March 2014

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PA G E S 5 2 VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 08 MARCH 2014 WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

BOBY JOSEPH,

DATA PRACTICE – HEAD, DATA SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES

DEMYSTIFYING BIG DATA FOR THE CHANNEL As Big Data & Analytics are gaining importance in the region, DST is working to enable the channel community to meet market demands. /32

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TRANSFORMING DATA CENTER BUSINESS

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The MEA region is clearly seeing the effects of the global cloud and Big Data boom, which is leading to rapid investment in the data center industry over the recent years. /24

E MT: “B ETTI NG B IG ON E NTE R PR ISE SOLUTIONS” /42

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Big Data in a Clasp

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EDITORIAL

Making Dubai Smartest

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A EDITOR@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, early this month announced a strategy to transform Dubai into a ‘Smart City’, in the presence of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and General Superviser of Dubai Smart City Project, and Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai.

As per him the strategy features six key pillars and 100 initiatives on transport, communications, infrastructure, electricity, economic services, urban planning. Under the strategy, 1000 government services will go smart in the next three years.

Dubai Crown Prince and General Superviser of the project of transforming Dubai into a smart city Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum quoting His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said he does not want to just develop the services, but he wants to change the way of life in Dubai. He did not set for us goals in customer satisfaction, but this time the goal is the happiness of man.

The very sentences denote their vision for the Dubai and connote the goal of making every citizen happy by bringing necessary services to them to be accessed by smartphones or internet enabled devices. Apart from eGovernment initiative and mGovernment initiative, these visionaries are looking at giving the country the smart governance. I remember His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, had said that Dubai is in a race against time to get to what is needed to become a smart city. It is true though but the manner the projects are being handled the dream can soon be reality.

In these visions and aspirations, technology plays a big role but there are also challenges. Therefore there is a need of contribution and participation from all quarters. This means a lot of companies in the country will have opportunity to work with the government sector. Starting from the internet service providers to telecom carriers, from wireless technology providers to mobile applications and services providers, from hardware to software providers, everything will go as part of the ecosystem of solution. And the challenges are match making a lot many technology vendors to work in unison to make great solutions. ë

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CONTENTS VOLUME 01 ISSUE 08 MARCH 2014 W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

COVER STORY

2014

TRANSFORMING DATA CENTER BUSINESS The MEA region is clearly seeing the effects of the global cloud and Big Data boom, which is leading to rapid investment in the data center industry over the recent years. /24

MY VIEWS /42

“Betting big on enterprise solutions”

MOHAMMAD MOBASSERI, CEO, EMT DISTRIBUTION

MY VIEWS /46

“Managing the classroom environment” AL KINGSLEY GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR, NETSUPPORT

INNOVATIONS /48

WATCHGUARD FIREBOX T10 UTM SOLUTION

FEATURE Tackling the Next-Gen Threats /36

As the threat landscape started changing, it led to evolution of multi-platform Unified Threat Management (UTM).

WatchGuard Firebox T10 Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, a network security appliance, allows enterprises to extend powerful network security to small office home office (SOHO) environments.

CORPORATE STORY /32

Demystifying Big Data for the Channel As Big Data & Analytics are gaining importance in the region, DST is working to enable the channel community to meet market demands.

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EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 05 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08 ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS ::::::::::::::::::::: 30 SERVICES ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 45 PARTNER CORNER:::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 31, 50 INNOVATIONS:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 48

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CHANNEL

STREET HDS EXPANDS PARTNERSHIP WITH SYMANTEC

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation announced an agreement with Symantec to resell Symantec NetBackup data protection software and Enterprise Vault information archiving software.

Hitachi Data Systems selected Symantec’s information management solutions because of their proven reliability in helping customers protect and store their critical information inside the evolving data center.

Enterprise customers want an endto-end solution from a single vendor to solve their data protection and retention problems. Businesses want to know their data is protected today more than ever before. The rise in big data analysis and the competitive advantage it brings has made that data more valuable to business. As a result, the need to protect data is increasing along with complexity.

BT TO IMPROVISE ITS HYBRID CLOUD SOLUTIONS BT will support Cisco’s InterCloud service working alongside Citrix and NetApp to broaden its Cloud Compute portfolio and improve the way its hybrid cloud solutions benefit customers globally. As organisations increasingly turn to the cloud for flexible and cost efficient ways of delivering IT services, the migration of workloads between different cloud environments remains a challenge.

Cisco’s newly launched InterCloud, based on open standards and supporting Citrix CloudPlatform powered by Apache CloudStack, enables companies to move workloads, such as storage, compute and applications, across different clouds .

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FAHAD AL HASSAWI, CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DU WELCOMES NDC

du to Provide Enterprise Solutions to NDC du announced that National Drilling Company (NDC), an ADNOC group company, has selected its enterprise solutions to power its communications needs.

Through the deal, du will provide NDC with Managed Broadband connectivity services – a reliable, cost effective solution that offers a higher redundancy than other service providers. More than 5000 employees at NDC will benefit from the partnership, which is testament to du’s superior managed service offering.

Fahad Al Hassawi, Chief Commercial Officer, du, said, “We are pleased to welcome NDC on board as the newest member of our enterprise customer family. NDC and its employees will benefit greatly from the quality of our Managed Broadband solution, part of our award-winning Managed Services offering, which delivers flexible connectivity to suit the requirements and improve the efficiency of large, dynamic businesses.”

El Walid Mohammed Abdalla, Head of IT Infrastructure, NDC, said, “Choosing an awardwinning Managed Services provider like du was only natural. The Managed Broadband solution meets our connectivity needs and complements our business. du offers a comprehensive range of Managed Services solutions, suitable for enterprises of all sizes. By choosing connectivity solutions from a Managed Services Provider (MSP), companies are able to improve their operational efficiency and service levels, by letting du’s expert team take control of essential functions – such as staffing, infrastructure, and networking.

At the recent Telecoms World Middle East Awards, du was named Best Enterprise Service Provider and Best Managed Service Provider, in recognition of the depth and quality of its comprehensive portfolio.

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CHANNEL STREET

‘The Big Data Analytics Power Lunch’ by DST and SAS Data Science Technologies (DST), a subsidiary of StorIT Distribution and a pioneer in the Big Data Analytics solutions and services space, has announced its inaugural event on Big Data Analytics for customers and partners on March 18, 2014 at The Westin Mena Siyahi in Dubai.

The event titled ‘The Big Data Analytics Power Lunch’ is a joint effort by DST and SAS to offer customers complete insights into harnessing their structured and unstructured, optimizing this data to grow their business further and demonstrate the features and benefits of using SAS Visual Analytics.

“As data volumes grow exponentially, organizations need to know how to harness this

data to find valuable and quick insights to gain a competitive advantage. Big Data Analytics is the key to unlocking the value of huge volumes of structured and unstructured data that can help companies make better decisions, take smarter actions and operate more efficiently,” said Boby Joseph, Data Practice - Head, Data Science Technologies.

“We are pleased to announce our first event for customers where we can take them through the Big Data life cycle, share success stories, demonstrate how SAS Visual Analytics with the right tools and services can add value to their business and existing data and share the solutions and services that DST can offer. ,” Joseph added.

CIOS ROLE CHANGE: FROM IMPROVER TO AN INFLUENCER Epicor Software has announced the results of a new Chief Information Officer (CIO) survey conducted in the Middle East, India and Africa. The survey showed significant trends amongst CIOs who are facing new challenges as their role changes in a technologically charged environment where business software solutions, like enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, are seen as critical business enablers.

A staggering 90% of respondents agreed that speed, reinvention, agility and innovation are critical to the success of any organization serious about optimizing performance and gaining competitive advantage. CIOs now have a seat at the top table, playing a critical role in driving the business forward through new technology.

INJAZAT TO HIGHLIGHT ITS LATEST TECHNOLOGIES Injazat Data Systems is throwing the spotlight on its latest technologies and innovative solutions during their participation at the 2nd BCS International IT Conference 2014, which kicked off March 9 in Abu Dhabi. The company is one of the major sponsors of the event, which is being held under the theme ‘Mobility, Intelligent Networks, & Smart Societies,’ The event gathered high-level officials and industry leaders from across the region to discuss IT innovations and their role in the evolution of business.

Injazat features its latest products and services at the event venue. The conference also served as an ideal platform for the company to further strengthen its services as well as meet and interact with industry experts from across the world.

The multi-track themed conference covers topics ranging from IT innovation to standards and best practices in cyber security, quality management systems (QMS), cloud computing, e-learning and education, sustainability and continuity, governance, risk and compliance, mobile computing, Internet social networks, and multimedia digital technology.

Dell Adds Network Certification Programme Dell has enhanced its PartnerDirect programme with the availability of the Networking Certification competency in the United Arab Emirates. The programme features specialised modules for networking to ensure that partners are up-to-date in an ever-changing world of technology and business.

The training offered as part of the accreditation process will enhance partners’ networking expertise and give them a competitive edge.

“The Dell Networking Competency Certification program is the ideal scheme for those partner organisations that want to engage

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their customers in a differentiated and advantageous business discussion. By participating in the programme, partners can take advantage of a host of sales, marketing and training benefits which are only available to authorised members,” said John Coulston, Channel Director, Dell Middle East.

The Networking Competency is something which is unique to Dell, and offers a wide range of benefits which are only made available to those organisations that hold this accreditation : n The free and in-depth training is designed to help partners under-

stand and communicate how The training will offer partners how to convert potential clients into actual sales. n With certification partners can take advantage of discounts and extended deals on products. n Partners can leverage virtual marketing resource aids to build an effective marketing plan. n The Dell Networking Certification helps organisations to become the partner of choice when it comes to introduction to existing customers.

“Our PartnerDirect program is more powerful than ever and we

continue to provide our partners with the best-in-class technology and services offerings. We have the strongest IT solutions portfolio in our history, and we continue to invest in research and development to address customer needs.

No other vendor can provide the technology solutions, spanning from the device to the datacentre to the cloud that so capably address customer requirements. Dell’s acquisition strategy has been instrumental in delivering this end-toend, solutions-focused capability,” said Michael Collins, Vice President and General Manager, Dell EMEA..

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Introducing

Unifying business communications for the new way to work. unify.com

Formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications

UNI-3746 ME Advts.indd 11Intro Ad.indd 1

Copyright Š Unify GmbH & Co. KG, 2014

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CHANNEL STREET

Sophos Updates its UTM Solution mand and control hosts. This latest Sophos announced an extensive version introduces Botnet protection update to its award winning Unified and cloud-based sandboxing to Threat Management solution, Sophos expand on the Sophos UTM’s existing UTM. With more than 100 new multi-layer Firewall, Web, Email and features, the highlight of the new Endpoint protection. This extends UTM platform is bringing Advanced the Sophos commitment to small and Threat Protection (ATP) to the small mid-market companies, delivering and mid-market, capabilities that access to advanced protection without were previously only available to large CHRIS KRAFT, VICE PRESIDENT, the complexity and cost normally enterprises.

PRODUCT associated with such functionality.

Developed by Sophos Labs, this MANAGEMENT, SOPHOS. “The initial stages of targeted new Sophos UTM approach brings attacks can often go unnoticed by together multiple technologies to security systems that don’t control incoming and rapidly identify and isolate infected clients and outgoing traffic. prevent communication with malicious com-

HELP AG WARNS AGAINST USING WINDOWS XP Preceding Microsoft’s imminent discontinuation of support for its hugely popular XP operating system (OS) on 8 April 2014, Help AG, a leading information security services and solutions provider in the Middle East, has issued a stern warning to business and home users to discontinue usage of the operating system or risk exposure to flood of security vulnerabilities. Windows XP currently has a 400% greater risk of malware infection than Windows 8.1 owing to improvements that have been added with each iteration of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. This percentage is only set to rise dramatically when the software giant ceases to release critical security patches for the OS.

RED HAT ANNOUNCES CERTIFICATION FOR CONTAINERIZED APPLICATIONS Red Hat has announced the extension of its application certification program to include containerized applications. The Red Hat Container Certification ensures that application containers built using Red Hat Enterprise Linux will operate seamlessly across certified container hosts.

Designed with the needs of independent software vendors (ISVs), service providers and their enterprise customers in mind, the certification extends the confidence customers have with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which currently supports thousands of certified applications, to certified containers running on certified container hosts. The pending release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering will both be certified container hosts, with Docker as a primary supported container format.

BROCADE’S NEW SAN FABRIC HELPS RACKSPACE MOVE TO CAMPUS-STYLE DATA CENTER Rackspace has improved the scalability, flexibility and performance in eight of its data centers across three continents with the deployment of Brocade’s Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN interconnection platform. With a 200,000 plus and growing customer base, the cloud giant is moving to a campus-style data center model, and Brocade’s Gen 5 Fibre Channel director-class switches have allowed Rackspace to simplify its SAN infrastructure while better utilizing both space and power within its data centers to significantly reduce energy costs.

Gen 5 Fibre Channel, the latest evolution in SANs, doubles the data throughput of 8 Gbps links, from 800 Megabytes per second (MB/sec) to 1600 MB/sec. Commenting on the deployment, Sean Wedige, CTO, Enterprise Solutions, at Rackspace said that his organization worked together with its storage array provider, EMC and Brocade to design a SAN fabric that was “ easy to grow and manage, while providing the flexibility to allow our data center technicians to connect any device to any switch in the fabric.”

Rackspace has also employed the ‘at-a-glance dashboard’ to receive customized views for visibility and insight into the health and performance of each SAN.

FVC-POLYCOM MENA PARTNER CONFERENCE KICKS OFF FVC, Polycom’s authorised Value Added Distributor and training Partner in the MENA region, kicked off its two-day FVC-Polycom MENA Partner Conference, held annually to give its partners in the GCC (including Saudi Arabia) and Pakistan the opportunity to meet the senior management from Polycom, get a preview of new

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products and network with partners across the region.

Dharmendra Parmar, Marketing General Manager at FVC said, “This year’s event, themed ‘Turn it On’ will focus on helping FVC’s Polycom partners recognise business opportunities across some of the key sectors and to maximise these opportunities. Polycom

launches new products like the innovative CX5100 360 degree camera for Microsoft Lync, continuously. Also, Polycom can now deliver its platform via hardware, software, hybrid solutions or in the cloud.”

Polycom Partner conference is expected to be attended by more than 100 people from the FVC

partner community across the Gulf region and Pakistan. In addition to showcasing vertical-sector solutions for the healthcare and energy sectors, FVC has arranged for an exhibition of a wide range of solutions from Polycom as well as value added accessories from its eco-system partners like Barco, Vaddio, and Revolabs.

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For deeper network security

look beyond the obvious.

Dell™ SonicWALL™ next-gen firewalls provide a deeper level of network security without slowing down performance.

Not all next-generation firewalls are the same. To start, Dell SonicWALL next-generation firewalls scan every byte of every packet while maintaining the high performance and low latency that busy networks require.

Additionally, Dell SonicWALL network security goes deeper than other firewalls by providing high-performance SSL decryption and inspection, an intrusion prevention system that features sophisticated anti-evasion technology, and network-based malware protection that leverages the power of the cloud. Now your organization can block sophisticated new threats that emerge on a daily basis.

Go deeper at: sonicwall.com/deep

Copyright 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell SonicWALL is a trademark of Dell Inc. and all other Dell SonicWALL product and service names and slogans are trademarks of Dell Inc.

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CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC

““Growth in MENA is expected to be slightly higher than the rest of the world led by strong growth in SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.”planning.”

ED ANDERSON, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GARTNER.

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SECONDS

CYBEROAM APPOINTS THREE DISTRIBUTORS FOR NETGENIE Cyberoam has appointed Bulwark, Emitac Qatar

Infor’s Channel Picks up Momentum Infor announced that 163 new channel partners joined the Infor Partner Network (IPN) in 2013, with 49 new resellers in EMEA alone. The growth of Infor’s channel has picked up significant momentum, with 48 percent more new resellers added than the previous year. With recently released innovations such as Infor Rhythm, UpgradeX and Infor Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management (d/EPM), partners are choosing Infor to provide their customers with business applications that are beautiful, usable and specialized by industry.

“We have launched several programs this year designed to help partners establish new revenue streams for their business and better align with Infor’s overall messaging and strategy,” said Jeff Abbott, senior vice president, Global Alliances

and Channels, Infor. “Infor is committed to developing mutually beneficial relationships with partners, and by continuing to establish new connections in countries around the world, we are helping our customers to better address their unique regional and local challenges.”

Leading firms such as AcumenERP, Aspect LLC, Inforlogic Limited and NuVista Technologies are joining the IPN to benefit from recently launched initiatives for partners including the new Micro-vertical Products Program (MVPP) and the IPN Digital Edge.

“We chose to join the IPN because it is clear that Infor highly values its partners and is consistently looking for new ways to strengthen the reseller program,” said G. T. “Toby” Stansell, president and COOr, AcumenERP.

and Sevengate as its distributors for its product NetGenie VDSL2/ADSL2+ Wi-Fi appliances.

Bulwark will be overseeing distribution for the region of UAE, Oman Bahrain and Kuwait while Sevengate and Emitac will cover the region of the Levant and Qatar respectively.

Bulwark., Emitac Qatar and Sevengate are also the existing distributors for Cyberoam network security appliances in the region. They will push NetGenie Wi-Fi appliances through their strong network of resellers.

INFO2CELL.COM RECORDS 27.7 PERCENT GROSS REVENUE GROWTH Info2cell.com has posted a gross revenue increase of 27.7 per cent in 2013 over 2012 buoyed by its growing business-to-consumer products and services. The company also attributed the revenue growth to sister company BuckSense Inc.’s strong support to its business operations. Info2cell.com and BuckSense, a worldwide interactive advertising agency, are subsidiaries of Italy-based telecommunications

MALOMATIA TO BECOME HP’S FIRST MSP PARTNER IN QATAR malomatia as a leading IT service provider in Qatar market has signed a partnership agreement with HP to become its first Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner in Qatar. It will leverage HP’s management software to offer Integrated Managed Service Solutions to enterprises in Qatar through a state-of-the-art operations center currently being built. malomatia CEO, Yousef Al-Naama, said, “We are extremely excited about this partnership.

Being the first HP Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner in Qatar uniquely positions us and enable us to offer our customers cutting-edge solutions at a much more competitive cost not just in Qatar but across the region. As an authorized HP MSP, we can now provide our customers the option to take advantage of our services without hosting it on-premise by using HP IT Management solution.”

According to Al-Naama, “Our partnership with HP marks an important step in our managed services business and our ability to industrialize our services. Managed Services represents “a key part of our business today and plays to the heart to the company’s objective of building and sustaining capabilities in the local market”.

company Acotel Group S.p.A. INFOWATCH SIGNS DISTRIBUTOR PARTNERSHIP WITH SCOPE ME Scope Middle East (SCOPE ME) has announced that it has been signed on by InfoWatch, a global market leader in Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions, as a distributor for the Middle East region. SCOPE will leverage its strong presence and understanding of the local market, vast reseller network and specialized technical capabilities to promote InfoWatch’s security solutions and grow the company’s regional market share.

UAE RANKS THIRD IN DIGITAL GOVERNMENT SURVEY A new comparative study by Accenture has found that Singapore, Norway and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) rank first, second and third, respectively, among 10 countries in their use

CITRIX ENHANCES XENMOBILE SOLUTION Citrix has announced new security and feature enhancements to the Citrix XenMobile solution. The new release empowers organizations in highly regulated industries, such as government agencies, to embrace device choice, improve productivity with quick access to more apps, and provide support for Microsoft Lync online meetings and other communication environments, without sacrificing security, control and most importantly, user experience. Citrix also enables enterprises and government agencies that are planning to phase out BlackBerry devices to transition smoothly, knowing their data and existing apps are secure, integrated and supported, the press release announced.

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of “digital government” — from offering online portals to access public services to employing digital channels and social media to communicate and engage with citizens.

The countries in the study — Brazil, Germany, India, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States — were measured.

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CHANNEL STREET

MMD Concludes its Roadshow in Cairo MMD, the leading technology company and brand license partner for Philips Monitors, announced the successful conclusion of its roadshow in Cairo, Egypt. The event was recently held at Grand Nile Tower Hotel, Cairo in association with Philips monitors in-country distributor QDS (part of Gulf Shadows Computer Systems group).

The event was held in order to showcase Philips display products and solutions for the Egyptian market. “This was our first-ever event in Egypt. The event was held to showcase the depth of our product line and a chance to get closer to the Egyptian market and to connect with local distributors and resellers,” explained Vineeth Sebastian, Regional Sales Director-MEA at MMD. “The event provided us with a platform to showcase our strength in terms of solutions and innovations to meet the requirements of the market based on local and global technology trends.”

Speakers at the event included Sharief Abdel Azim, the Managing Director at QDS; Vineeth

Sebastian, the Regional Sales Director-MEA at MMD and Sameh Gamal, Business Development Manager-MENA at MMD. QDS, Philips monitors local partner in Egypt, kicked-off the roadshow by introducing themselves which was followed by MMD corporate presentation, the company’s marketing strategies, and the company’s position in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Sharief Abdel Azim, the MD at QDS said, “We are happy to partner with MMD in the Egyptian market and we are certain with our efforts and support of Philips monitors, we will be able to corner a big size of the market. This event has helped us to deliver the key messaging from MMD and in same time we were also able to showcase wide array of Philips display products and solutions.”

Pleased with the high turnout, MMD now plans to take this roadshow beyond Egypt and hold such partner events in various countries across the Middle East region.

DIMENSION DATA RECEIVES FIREEYE 2013 GLOBAL SI OF THE YEAR AWARD Dimension Data has received the FireEye 2013 Global Systems Integrator of the Year Award.

The award was presented to Dimension Data at FireEye Momentum 2014, the company’s annual partner and sales conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this month. The FireEye awards recognises partners who are at the forefront of helping customers adapt to the modern threat landscape and help organisations create more secure infrastructure to combat today’s advanced threats. Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data’s Security Group Executive said, “We are very pleased to be recognised with this award. The global cyber threat landscape is expanding exponentially in both size and sophistication, and organisations are struggling to comprehensively protect their assets from advanced threats.”

MANAGEENGINE OFFERS SERVICEDESKPLUS FOR FREE ManageEngine has announced that the standard edition of its flagship IT help desk software, ServiceDesk Plus, is now available for free — with no restrictions, regardless of whether software runs in the cloud or on premise. Previously, the ServiceDeskPlus Standard Edition was free for up to five technicians/agents. The move slashes IT help desk expenses for the 60,000+ companies that have already adopted ServiceDeskPlus Standard Edition and invites other companies to do the same by adopting the ManageEngine solution.

In response, ManageEngine becomes the first vendor to offer a fully-functional, IT help desk free of charge, with no restrictions on the number of agents, tickets or end users or on the amount of cloud storage supported, stated the press release. ServiceDeskPlus Standard Edition comes with full-fledged ITIL incident and knowledge management functionalities, including extensive reporting and dashboard capabilities that cover the full life cycle of IT help desk tickets.

“Last year, we made ITIL affordable for all businesses at just $995. This year, we’ve made the standard edition of ServiceDesk Plus free so that all enterprises, big and small, can start following an organized process of ITSM in their organizations. This is not just ‘another help desk software.,” said, Raj Sabhlok, president, ManageEngine.

Mindware to take part in MENA ISC 2014 Mindware and Juniper will take part in the upcoming Middle East & North Africa Information Security Conference or MENA ISC 2014 that will take place on March 25th – 26th, 2014 in Riyadh, KSA. MENAISC 2014 will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, KSA as the official Platinum sponsors at

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the event.

The theme of MENAISC 2014 is “Securing Your Mobile Enterprise”.

There will be notable keynotes as in prior years along with an international security speaker and analyst.

This will be the fourth year for this highly successful and education conference which has enjoyed

three consecutive years of growing delegate and sponsor participation.

MENAISC 2011 – MENA ISC 2013 have achieved considerable success with over 400 delegates from all verticals in the MENA region attending each year. The event included leading international information security vendors

as well as local telecom and service providers and was able to effectively address the most prominent information security challenges and suggest solutions. Additionally, the previous conference received media coverage which helped increase awareness about information security in the whole region.

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DSG to Make Dubai Smartest Dubai Smart Government (DSG) Department has affirmed its full readiness to comply with the Smart Dubai Strategy to convert Dubai into the world’s smartest city, as announced by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President & Prime Minister & Ruler of Dubai.

H.E. Ahmad Bin Humaidan, Director General of DSG, said, “Dubai is witnessing the start of a new, unique and unprecedented stage to

H.E. AHMAD BIN HUMAIDAN, DIRECTOR GENERAL OF DSG

enhance the quality of human life in all fields, thanks to a number of initiatives launched by our prudent leadership

built on the infrastructure by our institutions and human resources to serve our citizens and residents.”

He added, “HH Sheikh Mohammed’s launch of the strategy to transform Dubai into the world’s smartest city gives us a roadmap to reach this goal with services and utilities on smartphones and the entire city designed in a smart manner to understand and serve the needs of all.”

WEB CLIPS “QATAR - DEAL OF THE YEAR 2013” GOES TO OOREDOO Ooredoo has won “Qatar - Deal of the Year” at the Islamic Finance Awards 2013. Ooredoo was nominated for its inaugural US$1.25 billion Reg S 5 year Sukuk (“the Sukuk”) which was launched in December 2013.

The award was received at the Islamic Finance News Annual Awards Ceremony 2013 held on 24 February 2014 at the Ritz Carlton, DIFC in Dubai.

The US$1.25 billion issuance was made under Ooredoo’s US$2 billion Trust Certificate Programme and was four times over-subscribed.

ETISALAT GROUP AND HUAWEI TO DEVELOP 5G IN THE REGION Etisalat Group and Huawei have signed a new

AVAYA TO IMPROVE HEALTHCARE DELIVERY

agreement that will deepen their cooperation in

Avaya is helping healthcare organizations enhance the patient, provider and payer experiences and advance their business through technologies that improve care team collaboration, patient outreach and service delivery. Avaya solutions that enable telemedicine, remote consultation and virtual healthcare have helped improve patient outcomes, increased care team productivity, and allowed greater cost control - all while addressing security concerns for protecting data while keeping it accessible.

“The healthcare industry has long understood the value of technology to improve healthcare delivery, and is now one of the leading verticals incorporating communications and collaboration solutions to provide an end-to-end experience that is more accessible to a broader group of patients. Avaya’s deep experience with the industry enables healthcare organizations to take advantage of communications and collaboration solutions with the privacy, compliance, etc.

next five years across the region.

pioneering telecom broadband services over the For the first time in the Region, Etisalat Group and Huawei will cooperate in the development of 5th generation (5G) mobile broadband. A joint team will be set up to conduct the trial of 5G services, which are the first ever trials of their kind across the Middle East, the press release announced.

“Etisalat has been committing to enhance the customer experience through Nurturing advanced technologies. 5G mobile network aims to tremendously improve user’s experience with never seen before speed and capacity.

MOVEMENTS Canon has announced the appointment of STEFANO ZENTI as Head of Emerging Markets Business Unit.

Riverbed Technology has promoted TAJ ELKHAYAT to managing director for Middle East, Turkey, North, West, and Central Africa (METNA).

Aruba Networks has appointed IT industry veteran BASHAR BASHAIREH as regional sales director, Gulf & Pakistan.

Bit9 appointed MOHAMMAD AQUIB AFTAB as Regional Director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

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4.1

NUMBER GAME

%

increase

is forecasted in IT infrastructure spending, comprising storage, server and enterprise networking equipment in the MEA.

EMEA CHANNEL ACADEMY HONOURS AMD’S ANDREW BUXTON Andrew Buxton, Director of Sales Component Channel and Regional OEMs EMEA at AMD, has been inducted into the EMEA Channel Academy Hall of Fame. The announcement was made during the ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2014 Awards’ held in Monaco on February 13th, in conjunction with regional channel event DISTREE EMEA. Farouk Hemraj, CEO and Co-Founder at DISTREE Events, said, “Inductees into the EMEA Channel Academy Hall of Fame are selected by a VIP Jury of senior channel executives. By conferring this status on Andrew Buxton, the VIP Jury recognised his channel achievements in EMEA during the last two decades and his long-term commitment to AMD.”

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Arbor Networks Launches Solution for Mobile Network Operators Arbor Networks has unveiled Peakflow Mobile Network Analysis. This new solution is designed for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) challenged with managing the steady rise in mobile data traffic and evolving threats.

Arbor’s Peakflow Mobile Network Analysis collects telemetry directly from the packet core, providing a wide-angle view of signaling activity through a rich set of intuitive reporting tools.

These reporting tools yield key operational and security insights, such as: Detailed signaling flow behavior between SGSN/SGW/MME and GGSN/PGW nodes – for real-time and retrospective analytics purposes. Detection and alerting of abnormal signaling message volumes, response times and information element codes – so security and operations teams can quickly identify potential causes.

“Given the high speeds offered by HSPA+ and LTE and the vulnerabilities inherent to BYOD,

attackers are undoubtedly attracted to mobile networks as a fast, convenient and readily exploitable platform for conducting malicious attacks,” said Matthew Moynahan, Arbor Networks President. “By building on our existing best-inclass Peakflow solution, we’re putting the same proven network visibility and security technology into the hands of mobile network operators (many of whom are our existing customers) with Peakflow Mobile Network Analysis. Now MNOs can see, understand and help stop threats before they negatively impact their infrastructure and services.”

“In today’s environment, no one security approach is going to prevent all malicious traffic from reaching the mobile network. And nothing is going to stop the increasingly complex mix of protocols within the network from generating anomalous traffic behavior,” said Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading.

SET LAUNCHES GOLD REWARDS PROMOTION FOR PARTNERS ESET has announced commencement of its ‘Hit the Goal and Get the Gold’ partner incentive program. Extending over the period of one and a half month from the 15th of February to the 31st of March 2014, the program enables sales personnel from the company’s reseller partners to earn gold rewards when they meet the preset sales targets. This offer coincides with ESET’s reseller rebate promotion which, during the same month and a half period, will allow the company’s retailers to earn a cash-back reward for achieving sales goals.

“Our aggressive expansion across the Middle East is very much channel driven and rewarding our partners for their performance is a key aspect of our commitment to them. With the new gold promotion, we offer our partners yet another attractive incentive,” said Elham Alizadeh, Channel Marketing Manager at ESET Middle East. “We had a lot of success with the relationship strengthening exercises that we conducted last year and this is the first of many exciting rewards programs in store for our partners in 2014.”

GEMALTO’S FULL RANGE OF MOBILE TRUST NET SOLUTIONS AT MWC Gemalto returns to Mobile World Congress with a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to enable customers to offer trusted services at every point throughout the mobile value chain, together creating the Mobile Trust Net. As part of this Mobile Trust Net range of offers, Gemalto’s embedded software, secure devices, platforms and hosted services create a secure eco-system in which end users can have confidence in the ability of their mobile devices to manage sensitive data. With six billion mobile connections in a consumercentric world where new relationships and business models are being defined, the need to establish this Mobile Trust Net is poised to underpin the rapid developments in Mobile Payments, Mobile ID, Mobile Connectivity and the Internet of Things.

Powerful mobile technologies and consumer trends are converging at breakneck speed around the world. LTE networks are proliferating, contactless smartphones becoming more and more widespread, and, by 2020, an estimated 50 billion machines will be interconnected. Operators, banks, retailers, enterprises and governments alike are looking to harness these changes, creating new revenue streams and strengthening customer loyalty.

Creating a trusted service-deployment environment enables every player in the mobile arena to build and implement new value-added services that their customers want quickly, easily, securely and cost effectively.

NEW NETAPP TO ACCELERATE VIRTUALIZED APPLICATIONS With more organizations embracing cloud mandates and moving quickly to flash-accelerated, shared storage infrastructures, NetApp has introduced a new line of enterprise storage systems and enhanced software designed to accelerate the broadest range of virtualized applications. The new NetApp FAS8000 series is

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the first enterprise storage system to unify SAN, NAS and storage virtualization into a single hybrid array. It is NetApp’s first FAS platform designed specifically for scale-out storage environments built on clustered Data ONTAP. The new FlexArray virtualization software enables existing storage to be managed by Data ONTAP

for a greater return on investment and makes legacy storage cloud-ready. The software enables the FAS8000 to virtualize and manage third-party arrays and delivers a nine-month payback guarantee. The new release of clustered Data ONTAP, version 8.2.1, extends nondisruptive operations (NDOs) and improves

data security and management of CIFS environments.

George Kurian, Executive Vice President, Product Operations, NetApp, said, “As they adapt their IT operations to improve service delivery and embrace cloud mandates, CIOs recognize the advantages of shared storage infrastructures.

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F5 and VMware Join Forces to Meet Demands of Mobile-Cloud Era F5 Networks and VMware announced a number of collaborative efforts designed to provide secure access control for customers’ virtual desktop deployments. The companies’ compelling new offerings introduce powerful capabilities to uniquely meet customer needs in the mobilecloud era, as end-users continue to work from all locations, and access their desktops and applications from various mobile devices.

F5 is bringing to market new versions of its BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) solution that have been tailor-made to deliver secure access and optimized performance for VMware Horizon View. Available in a range of throughput and concurrent user options, these new offerings cost-effectively enable customers of different size and scale to add industry leading secure access technologies to Horizon View. In addition, F5 is introducing a dedicated iApp and reference architecture to significantly speed deployments and provide prescriptive guidance on how these new solutions support VMware technologies.

“F5 shares our commitment to helping

customers prepare for and embrace the mobilecloud era. Adoption of VMware’s virtual desktop solutions continues to grow at a rapid pace, and F5’s new offerings give customers options in how to best combine technologies to enable mobile workforces to access their desktops and apps securely anytime and anywhere. I am excited about the strategic alignment and collaboration between the two companies, which will bring even richer solutions to our joint customer,” said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware.

“One of our goals in building an ecosystem of partners is to combine the advantages of F5 technologies with the compelling offerings of vendors in adjacent markets. One of the core tenets of the F5 Synthesis architectural vision is intelligent services orchestration, and we see VMware as a key partner. Together, we look forward to deepening our successful partnership with VMware to bring additional joint VDI solutions and benefits to enterprise,” said Manny Rivelo, executive vice president of strategic solutions, F5.

RESEARCH FIRM NAMES TERADATA THE LEADER IN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION Teradata announced that The Information Difference research firm has ranked Teradata as the global leader in technology innovation – with strong customer references as compared to its major competitors.

The report states that “Overall, the data warehouse market has never been more exciting from a technology point of view” and alludes to the rapid, explosive growth of data volumes and varieties – which present new challenges and require new big data strategies.

“Our research shows that Teradata continues to hold the strongest overall technology position in 2014 – at a time when big data analytics platforms must meet new and extreme user demands and complex data integration challenges,” said Andy Hayler, chief executive officer and co-founder of The Information Difference.

CISCO TO PROVIDE MORE THREAT-CENTRIC SOLUTIONS Cisco has added its Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), originally developed by Sourcefire, into its Content Security Portfolio of products, including Web and Email Security Appliances and Cloud Web Security Service. The integration provides customers worldwide with comprehensive malware-defeating capabilities, including detection and blocking, continuous analysis and retrospective remediation of advanced threats. This enhanced offering represents one of the initial technology integration efforts between Cisco and Sourcefire, and extends the option of advanced malware protection for more than 60 million enterprise and commercial users currently protected with Cisco Content Security solutions.

AMP utilizes the vast cloud security intelligence networks of both Cisco and Sourcefire (now part of Cisco). Like the attacks it is designed to protect against, AMP evolves to provide continuous monitoring and analysis across the extended network and throughout the full attack continuum – before, during and after an attack. By combining Sourcefire’s deep knowledge of advanced threats and analytics expertise with Cisco’s industry leading Email and Web Security solutions, customers benefit from unmatched visibility and control combined with the most cost-effective, seamless approach to addressing advanced malware problems.

SYMANTEC SHOWCASES ITS LATEST MOBILE SOLUTIONS Symantec showcased its most recent mobile solutions for both businesses and consumers this week at two industry conferences, Mobile World Congress and RSA Conference 2014. On display at both conferences this week, Symantec’s mobile experts shared new solutions that enable safe and secure management of information across iOS and Android platforms, including: Making Secure Logins Simpler for the End User –Symantec’s new Push Authentication

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technology for Symantec Validation and ID Protection (VIP) Service removes the need to manually enter a PIN every time someone logs into a VPN connection. The user simply clicks “allow” on their mobile device and the VPN client will automatically login without requiring a PIN. Expanding our Mobile Partner Eco-system – The Symantec Sealed program delivers enterpriseclass security for both internal and third-party applications on both iOS and Android operating

systems. The program currently has 60 partners like Webalo, Damaka, Alfresco and SAVO Group and more than 125 applications.

“In a world where mobility plays an integral part of both our personal and professional lives, Symantec’s mission is to help reduce security and privacy risks that prevent people from getting the most out of their devices,” said Chandra J. Rangan, vice president, Enterprise Segment Marketing, Symantec Corporation.

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Transforming data center business The MEA region is clearly seeing the effects of the global cloud and Big Data boom, which is leading to rapid investment in the data center industry over the recent years. This is especially true in the Gulf countries, like Qatar and the UAE, which are positioning themselves as major business hubs focused on supporting the growth of digitally enabled and high-tech business. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>â&#x20AC;&#x192; n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

T

he data center business in the Middle East and Africa region has been on the growth path in the recent times. The primary reason for this growth is that the whole region is witnessing resurgence in the IT spending, which is somewhere expected to exceed $32 billion in the year 2014 and a major chunk would be taking place in the data center space.

According to Data Center Dynamics annual census, data centers represent a sizeable and growing industry in the Middle East resulting from an increasing demand for power, space, skilled manpower, investment and optimization. With realized market growth in the Middle East of 18% in Facility Equipment investment, 7.5% in IT Optimization, and 16.7% in Managed Services, the market for data

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centers expanded by $1.22 billion in 2013.

As the need to increase storage capacity escalates, driven by the growth of data hungry customers and applications, the continued prevalence of cloud and the explosion of big data, the need for data centre services continues to grow to new heights.

As per IDC estimates, the data center delivered market has seen significant growth especially in UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, where there has been a significant increase in the availability of 3rd party data center space.

This increased local availability has prompted organizations to open up more towards 3rd party data center providers.

According to Gartner, EMEA infrastructure spending in 2014 will be driven by data center modernization efforts and new data centers

projects undertaken by both local and international companies.

Technology vendors like Schneider Electric, R&M, Brocade, and Cisco amongst others are benefiting directly from this upward trend, maintaining a forecast of growth driven primarily by continued investment on new technologies, cloud, and big data. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In 2015, the number of computers, mobile devices etc. connected to IP networks will be double the worldwide human population. This holds huge ramifications for network infrastructures. The greater the number of devices that are active, the more data is produced and exchanged. This is why data centers are taking on an ever more central significance. Nothing will work anymore without reliable and secure data communication and storage. The physical

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infrastructure, although a small portion of the investment, is the crucial backbone on which the entire data center runs,” says Alfred Tharwat, Head of Training & Data Center Consultancy, R&M Middle East, Turkey & Africa.

GROWTH PROPELLERS There are multiple factors propelling the growth of data center business in the MEA market.

Today, data centers are no longer an option, rather a must for organizations with multiple operating locations and/or organizations providing technology based services. This allows for centralized data and information management, standardization of technology and applications; thus unifying their customers interaction experience.

Thierry Chamayou, Vice President – IT Business, IT Business MEA, Schneider Electric, points out, “Over the past decade, the Middle East has become the ideal destination for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) owners and IT start-ups to leverage global innovation. With each sophisticated business, our main industry clients are demanding uncompromised quality, speed, efficiency and data memory. Also interesting to note is that more and more data centers are being built in regions that offer the most profitability, which are increasingly the developing markets.”

Zeeshan Gaya, Research Manager –Security Appliances, Virtualization, Servers and Storage Systems, IDC MEA, asserts, “Rising computational and storage needs along with a growing increase in local (in-country) datacenter providers have encouraged companies to look to use external data center providers. Furthermore, the complexity of managing it in-house and the difficulty in acquiring and retaining good quality IT talent has meant that organizations look increasingly outward for their IT management needs.”

Moreover, increase in the IT spending by large as well as small and medium enterprises in this region is revitalizing the data center market growth. Besides, many governments in this region have rolled out several e-Governance projects and in order to keep these services up and running, there is a need for data centers.

Another area that is gaining traction is building back up data centers as disaster recovery sites, as enterprises of all sizes are increasingly realizing the importance of data that is needed to run the business.

“The data center is arguably the most active and critical segment of today’s IT environment in terms of innovation, strategy, and investment.

In particular, it is integral to key initiatives such as the migration of legacy IT infrastructures and

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ALFRED THARWAT, HEAD OF TRAINING & DATA CENTER CONSULTANCY, R&M MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY & AFRICA

THIERRY CHAMAYOU, VICE PRESIDENT – IT BUSINESS, IT BUSINESS MEA, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“The governments are now spending more on infrastructure and the public sector will remain a main spending force in the data center market”

“Virtualization and cloud computing promise a transformation in services automation and provisioning through driving greater efficiencies within the data center”

EMEA INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING IN 2014 WILL BE DRIVEN BY DATA CENTER MODERNIZATION EFFORTS AND NEW PROJECTS UNDERTAKEN BY LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES

architectures to a more flexible, agile cloud model in its various forms—including public, private, and hybrid clouds. Regional organizations are realizing this and are increasing their spends on modernizing their data center infrastructures which is contributing to the growth of the market,” adds Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director, MEMA at Brocade Communications.

Additionally, the data center market in the Middle East is fuelled by increased construction of Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers, especially in Saudi Arabia and UAE, primarily driven by multinational corporations as well as regional collocation and hosting service providers.

Adding further, Tharwat states, “Another reason why I believe new data center spending

GARTNER

really take off this year is because of the regional push for cloud computing. Last year, due to the NSA revelations, key concerns surfaced regarding the security of data that is maintained on the servers of organizations based out of country. Local termination of data is a definite selling point for cloud services so telecom companies in the region will definitely see a huge opportunity here. Of course, catering to this demand will also require them to beef up their data centers.”

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS GROWTH All the leading technology vendors as well as service providers have made significant contribu-

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RAJESH N. RAJAN

SALES MANAGER, IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND DATACENTRES DIVISION (MIDDLE EAST), RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

How has been the growth of Data Centre business in the MEA market in the past one year or so?

Data Centre market has really gained momentum, but the growth has been limited to small & medium data centres only. The number of large data centres witnessed a slow down ZEESHAN GAYA, RESEARCH MANAGER –SECURITY APPLIANCES, VIRTUALIZATION, SERVERS AND STORAGE SYSTEMS, IDC MEA

“Rising computational and storage needs along with a growing increase in local datacenter providers have encouraged companies to use external data center providers” tion towards the increasing growth of the data center business in the MEA region.

For instance, the global player, Schneider Electric has risen to become one of the top three players in data center infrastructure management, and is in a unique position to bring customers innovative solutions that meet the most specific of requirements. The company’s emphasis on quality ensures that its solutions are designed, developed and delivered by leading technologists, contributing to the steady pace of technology and IT development (and consequently, sales opportunities) in the MEA region.

Data centers are integral to its IT businesses, and as demand for storage and operation continues to expand, Schneider Electric aims to provide the right solutions to manage the power and cooling of critical business infrastructure. This part of the business and its understanding of current markets have been crucial to securing business opportunities in the region.

Similarly, Brocade is constantly bringing technology innovation to the MEA market and does a lot to educate regional enterprises about the benefits of modernizing their infrastructures

What are the factors that are propelling the growth of Data Centre business in this region?

New initiatives related to public services, Technology innovations, Capacity enhancements, Business diversifications are the strong contributors to the growth in data centre business.

IT infrastructure growth in Middle East will be driven by Data Centre consolidation coupled with new Data Centre build outs. Please share your thoughts on this aspect?

True. Hosting facilities, that are on a rise these days, stands to gain on decisions related to data centre consolidations, where they have to invest in the right infrastructure to make this option appealing for the clients to go with them. Also new data centres need to be future proofed to increase its life span, which also calls for an optimised, high end, growth enabled IT infrastucture.

What has been your contribution towards the increasing growth of this business in the MEA region?

Rittal has championed the cause ‘efficiency by design’ in data centres with its high density Liquid Cooling Package, Modular UPS Systems and Chillers with inverter pumps, which in a way, evolved the way the new data centres are designed. The effort and the awareness that we built around such efficient systems created a demand for such high end, efficient and growth enabled modular DC systems. With the launch of Rimatrix S, the pre-engineered & Pre certified Data Centre with Zero U space cooling system, Rittal opens up a new market space for standardized data centre module, which is simply plug in and ready to use.

How much of your efforts are being directed towards enablement of partners who are actively involved in setting up of Data Centres across the region?

Partners play a major role for Rittal, being our extended sales team in all the markets that we cater. The same focus & effort that goes behind training our own sales team is extended to the partners to build their competency in sales & services related to Rittal DC solutions. Our energized territory focussed sales and pre sales team ensure dedicated attention to bring up Rittal champions within every partner company. The partners invariably are part of our trade shows in Germany & Middle East, where they also gain more experience interacting with Rittal’s product management team. Annual factory tours organised makes our partners familiar with the high quality standards on production & processes, also making them aware of the technology innovations on the road map to the future.

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in order to support trends like mobility, BYOD, big data, cloud and virtualization. In terms of technology, the company has established itself as a pioneer and leader in Data Center Ethernet Fabric technology, which is the next evolution in data center networks. In April last year, Brocade unveiled a comprehensive strategy that combines the best aspects of physical and virtual networking to increase business agility, reduce complexity and scale virtualization to new levels within and across data centers.

Sakhnini mentions, “To help customers deploy the latest data center technologies without having to incur large upfront Capex, Brocade also introduced in the region a first-of-its-kind ‘subscription-based’ financing model wherein the customer is permitted to increase or decrease the number of network ports they pay for on a ‘payas-you-go-bundle’ subscription basis, thereby helping customers escape the Capex trap and gain the solution they want on subscription.”

For R&M, the solutions that it designs and customizes for the region is vital to data center deployments. The company aspires to be at the top position for Layer 1, as it believes that cabling and passive components of the network in general represent only 6 to 7% of the overall cost of a data center. And keeping in mind that enterprises have to upgrade their active equipment / software / servers every 5 years, the cabling expenses are minor in comparison. It also emphasizes on quality by giving a guarantee of 25 years on its solutions.

“Directly responding to market demands, Cisco’s recently announced Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) offering is set to have a particularly significant impact on data centers through ramping up the efficiency, flexibility and speed increasingly demanded by the region’s profit-conscious business-leaders. Complemented by associated professional services and an open partner ecosystem, Cisco is now able to deliver the first data center and cloud solution built around the needs of applications.

The system offers full visibility, and integrated management of both physical and virtual networked IT resources,” explains Rabih Dabboussi, Managing Director, Cisco UAE.

VERTICAL INVESTMENTS The major vertical industries like telecom, banks and financial institutions, IT, healthcare, logistics, media and entertainment, and most importantly, the government sector have been in the forefront of making huge investments in the data centers.

“Banks and financial institutions have been at the forefront of enterprise network designs, as their real-time trading applications require very

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YAROB SAKHNINI, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MEMA AT BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS

“The data center is arguably the most active and critical segment of today’s IT environment in terms of innovation, strategy, and investment”

RABIH DABBOUSSI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CISCO UAE

“With our Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) offering, Cisco is now able to deliver the first data center and cloud solution built around the needs of applications”

THE DATA CENTER MARKET IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS FUELLED BY INCREASED CONSTRUCTION OF TIER 3 AND TIER 4 DATA CENTERS, ESPECIALLY IN SAUDI ARABIA AND UAE

low latency. So I believe this vertical will continue to invest in the latest data center technologies, which will enable them to accelerate the delivery of information to their customers. Telcos are making investments in SDN and NFV technologies in their data center networks. Other enterprises, which are highly dependent on the speed and scale of their data center networks and expected to make investments, include retail organizations with highly distributed locations and large manufacturing organizations,” opines Sakhnini.

Tharwat is quick to point out here that governments are now spending more on infrastructure and the public sector will remain a main spending force in the data center market.

As healthcare regulations set into place across the

region, electronic medical records (EMRs) will to become a norm and that will drive the growth of the data center market within the healthcare sector.

FOCUS ON ENABLING PARTNERS Looking at the potential and opportunities arising out of the data center business in the Middle East and Africa market, almost all of the vendors’ efforts are being directed towards enablement of channel partners who are actively involved in setting up data centers across the region.

Schneider Electric has a clearly defined global channel partner policy which has been implemented in the Middle East region as well. And this policy is of mutual benefit to both Schneider

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Electric and its partners. Apart from loyalty programs, rebates, and promotions, the company has an elaborate training program for its partners to inform them about all product updates, coach them on new launches and even send their technical staff to its training facilities in Europe and the US. On the other hand, R&M’s channel partners’ benefit from extensive and regular training as part of the company’s Qualified Partner Program (QPP). It has set up the first training academy in MEA for R&M at its regional hub in Dubai which is fully equipped to provide its partners with real world scenario trainings. R&M also continuously invests in its partners by empowering them with technical expertise from highly experienced specialists sharing latest product knowledge and best practices on R&M products. The company also regularly conducts its Business Breakfast initiative which brings professionals, network planners, service and maintenance personnel, IT consultants and other specialists together in an environment which fosters sharing of experiences and technical know-how. This also proves to be a great opportunity for its partners to explore new business opportunities.

Meanwhile, at present, the biggest chunk of Brocade’s investment in the Middle East is happening towards channel education and incentives. The company’s key focus is developing converged partners with true system integration skills in the IP networking, campus and data center markets. It has begun to organize 3 technical training programs for the channel every quarter, which is attended by partners from places like Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, and Iraq.

The company believes that Ethernet Fabrics is the future of networking and to ensure that its partners understand the technology, it has come up with a specific educational program called Ethernet 101.

CHANGING MARKET DYNAMICS The emergence of concepts like Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) is going to give a huge impetus to the data center business in the coming years. In fact, it is slated to totally change the dynamics of the data center business not only in this MEA region but across the globe.

SDDC can provide enterprises with better ROI and cost optimization given the maximum utilization of hardware and the pay as you grow model which reduces the upfront Capex investment. Additionally it will be able to reduce execution time, enhance operations excellence, eliminate human mistakes, and provide better scalability and protection to enterprise key assets.

Gaya highlights, “SDDC will ease the complexity associated with managing a fully virtualized environment by freeing up constraints and bottlenecks around the network. Organizations can virtualize their networking infrastructure far better to handle the radically different data flow in a virtualized server and storage environment. Newer datacenters being built today are designed with all available concepts including Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in mind, allowing for greater flexibility. Also, as part of the infrastructure refresh, organizations would be evaluating SDN’s to upgrade and scale up their datacenters. However, it is still early days for next gen datacenters, and might take a year or so before we see full-fledged adoption of these technologies.”

Meanwhile, most of the leading technology vendors as well as service providers are aligning their strategies to these changing market dynamics.

Tharwat comments, “One area wherein we have seen a lot of interest has been in the automation of data centers. This is why we introduced the R&MinteliPhy Automated Infrastructure Management (AIM) solution in the Middle East last year. The system has been designed to be easily retrofittable in existing data center cable installations and allows network managers to continuously monitor each and every connection in data centers and local data networks in buildings. R&MinteliPhy reduces both cost and complexity by enabling remote monitoring and multi-site support while unlocking functionality for the management, analysis and planning of cabling and network cabinets.

While taking the similar approach, Brocade is set out to transform networking by delivering a highly automated, efficient, VM-aware Ethernet fabric architecture that provides the ideal network foundation for virtualized, cloud-based data centers. The company has extended this

vision with enhanced capabilities that address new data center imperatives, such as network virtualization, and evolving network requirements in Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and enterprise data centers.

“ACI will help businesses in the region adapt to such trends by combining innovations in software, hardware, systems and application specific integrated circuits (ASICS) with a dynamic, application-aware network policy model structured around open application programming interfaces (APIs). Furthermore, Cisco’s data center switching innovations enable the network to rapidly respond to application development teams while delivering up to 75 percent total cost of ownership savings compared to merchant, silicon-based switches, and software-only network virtualization solutions,” asserts Dabboussi.

ROAD AHEAD… IT infrastructure growth in Middle East will be driven by data center consolidation coupled with new data center build outs. Apparently, there has already been an increase in the data center build outs especially by telecom providers, 3rd party data center companies, and even large enterprises.

Sakhnini is of the view that the region is experiencing momentum in two areas. The first is data center build outs and consolidation to construct public and private clouds and the second is major infrastructure build outs for public services like health and education. Both these areas mesh perfectly with Brocade’s plan and focus areas from a technology standpoint as well as the company’s partner ecosystem.

“Our in-house technology experts have discussed how data center-focused IT strategies necessitate the synchronization of IT and facilities management to produce optimal results. They also say that virtualization and cloud computing promise a transformation in services automation and provisioning through driving greater efficiencies within the data center. We have also created smart software such as StruxureWare, which optimizes scalability and cost. Thus, by merging key facets and solutions within IT, each new data center build-out is more sophisticated and user-friendly,” concludes Chamayou. ë

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ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

FUJITSU

A Targeted Approach

Looking at the current market scenario, offering solutions alongside products is becoming important. Fujitsu Technology Solutions has its own way to position itself in the market. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA (MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM)

I

Government and Banking. But in Saudi, Oil & n recent times, the market has changed Gas are important along with healthcare and considerably. There is a shift towards education. He points out that selling solutions solutions but the demand for products will requires identifying specific needs of the customalso continue. As a result, companies are ers. “We talk about High Performance Computing re-aligning their portfolio and strategies (HPC) with Universities, Oil& Gas and how HPC so as to position themselves in the best way for is linked to research or drilling parameters. The such a scenario. Fujitsu is a technology solutions approach is targeted. It will not make sense to company pillared by products. “We have our own talk about HPC to every segment. It is focused portfolio, we sell the solutions that the customer on customer’s basis where we see a sweet spot for needs, and we partner up with all the vendors out Fujitsu’s unique selling point,” he adds. there to give the customer an end to end solution.

Fujitsu has a channel programme where the So, we are a kind of a VAD integrator but on a partners are categorised as normal partner, much bigger scale. The projects are much larger select partner and select experts. and we work with our partners “Within these parameters you in the same way,” says Farid have access to tools and training.

Al-Sabbagh, Managing Director, We have people certified, so that Fujitsu Technology Solutions, you can keep the status of select FZE. partner and select expert in your Al-Sabbagh says that the partnership with Fujitsu. Behind advantage here is that the this programme, there is informacustomer base here is much tion, training, access to tools, smaller than in Europe or Japan.

SCAN TO white papers to those partners,” “As compared to Europe, the WATCH FARID elaborates Al-Sabbagh. entities here are smaller. Even the AL-SABBAGH To SMBs, Fujitsu sells through largest companies here will have ONLINE partners. It equips its partners 10,000 employees. This makes with products, training, support the adoption of technology faster and these partners are ready for services also. because they don’t have a huge legacy system and “Some of the partners would buy only products they can move from one place to another quickly. from us. Now, we are taking them to the next This is very much in nature of the market. They don’t have legacy problems and they like to get the step. The product discussions are becoming very much commoditised so there is more value in latest. This market is hungry for new and latest the solutions and business requirement to the technology,” he adds. customer. It’s really about how we engage with the The company’s major customers are from the

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FARID AL-SABBAGH,

MANAGING DIRECTOR, FUJITSU TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS, FZE

“They don’t have legacy problems and they like to get the latest. This market is hungry for new and latest technology.” market,” he says.

There is new technology popping up every other month. This confuses the customers. “They don’t want to buy a new solution every year.

Over the time what will happen is, people will go back to the basics and it will be more about stability, sustainability, and long term ROI. This is my vision of what’s happening,” comments Al-Sabbagh.

FINALLY..

Al-Sabbagh says that the company is in the transformation journey. “Last two years have been interesting when it comes to technology. The PC and the notebook market is going backwards, the revenues are being affected. However, if you look at the profitability, it is going the other way.

We are more profitable but we don’t have enough revenue. The story will continue and it will take one or two years for the market to stabilise when it comes to technology offering. We will be growing in a double digit YoY. The market is still growing,” he concludes. ë

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PARTNER CORNER

SI BUSINESS

Supporting the Market Demand

Apart from consolidating and expanding its SI business, Intertec is also making huge investments in R&D n WORDS: MANALI MISRA (MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM)

I

ntertec, a leading IT Systems Integrator and Solutions Provider started its operations in 1991. Since then, the company has expanded its customer base and today it counts to over 1000 across Government, BFSI and Corporate sectors in ME, India and UK. Intertec has local presence in five countries across the GCC and India.

“We are augmenting teams in every location since late 2013 to fully support the market demand. With the move to a larger location, we have further been able to invest in larger R&D capital, Network Operating Center to augment our managed services, BPO, and better training facilities. We shall be a 350 employee organization in 2014 and have had a three year plan to grow CAGR 40% until 2015,” says Nikhil Kothari, Director, Intertec Systems. Intertec recently moved its Head Office in Business Bay, a central location in Dubai, to support the regional growth in IT investment.

Kothari says that both Government and Private sectors are investing across the region on IT Infrastructure consolidation or DR, ITSM, managed services with SLA’s, collaboration with the multi-location users, business intelligence, mobility, improving maintenance management practice, information security and using technology for citizen and customer services. “We are ideally positioned up to support customers across the region,” he adds.

Intertec offers a gamut of solutions which includes Infrastructure Solutions, Business Apllications, Vertical Applications, Information Security, Contact Centre& Communications, Service Management, Banking Solutions, and

NIKHIL KOTHARI,

Managed Services & outsourcing. To support the requirements of customers, Intertec has strong alliances. “We have strong relations with most industry majors such as HP, Cisco, Infor, Oracle, Microsoft, F5, Symantec etc. are to name a few.

With these partners, most technology needs are covered barring certain niche technologies for which we are further aligned. We evaluate alliance partners based on not only the best of breed technologies, which is a given, but how we are ultimately going to support customers. We don’t entertain opportunity based partnerships,” he elaborates.

“We have extended our partnership with HP to Oman and signed with Infor as a Master Distributor for ME. Recently, we have also signed as the only MSP partner for HP Software in UAE, Oman & Bahrain. This is a strategic partnership for us to allow customers to plan investments with at their pace, experience proof of concepts and address situation-specific or time-specific technology needs,” he adds.

In addition to its SI business, Intertec is also launching four new IP’s in the market as a part of our R&D investments. “This will help us further entrench with Government authorities, contact centers, FMCG & distribution, and corporate businesses,” he comments.

Kothari informs that Intertec is also bringing opex solutions to market with the recent HP software partnership, CRM and service desk solutions, contact center outsourcing, mobility solutions and managed services. This is a global trend that is picking up the GCC. “We have also been further developing our consulting portfolio to help customers design, plan and implement

DIRECTOR, INTERTEC SYSTEMS

“We have had a three year plan to grow CAGR 40% until 2015.” their initiatives on cloud, DR, PAS 55, ISO 20000, ISO 27001, ITIL, etc. We see that with the global trends and exposure brought to the region, customers are getting savvier and want to adopt best practices,” he adds.

FINALLY..

Intertec has a positive market outlook and have made investments to support the same on technology practices, real estate, people and alliances. In the UAE, the Expo 2020 news would further improve the market sentiments, which were already on an upswing. “The Government spend in the region has generally increased from preceding years. This progression leads to more investments being made from the private sectors as well. However, while Middle East growth is projected above global IT spend average, IT companies need to understand the global influence on best practices is increasing and that end customer needs are increasing with their growth. Coming years will be dictated not only by your customer relationship, but by being agile to grow your knowledge quotient and service capability,” concludes Kothari. . ë

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CORPORATE STORY

DST

Demystifying Big Data for the Channel As Big Data & Analytics are gaining importance in the region, DST is working to enable the channel community to meet market demands.

T

n WORDS: MANALI MISRA (MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM)

he amount of data generated across the world is increasing exponentially.

As a result, the implications of harnessing and analysing the ‘Big Data’ have become crucial for companies so as to gain competitive advantage. According to IDC reports, the total worldwide data is set to expand from 2.8 trillion gigabytes in 2012 to 40 trillion gigabytes by 2020. Hence, there lies an opportunity for organizations which can help in harnessing this breakneck growth in data. Data Science Technologies (DST), a subsidiary of StorIT Distribution, is a pioneer in the Big Data Analytics solutions and services space. “Big Data has already been existing in the region. However, the data size was restricted to some verticals. The challenges of using this data were not realized till the potential of social media and mobility services was discovered in the recent years,” says Boby Joseph, Data Practice – Head, Data Science Technologies.

The growing importance of Big Data can be seen from the overwhelming response received

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at GITEX Technology Week’s inaugural Big Data Conference. Recently, DST also organized its inaugural event on Big Data Analytics for customers and partners in a joint effort with SAS to offer customers complete insights into harnessing their structured and unstructured, optimizing this data to grow their business further.

Joseph says that everybody is with significant pool of data. “The potential is enormous and the innovative use of it is countless. However, public utility, retail, tourism, research & development, banking & finance, healthcare, education and government, are some major buyers,” he adds.

He also informs that DST is initially targeting the banking & finance, government, utilities and retail sectors.

As the awareness about Big Data is growing and organizations are increasingly realising its implications, involving the channel community is also important. Joseph comments, “Data Science Technologies (DST), as the name implies, is a talent science that is branded for easy understanding of very complex deliverables to the

channel to support Big Data methodologies and practice. StorIT has been a pioneer in bringing in very focused technology vendors and services into the region and supporting the channel. DST is taking that one step ahead and supporting the channel community by enabling their delivery capabilities in the areas of Big Data consulting and professional services to meet the surging market demand.”

He points out that this would also help the SI and VAR community to plan their gradual transition from an IT hardware or software selling model to a service brokering model thus reaching out to their customers and help them achieve the same level of service they have enjoyed from the community in the past. “In turn, it also helps the consumer to demystify and quickly roll out their Big Data plans and exploit the opportunities of information explosion. It is said that if you do not have any kind of Big Data or Analytics built into your business practice, you are less likely to survive as a business beyond five years. If you are a government agency you are more likely to waste

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CORPORATE STORY

BOBY JOSEPH,

DATA PRACTICE – HEAD, DATA SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES

“DST is taking that one step ahead and supporting the channel community by enabling their delivery capabilities in the areas of Big Data consulting and professional services to meet the surging market demand.”

your monies in delivering the desired level of services,” Joseph explains.

DST primarily works with a resource pool of Data Scientists, domain experts, coding and integration service groups and finally the business team who integrate the channel. “There are some pre-defined quick start packs from prominent vendors, all pioneers in their field. However, the challenge is not in pre-packaging what you need but it is to demystify. We have the resources, skills, experience and the products to make Big Data Analytics a highly valuable proposition for every organization that is ready for adoption. We will consumerize big data and analytics to the channel,” adds Joseph.

At IDC’s new ‘Big Data and Analytics Roundtable 2013’ at Abu Dhabi, it was revealed that the UAE has been at the forefront of business analytics and Big Data adoption across the Middle East region and the investment in business analytics solutions across the region is expected to increase at a CAGR of more than 20% over the next five years.

DST is currently focused on servicing the GCC markets. As a part of its marketing activities, there is a concerted effort in the areas of identifying demand in the market while simultaneously creating awareness in the channel community and driving the message across to the potential customers. Data Science Technologies works hand-in-glove with its Channel Partners in reaching out to the end customers. “Data Science Technologies has got the skills to deliver cutting edge consulting and integration services around Big Data tools with expertise in Hadoop, MapR, MapReduce, Greenplum, Elastic Search, Python, MongoDB, Redis Solr,” says Joseph.

FINALLY..

Organizations are understanding Big Data & Analytics but there is still more to be done.

“Though there has been an increasing awareness of the underlying value of information sliced differently, conventional tools, SI’s and consultants are not geared to realize this potential. Big Data is about skills and experience and not equipment or head counts. The region is fast acquiring those but would need a lot more to meet the challenge,” concludes Joseph. ë

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PARTNER CORNER

CONFLUENCE 2014

Enhancing Personal Relationship

At Hotel Rotan, Fujairah, UAE, Spectrami could bring together 140 executives from 45 channel partners from different countries and cultures. n W O R D S : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A ( S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M )

S

pectrami successfully completed its first ever channel event, Confluence 2014- Inspiring Minds, in the UAE. It brought together 140 executives from 45 channel partners from different countries of the region.

Anand Choudha, MD, Spectrami, said, “It was difficult to bring together 140 people under one roof and match make them with 100 meetings and one to one interactions but it happened without any glitch. We organised individual meetings between the partners and the representatives from vendors depending on the interests of the partners.”

The idea behind organizing this event was to create personal relationship between the

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partners and the vendors. It was a perfect blend of fun and serious discussions. The company had planned 110 meetings but was ended up in arranging 125.

Anand maintains, “It is easy to connect sales persons in various forums, but it is difficult to catch pre-sales persons, which are equally important compared to their sales counter parts.

Therefore, we have invited pre-sales people as well.”

Confluence 2014 could witness partners’ seriousness in new technologies. It could become a perfect confluence for the vendors to meet the serious partners.

Today, Spectrami is working with around 35 partners and seven vendors. As per Anand, the

policy of Spectrami is to work with very selective focus partners. Irrespective of the partner size, the company makes sure that the partner is exposed to the entire portfolio of Spectrami.

Recently, the company expanded its operations to South Africa. Spectrami’s new office in Dubai not only houses a customers’ experience centre but also a training centre for the partners. As per Anand, by investing in such centre, the company will become authorised training and certification partner for all its vendors across Middle East, Africa and Europe as well.

FINALLY… Today, Spectami is offering solutions around three technology areas i.e. security, mobility and

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20/03/14 8:15 am

PARTNER CORNER

ZAHIR ABDELOUHAB

STRATEGIC ACCOUNT MANAGER, GOOD TECHNOLOGY

MOHAMMED SULEMAN

GM, ENTERPRISE OBJECTIVES, SAUDI ARABIA “Enterprise Objectives is a systems integrator with a major focus on security and availability. We have been into this industry since 12 years and one of the leading systems integrators for Saudi Arabia. This event has exposed us to the entire portfolio of Spectrami, which helps the partners to get an insight view of what products and solutions they should choose, which really complements our portfolio of solutions and hopefully all the sessions and training they have conducted will help us in deciding the strategy Attending this event I could realise the long terms and committed business objective of the vendors that I am interested in. Had not it been this place, it would have been difficult to catch hold of them. As far as the solutions from Spectrami is concerned, those might not be big names but they offer good technology, which can help our customers. Plus, Spectrami as company is a value added distributor having a good and passionate team managing pre-sales, sales and post-sales. This is what a channel partner needs – a team work to deliver the right solutions with the right platform.

Our challenges have always been about convincing customers and making them realise about their technological needs. So Spectrami has offered us a platform wherein we can utilise their resources as and when we require. In the month of April, we are organizing seminars for the end-users in Saudi, wherein we are inviting Spectrami team along with the vendor partners to present themselves individually. So Spectrami and its vendors have shown their commitment.”.

Suleman is optimistic that his company will certainly outplay the competition with the help of Spectrami in the government sectors in Saudi, which are by far the biggest consumers.

ANAND CHOUDHA,

MD, SPECTRAMI

“The idea behind organizing this event was to create personal relationship between the partners and the vendors.” storage as the drivers of business. But as a lot of virtualization is happening in the industry the company will look at some solutions in the virtualization security space seriously.

Last year Spectrami added 17 customers to its

portfolio. Anand feels that with the success of the event and face-to-face interaction with the partners, the company will be able to garner more business this year and end at a high note of 40-50% YoY growth. ë

Good Technology is a US based company specialised in Mobility.

This company has entered Middle East region and needs strong partnership to develop business. Its business model is 100% through partners. As per Zahir Abdelouhab, Strategic Account Manager, Good Technology, they understood from the customers that Spectrami is the significant distributor to work with in region as they have a lot of channel partners.

Zahir said “Confluence 2014 is the perfect event, which offers the right setting to meet so many serious partners at a time. We provide platform to the companies to enable them to make their business through mobility technology on a secured way. Our platform is based on container technology, which is offered through all mobile platforms including iOS, Android and Windows. We are able to provide the organizations mobile technology on their existing backend systems.”

Zahir said, “At present we are working with 2-3 partners in the region. Now that we have real feel of the workable business in the region which makes us optimistic to add 5-10 more partners. We want to invest in the region to develop strong enough business this year to have our own local resources next year. But in order to have local resources we will have to focus on our strong first step and that is to work with Spectrami.”

This region is realising that mobility is about transforming the business. I know that in one year we will not be talking about devices rather data available in mobility.

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FEATURE

UTM

Tackling the Next-Gen Threats

As the threat landscape started changing, it led to evolution of multiplatform Unified Threat Management (UTM). n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

U

nified Threat Management (UTM) emerged as a result of blended and sophisticated attacks.

UTM offers multiple security features on a single platform to counter malicious threats. The demand is continuing to grow with increasing number of incidents of data breaches and insidious repercussions on organizations.

THE MARKET SCENARIO According to EMEA 3Q13 Market Highlights, IDC points out that UTM remained the largest and fastest growing security appliance segment.

In 3Q13, UTM appliances increased by 37.7% year on year, representing 45.3% of total market revenue. The demand for single-function IDP and VPN appliances is shifting towards multifunction Firewall/IDP and UTM appliances.

“Security is expected to remain an IT budget priority in this year. Network perimeter security appliances like UTM, Next Gen Firewalls, IDS/ IPS always play the vital role in designing the Network perimeter Security. The term “Next Generation” in Networks Perimeter security space catches attention of the end users in MEA. Security that is driven by awareness of application

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and user context makes a UTM appliance truly “next generation,” Ranjit Narayan, Head of Sales – Enterprise, Comguard.

Jeremy D’Hoinne, Research Director, Gartner gives a detailed perspective on the MEA market.

He says that in MEA, there are two different trends. In Africa, U.S and European UTM vendors are prevalent, but the market remains very small, driven by North African countries and South Africa. Price sensitivity is very important, and often UTM, which normally are price attractive in other region, are challenged by routers with basic security features. “Middle East is different, closer to what we observe in Asia. The ME is playground for European vendors trying to expand, but the interest for UTM is not as strong as it is in the U.S and Western Europe. The reason is that the market has more use cases for large data centers and distributed branches, than for SMBs with UTM needs. That’s why the UTM vendors in the ME try to compete with enterprise firewall vendors on the distributed enterprise use case. Because the ME is a dynamic region in terms of IT and security spending the growth rate here is a bit higher that the average 14% for global UTM Market growth, close to 20% (for 2013 vs.

2012),” says D’Hoinne.

MARKET DRIVERS Over the time security attacks have become sophisticated. Internet opened up new opportunities for security breaches. Today, secure use of cloud, internet, and growth in mobility and consumerization of IT are driving the need of advanced security appliances. “There is a strong demand for security products in the Middle East, driven specifically by the need to secure cloud access and deployments and growth in mobility.

These demands resulted in a strong increase in the Middle Eastern UTM Market,” says Surender Bishnoi, WatchGuard, Regional Manager MEA. Deploying a device like UTM which tackles multiple threats helps in reducing TCO of the companies. Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services, Help AG, says, “As security needs have become more and more complex, there is a requirement to consolidate some security features applied at the network level. This consolidation is performed not just in order to optimise cost, but quite interestingly the consolidation of services actually enhances visibility into threats without correlating events from multiple devices.”

UTM appliances also reduce space and increase efficiency. Abhay Dubey, Technical Team Leader, Secureway Network Distributors says

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

ABHAY DUBEY

RAVINDER JANOTRA

TECHNICAL TEAM LEADER, SECUREWAY NETWORK DISTRIBUTORS

REGIONAL SALES MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, CYBEROAM

that there have been many threats which need Antivirus Scan, Antispam System, IDS (Intrusion Detection System), IPS(Intrusion Protection System), DLP(Data Leak Prevention System), ATP (Advance Threat Protection), Web Filtering, Application Control, Bandwidth Management, Secured VPN Links. “Seeing such vast area of threats the standalone security system cannot act versatile to keep information, data & electronic communication secure. Thus, with the growth of MEA as population, business, education, medical services, hospitality and multiple different sectors raise high alarm for UTM Services to be available from small to mega-size organizations. As per surveys and statistics the UTM market will touch 1.9 billion USD by year 2016. Such big number is coming from MEA only,” comments Dubey.

upfront costs and hence a feasible option. Dubey says, “Today managed security services include a wide range of services including firewall, Layer 7 Application control, IDS/IPS, Content Filtering, antivirus and many others. The interest and growth in these services has been strongly correlated with the sharp escalation in the regulatory requirement felt across industry verticals and dramatic increase in security breach notifications in the media.”

Managed UTM services opens up opportunities for channel partners. Florian Malecki, EMEA Products and Solutions Director, Dell says, “This is not a new scenario for Dell SonicWALL in the Middle East. However, we regard our core role as offering a range of security solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to secure their network, systems, users and data with a deep level of protection that won’t compromise network performance. It is our channel partners that would typically be involved with providing managed UTM services.”

“Network security business “Today managed in MEA will experience security services include a significant change and a wide range of services including firewall, Layer 7 growth under the influence Application control, IDS/ of emerging IT trends and growing adoption of IT IPS, Content Filtering, throughout all sectors.” antivirus and many others.”

MANAGED UTM SERVICES As the IT security appliance market is maturing in MEA so is the need to adopt next-gen security appliances. Many organizations are opting for Managed UTM Services. Interestingly, in the MEA, many telecos are providing these services.

Managed UTM services helps in reducing many

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CHANNEL PERSPECTIVE Every vendor focuses on its channel for deeper penetration in the market. Hence, channel

NICOLAI SOLLING DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, HELP AG

“As security needs have become more and more complex, there is a requirement to consolidate some security features applied at the network level.” becomes crucial to different aspects of business.

“Channel is important for UTM since the client is in relationship with the reseller. We see a lot of channel partners trying to leverage features from the UTM to provide services with added value,” says D’Hoinne.

Cyberoam’s network security appliances are represented in over 125+ countries through our worldwide channel partners only. “Dell SonicWALL only sells through channel partners in the Middle East and Africa. Dell SonicWALL’s channel strategy for UTM products is consistent with all our products. We continuously support our two-tier channel partner network through regular sales and technical training, marketing collateral and pre- and after-sales service. Our value-added distributors (VADs), meanwhile, play a particularly strategic role in carrying out ongoing reseller recruitment activities.

Roadshows, partner sales sessions and certification training are regularly carried out across the Middle East and Africa, culminating in a loyal and valued channel customer base,” comments Malecki.

WatchGuard prides itself on being 100% channel, 100% of the time. “WatchGuard is

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GISEC AD ENTERPRISE CHANNEL MEA-28x19 (170314).pdf

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FEATURE

VENDORS’ USP IN UTM SPACE n The USP lies in Cyberoam’s approach towards Network Security. It also introduced ‘Flexi-ports’ on network security appliances, allowing customers to leverage emerging connectivity options without changing their security appliance, thus giving them better value for their investments in Cyberoam technology. In addition, Cyberoam network security appliances are IPv6 ready. n Dell’s Next Generation UTM and FWs solutions offer superior protection and massively scale to extend state-of-the-art security to growing and distributed enterprise networks.

Along with superior power efficiency, Dell SonicWALL’s appliances lower the total cost of ownership by reducing complexity and the time necessary to configure, deploy and maintain security solutions. Mobile Connect app, for instance offers employees secure iOS, Android and Windows Mobile device access via Dell SonicWALL SSL VPN and NextGeneration firewall appliances through a single management interface. n The new Sophos UTM Accelerated (9.2) provides multiple layers of protection to secure your network from even the most advanced threats. It enables users to work effectively and provides them with simple, secure access to the data they need – on and off your network. n Because the threat landscape is always changing, WatchGuard solutions are designed to be able to easily add new network defense capabilities through security subscriptions, so costly hardware upgrades are not necessary. Its UTM solutions combine with powerful security subscriptions to offer comprehensive protection from malware.

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MIKE GOEDEKER

DIRECTOR PRE SALES ESG, CEEMEA, SOPHOS

“UTM adoption is picking up and on par with Europe. We assume this will continue to grow because of the nature of industry and services that are sold / hosted in MEA.”

SURENDER BISHNOI

WATCHGUARD, REGIONAL MANAGER MEA

“There is a strong demand for security products in the Middle East, driven specifically by the need to secure cloud access and deployments and growth in mobility.”

IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

awareness for network and information security, increasing pressure for regulatory compliance and sizeable impending investments from businesses looking to secure their IT led business environments.”

Mike Goedeker, Director Pre Sales ESG, CEEMEA, Sophos says, “MEA has been and always will be an important market for us. We see the same security drivers in MEA and also more specific ones based on an extensive banking and financial sector. Many customers are careful of appliances that come from the US and look more favorable to European and MEA based appliances with similar quality.”

The demand for UTM is growing across all verticals as none is left untouched by security threats.

Investments in UTM vary from Enterprise, SMB/ SME and SOHOs. Malecki says, “We see investment across all three market sectors, but in terms of Next-Generation UTM it would be fair to say that SOHOs and SMBs are driving adoption.”

Ravinder Janotra- Regional Sales Manager, Middle East, Cyberoam comments, “We are observing and experiencing good traction in all three segments. This is primarily due to growing

With new types of threats emerging on a wide scale, vendors need to continuously innovate their offerings to tackle network and information security. Imparting education among the users of various kinds of attacks also remains a hurdle.

The onus lies on the Government and industry to spread awareness among the users. Also, newer trends in technology like cloud and virtualization open up more challenges for the security

different to many other companies. To elaborate, WatchGuard has never and will never have anything to do with the sale side of business. We confidently allow our partners to support this area and we guide them by sharing any business leads that come our way. Our profit margins on all of our products are in the partners favour, and it will remain this way. In reference to capitalizing on opportunities in the region, our partners are successful in business because they are highly skilled in what they do, and benefit from the 100% support that we give them,” says Bishnoi

CHALLENGES

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FEATURE

RANJIT NARAYAN

HEAD OF SALES – ENTERPRISE, COMGUARD

“Network perimeter security appliances like UTM, Next Gen Firewalls, IDS/IPS always play the vital role in designing the Network perimeter Security.

landscape. “The main challenge for UTM is to provide value and not only a good price. Also, UTM market need to monitor what’s happening in the mobile security and cloud security market to avoid being cannibalized in the future,” says D’Hoinne.

Janotra points out that business and IT decision makers in MEA now realize how the impact of trends like cloud, BYOD, mobility ties with network security and this really augurs well for the business of network security. “Of course, there’s long way before these trends become fully entrenched in the very fibre of MEA’s IT industry.

JEREMY D’HOINNE RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GARTNER

“The main challenge for UTM is to provide value and not only a good price.

UTM market need to monitor what’s happening in the mobile security and cloud security market to avoid being cannibalized in the future.”

However, we see that network security business in MEA will experience a significant change and growth under the influence of emerging IT trends and growing adoption of IT throughout all sectors. As per one study be a leading analyst firm, likely business from cloud oriented network security from the region of UAE alone will exceed USD 70 million by 2019, registering a whopping growth over 45%,” he adds.

FINALLY..

The UTM market has grown steadily because of its value proposition. Goedeker says, “UTM

FLORIAN MALECKI

EMEA PRODUCS AND SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR, DELL

“We regard our core role as offering a range of security solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to secure their network, systems, users and data with a deep level of protection.” adoption is picking up and on par with Europe.

We assume this will continue to grow because of the nature of industry and services that are sold / hosted in MEA.” Frost & Sullivan values the CAGR of spending in the GCC network security market at 18% for 2012 to 2018. “During that period, spend is likely to increase from around $340m currently to $1bn. As UTM appliances are an important component of the security sector, it is not inconceivable to think that UTM sales will enjoy strong double-digit growth,” comments Malecki. ë

STAY UPDATED WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

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MY VIEWS

MOHAMMAD MOBASSERI,

CEO, EMT DISTRIBUTION

“Betting big on enterprise solutions” IN THE MEA REGION THE NEED FOR IT SECURITY SOLUTION AND IT IN GENERAL IS STILL EVOLVING. HENCE, THERE IS A LOT OF POTENTIAL FOR BOTH TECHNOLOGY VENDORS AS WELL AS SERVICE PROVIDERS TO TAP THE UNDERLYING OPPORTUNITIES.

What’s your perception of overall IT security market in the Middle East?

What we are noticing in the Middle East region today is that IT security market is booming and so are the threat vectors. And that’s the reason why our market is growing as well. We are expect-

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ing around 30% growth of the business in IT security and IT in general in the year 2014.

What are the strategies being followed to match the market growth number of 30%?

Recently, we have increased our focus towards IT enterprise security solutions. It is because this domain is growing much faster than the commodity space. We believe that in the enterprise segment, security has become more critical than just being a luxury tool; whereas, in the commodity space, security is not given that prominence.

On the other hand, we are witnessing different types of solutions in IT security environment.

Previously, only virus or malware protection was being considered by the organizations but now, these companies are talking about data leakage prevention, vulnerabilities, etc. In such a scenario, the enterprise security market will grow even further.

Currently, you are a small company, but you want to make EMT one of the top five companies soon. How are you pacing up your activities to make it happen?

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MY VIEWS

field of log management and event management Today, we might be a small company in terms solutions. of people but when you look at the background of the whole group in terms of worldwide presence, history in this region, and manageWhat is your strength in terms of ment expertise, we don’t really judge ourselves back-end support? as a small company. While we don’t have a First of all, vendors won’t sign up with any huge number of people, we do distributor without doing the have experience and skilled background check and making manpower. Moreover, we are not sure that their back-end support only relying on Dubai operation is strong enough to handle any but we also have offices in Asia type of customer queries. Since Pacific and Europe and these EMT has 15 years of experience offices are supporting Dubai in the distribution space, our operations as well. We have on back-end is very strong. In terms board engineers, business develof automation, we have using opers, and project managers ERP application for many years; SCAN TO WATCH who often travel to these regions ITIL supported help desk for MOHAMMAD MOBASSERI and support the big projects that partners; and training schedules ONLINE we engaged to. Our presence for partners and customers. worldwide is supporting our With such a vast experience and Middle East and Africa operations. presence worldwide, we are replicating the same We are growing very fast here with limited thing in this region as well. You must have also resources. At the same time, we are also focusing noticed that in the Middle East, we have signed very well on enterprise solutions that may not up with in-country distributors as well. So, there’s necessarily require too many resources. Here, we no doubt that our infrastructure is very strong are working more closely with channel partners. along with our finances.

We are enabling the partners and resellers to be able to deliver the solutions properly to the customers.

Would you like to add other products to your portfolio or want to remain in the security space?

We are not just into the security space. Our offerings also include application delivery, desktop management, and cloud solutions that are not limited to security side but we also take care of monitoring and infrastructure aspects as well. Gradually, we are trying to adapt ourselves to the market changes. For example, today cloud computing is booming and we are preparing more and more on the daily basis to deliver the services to the customers. For instance, we are looking at providing services around cloud backup solutions.

Hence, our services will not just be limited to security. We are also focusing on virtualization and cloud – be it infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, monitoring-as-a-service, and then security-as-a-service.

Any brand name you have in mind currently for cloud backup solution?

At this point of time, we can’t disclose the brand names as we are talking to 3-4 vendors. And we are not sure which one we are going to finalize.

But we are signing up with new vendors in the security space wherein we have entered into the

sign with us. In fact, it’s almost double of what we had expected. Today, we have a very good presence in Saudi Arabia signing up with more and more partners. Similarly in Oman, Qatar, UAE as well as Kuwait, we have signed up with good partners and these partnerships will be announced very soon. Egypt is another country where we have signed up with big system integrators. The solutions, services, and partner programs that we have help us to sign with best of the partners in the region. We have forayed in most of the Gulf countries and Egypt and the next phase would be making presence in Africa and Levant region.

How do you deal with challenges of retaining skilled manpower?

From the very beginning when we are expanding our presence worldwide, we left 10% of share for local offices to give it to the top managers or senior managers in the company.

This is one way of retaining people until they believe that this is their own company. We try to create the family environment within the group. Today, we have people working from different parts of the world and around 15 languages are spoken. And all of them work

“OUR SERVICES WILL NOT JUST BE LIMITED TO SECURITY, AS WE ARE ALSO FOCUSING ON VIRTUALIZATION AND CLOUD”

What services offerings you offer as a VAD? Right now, we are focusing on trainings and we are soon going to come up with EMT Academy.

Here, we are going to sign a new agreement as a training center with some of the vendors. We will be also providing vendor neutral training as well. This is going to be one of the most important services that we will be offering to our channel partners. Besides, the other area of focus would be providing technical support, pre-sales support, RFQ preparation support and so on. We will also be giving project specific support and training and post-sales support.

How has been your journey of strengthening resources, partners, etc. since October 2013?

We are expecting a good number of partners to

very closely with each other and as a team.

Secondly, most of the senior managers in each of the branches are one of the share holders.

And we try to remove any headache from their regular life challenges so that they can easily work and perform. For me, one of the most valuable assets in any company is human resource and nobody can grow alone. You should have team members to support you.

Any channel programs you are launching?

We are soon launching our Partner Advantage Program, which is going to be very interesting for our partners. It is going to be a two-tier program.

It’s just not the money part they gain in terms of margins or discounts but they will gain more benefits in terms of education and other facilities that we are going to give. This program will be launched in Q1 only. ë

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SERVICES

SERVICE PROVIDER

Leading the Transition

After the maturity of core services around voice and data, service providers are donning a new cap of infrastructure provider and managed service providers. DU being the young and flexible company in the region is focusing the market with all guns blazing.

n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

T

he telecom services market is booming in the Middle East and DU, one of the fastest growing telecom operators of the UAE, is well-positioned to make the best out of this market scenario. Two years after establishing itself in the region, DU started to train its focus towards enterprise business. The move was well-planned and DU was gearing up for this expansion which happened in 2009.

Jatin Sahni, Vice President, Large Enterprise & Business Solutions Marketing, DU, states that DU was building a network during that time. “We didn’t want to foray into the enterprise market without having a strong dedicated network. Also, we wanted to understand how we can differentiate in the market which is already penetrated by mobile. Also, we didn’t have an infrastructure across the UAE. Those building blocks were

RAGHAVAN MANI

IT MANAGER, PETROCHEM MIDDLE EAST FZE ELABORATES ON THE SAME.

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important before approaching any organization,” he adds.

DU’s decision seems to be in line with the rapid growth in the ME Telecom services market.

According to Gartner, the ME telecom services market continues to be the largest spending market. It represents 77% of total IT spending in the region in 2013.

Sahni terms it as a ‘constructive decision’ to focus on large enterprises. The reason is evident because DU had strong relationship with them within its zone and it was more of an extended mechanism of going back to the same customers and talking about its services.

To spread its wings in the enterprise business, DU first identified the different kind of companies that are operating in this market. It identified four different zones: MNC which is already operating globally but is also headquartered here, a govt.

entity which is home grown but also wants to become global, SME service sector industry and traditional conglomerates. “Like any traditional enterprise player you start with core services. We started with incumbent fixed services which we already had and an expansion of that plus a much differentiated mobile services. We didn’t want to go for ‘One for all Model’, says Sahni.

Today, DU has reached a state where it prides itself in offering a wide gamut of services to corporate customers. DU’s portfolio of services includes Enterprise Mobility, Enterprise fixed and connectivity services and Managed Services/ bespoke solutions. In Enterprise Mobility space, DU covers Voice, Data, and Roaming. DU is working on how to enable all these in a business environment. “I call it a mobile first enterprise which means using mobile phone to run your business. That’s the space where we are entering

“Petrochem, the largest independent chemical distributor in the Middle East, recently switched its mobile plan from Etisalat to du. First, we started for mobile with du, then our land line services. All the landline chargeable calls go through du now.

In the process, we have reduced our

expenses by switching from minutebilling to second-billing. Other than that we are utilising all the data center services from du. Primary data centre is here and a secondary one which is small is in du. A project is going on where we will be replicating everything, right now we are only replicating email.

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SERVICES

JATIN SAHNI,

VICE PRESIDENT, LARGE ENTERPRISE & BUSINESS SOLUTIONS MARKETING, DU

“We want people to be able to make video calls as easy as telephonic calls.” have been reversed. When we saw the confidence, we started entering this space,” comments Sahni.

In managed services, DU identifies itself into five categories. n Managed Connectivity n Managed Computing and Cloud n Managed Security n Managed Mobility & UC n Managed Applications The company has horizontal products in all these five categories to offer to corporate customers today. Sahni tells that the challenge now is that DU is not everywhere in the UAE in terms of connectivity. “We need to find a mechanism to reach everybody. You need to have a full ecosystem before approaching a customer which was the challenge last year and now we have built that. We and our sales are confident. We have a structured approach to managed services and we are not a short term player,” he adds.

FINALLY…

and here we touch the managed services part on mobility,” adds Sahni.

When DU carried out a survey in the region, 52% of the businesses wanted that telcos should

be the provider of Managed Services because they are more confident to take these services from telcos. “If we would have done a similar survey in Europe, US or India, the results would

We want to see the performance by switching over to the du data center.

If it is an acceptable performance, we may not maintain data center on our own here. That’s the long term plan but we are in experimental stage which is running this month. Based on the feedback we will decide. du

was already servicing us and we thought of going forward with them, they showed us the cost saving and we had seen their investment in the data center. People who manage it are very supportive and friendly to work with and helpful to the customers. It is more value for money now. du’s

Sahni informs that DU is growing in double digits but the enterprise share is relatively small today. The company is looking at a five-year window to expect real time return benefits for managed services. DU is amongst the top 5 players in the market for managed services. “I am happy with the growth. The ambition is to be amongst the top 3 by 2016. We have the right portfolio, right engine and right mandate within the organisation to maintain that direction,” he concludes. ë

formula is different : you pay for what you use. For us the attraction is the cost saving, the way du packages the services showed us the savings in cost. We don’t see much difference in Etisalat and du as far as services are concerned. It’s only the product and package that makes the difference.”

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AL KINGSLEY

GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR, NETSUPPORT

“Managing the classroom environment” THE EDUCATION SECTOR IN THE MEA REGION IS INVESTING HEAVILY ON INNOVATIVE CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGIES. AND THE EMERGENCE OF CONCEPTS LIKE BYOD AND MOBILITY IS GIVING A BOOST TO THE MOBILE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO AL KINGSLEY, GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR, NETSUPPORT, TO GET A DEEP INSIGHT INTO THE COMPANY’S OFFERINGS IN THIS SPACE AND THE ROLE PLAYED BY ITS PARTNERS

Tell us about NetSupport’s presence in the Middle East region?

As an education software specialist, NetSupport initially focused on the western markets like the UK, Germany, France, and North America amongst others. But as of today, we are doing

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business in about 100 countries. And Middle East is a very strong region for us with respect to the education sector. Here, we work very closely with Ministry of Education of different countries and in the process deal with many universities and colleges of this region.

What kind of products and services do you provide to the education sector?

For the last 25 years, we have been at the forefront of developing innovative solutions to aid in the management of desktop computers and their users. For the education sector, we offer a host of world-class products that help us address any type of customer requirements. For example, NetSupport School is the class-leading classroom software solution, providing teachers with the ability to instruct and visually/audibly monitor, as well as interact with their students, individually, as a pre-defined group or to the whole class.

Then we have, NetSupport Manager, which is multi-platform remote control software that continues to deliver the very latest in remote PC support and desktop management capabilities.

From a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone, one can monitor multiple systems in a single action,

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deliver hands-on remote support, collaborate and even record or play back sessions. We also offer a focused classroom management software solution, called NetSupport Assist, which ensures teachers have the tools they need to monitor, engage, and collaborate with their students.

We even work in conjunction with different partners like Intel for their classroom suite to actually control the content being delivered.

Within the education space, we are also talking about BYOD and mixed computing and technology.

What kind of potential do you see in this market?

We see a huge potential because learning has now become digital. Schools want to use new methods and mechanisms for teaching, which includes tablets as well as mobile technologies. And for the integration between the two, you need one solution which is universal. For NetSupport, our solutions while working with so many different partners and manufacturers are totally agnostic.

We don’t specialize on one particular platform.

We want our tools to be facilitators so that they allow better content to be delivered in the classroom. With regards to content, the barrier normally for any school is to control its reach to the students. Hence, there is a marriage between the content and the technology delivering it.

Given the increased access today’s students have to mobile technology, it’s great that schools have been quick to recognize the role that tablet devices can play in the classroom. For classroom management vendors such as ourselves, it’s vital that we continually develop not only the feature set of our solutions but also ensure our platform support is as broad as possible and accommodates the latest developments in IT − helping teachers to remain in control of computer-led collaboration and assessment and encouraging students to engage with classroom technology and peer-based learning.

What kind of target have you set for this region?

If you talk about this region, probably across the Gulf, we have active relationship with Ministry of Education in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lybia, Morocco, and many other places. Probably, in the last six months, we have shipped about a quarter million copies and in a year’s time, we are expecting to deliver 2-3 million devices across the Gulf region and North Africa.

I think the potential is huge because five years from now, every student will need to have some form of computing device to have an equal chance of getting a fair education. With

the growth in the students, the technology has to grow as well. And we have to keep in mind affordability aspect as well, as the cost of technology comes down, it will become more accessible.

How do you sell your offerings in the marketplace? How competitively are they priced?

The software is license based and you can either download it or get it on CDs. Most of our customers worldwide download the software but in some countries, it is delivered by our partners.

By far, the biggest market for us is Windows but with Android and iOS tablets coming in, it has slowed down a bit. We work with Microsoft as partners to promote education.

Due to the affordability factor, we are increasingly seeing, tablets are being presented as an alternative to the Windows and in many cases, they are cost-effective as well. This shift will continue to develop but some markets have luxury of both. The challenge for all technology and much you will see for corporate is that an Android tablet does not replace your PC for dayto-day job and the same goes for school as well, where you can’t replace PC if somebody wants to teach computing programme. But in terms of the

to deliver. Besides, we also work with manufacturers along with following the reseller and distributor model.

We have about 7 products, out of which there are 4 in the education domain. Our focus in this region is on both corporate and education sectors. Probably, it is more the education business that we have done in this region. But certainly our focus in on both product lines in this region.

In Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education, we probably have 300,000 to 400,000 licenses.

Similarly, we have sold licenses in Yemen, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, Bahrain, and Lebanon’s Ministry of Education. We have presence in all these places but we also face the challenge of finding the right partners who could cater to the education vertical. Finding the right delivery mechanism for channel is very important for us.

You don’t have a direct presence in this region and you are dependent on partner resources. How do you ensure quality support to your customers?

Our local partners tend to provide first line support to the customers in terms of dealing with initial enquiries from the customers. They will

“WE WANT OUR TOOLS TO BE FACILITATORS SO THAT THEY ALLOW BETTER CONTENT TO BE DELIVERED IN THE CLASSROOM”

tool for research, e-books, and online referencing, it is an alternative. So, many schools are looking for both the options. Recently, we have seen big deals happening in this region, where Ministry of Education in Qatar did a very large roll out and that too of Windows tablets.

On big deals, you will get the product licenses for $2 to 3 per copy and the small school licenses are priced at $10 to 15 per copy. Our partners get healthy margin on these prices.

How many partners do you have in this region?

In this region, our primary partner is Bulwark Technologies for Dubai and we have one partner in Kuwait. We try to have at least one partner in each region unlike many companies who have multiple partners. We often feel that there is time and investment required to develop a market and it is only fair to give that partner an opportunity

then escalate the second line to NetSupport with our offices in the UK, the US, and Germany. We offer about 19 hours a day live support online (live chat) and since we are also a remote control company, we also provide live remote control support to our customers. So, we provide second and third line support. And since we have a network of partners across the region, we can deploy resources whenever and wherever needed.

The key aspect about our technology and the reason why we have so many users (close to 12 million users globally) is that our products are recognized and respected wherein customers can download and try themselves. We have developed a product called NetSupoort 24x7, which is a 24-hour live support tool, wherein you can visit our website and chat live with the technician, who in turn, will assist you and give advices. And since it has been set up looking at different time zones, it gives us broader flexibility. ë

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INNOVATIONS

Riverbed Steelhead DX Edition 8000 Series Riverbed Technology’s new purpose-build appliance – the Steelhead DX Edition 8000 Series - to address the unique needs of datacenter-to-datacenter data replication workloads, deliveres up to 60 times WAN performance acceleration and up to 99 percent bandwidth reduction. With

the Riverbed Steelhead DX Edition 8000 Series, organizations can transfer and protect more data more often, with less risk and cost and recover data far more rapidly to improve business continuity.

The Riverbed Application Performance Platform is a set of integrated solu-

tions that give companies the flexibility to host applications and data in the locations that best serve the business while ensuring the flawless delivery of those apps to better leverage global resources, radically reduce the cost of running their business and maximize employee productivity.

To transfer and protect more data more often, organizations must ensure fast and predictable WAN performance despite common WAN performance impairments − high latency, packet loss, limited bandwidth and competition among applications, while protecting the bottom line by eliminating the unnecessary costs and delays associated with WAN infrastructure upgrades.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Organizations can transfer and protect more data more often, with less risk and cost and recover data n Eliminates distance between datacenters as a barrier to achieving true location-independent computing n Data can be moved, stored and backed-up regardless of where facilities are located, but with performance similar to a local area network.

Only Riverbed offers a complete solution for both large-scale branchto-datacenter and datacenter-to-datacenter environments. n Organizations must ensure fast and predictable WAN performance despite common WAN performance impairments n Allows IT to prioritize delivery of missioncritical applications over the fastest networks.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT EDITOR@ ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

WATCHGUARD FIREBOX T10 UTM SOLUTION WatchGuard Firebox T10 Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, a network security appliance, allows enterprises to extend powerful network security to small office home office (SOHO) environments. With 70 percent of high-value employees working at home at least once a week, the new solution allows network administrators to ensure robust protection of employees who are often managing the companies’ most critical intellectual property. The Firebox T10 features WatchGuard’s cloud-based RapidDeploy capability, which instantly selfconfigures and begins reporting back to the administrator’s central console by simply plugging in the appliance.

With Firebox T10 WatchGuard anticipates the small, cost-effective solution will also appeal to customers seeking full UTM protection for mobile kiosks and carts, such as those used in retail and health care environments, that regularly handle credit cards and personal information – and must meet the same stringent PCI and HIPAA compliance standards as larger offices and businesses.

The Firebox T10 delivers not only the same powerful UTM capabilities as the company’s larger models, including the RapidDeploy functionality, but it also features the company’s new visibility solution, WatchGuard Dimension.

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KEY CAPABILITIES n A new gateway security device that delivers full-strength security threat management to safeguard your organization’s invaluable ideas, data, confidential records and more. n This zero-install, cloud-ready tool provides realtime security intelligence, and allows administrators to have big-data-style views of key threats and top site usage across an entire user base. n Features full versions of the industry’s best-ofbreed technologies including: AntiSPAM, AntiVirus, and URL filtering

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INNOVATIONS

Dell PowerEdge R920

NetApp FAS8000 series

Dell PowerEdge server portfolio for enterprise, the Dell PowerEdge R920 is now Dell’s highest performing server, allowing customers to achieve faster results, quickly adapt to changing business needs and improve overall reliability. The solution showcases Dell’s commitment to delivering innovative solutions that meet growing demands for high performance and scalability whilst balancing cost.

Designed to provide optimal access to the vast expanses of information being recorded and processed by enterprises and built on the new Intel E7 processors, the PowerEdgeR920 offers exceptional capabilities in the handling of mission critical workloads, like enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), e-commerce, and very large databases – including in-memory databases.

With PowerEdge R920 applications can perform more transactions in less time, with up to 60 cores of processing power. The server carries several significant access enhancements such as the 8 low latency/high performance NVMe PCIe Express Flash drives that far surpass IOPS performance of rotating drives, the new H730P PowerEdge RAID controller (PERC) that doubles the previous cache size and delivers up to 100% more IOPS performance, and the dual PERC capacity that lets customers maximize performance across the larger number of available solid state drives (SSDs).

With built-in reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features, such as Dell’s Fault Resilient Memory and Intel’s Run Sure Technology the R920 lets customers operate their data centers with added confidence.

The new NetApp FAS8000 series is the first enterprise storage system to unify SAN, NAS and storage virtualization into a single hybrid array. It is NetApp’s first FAS platform designed specifically for scale-out storage environments built on clustered Data ONTAP. FAS8000 Enterprise Storage Systems Deliver a Unified Scale-Out Platform to Adapt to Changing Business Needs Quickly and Efficiently.

The FAS8000 supports the broadest range of SAN and NAS workloads with a single system optimized for scale-out deployments. The new storage systems can improve performance (up to 2x) and delivers better flash acceleration benefits (up to 3x more flash) than previous FAS platforms. Additional improvements with the FAS8000 include a new, storage I/O–optimized architecture with the Intel microarchitecture chip set, expanded memory, and improved flash support to deliver superior, low-latency performance for enterprise-class workloads.

Organizations can invest in the right long-term platform with the FAS systems and transition their applications confidently to a private, public, or hybrid cloud deployment by leveraging the highly adaptive, patented Data ONTAP operating system and best-in-class connectivity options.

The FAS8000 provides an enterprise storage solution that enables a high return on investment and accelerates resource-intensive applications with hybrid flash arrays that give more than 2.6M IOPs of flashintegrated, low-latency performance. Further, the FAS8000 enterprise storage systems are available today.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Allows IT to grow quickly in response to dynamic business conditions n Also includes a plug-in for managing or monitoring your HPC environment via Nagios (Linux console). n Lets customers operate their data centers with added confidence n Can also help improve service continuity by backing up the entire server stack of hardware, OS and applications so customers can operate with peace of mind.

KEY CAPABILITIES n FAS8000 supports the broadest range of SAN and NAS workloads n Provides an enterprise storage solution that enables a high return on investment n Decrease latency to deliver consistent application performance across a broad range of SAN and NAS workloads.

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PARTNER CORNER

SOLUTION DISTRIBUTOR

Solution Selling: the Buck Maker For today’s IT distribution business, the formula of success lies in offering solutions along with exceptional services and Logicom has it all. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

SAJITH RAJ

T

oday, Logicom Distribution is a name to reckon with, wherein it has emerged as a leading regional distributor of technology solutions and services covering a wide area in Europe, Middle East, and North America. If taken a closer look at the Middle East region, the company initially started as a Microsoft and IBM distributor 12 years back. It’s USP since the beginning has been on creating a healthy eco system of broader reseller network.

The distributor’s mission is to market high quality products in an efficient and effective manner while providing exceptional customer service and support. It also aims to continue developing an involved and loyal network of reseller ensuring the provision of a complete range of products, technical support, as well as financial credit facilities.

Talking about the focus of the company in the year 2014, Sajith Raj, General Manager, Logicom, says, “We are focusing to strengthen our position in all the Gulf countries by having full-fledged operations which is an upgrade from local sales offices we have been having since 10 years. This will allow us to grow further with more brands which are in need for a high profile distributor with local expertise and operations.”

Logicom has always been thriving to improve its product portfolio by adding complementing brands which makes a complete solution. Security, storage and virtualisation products are in the company’s focus list which is already in the final stages of implementation. Data centre and cloud based distribution is work in progress as part of

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its strategy to become a ‘Solutions Distributor’ in the region.

As a value-added distributor, Logicom considers itself as way above the rest, as it takes a very unique approach in the market in comparison to the competition. The company counts on operational excellence and sound long term relationships with the world’s leading technology vendors in order to provide our customers with best-in class products and services when and where they need them. Applying the highest standards of professionalism, Logicom is today seen as an indispensable link in the technology supply chain, facilitating mutually beneficial relationships with channel partners.

“We focus more towards bringing in value to the solution, which is the key factor in supporting resellers. We constantly focus on enhancing our resellers’ capabilities by training them in various technology verticals as well as up-selling their solution offerings by adding right support levels.

Though solution distribution is still not the driving factor for the company, it does contribute indirectly towards the increase share of business in rest of the product segments,” asserts Raj. And as far as back-end resources strength is concerned, the company has set up a call centre and recently established a very well accepted resource pool that takes care of different needs from its vendors and internal programs. Logicom also has a well-equipped warehouse with 12 hours/day operation which ensures faster TAT to fulfil partner transactions.

Constantly in pursuit of creating value, the company counts on the expertise and dedication of its people to enhance its products with

GENERAL MANAGER, LOGICOM

“We constantly focus on enhancing our resellers’ capabilities by training them in various technology verticals.” best-in-class service and support. Guided by the latest technological advances and exceptional working relationships with vendors and partners, Logicom prides itself in helping customers sustain competitive advantage and growth in ever changing markets and challenging times.

“Vendors should look for Logicom because of our financial capability, operational efficiency, secured credit and insured to make sure business continuity with limited risk/market intelligence, compliance and legitimate business model and practices, 100% process oriented and systematic approach, IT and back office Infrastructure/ERP/ CRM/Business Intelligence tools, geographical presence and channel reach, and lastly, an experienced team,” points out Raj.

FINALLY...

The company further believes that as a partner, one should be also be associated with Logicom because of its professional approach at all levels of interaction – starting from pre-sales, sales, product management, operations, finance and supply chain. Compliance is again a key factor for those who follow and to be rest assured products sourced are genuine from the supplier. ë

M A R C H 2014

MEA

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19/03/14 11:52 pm

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19/03/14 11:50 pm