. ServiceNow started a couple of years back with banking and telecommunications and have since launched solutions for manufacturing, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Public Sector, to name a few. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

In his role, Ackerman is responsible for managing all aspects of strategy, sales and operations in the MEA Emerging Markets. This includes driving both direct sales and channel sales, go-to-market strategy in the region and continuing the incredible growth of ServiceNow.

Ackerman started out in the Call Center and Business Continuity world at the young age of 23. Progressing through his career, he always kept one foot in sales and one foot in technical leadership roles living in 4 countries over 15 years. Prior to joining ServiceNow in 2015, Ackerman spent six years with a leading systems integrator, three of those as the CTO.

Ackerman would not like to single out any one achievement – he enjoys what he does and therefore has a slightly different perspective. His career trajectory has been a testament to his belief that successful people do not always invent new solutions for new situations. Instead, they routinely adapt proven habits to resolve problems and drive success. Ackerman likes to follow repeatable methodologies and people way smarter than him to ensure sustained success by repeatedly doing the right thing.

DREAM ROLE

His future roles will always be guided by his intention to leave a legacy which he would be proud of, but for right now, he has his dream role – helping build an organisation which has such a strong purpose, Making the world of work, work better for people. Ackerman is a sportsman and will always be competitive! Winning, he believes, is not about a specific end but about how an end is met. Vision, strategy, and execution all pale in comparison to how people are treated. This approach guides his moral compass and decisions on a daily basis.

ROLE MODEL

Ray Dalio would be just one of Ackerman’s role models in business. He is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency. Ackerman regularly refreshes his memory and does his best to apply these principles in his professional career.

OFFLINE

Ackerman enjoys spending quality time with his beautiful wife and two children playing sports or doing some outdoor activity. He is also a keen motocross and desert Baja racing enthusiast. His competitive nature means he still participate in all the local championships and the odd International Rally or Baja when the opportunity presents itself.

The Now Platform is a platform for

the workflow revolution

MARK ACKERMAN

Area VP for Middle East and Africa, ServiceNow.

ARIS, ALFABET, CUMULOCITY, WEBMETHODS ARE DRIVING DX

Software AG’s platforms are a digital backbone helping organisations integrate seamlessly, connect more effectively and run processes effortlessly.

With a strong focus on ‘digitalfirst’ that has customer centricity at the core of its business strategy, Software AG enables customers to build sustainable, connected enterprises to offer integrated effortless experiences. Software AG’s platforms as a digital backbone help organisations integrate seamlessly, connect more effectively and run processes effortlessly, enabling smarter decisions, faster.

The combination of the company’s software and service portfolio for digitalisation, automation and integration of business processes, machines, and devices and data is unique in the global market. Software AG provides its customers with solutions and support for digital transformation, from planning and integration to evaluation, analysis and automated decision-making.

The firm sets itself apart from the competition through its independent position in process management, digital transformation and IoT, giving it an excellent competitive position in a tough software market.

To ensure enterprises stay agile and in control, Software AG offers ARIS and Alfabet. These tools can enable companies to understand their current IT ecosystem, map their business processes, and optimise their future digital business.

ARIS aids managers and experts across all

functions and geographies to transform, control, and optimise their organisation’s way of working.

ARIS delivers an integrated view of their enterprise’s end-to-end processes, which allows to create a business operating model and hypercharge efficiency. Alfabet aids enterprises to get clarity on IT investments and its resultant business results. This is a fast, efficient, and scalable way to increase productivity and revenue, with decreased risk and costs with built-in enterprise architecture capabilities.

Connected enterprises are made possible by APIs, integration and microservices. WebMethods from Software AG unlocks innovation by delivering new business models through a connected digital ecosystem using

analysed utilising Cumulocity IoT from Software AG.

From a channel strategy perspective, Software AG has overhauled and simplified its PartnerConnect programme. It is a self-service programme where once the partner onboards; they get access to more than 400 certified trainings and access to information similar to Software AG employees. Therefore, the openness within its channel ecosystem is very evident and transparent.

Additionally, the region’s first IoT Academy

integration solutions including hybrid data integration capabilities with StreamSets that empowers customers to turn data into value.

IoT insights have a significant business impact. From connected product manufacturers to machine operators and plant managers, by connecting devices and sensors, data can be

led by Software AG is a platform for partners in addition to the larger community to elevate IoT capabilities and equip them to better position themselves for future success by building and showcasing IoT use cases for industry application.

Software AG also addresses mega trends in

From a channel strategy perspective, Software AG has overhauled and simplified its PartnerConnect programme

the channel-partner journey, such as that of IoT and digital twins in the Metaverse, the steep rise in cloud adoption and hybrid integration, amongst others.

Software AG constantly explores new ways to build a more connected world through integration, investigating trends, pursuing developments, testing technologies and evaluating their potential for customers and partners.

In line with the most recent acquisition with StreamSets to further accelerate rapid growth in hybrid integration, Software AG will be able to address more of its €61 billion total addressable market by entering the cloud data integration market segment.

The acquisition enables the convergence of application integration and data integration to deliver smart applications, solving a crucial part of the hybrid integration challenge for enterprise customers.

Recent projects include Hassantuk fire safety systems for Injazat and Ministry of Interior with du; Emirates NBD for transforming processes; Dubai Municipality for better service visibility for better service delivery.

TOP EXECUTIVE

Vlad leads the regional channel landscape as part of the company’s strategic programme for developing the alliances’ ecosystem. Vlad is highly experienced in promoting cross-industry business solutions. His extensive experience in driving digital transformation initiatives has resulted in several successful cases to streamline organisational processes and operating models. His sharp acumen in understanding business models builds long-lasting partnerships for Software AG while focusing on constant business growth and customer experiences.

Over the past 15+ years Vlad has been working for leading software industries focusing specifically on revenue generation activities through direct or indirect channels.

In addition to his partner relations role, Vlad also leads key initiatives at Software AG such as the launch of the region’s first IoT Academy in the UAE last year. The initiative goes across the region with the Academy opening to Saudi Arabian IoT enthusiasts in 2022-2023.

VLAD POSTELNICU

Director Alliances and Strategic Partnerships, Software AG.

PROACTIVELY PREDICTING AND PRIORITISING THREATS

Enterprise SOCs can now spend less time on error-prone fire drills, coupled with weeks of investigation and can respond faster to protect the organisation.

Trellix XDR delivers living security to help organisations stay one step ahead of adversaries, adapt to new threats, and accelerate detection and correction. This security ecosystem goes beyond basic XDR capabilities and focuses on proactively predicting and prioritising threats instead of just reacting after an attack. This means that an organisations’ SOC spends less time on error-prone fire drills with weeks of investigation and can respond faster to protect the organisation.

Trellix’s XDR ecosystem is designed to accelerate the effectiveness of security operations by providing customers with the capability to ingest over six hundred native and open security technologies. By providing security analysts with better insight, granting more control, and delivering comprehensive threat context, analysts can save time and act decisively to remediate threats.

Trellix brings Prevention, Detection and Response, which are the critical capabilities of XDR, under the same umbrella, making it easier for enterprises to adopt and implement an XDR architecture faster.

This has been made possible by decades of experience in addressing complex enterprise cybersecurity challenges.

Trellix provides capabilities to protect and detect complex attacks at endpoint, network, email and cloud, while empowering the Security Operation Center to efficiently handle events and respond to incidents faster. It is also worth pointing out that the Trellix solution provides a hybrid architecture, catering to every business need rather than providing a singular approach.

The Trellix partner programme will be focused on skills and capabilities of its partners. The company recently launched a revamped Trellix University to upskill partners.

Trellix always strives for lighter, faster and consolidated technologies which is reflected in the company’s plans. As threats get sophisticated, Trellix will continue to innovate in its detection capabilities to protect businesses. In the year ahead, Trellix will continue to offer new solutions powered by AI, machine learning, and telemetry data from the company’s one billion–plus customer sensor network.

TRELLIX

Trellix recently launched a revamped University to upskill partners

TOP EXECUTIVE

Vibin Shaju works closely with enterprise organisations to understand their cyber security challenges and provide optimal solutions to meet their goals. Shaju also serves as the General Manager for Trellix in the UAE where he manages multiple functions including Sales, Presales, Support, Marketing and Professional Services.

Shaju’s early career included multiple technical roles with system integrators and vendors. He moved into a management role about 8yrs ago, quickly moving up the ladder from Regional Manager, Presales Middle East to his current role as Presales Director for EMEA.

Shaju has been instrumental in building a strong technical team at Trellix that understands the current cybersecurity challenges in cloud and security operations and enables organisations to transform their architecture to defend against modern cyberthreats. Shaju and his team have been involved in designing and implementing critical infrastructure cybersecurity projects at the national level in region.

DREAM ROLE

Shaju has spent his entire career in cybersecurity, with a commitment to continuous learning and improvement. He believes that Cybersecurity is #Soulfulwork as he has the opportunity to protect thousands of organisations against cyberattacks every day. Shaju is already living out his dream career and is truly passionate about what he does.

ROLE MODEL

With over 20+ years in the cybersecurity industry, Shaju has been blessed to have worked with some of the most innovative, brightest and inspirational leaders, both regionally and globally. There is not one person that Shaju would say he has modelled his career on but rather, he has tried to emulate traits from several. He firmly believes that his colleagues, managers and customers have had a big role to play in his journey.

OFFLINE

With a passion for history and nature, outside of work, Shaju loves travelling and seeing new places. He also enjoys playing sports to stay fit and mentally fresh.

Trellix partner programme will be focused on skills and capabilities of partners

VIBIN SHAJU

EMEA Presales Director and UAE General Manager, Trellix.

BUILDING A STRATEGY FOR AUTONOMOUS DATA MANAGEMENT

Veritas will deliver ADM updates, including deeper integration across multi-cloud, further autonomisation of data management and new services.

Veritas Technologies is a vendor in multi-cloud data management whose customers rely on protection, recoverability, and compliance of data. With over 80,000 customers - Veritas supports enterprises around the world with hybrid multi-cloud solutions, ransomware solutions, as well as data compliance and governance solutions. These include NetBackup, Netbackup SaaS Protection, InfoScale, EnterpriseVault, Cloud Storage, and many more.

The rush for enterprises to digitally transform their IT and data protection infrastructure since the pandemic has left many dangerously exposed to data threats, such as ransomware, and tackling increased complexity and rising costs from multi-cloud adoption. When businesses introduce new solutions to their technology stack, protection capabilities need to be extended to cover them. However, many businesses are struggling to keep pace.

Veritas offers its customers reliability at scale, which delivers the resilience needed to navigate multi-cloud environments, digitally transform their data protection management, and protect themselves against cyberthreats. Veritas also offers customers Autonomous Data Manage-

experience that delivers performance and versatility, edge to core to cloud, with support for 800+ data sources, 100+ operating systems, 1,400+ storage targets, and 60+ clouds.

The Global Partner Programme is designed to drive growth and reward performance.

ment that reduces operational overhead while delivering greater value.

Veritas is uniquely equipped to help organisations of all sizes conquer the complexity of managing and protecting their business-critical data. Through its integrated product portfolio, Veritas provides a unified data management

The main objectives of the programme are:

l Reward partners for generating and closing new opportunities

l Enable partners by offering comprehensive training

l Promote customer retention with capable and committed partners

Veritas offers customers reliability at scale, which delivers resilience needed to navigate multi-cloud environments

l Develop content, tools and fund joint activities for demand generation

The Veritas vision is built on a strategy for autonomous data management ADM, where solutions will use AI and machine learning to self-provision, self-optimise and self-heal. This is founded on Cloud Scale Technology, a containerised, cloud-optimised reimaging of the software underpinning the NetBackup solution.

Going forward, Veritas will deliver updates that fulfil its ADM promise, including deeper integration across multi-cloud environments, further autonomisation of data management and new services that reduce the burden on IT staff. At the same time, Veritas will bolster defences against ransomware, continue to simplify compliance and help customers reduce complexity as the transition to the cloud.

TOP EXECUTIVE

Yudum covers channel sales in the International emerging region. The region expands from Eastern Europe to Middle East to Africa and India. Yudum was promoted to Channel Director role at Veritas about a year ago, and previously held leadership positions within sales at Veritas. Before joining Veritas, she held positions in other IT organisations including Oracle, Dell EMC and IBM.

Since Yudum joined the Channel team at Veritas, there have successful steps towards transforming the cloud portfolio. Yudum has helped the channel community to adapt to support this transformation. Veritas has also strengthened relationships with alliance partners such as Microsoft, AWS, Fujitsu, Kyndryl and Hitachi as well as local alliance partners such as Infosys and Wipro.

DREAM ROLE

To continue to enjoy my journey in this dynamic fast-paced company where the only constant is change itself. Yudum hope to continue for many more years to come.

ROLE MODEL

The executive Yudum most admires in the industry is Johnny Karam, Regional Vice President, Emerging Region, Veritas. Throughout the organisation he has driven a culture of customer centricity and of one team where we all strive to be a partner’s first choice.

OFFLINE

Yudum is passionate about mentoring. She has been a mentor both through formal programs, as well as informally coaching people around me. Yudum like to help people to find fulfilment in their careers. Yudum also enjoy participating in sports such as football, volleyball and skiing.

YUDUM YONAK

Channel Director of International Emerging Region, Veritas Technologies.

ENABLING MULTI CLOUD, APP MODERNISATION, DISTRIBUTED WORKING

75% of business decision-makers say their organisations struggle to glean actionable insights from data that is generated by their technology infrastructure.

One of the main challenges an organisation faces is how to transform their operations to keep up with the pace of change, and the ever changing demands of customers. Organisations need to scale up securely and innovate quickly to compete. They need to increase productivity and efficiency and offer customers the type of digital services they expect.

VMware’s solutions around multi cloud, apps modernisation, and distributed working are enabling organisations to digitally transform by bringing simplicity where there was complexity and giving organisations a clear path to reach their transformation goals.

VMware’s multi-cloud platform can provide for all an organisation’s applications, wherever they want them deployed. VMware’s cloud platform provides the trusted, secure foundation to enable innovation and control. This gives VMware an unmatched ability to empower organisations to accelerate their innovation to meet the new and immersive needs of customers and employees, and to seize the opportunities in front of them today and into the future with ease, speed, and control.

VMware’s key solutions are in six main categories: multi-cloud, app platform, cloud

and edge infrastructure, anywhere workspace, security and networking.

VMware Cloud Foundation provides organisations with a future ready architecture for modern business and supports multi-cloud environments, supporting both traditional enterprise and modern apps, and providing a complete set of highly secure software-defined services.

With VMware’s Tanzu platform, organisations can build new cloud-native apps, modernise existing apps, and operate infrastructure that serves them across any cloud.

company’s singular, unified, global partner programme. Partner Connect’s new framework aligns to today’s cloud, services, and solutionscentric business models, and will help partners drive better business performance and profitability while transforming their businesses for tomorrow.

The evolved VMware Partner Connect programme will deliver a flexible framework to support partners’ go to market with VMware, accelerate partner growth, and reward partners for the totality of their achievements and capabilities. VMware is delivering several

Organisations can successfully manage their distributed workforce with solutions including Workspace ONE, an intelligence-driven digital workspace platform that delivers and manages any app on any device.

In August, VMware announced the next evolution of VMware Partner Connect – the

immediate benefits, with additional capabilities and enhancements to be made available in the future.

Key announcements at VMware Explore included cloud and edge infrastructure solutions featuring innovations to help organisations better run, scale, and secure the broadest

VMware Partner Connect programme will deliver a flexible framework to support partners’ go to market

including Workspace

range of enterprise workloads across private and public clouds and at the edge; and a multi-cloud management portfolio called VMware Aria, which provides a set of end-to-end solutions for managing the cost, performance, configuration, and delivery of infrastructure and cloud native applications.

Some of VMWare’s key regional projects include: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health deployed multicloud solutions from VMware to digitally transform the country’s public healthcare sector; Solutions by stc became the first VMware Sovereign Cloud provider in Saudi Arabia; VMware signed an MoU with Aramco to support collaboration across cloud and end-user computing, cybersecurity, and digital transformation; Mobily Business announced the launch of its SD-WAN service, built on VMware solutions, for Mobily Business customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ë

TOP EXECUTIVE

Ossama Eldeeb’s role involves working with his team to develop and execute the engagement strategy within VMware’s partner organisations across the South EMEA region – an area with 4,000 plus active partners. Eldeeb reports to the South EMEA Vice President.

Eldeeb has 25 years of direct and indirect sales experience, business development and management within three major IT companies: VMware, Microsoft, and Advanced Micro Devices. He took on his most recent role in August 2021 after developing VMware’s MENA partner ecosystem as Regional Channel and Commercial Sales Manager, Middle East and North Africa.

Eldeeb says his most memorable achievement has been to help build a team in the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa region that has made this region one of biggest markets for advanced partner certification. According to Eldeeb, this is because of the commitment of the VMware team and partners, who make a financial investment to offer this certification to employees.

DREAM ROLE

One year into his current job and Eldeeb is clear that it is a dream role. He is passionate about bringing out the best in people and also enjoys his role as co-leader for the VMware Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Power of Difference across METNA. He describes this role as being satisfying as it allows him to help develop the team and to see a growing number of talented women excel and bring their skills to the table.

ROLE MODEL

Eldeeb considers himself fortunate to have worked for three organisations he admires. He points out that VMware, Microsoft, and AMD are all hugely successful companies that have adapted and innovated to thrive. If we want inspiration, we can look at Dubai, many of us call home.

OFFLINE

Outside of work Eldeeb loves spending time with his family, especially quality time outdoors when the weather permits. He also likes to relax by doing outdoor pursuits like fishing and paddle boarding. He also enjoys keeping his mind sharp with lots of reading.

OSSAMA ELDEEB Senior Director, Partner Organization, VMware South EMEA.

Organisations can successfully manage their distributed workforce with solutions

Supported By

31 October - 3 November 2022

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The Future of Energy: Sustainable, Affordable, Secure

STRATEGIC CONFERENCE

THEMES:

The long-term impacts of geopolitics on the global economy and energy industry

The road to COP27 and COP28

An industry transitioning: adapting to the new fundamentals of supply, low carbon and new energy solutions

Innovation and the energy transition: pioneering a new era of technology development

The new management agenda: future workforce and the leaders of tomorrow

CONFERENCES AT ADIPEC:

• Strategic Conference

• Technical Conference

• Decarbonisation Conference NEW

• Offshore & Marine Conference

• Smart Manufacturing Strategic & Technical Conferences

• Forum for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Conference

• Downstream Technical Conference

Strategically taking place before COP27, ADIPEC is the global platform for leaders to reinforce commitments that will drive the industry towards reducing emissions, meeting decarbonisation goals, and providing a realistic view on short- and long-term energy outlooks. View

CLOUD-MANAGED NETWORK MANAGEMENT SOLUTION FOR SMBS

Nuclias Cloud is D-Link’s 100% Cloud network management solution for Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) with multiple network deployment sites and limited IT resources such as hotels, restaurants, chain-stores, and campuses. It is a readymade and independently-maintained solution that allows SMBs to manage and monitor their own networks remotely, or outsource this work to a Managed Service Provider (MSPs), featuring zero-touch installation, zero-cost platform upgrades and security fixes, unlimited scalability, 99.9% reliability, and a very light footprint. It is a comprehensive solution, encompassing network devices and the Cloud platform that runs them, for businesses seeking a hassle-free, worry-free IT network experience, where costs are transparent, and things just work.

Nuclias Cloud is a 100% Cloud-managed network management solution that can deliver tremendous efficiency gains for SMBs with numerous small locations and modest IT resources, such as retailers, restaurants, gas stations, and hotel chains and is well-suited to businesses who want a network that just works, without being bothered with configuration or administration tasks. Networks and sites can be managed remotely through an intuitive interface and dashboard, without the need to open up ceilings or travel to other sites to rectify small problems, and without the need for specialized IT skills. New devices can also be on boarded automatically through a zero-touch process, meaning non-

technical personnel can handle this task if necessary. Nuclias Cloud delivers the control and ease-of-use an SMB needs, without costly add-ons they’ll never use. And what’s more, any information sent to and from the Cloud is encrypted, with 99.9% reliability guaranteed. And because it’s Cloud, you won’t be needing your own server, or a dedicated Admin to run it. All you need are the Cloud managed network devices, a Cloud license, and a PC or tablet to run the app – that’s it.

Building a high-performance multi-site network is a very complex task that can take months or even years when starting from scratch. Traditional enterprise solutions offer the extensibility, scalability, and features you need, but they can also be highly complex, requiring special services for deployment, maintenance, and expansion, special training for operation, and expensive annual maintenance contracts that must be kept current to receive all the latest patches and updates. And when it comes to managing and monitoring such networks, most organizations are paying for features they neither need nor use. According to an IDG Research Services survey, many businesses would be happy to give up certain functions or capabilities to reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Of the over 100 respondents involved in purchasing network management and/or monitoring solutions, two-thirds said they were paying for features and capabilities that were unused and unneeded, while 55% of IDG respondents using solutions from the top vendors were willing to give up unused functionality to reduce cost. ë

CIO 200

GBM BOOSTS COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH ACQUISITION OF COORDINATES ME

GBM has recently announced its acquisition of Coordinates Middle East. Can you tell us more about this new partnership?

Earlier this month, Gulf Business Machines (GBM) completed the acquisition of Coordinates Middle East majority shares, with Cor. becoming an intrinsic part of GBM’s suite of cybersecurity offerings. Cor. is our innovative technology-agnostic platform that enables integration, automation, and orchestration across detection, response, and remediation of any technology to achieve cyber resilience.

The acquisition was a result of several months of conversation between GBM and Coordinates Middle East where we recognized the synergy between both organizations in our efforts to build cyber resilience across the region, and in our common goal to help organizations to address challenges faced with legacy Managed Security Services that are historically complex to deploy, challenging to adopt, slow to respond to events, and resource-heavy on enterprises. Through this acquisition, GBM will bring to market state-of-the-art technology further boosting its ability to anticipate, detect and respond to cyber threats.

How will Cor., Coordinates cybersecurity platform, strengthen GBM’s cybersecurity portfolio?

Over the past five years, the Coordinates Middle East team has built the most advanced cybersecurity platform in the industry which enables the seamless integration of any technology to provide defense-grade services to enterprises of all sizes. This includes automation and orchestration of the entire cybersecurity lifecycle across monitoring, detection, response & remediation, giving enterprises the choice to maintain and choose their technology stack, the ability to make those technologies perform at their highest levels and develop a web of self-defense capabilities at machine speed. The addition of Cor. into GBM’s security portfolio is a significant milestone in the evolution of the

TAREK GHOUL Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Coordinates Middle East

complex and diverse business needs. I believe this partnership is a winning formula with the combination of GBM’s unparalleled depth, expertise, and reach in the region, along with Cor.’s adaptive, bespoke cyber defense technology, which will help us support enterprises of all sizes to defend against emerging cybersecurity threats.

Coordinates was built from the ground up as a disruptive, pure-play Managed Detection and Response firm. Our platform enables the democratization of defense-grade security services that are inherently expensive, complex to deploy and manage, and intrinsically demanding. Through this acquisition, our team is able to support clients across the region to develop the latest detection capabilities, create a new algorithm, or evolve an integration to improve client security posture around the clock.

How has the approach to cybersecurity changed within organizations as we witness accelerated digital transformation and a focus on post pandemic recovery?

Managed Detection & Response market, and I am very excited to be joining forces with GBM to extend the offerings of this platform to more organizations across the region.

What motivated this partnership with GBM and how will this acquisition provide a unique offering to your customers in the market?

GBM is an accomplished player in the regional IT space with over three decades of experience helping organizations transform their IT infrastructure and addressing their specific,

In a hyper-connected world, no business is stealth on the threat radar. The nature of cybersecurity risks has evolved and grown in sophistication and volume as we see accelerated digital transformation across sectors. Cybersecurity has become a key discussion point in the boardroom, and it has become clear on a senior management level that organizations can be disadvantaged if lacking the resources, sufficient budgets, and specialized expertise to protect businesses and fend off risks.

As such, we are seeing cybersecurity maturity being recognized as a strategic competitive advantage by business leaders. This has resulted in organizations taking a holistic approach to mitigating security risk, by focusing on people, processes, technology and business priorities. While there is still a lot of work to be done around this, I believe we have already made considerable progress as cybersecurity is now considered central to the digital architecture of the enterprise. ë

STREAMLINING YOUR BUSINESS TO COMBAT SUPPLY CHAIN CHALLENGES

Supply chain challenges is an issue that is not going away anytime soon. In the Middle East, we continue to be faced with supply chain labour challenges, due to the large emigrant workforce – a major factor that differentiates this region to the challenges other countries face. The impact of the pandemic has seen employees leaving for their homeland, leaving their roles to find better opportunities, or diversifying their skill set into other areas.

Looking at the entire manufacturing global supply chain, aspects such as high costs, and the ever-increasing talent gaps and labour shortages expose the apparent high dependency on the workforce.

To combat these challenges, businesses are responding by placing a lot of importance on anticipating and minimising labor-related risks in their supply chain. Organisations are increasingly looking at alternating their processes & controls, that were human dependent, and now questioning where they could be more efficient and fit for the future. The answer, implementing software solutions and industry 4.0 technologies.

The effective solution for businesses to overcome manufacturing labour shortages is to implement automation through a vertical approach to software solutions. Defined as:

Data capture - capturing data can be simplified with automatically using machine reading and measuring systems, barcodes for quick scanning, machine learning that automatically reads populates data.

Monitoring & controlling - of process and controls systems so they can have benchmarks set, send out auto alerts by chosen delivery model, allow benchmarked transactions and escalate exceptions and control machinery and alert on any deviations or specific parameters.

Measuring and analysing - to utilize intelligence and analytics that can also be used to slice and dice data, understand trends, spot opportunities, and eventually maximize revenue. Dashboards and reports can reveal status updates across the entire enterprises supply chain and provide detailed data that can be

VIBHU KAPOOR

Regional Vice President, Epicor

relied upon and quickly actioned. Operations that were once reliant on manpower can now be automated resulting in greater efficiency and competitiveness.

Bringing this to life at Epicor, we developed Epicor Kinetic to intuitively personalise and integrate with existing business platforms, whether a company is looking to find new ways to replace manual processes, see the full picture of your business performance and need to access data from multiple systems such as an accountancy platform (APS) or empower your users with access to self-serve business data such as configure price quote (CPQ) we enable businesses to track work progress in real-time, improve technical data processes and increase automation and insights, all while maximizing business revenue.

Choosing a reliable partner is part and parcel of adopting the right software solution. A trusted and reliable partner will take the time to create a bespoke solution for your business.

This is where ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is key, especially for those in manufacturing. The trusted partner would bring their industry experience and knowledge, challenge you at every stage and align your business processes towards best practices, with the right mix of technology. This would not only aid in preparing for the change required with new technology, but also ensure the right solution to help manage day-to-day business activities across accounting, procurement, project management and of course supply chain operations. As a result, a more efficient and streamlined supply chain that is less reliant on a human workforce has come to fruition.

Automation can benefit workers, in turn allowing companies to shield against labour challenges. Fundamentally, it gives manufacturing and supply chain companies the opportunity to better use their resources, allowing employees to utilize their skill sets. Manufacturing companies are seeking employees who will bring a mixed skill set to the table, a combination of technical, soft, and physical skills required in a setting that is largely techrun. As such, workers have greater opportunity to work in an environment that sees them learn and use diversified skills, while allowing them to be more accurate, reliable, and efficient themselves. In fact, the prospect of working for manufacturing companies whose supply chains are automated can be significantly more attractive to candidates.

In short, reducing the demands on employees can lead to greater retention and more job satisfaction, ultimately cutting back on labour shortage. Companies will have to remain cognizant of the potential skills gap and should be prepared to upskill and train employees accordingly. There is no doubt that our supply chains of the future will need to be characterized by both resilience and responsibility.

Automation holds the key to this. It can help companies safeguard against any serious regional labour shortages, enabling them to build around their customers, help economies recuperate and ultimately support stability in supply chain. ë

GRAND FINALE

23rd NOV 2022

THAILAND

WHERE TECHNOLOGY IS BORDERLESS, AMBITIONS ARE FEARLESS, AND LEADERSHIP IS LIMITLESS