Enterprise Channels MEA August 2017

B IOS: LEVE RAG I NG CLOU D FOR AN ‘ALWAYS-ON’ B USI N ESS / 34

PA G E S 5 2 VOLUME O5 | ISSUE 01 AUGUST 2017 WWW.EC-MEA.COM

Big data, seamless connectivity, digitization and competitive loyalty are adding that extra layer of beauty to the hospitality sector that stands on the threshold of major disruption... /24

M E DEVICES AT CONSTANT R ISK OF ATTACK: SON ICWALL /30

INDIAECM012017

Smart Services On the Platter

THE CRITICAL

INFRASTRUCTURE FORUM 2017 28TH NOV 2017

THE NEXUS OF GCC COUNTRIES FOR FUTURE ECONOMY Unveiling the investments, roadmap, technolgies and key infrastructure pillars that put GCC on the map of global competitiveness

ORGANISED BY

www. gec360.org

BROUGHT BY

EDITORIAL

Re-thinking Ecosystems

ANUSHREE DIXIT A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M

Recently, I had an opportunity to sit with 2 CEOs from leading organizations over a cup of coffee— one of them was a CEO of a IT service provider organization and the other a customer. As we sat across the table talking about the market dynamics and how the relationship between a service provider and clients have changed, a very interesting discussion popped up— on revenue generation and budget allocation. Though we read about this and hear about this daily, it was really interesting to see things come out from the horse’s mouth.

While curbing budgets and having pre-outlined allocations were the common grounds for both the sides; it was very interesting to see how digital transformation is steadily becoming the modus operandi of all their business models; how supply chains are being affected and how the revenue models were architected in both the CEO’s organization; how partners and OEM’s would be playing key roles in redefining the ecosystem?

The bottom line is— the market is no longer a ‘sell and purchase’ monotone.

The thin line of difference between pushing service and providing service is well understood and we could actually see some defined research and development from the service providers side going into understanding what a customer wanted and an equal caliber from the customer side in having the appetite to listen and comprehend what would best suit his/her organization.

With that in mind, in this issue of Enterprise Channels MEA, we are trying to showcase various models of transformation. One predominant question that you will find in the stories is, what digital transformation means to a particular organization? Because without answering that, there is no moving ahead.

Happy Reading! ë

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2017 CONTENTS

VOLUME 05 ISSUE 01 AUGUST 2017 W W W. E C - M E A . C O M

COVER STORY

SMART SERVICES ON THE PLATTER

Big data, seamless connectivity, digitization and competitive loyalty are adding that extra layer of beauty to the hospitality sector that stands on the threshold of major disruption /24 CIO SPEAK /28

‘BROADCASTING DIGITIZATION’

INNOVATIONS /49

SPECIAL STORY Business & IT A Shared Responsibility!

46

POLARIS BOX 6

MR. DAMIAN O’GARA, VICE PRESIDENT OF IT AT OSN

R&M unveiled its new generation of sturdy and flexible connection boxes for fibre optic networks.

MY VIEWS /29

REVOLUTIONIZING LOGISTICS KUSHAL NAHATA, CO-FOUNDER & CEO, FAREYE

PARTNER STREET /31

ARROW-DELL EMC

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04 CHANNEL STREET : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 FOCUS STORY “BAHRAIN”::::::::::::::::::::::: 42 INNOVATIONS : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 49

ADVERTISER INDEX: CIF 02, EMITAC 03, VEEAM 07, REDHAT 09, OMA 11, GITEX 2017 13, SPIRE 15, GEC AWARDS 2017 17, FINESSE 19, DARKMATTER 21, DELL EMC WORLD 23, GITEX DWTC 41, FINESSE 45, GBM 51, GEC OPEN 52

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CHANNEL

STREET Juniper Networks Reports Preliminary Second Q2017 Financial Results Juniper Networks reported preliminary financial results for the three months ended June 30, 2017 and provided its outlook for the three months ending September 30, 2017. Net revenues were $1,308.9 million, an increase of 7% year-over-year and sequentially. GAAP operating margin was 19.7%, an increase from 16.7% in the second quarter of 2016, and an increase from 12.8% in the first quarter of 2017.

“We are executing on our strtegy to lead the transformation to the cloud, and I am pleased with the continued strength in our cloud solutions. We believe our innovative product portfolio has us well positioned to expand our business

opportunities as customers look for high-performance network solutions that deliver scale, performance and automation” said Rami Rahim, CEO, Juniper Networks.

“We delivered solid profitability and continued to generate healthy cash flow from operations,” said Ken Miller, CFO, Juniper Networks. “We remain focused on delivering shareholder value through revenue growth and diversification, earnings expansion and an optimized capital structure.” Total cash, cash equivalents, and investments as of June 30, 2017 were $4,215 million, compared to $3,491 million as of June 30, 2016, and $4,044 million as of March 31, 2017.

COMMVAULT BEGINS FISCAL YEAR WITH STRONG CUSTOMER MOMENTUM Commvault began its fiscal year for 2018 with continued worldwide growth with customers and managed service providers in the first quarter. The growth was fueled by the increasing need to protect and use data to drive the digital transformation, the accelerated shift to the cloud to drive increased business agility, innovation and collaboration, and the increased regulatory demands faced by global organizations to meet GDPR and other requirements. Data recovery and protection from rising global ransomware attacks around the world also contributed to the growth.

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RAMI RAHIM, CEO, JUNIPER NETWORKS

GARTNER NAMES CLOUDHPT ‘AS VISIONARY’ DRAAS PROVIDER The 2017 edition of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service Provider has recognized CloudHPT in the ‘Visionary’ quadrant. CloudHPT is the cloud division of UAE based managed service provider, BIOS Middle East. “There is an increasing importance on Disaster Recovery as companies leverage technology to move towards always-on business. We are delighted that our approach to industry leading recovery SLA’s, emphasizes the importance of disaster prevention through 24/7 security managed services has been recognized visionary” said Adam Wolf, Technical Director, BIOS.

ENTERPRISES STRUGGLE to deliver Availability across even the most modern environments

Veeam recently surveyed over 1000 global enterprise decision makers to understand the protection, recovery and Availability challenges faced by modern organizations. Research insights identified a startling amount of under-protected or unreliably recoverable data within these organizations, seriously hindering their digital transformation strategies.

It's alarming to see that...

82% 77%

Resulting downtime is inevitable and extremely costly!

Downtime happens and it costs the average enterprise each year

of organizations are experiencing an Availability Gap and are unable to meet the uptime SLAs expected

of organizations are experiencing a Protection Gap and are unable to protect data frequently or reliably

$21.8 MILLION 36%

Cost increase year-over-year

How is this affecting digital transformation within the enterprise?

The impact of downtime or data loss

MORE THAN JUST MONEY...

69%

of enterprises recognize that digital transformation is critical to their future

Loss of customer confidence,

Damage to brand integrity,

Loss of employee confidence,

Diversion of project resources,

48%

40%

33%

28%

66%

45%

are planning these initiatives now

admit a lack of Availability is stifling innovation

What can your organization afford to lose?

With an average annual cost of $21.8M in Availability challenges, organizations cannot afford the status quo any longer. Organizations must accelerate their planning and implementation of modern Availability solutions that will ensure reliable and rapid recovery.

LEARN MORE

go.veeam.com/2017-availability-report

CHANNEL STREET

Veeam Strengthens Grip on Availability Market Leadership

GREGG PETERSEN REGIONAL SALES VICE PRESIDENT MEA VEEAM SOFTWARE

In Gartner’s Backup & Recovery Marketshare Report 2016, Veeam was ranked No. 4 globally with a 27 percent year-over-year growth. Gregg Petersen, Regional Sales VP, MEA at Veeam says, “There is zero tolerance for downtime. CIOs and IT managers are also beginning to understand

that legacy backup and recovery solutions no longer suffice as they virtualize their infrastructure and move to the cloud. Availability solutions for the modern data centre is the way forward.

This is driving a lot of interest in our solutions.”

BATELCO AND AFS PARTNER FOR MOBILE WALLET SOLUTION Batelco have signed an MOU to roll-out a state-of-the art mobile wallet solution in Bahrain.

AFS Chairman Sael Al Waary and Batelco Bahrain CEO Eng. Muna Al Hashemi, signed on behalf of the two firms at Batelco headquarters in Hamala.

The innovative solution will add convenience to accelerate Bahrain’s journey towards a cashless digital society with added security for both consumers and merchants. A full range of integrated features will be available on the mobile wallet such as, person-to-person money transfers and loyalty points in a secure and convenient manner for both consumers and merchants and many other services.

DUBAI FUTURE ACCELERATORS OPENS APPLICATIONS FOR THE THIRD PROGRAM Dubai is calling on the world’s most innovative companies to help find solutions to the biggest challenges of the 21st century.

The third cycle of its flagship Dubai Future Accelerators program, run by the Dubai Future Foundation, focuses on building partnerships and developing regulatory friendly environments that support deep technology start-ups with the potential to radically improve the world.

Beginning in October this year, government entities a and technology partners will join forces to develop innovative solutions for healthcare, education, travel, energy, water, and more. The program integrates 4th Industrial Revolution-inspired technologies such as AI, robotics, blockchain, 3D printing, genetics, and virtual reality, with the government providing regulatory support to develop pilot projects at the city-wide scale.

The first two editions of the program recorded overwhelming success, attracting more than 4,000 applications from the world’s most innovative companies. Out of the 65 accepted companies in the first two cycles, 74% signed a with a government partner to work on pilot projects.

In the third cycle, the program will launch a new humanitarian accelerator in partnership with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Global Initiatives. This is a first of its kind in the Arab World that will connect technology start-ups with UAE’s humanitarian sector to multiply their positive impact.

XEROX LEADS QUOCIRCA MPS MARKET LANDSCAPE REPORT FOR THE EIGHTH YEAR The Quocirca report, a vendor analysis of the global enterprise MPS market, cites Xerox’s “breadth and depth of capability across office to production print environments, and a strong vision for innovation” as a testament to the company’s ongoing leadership in the

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space. “Xerox has been a clear leader in the MPS market for years – proven again by its eighth year at the top,” said Louella Fernandes, Associate Director at Quocirca. “Xerox’s innovations in security, analytics and other capabilities continue to enhance their MPS

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portfolio. Particularly its ConnectKey platform holds great promise as a key enabler for workflow automation for both SMBs and large enterprises.” “At Xerox, we have a comprehensive security suite to proactively protect device fleets and the data associated with them.

Quocirca’s latest report proves that organizations view MPS as a valuable component of their security strategy and their digital transformation” said Ted Dezvane, Managed Document Services Leader, Xerox.

CHANNEL STREET

Dell Explores the Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships

6

SECONDS

IFS REINVENTS FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT WITH HOLOLENS IFS launched a new proof of concept, developed by the company’s innovation think tank IFS Labs, to reinvent field service management. IFS Labs has developed an integration between the enterprise applications suite IFS Applications and Microsoft HoloLens that enables service engineers to visualize holographic IFS software data on the HoloLens screen, which is plotted directly on the asset they are to service.

HID GLOBAL ACQUIRES ARJO SYSTEMS Arjo Systems gives HID Global broader capabilities to deploy electronic identification and ePassport solutions for government programs. The acquisition brings together complementary strategies, customer bases and offerings that have strong synergies to support continued innovation for government-to-citizen ID customers. Arjo Systems boosts HID as an eID and ePassport solutions provider with

JEREMY BURTON, CMO, DELL

complementary products and new software capabilities.

ABB COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF B&R

In 2030, every organization will be a technology organization and as such businesses need to start thinking today about how-to future-proof their infrastructure and workforce, according to a report published by Dell Technologies.

The research, led by the Institute for the Future alongside 20 technologies, academic and business experts from across the globe, looks at how emerging technologies such as AI, robotics, VR, AR and cloud computing, will transform our lives and how we work over the next decade. The

report, titled ‘The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships’ also offers insight on how consumers and businesses can prepare for a society in flux. “Never before has the industry experienced so much disruption. The pace of change is very real, and we’re now in a do-or-die landscape. To leap ahead in the era of human-machine partnerships, every business will need to be a digital business, with software at its core,” said Jeremy Burton, CMO, Dell

Through the acquisition of B&R, ABB is taking another major step in expanding its digital offering by combining its industry-leading portfolio of digital solutions, ABB Ability, with B&R’s strong application and software platforms, its large installed base, customer access, and tailored automation solutions. With the closing of the transaction, B&R becomes part of ABB’s Industrial Automation division as a new global business unit called Machine & Factory Automation, integrating ABB’s PLC activities HP RELEASES 2016 SUSTAINABILTY

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COMMSCOPE TO ACQUIRE CABLE EXCHANGE

REPORT

CommScope has agreed to acquire Cable Exchange, a privately held, quick-turn supplier of fiber optic and copper assemblies for data, voice and video communications. This highly complementary acquisition will deepen CommScope’s capabilities in supporting the growing market for high-capacity, multi-tenant data centers and hyperscale data centers operated by the world’s largest technology and retail companies. As more user-driven information and commerce flows through networks, operators are quickly deploying larger and more complex data centers to support growth in traffic and transactions. “We are pleased to further expand our capabilities in the data center market with Cable Exchange, a trusted and respected provider of critical network infrastructure with strong customer relationships,” said CommScope President and Chief Executive Officer Eddie Edwards.

outlining new efforts to shrink its global footprint

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HP has released its 2016 Sustainability Report, through a 10 percent decrease in supply chain Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 2025. Concurrently, the company announced two supply chain responsibility goals to: 1) double factory participation in supply chain sustainability programs; and 2) develop the skills and improve the well-being of 500,000 supplier factory workers by 2025. All three goals use 2015 as a baseline.

CHANNEL STREET

Mimecast Introduces Sync & Recover for Exchange & Office 365

GLENN BROWN, SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER AT MIMECAST

Mimecast Limited introduced Sync & Recover for Exchange and Office 365. Sync & Recover offers unified management of compliance, archiving and data resilience. The new service also provides organizations with protection against downtime in the event of a ransomware or other malware attacks, while cloud-based efficiency can quickly restore corrupted or lost email data. “Organizations must ensure their data governance and management strategy includes a combination of archiving, backup, and data protection capabilities, so they have the appropriate tools in any recovery situation – whether that

be the aftermath of a ransomware attack or if an employee accidently deletes an email file” said Andrew Smith, Senior Research Analyst at IDC. “Sync & Recover for Exchange and Office 365 offers organizations a simple, streamlined way to recover deleted or corrupted email, calendar, and contact information by leveraging archive data” said Glenn Brown, Senior Product Manager at Mimecast. Offered as an add-on option for archiving customers, Sync & Recover offers simplified administration and streamlined recovery taking out the need for organizations to acquire additional software or hardware.

SAP LAUNCHES INTERNET OF THINGS SOLUTIONS TO FOSTER DIGITALIZATION SAP SE launched new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for its digital innovation system SAP Leonardo, helping Middle East customers to drive digital transformation, realize business value, and connect to use case scenarios. SAP Leonardo digital innovation system has been enhanced to include new accelerators for industries and the Internet of Things, extended tools for SAP Build and new Cloud Foundry packages for SAP Cloud Platform for partners.

“We’re helping customers drive business model and process changes by building innovative capabilities that integrate with our core business applications, making it easier for customers to quickly realize the value of digital transformation and at reasonable cost” said Mala Anand, Executive Vice President and President of SAP Leonardo, Data & Insights at SAP. SAP launched three new SAP Leonardo Innovation Services to help businesses connect new technologies to use case scenarios with the goal of shortening time to value.

Technologies covered include the Internet of Things, machine learning, analytics, Big Data, design thinking, blockchain and data intelligence.

Michael Kleinemeier, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Digital Business Services, SAP. “SAP Leonardo Innovation Services provide customers with a safe way to experiment with new technologies and find the best fit for their business before making an investment in new technology.”

MENA CLOUD ALLIANCE PIONEERS FOUNDATIONS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION The MENA Cloud Alliance is breaking new ground in monitoring, identifying and resolving issues around cloud adoption regionally.

The Alliance, which has a growing membership, provides a neutral platform to address opportunities and issues in the region. It provides

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a forum to generate dialogue, accelerate cloud computing and develop its impact on MENA’s digital economies.

This is significant as the Middle East is predicted to have the highest cloud traffic growth in the world offering potential for the cloud

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market and other emerging tech trends such as Big Data, Internet of Things and Smart City.

MENACA also has the distinct advantage of being a neutral industry association which is vendor agnostic. It distinguishes itself as a think-tank positioned to formulate

policies and strategies based upon global best practices as well as regional practice. As a result, it is uniquely positioned to create rich insights which can be utilized by those operating in the region and those making investment in the regional technology landscape.

THE 6 KEYS TO UNLOCK YOUR GITEX 2017 POTENTIALS WE CARVE THE PERFECT PLAN FOR YOU!

7

ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA (GITEX 2017 ISSUE)

INFRA INSIGHT Annual Technology Handbook

G LIVE

SURVEY

The Ultimate destination for all Gitex actions

The crucial step towards attaining your ROI

Meticulously weaved around Infrastructure Market in MEA.

GEC AWARDS

VIDEO INTERVIEW

Awarding deserving organizations for their unparalleled commitment

Bring your views to life.

TO PARTICIPATE CONTACT Accent Info Media MEA FZ-LLC 223, DMC – 9 Dubai Media City, Dubai, UAE

SALES Ronak Samantaray Mob: +971 555 120 490 Email: ronak@gecmediagroup.com

EDITORIAL Anushree Dixit Mob: +971 529 112 472, Email: anushree@gecmediagroup.com Divsha Bhat Mob: +971 561553608 Email: divsha@gecmediagroup.com

CHANNEL STREET

Bulwark & EnGenius Introduce Partner Loyalty Programme

WEB CLIPS CHINA TELECOM AND ERICSSON LAUNCH OPEN IOT PLATFORM

Bulwark Distribution and EnGenius has launched a Loyalty Programme for partners in the region. The programme focuses on providing lucrative incentives to partners based on the revenue generated and the exposure and opportunity they provide for the VAD in the region.

Partners can now achieve the desired levels based on revenue generated through certification programs and partner enablement sessions being organized by Bulwark.

China Telecom and Ericsson have launched the China Telecom IoT Open Platform that will support China’s “One Belt One Road” strategy and accelerate the deployment of Internet of Things solutions and services.

The China Telecom IoT Open Platform enables enterprises to deploy, control and scale the management of IoT devices through partnerships.

HITACHI NAMED A LEADER IN THE MAGIC QUADRANT FOR SOLID-STATE JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, CEO, BULWARK DISTRIBUTION

ARRAYS Hitachi’s continued investments in the development of its flash software and

NEDAA & NOKIA SET DUBAI AS BASE OF PIONEERING INNOVATION & CREATIVITY LAB Nedaa, the Dubai Government security networks provider, has signed an agreement with Nokia formally designating Dubai as the headquarters of their pioneering Innovation and Creativity Lab. A key stipulation under the Nedaa-Nokia agreement is the Emiratisation of all positions and jobs and the training and qualification of employed UAE Nationals to international standards. Nokia will also grant Nedaa and approved technology partner Esharah Etisalat Security Solutions access to its advanced radio systems and Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things, the company’s innovative Internet of Things platform.

hardware technologies have resulted in the delivery of a superior enterprise storage offering for its customers, backed by the most flash-related patents in the industry.

Hitachi VSP F1500, which first debuted in October 2016, was purpose-built for businesses with large-scale data management requirements—including mainframe.

KNOWLARITY’S SOLUTION TO HELP THE RETAIL INDUSTRY IN THE UAE Knowlarity’s cloud communication solution helps with call recording feature. Every single interaction with a caller – inbound or outbound will be recorded. A CRM integrated

MOVEMENTS MAMOUN ABDULLAH is General Manager and Head of Channel for the Middle East region Zyxel communication

Cisco Appoints DAVID MEADS VP for MEA

Citrix appoints DAVID HENSHALL as CEO

Axis appoints TERTIUS WOLFAARDT as BDM for MEA

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NUMBER GAME

1

$ bn

Payers will have saved $1 billion globally through implementation of RPA tools, skill sets and process reengineering by the end of 2018

with a calling system has a lot of data about an individual salesperson’s performance.

Sales leaders can look at that data to draw insights and train. With API Integration, Multi-Level IVR, Call Recording, Call Queuing and Call Distribution features, Knowlarity’s cloud communication solution ‘SuperReceptionist’ presents endless possibilities for businesses, to improve customer experience and retention.

DED AJMAN LAUNCHES NEW ESERVICES DED Ajman has introduced three new services for the Consumer Protection and Control Department as well aimed at facilitating transactions through the eService’s portal to do away with personal visits to customer service centers on issues regarding fixing price lists, request for review of trademark disputes as well as concerns with commercial agencies.

CHANNEL STREET

Data Gets a Voice with Qlik Sense Tour 2017 Finesse together with Qlik has successfully concluded the Mumbai leg of Qlik Sense Tour 2017. The event was one of the series of over 100 events in cities across Asia Pacific and Europe, the Middle East and Africa dedicated to demonstrating to organizations how they can give their data a voice, helping organizations understand how to listen to what their data has to say, and to end data silence.

Qlik Sense Tour 2017 Mumbai was designed to help attendees discover the new era of analytics that goes beyond the linear and limited options of the past.

To showcase how more flexible data analytics platforms can deliver actionable insights by giving data a voice, delegates were given product demonstrations and heard from Qlik’s customers and Finesse.

DIFC COURTS AND MICROSOFT UNITE TO CREATE COMMERCIAL COURT OF THE FUTURE Dubai International Financial Centre Courts revealed its partnership with Microsoft to drive the digital transformation of the commercial courts systems in the region and beyond. Building on successful digital courts projects such as the DIFC Courts’ Smart Small Claims Tribunal, the DIFC Dispute Resolution Authority signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft – during the International Association of Court Administrators in Washington, DC. As a first step, the agreement is aimed at enhancing connectivity and virtual solutions to advance the more traditional court areas such as registrations, filings, case management, and even trials.

FUELED BY NETAPP PROGRAM DRIVES GROWTH FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS NetApp revealed the expansion of its Fueled by NetApp program, designed to help drive growth for service providers who are helping their customers on the path to digital transformation. With this announcement, service providers gain access to new consulting and incubator programs, as well as new efficiency guarantees and increased training.

“Enterprise technology is rapidly shifting to consumption-based and hybrid cloud models, creating a unique growth opportunity for the service provider industry,” said Fadi Kanafani, Regional Director Middle East & Africa at NetApp. “Our Fueled

by NetApp program addresses this digital transformation with a tailored approach with a clear go-to-market consultancy for service providers designed to drive business growth while reducing risk.”

Carrenza turned to NetApp and implemented the market-leading NetApp SolidFire all-flash block storage system to increase the agility and responsiveness of its cloud infrastructure. “The Fueled by NetApp consulting team provided us valuable market insights and intelligence that helped us figure out our flash storage strategy in a way that we have not experienced from any other storage company” said Matthew McGrory, MD of Carrenza.

IXIA AND ARROW ELECTRONICS EXPAND RELATIONSHIP TO INCLUDE EMEA Ixia has expanded its current relationship with Arrow Electronics enabling Arrow to distribute the full portfolio of Ixia solutions in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), in addition to North and Latin America.

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The expanded relationship will allow Ixia’s EMEA-based reseller partners to take advantage of Arrow Electronics’ specialized services and expertise across the product lifecycle. In addition, Arrow Electronics’ resellers in EMEA can

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join Ixia’s Channel Xcelerate Partner Program, which enables reseller partners to deliver end-to-end solutions for making their customers’ applications and network security stronger. “Arrow’s strong ties with leading Ixia technology partners

in North America and EMEA will help fast-track compelling end-to-end solutions to value added resellers and their customers” said Lori Cornmesser, Vice President of Global Channel Sales at Ixia.

HONOURING THE BEST

GLORY AWAITS THE CHAMPIONS!

It is time to raise the bars and touch new milestones, yet again as the 4th Annual GEC Awards 2017 is set to go on stage this October. Ruling the pre-GITEX stage since the past 4 years, GEC Awards has become the fastest growing industry awards in the region and a major referral for ICT champions in the MEA region.

NOMINATE NOW For more information, write to anushree@gecmediagroup.com ronak@gecmediagroup.com divsha@gecmediagroup.com BROUGHT BY

ORGANISED BY

NOMINATION DEADLINE IS 1ST SEPTEMBER 2017

CHANNEL STREET

Citrix extends partnership with Google Citrix extended its long-term strategic relationship with Google. Customers will be able to use Citrix Cloud to provision and manage secure digital workspaces, including Citrix Workspace Service, on Google Cloud Platform. Citrix and Google are working together to bring cloud delivery of applications and desktops, and secure cloud-optimized endpoints to their enterprise customers who are increasingly looking to both public and hybrid clouds to solve their business requirements for secure digital workspaces. “Our

collaboration with Citrix will help businesses of all types accelerate their transition to the cloud including the desktop infrastructure and applications that they want to use” said Nan Boden, Head of Global Technology Partners, Google Cloud.

“Our customers are asking Citrix and Google to work more closely together to deliver innovative solutions from the cloud to help them embrace the future of work” said Steve Blacklock, VP of Global Strategic Alliances, Citrix.

MICROSOFT INSPIRE REVEALS PARTNER STRATEGIES Microsoft kicked off Microsoft Inspire in Washington, D.C. where the company unveiled Microsoft 365, a new set of commercial offerings. Microsoft 365 represents a significant opportunity for partners to increase deal size, differentiate offerings, and grow managed services revenue. To fuel Microsoft partners’ success and help meet the company’s goal of a $20 billion cloud run rate by 2018, Microsoft announced with launch hardware partners, Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo, that Microsoft Azure Stack is now available. Microsoft 365 Enterprise is the evolution of the company’s Secure Productive Enterprise offering and includes Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It provides customers with the latest and most advanced technology for empowering employees. Microsoft 365 Business is designed to give small-to-medium sized businesses a complete productivity and security solution, while streamlining IT management. It includes Office 365 Business Premium, security and management features for Office apps and Windows 10 devices, all managed in a centralized console for deploying and securing devices and users in one location. Microsoft is helping companies in every industry grow faster and more efficiently than ever before, through business innovation fueled by cloud technologies.

TRIMBLE INTRODUCES TEKLA 2017 SOFTWARE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY Trimble introduced three new versions of its software for structural engineering, fabrication and construction teams: Tekla Structures 2017, Tekla Structural Designer 2017 and Tekla Tedds 2017. Continuous development of Tekla Building Information Modeling solutions demonstrates Trimble’s commitment to innovation in structural engineering, off-site prefabrication and on-site efficiency.

“In these new Tekla versions, we focus on improving communication and modeling methods because these are directly tied to the productivity of core tasks within large workgroups and projects,” said Jari Heino, General Manager of Trimble’s Structures Division. “The software provides a variety of completely new tools for users to expand their scope of work and collaborate with project stakeholders to ensure that the entire team is on the same page.”

For general design, the new version of Tekla Structures BIM software offers more control over direct modification, which allows users to create an accurate structural model quicker and easier. There is a faster organizer for finding and fixing parts, and improved tools for instant information reporting.

For concrete, Tekla Structures 2017 introduces the next generation reinforcement method that gives users more flexibility to create and modify reinforcements for different types of concrete geometries. With the unique pour unit feature, managing and reporting all pour-specific information is effective and easy.

SERVICENOW LAUNCHES INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION ENGINE ServiceNow revealed machine learning capabilities to tackle some of the biggest problems in IT. With ServiceNow Intelligent Automation Engine, companies can now prevent outages before they happen, automatically categorize and route incidents, predict future performance

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and benchmark performance against IT peers. Capability will also bring machine learning to ServiceNow cloud services for Customer Service, Security and Human Resources.

The ServiceNow Intelligent Automation Engine is machine learning intelligence applied

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to four of the biggest use cases that IT has today. ServiceNow has taken the combination of massive amounts of contextual operational data, huge R&D investmentand a team of leading data scientists, to address four big challenges for today’s IT organizations – preventing outages,

automatically categorizing and routing work, predicting future performance and benchmarking performance against their peers.

“Intelligent automation heralds a new era in workplace productivity,” said Dave Wright, Chief Strategy Officer, ServiceNow.

MOVE IT. MANAGE IT. USE IT. It’s your data.

Your cloud strategy.

Between 30% to 45% of cloud spend is wasted (…is that right? That can’t be right.1) A smart multi cloud data management approach is critical. Your data: securely moved, well managed and effectively used. You’re smart, and that’s right.

COMMVAULT AND THE CLOUD - SIMPLY POWERFUL. 1 State of the Cloud Survey, RightScale, January 2017

COMMVAULT.COM | +971 4 375 3491 | TALKTOUS@COMMVAULT.COM © 2017 COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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CHANNEL STREET

Mindware Extends Partnership with Dell EMC in KSA

NICHOLAS ARGYRIDES - CHIEF OF SALES & DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER, MINDWARE

Mindware has extended its contract with Dell EMC in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This includes the Infrastructure Solutions Group family of products, such as the high-end storage and servers. Following a successful partnership across the Gulf, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Dell EMC and Mindware are now expanding the relationship into one of the most important regional markets, Saudi Arabia .“The recent inclusion of Saudi Arabia in our contract is a significant stepping stone into the evolution

of this partnership” noted Nicholas Argyrides, Chief of Sales & Deputy General Manager, Mindware. “As the DellEMC merged company is now a reality, having access to the full array of the vendor’s offerings into the Kingdom was absolutely necessary and – I am convinced – to the best interest of both organizations.”, he added.

“We thank DellEMC for putting their trust in Mindware. Despite the challenging regional market conditions, all we have to do is to go out there and do what we do best”.

ATTIVO NETWORKS LAUNCHES THREAT DEFEND PLATFORM The new platform takes deception-based threat detection to a new level, addressing growing marketing demand and technology advancements to outmaneuver modern-day attackers that are anticipating detection technology as a security control. Additionally, the solution has further expanded its integration partnerships and forensic attack analysis automations to deliver streamlined playbooks to better arm incident responders with an actionable defense against in-network threats. “The Platform easily scales to match the needs of the customer in the Middle East, as it retains the element of surprise while adding features based on advanced deception techniques, predictive vulnerability assessment, adaptations for the environment and automations that simplify isolation and elimination of threats within the network” said Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Attivo Networks.

TRUKKIN LAUNCHES CLOUD BASED APP TO SIMPLIFY COMMERCIAL TRANSPORT Trukkin Middle East launched its new cloud-based B2B platform that unites customers with shippers and truckers in the Middle East to create new business opportunities and deliver streamline logistics solutions. For clients, Trukkin unlocks new suppliers, services on demand, and lower transport overheads backed by transparency. For fleet owners and individual drivers, the Trukkin platform offers a powerful new channel for business development.

“We’ve launched Trukkin with the mission of making it the preferred logistics enabler region wide by providing a state of the art mechanism to connect suppliers and clients. Trukkin answers a genuine industry need for greater transparency, choice of providers and the ability to request transport services from available fleets. The team has developed the product after extensive on-the-ground market research, working very closely with partners from Saudi Arabia. We have honed the user journey to make registration, placing orders, accepting bids, and making payments very simple, leading to an excellent user experience from start to finish.” said Trukkin CEO and co-founder Janardan Dalmia. The Trukkin ecosystem comprises a multi-lingual customer app on iOS and Android, and a web portal.

Fleet owners and individual drivers can also take advantage of the multi-lingual online portal and apps. Customers, fleet owners and independent drivers all register on the Trukkin platform after going through a verification process.

PURE STORAGE IN GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT FOR FOURTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR Pure Storage has improved its position within the Leaders Quadrant of the Gartner’ July 2017 Magic Quadrant for Solid State Arrays by Gartner. For the fourth consecutive year, Pure Storage is positioned furthest along the “Completeness of Vision” axis in the Leaders Quadrant.

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In October 2016, Pure Storage introduced a petabyte-scale configuration of its flagship FlashArray//M family and significantly expanded its collaboration with Cisco to enhance the companies’ joint FlashStack converged infrastructure platform.

Cisco and Pure Storage have

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developed Cisco Validated Designs for FlashStack that include Citrix, Commvault, Oracle, SAP and VMware. “Our joint FlashStack converged infrastructure solution enables IT organizations to easily scale with business requirements, accelerate automation and quickly deploy a foundation for hybrid

cloud solutions” said Nirav Sheth, VP, Worldwide Partner Sales, Cisco.

“Since inception in 2009, Pure has innovated to fix data storage—to make it dramatically faster, simpler, more robust, and lower cost to own over time, ” said Scott Dietzen, CEO, Pure Storage.

CASE STUDY

VEEAM

Dubai Duty Free Cashes In on 24x7 Availability with Veeam Veeam provides real-time monitoring, alerting, resource optimisation, configuration tracking, capacity planning and forecasting so Dubai Duty Free can identify and resolve issues before they become problems and cause downtime.

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE Dubai Duty Free gets more foot traffic in one week than most retailers dream of getting in one year.

Nearly 1.5 million travelers walk through Dubai International and Al Maktoum International airports each week, and many of them shop at Dubai Duty Free. From fine jewelry to artisan chocolates, Dubai Duty Free provides a wide range of everyday and luxury goods that travelers seek, while saving them time and money. Dubai Duty Free is a 24-hour operation, making it a classic example of an always-on business.

“Being a 24-hour operation means zero downtime,” said Faizan Billah, Assistant Manager of Technology & Infrastructure at Dubai Duty Free. “If a critical operation goes down such as warehouse robotics or the point-of-sale system, we can’t tell the customer to wait 30 minutes while we bring them back online. Thirty minutes of downtime could cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.”

THE VEEAM SOLUTION Veeam Availability Suite delivers 24x7 availability of Dubai Duty Free’s multi- hypervisor environment. Veeam helps the duty free retail giant avoid the risk of downtime so millions of travelers can shop around the clock.

“Our goal was 24x7 availability,” said Allan

Chapman, IT Manager at Dubai Duty Free.

“Veeam gave us that and so much more including a DR solution for business operations and scalability to support business growth.”

Dubai Duty Free’s DR strategy begins with Veeam replication. VMs are replicated between data centers, so if hardware or software malfunctions, Dubai Duty Free can recover a VM quickly by failing over to its replica and failing back to production.

“With Veeam replication at the center of our DR strategy, we have peace of mind,” Chapman added.

Veeam scalability provides peace of mind too.

Veeam was built to back up petabytes of data on thousands of VMs; Dubai Duty Free uses Veeam to back up 30TB on approximately 40 VMs. As data grows by 5TB each year, Veeam will scale accordingly.

Veeam was built for high-speed recovery too.

Dubai Duty Free’s favorite restore features are Instant VM Recovery®, which restores a VM from a regular backup quickly, and Veeam Explorer™ for Microsoft Exchange, which restores emails in minutes.

Veeam Explorers are also available for SQL Server and SharePoint.

“We c ouldn’t perform item-level recovery until we deployed Veeam, only database- level recovery,” Chapman said. “When a colleague asked us to restore an email, it could take up to two days.”.

Veeam provides real-time monitoring, alerting, resource optimisation, configuration tracking, capacity planning and forecasting so Dubai Duty Free can identify and resolve issues before they become problems and cause downtime.

THE RESULTS Recovery is up to 99% faster Dubai Duty Free never closes, which means its multi-hypervisor environment must be available 24x7. Veeam ensures 24x7 availability with highspeed recovery features that restore whole VMs, files and individual items in minutes.

l

Replication supports DR and business continuity Dubai Duty Free couldn’t replicate VMs until Veeam was deployed. Veeam replication became the center of the company’s DR strategy, providing business continuity and peace of mind.

l

Complete visibility enables proactive issue resolution Warehouse operations are critical to Dubai Duty Free’s success. Veeam’s real-time monitoring and alerting and customisable reporting help the company identify and resolve issues in VMs running warehouse operations before they become problems and impact the business. ë

l

ALLAN CHAPMAN ,

IT MANAGER DUBAI DUTY FREE

“Our goal at Dubai Duty Free was 24x7 availability.Veeam gave us that and much more including DR solution for business operations to support business growth.”

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DellEMC_Gitex_Ad_HR.pdf

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#1 in everything now in one place.

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COVER STORY

Smart Services on the Platter The digital traveler has packed his bag and set on voyage. Hospitality sector across the region is geared up for massive transformation . Big data, seamless connectivity, digitization and competitive loyalty are adding that extra layer of beauty to the hospitality sector that stands on the threshold of major disruption.

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COVER STORY

n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

T

he leisure, travel and hospitality industry has already stepped into an era of major disruption.

Be it a staycation or a vacation, a casual dinner or even an evening coffeeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; there are innumerable occasions where digitization plays a key role in determining decisions of a consumer. Today, Zomato has taken the place of the friendly people from whom you took recommendations for a delicious bite enroute or a relishing full course meal. Competitive websites offering competitive prices and choices on holidays, hotels, flights and food are forcing the hospitality sector to reimagine business on new platforms every day and every minute.

From online check-ins to information reviews, technology is disrupting the sector like never before. Even traditional or heritage hotel chains are also not aloof from this. They realize that heritage value is not enough to attract the modern digital

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COVER STORY

“Predictive, proactive, and actionable data opens the door to new travel experiences.”

-GRAEME KANE,

“Integrating front and back end solutions is essential to effectively manage costs, optimise business performance, and free up managers’ time.”

-MONZER TOHME,

HOSPITALITY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER AT ARUBA NETWORKS MIDDLE EAST & TURKEY

“The modern digital traveler is the holy grail that is at once both lucrative and elusive.”

-MR. RAJ SAHNI (AKA ABU SABAH), OWNER & CHAIRMAN OF RSG INTERNATIONAL

REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, SALES, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, EPICOR SOFTWARE

30mn Saudi Arabia to attract 30 million visitors by 2030

1bn Kuwait national hospitality spending will reach 1 billion USD by 2025

$104.4b

$1b

GCC’s hospitality sector has $104.4b projects under way

10.8%

Kuwaiti travel and tourism sector will grow a massive 10.8 percent in 2016

traveler. He would seek modern amenities in a traditional perimeter. According to the Fundación Orange study on Digital transformation in the tourism and hospitality sector, “the tourism and travel sector makes extensive use of both information and transactions in all stages of the value chain.” Consumers search for information before a trip, they compare and check opinions of other travelers, and then they reserve tickets,

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Oman’s hospitality market to reach $1b in 2020

$9.8bn

UAE hospitality & Tourism Revenue to reach $9.8 billion by 2020

hotels, and even tickets for shows and museums.

“Hotel chains are already responding to this shift in their customer base by creating or purchasing boutique brands to add to their portfolio.

Gen Y focused brands have been created to meet the demands of Millennials,” says Graeme Kane, Hospitality Business Development Manager at Aruba Networks Middle East & Turkey These millennials demand the latest technology to help

them stay connected and engaged and expect hotel chains and other travel related industries to personalize their experience through technology.

Over 70% say free Wi-Fi plays a key role in deciding where they book. So being able to provide the best possible Wi-Fi experience, personalized with mobile engagement solutions, is critical.

But there are two ways of adapting to this digital transformation: being reactive, that is,

COVER STORY

HOSPITALITY WONDERS OCCUPYING OVER

42,000,000 SQUARE FEET

Falconcity of Wonders hosts 7 wonders of world

Phase two of the Makkah Residence Development is currently in the design stage

$6.8bn Firdous Sobha of Umm al Quwain has an estimated value of $6.8 billion

incorporating technologies and processes that respond to consumer needs; or being proactive, offering new unexpected possibilities that take the customer’s digital experience to a new level.

Epicor recently released iScala for Hospitality, a back-office solution for restaurants, hotels, and resorts. Available on-premises, as a hosted solution or cloud-deployed, the platform meets the unique needs of the hospitality industry by enabling companies–be it a single-location hotel or a multi-site operation with mixed shared service centers and local facilities–to streamline operations and efficiently integrate all operations on a single platform.

“Today’s traveller is no longer satisfied with the traditional hotel experience – they expect seamless connectivity across multiple devices, real-time access to information and services, customised in-room entertainment and an individualised experience that meets their own unique needs.”

Although this is a global trend, it is spreading in the Gulf perhaps more quickly than anywhere else.

In Saudi Arabia, two recently announced Aloft hotels will feature the Kingdom’s very first keyless entry systems, as part of a wider shift towards efficient, high-tech hotel design. The system, called SPG Keyless, allows guests to use their smartphones or Apple watches as a room key.

A NEW AGE IN TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY A demanding traveler has reshaped the way in which a place welcomed him. According to a report, “ Augmented and virtual reality: beyond mobile devices, augmented and virtual reality experiences are now being offered, such as the digital observatory of the Barcelona Skyline at Terraza 83,3, which provides information about the monuments thanks to augmented reality technology, and which also allows immersive visits to some of the monuments with virtual reality goggles.”

“The shift towards mid-market hotels and the escalation in inter-region travel will continue to prevail in the region. We anticipate a substantial conversion in pricing from static to dynamic.

There has also been a steep escalation in ‘niche’ tourism with travelling becoming easier both in practice and planning. There is a wealth of information regarding destinations and cultures which makes it elementary to travel to places. For instance, the region has seen a surge in niches such as medical and wellness tourism, theme park tourism and ‘Halal travel’,” says Mr. Raj Sahni, Owner & Chairman of RSG International

WHEN CONNECTIVITY IS

NO MORE A PERK Aruba has some strong recommendations when it comes to the question of connectivity. “Stop handing out Wi-Fi logins on a piece of paper. Guests can be welcomed through a custom-branded captive web-portal where they can get secure Wi-Fi access while getting impressed with ads and special offers about the venue. It’s also where hotels can inspire them to download the venue’s custom mobile app.

Custom-branded mobile app. Venues come to life when guests use the hotel’s custom-branded mobile app. From the comfort of their smartphones, they can get turn-by-turn directions to amenities and relevant push-notification offers based on their opt-in preferences and real-time location,” says Graeme Kane, Hospitality Business Development Manager at Aruba Networks Middle East & Turkey

A ROBOT KNOCKS AT YOUR DOOR Futuristic experience define ‘Today’. Hotels are forced to evolve based on that and we can see various hotels across the region going out of the box.. Nowadays you can see robot butlers and waiters in some niche places. These types of digital systems not only make it easy for hotel staff to deliver items to guests, but it also offers a forward-facing digital experience to people who stay at the hotel.

FLOWING WITH THE MEGATRENDS According to Aruba, there is a way in which these cost streams can be turned into revenue streams by answering those five key questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? “Today there is technology that allows hotels to identify Who is entering the facility, What they are interested in (based on previous visits), Where they are inclined to spend more time within the hotel property/ resort when they do certain activities, and most importantly why they are taking these actions,” says Graeme.

According to PwC, the five global megatrends that are widely believed to be shaping the future of our world are: demographic shifts and social change, a shift in global economic power, accelerating urbanisation, climate change and resource scarcity, and the rise of technology.

FINALLY Its not only the coffee that has to be served hot.

It is not only the bookings that have to be done fast. Digitization needs to go down the roots and disrupt the epicenter of all experience. ë

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CIO SPEAK

OSN

‘Broadcasting Digitization’ THE BROADCAST MEDIA INDUSTRY HAS GONE THROUGH VARIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS FROM SATELLITE TO ON-DEMAND TO MOBILE APPS, AND IT PLAYS A PIVOTAL ROLE IN ITS DELIVERY PATTERNS. MR. DAMIAN O’GARA, VICE PRESIDENT OF IT AT OSN TALKS ABOUT HIS EXCITING JOURNEY IN OSN’S DIGITIZATION.

“Protecting customer’s data is very important for us. We have the measures in place to track down pirates immediately. We have a security team and all our employees are trained in the basic cybersecurity techniques.” n B Y: D I V S H A B H AT < D I V S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >

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igitalization is certainly changing the old way of doing things. It is very interesting how Damian still recalls receiving his first job offer letter through a telegram back in the 1990’s.

Today, digitalization is not just about embracing new technologies but changing the culture of the organization. There is a need for the IT leaders to introduce agile ways of working in the organization and also innovate new ideas. “There is no end to our digital transformation. Digital transformation for us means business intelligence. We are investing a lot of money into this intelligence. BI gives us all kinds of insights. From an internal operations view, it allows us to monitor systems availability and see how many subscribers have tuned in. This kind of data allows us to simplify customer experience and develop ways to enhance our services. So, BI provides a lot of information across the business like understanding our customer’s present and predicting their future needs” says Damian.

Providing premium entertainment across the MENA, with over 150 channels, OSN’s strength is led by its long-term partnerships with studio majors including Disney, HBO, NBC Universal, Fox, Paramount, MGM, Sony, DreamWorks to name a few.

And now this entertainment network is on a cloud journey. OSN has started to embrace cloud-based services “We have a cloud first policy. We shall be gradually shifting to cloud in the coming months. We are reviewing all our technology stacks and services on a case by case basis.” commented Damian.

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The real benefits of broadcasting media moving to cloud is less about cost efficiency and more about speeding up time to market. But as it continues to be dependent on cloud and digital platforms, the need for cyber security is high. Talking about the cyber security Damian says that attacks can be prevented by organizations to a certain extent by protecting themselves with upgraded servers to the latest recommended versions. “The objective of the attacker is to get the confidential data but every organization has to protect themselves with firewalls and antivirus.

Protecting customer’s data is very important for us.

We have the measures in place to track down pirates immediately. We have a security team and all our employees are trained in the basic cybersecurity techniques. We have our security policies in place and have upgraded all our servers to latest recommended versions from our suppliers” says Damian.

It is always important for a CIO to remain one step ahead of the attacks and the organizations should be best equipped to mitigate the effects of any cyber-attacks. Mr. O’Gara looks at how CIO’s

can protect their organization from the attacks and also what the future holds for the CIO and cybersecurity. He believes that a CIO can assist the organization in adapting the changing technology of threat landscape. “I would advise the other CIO’s to keep all their systems on premises updated with latest recommended versions from their suppliers. Also, they have to make sure they have a world class security team and constantly train their employees” says

MR. DAMIAN O’GARA,

VICE PRESIDENT OF IT AT OSN

Damian.

However, in the ever-changing world of technology, OSN promises to always deliver the best to its customers. With services like OSN on Demand and OSN Play they offer unparalleled choice, value and convenience to a demanding and tech-savvy audience. “Our customers always come first and we make sure that we meet customer demands and expectations. In fact, we like to over deliver – and we do this through constant innovation and a deep understanding of our customers’ needs and preferences” concludes Mr. O’Gara. ë

GUEST TALK

MY VIEWS

Revolutionizing Logistics THE PHENOMENON OF E-COMMERCE INDUSTRY HAS GROWN BEYOND COMPREHENSION IN TERMS OF VOLUME, SCALE, MARKETS AND COUNTRIES. WITH SHOPPING ONLINE AND AT RETAIL STORES AT THE SAME TIME BECOMING A REALITY AND DEVICES CONNECTING EVERY ASPECT OF CONSUMERS’ LIFE, THE SHIFT IS MAKING WAY FOR THE TIDAL WAVE OF INDUSTRY TRANSITION IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

KUSHAL NAHATA,

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, FAREYE

“Logistics players today are adopting unconventional solutions, smarter analytics and advanced processes to serve the ‘digitallyempowered’ customer. .”

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Tell us about FarEye in brief.

To simplify the complex logistics processes and to provide end-to-end visibility into logistics operations, FarEye created world’s first Business Process Management platform for Logistics operations in-order to optimize supply chain and predictive analytics to improve efficiencies.

FarEye created world’s first Business Process Management platform for Logistics operations to optimize supply chain and predictive analytics to improve efficiencies.

FarEye brings the expertise of working with larger enterprises across the industry verticals in Retail, ecommerce-logistics, BFSI, Healthcare, Field Services and FMCG. FarEye has been empowering the logistics wings of Blue Dart - DHL, Walmart India, Hero FinCorp, Amway India, Hitachi, Bajaj Capital and over 75 large organisations across 15 countries globally.

FarEye’s technology platform is revolutionising logistics operations across industry verticals like Express Logistics, ecommerce, FMCG, Retail, Financial Services and more.

The company has grown over 200% in the last three years and continues to grow with its larger vision at the center of all developments - providing complete visibility to help brands deliver their brand promise, ‘real-time’.

How long have you been operating in Middle East? Do you have a local presence in the UAE? We started operating in the Middle East in 2014. Our current clients are Mara Express, Namshi and Century Express. The company has sensed a huge demand for its flexible, scalable and future-oriented solution in the form referrals and direct leads, therefore we opened a local office in the Dubai region to serve the

market faster and better.

What kind of demand do you see for your solutions in this region?

Today’s customer is digitally connected, engaged and influenced.

This has given a push to the e-commerce markets, setting the market size to reach USD 20 billion by the year 2020. To enhance the customer experience and provide a seamless delivery experience logistics players are ‘going mobile’ and are ready to ride high on the technology wave. The growing popularity of ecommerce has given rise to accommodate a new business model which is ‘tech-driven logistics.’ Logistics players today are adopting unconventional solutions, smarter analytics and advanced processes to serve the ‘digitallyempowered’ customer. Customers expect convenience and speed which entices logistics firms to venture the possibilities of the virtual world. Innovative last-leg solutions help in improving connectivity to ensure, speedy and affordable delivery. In order to ensure customer loyalty, logistics companies must adopt track-and-trace systems, efficient last-mile delivery methods, integrated technology and smarter delivery management systems.

What is your go to market strategy in Middle East and who are the partners you work with?

For us in the Middle East, referrals from customers and positive word-of-mouth helped in gaining the market quickly. FarEye’s team which is based in Dubai is quite bullish in its approach and we are reaping results.

Customer endorsements are our key motivation. FarEye is trusted by leaders and has been recognized globally and we have our clients’ incredible support behind us:. ë

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GUEST ARTICLE

Middle East Devices at Constant Risk of Attack Tenacious vigilance is required moving forward to remain safe in what is an ongoing world cyberwar

n F L O R I A N M A L E C K I , I N T E R N AT I O N A L P R O D U C T M A R K E T I N G D I R E C T O R AT S O N I C W A L L

Whether you believe that the ostensible purpose of NotPetya was financial gain or political sabotage, the major takeaway from the past few months is that NotPetya, WannaCry, and other weaponized threats are only a sign of things to come. Despite not being targeted directly, we in the Middle East need to remain supremely vigilant. It only takes one click of a malicious link. Or an infected attachment is opened, and an entire network can come crashing down.

The rise in sophistication and distribution of the recent ransomware attacks is alarming.

According to SonicWall’s latest Threat Report, ransomware attacks increased from 3.8 million attempts in 2015 to 638 million in 2016, in other words, multiplied by 167. And we have seen significant activity so far in 2017. It is clear that we are living through a worldwide cyberwar, with cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers launching mass attacks aimed at disabling

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systems and data theft.

The latest trend is to launch malicious ‘cocktails.’ Each of the ingredients of the cocktail is known, but their combination generates malware as different as they are efficient.

NotPetya was responsible for varying forms of network disruption that brought real business harm to huge global companies such as WPP, food giant Mondelez and Danish shipping and transport behemoth Maersk. The impact of ransomware i s instant and disturbing to business continuity.

NotPetya targeted Microsoft Windows-based systems, infecting the master boot record to execute a payload that encrypts a hard drive’s file system table and prevents Windows from Today we face multiple threats and more destructive attacks. You can expect that attackers will improve their future campaigns. You can also expect that your network may be vulnerable

to stray bullets, where organizations fall victim to attacks not specifically targeted at them. The interconnectivity of systems and the ubiquity of applications leaves many potential vulnerabilities, from within or without the enterprise, all the more dangerous.

Technology security professionals are dealing with an ever-menacing threat landscape that will continue to develop in sophistication and grow in volume. Cyber tools are being weaponized to match the financial goals of cyber criminals and the political aims of cyber activists and state-run hackers.

Both NotPetya and WannaCry however, exploited basic and known Windows security vulnerabilities. Applying basic features that automatically patch these vulnerabilities will mitigate the stray bullet factor. And beside the mature level of network security required to reduce cyberattack risk, security professionals need to continually test for inherent vulnerabilities emanating from employees and third parties who interact with enterprise networks.

Ensure that your next-generation firewall has a subscription to an up-to-date security gateway to receive protection from ransomware attacks automatically. Use a multi-engine network sandbox to examine suspicious files entering your network, detect and stop the latest threats, and protect against future infractions. Ensure that your backup solution is up-to-date and regularly test your data recovery tool.

Vigilance is your primary defense mechanism, and in the Middle East region where political tensions continue to rise, targeted attacks are just a matter of time. A process of continual cyberthreat education of employees and other stakeholders who to your network is essential to reducing your risk of exposure. ë

MY OPINION

INFOR

Ushering the Next generation of Intelligent Applications IN AN UP AND CLOSE INTERVIEW WITH TARIK TAMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, IMEA AT INFOR WE TRIED TO DECODE HOW AND WHY INFORCLAIMS TO STAND AS A CATALYST FOR THE NEXT GENERATION BUSINESS APPLICATIONS.

n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >

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ccording to Tarik Taman, General Manager, IMEA at Infor, digital transformation is all about keeping the customers and their business agile. The vendor has been evolving with its applications and changing industry dynamics with applications that Infor claims to be ‘beautiful’. Tarik says, “Look at our interface and you will definitely agree that unlike the traditional messy interface of ERPs, our applications have a graphic beauty to it. We have outsourced the work to a designing agency that has 100+ people working everyday to create that aura of difference in our interface.”

2017 has been a great year for Infor according to Tarek. With some strong cases in the UAE, KSA, India etc the vendor is all set to bring in some major disruptions at the customer end. “It has been a great year for us so far. We have engaged with some great customers and the market is just right for us. Presently we are figuring out the right formula for the public sector. We are totally in the game and we believe that when people would go into the next generation of ERP platform, it will be a great time for us to have a large share in the market.”

Talking of a recent customer win, Zahid Group, a privately held organization headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has achieved a key milestone in its digital transformation strategy. After extensive planning and preparation, EJAR, a Zahid Group company, has successfully launched the first phase of Infor’s innovative M3 solution. The management of Zahid Group created a business transformation roadmap in 2012, starting with the implementation of Infor’s M3 software to standardize key business functions across the Group’s companies in order

to build a more effective workforce and deliver enhanced customer acquisition and retention.

Zahid Group’s goal of achieving operational excellence aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to diversify the Kingdom’s economic interests in the private sector.

“In such an unpredictable business environment, growing organizations need solutions that work, and work well, while still being useful, flexible, and powerful. As a business evolves, it needs a wider range of capabilities, without adding unnecessary maintenance, deployment time, and cost - which is exactly what Infor delivers with its power cloud-based applications and strategic partnerships,” says Tarik.

Infor claims that their applications are ‘Built for the cloud’. Justifying the claim, Tarik says, “The most competitive advantage of our solutions is that customer have the option to put the data in their data center or on the cloud, and those who prefer to go on the cloud have the choice of scalability.”

Recently, Infor also launched the Coleman, an enterprise-grade, industry-specific AI platform for InforCloudSuite applications.

Coleman develops a conversational relationship with the user which can be rendered in InforMing.le, a social collaboration platform, or a synthetic conversational user interface. User efficiency is increased as studies show humans are able to speak and hear 3-4 times as many words per minute as they can type. Processing the vast data in InforCloudSuite, Coleman automates search and gather functions, which can take up 20 percent of a user’s work week, significantly increasing productivity. ë

TARIK TAMAN,

GENERAL MANAGER, IMEA AT INFOR

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PARTNER STREET

‘Reach the Sky’ COST EFFECTIVE AND AGILE DATA CENTERS ARE THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE MODERN ENTERPRISES. THE EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOP, HELD BY ARROW ECS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH DELL EMC WAS A CATALYST IN ADHERING TO THE NEED OF THE MARKET FOR HAVING COMPREHENSIVE PARTNERSHIPS TO EVALUATE CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS AND HELPING THEM EMBARK ON THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY WITH THE NEWEST PORTFOLIO.

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I

n clining towards the market pulse and focusing on the digital transformation mandates, Arrow ECS recently held a dedicated event with Dell EMC that updated the channel partners and end-users with the knowledge of Dell EMC’s latest portfolio of hyper-converged infrastructure, storage, servers, data protection and networking infrastructure.

Quote from Vimal Kocher, Managing Director, Arrow ECS Middle East said, “Our goal with these educational workshops is to provide channel ecosystem partners with the latest information and fresh perspectives of modern networking technologies. Arrow is uniquely

positioned to provide effective and comprehensive enablement programs from logistics, operations, pre-sales, post-sales, marketing to financing that they need to deliver turnkey IT solutions to their customers. We also took this opportunity to invite 70 end-users from public and commercial sectors for a sharing and networking session.

This interaction provided us with great insights on their common pain-points and obstacles in preventing them to optimize their networking and data center infrastructure. We are then be able to evaluate how we can customize our networking solutions to help them with their digital transformation.”

PARTNER STREET

Samer Semaan, Distribution Manager UAE and Gulf, said ” The biggest value addition that customers can have is our new channel program.

In this we have combined the best of both the worlds, ie, legacy Dell and legacy EMC and it has more value and benefits. Without any exaggeration I can say that this is the best available partner program in today’s market. Talking about the customer side, the customers are more excited than we are. IT is no more just a product. When we meet a customer, the requirement is always an end-to-end portfolio or infrastructure, With the merger, customers are not exposed to a wide portfolio of solutions and they just need to speak to one company for whatever their need is.”

As Digital transformation disrupts the modern workplace, no organization is aloof from the pressure. Information or Data is the key to any business and streamlining this data is the utmost priority of any modern CIO. With this in mind,

Dell EMC is prepared to introduce some new dimensions to the ways in which servers, storage and data protection were once architected.

The three key transformational pillars for Dell EMC are; IT Transformation, Security Transformation and Workforce transformation.

One of the prime mission of which is the breathe that much needed simplicity into the complex architectures.

While talking to Basil Ayass, Regional Sales Director, META, Dell EMC about the roadmap that he has set for himself and the company for the next quarters he says that the times are indeed challenging but comes with a lot of positive opportunities. “Servers are becoming the bedrocks of the data center as we move to converged and hyper-converged, software defined infrastructures. Gradually everything moves to the server, hence the server will be running all your workloads. It is indeed a very exciting time

for us and we can definitely see some great challenges lying ahead for us which we are ready for.”

Speaking on the ‘Transformation’ buzzwords, Basil says that transformation is change for the better. It can be summarized by the word digital transformation. Today, all industries are under threat. Everyone is affected and change is the only constant. If customers do not want to be disrupted they need to transform. The ultimate sophistication is simplicity. We are trying to simplify the procurement processes, the implementation processes and the management process for all our solutions. We do a one stop shop. From the procurement angle you can buy everything from one company. Arrow is one of our VAD that can offer you an end-to-end portfolio. We have one team that would deploy your end to end implementation. We opened an open source manage platform. Together with Dell EMC, Arrow ECS focus on building modern Data Centers that are at the same time cost effective, efficient and agile.

“Modern applications that push IT to the limit need a modern networking strategy. So, together, we help our Partners and their Customers to take better control of network and break free from outdated technologies.During our Event “Reach the Sky” we unveiled key information and Dell EMC newest product features of hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, servers and networking and data protection. We would like to highlight that our main value proposition to our Partners in the region is to enable, support and empower them to deliver turnkey solutions to their Customers. We support our Channel with logistics, operations, pre-sales, post-sales, finance and marketing,” added Vimal. ë

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MY VIEWS

Leveraging Cloud for an ‘Always-on’ Business EC MEA SAT DOWN WITH ADAM WOLF - TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, BIOS TO UNDERSTAND THE DISRUPTIVE MODELS THAT THE CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER IS BRINGING FORTH FOR THE OPEX-SAVY ENTERPRISES.

Gartner recently named you a visionary DRaaS provider. What is your ‘vision’ as an organization?

CloudHPT was conceptualized in 2012, a time when the market adoption of cloud was low in the UAE and yet there was a huge demand for moving from CAPEX to OPEX models.

CloudHPT is the only Cisco-powered cloud in the UAE which utilizes the latest Cisco UCS technology. Being built on high-performance technology (HPT), CloudHPT uses modern datacentre innovations in the industry including VMware and Cisco’s application-centric infrastructure (ACI), to deliver the most secure cloud platform in the Middle East region.

There is an increasing importance on Disaster Recovery as companies leverage technology to move towards always-on business. We are delighted that our approach to Disaster Recovery, which in addition to industry leading recovery SLA’s, emphasizes the importance of disaster prevention through 24/7 security managed services has been recognized Visionary,” Adam Wolf - Technical Director, BIOS.

ADAM WOLF,

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, BIOS

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How sure were you that the region would be receptive to such a technology, then?

When we planned a cloud model, we saw a shift in the market. We saw that customers no longer wanted to spend huge CAPEX’s on purchasing large infrastructure on premise. They wanted a smarter way to consume their IT. The challenges that we primarily had could be attributed to ‘Fear’ and ‘doubt’ about security and the viability of cloud. But then in the UAE, the government has launched Dubai smart government and smart city and I believe this soften the stance many people had on cloud.

All of these smart initiatives play well into using third party service providers, so that businesses can focus on their primary operations and not IT. We leveraged the fact that there was a market shift and came in with solutions that are designed around saving people money.

A great example that came our way was Abu Dhabi Finance. They were a managed services customer and needed a DR for regulatory compliance by central bank. We did a TCO analysis of building the DR. They needed to replace their production line and it was coming in at about 4 million Dirhams spend for a three-year TCO. We then moved everything to CloudHPT which saved them about 50% to 100% over 3 years.

What would the one thing that makes you stand apart from other MSP’s?

There are a few things that give us an advantage as a service provider. One of the main one is having the cloud platform; being able to deliver those hybrid services where we can add a lot of value by offering more than replacing of a physical person on the ground with a team of virtual people. Being able to offer a combination of services is definitely one of the big advantages because I don’t see many other managed service providers that have the same level of cloud infrastructure in the UAE that we have today.

Tell us in brief about your concept of Hybridization?

Hybridization is really to help with the transitions to cloud. When we meet customers, they can be in different stages of cloud readiness. Maybe somebody has recently made an infra¬structure purchase and therefore financially it does make sense for them to go for the cloud. Possibly they’ve got some applications which are Internet facing and they want it to be more secure that they want to take benefit of things like our DDOS prevention services.

Our ISP network has high availability built into it that you maybe can’t get in your own office or your own data centre. So that’s where you get that hybrid environment and by having the managed services team we’re able to then layer a common SLA across that. ë

MY VIEWS THE DATA ECONOMY 2017 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

PURE STORAGE INDUSTRY INSIGHTS TO BALANCE INFRASTRUCTURE AND APPLICATIONS FOR DIGITAL BUSINESS

The Evolution of Data in ‘Cloud Era’ DIGITAL DRIVERS AND BARRIERS

DATA IS THE NEW CURRENCY— AS WE ALL AGREE. IT PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN TRANSFORMING NOT JUST THE BUSINESS, BUT THE ENTIRE WORKFORCE. PURE STORAGE RECENTLY BROUGHT OUT A MARKET EVALUATION Identifying and responding to drivers barriers of digital transformation REPORT THAT STUDIED THE and IMPACTS OF THIS MAJOR is DISRUPTION. essential to generating measurable value from disruption – and it is important that businesses align data decision-making with their own objectives.

“70% of the respondents said that data is a big part of how business is transformed.

01 CIOs want to take that data and make the best of it to make quicker decisions, to be able to operate faster and change business for good.”

The key factors driving adoption of digital solutions in the UAE Business models (54%)

Competition (48%)

Customer demand (48%)

Create cost savings (46%)

n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >

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02

around the world on what IT decision makers he term ‘Transformation’ for Pure want. Yousuf Khan, CIO at Pure Storage said, Storage is ‘Being able to dramatically “70% of the respondents said that data is a big improve the business process that Technical complexity is the biggest barrier to converting to digital solutions part of how business is transformed. CIOs want run the company, enhance customer Technical complexity (51%) Competing priorities (47%) to take that data and make best use out of it to experience, empower them in terms of revenue, EMEA / Russia generally (29%) IT to deliver the strategy (39%) make quicker decisions, to be able to operate brand and reputation’. According to Pure Lack of digital skills (38%) faster and change business for good.”

Storage, these are the three center pieces of with the help of which one is able to combine whats happening in the physical world with whats DATA-DRIVEN happening in the digital world and bring those ORGANIZATIONS together.

According to Yousuf, the two requirements of Pure Storage recently conducted a global a data driven organization are; Speed and the such as storage are seen to be slowing down digital study measuring the digital state of today’sFundamentals ability to put the data to work. transformation progress businesses and the challenges they face in “60% of the respondents said that storage (69%) of businesses and (76%) in a rush innovatetransformaand bring new putting their data to work to drive innovation. had been a bottleneck fortodigital regarded as an after-thought solutions to market for three-quarters The report also acts as a 2017 benchmark for tion. Using oldof architectures for business will businesses in the UAE organizations accelerating into the “Cloud only slow down the process. Organizations Era” and gauging where they are in balancing need to have a world class storage infrastructure infrastructure and applications in their business and we at Pure Storage are paing the roadmap and how this is set to evolve as we approach for that. To give the infrastructure the ability 2020. The report interviewed over 9000 people to put this data to work, we are providing

03

CLOUD AND ON�PREMISE � BEST OF BOTH WORLDS Public cloud storage is being used more by businesses in response to growing data volumes. But security is raising concerns, and it’s only with a considered workload strategy that businesses can find the right balance of cloud and on-premise storage that suits them.

YOUSUF KHAN,

CIO AT PURE STORAGE

companies and the channel partners with a world class infrastructure that can help them make the most out of their data.”

He also adds that we are living in a hybrid cloud world and we will for a long time. “In this scenario, two important question rises; the cost of data and the cost of securing that data,” adds Yousuf.

SIMPLICITY IS A PART OF OUR DNA

An average of 39% of storage currently runs on traditional on-premise, with less on public cloud (25%) or private cloud (23%)

Public storage is tipped to increase in 69% of businesses, with private cloud (57%) and SaaS (53%) also showing momentum in an 18-24 month timeframe. 43% see increases in traditional on-premise storage in this timeframe

“We imbibe simplicity in whatever we do. There is simplicity when you buy a solution from Pure Storage. It is simple to set up our solution. You can install in minutes rather than hours. Upgrade is simple. Managing is easy. We are simple from a support perspective as well”. ë

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There is momentum towards public cloud with key benefits

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FEATURE STORY

Smart Choices for a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Cleanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Network The operators of datacentres are facing the challenge of meeting the growing demands for network bandwidth without increasing infrastructure power and cost. This triggers the need of structured cabling which is cost effective and results in consumption of less power. Cloud data centres manage 70% of the IT work globally and there is also an increase in the number of organizations using IT services from external data centre. The private users, using the web for transferring images and videos are increasing. According to reports, around 90% of internal data traffic is related to transmission of videos.

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FEATURE STORY

n B Y: D I V S H A B H AT < D I V S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

T

he need for advanced communication technique has been increasing in the Middle East and Africa region. The rise in internet penetrationand increasing internet communication and also the convergence of data centres are responsible for the growth of structured cabling market. The key trends of the structured cabling market are the increase in demand of optical fibre cables market in the organizations because of its high-speed data transfer. According to MarketandMarkets, the global structured cabling market is expected to reach $13.3 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 9%

between 2015 and 2020.

GROWTH OF FIBRE OPTIC CABLING The growing importance of cloud computing and Internet of Things is driving the use of internet, which is driving the fibre optics market, as it acts as the backbone of data transmission. The increase in demand for Over-The-Top (OTT) video content has also driven the increase in demand for internet which in turn has led to the higher usage of optical fibre cable to transfer information over the internet thus driving the fibre cables market. According to reports, the

fibre optics market is projected to reach USD 5 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 9.8% from 2016 to 2021. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As data traffic continues to grow, from Facebook videos and Instagram selfies to Office 365 sessions and IoT connected devices, there is an unprecedented surge in construction of new cables that currently carry 99 % of this and all Internet traffic between continents. The investors in these new submarine cable systems, which now include large cloud service providers and content companies are finding that when these submarine cables terminate on land, data centers are the optimal location to immediately connect

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FEATURE STORY

“End-users must do their due diligence on potential cloud providers to ensure that they provide the correct migration path that meets the strategic intent of their business” -DAVID HUGHES,

“Server virtualization is one of the trends in increasing the efficiency of data centers; however, it can lead to stresses in the supporting connectivity infrastructure” -TAREK HELMY, REGIONAL DIRECTOR GULF AND MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH & EAST AFRICA OF NEXANS CABLING SOLUTIONS.

DIRECTOR, FIELD APPLICATION ENGINEERING, MEA, COMMSCOPE.

GLOBAL STRUCTURED CABLING MARKET US - $17.4 Billion 0.4%

F-1

In Billion

CAG

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

Source: Market Research Future

these point to point submarine cables into a single location that directly connects to thousands of networks” commented Jeroen Schlosser, Managing Director, Equinix MENA. “The increasing flow of traffic particularly

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from the cloud is pressurising the conventional network architectures in ensuring business continuity. These developments affect the data centre environment and place a new series of demand on the network at the level of cabling infrastruc-

“Companies are not only connecting to multiple clouds for various business applications, they are connecting to and collaborating with other businesses in their digital supplychain in order to gain competitive advantage” -JEROEN SCHLOSSER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EQUINIX MENA

ture” says Tarek Helmy, Regional Director Gulf and Middle East, South & East Africa of Nexans Cabling Solutions.

PLUG & PLAY CABLING TRENDS Plug and Play pre-terminated solutions have offered remarkable value to the data centre sector.

Reports say, they are about 50 percent faster when it comes to network maintenance. “Among pre-terminated solutions, MPO/MTP fibre has fast become the de facto choice for single and multimode connectivity due to its simplicity, speed and high density. In a contemporary world speed is becoming more relevant, but so is the ability to migrate to higher data rates with minimal design and disruption. This not only protects both the Op-ex and Cap-ex for an organisation, but also enhances the route to market. This area has continued to evolve and with the introduction of ultra-low loss performance and with a choice of 8-12-24 way configurations, ensures that the infrastructure can be designed to suit emerging applications and customised to suit the end-user’s strategy” said David Hughes, Director, Field Application Engineering, MEA, Commscope..

FEATURE STORY

MIDDLE EAST CABLES MARKET BY TOP 5 TRENDS OF STRUCTURED PRODUCT 2012 - 2020 CABLING IN 2017 Demand in the automated infrastructure solutions.

Enhancement of preexisting technologies.

Source: Grand View Research

CLOUD APPLICATIONS DRIVING THE NEED Due to flexibility of its services, cloud computing has been the preferred way to do business. There is a fundamental shift in the digital economy where in the cloud is dominating and enterprises business models are being increasingly interdependent. “Companies are not only connecting to multiple clouds for various business applications, they are connecting to and collaborating with other businesses in their digital supplychain in order to gain competitive advantage. In this interconnected era, connectivity is the lifeblood of enterprise and the speed, security and scalability of this connectivity will define success or failure for many businesses. The cost and latency efficiencies that subsea cables offer is just one part of the reason why they have become so

55%

2017 is the year where 55% of businesses will adopt the structured approach for cabling in Dubai.

Ultra-High-density solutions.

indispensable. In the months and years to come, they will be the foundations on which a new era of global communication is built – the era of interconnection” said Schlosser.

“End-users must do their due diligence on potential cloud providers to ensure that they provide the correct migration path that meets the strategic intent of their business. Migration initiatives are now a fundamental part of business continuity and competitive advantage for an organisation. Therefore, the ability to scale in an agile manner is integral to an enhanced go-tomarket strategy” said David Hughes.

IOT TO THRIVE SAFE & SECURE IN THE DATA CENTRE Smart devices are enabling a new kind of infrastructure, an intelligent network built on the Internet of Things. The majority of global data traffic is transferred though the submarine cables.

These cables are crucial as organizations depend on instant connectivity to markets globally. The submarine cables enable low latency as they connect to more places that real time technologies like IoT is required.

Equinix says its success with submarine cable operators derives from its ability to provide “one-stop shop” access to cable landing station, backhaul, and interconnection needs. The company also has adapted its support model to better meet the needs of submarine cable systems operators, creating a turnkey package

Increased focus on future proof networks.

Shift in the usage ratio of copper and fiber products.

of cable landing station, power, colocation, and interconnection.

FINALLY Cabling are not going anywhere in the near future Although the trends are shifting towards Wi-Fi technology but major back-ups and power and transmission will still be heavily relying on cabling. Structured cabling supports multiple and mixed vendor environments and applications long after installation. However, the ability to run an applicationat any time comes only with the proper planning of a high-performance structured cabling system. By taking the time to plan, an organization can simplify operations. A properly planned system will allow organizations to spend their time and financial resources in other sectors. The other option is to face network problem as it arises. The decision is yours! ë

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MY VIEWS

The Era of Intelligence Revolution DRIVING THE VISION TO LEAD THE FOREFRONT OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, LENOVO HAS USHERED IN, WHAT THEY CLAIM AS, THEIR WIDEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE PORTFOLIO OF SERVER, STORAGE, NETWORKING AND DATA CENTER SERVICES.

T

he surge in IoT and the associated connected devices are further fueling the service providers to dive deeper into their expertise to help organizations sail through the ‘Intelligence revolution’. From improved workflows to enhanced service delivery, all aspects of business are ready to embrace this change. In the wake of this era, Lenovo Middle East and Turkey and Africa (META) announced its new regional business strategy that is aimed at helping regional businesses transform for the “Intelligence Revolution” era.

Russell Theron, Data Center Lead Gulf, DCG, said, “For the modern CIO, service delivery is his first priority. Lenovo, being no 1 in reliability and customer satisfaction, is delivering a full range of integrated solution that includes a cutting edge hyper converged platform along with competitive implementation services. We are no longer just a hardware provider, we develop platforms that deliver services in accordance to the customer needs. The ambitious projects of the leading government organizations in the Middle East are further propelling our vision and we are geared up to help the organizations successfully embark

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on this journey of transformation. We have also formed the open source platforms giving our customers the choice of flexibility.”

ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile. Lenovo’s new end-to-end data center portfolio will enable Middle East customers to harness the power of the “intelligence revolution” and create a strong technology foundation that supports transformative capabilities such as data analytics, high-performance computing, hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Lenovo’s new ThinkSystem servers achieved 42 #1 performance world records, integrated with the latest Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

The ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile portfolios empower customers to create the foundation of a future-defined data center with According to Lenovo, simplicity, agility and flexibility, and future-proofed preparation are the three key factors empowering the customers to lay the foundation for a future-defined data center.

Simplicity: Often, customers find the price for technological advancement and advanced IT capabilities is complexity and confusion. The

new ThinkSystem portfolio of servers, storage and networking solutions allows customers to address these concerns by giving them the ability to streamline IT infrastructure; this leads to increased service levels of data center operations that tie directly to business growth.

Agility and Flexibility: With the Lenovo ThinkAgile portfolio, customers can leverage its pre-integrated, pre-built and pre-tested offerings to deliver robust new capabilities that are essential in a competitive environment where customers must quickly use data-driven, actionable insights to refine applications and the customer experience will be paramount to today’s businesses as they strive to uncover new competitive advantages in an increasingly crowded market.

Future-Proofed Preparation: The ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile solutions are designed to support workloads spanning large data analytics applications to high performance computing, artificial intelligence and the largest hyperscale environments to help customers conceptualize and create infrastructure that relevant for their future needs. ë

gitex.com

Re - Imagining Realities

“

Dubai’s digitisation initiatives could generate a potential USD 4.87 billion in value by 2019”

Supporting 145,000 trade attendees with their Digital Transformation initiatives

John Chambers, Chairman, Cisco, 2017

BUSINESS

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NEW FOR 2017

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any other event suppliers

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Smart Manufacturing & Data Centre area

9 Vertical Conferences 1

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Future Tech: public private partnershipprogram showing AR, AI, VR, Autonomous System & Robotics Solutions

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CALLING out All innovators in 5G AR, VR, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud, Cyber Security and IoT

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7/10/17 9:48 AM

FOCUS STORY

FOCUS BAHRAIN

‘ADAPTIVENESS’

has an address

Bahrain

In the race to ‘digitization’, Bahrain stands as a good example. Though being one of the most adaptive countries to newer technologies, the kingdom has made sure that the investments are filtered and technology should empower rather than derail the economy.

As a very calculative step towards easing IT expenditures in the kingdom, all projects concerning the ministries and government organizations would be channeled through a committee appointed by the Bahrain government.

Solution providers who possess niche skills and disrupting technologies have a great future in the kingdom.

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n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

T

he kingdom has definitely added some elite feathers to its cap. Be it creating a record of producing a company registration within 93 seconds or being strategically located to reach all the Gulf countries within one hour. Bahrain has long since been a retreat of peace and celebrated for its quality of life.

THE POSITIVE INFLUX OF NEWER TECHNOLOGIES

One of the key testimonial of Bahrain’s adaptive nature to change is the fact that the first edition of the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) FinTech conference will be held in Bahrain to foster discussion about the challenges and opportunities presented by the emerging sector. Banking sector, to be specific, is seeing a great level of disruption with newer technologies on board. Fintech organizations can find a very green pasture to thrive.

Fintech Digital Solutions and Consultants has been one such firm that are rising steadily. “We provide state-of-the-art payment solutions based on solid secured infrastructure, observing the high demands of card payment industry. The solutions are compliant with the latest PCI DSS security standards including POS, mobile, and online transactions processing that are unified on single payment platform with high standard quality, services locally and globally, simple and secured. The solutions include core banking, online website and mobile applications, etc.” says Ahmed Albalooshi, Managing Director, Fintech Digital Solutions and Consultants.

“Amongst startups, we are seeing a hotbed of innovation emerging in the country as tech entrepreneurs are able to use cloud technologies to fuel creativity, innovation, and forward thinking to launch new businesses. One initiative we have been working on to help the Bahraini startup ecosystem to grow is the Cloud10 Scalerator. Part of technol-

FOCUS STORY

“Part of technology investment firm C5, the Cloud10 Scalerator is working with new startups in Bahrain to help scale up their businesses by using AWS.” -ZUBIN CHAGPAR,

HEAD OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR FOR MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, AMAZON WEB SERVICES

ogy investment firm C5, the Cloud10 Scalerator is working with new startups in Bahrain to help scale up their businesses by using AWS,” Zubin Chagpar, Head of the Public Sector for Middle East and Africa, Amazon Web Services “In Bahrain, the three main sectors are government ministries, state owned enterprises, and banking. At the moment, the telcos are hesitant to make any new IT investments; therefore, as far as IT investments are concerned, it is only the SOEs and banks who are investing in new infrastructure and digital development. As aforementioned, the government has already invested heavily in digitalization throughout the years, with the national e-services portal being an example of that. Due to the increasing number of cyber security threats globally, though, there is a growing focus on security from both commercial

and public sectors,” says Abdulla Ishaq, Country General Manager, GBM Bahrain

GOVERNMENT AS THE TRUE ENABLER A news in Bahrain News Agency states that in 2015 at the Government Forum, “HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad AlKhalifa, the Crown Prince Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, announced that the time has come for the private sector to take the lead in Bahrain’s economy. HRH also added that government role would shift from being the major contributor in the GDP to that of an enabler, regulator, facilitator and partner for the private sector. Originally launched in 2008, economic vision 2030 was reinforced with further focus being directed to new sectors such as Financial

Service, ICT, Tourism, Logistics and Manufacturing, in a clear attempt to further diversify from an oil and gas based economy.” In the Public sector, in April, Bahrain’s Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) announced they will begin the migration of 10 government websites to AWS including, the Ministry of Justice & Islamic Affairs; Ministry of Health; Central Bank of Bahrain; National Oil & Gas Authority; Survey & Land Registration Bureau; Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning; Ministry of Transportations & Telecommunication; Public Prosecution; Capital Governorate and the Northern Area Municipality. This is allowing the iGA to provide government departments with the latest cloud technologies to help them better serve the citizens of Bahrain

MAKING WAY FOR RAPID DEVELOPMENT “In November last year we announced that Amazon Web Services was opening an office in Manama, Bahrain in order to support the rapidly expanding customer base we have in the Middle East. Middle Eastern companies were amongst the earliest adopters of AWS cloud services in EMEA and are using AWS to run everything from development and test environments through to production, mission critical workloads as they use AWS to grow their businesses and go global. The new office was opened

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FOCUS STORY

“The IT market in Bahrain is expected to grow rapidly, supported by its well educated population, government initiatives, and increasing demand for SMAC technologies.”

-KIRAN DHAR,

“We help companies plan and manage the changes in their systems to accommodate changes in business structure.”

on January 1st this year and since then we have seen strong growth in activity in the country,” said Zubin.

As a go-to-market strategy, we’re trying to develop technology roadmap for some of the

conglomerates and Government organizations in Bahrain and other geographies that will help them mitigate business risk, save IT operational cost, improve happiness index, and streamline business processes. As a result, Intertec is working

“GBM has always been a leader in the IT market in Bahrain and we are aligning GBM with the government technology roadmap.”

-ABDULLA ISHAQ,

-AHMED ALBALOOSHI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FINTECH DIGITAL SOLUTIONS AND CONSULTANTS, BAHRAIN

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, INTERTEC SYSTEMS

COUNTRY GENERAL MANAGER, GBM BAHRAIN

on developing and implementing disruptive technologies such as Digital Transformation, Managed Services, Security Services, Consulting Services, Business Applications, AP Automation and IT Service Management. ë

$1bn

It will increase tourism’s contribution to Bahrain’s GDP to $1 billion by 2020, effectively doubling the share from 3.6 per cent to 6.6 per cent

Bahrain has unveiled its brand-new tourism identity: ‘Ours.

Yours. Bahrain

non-oil sector accounts for 76 percent of Bahrain’s total GDP, according to the IMF

$12bn

strong pipeline of infrastructure projects worth over $32 billion

$1.1bn

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$107.2 Currently, there are over 41 governmental entities providing over 380 online services through various channels

$1.1 billion Bahrain International Airport modernization programme

44

ranked 11th globally in the Telecommunications Infrastructure Index according to the United Nations’ eGovernment Report 2016

World Bank estimates Bahrain’s fiscal break-even price was $107.2 per barrel in 2015, the highest among GCC states

SPECIAL STORY

Business & IT

A Shared

Responsibility!

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SPECIAL STORY

Aligning IT with business has been recognized as an ongoing concern within organizations for decades. Aligning business with IT is a process that needs constant effort by organizations to attain business transformation.

Today, most CEO’s know that their businesses should be aligned with IT. For the CEO, the transformation of his organization through IT is one of the positive accomplishments in keeping the manufacturing operations from subsiding. And the CIO steps up to the challenges of maintaining a strong relationship with the management. Attempts to bridge the gap in this partnership is essential to increase revenue, reduced costs and innovation of the business. n B Y: D I V S H A B H AT < D I V S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

A

ligning business with IT needs effort from IT as well as business enterprise to ensure that IT delivers services that contribute directly to the delivery of business outcome. Many enterprises today require technology to support business process. To deliver services to end customer, organizations depend upon IT resources. Enterprises recognize the value of IT services during the need for business automation like improving financial performance or increasing market share.

STEPS TO BUSINESS ALIGNMENT WITH IT n

Identify business drivers

n

Create IT vision

n

Assess current alignment

n

Identify alignment gaps

n

Prioritize IT initiatives

n

Evaluate implementation options

n

Create migration plan

n

Adjust IT strategy

HOW CIO’S CAN HELP CEO’S? In today’s competitive world, organizations face constant pressure from their competitors. To stay successful in the industry, an organization requires willingness to embrace change and innovation. CEO’s need support particularly from CIO’s to deliver innovative technology solutions and make their organization more efficient. CIO’s can help CEO’s by introducing collaborative tools and self-service portals to reduce human capital costs. They can educate the Boards, CEO’s and Senior Executives about the disruptive trends and opportunities. The CIO’s can engage senior managers to co-create innovative solutions in partnership with vendors. They can help the CEO’s in understanding the new technologies and create innovation hubs to benefit the organization.

Mark Ackerman, Sales Director, Middle East, ServiceNow says that a modern CIO should align his business with IT by establishing service portfolio policies that govern the management of the full lifecycle of each service, from inception to retirement; Ensure that the scope of each service is clearly defined and documented in the service

Drives, Empowers and invests in IT

Enables business innovation, growth and efficiency

BUSINESS

IT

“CIO’s should come out of the shell of supporting business on what business requires, infact empower business to be differentiators.”

-ANSHUL SRIVASTAV, CIO, UNION INSURANCE.

catalogue—and, where possible, provide full disclosure by also describing what is ‘out of scope’ for the service; Ensure that each service offering has an associated pricing model, unit price, and cost. He also added that a CIO should establish pre-defined evaluation criteria for assessing all requests and ensure resource planning accounts for all relevant factors affecting resource availability, such as vacations, holidays, shift premiums, maintenance, support, etc.

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SPECIAL STORY

BENEFITS OF ALIGNING IT WITH BUSINESS Improved speed to market Improved efficiency of implementation n Lower costs though re-usability n Risk reduces through more predictable outcomes n Reduced cycle time n Enhanced quality n Creates an investment portfolio that maximizes business impact n Improved employee morale n Budgeting becomes more predictable n Increased enterprise agility n n

“Establish service portfolio policies that govern the management of the full lifecycle of each service, from inception to retirement.”

-MARK ACKERMAN, SALES DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST, SERVICE NOW.

2016

CEO’s TOP PRIORITIES FOR IT

32%

Reach Revenue Goals

32%

23%

Simplify IT

31%

29%

Upgrade IT & Security

32%

22%

Product Innovation

28%

13%

Collaborate on Customer Initiative

17%

BUSINESS AND IT MUST PARTNER Aligning IT with business supports business goals of the organization. It improves the organizations overall performance. It can lead to the development of better services, efficient supply of chain management and reduction of costs. The Union Insurance CIO, Anshul Srivastav says “When a

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CIO decides to adopt technology, and make it a DNA of the system, they have to split out the regular operations and the change management for innovation/ disruption. There must be clear cut demarcation between proposing innovative solutions and supporting existing setup with regular operations. CIO’s should be financially sound to derive the value of the change and build

a solid business case. With everything turning into service CIO’s should be cautious on how to play the game of consuming it as service and pay as you use to derive a value of the business case.

CIO’s should come out of the shell of supporting business on what business requires, in fact empower business to be differentiators. To lead it, how they innovate is important. So, leading the change should not go with regular operations” An IT enabled business strategy is required in order to meet the business objectives and goals. An IT enabled business strategy contains the organizations long term IT plans on how IT should be deployed and implemented in the future. It also incorporates the organizations IT strategy that holds information of IT applications. It also describes how IT should be organized within the organization and helps them understand the complexities of data. By aligning their business with IT, organizations can achieve the best return on their IT investment.

FINALLY In order to progress, it is required that an organization establish an interactive relationship between business and IT processes. Collaborative partnership between business and IT does not have to be initiated only by the CIO. A CEO may also have the right IT leadership. It is not required that the CIO should have access to IT and business strategies; IT managers can also make strategic decisions in delivering the business value of IT usage. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who initiates the effort. If there is alignment between IT and business, the organization will be successful. ë

INNOVATIONS

KEY CAPABILITIES n Dust-tight and waterproof housing and lift-up lid; can accommodate up to twelve plugs and up to 60 splice connections. n Space for four FMTS 1TPU splice trays or two 2TPU splitter trays which can be inserted and removed with minimal effort. n An integrated housing seal made by a two-component injection moulding technique makes sure that dangerous dust and powerful jets of water cannot penetrate the box. n Features knock-out cable grommets on all four sides and on its back, giving installers more leeway when it comes to positioning. n Can be positioned virtually anywhere in a building.

Polaris Box 6 R&M unveiled its new generation of sturdy and flexible connection boxes for fibre optic networks. The Polaris-box 6 has been designed to supply single and multi-dwelling units, terraced houses and comparable building complexes with fibre optics and R&M intends to engage with Middle East telecom providers to deploy the solution in their Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) rollouts.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ GECMEDIAGROUP.COM

AMD RYZEN PRO DESKTOP PROCESSOR AMD added another tier to its enterprise CPU portfolio with the introduction of AMD Ryzen PRO desktop processors. Designed to meet the demands of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compute-intensive workplace, Ryzen PRO desktop processors will bring reliability, security, and performance to enterprise desktops worldwide.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Provides up to 52 percent improvement in compute capability over the previous generation n Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 offers up to 62 percent more multi-threaded performance than select competing solutions. n Offer state-of-the-art silicon-level security, providing hardware-based cryptographic and security technologies to help protect against an ever-growing number of threats. n Security standards like secure boot, Ftpm, AES, and Windows 10 Enterprise security features are fully supported across the entire Ryzen PRO processor family. n Provide commercial-grade quality and reliability to help ensure platform longevity for futureready computing.

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INNOVATIONS

imageFORMULA Flatbed Scanner Unit 102 Canon Middle East launched the imageFORMULA Flatbed Scanner Unit 102 (FSU102) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the perfect accompaniment to the Canon imageFORMULA Document Scanner range. Specifically designed to partner Canon imageFORMULA scanners, the compact and lightweight FSU102 enables users to capture images from both devices in one operation - using the same software driver interface. As the ADF and FSU102 work together, users are able to combine several documents, from both sources, and create a single file â&#x20AC;&#x201C; improving productivity for even complex workflows.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Enhances efficiency by delivering scans in record time. n A4 page scanning takes less than three seconds in grayscale and under four seconds in colour. n From A4 documents down to smaller items, such as passports, all materials can be captured quickly and easily, allowing work to be completed in a faster timeframe. n Enables users to scan bound documents, books and fragile media (up to A4) swiftly and simply. n Delivers high resolution scanning to ensure crisp detail and perfect accuracy. n Offers image processing features including Auto Resolution, 2D Code module compatibility, Background Smoothing, Notch Removal and Dot Eraser. n Optimal energy efficiency is ensured by an all new CIS sensor and the addition of an LED light source; under which the scanner can run under 7W while in full operation and less than 1.7W in sleep mode.

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Dell EMC 14th Generation PowerEdge Server Dell EMC revealed worldwide availability for its next generation of server to help customers of all sizes fuel their IT transformation initiatives. The new 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio forms a scalable, automated and secure compute platform for traditional and cloud-native applications, designed for new Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Accelerated database performance and lower latency with up to 12 times more database IOPS and up to 98% less database latency in a VMware vSAN cluster. n Faster and seamless live migration of virtual machines now up to 58% faster with up to 75% less CPU usage when using 25GbE with Remote Direct Memory Access. n Faster storage performance in compute to maximise application performance with up to six times more NVMe drives, up to five times total flash storage, 30 percent more input/output slots and 25% density improvement

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