May 2014 by GEC Media Group

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PUMPING LIFE INTO IT INFRASTRUCTURE When the business of Emirates Transport started expanding, the organization realised the need of transforming its IT infrastructure. /36

AHMED HASSAN MOHAMMED YAQOOT

IT DEPT MANAGER, EMIRATES TRANSPORT

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For deeper network security

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HARNESSING IT SERVICES FOR GROWTH & BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION

INDIAECM052014

In today’s dynamic world, the need to have IT solutions and products structured and tailored around an enterprise’s need is gaining paramount importance. /24

DE LL: “LEVE RAG I NG CUSTOM-B U I LD EXPE RTISE” /23

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Big Data in a Clasp

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EDITORIAL

Changing Face of Partners

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

With cloud computing becoming more relevant to the end customers because of all reasons known to most of us, the scenario of all pervasive cloud services is going to open up soon. Therefore it will also influence the partners’ business model and go to market strategy. As per some of the predictions from the industry’s leading technology providers, the tiered partnering system which are divided in categories of resellers, dealers, distributors or even solution providers are going to fizzle out and merge with one another and create a new identity to be known as cloud service provider. Although the trend will be typical to different regions of the world but for sure, it will become universally accepted evolution sooner than later. Today, the most advanced and developed countries are experiencing this trend but tomorrow it will happen with the developing countries too. My argument on channel evolution is based on the market evolution and technology providers’ strategy to address the market. Everyone is aware of what happened to IBM - from being hardware, software and services provider. It is now focusing on software and services – that to cloud services. Similarly in the case of Dell, it started its journey from hardware, but gradually embraced software and services in the second half of its story, but now focussed on the services’ landscape. Today is the last day of EMC World 2014, organized at Las Vegas, Nevada. I could clearly see the changing face of EMC and its diversion from being a pure play storage provider to be an infrastructure solution providers and finally ending up being a cloud service provider. This reflects mood of the customers and the change in the trend in the industry. Today, every penny matters to the accounts and profitability of the company, so any arrangement that can save penny without compromising with security and privacy will be encouraged and cloud computing does fall into that space easily. Of course cloud will have different versions to different regions but the fact is that at the end of the day it will be services not the products. To be more specific to our region, which is resistant to outsourcing to third party service providers or to outsourcing to other countries, hybrid cloud will be the reality. The partners in this region have to understand it quickly or else, as per some industry experts, they will perish or meet the consequences of Nokia. Plus, with cloud computing, the partners have to be cognizant of the growing influence of other plugins of the technology landscape including Big Data, Social Media and Mobility and accordingly they can decide their future course of action, whether to stay healthy or to slog. ë

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CONTENTS VOLUME 01 ISSUE 10 M AY 2 0 1 4 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

HARNESSING IT SERVICES FOR GROWTH & BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION In today’s dynamic world, the need to have IT solutions and products structured and tailored around an enterprise’s need is gaining paramount importance. /24

MY VIEWS /34

“Enriching the cloud computing experience”

SIMONETTA MERCIECA, SALES DIRECTOR – EMERGING MARKETS, 2X SOFTWARE

MY VIEWS /23

“Leveraging CustomBuild Expertise” BASIL AYASS MARKETING DIRECTOR, DELL MIDDLE EAST

INNOVATIONS /52

SAMSUNG WI-FI AND NFC PRINTER

FEATURE The Future-Proof Solution /30

As the demands of bandwidth is increasing, the structured cabling solutions are being designed so as to meet tomorrow’s demands.

Equipped with both Wi-Fi and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is touted as Samsung’s most user-friendly printer yet will make printing easier than ever and deliver the highest color quality prints

MY VIEWS /39

“Writing a distinctive cloud story” DEEPAK NARAIN REGIONAL PRESALES MANAGER, VMWARE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AMERICA

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 05 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08 CUSTOMER SPEAK :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 36 PARTNER CORNER::::::::::::::::::::: 40, 48, 50 CORPORATE STORY :::::::::::::::::::::::::: 42, 44 VIRTUALIZATION :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 46 INNOVATIONS:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 52

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CHANNEL

STREET SOFTWARE AG’S APAMA RECOGNIZED

Software AG’s Apama software has been recognized as the industry leading ultra-high performance complex event processing technology for the second year running by Waters Technology. With significantly enhanced speed and scalability, Apama was acknowledged as best sell-side CEP technology reflecting an industry-wide move to broaden the role of CEP to encompass high frequency surveillance and real-time risk management as well as trading. While Apama has always been at the forefront of high-performance event processing, adding LLVM, inmemory data management and ultralow-latency messaging is a paradigm shift in the CEP vendor landscape. Apama now enables organizations to build more advanced applications.

GREGG AMBULOS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL CHANNEL SALES, EMC

COMMVAULT ENHANCES PARTNER PROGRAM

EMC Unveils New Business Partner Program

CommVault’s new enhanced PartnerAdvantage program is designed to help channel partners accelerate revenue growth and simplify collaboration as they expand into new markets, such as data protection, archiving, mobility and cloud services. The expanded program includes a globally consistent tiering approach, deal registration processes, enablement and demand generation capabilities, and an intuitive partner portal to deliver a more predictable and profitable engagement model. The program now offers the channel a consistent way to collaborate and conduct business that opens the door to new markets and customers.

EMC unveiled the new global Business Partner Program (BPP) providing EMC partners with a common, unified framework. The new BPP brings together all previous EMC partner programs to create a simple, predictable and profitable experience for each partner. Designed in concert with partners, the BPP offers more flexibility and choice as well as greater access to solutions and services to enable partners to play a leading role in both the 2nd Platform and emerging 3rd Platform of IT, characterized by the mega trends of social, mobile, cloud and Big Data. Under the BPP partners can choose the tracks that best fit their strategic objectives. The BPP tracks include: EMC resell, distribution, cloud service provider, system integrator and outsourcer as well as the RSA SecurWorld program. Partners in multiple tracks can use dollars earned and

channel street.indd 8

training credits in one track across other tracks for maximum flexibility, to lower costs and to invest in new lines of business with EMC. For those partners qualified in VMware, Pivotal, RSA and VCE programs, EMC offers crossprogram training credits to significantly reduce the partner’s investments in sales or technical certifications. EMC will also offer qualifying partners additional incentives for reselling solutions built using a combination of EMC, VMware, Pivotal and VCE technology. Gregg Ambulos, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales, EMC Corporation, said, “The program offers enhanced flexibility and choice and harnesses the power of EMC’s federation of companies to enable partners to deliver exceptional value in the market through a deep set of solutions and services.”

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CHANNEL STREET

HDS Enables Customers for Continuous Cloud Infrastructure Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) has announced new technology to accelerate customer success with Business-Defined IT – a closer linking of a company’s business and technology objectives that demands a more responsive IT foundation. Called a “Continuous Cloud Infrastructure”, this foundation can drive IT efficiency through a responsive, software-rich architecture that can quickly react to changing needs without continual redesign and disruption. A move toward Continuous Cloud Infrastructure ensures customers can build the most available, automated and agile environment for nextgeneration data centers. With this goal in mind, Hitachi delivers

Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS), Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000 (VSP G1000), a new version of the Hitachi Command Suite management platform and significant enhancements to its Hitachi Unified Compute Platform converged computing offerings. Together, these technologies provide the foundation of an IT infrastructure that can adapt to continuously changing business needs, without disruption. “Our customers across industries have told us that to keep up with the frenetic pace of business they are aligning the IT and business functions more closely than ever,” said Brian Householder, COO, Hitachi Data Systems.

A10 NETWORKS APPOINTS TERRENCE GAREAU AS PRINCIPAL RESEARCH SCIENTIST A10 Networks has hired Terrence Gareau as Principal Research Scientist. In this new role, Gareau will build a security engineering and response team, providing A10 ADC (application delivery controller), CGN (carrier grade networking) and standalone DDoS (distributed denial of service) customers with in-depth DDoS research and advisories. Additional intelligence gathering and threat advisories will further assist customers in protecting their networks from the rising incidence, volume and sophistication of crippling DDoS attacks. Prior to joining A10 Networks, Gareau founded and led PLXsert, a well-respected DDoS service from Prolexic (recently acquired by Akamai). DDoS attacks cause disruption in a company’s business operations, resulting in lost revenue and brand damage.

ORACLE EXPANDS ITS CLOUD PORTFOLIO To help organizations more rapidly adopt and utilize hybrid cloud solutions, which can securely and seamlessly integrate public cloud solutions with on-premises and private cloud environments, Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Database Backup Service and Oracle Storage Cloud Service. Part of Oracle’s commitment to providing the industry’s broadest and most advanced cloud portfolio, the new services empower customers with choice and deliver the flexibility to easily move critical applications and data from on-premises to the cloud and vice-versa. Part of the Oracle Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) portfolio, Oracle Database Backup Service provides a simple, scalable, and low-cost Oracle Database cloud backup solution, and can be an integral part of multi-tier database backup and recovery strategies. Tightly integrated with Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), Oracle Database Backup Service enables customers to continue using the familiar RMAN commands for seamlessly and securely performing backup and recovery operations between on-premises Oracle Databases and the Oracle Cloud.

VMware vForum 2014 Themed as ‘Amplify The Possibilities’ VMware vForum 2014 will be arriving in Riyadh in May, with more than 18,000 attendees expected to attend this year’s series, which will span 24 events across Europe, Middle East and Africa. The theme for 2014 is ‘Amplify The Possibilities’ and will focus on building the next generation of IT to enable organisations to thrive in the new mobile cloud era. During the event, attendees will hear from VMware and partners on the latest in cloud computing, virtualization

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SAM TAYAN, REGIONAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST NORTH AFRICA AT VMWARE

and mobility strategies, and from organisations already reaping business benefits through true IT

transformation. The event will kick-off with a keynote from Jean-Pierre Brulard, Vice President, Southern Region, EMEA, VMware, on The SoftwareDefined Enterprise: Thriving in the Mobile-Cloud Era and will address how business expectations on IT have grown exponentially, the fundamental changes required in the way IT operates and the benefits software-defined enterprises can reap. “IT innovation is no longer

limited to the realm of technology. Now more than ever, it’s about driving business growth and new possibilities,” said Sam Tayan, Regional Manager, Middle East North Africa at VMware. “VMware vForum 2014 provides the opportunity to network with peers and hear industry leading insight on how all companies, from SMEs to global organisations, are successfully embracing the next generation of IT at the rapid pace required within businesses today.”

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Spectrami Conducts First Workshop Spectrami in association with Violin Memory had recently organized Tech Workshop, a training workshop for its channel partners on enterprise flash storage solutions in Dubai, UAE. Channel partners from all over Middle East attended Tech Workshop that was held earlier this month in Dubai. The workshop ran separate tracks for sales and pre-sales and was well received by channel partners. Partners like Wipro, Al Rostamani Communications, Enterprise Objectives, Gulfnet, ISYX Technologies, Vision Horizon, Boolean IT, and Byoun Technologies, were among the few who attended Tech Workshop. The Training Manager for EMEA region at Violin Memory, David J Ross presided over the training. He began with the introduction of the company and explained the benefits of enterprise class of flash storage solutions from

SPECTRAMI’S TECH WORKSHOP FOR VIOLIN IN PROGRESS

Violin Memory. During the workshop, Ross also revealed the unique product architecture that gives the company’s solutions a distinct advantage. The partners’ technical teams were given hands on experience on products as well as offered deep dive technical sessions. The main focus in the sales training sessions was laid on product positioning, competitive landscape, etc.

MANAGEENGINE FORTIFIES ENTERPRISE SECURITY LOG ANALYTICS ManageEngine announced the general availability of new features to its enterprise security log analytics portfolio. EventLog Analyzer, the security information and event management (SIEM) software, now offers complete user audit trails as well as the real-time event correlation and ISO 27001 reporting previously available in beta. Firewall Analyzer, the firewall security management software, now provides PCI DSS, NERC-CIP, NIST, ISO 27001 and SANS compliance reports out of the box. “A typical large enterprise today generates 10 to 100 billion events every day that amount to several terabytes of security relevant data,” said Chenthil Kumaran, Development Manager, SIEM Solutions, ManageEngine. “Without an automated solution, making sense out of all those events in real time is impossible. That’s why we have built the correlation rules. Now, you can get notified on your mobile device when multiple users try to hack into your most valued server, when a single user tries to login to several servers at once, when a key file gets modified and a host of other scenarios. The software comes bundled with 50 such rules that can be customized further for your needs.” EventLog Analyzer 9.0 and Firewall Analyzer 8.1 are available immediately.

ALPHA DATA RENEWS CONTRACT WITH UPP Alpha Data recently renewed its contract with United Printing Press (UPP), one of the leading printing firms in the Middle East--a move that reflected the strong partnership between the two companies. Under the terms of agreement, Alpha Data will deliver innovative and connected infrastructure solutions to meet the printing company’s information technology (IT) needs. The two firms first collaborated in 2013 with Alpha Data providing project management, consultancy, and training services to UPP. With the latest project, Alpha Data handled the implementation of the Microsoft System Center software suite and also configured the existing Exchange cluster. It also helped UPP meet other essential requirements like the creation of a security patch program for desktops and servers; virtualization; and the integration of services desk solution with the existing MS infrastructure. Experts from Alpha Data also trained UPP staff on how to operate the new infrastructure. The company successfully completed the project within two months. UPP reported working on an improved and secured infrastructure following the implementation of the new system. The changes resulted in centralized management of its IT infrastructure, increased server utilization, and dynamic resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms, among others.

EMC EXTENDS FLASH STORAGE LEADERSHIP EMC Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held DSSD, Inc. Menlo Park-based DSSD is the developer of an innovative new rack-scale flash storage architecture for I/O-intensive in-memory databases and Big Data workloads like SAP HANA and Hadoop. The transaction is expected to close in

channel street.indd 12

the second quarter of 2014, subject to customary closing conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is not expected to have a material impact to EMC GAAP or non-GAAP EPS for the full 2014 fiscal year. Menlo Park-based DSSD will operate as a standalone unit within EMC’s Emerging Technology

Products Division reporting to Chirantan “C.J.” Desai. DSSD President and CEO Bill Moore, formerly Sun Microsystems’ Chief Storage Engineer, ZFS co-lead and 3Par’s first employee, will lead the DSSD business within EMC. Andy Bechtolsheim, who is also Chairman and Chief Development Officer of Arista Networks,

and formerly a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, will serve as DSSD’s strategic advisor. DSSD will complement EMC’s flash-based systems and software portfolio which began with EMC’s early entry into flash storage in 2008 when it became the first to integrate Flash drives into enterprise storage arrays.

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CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC

“Although all our markets are targeting exponential growth, our analysis shows there’ll be higher rates of growth in mature regions such as Europe and North America, given the legacy data centre investments in those geographies that require transformation.” STEVE JOUBERT, GROUP EXECUTIVE (DATA CENTRE BUSINESS UNIT), DIMENSION DATA

SECONDS

SANDISK’S FIRST DUAL USB DRIVE SanDisk Corporation has launched the SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive, a USB flash drive featuring both a micro-USB and a USB 2.0 connector in

MoE Deploys Aruba’s Wi-Fi APs Sheraton Dubai, Mall of the Emirates Hotel, one of the newer additions to the Sheraton portfolio which belongs to Starwood Hotels and Resorts, has successfully upgraded the Wi-Fi network in its Mall of the Emirates (MoE) property using Aruba’s high performance Wi-Fi access points (APs) and mobility controllers to provide uninterrupted wireless connectivity to its guests. Vises Kith, Director of IT, Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates Hotel, said, “Aruba is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for mobile enterprises. Our guests utilize their mobile devices from the minute they enter the hotel to connect to social media platforms, access email and stream video. We feel that Aruba’s range of products delivers the quality and

consistency necessary to transfer the associated large volumes of data at the high speeds required. Furthermore, the mobility controller has completely eliminated the challenges of configuring, managing and troubleshooting the wireless network which has dramatically improved our guests’ experience while reducing the efforts of the IT team.” A total of 350 Aruba APs were deployed across the business center, 481 guest rooms, and the public areas of the hotel covering 24 floors, 10 meeting rooms, the restaurants and two lobby areas. Aruba is also providing wireless coverage in all back-office areas. The 350 APs are all remotely configured and managed by an Aruba 7200 series mobility controller.

a sleek and sturdy form factor. The SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive is designed for Android smartphone and tablet users who need an easy way to move content such as photos and videos from their mobile devices. The drive allows users to safely store and backup files, free-up space, or simply transfer multimedia between their smartphones, tablets and computers. AOC LAUNCHES ITS FIRST 28” MONITORS AOC has launched its first two 28” monitors. The m2870Vhe and m2870Vq feature extra-large 16:9 MVA panels with Full HD resolution, wide viewing angles and high luminosity. Rich colours, high contrast and fast response times make these two displays ideal for both professional needs and entertainment such as video games and movies. Both models come with an extensive array of input options and other features, with the m2870Vq even boasting an additional DisplayPort connector and stereo speakers.

STORIT HOLDS JOINT WORKSHOPS WITH QUANTUM StorIT together with Quantum held successful ‘Quantum Backup workshops’ for customers and partners in Dubai and Riyadh this month. The workshops covered product presentations on Quantum’s traditional tape library and disk appliance solutions and highlighted the benefits of partners joining Quantum’s partner Alliance program. “StorIT held joint workshops with Quantum in Dubai and Riyadh, which was a huge success with more than 30 channel partners and customers attending the event in both cities. Andrew Childs, Regional Sales Manager at Quantum held an interactive presentation covering a wider perspective in a changing backup and archive environment, Francois Eid, Presales Consultant - Expansion Markets at Quantum spoke on the features and benefits of using Quantum’s latest solutions. They also shared their regional business strategies, introduced their latest technologies, shared global success stories and highlighted the benefits of Quantum’s partner alliance program,” said Mohammed Abdul Hadi, Channel Account Manager, StorIT Distribution. The Quantum Backup workshop in Dubai and Riyadh were the first of the series of multi-city events that StorIT and Quantum have planned for channel partners across the region.

CANON MIDDLE EAST COLLABORATES WITH MGI Canon Middle East has appointed Media Group International (MGI) to expand its Professional Video business in Qatar within the broadcast and production industry, as part of its diversification into new business domains such as professional cinematography and pro-video. Canon’s collaboration with MGI is one of several new business initiatives that focus on product offerings for targeted sectors. MGI will concentrate on cinematography and professional video equipment with multipurpose technology that can be utilized across several platforms. NEC DISPLAY SOLUTIONS LAUNCHES NEW MULTI-TOUCH DESKTOP DISPLAY NEC Display Solutions Europe has launched the MultiSync E232WMT, a multi-touch LED backlit desktop display designed for the latest operating

DIMENSION DATA TO QUADRUPLE ITS DATA CENTRE BUSINESS BY 2018 Dimension Data said that it will quadruple the size of its data centre business to USD4 billion in the next five years. The Group’s existing USD1 billion data centre business has a significant presence in all major regions. It’s looking to aggressively grow and scale these businesses both organically and through acquisition. In addition, Dimension Data believes its access to a significant set of data centre assets across its parent company, the NTT Group, differentiates the business.

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systems and for use in today’s corporate office, retail signage and as a second device. The 23-inch monitor is a welcome addition to the NEC E Series with an In Plane Switching (IPS) panel, providing excellent colours and response times and industry-leading quality. The highly flexible height-adjustable stand can be adapted to meet the needs of any user, and can also be used in a flat desktop mode.

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Riverbed Launches SteelFusion 3.0 Riverbed Technology has announced Riverbed SteelFusion 3.0 (formerly known as Riverbed Granite), the first branch converged infrastructure that centralizes data in the datacenter and delivers local performance and nearly instant recovery at the branch. SteelFusion fuses branch servers, storage, networking, and virtualization infrastructure into a single solution that, as measured by Taneja Group, reduces the average time to provision branch services by 30x (from five hours to ten minutes) and recovery from branch outages by 96x (from 24 hours to 15 minutes). With SteelFusion 3.0, Riverbed raises the bar with even faster branch recovery, higher data capacity, and faster performance. “SteelFusion is a no-brainer because as an IT leader you want simplified infrastructure and all of

DELL AND RED HAT CO-ENGINEER OPENSTACK-BASED CLOUD SOLUTIONS

your data, servers, and virtual machines in the core datacenter,” said Mike Rinken, senior associate and director of IT at Mazzetti, a full-service consulting and building design firm. “With Riverbed I no longer need separate physical infrastructure at my branches for file, and application servers. All that now rolls onto a single SteelFusion branch converged infrastructure appliance.” Riverbed SteelFusion is part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform, the most complete platform for location-independent computing that gives companies the flexibility to host applications and data in the locations that best serve the business while ensuring flawless application delivery to better leverage global resources, radically reduce the cost of running their business and maximize employee productivity.

LEXMARK PRINT MANAGEMENT ADDS FLEXIBILITY Lexmark Print Management (LPM) gives channel partners a solution that is flexible, easy to set up and maintain. It can be seamlessly integrated into existing customer IT environments and procedures. Through LPM, not only can providers offer their business customers the ability to reduce printing costs and shrink carbon footprint, but also introduce new functionality in a timely, cost-effective manner. As part of Lexmark Print Management, Print Release lets users send print jobs from anywhere, e.g. from their desktop, tablet or smartphone and release the jobs for printing whenever and wherever they want to. All documents are held in the print queue until their owners release them. This means confidential information stays protected and print jobs don’t pile up endlessly on office printers. The queue can be hosted on-premises or in the cloud for additional features and benefits.

Dell and Red Hat have announced the availability of co-engineered, enterprise-grade, private cloud solutions based on OpenStack, the Dell Red Hat Cloud Solution, powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The companies also have extended their collaboration to enable the compatibility, portability and reliability for Platform-asa-Service (PaaS) offerings that enterprise customers need as they build public, private and hybrid cloud environments. Through the new private cloud solutions and extended alliance, Dell and Red Hat aim to provide enterprise customers at various stages of OpenStack evaluation and use with an enterprise-grade software life cycle experience, and greater stability, predictability and rigor to the community-published OpenStack updates. Dell and Red Hat have coengineered OpenStack-based cloud solutions to address enterprise customer demand for more flexible, elastic and dynamic IT services to support and host non-business critical applications – including mobile, social and analytics – and dev/test environments.

A10 Networks Launches New Thunder Series A10 Networks has launched four new Thunder Series appliances, including the industry’s first 100 Gigabit Ethernet capable Layer 4-7 network appliance, and new mid-range and high-end models that expand the company’s portfolio of appliances, providing even greater price/performance to customers seeking to scale and secure their most demanding data center applications and networks. The new Thunder Series appli-

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JASON MATLOF, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING

ances are based on A10’s innovative Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) software, which

delivers industry-leading price performance for a given amount of memory and CPU resources. They also leverage the same data center efficient designs as other ACOSbased appliances consuming less power, cooling and rack space, which are critically important metrics for large data center operators. “As data center traffic rates continue to rapidly rise driven by major trends like mobile and big data, our

customers see increasing demands on data center networks, requiring ever great scale, performance and security,” said Jason Matlof, vice president of marketing. “A10 has consistently delivered substantially greater price performance relative to our competitors. Ihis announcement of the industry’s first 100GbE L4-7 application networking appliances and other new models continues this leadership.”

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Avaya Expanded Automation Avaya has expanded automation from the data center to the end device, completely removing manual provisioning from everyday service delivery. With new and enhanced networking products and solutions, Avaya becomes the only vendor in the industry to deliver a unified automated network from the data center to the end device, the press release stated. The new Avaya Automated Campus builds on the company’s software-defined data center framework, now spanning the data center and the campus. Avaya’s software-defined data center framework leverages Avaya Fabric Connect with enhanced Shortest Path Bridging and intelligent orchestration capabilities. With the Avaya

Automated Campus, IT departments can turn up scalable cloud-based services by provisioning end points at the Data Center edge and the Wiring closet edge – without having to configure any devices in between. IT simply sets up their critical distribution and core switches once, then turns up and makes changes to services at the edges. The announcement also includes the automated attachment of end-user devices, such as wireless APs, IP cameras and phones, and non-fabric switches with a new feature called Avaya Fabric Attach. This Best of Interop finalist in the networking category can save IT managers hours -- even days.

WEB CLIPS SMARTWORLD UNVEILS ITS PRODUCT ROADMAP Smartworld unveiled its planned roadmap towards future growth and development at its annual event ‘Smart Gathering 2014’, which was held at the JW Marquis Hotel in Dubai. During the event, which was being held under the theme, ‘Enabling Digital Economic Growth,’ Mohamed Fouz, CEO, Smartworld, detailed the company’s vision and mission, the new structure, growth aspirations and strategic goals for the next four years. SYMANTEC ADVICE ON HOW TO AVOID THE HEARTBLEED BUG Symantec is aware and currently investigating the OpenSSL vulnerability, dubbed Heartbleed

DELL ADDS TO POWEREDGE VRTX

– which allows attackers to read the memory

Dell is introducing new capabilities for PowerEdge VRTX to drive further simplicity, efficiency and performance in remote, branch and small business offices. The enhancements includeNext-level data protection inside the chassis: For customers requiring the highest levels of availability and redundancy possible, Dell now offers an optional redundant PowerEdge Raid Controller (PERC), which provides RAID controller failover inside the Dell PowerEdge VRTX chassis. More server node choices: PowerEdge VRTX now offers additional server node choices - including the 4-socket, PowerEdge M820 – to enable faster processing of workloads such as large, back-end database, business intelligence, data mining, enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications.

OpenSSL software. This may disclose the secret

of the systems using vulnerable versions of keys, which allows attackers to decrypt and eavesdrop on SSL encrypted communications and impersonate service providers. In addition, other data in memory may be disclosed including names and passwords of the users or other data stored in memory by the service. 100 PERCENT OF AIRLINES INVESTING IN BI SOLUTIONS More than half of passengers would use their mobiles for flight status, baggage status and airport directions and by 2016 the majority of airlines and airports will offer these services. In total,

MOVEMENTS A10 Networks has hired TERRENCE GAREAU as Principal Research Scientist. Aruba Networks announced the appointment of GRAEME KANE as regional Hospitality Business Development Manager for GCC, Egypt & Turkey. LEE MILES has been appointed as Regional Director for the Middle East at Infor.

NEIL WALKER has been appointed as the new Channel Marketing Manager for Fujitsu’s document scanner business.

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NUMBER GAME

increase

in revenue for BI and analytics software from 2012 to 2013 to take it to $14.4 billion from $13.3 billion: GARTNER, INC.

100% of airlines and 90% of airports are investing in business intelligence solutions to provide the intelligent information across their operations which these, and other services, demand. This is according to Smart Thinking, recently released by SITA at CAPA’s Airlines in Transition Summit in Dublin. F5 ISSUES GUIDANCE FOR CUSTOMERS In response to widespread concern about this week’s OpenSSL Heartbleed bug and related attacks, F5 Networks issued a statement and some simple guidance for its customers. Companies using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to terminate SSL connections already have the necessary protections in place to secure their applications against the Heartbleed bug. For companies terminating SSL connections on application servers (not utilizing F5 SSL offload), the threat can be immediately mitigated through open, extensible F5 iRules.

M AY 2014

MEA

08/05/14 8:52 am

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AWAL Appointed as an Elite Partner of Interactive Intelligence Interactive Intelligence has signed AWAL IT Services, a subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company (STC), as an ‘Elite’ partner. As per the terms of the agreement, AWAL will sell, implement and service Interactive Intelligence’s contact center, unified communications, and business process automation software and solutions portfolio across all market segments and verticals in Saudi Arabia. The demand for contact center, unified communications and IP telephony solutions has been growing rapidly in Saudi Arabia and this trend is expected to continue in the next few years. The technology revolution currently witnessed in the Kingdom has led to the emergence of a new class of consumers, who easily access information through diverse channels enabling them to express their views. The increasing demands

of these customers have compelled call center operators and organizations to evolve at a rapid pace to accommodate the growing needs. The government has also introduced various initiatives aimed at providing high quality customer service and opening new channels of communications with customers. “Interactive Intelligence is highly committed to the Saudi market and is continuously looking for strong partners that can help grow our business in the region - partners who have strong local presence, wide market coverage and high level skills and expertise. We are very pleased to partner with the company and look forward to working closely with them,” said Safwat Alshawaf, territory manager, Saudi Arabia at Interactive Intelligence.

NEW DESKTOP SOLUTION FROM VMWARE VMware announced VMware Horizon 6, an integrated solution that delivers published applications and desktops on a single platform. Horizon 6 becomes the industry’s most comprehensive desktop solution with centralized management of any type of enterprise application and desktop, including physical desktops and laptops, virtual desktops and applications and employee-owned PCs. “Customers want to transform their applications and enterprise desktops for the Mobile Cloud Era – extending access to employees on any device, from anywhere via a comprehensive solution that is simple, secure and cost effective,” said Sumit Dhawan, vice president and general manager, Desktop Products, End-User Computing, VMware. “VMware Horizon 6 addresses these issues and delivers amazing new capabilities to our customers at nearly the same cost as a traditional, physical desktop. Horizon 6 represents a major product milestone that continues the rapid pace of innovation from VMware, and helps customers take the next step in their desktop journey.”Innovations in application delivery, datacenter-to-device management, storage optimization and flexible hybrid delivery in VMware Horizon 6 make enterprise desktops and applications easier and more cost-effective to deliver, protect and manage.

VEEAM TO EXPAND REACH IN THE GCC Veeam Software announced a strategic partnership with Redington Gulf to continue growth throughout the Middle East. The alliance comes at a pivotal time as Veeam looks to further expand its reach in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “Our new partnership with Redington Gulf is instrumental in strengthening and growing Veeam’s position further in the GCC. As such, we are looking to expand our customer and partner base in the region, as well as gain more significant presence within certain countries,” said Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC. “Redington has a wide network of distribution points across the region and strong relationships with resellers. In this way, Veeam will be able to reach out to new partners and complete their virtualization proposition with the leading Data Protection and management technology.” Over the last few years the GCC market has shown an increasing demand for Protection for the Modern Datacenter, and partnering with Redington Gulf will help Veeam to satisfy the demand as well as grow its footprint in the Middle East. In 2013 Veeam gained in excess of 450 new customers in the Middle East alone, a feat that contributed towards the vendor being featured in Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant due to its sizable presence in enterprise. Globally the company added over 34,000 new customers in 2013, totaling over 91,500.

ESET LAUNCHES ONLINE STORE E-Commerce is booming in the Middle East and the recent ‘Online Shopping Behaviour Study 2013’ by MasterCard found that almost 50% of consumers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar already shop online while consumers in other GCC countries also strongly follow this trend. To engage with this new breed of shoppers and to provide easy and instantaneous access to its comprehensive range

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of best-in-breed antivirus and IT security solutions, ESET has now launched an online store that will cater to both business and home customers in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, KSA, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan and Yemen. Pradeesh VS, General Manager at ESET Middle East said, “Across the region, the trend towards online shopping is evident and

we want our solutions and the associated customer support to be as easily available to our customers as possible. At the same time, we have ensured that we can offer this convenience in the most secure manner by implementing a number of technologies and policies that will best safeguard the privacy of our customers.” Through the online store,

home users will be able to purchase licenses to ESET’s Smart Security 7 and NOD32 Antivirus 7 for Windows based PCs as well as the recently upgraded ESET Cyber Security and ESET Cyber Security PRO for Apple Mac computers. The company’s robust offering for mobile device protection, ESET Mobile Security, is also available through the online store.

M AY 2014

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08/05/14 8:52 am

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Aruba Strategizing to Expand in Hospitality Sector Aruba Networks announced the appointment of Graeme Kane as regional Hospitality Business Development Manager for GCC, Egypt & Turkey. In this new role, Graeme is responsible for developing and executing strategies to expand Aruba’s customer base in the hospitality sector, a key vertical in which the company has been experiencing a great deal of success with a number of high profile wireless network project implementations across the region. Graeme has over 16 years of experience in the ICT Industry, specializing in telecommunications & networking. For the past 8 years he has been based in UAE, working in the hospitality and healthcare vertical at Avaya. He brings strong technical knowledge in the hospitality space, commercial acumen and analytical ability, excellent communication skills and the ability to build

trusted relationships at all levels. “Today’s tech-savvy members of #GenMobile always travel with three or more mobile devices. And when they arrive at hospitality venues, they’ll demand to connect to everything all the time, making it essential to provide a memorable guest Wi-Fi experience. Guests expect alwayson Wi-Fi to find in-venue activities, access self-service apps and stream content without delay. Aruba provides smarter, adaptive wireless network infrastructure that enables secure Wi-Fi access to thousands of devices at a time, supports mobile collaboration for staff, and enables personalized and location-based mobile engagement for guests. The company’s wireless technology leadership coupled with its rich experience in the hospitality sector augurs well for the future,” said Graeme.

EASTNETS WINS CONSULTANCY CONTRACT EastNets has been awarded a consultancy contract to audit its SWIFT operations infrastructure by the European Central Bank (ECB), including its SWIFT Alliance Access (SAA) and Alliance Gateway (SAG) for high and low EURO value payments. EastNets’ team of SWIFT-certified engineers will carry out the audit for ECB’s environment to ensure the operation of its SWIFT Alliance infrastructure. With EastNets cost effective SWIFT System Care, ECB can leverage the instant support, expertise and knowledge to reduce its cost and of maintaining a SWIFT infrastructure. Hazem Mulhim, CEO, EastNets, said, “The European Central Bank adds considerable value to our already existing portfolio of high value clients We have clinched the deal against more than 10 other SWIFT-certified service providers, demonstrating our expertise in SWIFTAlliance architecture supported by superior features and excellent service. We assure ECB of highpriority on-site support, immediate response and 24/7 support helpline in case of emergency.” The European Central Bank’s main function is to maintain purchasing power for Euro, stabilizing price in the euro area. The euro area came into being when responsibility for monetary policy was transferred from the national central banks of 18 European Union Member States to the ECB since 1999.

OPENSHIFT MARKETPLACE Red Hat has announced OpenShift Marketplace, a one-stop shop that will enable customers of all sizes to find and try solutions for their cloud applications. The OpenShift Marketplace will bring the power of Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-asa-Service (PaaS) partner ecosystem directly to OpenShift Online customers, enabling them to experience the benefits of enterprise PaaS with tightly integrated, complementary solutions developed for the public cloud – all without losing time on technology integration. With its OpenShift Marketplace, Red Hat aims to reduce the search time and cost of finding the perfect solution for customers seeking value-added OpenShift partner add-ons. Customers will be able to easily find the information, tools, and community they need to discover and procure the right solution. They will be able to securely access and manage leading OpenShift application technologies from a single location. Customers and developers will be able to easily search for third-party OpenShift solutions and add-on productivity offerings, including database, email delivery services, messaging queues, application performance monitoring and more, all managed from a central location. Several OpenShift partners have already signed on to add their solutions to the OpenShift Marketplace, including BlazeMeter, ClearDB, Iron. io, MongoLab, New Relic, Redis Labs, SendGrid, and Shippable.

LEADING COMPANIES EMBRACING CITRIX CLOUDPLATFORM Citrix announced that leading companies across key industries are embracing Citrix CloudPlatform powered by Apache CloudStack to run their cloud environments. With more than 250 customer deployments to date, Citrix CloudPlatform cloud infrastructure platform is empowering top brands to transform their on-premise IT infrastructures into agile and efficient clouds, and provide application-centric cloud orchestration for any workload.

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Apache CloudStack cloud orchestration and provisioning software has rapidly become the go-to open source platform for building, managing and delivering highly scalable clouds. As the first commercial version of Apache CloudStack, BT, Datacentrix, DU, Globo.com, Interoute Teleommunications, KDDI Corporation, NTT Communications, Zajil International Telecom Company and Zynga are among the organizations around the world deploying Citrix Cloud-

Platform in a wide range of markets, including telecommunications, media and advertising, and insurance. “Citrix CloudPlatform gives our enterprise customers an immediate return on investment by providing greater operational flexibility, choice and efficiency and drastically reducing their operational expenses,” said Sameer Dholakia, group vice president and GM, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix.

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MEA

08/05/14 8:52 am

MY VIEWS

BASIL AYASS

MARKETING DIRECTOR, DELL MIDDLE EAST

“Leveraging CustomBuild Expertise” BY DELIVERING SCALABLE AND YET SIMPLE TO USE CLOUD AND VIRTUALIZATION SOLUTIONS, DELL IS UNIQUELY POSITIONED TO ADDRESS THE MEA REGION’S MOST PRESSING BUSINESS AND IT CHALLENGES. THE EMPHASIS IS ALSO ON DEVELOPING SERVICE PROVIDERS’ CAPABILITIES.

How is Dell looking at hybrid cloud scenario emerging in the market place? Today, we see customers move some of their applications and services to the public cloud. But majority of the applications and infrastructure is in the data center. Here, the customers have a problem, as some data is lying within their premises and some are on the cloud. Hence, most of them have started building hybrid cloud. For example, a lot of customers are creating two copies of their data and keeping one copy each at their data center as well as cloud. But in reality, it doesn’t make any sense keeping two copies. And that’s where customers are asking us to sync the data from their data center to the cloud. Here, Dell has a solution, called Boomi, which has a lot of adapters to work with Oracle ERP within the customers’ database / data center. Any software that you are running in your data center, this solution will sync it and replicate the changes

to all your public cloud providers. No matter what are you using – be it Salesforce.com or Microsoft Azure, public or private – it is synced. Here, you have a real hybrid cloud. How upbeat are you about the desktop virtualization market? Every enterprise in this market is done with virtualization of servers, as it is a de-facto standard now. What we have observed in the recent times is that Dell has emerged as a leader in the PC and notebook domain. Till some time back, we had regular customers buying our products in volume. But as of today, the same set of customers keep asking or enquiring us about virtualization and Dell Wyse. At one side, we work with the likes of VMware and Citrix but on the other hand, we have also acquired a company, called Quest Software. And out of its large portfolio of software, Quest offers a solution called vWorkspace, which provides

a virtual desktop environment to customers. If any new customer is looking for an end-to-end solution and at the same time wants to avoid the headache of dealing with multiple vendors, then we propose vWorkspace, as it is from Dell and along with it, the customer gets Wyse thin client, servers and storage from us. In this way, the customer’s virtual desktop infrastructure can all be from the same company. With this, the customer gets one company, one contact, and one support desk. Besides giving an end-to-end solution, we have also released a solution called, Mobile Cloud Client. It’s like a USB stick and if you plug it in any TV, then even you get your desktop. It gets connected through Wi-Fi or 3G and all you have to do is to plug it in the HDMI port of your TV. Instead of carrying your tablet or laptop, you can now use Mobile Cloud Client. We have a customer mix of all sizes. For example, in large telcos and hospitals, people are using virtual desktops. The telcos are using it for their call centers. As far as the hospitals are concerned, one example is of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center which is one of our customers using virtual desktop. In the vertical industries like manufacturing, retail, and governmental organizations, we are seeing small and medium customers using virtual desktops. What has been Dell’s service provider strategy? Dell has been working on a global scale with several service providers to provide Infrastructureas-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service. We have very good relationships and public references with companies like eBay, Google, and Amazon amongst others. In the Middle East, we have yet to see that industry reach the tipping point. The local service providers available today are still much smaller and not using purpose-built hardware. In the area of ultra dense servers, as per IDC estimates, Dell has emerged as the number one player, wherein we have built servers very specific for the service providers. Here, we have built a special kind of servers for cloud providers, called PowerEdge C. People who want to offer cloud services, we haven’t seen the pick-up in the Middle East market yet. It is because today the service providers that are available here have still not grown to scale that they require the ultra dense or ultra low power consumption servers. Though we are the number one provider of this solution globally for service providers, we still haven’t sold it in big amount in the Middle East. The service provider market is still maturing and developing here. ë

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COVER STORY

Harnessing IT Services for Growth & Business Optimization In today’s dynamic world, the need to have IT solutions and products structured and tailored around an enterprise’s need is gaining paramount importance. Add to this, the services layer helps enterprises optimally utilize these deployed products, to be future ready, and continue to stay ahead of the curve. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM> n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

he IT services market has been witnessing a substantial growth in the Middle East & Africa region. The primary reason behind this is that services component of enterprise IT spending continues to be robust as more and more businesses are increasingly leveraging IT to drive efficiency, collaboration and optimize cost. Also, managed services are enabling enterprise to focus on core activity while continuing to leverage on IT. IT demand is quite selective in large Middle East organizations, with strong demand from vertical sectors like public services, telecommunication, healthcare, and banking. As the Gulf countries continue to develop the non-oil GDP part of their economies, increased reliance on IT is occurring and spurring growth. As such, managed service providers are looking at developing new streams of consistent income and are diversifying their portfolios to capitalize on the mobility trend from individuals and corporates alike. As per IDC estimates, the overall MEA IT services market grew roughly 10.2% in the year 2013 over 2012. Besides, the governments across Middle East are increasing their spending on national infrastructure, citizen services, transportation, and education across the Middle

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East countries. These initiatives are driving large scale systems integration, and other project based services. Increasing cost pressures, and dire need to drive innovation from CIOs office is pushing organizations to evaluate and adopt managed services, as well as datacenter services for hosting, business continuity and disaster recovery. Cloud services are finally arriving as customers look to build scalability, flexibility, and agility in their organizations. Similarly in Africa, managed and cloud services are seeing increased traction among customers. Adding to it, Biswajeet Mahapatra, Research Director, Gartner UAE, says, “Hardware refresh, implementation of ERP, mobility, improving processes and infrastructure and having IT as a shared service (which would include consolidation) are some of the initiatives in this region. A few of the customers are also trying hands on to build the mobility infrastructure and architecture along with the related security requirements. We expect a surge in managed services demand in this region as companies work on new long term initiatives in improving customer experience, providing all services online and building mobility architecture.” “In the last few years, what we have observed that there is an increased adoption of IT services

by large enterprise customers in MEA region. Today, the customers are trying to move from traditional way of running business and IT and taking a more services approach. The reason behind this trend is that enterprises want to deploy solutions very quickly, infrastructure to continuously support them, and require services and solutions that would cater to the new business model of IT. This means that it is more service-led to meet specific business requirement,” highlights Aaron White, General Manager – Hitachi Data Systems, Middle East & Turkey.

DEMAND GENERATORS The demand for cost effective IT services is definitely one of the reasons for increasing growth. Also the ongoing growth spree has been led by emerging enterprises in wake of deploying complex applications for process automation and operational efficiency; subsequently, posing a need for robust support system to overcome issues such as round-the-clock monitoring, security, business continuity, etc. along with support for internal as well as external users. Besides, the pressure to reduce IT investment due to changing economic conditions, business need to implement emerging technologies, increase in mobile traffic, data analytics, regula-

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COVER STORY

may

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COVER STORY

BISWAJEET MAHAPATRA, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GARTNER UAE

AARON WHITE, GENERAL MANAGER – HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS, MIDDLE EAST & TURKEY

“We expect a surge in managed services demand in this region as companies work on new long term initiatives in improving customer experience, providing all services online and building mobility architecture”

“There is an increased adoption of IT services by large enterprise customers in MEA region, wherein they are trying to move from traditional way of running business and IT and taking a more services approach”

tory and compliance requirements, security, etc., higher leverage on service providers for flexible models are the also the key factors fuelling this growth. Saurabh Verma, Program Manager – IT Services, IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, adds, “Some of the key factors driving the growth are increased government spending on citizen centric projects, public services, national infrastructure, healthcare, and education. At the same time, improvement of last mile connectivity in African countries is driving the growth of datacenter and cloud services. Managed and other outsourcing services too have been consistently growing in the region given shortage of specialized IT skills, increased cost pressure, and organizations shifting their focus on the core of their business and outsourcing the rest.” According to Gartner, MEA market has been growing slowly and steadily. Many organizations that have gone ahead with implementation of new ERP systems have been engaged with the vendors and SIs in completing and stabilizing the process, and have also been working in improv-

Cover story.indd 26

SAURABH VERMA, PROGRAM MANAGER – IT SERVICES, IDC MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA, AND TURKEY

“Some of the key factors driving the growth are increased government spending on citizen centric projects, public services, national infrastructure, healthcare, and education”

ACCORDING TO IDC, THE TOTAL MEA IT SERVICES MARKET GREW AROUND 10.2% IN 2013, AND THE 2014 GROWTH RATE IS FORECASTED TO BE AROUND 11.8%

ing the backend infrastructure. This includes building a new BCP and DR plan, implementing new ITSSM solutions, improving the IT processes including adoption of best practices in IT Operations management. Focus has also been in improving the skills of internal IT teams and outsourcing some of the regular services (where possible and feasible). “The ICT landscape is experiencing change from both a commercial and a technological standpoint. We are also witnessing a shift in how decision makers are reviewing their business models to service ICT needs for their businesses. Depending on the size and nature of the business, a number of organizations are exploring options

to move to a cloud managed service model for instance, where decision makers can take on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model rather than buying in hardware that would not only put pressure on their CAPEX but would also have to deal with legacy technology that will eventually become obsolete once new technologies are introduced,” states, Dong Wu, President – Huawei Enterprise, Middle East. Additionally, the emergence of consumerization, combined with the growing young population in the Gulf region is driving the need for technologies around the intersection of cloud, mobile, enterprise solutions, social, and information, with the result that IT managers

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COVER STORY

need to evaluate the workplace and examine their IT buying decisions accordingly. Mathias Militizer, General Manager, Middle East and Africa, Lexmark, is quick to point out here that specifically with respect to the Managed Print Services market, there has been significant growth in the last 12 months. The explosion in digital data is forcing organisations in the region to review their approach to enterprise information and how to manage it as part of their wider document management strategies. It is this that is driving the evolution of MPS so that it no longer simply focuses on the fundamentals of print output and fleet management. Now, it is increasingly about instilling best practice and improving business processes to integrate paper and digital workflows within an organisation leading to efficiencies and cost savings Moreover, the high proliferation of end user devices in the enterprise segment; harnessing of the Big Data information by all the vertical industries; and infrastructure and application modernization amongst others are some of the factors leading to the growth of the IT services industry in the MEA region. Verma further highlights that the exponential growth of end user devices in the enterprise segment has provided significant push to the enterprise mobility, and its surrounding markets such as mobile devices management. With the third platform technologies (cloud, mobility, social, and Big Data) gaining increased interest and adoption, the 3 V’s of Big Data i.e. volume, velocity, and variety are slated to offer a variety of opportunities to convert data into insights, and actionable business ideas henceforth. “Infrastructure and application modernization is the top priority now. We will see it to grow for the next few years along with other initiatives like data cleansing, improving the quality of data, data integration etc. Of course, mobility is and will remain a high growth segment for the next few years. As organizations complete the data quality improvement part, they would be looking at implementing BI tools and get more information from the existing transactions and databases. This will help them build the long term roadmap for Big Data planning and implementation,” explains Mahapatra.

TAPPING THE UNDERLYING OPPORTUNITIES IT services is by far the fastest growing market in the ICT industry. With multiple mega projects planned in the region, the basic support and installation services will see increased demand along with systems integration, and network consulting and integration services. Apart from

that, managed, datacenter, and cloud services will also see increased demand across the verticals. This substantial growth of IT services market has opened up a window of opportunities for both the vendors as well as service providers in the MEA region. And everyone’s in the race to tap those underlying opportunities. Some of the immediate opportunities include implementation of management platforms like IT infrastructure, applications, middleware, and hardware; mobility based solutions including architecture definition, security on devices, application development; virtualization of infrastructure, consolidation activities, building of new datacenters, managing and monitoring them at a later point of time; and development, implementation and management of verticalrelated custom applications. Here, Mahapatra is of the view that MEA is a very engaging market wherein vendors and SIs need to be very much involved in understanding the requirements and building a long term partnership with customers. Both vendors and SIs need to look at the typical needs of this market and not force fit solutions 100% which they have implemented in other geographies. Support and services availability is this region is very critical, hence it is advisable that vendors and SIs should have a much focused strategy for the MEA region and prove their capabilities in this region and the verticals they want to target in this region. Also each country in this region is unique, so it is advisable for companies to understand those unique natures. Meanwhile, amongst the vendors, Citrix technology has always been about delivering applications to anyone, anytime, on any network. Building on this legacy, its solutions have evolved to deliver against this new IT imperative of mobility, enabling new ways of working through secure, mobile, and user-centric mobile workspace solutions. In collaboration with its ecosystem partners, the company is able to deliver a holistic solution that caters to various needs of organizations and end users when it comes to transforming their work and play to a truly mobile experience. “Citrix technology has always been about delivering applications to anyone, anytime, on any network. Building on this legacy, Citrix solutions have evolved to deliver against this new IT imperative of mobility, enabling new ways of working through secure, mobile, and user-centric mobile workspace solutions. In collaboration with our ecosystem partners, we are able to deliver a holistic solution that caters to various needs of organizations and end users when it comes to transforming their work and play to

a truly mobile experience. Virtual and mobile workspaces have been the cornerstone of Citrix’s offering for a while now. These empower people to choose when, where and how work gets done, giving them a new level of freedom, flexibility and choice,” opines Noman Qadir, Director – Channels, MEA at Citrix. Following a similar approach, Lexmark has developed the capability to enable organisations to manage the entire lifecycle of a document as it is vital that documents, whatever their format, can be captured at the point of entry to the organisation and integrated directly into business processes and workflow systems to ensure information is available whenever, and wherever it’s needed across the business. For the service providers like Help AG, competing in the services domain presents a huge opportunity. Since its inception, the company has maintained its focus solely on IT security and this has enabled it to build a level of technical competence that is unmatched. As the delivery of services essentially depends on the skill of the service provider, rather than only on the capabilities of the vendor solution, Help AG has a definite advantage over others. Stephan Berner, Managing Director at Help AG, maintains, “Services in general are a great means of delivering value to customers. The market scenario today is one wherein customers no longer require just basis solutions delivery. They want to engage more deeply with their solution providers in order to have a comprehensive solution together with things such as 24/7 support, managed services, etc. This permits us to wrap more offerings around the vendor products often allowing us to compensate on low margins on the actual solutions through the profits we make on the value-add services.” Similarly, for the other leading service provider of the region, StorIT, services is its biggest value addition and to consistently maintain the same is a big challenge. When a customer buys from StorIT, the value addition is quantified in the services rendered with and after the sales. This helps the company to service its channel better and in turn, get increased and new business opportunities. “As lower end IT has become a commodity and the IT products sold through VAD is little complex and requires various levels of services, the vendors have identified areas of service rendered at different tier levels. This helps in expediting the project, building redundancy, fan out customer reach, reduce cost of service to consumer and finally, have excellent turnaround and availability time. Our vendors have pioneered this model with us and StorIT delivers all tiers of service at

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COVER STORY

DONG WU, PRESIDENT – HUAWEI ENTERPRISE, MIDDLE EAST

MATHIAS MILITIZER, GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, LEXMARK

“A number of organizations are exploring options to move to a cloud managed service model, where decision makers can take on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model rather than buying in hardware”

“The explosion in digital data is forcing organizations in the region to review their approach to enterprise information and how to manage it as part of their wider document management strategies”

various costing to consumer transparently with the same quality and competency as required by the vendors, these are audited year-on-year to maintain and enhance service deliverability,” asserts Hema Abhilash, Technology Consultant, StorIT.

GAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE In a bid to gain competitive advantage in the IT services domain, both the vendors and service providers are adopting unique strategies. One such move is developing vertical knowledge as well as enhancing skills of local workforce that will help in building credibility in the region. Besides, like other international markets, they are also focusing on being price competitive and providing cutting edge solutions, as this strategy will yield good results here as well. And in order to provide end-to-end solutions to the customers, a consortium of technology vendors, SIs, and consultants are also being formed. “Each vendor and service provider have

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different strategy and identified verticals that they want tap into. Having partnerships with local resellers, distributors, and service providers across all the MEA countries is pivotal for the product vendors as each country has got different set of distributors and a mix of local, regional, and multinational service providers. For services providers, there are some common themes such as having a local presence in the country, leveraging a mix of on-shore and off-shore delivery capabilities, and a verticalized approach,” elaborates Verma. In order to harness business growth in the enterprise market, Huawei’s focus this year is to look into its channel partner business. The company will not only work closely with the partners but also enable and provide them value across different verticals markets, as it believes that it is vital to enable the partners as a means to go-to-market most effectively. “Besides, our focus is also maximizing profitability for the partners and at the same time, incentivizing them based on revenue

STEPHAN BERNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT HELP AG

“Today, customers want to engage more deeply with their solution providers in order to have a comprehensive solution together with things such as 24/7 support, and managed services”

targets, breakthrough in markets, industries and countries along with their commitment to investing with Huawei. Partner Development Funds (PDF) for instance, is just one of the key areas that Huawei is ready to allocate to partners as a means to create more business opportunities through marketing activities,” adds Wu. Toeing the same lines, Citrix continues to provide a complete mobile workspace solution that securely delivers apps, desktops, files and services to any user, on any device over any network – all with an intuitive user experience. As a result, workers gain access to a portable, always on, always connected working environment that follows them no matter where they go, no matter what device they choose to use, and no matter what method of connectivity they happen to be leveraging. “No other vendor provides the breadth of capabilities – from app and desktop virtualization, to secure mobile app and device management, to cloud networking – that are needed to enable the delivery of comprehensive and

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solution and real world security requirements or threats – a truly unmatched level of technical skill and innovation within the reseller community. Berner further highlights, “Our team of skilled security consultants often enhances the functionality of vendor solutions. This could, for instance, be writing customer signatures for IPS and Antivirus for Symantec SEP, IPS signatures for IPS systems, client application enhancements for Symantec DLP and advanced website protection utilizing Ergon Airlock and the F5 BigIP Platform.”

GROWTH PREDICTIONS

NOMAN QADIR, DIRECTOR – CHANNELS, MEA AT CITRIX

HEMA ABHILASH, TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT, STORIT

“Many service providers are adopting Citrix technology to deliver managed services to customers all over the Middle East”

“StorIT delivers all tiers of service at various costing to consumer transparently with the same quality and competency as required by the vendors.”

personalized mobile workspaces. Many service providers are adopting Citrix technology to deliver managed services to customers all over the Middle East,” asserts Qadir. For the printing major, Lexmark, one of the key strategies is its industry-focused solutions on a variety of verticals, from banking to retail. The company’s strategic approach to solving the unstructured information challenge is the advantage businesses need to exceed customer expectations, drive financial performance, and promote future flexibility. “As we own our technology, we are able to deliver a strong integrated MPS and solutions platform. Lexmark’s offerings have been extended following its acquisition trail of 12 companies over the past 3 years. The acquired companies allow Lexmark to tap into the elements of the capture, process, content management, and search across various vertical industries in document management,” states Militizer. In this competitive scenario, service providers too are in the fray of making a mark for

themselves and creating unique differentiators that could help them score over other players. For instance, StorIT’s USP remains in keeping up with the technology and dropping the services and offerings which are obsolete and move the service tier to partners on less complex services. “Our vendors support and continuous investment in technological needs are passed on to our partners and consumers. We proactively invest in ground breaking service offering, thus adding to our ability to retain resources and moving them up the ladder in scalability is another part of the success,” points out Abhilash. On the other hand, Help AG has built an unmatched level of technical competency. The company is extremely selective in the recruitment process and has about 80% of its staff serving in various technical positions. Even if there’s a lack of features coming from the vendor solutions, Help AG still has the resources to develop applications to overcome the limitations posed to bridge the gap between available product

According to IDC, the total MEA IT services market grew around 10.2% in 2013, and the 2014 growth rate is forecasted to be around 11.8% as per the recent estimates. The CAGR for the period of 2012-2017 is forecasted at 11.3%. Looking at the current scenario, the industry experts feel that the MEA market is at a tipping point, where organizations are looking at effective solutions to reduce capital costs, time utilized for deployment and drive higher performance. And in today’s environment, ICT adoption in an enterprise goes beyond just deployment. Enterprises have realized that the reason why they outsourced deployment of solution to an outside vendor is valid enough for them to look at ICT experts to maintain the solutions. Hence, role of IT companies has got extended to deploy, manage, update and upgrade as per the client’s business needs. This is the reason why Services is bound to become key drivers for IT investments in the coming years. Going forward, the managed service providers need to focus on service excellence and offer ‘productized’ services to retain customers. They must expand their local delivery capabilities by having knowledgeable, customer-facing partners, and value added distributors. It is also important for managed service providers to have productized solution that offer a strong USP with flexible business model like OPEX or utility based models. And considering today’s business-class infrastructure, which include mobile devices to security, virtual workstations to integrated collaboration, in-house support in future shall no longer be sufficient to those organizations riding on technology growth. To lead, managed service providers must define their way within the industry by scaling their infrastructure landscape to meet the demands of new customers while continuing to offer refined service to existing customers by partnering with experts, increasing their services scale and enhancing manpower skills. ë

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FEATURE

STRUCTURED CABLING

The Future-Proof Solution As the demands of bandwidth is increasing, the structured cabling solutions are being designed so as to meet tomorrow’s demands. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

ever before has exchange of information played a vital role as in today’s time. To make that process happen network is required and cabling forms the most crucial component of network, the heart of your business. The boom in internet users and streaming of HD content has resulted in increased demand of bandwidth and thereby laying pressure on networks. The growth of mobile data is touted to be the fastest in MENA region. The humongous growth in data is just one aspect of increased demand of structured cabling. From various vendor-specific cabling standards, the industry has accepted the structured cabling to facilitate easy working.

THE MARKET The global structured cabling market has been characterized by its stable growth over past several years. Growth is expected to continue in the structured cabling market to exceed $8 billion by 2015. “The Structured Cabling market in Middle East and Africa is growing steadily, which can be attributed to the current huge construction projects and ongoing infrastructure

projects, airports, hotels, hospitals, educational institutes to name a few. Countries such as UAE, Qatar, KSA are having continuous growth in the LAN Infrastructure market,” comments Tarek Helmy, Regional Director Gulf and Middle East, South & East Africa of Nexans Cabling Solutions. Meanwhile, the announcement of Dubai hosting the Expo 2020, and Qatar the FIFA World cup 2022, both will result in additional growth due to large projects being commissioned there.

THE GROWTH DRIVERS Structured Cabling has many advantages. It is flexible, easy to change or move and is usually termed as the future-proof solution. It also supports multi-vendor equipment and has a longer life. All these offer a greater ROI which is a must in the current economic conditions. The IP convergence is leading to complex networks and the ever-increasing growth in data with the insatiable need for greater bandwidth is leading to the growth in structured cabling. A well-planned structured cabling in an organization helps in increasing the productivity and the organization can reap benefits for years to come. Helmy tells that in the data centres, there is

a strong demand in high-bandwidth solutions, especially solutions that accommodate migration paths to 40G and 100G speeds both in copper for server to switch connections and fibre for switch to switch links. Energy efficiency is an increasingly important aspect in the choice of cabling especially with the arrival of Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE P802.3az standard), which allows for energy savings in the physical layer (PHY). “This gives clients insights on where best to use fibre or copper cabling. The design and lay-out of a cabling system in a data centre is an often debated and studied topic, where we bring in experts to help our customers decide what best suits their requirements. We are also witnessing market growth in the Data Centre market with the immediate need of the 10 GBE application over copper & Fibre,” says Helmy. Computer rooms or data centres of the past, hosted dedicated servers for each application. With arrival of mobile devices and server virtualisation things are changing dramatically. Much of the current movement to cloud architectures is being enabled by massive adoption of virtualisation. Since 2010 there are more virtual servers shipped than physical servers. The current trend

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FEATURE

TAREK HELMY

REGIONAL DIRECTOR GULF AND MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH & EAST AFRICA OF NEXANS CABLING SOLUTIONS

DAVID HUGHES

RCDD/DCDC/NTS, SENIOR TECHNICAL MANAGER MEA, COMMSCOPE.

“The Structured Cabling “Structured cabling isn’t just market in Middle East for data. It also supports a and Africa is growing diverse array of extra-lowsteadily, which can be voltage systems throughout attributed to the current an intelligent building, such huge construction projects as HVAC, security, VoIP, and ongoing infrastructure lighting systems and more. projects, airports, hotels, That’s a lot of responsibility hospitals, educational for the structured cabling institutes to name a few.” infrastructure to handle nowadays.” of BYOD’s with smart phones will increase business demand even further. The next big growth area is in machine-generated data, for example data coming from security cameras and also billions of RFID tags and sensors. “Structured cabling isn’t just for data. It also supports a diverse array of extra-low-voltage systems throughout an intelligent building, such as HVAC, security, VoIP, lighting systems and more. That’s a lot of responsibility for the structured cabling infrastructure to handle nowadays,” says David Hughes RCDD/DCDC/NTS, Senior Technical Manager MEA, CommScope.

EVOLUTION AND INNOVATION From a vendor-specific system to a standardised one, cabling has come through a long way. Fibre

is gaining its foothold but copper has also not lost its value especially there is scope in particularly in CAT6 UTP for Gigabit Ethernet and CAT7 for 10G. “Copper cabling solutions are ideal in “horizontal” situations, for example in service areas on a particular floor or office, while Fibre cabling is well suited to “vertical” applications, working as the backbone between floors and between buildings, and as the connection for Wi-Fi or DAS systems. In an intelligent building, these different layers of IP connectivity are the arteries of information that allow central operation and interoperation between various building services,” comments Hughes. Helmy says that from technology point of view, there are innovations like arrival of AVB (audio video bridging) which is intended to deliver the highest quality of audio and voice

traffic which is very sensitive to latency and noise. Another one is direct attached twinax could be too expensive, therefore there is an increased focus on fibre only today for 40G/100G support or anticipating the arrival of 40GBASE-T, although with copper cabling there is a requirement for fully shielded. With the proliferation of lot of mobile and wireless technologies including 2G, 3G, 4G/ LTE, Helmy feels that only the Wi-fi will have an impact on the LAN cabling. The role of cabling is to connect WAPs to the IT network and to enable wireless to be flexible and upgradeable. New generations of WiFi are appearing on market now, and will run mostly at 5GHz and possibly 60GHz (also referred to as WiGig).These WAPs have reduced cell size coverage, meaning more AP’s are required. The bandwidth will also move up. It is expected that the uplinks will run at 10Gb/s, where the wireless downlinks are running at 1Gb/s speed. Wireless AP’s are driver for need of Cat6A in the office environment, the cabling standard to support 10G Ethernet. Cat6A is required to cable between SD and SCP. From SCP to other Service Outlets can be of lower grade and can be made dependent of type of application. “Mobile data is growing faster in the MENA region than anywhere else in the world, with a growth of 107% in 2013. We expect long-term demand for Enterprise products to be driven by global information technology spending and the ongoing need for bandwidth, which creates demand for high-performance structured cabling solutions in the enterprise market. This will certainly drive the need for more and higher speed Wi-Fi Access Points and next generation multi-operator DAS systems, both of which will require a wired infrastructure to support them,” says Hughes. “End-to-end” fibre to the x (FTTx) architectures can now transmit voice, data and video through technologies that include radio frequency over glass (RFoG), Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) and gigabit passive optical network (GPON).

THE ROLE OF CHANNEL CommScope has an extensive global network of channel partners including independent distributors, system integrators and value-added resellers. Its enterprise segment sales force has direct relationships with its enterprise customers and generates demand for its products, with sales fulfilled primarily through channel partners. The direct sales force and channel partner relationships give CommScope extensive reach and distribution capabilities to customers globally. Its

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KEY FEATURES

CommScope’s solutions are known and trusted for their performance and reliability. From the traditional structured cabling perspective, these include: l GigaSPEED X10D copper cabling for horizontal subnetworks, delivering 10G data transmission up to 100 meters with four connectors in the channel l TeraSPEED singlemode, zero-water peak fiber cabling for vertical deployments, delivering 50 percent more wavelength range than conventional singlemode, with up to 16 channels of coarse wave division multiplexing (CWDM) and 400 channels of dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) l LazrSPEED 550 multimode, laser-optimized fiber cabling for vertical deployments, delivering up to 10G over backbone connections up to 550 meters When combined with iPatch panels that simplify remote monitoring and management, these structured cabling solutions deliver all the power you need to turn your intelligent building into a smart bet for your customers. CommScope has recently added the Redwood intelligent lighting network platform and iTRACs CPIM to its comprehensive portfolio. And in March, it announced the launch of Data center on Demand, which combines the best of traditional brick and mortar data centers and modular data centers.

Broadband segment products are primarily sold directly to MSOs with whom the company has long-standing relationships. Since 1998, Nexans has invested heavily in establishing a very strong partner network across the ME & East Africa regions. Its partner network includes Value Added Distributors & Direct channels (System Integrators). “Each of our partners is a market leader in networking within their local market. The market leadership of Nexans partners includes expert staffing fully certified by us, support level, end-to-end solution offering, and last but not least their financial strength. Such strong partners’ network has enabled Nexans to secure deals with Global Key Account customers,” asserts Helmy. He says that Nexans always grant its end customers to have a proper implementation of the offered solutions through utilizing the Nexans certified partners in their market.

CHALLENGES Hughes points that uncertain global economic conditions, an ongoing slowdown in commercial construction activity, uncertain levels of information technology spending and reduction in the

Nexans has a wide range of best-in-class products such as the LANmark-6A and -7A products, the LANsense Next Generation Analyser (NGA) and the Nexans EMAC (environmental monitoring and access control) devices, complete Data Centre Pre-Term solution in both copper and Fibre, and High density patching. It also has pre-terminated customised copper assemblies in Cat6A, Cat7A, as well as FO assemblies in OM3, OM4, & OS2. Nexans offers a complete range of LAN cabling products and value added services providing improved reliability and reduced cost of ownership for Network Managers. All offered solutions are supported by the Nexans 25-year warranty program that covers Products, Performance, Channel, and Labour. It is worth mentioning that Nexans’ Intelligent Infrastructure Management (IIM) solution is seeing an increase in demand from companies looking specifically for medium to large installations as it has also become mandatory in Data centres. Medium to large installations are requesting Intelligent Infrastructure Management solution to manage their IT networks. The Middle East is one of the largest markets for Nexans’ Category7A solutions, which has double the bandwidth of the current Cat6A as well as it is likely to support the future 40 GBE application once it becomes standardized.

levels of distributor inventories may negatively affect demand for structured cabling are some of the challenges faced by the industry.

SUGGESTIONS FOR CIO/CTO The feasibility of the deployment is important along with the ROI of it. In these cost-cutting times, expenses on any project become a priority for a CIO/CTO. “Much of the new technology we have brought to market recently, from our Redwood intelligent lighting network to the iTRACS DCIM system, to Data center on Demand, has been focused precisely on this topic. We have seen that conventional technologies are no longer sufficient for helping CTOs and CIos achieve their objectives around expense reduction and efficiency, and that new tools, such as those described above, are required to help them meet their overall plans,” says Hughes. Helmy says that CIOs & CTOs need to verify that the initial investment on the LAN cabling (CAPEX) is really minimal when taking into consideration the expected life time of the infrastructure (+20 years), and that cabling may represent not more than 7% to 10% of the IT

budget of any project. Accordingly, there is no saving whatsoever when they pay a premium for the best available infrastructure cabling in terms of quality and latest technology, which will support their today’s and tomorrow’s requirements. “Don’t just look at investment cost (CAPEX) but also at operational costs (OPEX). Cabling infrastructure needs to support up to 3 generations of active equipment! Operational costs can be reduced even further with a managed cabling system or automated infrastructure management (AIM),” he adds.

FINALLY The opportunities in the structured cabling market are huge. However, the increased penetration of smartphones, tablets and the never-ending demand for greater bandwidth is putting pressure on the supply side. The vendors are continuously innovating to serve the best to the customers. As more bandwidth is needed for digital voice, high-speed data and high-definition video, service providers are looking for innovative optical infrastructure solutions to meet today’s challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s demands. ë

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MY VIEWS

SIMONETTA MERCIECA

SALES DIRECTOR – EMERGING MARKETS, 2X SOFTWARE

“Enriching the cloud computing experience” FOLLOWING ITS VISION TO BECOME THE RECOGNIZED LEADER IN CLOUD COMPUTING DOMAIN, 2X SOFTWARE IS INVESTING HEAVILY IN R&D TO BRING INNOVATION TO THE MARKET; THUS, ALLOWING ITS CUSTOMER TO OBTAIN THE MAXIMUM FROM THE CLOUD COMPUTING EXPERIENCE.

Briefly tell us about the inception and evolution of 2X Software? 2X Software was formed in 2005 by industry veterans in response to the growing demand for cloud computing. The knowledge roots of the company are deep in the communication protocol, IT security and virtualization. The company pioneered some of the earliest innovations in client and hypervisor independent desktop virtualization and application delivery.

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2X became one of the first ISV’s to leverage virtualization as a fully managed and centralized BYOD approach, doing so before the rise of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android smart device boom. 2X is battle tested and has proven its experience in business continuity with each successful implementation of more than 20,000 enterprise customers into a secure and cost efficient mission critical private cloud environment.

2X is in a space which is already crowded. What is your niche in this space? The cloud-computing arena is quite crowded now; many companies are moving fast in order to consolidate their market share. 2X has embedded in its DNA the innovation, we are delivering a unique technology to the market and we are continuing to do our best to maintain our customer on the technological frontier. In the last years, we have consolidated our position as trusted advisor to any business that would take advantages of cloud computing. How are you different from cost and application perspective? 2X Software is the answer for all the companies that are looking for an alternative at the oligopoly of the traditional big corporation. We are able to provide high quality standard and application high availability at very competitive price compared to our competitor. The thousands of customers that join our company every day is the proof that model is working.

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Currently, the company offers 4-5 product lines to the market. Which product are you focusing the most in this region? Considering the size of companies in this region and the evolution of the business, we believe that the market is interested to hear about 2X ApplicationServer XG. The solution can allow the company to enjoy the full benefits of the cloud computing, remote access, publishing application and mobility can boost the productivity reducing instead the IT cost. How do you approach the market, as it is quite open? Our approach to the market is quite simple. Our success is based on two main reasons – an excellent technology platform and a very competitive price. In EMT, we have identified a reliable partner to help us to deliver these two messages and better understand the specific needs of region. We have developed a model that allow us to have a worldwide vision but with a local flavor. We firmly believe that one size does not fit all; and we are proudly a global local company. We are aware of the competitive arena and have already our place there, but also we are focusing on all the companies left out of the cloud computing because of complexity or budget limitation. What is your sales pitch for the CXOs? Since 2X Software was formed 8 years ago, the company pioneered some of the earliest innovations in client and hypervisor independent desktop virtualization and application delivery. 2X is neither a pure play cloud software developer nor a cloud computing service provider or software as a services (SAAS) provider. Actually, 2X is the software based solution to do all of those things. 2X ensures that any enterprise or customer’s data and applications are always fully secure and available. 2X leverages their ability to provide a complete cloud computing ecosystem by offering the flexibility to choose from a broad range of enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure solutions. With offices in all major time zones, 2X also has the advantage of not being a “lights out” software vendor. 2X’s highly experienced support engineering teams are available 24/7 to take care of any issues that may occur, so that you never have to worry. 2X is even better than traditional support call centers because the person you call or email about a problem will be the engineer who will help you fix it. 2X is not an order taker, and

they don’t try to shape your needs so that they match their products or services. By listening to their customers’ needs and feature requests, 2X take a unique consultative approach to delivering a solution with their flagship product, 2X ApplicationServer XG. It is a fully flexible and customizable all in one enterprise cloud software solution. Do you remember good old fashioned customer service? They do at 2X, and they practice it every day. 2X is not a large company, but they have over 20,000 customers across the globe, and every 2X employee is excited to know something about you and your IT needs. So don’t be surprised if you get to know 2X Support Engineers & Customer Service Agents by name. Most probably they already know yours. 2X gives you premium private cloud computing solutions without the premium pricing. They’re different because they offer private cloud software technology solutions for data centers and home users at very competitive pricing across their entire product line. Compared to other solutions,

POC? Our strategy for pre-sales and post-sales for the region is provide a consistent support since the beginning of the project until the last server is up and running. With the support of EMT we want to be close to the partners and the customers in order to develop the right confidence in 2X solution. A POC is available for any customer that would like to discover more on the solution, looking how it moves in its environment. Honestly is our best sales pitch, most of the time we close the POC and the sale at the same time. What is your partners’ requirement and empowerment strategy? In order to improve the knowledge of 2X Software channel, we have created a consistent partner program, built between benefits and trainings. Different partnership levels are available: • 2X Partner – Entry level obtained after initial 2X Partner Program. • 2X Advanced Partner – For resellers who sell

“WE HAVE CONSOLIDATED OUR POSITION AS TRUSTED ADVISOR TO ANY BUSINESS THAT WOULD TAKE ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING”

their cloud-based products and services have the potential to save your business upwards of 60% of total cost of ownership. What is your marketing and distribution strategy for 2014, though we know EMT is your only distributor? 2X Software at the moment do not have strong brand awareness in the region and our main effort for this year is to grow in terms of market share and increase our brand awareness. All the marketing activities on the area will be address through EMT, our trusted advisor and the only authorized distributor in the region. We are engaging with the local specialized press to help the audience to read more about our vision allowing them to get closer to 2X Software. Later this year, we are planning to organize an event with EMT in order to present the new products to the market. What is your pre-sales and post sales strategy in the region, including

and support 2X products on a regular basis. • 2X Premium Partner – For resellers who actively sell, support and promote 2X software. 2X Software is committed to providing the expertise and resources necessary for the success of the partner. We have built the program to allow the partner to grow with us with the minimum investment. The global 2X Partner Program allows our partners discounts for the full range of “state of the art” 2X virtual computing solutions, marketing and sales support, enhanced technical support and sales and technical training. What kind of growth are you visualizing in this region and which verticals are most like to buy your products? By the end of this year, we are aspiring to grow about 15% in the area. The verticals that have been traditionally keen to adopt our solution are the public sector, particularly the education segment, the services and media and communication. In the region specifically, we also expect to see an increment in the Oil and Gas sector. ë

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CUSTOMER SPEAK

AHMED HASSAN MOHAMMED YAQOOT

IT DEPT MANAGER, EMIRATES TRANSPORT

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We wanted a skilful and a reliable partner who understood our requirements thoroughly, advise us with the right solution and help us move faster.But that was not the only factor for selecting Emitac, it was about the solution also.â&#x20AC;?

ounded in 1981, Emirates Transport (Emirates General Transport and Services Corporation) is a federal corporation wholly owned by the government. Emirates Transport covers the entire country with 33 locations, 19 business centres and 7 subsidiaries. With a colossal fleet i.e. 15,000 and approximately the same number of employees, the services offered by the organization include Technical services, Logistics services, Support Services, Transport & Rentals and School Transport. Since 2007, Emirates Transport has undergone a revolution in its business line and in its IT infrastructure.

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CUSTOMER SPEAK

EMIRATES TRANSPORT

Pumping Life into IT Infrastructure

When the business of Emirates Transport started expanding, the organization realised the need of transforming its IT infrastructure.

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

THE ‘INFRASTRUCTURE’ CHALLENGE

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PARTNER

Emirates Transport’s IT department was established in 1998 with five people. Today, it has 34 people. “We have a wide variety of technology to serve different types of businesses but the challenge was about the infrastructure. Our data centre was too small and in 2007 since the business started growing, we found that it would be difficult to live with the datacenter we had,” says Ahmed Hassan Mohammed Yaqoot, IT Dept Manager, Emirates Transport. The challenge was to construct the data centre in the same space without affecting the business.

One of the initiatives of Emirates Transport’s IT strategy was to build a virtualized environment. Yaqoot tells that his idea was not to stick with the technology but with the partner. “We did the benchmarking for infrastructural capabilities and from UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCCA) we got feedback on service level of Emitac Enterprise Solutions (EES),” he informs. Before that, Emirates Transport was dealing with Emitac but only for HP servers. “We wanted a skilful and a reliable partner who understood our requirements thoroughly, advise us with the right solution and help us move faster. But that

was not the only factor for selecting Emitac, it was about the solution also. We wanted to go for the right solution and not the one which we liked,” tells Yaqoot. The relationship between the partner and customer is not just about selling the products. It’s about how you can serve the relationship well by giving them support and service. Emirates Transport conducted sessions with various partners to understand their solutions. Yaqoot tells that many vendors like EMC, Fujitsu, Dell etc. were present themselves directly but his criterion was the role of partner in this project and their experience in this kind of project. “The partner should have the capability to carry on the

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KEY MEMEBRS OF ET IT TEAM

TEAM EMITAC INVOLVEVED IN ET PROJECT “Following a review of the major offerings in the market, Emirates Transport decided to implement VMware as it best suited the organization’s needs and would easily integrate with its existing server virtualization infrastructure. The proposed solution was a Multitechnology solution and was scoped specifically for Emirates Transport to design, deliver, setup and implement the infrastructure that would be required to host Core / Enterprise Applications at Emirates Transport Datacenter. It was highly imperative that the requisite infrastructure for hosting Enterprise Applications was to be right sized and configured to meet the high availability / uptime requirements of the business community in addition to strong post implementation support services. As a part of the solution, EES undertook the installation of Hardware; carried out a planned and thorough assessment of the environment and proposed a sound Migration strategy followed by producing a Virtual Infrastructure Design. Once the consensus was met, the migration was planned and virtualization of 60 servers was carried out successfully.”

commitment. From this perspective, Emitac was more efficient than others. The project was huge and estimated at $2mn but the deal was signed at $1.6mn,” he adds. For Yaqoot, money was not the main concern but the most important thing was, the partner chosen should be able to meet the expectations and provide support. Emirates Transport took enough time in evaluating the partner and finally the project took off in 2013. “The project taught us a lot in terms of technical risks and the mutual relationship with Emitac has grown ever since. A lot of projects have been delivered to this corporation by other partners, but the support was not up to mark. Hence support was one of the main criteria we were looking for in the chosen partner. Emitac has the experience needed, good in delivery of such projects and extremely good at support. GCCA also gave us the feedback that Emitac is excellent in support,” elaborates Yaqoot.

TRANSFORMATION Emirates Transport has deployed full HP solution including HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure with 10 blade servers, HP all-in- one 420 for the back-

up storage, HP 3PAR, and Veeam for back-up of cloud. It also included the transformation of all physical applications to the virtual environment as virtualization was done for about 60 servers. “The challenge was to move all the applications to the virtual environment and also to upgrade our domain of the exchange. The criterion was not to interrupt the business. Ultimately, we were successful,” says Yaqoot.

BENEFITS Yaqoot tells that transforming the IT infrastructure has had several positive outcomes on the organization. Earlier, Emirates Transport had eight racks of servers which is now reduced to two thereby solving the space crunch situation as well. “Earlier, it used to take 2-3 months to ask for procurement of a server, today it is ready within five minutes as it is virtualized,” he adds.

PROJECTS ON ROAD Emirates Transport does not have a DR site. Yaqoot is quite sceptical about outsourcing the project as he doesn’t want to take the risk of confidential information being compromised.

Therefore the organization is engaged with the Electronic Federal Network (FedNET) managed by the UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). Plus, the organization has decided to have its own DR site,. Emirates Transport is going to have the next phase of IT transformation and build its own DR site. It is in discussions with companies for the same. Other projects which are coming up include irtualization of all desktops and implementing mobility solution. “We will build our private cloud. We are expanding beyond the country and we need a highly secured channel to connect through internet,” informs Yaqoot. In a recent announcement by Emirates Transport, the organization has revealed its investment plan for 2014-2016. Apart from other features, the plan focuses on five main investment opportunities in the market through developing its initiatives, expanding the services of logistic transportation, private school transportation, technical services of light vehicles, technical services of heavy vehicles, and the abroad expansion of the services of school transportation.

FINALLY… Emirates Transport has a lot of projects coming up this year. “We are going to the mobile space with a bigger approach because we have a lot of e-services. It’s also important to do so keeping in mind the mandate of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum of providing a worldclass e-government in Dubai,” says Yaqoot In order to make the process smooth, from this year, Emirates Transport will share all its projects along with the time line with its big partners. Plus, Yaqoot wants to reduce the time to procurment to 15 days instead of one month. ë

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doesn’t mean that partners don’t have a place in it. We have partners who are also taking similar initiatives. And the second reason is to build the confidence that customers already have in us. We have come across a lot of customers who are very hesitant to move to public cloud. And even if they move, they are very selective. So, by building the hybrid cloud, we are sending across the message that it is seamless as well as boundary-less. The VMware story about hybrid cloud is very distinct from other stories out there in the marketplace.

DEEPAK NARAIN

REGIONAL PRESALES MANAGER, VMWARE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AMERICA

“Writing a distinctive cloud story” LOOKING AT THE WAY BUSINESSES THRIVE IN THE CLOUD ERA, VMWARE IS LEAVING NO STONE UNTURNED IN BRINGING OUT INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS THAT COULD HELP THE ENTERPRISES IN THEIR TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO DEEPAK NARAIN, REGIONAL PRESALES MANAGER, VMWARE MIDDLE EAST, TO GET AN INSIGHT INTO THE COMPANY’S CLOUD STRATEGY

What are the current trends prevailing in the Middle East region? The trend is very clear in this region. Earlier, there was a bridge called virtualization and today, we have crossed it. There are two forces that are driving the market right now. The first one is still the core virtualization, wherein people are very comfortable in converting their tier II and III systems into virtual machines. The real challenge is with the tier I systems like the Oracle’s, SAP’s, Microsoft Exchange, SQL Servers, etc., and finding an optimal solution for them in the virtualization environment. That’s what we call business critical apps. This is the technology side of the trend. The other side is of the whole concept of cloud computing, which is really about improving your operations and making it seamless. It is also about taking the bulk of the workload, automating it, and pushing the responsibility back on the

end user self service. Hence, these are the two forces that are driving from the data center side. The biggest force multiplier is the cloud that we experience every day. Everybody’s expectations of how IT should work have changed and they are expecting these kinds of dynamics in their day-to-day lives. It is because if we don’t give it to them, there are other players to provide the same level of services. VMware is currently riding on a transformational journey from virtualization to cloud. How are you embarking on this journey? Since it is a journey, we understand that every journey needs a light house. Hence, we are positioning ourselves as light house, wherein we have built our own cloud now for two reasons. Firstly, to build our own experiences from it so that it helps in improving our products. But this

There seems to be a great focus toward end-user computing as well. How is it shaping up? It is shaping up very well because we have a great data center DNA. We have been very successful with our endeavors like Horizon suite, which is an integrated solution that delivers published applications and desktops on a single platform. With the acquisition of AirWatch, we have realized that they have a great device centric DNA and are market leaders in enterprise mobility management. Now, we are trying to find synergies and ways to merge it. While we can’t share the details, the roadmap is very-very rich. It will be basically about taking the best of both the parties and even if there is an overlap, the best solution will be chosen. Which are the areas that are going to drive your business in the MEA region? Cloud is one area where we are betting big in this market. This is going to be the ultimate journey for us in the MEA region. We understand this is a region of small countries and hence it is going to be a fragmented market for us. Hence, we are looking to partner in each of these countries. We are also looking forward to work with government sector that needs the cloud for its own purposes. Every country has a different way of reaching that goal but the end target is the same. Does this mean that journey of virtualization is over for VMware? The virtualization journey is of course not over for us yet. Today, virtualization is a must for all the enterprises. The earlier trend was of mission / business critical apps and now people know the technology, its working, and benefits. In the current scenario, usage of the technology for mission critical environment is still there. We are no way close to the commodity market yet. Across the world, 60% of the enterprises are virtualized but we still have to cross the rest 40%. And mind you, the journey gets harder with each step. ë

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DAVID W. CEARLEY

VICE PRESIDENT & GARTNER FELLOW

“Promoting Cloud as a New Style of Computing” IN THE MIDDLE EAST REGION, CLOUD COMPUTING HAS MOVED FROM THE HYPE CYCLE TO A SITUATION WHERE THE MARKET IS WITNESSING DEPLOYMENTS AND TECHNOLOGY VENDORS HELPING THEIR CUSTOMERS IN THAT PROCESS. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO DAVID W. CEARLEY, VICE PRESIDENT & GARTNER FELLOW TO GET AN INSIGHT ON THE ADOPTION RATE OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN THIS REGION AND HOW IS THIS MARKET GOING TO EVOLVE IN THE COMING YEARS.

What’s your assessment of the cloud computing market here in the Middle East? When we look at cloud computing, we try to emphasize that it is not about external or internal, public or private cloud. It is a style of computing which has certain characteristics. Our observation of the Middle East is that this market is following the same set of path or trends like many other markets, including North America. As the concept of cloud computing begins to be understood, people see what it provides in terms of agility, abstraction layers, change the infrastructure, etc. There’s a lot of value to this style of computing and it impacts how you think about building data centers, applications, etc. The scenario here is such that there’s a dearth of local cloud computing service providers and the first step being taken up by enterprises here is going in for private

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cloud computing. If somebody wants to look for public cloud service providers, they have to look for some other parts of the world or region. This reinforces the idea of looking inside first, which is perfectly natural. But many companies say that since they have done virtualization, they are done with the cloud as well. However, the fact is that virtualization is not cloud computing. It is one of the techniques that you might use to deliver it. We look at a path where people are naturally applying the techniques internally, wherein they first think of private cloud and virtualization, then they quickly realize that there’s a lot more involved in it and in turn, start building true private cloud environment. If you look at the public cloud, it’s only a matter of time before we see more things happening in this domain. In fact, there are many companies today using public cloud services out of the Gulf region. Hence, we have been successful in breaking the whole myth about cloud computing. The reality is that there are certain workloads and data types that can be done in the cloud. There are local companies here using Salesforce.com, Office 365, and Azure amongst others. We are also seeing some activity in the European region on AWS. But typically, we are trying to target Europe as a key delivery point rather than the US. Public cloud is happening in a variety of places. But, the reality here is that it is a very small market for public cloud services. Could you highlight some of the challenges being faced by this region in terms of cloud services? The big issue that everybody raises here is that all the cloud services are from Europe, Singapore, the US, or somewhere else. So, over the next 12 to 18 months, we expect more things to become native in this region and a variety of real and local true Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings. And if you look at the longer term plans for some of the larger providers like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, there’s a lot of provider of IaaS. It breaks down into three groups – first are the Leaders who have the highest growth rate in infrastructure usage or largest existing number of steady state virtual machines. Amazon is by far the number one player in this space, followed by Microsoft and Google. These three are distancing in terms of growth rates and steady state virtual machines. Then, there are players like CSC, Rackspace, and VirtualStream amongst others who are part of the second tier and have smaller

growth rates. And the third tier comprises of players like Orange, Atos Origin, and others that are in the game but have pretty thin existing business. Here, I would put Etisalat as well that doesn’t have true cloud services today. However, this group is going to move up in terms of scalability anchored in a region, market, or industry in order to survive long term. Hence, we are seeing a lot of interesting dynamics in terms of IaaS. Where is the market going to evolve generally in the next few years down the line? I have already talked about the changing dynamics of IaaS. Then, if you look at Software-as-aService market, it is also evolving where every software vendor will be delivering SaaS or multitenant service over the next few years. There are times where companies like Microsoft may evolve. They have Office 365 as well as Azure. But there is some overlap. In fact, the biggest vendors like Google, Microsoft, and IBM have a big anchor point and they are going to leverage that to build the bigger ecosystem. But most SaaS providers are delivering just their application and not infrastructure. In fact, many of them don’t have to do anything with the data centers.

Where do the opportunities lie for the channel partners? The opportunities that exist around here looking at helping enterprises migrate to cloud applications, doing management around cloud applications the same way as managed services in the classic outsourcing area. The channel partners will have to look at their existing client and find out when they have upgraded to this version of the software and mapping out with the client as to where be the next reasonable upgrade point and helping them to make the transition. Here, the channel partners will have to play a very different role in the cloud in terms of bringing the real value proposition. The business is going to be different for the channel partners in the cloud computing scenario. If they are making the money out of selling the hardware, they have to be very watchful as the whole market dynamics changes. If they can’t make money out of licenses and selling hardware, they will certainly loose the business. Today, cloud computing is still perceived to be in the hype cycle. When it is going to be commodity or real business for enterprises as well

“THE SCENARIO HERE IS SUCH THAT THERE’S A DEARTH OF LOCAL CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICE PROVIDERS AND THE FIRST STEP BEING TAKEN UP BY ENTERPRISES HERE IS GOING IN FOR PRIVATE CLOUD COMPUTING”

I would not be surprised to see SAP coming into Dubai in the next one year to 18 months time and work with Etisalat or DU, and then deliver SAP as a service. They are building the HANA based multi-tenant service and going to sell it as a service. But at the same time, they won’t run the data center; they would run it on somebody else’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The issue with mission critical application and data is complex. Today, what we see in the US, Europe, and some parts of Asia is that mission critical applications are running on the cloud. Once you get local service providers here, it’s going to look much more like outsourcing. If you are willing to do it, it’s just a different kind of outsourcing with a little different contract.

as vendors? It’s important to understand that hype cycle does not measure when it is going to become mainstream or when you get the value. It’s really the measurement of what is the current market perception. Today, the cloud is going down towards the slope of disillusionment. Though it is not at the bottom now, it is half way down. The reason for this is that earlier people used to perceive cloud as a savior for everything. But looking at some of the failures, they have started looking it down. We keep informing people to not dismiss it suddenly, as there’s a value proposition in the cloud. Hence, we believe that there’s still 3 to 4 years time for the cloud computing to become real business for vendors. However, it is already mainstream for enterprises for some applications. ë

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TOSHIBA

Diversifying its Role

Strike while the iron is hot is an old adage but Toshiba knows how to practise it. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA (MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM)

ith the evolving scenario in IT, vendors are realigning their strategies to sell products along with solutions and services. The wave of mobility and BYOD has brought about a sea change in the demand of the customers. Toshiba is making full use of the opportunities opened up by the new trends. In April, Toshiba launched Cloud Client Management Services in MEA, six months after it was launched in the US and Europe. Toshiba Cloud Client Manager (TCCM) is a cloud service that allows IT administrators to easily manage end-point devices across a deployment by providing comprehensive tools to ensure device efficiency and compliance. “As the production costs are declining, we cannot expect to survive by just making products. We are now looking at hardware and services. We will come out with more services. That’s the direction where we are going,” comments Santosh Varghese, General Manager - MEA, Digital Products & Services, Toshiba. An IT manager needs to manage all the PCs and with the concept of BYOD gaining traction, people bring all types of devices. Even mobile devices are connected to the corporate network. Such a scenario may be a nightmare for the IT manager. Apart from managing the gadgets, information accessed by the employees has also to be monitored. “With client device management

and mobile device management the IT manager can control PCs. He can centrally do a software update. He can also set alerts which of the PCs’ hard disk is not working and which one needs a back-up,” explains Varghese. When Toshiba offers hardware in B2B space, this particular service comes with it. If a customer is not buying a Toshiba notebook then he can buy these services separately. Companies which don’t have IT managers, Toshiba will provide them the services. $10 license fee per month per client is the cost structure of the service. “It is very critical now because of the concept of BYOD. Even students are asked to bring their tablets, so there is a lot of opportunity in different segments. One of these is the part of hardware plus strategy,” adds Varghese. All the new products by Toshiba will come bundled with this. The company’s salesmen and partners are promoting this srevice in different verticals. They can just buy the license and start managing the clients. This is not the highly enterprise one, it is on the client side also. For enterprises, Toshiba also plans to start Disaster Recovery site. “We have DR site in different zones where people can duplicate their data. We also have cloud storage. SMBs can use that. We provide guarantee, back up and real time access. Most of the companies here don’t even back up the data. We back up the data and provide data recovery also. DR and Cloud storage will happen

in October here. We are going step by step,” he adds. Toshiba has the opportunities with SI and channel to give these services. Some of the services are on cloud and customers don’t have to have a dedicated server infrastructure. Most of the SMBs don’t have an IT manager, they don’t want any of these infrastructure management. “We could also empower certain Value added reseller to give these services to them. This is another business model that we are looking at,” tells Varghese. For Toshiba, the next phase will be the VDI. Varghese says that there might be other kind of vendors for this but for Toshiba the advantage is that it can bundle the services with its hardware and hence it’s very easy to connect with its customers. For customers, these services by Toshiba offer better management of the devices, less down-time, you would know when your hard disk is going to fail, you can replicate the data and change the disk, even if its crashed. Customers can contact service providers where they can recover almost all the data. “It is going to influence different segments. We are looking at Enterprises and SMBs. We can also look into the consumer segment,” he adds.

FINALLY Gartner predicts that about half of the world’s

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SANTOSH VARGHESE

GENERAL MANAGER - MEA, DIGITAL PRODUCTS & SERVICES, TOSHIBA.

“This is the right time to offer managed services. Prices are dropping by almost 20% YoY and the market is shrinking. If the channel doesn’t do these kinds of services then they are going to close very soon.”

companies will enact programs by 2017 and will no longer provide computing devices to employees. “This is the right time to offer managed services. Prices are dropping by almost 20% YoY and the market is shrinking. If the channel doesn’t do these kinds of services then they are going to close very soon. This is the only way to rethink their strategy. Customers are ready for this change. It is a big thing for the channel, they can add here what they are losing in the hardware,” concludes Varghese. ë

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HUAWEI

Creating maximum value for enterprises

In order to create a strong foothold in the enterprise domain, Huawei is keen on providing wide-ranging and highly efficient ICT solutions and services for enterprise customers in the Middle East region. The company is also strengthening its relationships with VADs as well as channel partners to address the arising market requirements. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH (NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM)

or Huawei, a leading global ICT solutions provider, the Middle East has been one of the fastest growing regions around the world. The company has been present in this region for more than a decade and in all these years of its existence in the market, it has established a very strong presence as far as resources are concerned, as it has close to 3,500 to 4000 people based out of this region, covering GCC, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Even from the revenue perspective, Huawei is perceived to be the single largest vendor in the region. Traditionally, the company has been a telecom vendor with a huge presence in service provider area. After controlling a majority share in this domain, the focus is now shifting towards the enterprise business. For Huawei, it is the next growth wave and it would like to capitalize on its existing customer base which it has already created through the network of service providers. “Today, the focus is on creating the infrastructure which is required for the next-generation IT. We understand the bandwidth requirement and the speed of data communication is continuously increasing and this will give rise to agile networks. Software-defined network is certainly going to take over in the coming days. This is going to be our key focus area as well. And the same time, the number of resources we have in this region, we believe that enterprise business is the way forward for us,” says Shailendra Sainani, Director of Com-

mercial Sales, M.E. EBG at Huawei Technologies. He further adds, “Since the growth is tremendous in terms of data traffic and storage, it will give rise to high performance computing and high availability of data. The best example is of smart city, where there’s going to be an absolute explosion of data. Hence, from the enterprise perspective, storage is another key area for us. ”

KEY FOCUS AREAS From the vertical focus perspective, the hospitality sector is a very big area for Huwaei and that’s going to grow. It also has big plans for the education sector, which is another area that is going to provide lots of inputs in terms of BYOD and mobility. Oil & Gas sector is on the radar too, as it believes that the region’s economy is controlled through this segment. This is one critical area where robust infrastructure is required and the company believes that that it has the capacity to do it as well. From the technology perspective, the key focus areas include high performance switching, software-defined networks, storage, BYOD, and mobility. “From the products’ perspective, Huwaei is today one-stop shop, wherein we manufacture from servers to modular and container data centres. We are known for having a 26 feet container loaded with everything which is required to run an IT in desert. In terms of the solutions that we offer to the market, we consider mobility

is one of the areas that are dominating currently. So, we offer secured wireless connections where enterprises can drive device management and application management, which in turn, gives them the BYOD solutions,” points out Sainani. Additionally looking at the data explosion growth, Huawei also offers micro data centres, container data centres, and modular data centres. Another important focus area that the company considers is the connectivity of enterprise networks – from LAN and WAN perspectives. The company believes that these are the solutions that are going to drive its business in this region. He further states, “Our value proposition as against the competition is that we are again a one-stop shop, wherein we manufacture our own devices and not dependent on any thirdparty. Besides, the management software on the compute and storage platform is a single one. The connectivity is also coming from Huawei. Hence, we give an optimized performance in this entire gamut of things. We use accelerator cards which are again patented from Huawei. These are some of the devices which have no competition in the market.”

GO-TO-MARKET MODEL Huawei is a 100% channel driven company. From the enterprise business perspective, it doesn’t sell directly to an end-customer. The company follows a two tier strategy, wherein it has distributors as well as channel partners. And it engages with

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an end customer through a channel partner. Even, the services are also provided through the partners. “We work closely with the likes of SAP and Oracle and we have certified appliances on SAP HANA. We have appliances or configurations which are reference architectures and certified by these application developers and we take these to market through authorized channel partners. If you look at it from the application perspective, it’s the channel partner who has the understanding of that particular application. We can provide them with reference architecture which is certified for that particular application. Though we provide an end-to-end solution from the hardware perspective, when it comes to integrating the application, we work with system integrators or authorized application providers,” highlights Sainani. He elaborates, “We are pretty much focused on our approach, wherein we want our channel partners to be profitable with us. When we select the channel partners, we focus on creating value in their current ecosystem. Besides, we also look at whether they have the capacity to take our products into the market and act as a

SHAILENDRA SAINANI

DIRECTOR OF COMMERCIAL SALES, M.E. EBG AT HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES

“Our value proposition as against the competition is that we are a onestop shop, wherein we manufacture our own devices and not dependent on any third-party” trusted advisor. Hence, we focus from the region perspective, solution angle, and the verticals in terms of which sectors they can take us into. Keeping these aspects in mind, we carefully select

our channel partners. We have channel programs that help them on the profitability.” The company follows a value added distribution model. Since it has a very wide solution portfolio, it has to also see to it that distributors are picking up the right solution. The reason is that the company doesn’t want them to go and sell each and everything that we it has in its basket. Huawei wants them to specialize. Hence, the company has specialized distributors in the areas of voice and video (UC & C), IT (server & storage), and then it has one large distributor, which carries its entire product portfolio. These VADs are Enterprise Systems and Optimus. While Optimus takes care of UC & C business, Enterprise Systems looks after the overall portfolio. “Moving into the enterprise business from telecom carrier business – it’s a completely different ball game and business model. In the first three years, we tried to understand the market; the areas we need to focus on, and identify the partners that could carry our message forward. It is then we signed Optimus as our VAD in order to produce the best value for us in terms of preferred market, focusing on UC solutions. Toeing on the same lines, Enterprise Systems has been again able to demonstrate its reach in the market and showcase all our product line.” explains Sainani. He further mentions, “We believe that the success of a distributor is always directly or indirectly contributed by the vendor as well. We have observed that Optimus is quite focused on our brand and the company has been able to demonstrate a strong commitment by putting dedicated resources and demo equipments in place. Besides, it has also showed that it is quite focused with Huawei, as it doesn’t deal with multi-brands.”

MOVING AHEAD Huawei is continuously making progress in this region, as it has come up with a very clear idea to identify the number of channel partners it wants to work with in terms of managed relationship and number of partners it wants to engage on an opportunity basis. Like other vendors, the company doesn’t a huge army of partners. “We want to take a much targeted approach, where it’s all about identifying partners for managed relationships, develop those relationships, and have strategic vision. At the same time, we are open to partnerships; evaluate them from solution and region angles, and which verticals are they catering to. If these three elements are there in place, then it is not stopping us to forge partnerships,” concludes Sainani. ë

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CITRIX

Riding High on the Mobility Wave With new trends gaining traction in the IT world, a lot has been changed on the demand side and Citrix has already planned how to stay ahead in the race.

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

onsumerization has redrawn the IT landscape. The way IT is used and purchased is driven by consumerization and one of the most talked about trends is that of BYOD. Vendors are gearing up to fulfil the various aspects of this demand and Citrix is already ahead of the curve in enabling mobile workstyles. The company has exuberant plans to grow at a fast space in a short span of time. Citrix has always been known in the market and globally for being an application delivery company. In the last four years, a lot has changed at Citrix. “Five and a half years ago, we were just close to a billion dollars in revenue and we had taken the leap into Desktop Virtualization already before anybody thought about it. $2.9 billion is the published revenue of last year. In less than four years we went from 1 to 3. It also shows the evolution, we went from remote access, application delivery, took on virtualization, took on cloud computing, went into mobile workstyles now,” comments Noman Abdul Qadir, Director of Channels for Middle East and Africa at Citrix. Mobile workstyles is something which is happening and is real and Citrix has the full stack of the solutions. “It is unbelievable that while we have been in our niche area of focus at a global level, we have carved out that space that we are leading change and not just fulfilling demand from the

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technology perspective,” says Qadir. When the demands of customers change, there is a direct impact on channel partners. It opens up new avenues but the channel community needs to be prepared for that and the vendors need to sensitize them. A lot of enterprise customers are having the BYOD demand from their employees and then governance and compliance also are to be taken care of. “The customer demand is so big that it is putting a lot of pressure on channel ecosystem. We have given it a thought and we need to redesign our channel programmes. We need to make sure we are relevant to the right partners, the partners are profitable and that they are providing the right value and not just transacting and giving products to our customers,” informs Qadir. Citrix also wanted to make sure that it has the right partners on board to fulfil the demand. “Third thing is about differentiation. You want to make sure there is certain segmentation in the channel community so that people can differentiate and play in the right space with the customers. Those are the broad line changes that we have done,” he adds. Citrix works through channel and its product license fulfilment is also through channel. Citrix doesn’t want partners just to transact at 4-5% market. Instead it wants them to earn revenue and support customers. Partners play a role in making the customers happy and Citrix is making

sure business is developed in the market and the partners become relevant. “Skills, having the right solutions on board, profitability, differentiation are the points that a customer looks for in a partner. We want our partners to grow with us as well. Citrix is profitable to its partners , probably more profitable than a competition in our space,” comments Qadir. Qadir feels that from a reseller perspective, they become even more relevant to a customer than a Desktop Virtualization environment. They are able to influence the core of IT strategy of any CIO. Citrix is wary of over channelizing as then nobody makes money and the quality dips. Citrix wants to increase the number of partners who are productive, doing deals, real life projects with customers. It will also appoint new partners as the technology evolves and to make sure that the customers get the best. “The influx of partners from competition is unbelievable. The vice-versa happens very rarely because we have been so profitable over the years and have not lost partners. We want to be a channel friendly company. This is a clear mandate for us,” says Qadir. In Middle East, Citrix had a phenomenal growth last year. Qadir explains that is probably one of the most successful years Citrix has had in the Middle East. “It has been an upward curve, I have never seen a dip in my five years at Citrix. We love the word “any” which means the trend

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MEA

08/05/14 9:20 am

VIRTUALIZATION

NOMAN ABDUL QADIR

DIRECTOR OF CHANNELS FOR MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA AT CITRIX

“The customer demand is so big that it is putting a lot of pressure on channel ecosystem. We have given it a thought and we need to redesign our channel programmes. We need to make sure we are relevant to the right partners, the partners are profitable and that they are providing the right value and not just transacting and giving products to our customers.” MESSAGE TO PARTNERS “Partners can either ride this technology wave or they will come irrelevant. Partners are doing a good job and there is enough demand in the market. Buckle up for the roller coaster ride and let’s do it on a longterm not just opportunistic basis.”

is that customers want to see their productive, be able to work from anywhere, have access to anything on any network,” he adds. Qadir says that Citrix has competition in certain cases on server virtualization, cloud and some vendors competing on mobile device management and application delivery control. He believes that in all mobile workpsaces, Citrix is the market leader which itself is big enough for the partners to consider working with Citrix. “For customers, we have end to end solutions. Customers like us because we provide value and end-user experience. If you look at enabling mobile workspaces, let’s leave the traditional IT behind, if you look at consumers of IT, they want to make their life simple, open platform for any device and third is user experience, it should be seamless,” he adds.

Globally, healthcare has been very strong with Citrix along with government, banking and telecos. Education sector is the early adaptors. They have high impact with end users and a lot of critical applications and data that cannot be compromised, lot of them need flexibility in the way they approach it and have big needs on ROI and TCO. “Those people that need an impact immediately, those are the people who work with us. Retail came later as they consider cost of technology, but we have been game changers for many retail and fashion brands,” he adds. The mobility story is much bigger than the legacy desktop virtualization because you are touching many devices, your relevance to customers and customer’s end users is much more, services, revenue is definitely there. “Somebody who has done Desktop Virtualization, when

they look at mobility, they have to go and secure devices now which is the MDM story. Delivering on a thin client or laptop is different than that on a mobile. So, they will need to incorporate application management as well. Security is important too. An IT team needs easy, adjustable, flexible solutions to manage those workloads as well,” adds Qadir.

FINALLY… Citrix has recently re-looked at its distribution strategy because partners were looking for more options. Therefore, Citrix has appointed Logicom as the second distributor in the Middle East. “Our current distributor has done a phenomenal job for us though, but the demand is so much that we really needed to open it,” concludes Qadir. ë

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PARTNER CORNER

YOUSSEF FAWAZ

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DIMENSION DATA MIDDLE EAST

“Empowering enterprises to realize full benefits of cloud” FOR ENTERPRISES AND ORGANIZATIONS TO BENEFIT FROM THE TRUE ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD, IT HAS TO BE DELIVERED AS A SERVICE TO THE CLIENT, WHETHER THAT IS A PUBLIC OR A PRIVATE SOLUTION. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO YOUSSEF FAWAZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, DIMENSION DATA MIDDLE EAST, TO GET AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES BUSINESS AND THE STRENGTH AREAS.

Could you throw some light on system integration business in the MEA market? In general, the concepts of IT have changed. Today, the demands are more focused on achieving business objectives, as most of the CEOs and CIOs want to accelerate their business in a more cost-effective way and be as efficient as possible. This can only be achieved by focusing on the core business and organizations like us can take care of their systems. A new trend is also visible in the market, called IT-as-a-Service, where you pay as per the consumption. Here, you don’t need to own or buy the assets; rather you can focus on your core business. This is where our role comes into the picture. It doesn’t matter what we provide, our focus is on providing services that a client needs. Today, this is the focus and that’s what makes us stand out locally as well as globally.

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PARTNER CORNER

The Middle East market has matured over a period of time. Earlier, the enterprises wanted to own and control the assets but now, they just care about achieving what they want regardless of how it is done. This is where you have companies like Dimension Data who are vendor-agnostic. This means that we never push any brand and it is our imperative to see that the customers are getting the right service.This is a big differentiator for us. What has been the USP of your services vis-à-vis the competition? Our value proposition is that we are the only system integrator providing IT-as-a-Service. Today, we have globally 10 cloud services that we offer to the clients. For example, we have a success story wherein a bank has completely outsourced its IT to our cloud, which is a big step in this region and shows a trust toward our services. We cannot compare ourselves with other system integrators because we focus on our strengths rather than the competition. Besides, we are a global player and UAE specifically, is a place where all the big players are going multinational. And today, Dimension Data is one of the few companies that can go with these big players wherever they are. Whenever there is a requirement of services globally, be it in financial, transportation, or government sectors, we can be there offering the same service across the world with one single contact person in the country to provide any type of assistance. This is our sweet spot where we focus on. And we believe that this is the reason why clients worldwide want to work with us. How do you approach the customers with your portfolio of products and solutions? We always try to have discussions with the customers on their business requirements – be it at the COI / IT Director level or the CEO level. We have a good number of clients where the traction is from the CEO level because in providing any business solution, you can’t ignore anyone. Depending upon what the client is looking; we try to map the business objectives and strategies with the technical requirements. Hence, we translate their business requirements into the service – be it managed service or outsourcing – depending upon the maturity of the client. We have been playing a big role in the IT outsourcing space and today, IT-as-a-Service is becoming a new flavor of the industry. This is where we come into the play in terms of explaining the clients what they require and

their charges will be on per consumption basis. For instance, we follow this approach in the contact center space, where we bill the client as per the consumption. It’s like electric consumption model that is coming into the IT space as well. With the kind of changes happening in the industry, is there anything that concerns you? This is part of any change in the business. Today, many things have become commodity. Earlier, selling PCs was a big business but of late, many players have sold their businesses. And that’s the reason we keep on evolving our offerings to match the current business requirements of the enterprises. The changes need to keep on happening to catch up with the market trends and you need to also come up with new and innovative approaches that make businesses run. What are your strength areas as far as solutions or services are concerned? We are very much focused and wherever we feel like certain services are not our strength

this part of the world, where you are partnering with most of the big telcos as a preferred partner for them. While they provide the telecom services, the other services are white-labeled to partners like us. As long as you can bring the partnership into pay, it will bring you more values; and rather than competing, you can complement each other. Today, we have expertise in the ICT space and hence, we complement them to provide further services to their clients. Currently, we have a number of successful case studies in UAE and Saudi Arabia, where we complement one of the biggest telcos in the region to help them provide better ICT services to their clients. Where do you want to see yourself couple of years down the line? Will you prefer to be referred as system integrators then as well? The kind of offerings we have in the space of cloud and other areas, Dimension Data is already much more than a system integrator today. If you look at other system integrators in the Middle East, they still lack in these areas. We are beyond their level providing system integration services

“OUR VALUE PROPOSITION IS THAT WE ARE THE ONLY SYSTEM INTEGRATOR PROVIDING IT-ASA-SERVICE AND TODAY, WE HAVE GLOBALLY 10 CLOUD SERVICES THAT WE OFFER”

area, then we convey the same to the clients. We believe that reputation is more important than the business. If we fail or don’t deliver as per the client requirements, we won’t get further business and the reputation that has been built in all these 32 years of our existence will certainly vanish. Our success factor lies in the approach where prior to engaging with the clients, we look at our capabilities; whether we can we deliver the services locally, and take the help of our global team, if required. Besides, we also leverage within the group the expertise that can help us deliver the value and support to the customers. Now-a-days, telcos are becoming a direct competition to companies like Dimension Data. Do you agree? Actually, this is not the case, and specifically, for

in different shapes, form, or fashion. It might be for a start-up company to aspire to be the number one player; but in our case, we are already recognized globally for our quality services. Going forward, would you like to have more intellectual property in certain areas? Today, cloud is our intellectual property. We did a couple of acquisitions three years back, and today, we have our own cloud. We are on the list of Gartner, wherein we compete directly with major global players. After the acquisition of Datacraft and one of the companies in Europe, we are hopeful that it will help us increase our footprint and coverage in this domain. There will be more acquisitions happening in the future as well that will certainly help expand in the Middle East region. ë

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PARTNER CORNER

NARESH KOTHARI

MANAGING DIRECTOR, PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, INTERTEC

“People are trying to sell IT as a product and that is a problem. IT is an enabler and business driver. Now, one doesn’t have to change one’s need according to IT but it’s the other way round. That’s the big turn in the evolution of how things are happening.”

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PARTNER CORNER

INTERTEC

The Strategist

Intertec is not only a solution-centric IT Systems Integrator but also a developer of applications with a focus to consolidate in Managed Services arena. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

he industry might have shifted its focus from products to solutions now but Intertec was prudent right from its inception 24 years ago. Intertec has always been a solution-based company. “When we started we were absolutely selling solutions. But the scalability of those days and these days has changed completely. The flexibility and possibility of doing things has completely transformed. For some time in between we were focused on products. But today, product focus doesn’t help. At the end of the day, the customer is looking at a solution,” says Naresh Kothari, Managing Director, President & Founder, Intertec. As an SI, Intertec has partnerships with 21 companies including Infor, HP, Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft. It believes in bringing out the best of breed products and integrating them as solutions. The company has presence in the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and India. Intertec is clear in its viewpoint that it is not just the products which make the difference but the value services which are added on the top of them. For Intertec, it is imperative to understand the need of business for a greater productivity. “People are trying to sell IT as a product and that is a problem. IT is an enabler and business driver. Now, one doesn’t have to change one’s need according to IT but it’s the other way round. That’s the big turn in the evolution of how things are happening,” adds Kothari. Intertec has a definitive approach where in it looks into the pain points of

the customers and based on that it comes up with the niche solutions. “This is where the technology enablement comes that how do you really integrate. That’s the base approach which we have been following and this is what the requirement of industry is. From last five-six years, a lot of industry has invested in the approach where they thought one thing will fit in all, so they went into this major investment where they had integrated this approach. In today’s situation, same people are realizing that now how difficult it is to maintain that one single thing because it is not fitting into all the business areas. The key thing what we notice fits into our strategy that how these disruptive technologies are getting integrated to bring the solution,” adds Kothari. According to Kothari, three things to be understood to build a right solution are productivity, retaining and increasing customers, and reducing costs. “95% of our projects are well delivered because we go on a project delivery based on solution. We manage the expectation of the customer and we say what is doable and what is not. We are able to do end to end integration of anything in IT,” he adds. One of the focused areas that Intertec is consolidating its foothold is Managed Services. The company already has large projects in place. It is also setting up its own NOC in Dubai by next month. Kothari tells that there is a huge scope of Managed Services in Government and SMB. “What agility, SLAs, technology we can bring to the customer is to be pitched to them. There is

competition but we see there is a market for this,” he adds. Intertec is already providing help desk and complete end user management as managed services. And now it is getting into data centre management and monitoring. “We are bringing asset performance management strategies, which is the key. We have 70-80 customers and we are the second largest player in GCC,” adds Kothari. Kothari tells that the company cannot have one value proposition for all customers. Each customer has his own pain points and those have to be evaluated and then based on that the solution customization. “Understanding the pain points of the customer and managing costs in the contract year period is important. We have to see what the issues are and how long those issues are pending. Most importantly we need to be sure whether their customers are satisfied,” he tells. Intertec did a survey when it undertook some of the Managed Services projects. The results revealed that the customer satisfaction was as low as 60%. With its contract, Intertec has assured to bring that to 85%. “Today all our server contracts have 90% level of customer satisfaction. When we go to any organization we need to see what is their vision and the areas where they would like to concentrate. It has to be a combination of tool, people, processes and then how everything is aligned to their business objective. If we are able to map that value chain, we are there,” asserts Kothari. Intertec has expanded its role not only by foraying into Managed Services but also developing its own applications. In the local market, Kothari claims to be one of the few IT companies with its own IPRs as well. “We have invested a lot of money in development. We have created our own inspection and compliance. There was no local company available on that. We have developed a product on our ERP named Syros where there are more than 100 SMB customers on that,” adds Kothari. Intertec also has developed its own application on agent performance management which is a requirement in a BPO/Call Centre environment. It has its product on mobile force which is to do with mobile application for FMCG. This will be ready for delivery in three months’ time. Intertec has a complete different team focused on security where it works with companies like Symantec, F5, Fortinet and HP. Kothari tells that Intertec has strong authority in healthcare, transportation, hospitability etc.

FINALLY… With over 300 people in the company and revenue of 40 million dollar, Intertec is looking at a 40% growth. ë

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INNOVATIONS

Samsung Wi-Fi and NFC Printer Samsung Electronics’ new Multifunction Xpress C1860FW printer equipped with both Wi-Fi and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is touted as Samsung’s most user-friendly printer yet will make printing easier than ever and deliver the highest color quality prints in the

process. The great thing about our NFC-enabled printers is the flexibility that they offer to users. With these printers, people can print whenever they want, wherever they want—whether the document is on a cloud or in a camera. In our opinion, this kind of technology is more

than just state-of-the-art, it is practical; it is valuable; and it rings true to our belief that people are behind every product that Samsung creates. The Multifunction Xpress Series is crafted to be entirely problem-free. Thanks to the Samsung MobilePrint App, content

flows seamlessly and easily from consumers’ mobile devices to their printers. The only setup required is a visit to the Android App Store. Users can even print directly from Google’s cloud platform to get the documents that they want on-the-go. With NFC technology, printing, scanning and faxing are merely a tap away. The Multi-Function Xpress C1860FW was crafted with speed in mind.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Currently available across leading retail outlets in the UAE for AED 1899. n Content flows seamlessly and easily from consumers’ mobile devices to their printers. n The only setup required is a visit to the Android App Store. n Users can even print directly from Google’s cloud platform n By virtue of the Faster Print Jon Spooling and Gigabit Ethernet, the C1860FW will never keep users waiting. n The Dual CPU boosts the printers’ quick speeds to yield more than 50 pages of fullcolor slides and large, full-color documents in true-to-life color. n Bright, glossy colors are never out of reach with the C1860FW. n The ReCP enhances images to create professional quality print-outs with smooth images and clean text.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT EDITOR@ ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

FUJITSU NEW SCANPARTNER SERIES FOR ENTRY-LEVEL Fujitsu ScanPartner SP25/SP30/SP30F help companies take their first step towards a digital workflow, thus further improving their productivity and efficiency. The ScanPartner Series is the ideal extension of the two existing Fujitsu document scanner families: the fi Series with high performance features for professional use and the ScanSnap scanners tailored for home and small office environments. The new ScanPartner scanners come with a complete software package supporting document capture in business environments. The ScanPartner SP25/SP30/SP30F scanners are equipped with a robust paper feeding mechanism, offering high reliability for a wide range of documents including non-standard documents and plastic cards. The ScanPartner models SP30 and SP30F can capture 30 pages per minute (A4, colour, double-sided, 200/300dpi), the SP25 model scans 25 pages per minute. To further improve work efficiency the new scanners feature an ultrasonic sensor for multi-feed control ensuring trouble-free scanning of large volumes and mixed document batches. With measurements of 301x160x158mm (SP25/SP30), the ScanPartner scanners are compact in size. They occupy only very little of the valuable desktop space and are within users’ reach when needed.

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KEY CAPABILITIES n Delivers automated functions such as auto-size recognition and blank page removal to simplify scanning operations and pre-scan sorting n Offers automatic conversion of colour images into black and white images for optimised OCR (Optical Character Recognition) n Allows for converting scans into text documents such as searchable PDF or Microsoft Word files to be utilised for other work tasks

M AY 2014

MEA

08/05/14 9:29 am

INNOVATIONS

Epicor ERP Version 10

NEC Touch Monitor

Epicor ERP version 10 represents the transformation of business software to inspire the next-generation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) users. The new offering is a visionary blend of rich global functionality built on agile technology that eliminates complexity to make ERP easier to use, more collaborative and more responsive than ever before, while supporting today’s business imperatives: social collaboration, deployment flexibility, accelerated performance and broad device accessibility. With a streamlined experience across multiple devices and expanded deployment choices -- on premise, cloud or managed service -- Epicor ERP version 10 delivers a consistent experience, delivered in a single solution. The new touch-enabled, intuitive user interface (UI) is designed from the ground up to work with touch screen devices -- empowering users to work the way they want. With Epicor ERP version 10 companies gain a technology platform that can support them as they conduct business today and in the future – on any device, anytime, anywhere in the world. It is an enterprise solution that supports growth and expansion into new markets, encouraging companies to connect with their customers, partners, employees and products in new and innovative ways. Epicor ERP version 10 is immediately available in 35 languages and 26 countries worldwide.

NEC MultiSync E232WMT, a multi-touch LED backlit desktop display designed for the latest operating systems and for the use in today’s corporate office, retail signage and as a second device is 23-inch in size. Part of fits E Series and with an In Plane Switching (IPS) panel, it provides excellent colours and response times and industry-leading quality. The highly flexible height-adjustable stand can be adapted to meet the needs of any user, and can also be used in a flat desktop mode. Offering the best in form and function the E232WMT touch monitor features the latest 10-point P-Cap touch sensitive technology. Furthermore, the wide format is ideal for side-by- side applications, along with broad connectivity options with three inputs - HDMI, DVI-D and D-Sub. The ergonomic 53mm height adjust, and tilt design is augmented by a range of integrated features including speakers, headphone jack, USB 3.0 Hub and FHD webcam. The excellent IPS image quality offers wide viewing angles in 16:9 screen format and the overdrive function bring a 5ms response time for smooth and blur-free document scrolling, as well as moving-image reproduction. The combination of LED backlighting, as well as TCO 6.0 certification ensures that the E232WMT display aligns with NEC’s Green Vision for sustainability and is as eco-friendly as possible.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Introduces new enhancements to its powerful ICE Business Architecture, furthering Epicor ERP interoperability and empowering users to define ERP for themselves and share it with others. n Epicor ERP has more than 1,300 business services which are connected by the Epicor ICE Framework. Each service functions as a reusable component covering every major business aspect managed by ERP (e.g., Bills of Material, Invoicing, Material, Orders). n Each service is customizable and use rules engines -- rather than fixed code -- to control fundamental needs such as rounding, currency, legal numbering, and book structure. ERP services are managed by the Epicor ICE Framework to coordinate their interactions in accordance with business processes defined by ERP users. n Includes new consumer-grade enterprise search capabilities. n The Epicor Business Activity Query advanced query tool is now optimized for SQL Server for greater speed.

KEY CAPABILITIES n 10-point on-screen multi-touch control, 15,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio delivers amazingly detailed images and text n 3-way ergonomic stand with fold-flat capability n Height-adjust, tilt & swivel enhances your viewing comfort n Integrated USB 3.0 hub easily connects you to your peripherals n Full-HD camera and integrated speakers for increased functionality n HDMI input provides expanded connectivity with advanced technology

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EVENT REPORT

COMGUARD

Tech Convergence – 2014 At its 3rd Regional Partner Conference 2014 ComGuard also introduced the Partner Loyalty programme

THE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS WHO SPONSORED THE EVENTS: DIAMOND PARTNER Kaspersky Lab GOLD PARTNERS Ixia, GFI, AirTight and Ping Identity SILVER PARTNERS Bluecat, Exalt Communications, Niksun

omGuard held its 3rd Regional Partner Conference 2014 from 15th – 17th April, 2014. This is an Annual Event and this year it was named as “Tech Convergence – 2014” and the theme was “Inspiring Thoughts… Aspiring Greater Heights…” Altogether ComGuard had around 250 partners attending this event from across the Middle East, India & West Asia. This conference is an occasion where channel partners across the region of MENA, WA and India converge to network, share ideas, and get reinforced. This is also an event to recognize and reward the partners for their business excellence. ComGuard’s Partner Conference is a flag ship event of ComGuard that comes with fun, excitement, networking, and business opportunities. Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO ComGuard also introduced the Partner Loyalty programme, new road maps of business deliverance and enhanced

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Channel programs that will enable partners to achieve the mark of sales incentives. ComGuard’s Partner Conference is an exclusive, residential retreat by invitation, during which the ComGuard Team and the Technology Partners got an audience of 200 plus esteemed Channel Partners of ComGuard under one roof. The partner community got to hear from top-line technology partners who delivered insights to propel their business and present product cutting edge updates, channel initiatives and incentives during the conference speaking slots. There were two days of Networking Dinner where the Technology Partners got to interact with Channel Partners across the region. The Channel Partners got to enjoy two evenings of entertainment along with other partners from across the region as well. The first evening was purely for icebreaking and networking. Day two was the day of Conference followed by scheduled B2B meetings and ended with a Gala dinner

wherein ComGuard recognized it’s esteemed Channel Partners by presenting Awards in various categories. Day 3 was the continuation of the conference and culminated with the Valediction by around 12:00 hrs. Thereafter was the continuation of the scheduled B2B meetings. The Technology partners could meet and interact with prospective Channel partners. ComGuard benefitted from this by promoting cross selling of products. This was the definite ROI of the Event. ComGuard gave away 32 awards to its partners in various categories. This was the recognition towards the loyalty and achievement in various categories and levels of metrics. This year the Regional Partner conference was a runaway success. Both the Technology Partners and the Channel Partners gave ComGuard equally overwhelming and positive feedback. The icing on the cake was the scheduled B2B meetings. ë

M AY 2014

MEA

11/05/14 12:06 pm

Connect. Share. Give. Take. Solve. Save. Smile. Unify. Introducing Unify. Unifying business communications for the new way to work. unify.com

Formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications

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2/11/2014 2:44 PM

PowerEdge VRTX vs. Office IT Complexity Changing office IT from complicated to simple.

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Visit Dell.com/ae/business/p/poweredge-vrtx/pd and start untangling your office IT now. Dell is located at One Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas 78682. *Results based on testing by Principled Technologies in June 2013, comparing the total cost of ownership and return on investment of a PowerEdge VRTX with 4 M-series server nodes and 15x 300GB 10K shared storage to an equivalently sized cloud offering from a leading public cloud provider. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products.

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