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TRANSFORMING BUSINESS
Companies which are ready to mould themselves according to the market demands survive the best in long run and Etisalat is ready to set such an example /22
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WIRELESS
TO SU RVIVE YOU N E E D TO CONVE RG E /21
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For deeper network security
look beyond the obvious.
Dell™ SonicWALL™ next-gen firewalls provide a deeper level of network security without slowing down performance. Not all next-generation firewalls are the same. To start, Dell SonicWALL next-generation firewalls scan every byte of every packet while maintaining the high performance and low latency that busy networks require. Additionally, Dell SonicWALL network security goes deeper than other firewalls by providing high-performance SSL decryption and inspection, an intrusion prevention system that features sophisticated anti-evasion technology, and network-based malware protection that leverages the power of the cloud. Now your organization can block sophisticated new threats that emerge on a daily basis. Go deeper at: www.sonicwall.com/deepernetsec
Come and visit Dell SonicWALL at Gitex, booth number D1-21
Copyright 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell SonicWALL is a trademark of Dell Inc. and all other Dell SonicWALL product and service names and slogans are trademarks of Dell Inc.
H P M I DDLE EAST HOSTS AN N UAL CHAN N E L AWAR DS 2013.
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SECURING THE ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES
INDIAECM112013
The Middle East security market is poised to grow over the next few years, thereby, opening up huge opportunities for vendors to identify and tap. /34
EXPLOR I NG N EW AVE N U ES /42
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EDITORIAL
Security Matters Most
S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A EDITOR@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM
The five-six days of Gitex gives a feeling of as if we were into entire one month engagement. It was so exhaustive…full day, you engage with the clients and partners during day time and from the evening till mid-night get along with many people informally in parties thrown by various principals and partners. But believe me, it is worth spending time. You get to meet a lot of people under one roof, which otherwise would have been impossible to meet for years. Plus, you get to know so many trends in the market. At least, it was for us. As a new company in the market, it was a great exposure. I must say it was a good show. Best thing was all the segments of offerings were well placed in various halls making a very good display of the solutions. So the visitors did not have to waste their time in searching their required vendors. I was quite content with Hall-1, -2, -3 and -4, which was catering to the entire solutions market. What I found that there was an enhanced focus on Cloud Computing and big data this time from the exhibitors’ stand point. And, there were so many content security vendors available in the expo in various partners’ booths and even directly. In fact, security is the pain point for modern day’s IT infrastructure. Overall IT market in the region is growing- the Middle East expenditure on IT is expected to cross $20 billion this year, which represents a growth rate of over 10 per cent year onyear. The total security appliances market has increased by more than 11.13% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012 in the Middle East region. Another contributing factor is the wide spread personal and business usage of social networks, where data can be easily disclosed creating vulnerabilities that hackers can use. The market reports also suggest that almost 50% of social networking users in the UAE have fallen victim to one form or another of Cyber Crime. In this issue, we have covered the various contours of enterprise security. Plus, we have covered many stories which are worth reading. In addition to this, we have brought out a Gitex Round up, which covers all the vendors that are responsible for influencing modern day computing in the region. ë
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CONTENTS VOLUME 01 ISSUE 04 NOVEMBER 2013 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
2013
COVER STORY
SECURING THE ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES
The Middle East security market is poised to grow over the next few years, thereby, opening up huge opportunities for vendors to identify and tap. /34 MY VIEWS /30
“TAKING A MULTILAYER SECURITY SOLUTION APPROACH”
BASHAR BASHAIREH, SENIOR REGIONAL DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST & PAKISTAN, FORTINET
MY VIEWS /32
“SourceFire is all about Quality” ANTHONY PERRIDGE, CHANNEL DIRECTOR – EMEA, SOURCEFIRE
INNOVATIONS /45
FUJITSU DESKTOP SCANNERS
FEATURE
VAD PITCH
Etisalat /22
EMT /42
Transforming Business
Exploring New Avenues
The new Fujitsu fi-7180/fi-7280 and fi-7160/fi-7260 document scanners have been launched in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
STORAGE /41
‘Making Video Calling as Easy as Telephonic Calls’ GARY RIDER, RPRESIDENT, EMEA POLYCOM
EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 05 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08 ENTERPRISE::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 21 CORPORATE STORY:::::::::::::::::::: 24, 26, 28 GUEST TALK::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 27 LEADERS’ PITCTH::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 28 PARTNER STREET:::::::::: 26, 29, 30, 48, 52
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STREET CAMBIUM NETWORKS SIGNS PROLOGIX AS DISTRIBUTOR
Cambium Networks announced that Prologix is the preferred ePMP distributor in the Middle East and Africa. “Since our inception in 1998, Prologix has been committed to helping its customers find the best possible solutions to their IT and connectivity problems. There was no doubt in our minds that Cambium Networks’ ePMP solution would be attractive to a wide array of our customers, especially with the incredibly growth of smartphone users across the Middle East and Africa,” said Sarwan Singh, Managing Director, Prologix.
VMWARE UNVEILS NEW AND ENHANCED CLOUD SOLUTIONS VMware announced new capabilities and enhancements across its portfolio of cloud management solutions to simplify and automate management of IT services for multiple clouds and platforms. New product releases introduced include VMware vCloud Automation Center 6.0, VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.8, VMware IT Business Management Suite and VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5. In addition, VMware will update the automation and management capabilities of VMware vCloud Suite 5.5, recently introduced on August 26, 2013. VMware’s enhanced cloud management solutions are expected to be available in Q4 2013.
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SHAHNAWAZ SHEIKH, DELL SONICWALL’S REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AFRICA AND TURKEY
Dell SonicWALL Enabled KFAFH King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital (KFAFH), Jeddah, KSA, has increased its overall network by up to seven times after it turned to Dell SonicWALL to support and protect two data centers and fivecity wide satellite clinics that form part of a national network of healthcare facilities. The hospital managed by the Medical Services Division of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), has 450 beds and provides a wide range of primary, secondary and tertiary medical services to members of the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces and their dependents. After increasing its infrastructure to 10GBbps, KFAFH was faced with several security challenges. “The hospital did not have secure or reliable access to online, internal and web services,” said Abdullah Y. Alfie, Director of Communication and Information Technology. “In addition our system was unprotected from threats and stagnant. We found ourselves vulnerable and we were unable to work outside of the hospital securely. We wanted to
enable our doctors and staff to have access to our internal resources wherever they are.” Dell SonicWALL deployed its Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive E10200 Next-Generation Firewalls to provide multiple layers of security to protect the data centers. In addition, doctors and staff requested access to corporate network resources from their personal smartphones, tablets and laptops. The hospital required a secure way to roll out its BYOD initiative. To enable staff to work from outside the hospital, KFAFH implemented Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive E10200 NextGeneration Firewalls. “KFAFH is a good example of effective use of Dell SonicWALL technologies. In a changing IT environment that requires employees, especially doctors, to work remotely, we are proud that Dell SonicWALL could provide KFAFH with the necessary technologies,” said Shahnawaz Sheikh, Dell SonicWALL’s Regional Director, Middle East, Africa and Turkey.
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CHANNEL STREET
Emerson Network Power Introduces Innovation Partnership Program
ARBOR NETWORKS ACQUIRES PACKETLOOP
The implementation of the Emerson Network Power will be program across EMEA means launching its Innovation Partnerthat the Middle East will be ship Program across the Middle one of the first regions to join East, starting with the UAE and Emerson Network Power’s in partnership with Mindware. strategic Innovation PartnerThe program will extend to the ship Program initiative.” Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, In the Middle East, Jordan and Lebanon. Emerson Network Power and The announcement builds on Mindware will run a number last year’s strategic alliance with of promotions and initiatives regional distributor Mindware in to benefit the local reseller the Middle East and North Africa base, including dedicated (MENA) resources for product training Peter Lambrecht, Vice PETER LAMBRECHT, VICE and education across a President, Sales IT and Finance PRESIDENT, SALES IT AND comprehensive portfolio of Segment for Emerson Network FINANCE SEGMENT FOR EMERSON NETWORK POWER products and services, such Power in Europe, Middle East IN EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND as new interactive material, a and Africa said, “The launch of AFRICA new unique online configurathe program in the region is a leap tor and a wealth of additional forward for Emerson and shows marketing promotional tools. the commitment we have as a company for our “Working with Mindware coupled with our partners in the Middle East. product portfolio will help Emerson Network “Working with Mindware also means that our Power achieve significant growth over the next 5 partners can greatly benefit from world-class years, which in turn means further investments training, information and tools, enabling them to in the UAE and the Middle East over the coming address key customer challenges while maximizyear,” explained Lambrecht. ing their revenue and opportunity potential.
Arbor Networks has acquired privately held Packetloop, an innovator and leader in the field of Security Analytics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Arbor plans to invest in and expand Packetloop’s Sydney, Australia-based operations. “The Packetloop technology and people are a great addition to the Arbor team. They bring tremendous insight and knowledge in applying security analytics to the advanced threat landscape. They have developed a really innovative and powerful solution that brings context to data, quickly, and in a meaningful way for those who need it,” said Arbor Networks President Colin Doherty. “Arbor shares our belief that detection is the key, prevention is the goal and it all starts with great visibility. We also believe that data without context is meaningless,” said Packetloop co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Scott Crane. “Arbor is a successful and well-established company, yet they still have the heart of a startup, an innovator, a disruptor. They’re continuously pushing the envelope. That type of environment, with their people and technology, is a great fit for Packetloop.”
HP Unveils New Innovations at GITEX HP announced secured mobile print solutions that make it easier for business customers to print whenever and wherever they need. HP launched new single-function printers, multifunction printers (MFPs), scanners and solutions that streamline customers’ digital and paper processes and increase business productivity at GITEX Technology Week 2013. HP also launched the HP Officejet Pro X, the world’s fastest desktop printer as recognised by Guinness World Records. “Organizations need to adapt quickly to the changing landscape of information technology, which
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includes dealing with the vast amounts of data and processes created by a growing mobile workforce,” said Robert Dinkelacker, Director Printing, Personal Printing Group Middle-East, Mediterranean
& Africa. “New innovations and an updated LaserJet printing portfolio help improve customers’ mobile print experience and transform the management of digital and print workflows for potentially greater
business performance.” New HP mobile printing solutions include, the HP 1200w Mobile Print Accessory, HP LaserJet Enterprise M800 series, The HP LaserJet Enterprise M806 and HP Colour LaserJet Enterprise M855, HP Colour LaserJet Enterprise M750 series, HP LaserJet Pro M435nw MFP, Updates to HP ePrint Enterprise and HP Capture and Route 1.3 solution now offers iOS and Android mobile client support making it easier to manage, update and store information accurately and efficiently. In addition, users can now scan from HP Officejet.
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STILL FRAUGHT WITH IT MANAGEMENT HICCUPS?
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CHANNEL STREET
TalariaX Launches sendQuick ConeXa Integrated appliance sendQuick ConeXa is an integrated appliance that delivers 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) via SMS (Short Messaging Service) OTP (One-Time-Password) for secure remote access. sendQuick Conexa has built-in RADIUS server which makes it fully compatible with SSL VPN and RADIUS based clients. sendQuick ConeXa integrates with Active Director (AD), LDAP, Major Database and RADIUS servers and delivers self-generated (token-less) OTP via SMS to mobile phones. sendQuick Conexa performs authentication, authorisation, OTP generation and transmission, making it a self-sufficient offering for all enterprises.
sendQuick ConeXa supports several SSL VPN’s for multiple remote access authentication involving diverse SSL VPN login scenarios, server dependant work flow and user interfaces (Challenge/Response, Single Sign-on, Single Page Token). It supports configurable OTP Characteristics (6-10 characters/Customisable User Message/Configurable OTP expiry time in minutes) and several types of SMS ie., normal SMS, Flash and Message Overwrite SMS. SMS Password request can be set for on-demand SMS OTP feature making it highly secure. This feature does not depend on external or third party networks.
BELKIN UNVEILS THUNDERBOLT EXPRESS DOCK Belkin announced the availability of the Thunderbolt Express Dock, a sleek, compact, cable-clutter-free dock for Mac computers with Thunderbolt ports. Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock is the only solution that is equipped with two Thunderbolt ports, allowing users to daisy-chain up to five additional Thunderbolt high-speed devices while maintaining maximum throughput and granting instant access to multiple desktop devices with one cable, the press release announced. It maintains the portability of laptop by eliminating the constant need to plug and unplug numerous desktop peripherals.
EMIRATES NBD AND EIB JOIN EPAY DIRECT DEBIT PLATFORM Dubai Smart Government signed an agreement recently with Network International, under which Emirates NBD and Emirates Islamic Bank (EIB) have joined its ePay Direct Debit platform, for settling fees of government services. The agreement was signed by H.E. Ahmad Bin Humaidan, Director General of Dubai Smart Government, and Abdulla Qassem, Chairman of Network International, and Bhairav Trivedi, CEO of Network International, along with senior officials from both sides. Commenting on the agreement, Bin Humaidan said, “The addition of more banks to the ‘Direct Debit’ service reflects the ongoing joint commitment to raise the bar of excellence with regard to banking and electronic services provided to customers as per the highest standards of quality in line with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to create a world-class smart government in Dubai to ease the life of all segments of the society and make them happy.” for any organization, regardless of
VEEAM SOFTWARE DOUBLES ITS BUSINESS IN ME Veeam Software, provider of backup, replication and virtualization management solutions for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, announced record results for the second quarter of 2013 continuing its history of accelerated growth of sales, partners and employees based on its Modern Data Protection solutions. Globally, total bookings revenue increased 100 percent in Q2 13 compared to the same period in 2012, and business in the Middle East region doubled over the same period. In the United Arab Emirates,
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RATMIR TIMASHEV_VEEAM’S PRESIDENT AND CEO
Veeam’s Middle East regional headquarters, the company’s revenue booking increased by 87 percent in
Q2 13 compared to the same period in 2012, while in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, revenue booking grew
by 100 percent in the same period. “Looking at our two largest markets in the Middle East, Veeam grew its customer base in the UAE by 55 percent (year on year Q2 2012 compares to Q2 2013) and 45 percent in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the same period,” said Ratmir Timashev, President and CEO, Veeam. “The Middle East region represents tremendous potential for us. Our office in Dubai grew rapidly from 1 to over 20 people since its inception in 2011. This is a direct link to the number of customers we are acquiring.”
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CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC
“Social media driven digital engagement is a disrupting force that is among the most significant factors driving business today,” SAID TRIXEE LOH, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AT DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE
Optimus Launches Huawei Bundle Promotion Optimus Technology and Telecommunications along with Huawei announced the launch of exciting bundles with Huawei’s latest IP Telephony products for channel partners across the GCC region and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. As part of the promotion, Optimus and Huawei will offer two product bundles – Huawei eSpace U1910 and Huawei eSpace EGW 1530A at the most competitive pricing with rebates and other value-added services for partners including marketing, advertising and sales support. Also available in both bundles are the colour screen Huawei eSpace 7910 IP Phones. It provides end–to-end user experience and support for seamless integration with Unified Communica-
tions services. “We are pleased to announce our special Huawei bundled promotion for our channel at amazing prices and with lots of benefits. Huawei’s eSpace UCC products are quick and easy-todeploy world class products, which offer customers low TCO, flexibility, mobility and end-to-end security in addition to investment protection as it offers customers multivendor rationalization with open standards. By offering our channel a comprehensive Huawei eSpace UCC bundle, we want to encourage them to sell more and at competitive rates. This promotion would add tremendous value to our partners.
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ZOTAC SIGNS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH GULF SHADOWS ZOTAC International has signed a distribution agreement with Gulf Shadows Computer Systems to bolster its presence in the regional market. As per the terms of the agreement, Gulf Shadows will promote and distribute ZOTAC’s award-winning range of graphic cards through its strong channel network across the MENA region except the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain markets. “SANDISK EXPANDS IN AFRICA SanDisk Corporation has signed a distribution deal with Strategy International, an IT distributor in Africa. Strategy International distributes to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. “Strategy International has been distributing SanDisk products to the northern African channel for the past few months,” said Sreedhar Sreekumar, SanDisk Regional Sales Manager, Middle East and Africa. “Our relationship with Strategy International reinforces our objective to expand our product reach in Africa. We are excited to work with Strategy International in the hopes of reinforcing the use of SanDisk products
MACKEEN TO SHOWCASE ITS SOLUTIONS AT EMC FORUM Mackeen Technology will showcase leading security and data storage solutions that can complement enterprise transitions towards Cloud Computing and Big Data during the 2013 EMC Forum to be held on October 9, 2013 at St. Regis Hotel, Doha, which is specifically designed for professionals looking for IT transformation to the cloud. Mackeen, a Silver Sponsor of the event, will be exhibiting its integrated security systems, network storage solutions and integrated monitoring solutions. The forum will be an ideal platform to highlight the complementary strengths of the two companies: while EMC has established its name in IT infrastructure solutions including storage, Cloud Computing and Big Data, Mackeen is known for its robust security solutions as well as storage management systems.
throughout the continent.” RIVERBED SOLE VENDOR IN VISIONARIES QUADRANT Riverbed Technology announced that the Riverbed Stingray product family has been positioned by Gartner as the only vendor in the Visionaries quadrant of the 2013 “Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)” report. Businesses and service providers face growing challenges in delivering reliable application performance for websites, portals and cloud
NEC DISPLAY SOLUTIONS LAUNCHES SERVICEPLUS PROGRAMME NEC Display Solutions Europe has launched NEC Serviceplus, aimed at giving customers added value to NEC’s already generous performance guarantees and warranties. Serviceplus is a pre-sales, installation and operational service extension for the NEC display products and solutions, built on its world-renowned NEC reputation of quality, performance and longevity. NEC has created the Serviceplus warranty and value services extension programme in response to a growing need for additional service offerings to match the modern, fast-paced business environment. “We have a product philosophy that has enabled us to become a leader across many vertical sectors. None of that was achieved without putting customer needs first,” said Ian Gobey, General Manager at NEC Display Solutions Europe. “Underlining the commitment to customer satisfaction NEC Display Solutions has now launched the Serviceplus programme to be able to provide additional performance with peace of mind and confidence in your display solution.”
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applications across today’s complex and global IT environments. ORANGE BUSINESS SERVICES DELIVER CLOUD SOLUTIONS Orange Business Services put cloud computing at the heart of its strategy to become a leading global cloud services provider with Flexible Computing, its flagship Infrastructure as a Service offering built on NetApp. Orange Business Services, the business services arm of global telecommunications leader Orange, developed its Flexible Computing solution with NetApp Data ONTAP at its core.
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Etisalat Partners with Dubai Public Prosecution Etisalat announced its partnership with Dubai Public Prosecution, with the telecom major providing the government department with a cloud-based managed web security solutions. The announcement came during a signing ceremony at GITEX Technology Week. The new deal will enable Etisalat to provide cloud-based, managed secure email solutions, thereby becoming an integrated service provider for the Dubai Public Prosecution. This solution will provide Dubai Public Prosecution with real-time reporting and forensic summaries and up to six months of transaction logs, bandwidth management tools to restrict non-productive web traffic and data loss prevention solutions security, flexibility and
convenience as they need. The managed email solution from Etisalat, powered by Zservices (Zscaler Middle East Cloud), will supply Dubai Public Prosecution with a fully logged cloud-based security-as-aservice solution for all of their web communications anywhere in the world. “Many enterprises and government departments require completely secure web services at the fingertips, wherever they are in the world. Etisalat’s new cloud-based managed web security service gives business and government both the web access and web security they can rely on,” said Abdulla Hashim, Senior Vice President, ICT, Etisalat UAE.
HP UNVEILS ENTERPRISE-CLASS SDN OPEN ECOSYSTEM HP unveiled the industry’s first enterprise-class software-defined networking (SDN) open ecosystem with the HP SDN Developer Kit (SDK) and the HP SDN App Store, creating new business opportunities for partners, and providing a simple way for customers to purchase and deploy network services. Legacy network rollout typically requires months of extensive ‘human middleware’ and customization, delaying potential application deployment while limiting agility. SDN promises to automate network operations, however closed, proprietary SDN technologies inhibit innovation, prevent interoperability and limit creation of a marketplace. An open SDN ecosystem and application development platform can unlock innovation as well as enable collaboration.
EMP IMPLEMENTS SOURCEFIRE’S IPS Emerging Markets Payments (EMP) Group, based out of Egypt, supports all electronic payment card schemes and all electronic distribution channels. The Group is committed to remaining at the forefront of the digital currency revolution by creating a payments platform that drives card penetration and other payment types in these emerging markets. As part of its continuous commitment, EMP recently implemented Sourcefire’s IPS (through FVC and its partner) for the agility and intelligent functionality it provides to EMP’s systems deployed across its network of clients in MEA. The Group began by using the open source version in an initial test period of three months before moving to the full commercial version of the software. Installing Sourcefire’s FireSight, EMP is now able to monitor its internal network using a customised network discovery policy. The new IPS now shows the network’s vulnerabilities, helps to create recommended actions, and in turn helps create the best practice policies for all EMP sites.
QATAR TO HOST ITU TELECOM WORLD 2014 The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced that the State of Qatar has been selected as host country for ITU Telecom World 2014, following a competitive selection process among bidding ITU Member States. The State of Qatar has appointed leading international communications company, Ooredoo, to help organize ITU Telecom World 2014, on behalf of the Government of Qatar. “We are delighted that Qatar, one
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of the world’s most advanced and committed adopters of cuttingedge technology, will host ITU Telecom World 2014,” said Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU SecretaryGeneral.”Strategically located at the crossroads of three continents, Qatar provides the ideal location to continue the ITU Telecom World conversation on harnessing the power of next generation technology for the benefit of the ICT industry and the people of the world.”
“As part of our 2030 vision, Qatar is pushing ahead with its national strategy to build a knowledgebased economy and drive global competitiveness. This makes our nation the ideal host for ITU Telecom World 2014, which has made its mission to promote social development through advanced technology,” said H.E. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman, Ooredoo. “We are proud to be playing a key role in assisting the State of Qatar with
this important international debate. Mobile technology helps to enrich people’s lives, and we are sure the discussions and decisions made possible by the ITU Telecom World 2014 event in Doha will have an essential impact.” This year’s edition of ITU Telecom World was held in Bangkok, Kingdom of Thailand, from 19-22 November 2013 on the theme of “Embracing Change in a Digital World”.
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A10 Networks Eyes Expansion in ME A10 Networks announced significant investment in the Middle East region including new sales, presales and support staff, offices and partnerships. A10 appointed Glen Ogden as Regional Sales Director for the Middle East region. Glen has over 15 years combined experience in Application Delivery and Network Security, holding positions with F5, NetScaler, Cogneto, Nokia and Qualys.
Glen holds a post-graduate degree in International Business from Hull University, United Kingdom. In the first three quarters of 2013, A10 has seen huge growth in the Middle East region and is looking to recruit additional positions for 2014 to help its dedicated team provide increased local sales and technical pre-sales. A10
also committed to have an Engineering Support Team based in KSA in addition to an indirect channel model across the region.“We are recruiting top personnel as fast as we can without impacting quality. Given the current demand and our technological advantages, I see A10 doubling in size in my region for years to come,” said Andre Stewart, VP of EMEA, A10 Networks.
WEB CLIPS TECH MAHINDRA LAUNCHES RETAIL DIGITAL ENTERPRISE SOLUTION Tech Mahindra Ltd. launched its retail digital enterprise solution ShelfMonitor – Mobile Merchandise Manager. This solution empowers retail store personnel with intelligent information on potential shelf gaps and real-time actionable insights, thereby helping retailers improve sales and avoiding lost opportunity. “PHILIPS ULTRAWIDE 21:9 DISPLAY ON SALE Fresh from its debut showing at CeBIT 2013, the Philips 298P4QJEB professional display is now on sale. MMD, the leading technology company and brand license partner for Philips Monitors, is pleased to announce the release of this
ALCATEL-LUCENT LAUNCHES UNIFIED ACCESS Alcatel-Lucent unveiled major enhancements of its enterprise solutions portfolio with the launch of its Unified Access approach for both wired and wireless networks. Unified Access enhances Alcatel-Lucent’s Converged Campus Network solution, delivering the power of policy integration, network services, BYOD support and cross-platform security to enterprise networks. Unified Access capabilities are offered across Alcatel-Lucent’s entire enterprise networking portfolio, requiring only a software upgrade to deploy while preserving existing equipment. Unified Access network services and BYOD services are available today. “Alcatel-Lucent is known for its ability to deliver deeply integrated solutions to solve real customer needs,” said Michel Emelianoff, President, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. “We knew that the current wave of BYOD and mobility would bring new challenges that needed a holistic solution. Unified Access is our answer to these challenges.”
ultra-clear, ultra-productive 29-inch display. With the widescreen viewing experience of its 21:9 aspect ratio, the new display combines MultiView ability, setting fresh benchmarks for workplace productivity. NEW COMPACT POE SWITCH FROM BROCADE Brocade has announced an addition to the company’s campus networking portfolio with the Brocade ICX 6450-C Switch, which delivers enterprise-class features in a compact form, and supports the simplification and automation provided by the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture. Executing on the company’s strategy to deliver
MOVEMENTS Brocade appointed ARI BOSE to the position of Chief Information Officer Alcatel-Lucent has appointed DR. MARCUS WELDON as President of Bell Labs SAJITH RAJ is the new GM of Logicom Dubai Software AG has appointed VIJAY JASWAL as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Middle East and Turkey region. NVIDIA appointed CHANTELLE TAVID as Regional Marketing Manager for the Middle East & Africa.
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NUMBER GAME
81 percent
of all smartphone shipments are Android in 3Q13
innovation for specific customer segments, the Brocade ICX 6450-C is designed for the unique and stringent requirements of government and public sector organizations. ARBOR NETWORKS RELEASES PEAKFLOW SP 6.0 Arbor Networks announced major scalability and performance improvements as well as the introduction of “Flex Licensing” options to Peakflow SP, the de facto standard for network intelligence and infrastructure availability. “With the Peakflow SP 6.0 release, we’re giving customers greater performance, scalability and the flexibility they require to see, understand and secure large, distributed and complex network environments.,” said Arbor Networks President Colin Doherty, Peakflow SP Solution Arbor’s Peakflow SP platform includes two main components, Peakflow SP and the Threat Management System (TMS).
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CHANNEL STREET
HP Middle East Hosts Annual Channel Awards 2013
DIGITAL FORENSICS CAN HELP YOU UNCOVER THE FACTS Suspected employee misconduct is sometimes not fully investigated to confirm or deny any allegations, it is important for HR Professionals to understand the nature of IT evidence. Simply browsing an employee’s computer or asking the IT staff to supply email files for HR review will sometimes not be sufficient to uncover the real facts in a case. Whenever IT is involved, an employee investigation should follow the chain of custody procedures where the original evidence should never be analyzed or tampered with but secured in a forensics manner, in most cases a forensic copy of the original evidence must be used in an investigation. Following the chain of custody procedures is not an option but a rule which every organization must be compliant with in order to ensure admissibility of evidence in a court of law. Digital Forensics can retrieve deleted files and allow HR professionals to make decisions based on facts. Even the most careful and articulate employee will leave traces showing their actions and intentions.
HP Middle East hosted its annual Channel Awards ceremony during GITEX Technology Week to acknowledge and reward the efforts of its channel partners during the past year. The award night was well-attended by HP partners from around the Middle East region Channel partners competed for awards in 14 categories, which cover all areas of HP CHANNEL AWARDS HP’s business in the region, across both region” said Eyad Shihabi, Managing Director, Enterprise and consumer offerings. HP’s channel HP Middle East.” “We are happy to see such awards goes beyond rewarding HP partners for a good turn-out once again this year, and revenue earned, and especially highlights investcongratulate the winners and all our partners for ments in relationships and skill development their efforts and success over the last year.” among partners. HP Middle East announced last week additional “Our partner-centric business model has been enhancements to its PartnerOne program. a key driver of HP’s growth and success in the
ESCAN LAUNCHES BUSINESS SOLUTIONS WITH CLOUD SECURITY eScan launched its latest version of business security solutions – eScan 14 SMB Editions with Cloud Security, eScan 14 Corporate Edition with Cloud Security and eScan 14 Enterprise Edition with Cloud Security to secure the business networks from the increasing new age threats targeting servers and further intruding and infecting both the mobile and non-mobile endpoints. eScan business security suites send instant alerts to the administrators on every outbreak occurring in the network and hence automatically prevents the spread of malware infection over the networks. The new secure web interface of eScan uses SSL technology to encrypt all communications and the summarized dashboard provides administrator the status of the managed clients in graphical formats such as deployment status, protection status and protection statistics for easy monitoring.
UNIFY APPOINTS MOMENTA GLOBAL AS TIER ONE PARTNER Momenta Global has been appointed by Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) as a tier one partner for Qatar. As a tier one partner, Momenta is well positioned to deliver value added services and implementation support to enterprises and SMEs looking to leverage the efficiencies of the vendor’s UC solutions. “We were happy to host the first Momenta - Unify event for our customers in Qatar. The response we received was tremendous with
ANIL KUMAR JAIN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT APAC, MIDDLE EAST, RUSSIA & CIS, UNIFY.
wwIT managers and decision makers of some of the biggest businesses in Qatar attending the event. We are also happy to announce that
we are taking our partnership with Unify to the next level by becoming their tier one partner in Qatar,” said Suraj Thampi, CEO of Momenta Global. “Unify’s business model in the Middle East is working through partner eco system. Momenta is a reputed and well-established company with the market knowledge, expertise
and experience in deploying IP and UC solutions for some of the largest customers in Qatar. They are a strong and reliable partner for Unify and as our tier one partner we are entrusting them with an enhanced role which reflects our strategy to grow together with committed partners. Momenta has a strong team with vast experience in the planning, deploying and maintaining communications systems,” concluded Anil Kumar Jain, Senior Vice President APAC, Middle East, Russia & CIS, Unify.
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Dimension Data Retains Its Leadership Position Dimension Data CEO, Brett Dimension Data has been posiDawson said, “Maintaining our tioned by Gartner in the Leaders position as one of the six leading Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant organisations in the world for the for Communications Outsourcing ‘ability to execute’ and ‘completeand Professional Services (COPS) ness of vision’, is a tremendous 2013, report for the third consecuhonour for the Group, and I feel tive year. Dimension Data is one of it emphasises our philosophy only two organisations positioned of putting our clients are at the in the Leaders Quadrant three centre of everything we do. In years in a row, the press release addition, our acquisition of announced. telecom expense management Compiled by Gartner analysts, provider Xigo only 20 months the Magic Quadrant examined 18 DIMENSION DATA CEO, BRETT DAWSON ago in February 2012, is also vendors of IT services for business paying off. When we acquired Xigo, our goal was communications systems worldwide, employing to accelerate the Group’s offerings in the managed two main evaluation criteria. These include ‘abilcommunications space. ity to execute’ and ‘completeness of vision’.
ESET TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE PROGRAM LAUNCHED ESET launched the ESET Technology Alliance, an integration partnership. The aim of the program is to better protect businesses with a range of complimentary IT security solutions that seamlessly integrate with ESET products. The first entrant into the ESET Technology Alliance is DESlock, an encryption software company.
ROI FOR EMC BACKUP AND RECOVERY SOLUTIONS HIGH EMC has released the findings of a study that quantifies the business value of investment in advanced backup and recovery, measuring the operational gains, ROI, and payback periods of these solutions. According to analysts, the customers interviewed experienced a total average annual savings of over $2.9 million from backup transformation, which includes a combination of hard and soft costs. EMC customers were able to see a 454% ROI and payback for the solutions in less than five months. Fady Richmany, Senior Regional Director, EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division in Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle East, said, “Responses from nine prominent enterprises representing key verticals like Telecom, Banking and Finance with combinations of EMC backup and recovery solutions helped IDC establish a clear business value behind backup and recovery deployments by highlighting a quick payback period and massive performance enhancements as well as a combined annual savings of approximately USD 3 million.”
Customer Service Experience Survey Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. has released findings of its Middle East customer service experience survey. Following a global survey done during the early part of this year, the regional survey of 121 contact centre professionals was conducted during June and July 2013. The large majority of respondents (78.5%) rated customer experience to be extremely important while 18.2% stated it to be important. First call resolution, professionalism
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and a timely response are perceived to be the most valued parameters in customer interactions in that particular order. This is in line with the global survey results which reveal that a knowledgeable representative and a timely response are the most valuable components of a great service experience. Over three fourths (76%) of the survey respondents already have a customer service strategy in place, though surprisingly there were still 24% that either did not have a strategy or were not
aware of such strategies. Organizations perceive the contact centre to be vital to providing excellent customer service. 66.1% stated it to be very important and 24% agreed that the contact centre was somewhat important in this regard. Not surprisingly then, the contact centre remains at the heart of most organizations’ strategies and defines the customer experience for 51.2% of respondents. Sales and Marketing departments also exert influence and 33.1% of participants stated that
IT too is increasingly playing a role. Shaheen Haque, Territory Manager, Middle East and Turkey, Interactive Intelligence said, “As a provider of business communications software for contact centers and enterprises, we were eager to understand the importance that enterprises in the region are placing on customer service and the strategies and methodologies that are currently being employed to optimize customer service interactions.
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ENTERPRISE
DELL
‘To survive you need to converge’ Over the years, Dell has been transformed from a product-centric to the leading solution provider and this year its presence at GITEX reflected the same. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
A
t GITEX Technology Week 2013, Dell focused on endto-end solutions. The stand could be divided into four zones namely inform, protect, connect, and transform. These are the pillars for solving technology challenges. “We are showcasing from the perspective of customers who are looking for solutions in today’s scenario. There are three industry specific solutions for Oil and Gas, Banks, Education,” says Basil Ayass, Director Marketing, Dell. For Gitex, the main focus was PowerEdge VRTX along with and Active Infrastructure 1:1. “VRTX looks like a PC. There is no need for special cooling, cabling or electricity. It
BASIL AYASS
DIRECTOR MARKETING, DELL
“We are changing the PartnerDirect program in response to the feedback from our channel partners.” saves space and is suited for remote, small office environments targeted at SMBs,” adds Ayass. Dell also demonstrated how recent acquisitions such as Wyse, AppAssure, Kace, SonicWall
and Quest can help organizations and partners address technology challenges. Dell had not participated in GITEX in 2010 and 2011. “We thought it is expensive. Last year, we participated with a very small stand but we saw that we were able to generate business. I did the analysis and realised we had closed USD 5 mn business because of the people we met who were interested. This Gitex USD 20 mn $ pipeline of business is expected,” comments Ayass. Cloud is one of the pillars of transformation but Ayass feels that in the ME region, the growth area is security. “The government of ME and the all the industry sectors spend huge amount on security,” he adds. “IDC tracks performance of various servers i.e. rack servers, tower servers, blade servers, etc. Last year they added one more type of server, which they call as super scalar dense server. These servers do not have CD ROM, LCD, etc. they are very small. So ,the cloud server providers including Amazon, Google, etc. are buying these servers. And if one looks at Dell, this segment is the fastest growing server in our portfolio. We call it PowerEdge C. We are selling it to those cloud providers and four of the top five cloud providers are buying our servers,” he adds. Dell has less than 500 employees in ME. It operates completely through channel in this region with its 57 preferred partners who Ayass terms as ‘extended arms’. Dell is improving its channel partner program –PartnerDirect with new additions. “We are changing the PartnerDirect program in response to the feedback from our channel partners. We listen to the channel and try to make it easier for them to work with Dell,” tells Ayass. In ME, few weeks ago, Dell added a deal registration portal to its PartnerDirect program where the partner when working with a certain customer can register. It gets approved by Dell and then no other partner can get the price that the other already has. “We got the feedback that partners need protection from other channel partners and more tools to become self sufficient and self-reliant. For better tools, we are soon launching online Solutions Configurator for partners,” he adds.
FINALLY.. Over the years Dell has been transformed significantly. Ayass believes that it is the time for convergence. “Customers are not looking for just networking or server products from different vendors but they need solutions. Vendors providing only networking or server products won’t survive,” he concludes. ë
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FEATURE
ETISALAT
Transforming Business
Companies which are ready to mould themselves according to the market demands survive the best in long run and Etisalat is ready to set such an example. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
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ew and emerging trends in technology impact decision making and policy and the appropriate example is the recent initiative of Dubai Smart Government to provide government online services. The GCC countries, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the fore front, are quickly adapting to the growing demand of ICT in every sector. According to the latest forecast by Gartner, Middle East IT spending is projected to total $192.9 billion in 2013, a 5.5 percent increase from 2012. The report also expects strong IT demand from vertical industries like banking and government in 2013. In last few years, there has been a noticeable shift from just being a box-mover to be a service provider and Etisalat was quick to be receptive to that change. The leading telecom company soon started providing ICT solutions in the region.
“We need to transform our focus in telecom and become full service provider moving to the ICT. This is where we see the trend and growth in the enterprise. ICT will be the fundamental factor for different sectors,” comments Abdulla Ahmed Al Hashim, Senior Vice President, Information Communication Technology, Etisalat. Etisalat’s core business is connectivity but it offers end-to-end ICT services. Under managed ICT services, the company offers Managed Voice PBX, Managed LAN and WAN, Managed TelePresence and Managed Remote Access Service. It also has business connectivity solutions, mobility solutions, eBusiness solutions, Cloud-based services, Unified Communications and M2M solutions. It has a different security portfolio to counter DDoS. Recently, Etisalat has launched its new cloud-based managed email security service for businesses.
On Etisalat’s transformation, Hashim comments, “You need to transform because the market is transforming and also the market expects you to be their solution provider. Telecoms fundamentally provide the connectivity but it is beyond this. That’s why at Etisalat, we started to follow a different strategy back in 2007.” In other domains, Etisalat offers dedicated hosting, IaaS, Saas and online back-up and storage. Etisalat is not only targeting government but it has solutions for other sectors also. “We have developed a number of services for education, health, hospitality, retail industry, finance and banks. We have horizontal products which can work for every sector,” tells Hashim. IDC research predicts that the third platform, consisting of social media, cloud, mobility and analytics will serve as the primary growth driver of the ICT industry over the next decade. “People
ETISALAT’S TOP 10 RECENT PARTNERSHIPS Etisalat and Polycom plan to work together to deliver video and voice collaboration solutions that connect people securely across any network, protocol, application or device customers want to use.
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Etisalat has signed a strategic partnership with Tech Mahindra, drawing upon its extensive systems integration experience to provide transformation services that will yield efficiency savings.
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Etisalat Group and Huawei signed a new global agreement in which Huawei will support Etisalat Group by focusing on the enhancement of its broadband and digital services.
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Etisalat has a recent partnership with RTA to launch the first NoL smart touch device for Dubai commuters utilising public transport.
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Etisalat partnered with Dubai Public Prosecution, with the telecom major providing the government department with a cloud-based web security solutions.
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FEATURE
ABDULLA AHMED AL HASHIM, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, ETISALAT.
“We want to be the no. 1 ICT solutions provider. We want to be Wipro and IBM of UAE”
MIDDLE EAST IT SPENDING FORECAST (BILLIONS OF U.S. DOLLARS)
2013
2014
2015
2016
Devices
29.6
34.2
38.9
44.5
Data Center Systems
3.6
3.9
4.1
4.2
Software
3.4
3.7
4.0
4.3
IT Services
7.7
8.0
8.3
8.6
Telecom Services
148.5
153.4
157.1
161.4
Overall IT
192.9
203.2
212.4
223.0
SOURCE: GARTNER (MARCH 2013)
fear about security in cloud. We understand this, that’s why we are developing solutions to make it more secure,” adds Hashim. In its transitional phase, Etisalat is bound to witness internal changes and the way it does business. “When there is an investment, we need to justify that investment. This is transforming the way we really do business. It is not like selling a product, now the selling will be solution based, value based and delivery of ICT projects is different. It requires different capabilities where sometimes we need to depend on partners,” informs Hashim. With changing time, the demands of enterprises are transforming as well. They are becoming more complex and sophisticated. With more
Etisalat announced its partnership with ENTIRETEC to offer bandwidth-ondemand services based on its CLT– Core Layer Technology.
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intricate type of security issues, enterprises are a little sceptical to invest with service providers. However, Etisalat is 60% government and 40% share holders. It enjoys the trust of customers as a financially stable government entity. To gear up to meet the future demands of enterprises, Etisalat is entering a lot of partnerships. The recent ones are with Tech Mahindra, Ploycom, and ENTIRETEC. “Partnership in ICT is very important for Etisalat so that they can compliment us with our solutions,” comments Hashim. As far as expansion in terms of geography is concerned, Etisalat is in no rush. “Moving into the value chain from core connectivity to the spectrum of ICT, we first want to establish presence here and focus in the UAE,” tells Hashim.
Etisalat launched Duroosi tutorial videos in strategic partnership with the UAE Ministry of Education, supported by Google.
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Etisalat joined hands SAP to align and accelerate its support to the m-Government strategic goals and initiatives.
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The company has a goal to be a trusted solution provider to the enterprises and strategic partner to the government and wants to with its clients as partners to jointly develop innovative solutions. In line with the concept to develop smarter solutions, this GITEX, Etisalat had a theme ‘Together we make the world Smarter’.
FINALLY… With strong partnerships and rapidly broadening its portfolio of services, Etisalat is all set to tap the opportunity offered by the MEA market. “We want to be the no. 1 ICT solutions provider. We want to be Wipro and IBM of UAE. We have competition but we have the ability to do that,” tells Hashim. ë
Etisalat has announced a new partnership with British Telecom (BT to provid) healthcare ICT services.
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Etisalat has expanded its long-standing partnership with NetComm Wireless to deliver wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication technologies to Etisalat’s vertical market customers.
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CORPORATE STORY
UNIFY
Unifying Communication and Collaboration needs
By synchronizing technologies, creating an engaging user experience and weaving communications seamlessly into the way businesses operate, Unify is looking to empower an increasingly mobile workforce to work better together. The result is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective efforts, energizes the business and drives better performance n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
I
n a strategic move, the communications software and services firm, Siemens Enterprise Communications, has recently rebranded itself globally as Unify. The new name reflects perfectly what the company does the best i.e. unifying its customers’ communications systems. Born out of the engineering DNA of Siemens, Unify builds on a heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards and security to provide integrated communications and networking solutions for 75% of the Global 500. Giving an insight into this development, Oliver Obitayo, VP – Marketing and Solutions, EMEA / APAC, Unify GmbH & Co, says, “Our stakeholders continue to be Siemens AG as well as Gores Group. Basically, the company has undergone a name change along with appearance, look-andfeel, and message to the market. The rationale behind coming up with the new name i.e. Unify, was that it describes best what we do. We bring together people, processes, content, and embed it around enterprise communication system which supports a new way to work.” “The unique situation we have today is that we are able to build over the rich history of Siemens Enterprise Communications as well as Siemens in general of having 165 years of experience in this domain. It’s a very rich area of innovation and building on the very traditional foundations of innovation and German engineering; we are
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basically adding a new brand value and transforming the communications space. If you put all these aspects together, you get a great product and solution for the market, which is hungry for such kind of offerings. We have realized that nobody is offering an end-to-end solution in the market currently,” adds Obitayo. The company chose GITEX exhibition in Dubai as a perfect platform to launch the new brand. The response by the customers as well as partners has been really fascinating and the feedback that it is getting with regards to brand color and name is exhilarating. “They are saying that the new name really describes what we do, as our endeavor is to unify and bring everyone together. And we are doing so by leveraging our products in unified communication and collaboration space,” asserts Obitayo. Meanwhile, the company will continue offering its known Unified Communication and Collaboration products like OpenScape Voice and OpenScape Business to the market with additions like X3, x5, and X7. Ditto holds true for OpenScape Office product which caters to the mid-market. On the other hand, the company is also work-
OLIVER OBITAYO
VP – MARKETING AND SOLUTIONS, EMEA / APAC, UNIFY GMBH & CO
“Unify communicates with channel partners in order to enable and keep them updated about our offerings to the market”
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CORPORATE STORY
ing on its flagship product, called Project Ansible, which contains all the technological innovations. With the introduction of Project Ansible, Unify is leading the market with its vision of a dynamic communications and collaboration platform. Though not all components of this product might be immediately relevant for mid-market or smaller customers that go through the channel, it will be ready to be sold by next Summer for the bigger enterprise.
GO-TO-MARKET APPROACH As the new brand has been recently launched, the company is just starting the marketing activities. Besides media spending in the global market, Unify has been the part of Gitex to have face-toface interaction with the customers and partners so that they can physically see the products. “We also want to continue to be present in the media, especially in the Middle East region. From a pure marketing perspective, what really works well for us is the continued support to the channel partners. We have a set of tools and award winning channel partner program. We have very effective online tools where partners can manage
MARC AGHILI,
VP – GLOBAL INDIRECT CHANNELS, UNIFY GMBH & CO
“We need to do multiple activities to enable our partners in order to sell our new brand.”
their business in proactive way and have access to dynamic marketing material so that they can drive their own market related activities for the end users,” points out Obitayo. Marc Aghili, Senior VP – Global Indirect Channels, Unify GmbH & Co, highlights, “We need to do multiple activities to enable our partners in order to sell our new brand. It starts with marketing support and tools that we are providing. This is just one side of the story. The other side is from the qualitative perspective, wherein we look at the partner landscape in the Middle East region and make sure that we are recruiting new partners who are willing to take our brand to the next level but also make the existing partners successful. This is the two-way strategy that we are following in this region. Though this development has not called for any significant changes in the company’s channel strategies, Unify is certainly looking at broadening the horizon of the partner landscape. It will continue to follow a two-tier distribution model wherein there are distributors and resellers taking its offerings to the market. Besides this traditional distribution business model, there are system integrators who are directly buying from the company. Both the models are addressing the different segments. The distribution to the reseller channel is mostly addressing the small and medium enterprise and the system integrators who have a direct relationship with us are addressing the majority of the large enterprise customer segment. Adding further, Obitayo says, “We will also focus in a completely different way from channels communications perspective, which means that Unify communicates with the channel partners in order to enable and keep them updated about our offerings to the market. The other major focus has been on enablement and certification of partners because only a well trained and certified partner will be able to stand in the market with our set of products. We rely heavily on our partners and that’s why we are careful in selecting them in the region so that they represent the brand and have great capabilities in selling our product.” “Today, telephony is coming closer and closer to the IT world and the decision makers on the consumer side are more often IT or business unit people. And when you are talking to these varied people, then you certainly require different set of partners on board to sell. This is a kind of shift that we want to see in the partner landscape to
make sure that they have the right capabilities. And of course, we are looking at regional expansion to make sure that you have the footprint with the right partner in those dynamic growth regions that we are looking for,” Obitayo adds. “The other important area is the coverage model. Though we have an office in Dubai, but this region is huge and countries like Saudi Arabia are still to be tapped completely. This is one area where we want to invest. Besides, we also need to invest in places like Oman and Qatar not only in terms channel partners but also our brand,” states Aghili. Unify believes that partner manageability is a joint responsibility. The vendor and distributor together should drive this responsibility and that’s what the company follows at their end. With a small team, it is currently limited but as the company grows with its partners, it hopes that the internal team will take this effort jointly with the distributors.
STRENGTHENING INTERNAL RESOURCES Post this move, Unify is certainly looking to strengthen its internal resources in the region. The company’s fiscal year 2014 started this October, which means it has done the planning for resources, marketing support, and sales support. When it comes to the partner community, they are not only supported by Unify’s local team but also from the global organization. A lot of sales enablement with regards to the new brand comes from the central point. “The other aspect is that while you are growing, you have to invest in your internal people. Our competitors have a strong presence in the marketplace and in order to compete with them, we have to add resources. We have done so in the past and we will continue to invest in sales and pre-sales resources to support our channel partners. I think it’s a critical element as we are having a 100 percent indirect model in the region. So, in order to get the coverage and momentum going in the region and most importantly, create the mindset amongst the channel partners who deal with multiple brands, we have to be better off than the competition. This means providing better support, having qualified people to support our resellers in specific deals, and in some cases, jointly dealing with end customers,” adds Aghili.
FINALLY... Though the company is not ready to disclose the numbers, its expectations from the growing market like Middle East is to register the double digit growth in the current fiscal year. ë
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CORPORATE STORY
KASPERSKY LAB
Capturing the New Market
After establishing its mark in B2C segment, Kaspersky Lab is on the path to replicate the same in its enterprise business. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
W
ith the threat of security breaches lurking around, there is an increase in number of enterprises demanding simpler security services and products. “We are targeting mainly the enterprises and corporate business and this is where we are growing. We are offering the enterprises not only products but services also in terms of security intelligence services and official training for security,” informs Khalid Abu Bakar, MD, Kaspersky. In worldwide Corporate Endpoint Security Suite market by IDC’s ‘Worldwide Endpoint Security 2013-2017 Forecast and 2012 Vendor Shares’, Kaspersky Lab has been ranked third largest vendor. The company recently launched Version 10 of its End Point Security for corporate businesses. “We have overcome our competitors when it comes to approaching the enterprise customers with a full-fledged end point security,” comments Abu Bakar. Last year, Deloitte Technology Fast 500TM EMEA recognised Kaspersky Lab as one of the 500 fastest growing technology companies from 24 EMEA countries based on five-year average percentage revenue growth. The company had 864% growth in five years. Commenting on the secret of Kaspersky’s success, Abu Bakar says, “It is because of efforts which have been put in the best deals and immense dedication with focus on every line of business.” Kaspersky is also entering into new distribution partnership with Aptec- an Ingram Micro Company to undertake the distribution of its B2B solutions. “Weston and Aptec partnership is help-
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Story-kaspersky.indd 26
ing us to go deep into the business. They carry only corporate products and their reach is deep through the channel,” comments Abu Bakar. In October 2013, Kaspersky also launched a renewed partner program across Latin America, Middle East, Africa as well as Turkey and Eastern Europe to create a single, unified approach to channel development across the region. “We have a dedicated team for the channel with a channel recruitment manager and channel enablement manager. All efforts are to bring incentives and initiatives to make our channelstrong,” says Abu bakar. The Middle East office has seen a growth in its head count as well. It has grown from six to 25 people covering country, region and business line. “We are the only one who can manage physical, mobile, virtual network within one platform and console. All this is because it is all developed in-house, we didn’t buy any companies. This is a major selling point when we go to our customer that with one console and one platform, we will be able to reduce the complexity because it is very cost-effective to have all of these within one solution,” tells Abu Bakar. Kaspersky is also offering the mobile device management, communication controls, systems management, mail security, and collaboration security. Abu Bakar informs that the regions driving maximum growth are mainly in the Gulf like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan where the company claims to have 70% market. He tells that Government is the main driver of growth with Banking and SMBs trailing behind. On the consumer side, the latest offering is
KHALID ABU BAKAR
MD, KASPERSKY.
“We are the only one who can manage physical, mobile, virtual network within one platform and console” Kaspersky Internet Security – Multi-Device 2014. It is multi-platform security solutions protecting PCs, Android tablets and phones etc.
FINALLY... The company is creating new market places and eating from its competitors. “Our growth is high comparing to the growth of the expansion of the market itself. This means we are eating from our competitors plus we are discovering lot of new markets by offering new products,” tells Abu Bakar. This GITEX it has launched the Kaspersky Safe Money which is a solution for the banks and financial institutions to protect their online customers from financial cyber-attacks. “This is a completely new market and a new business approach to the banks. We believe it will be changing the online banking security,” comments Abu Bakar. Kaspersky is expecting to grow by 30%. ë
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GUEST TALK
DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITY
Prepare for Big Data with Open Hybrid Cloud Gerald outlines the ways an open source hybrid cloud can help businesses sustainably manage big data
n WORDS: GERALD STERNAGL, EMEA BUSINESS UNIT MANA G E R S T O R A G E AT R E D H AT n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
BIG DATA, BIG ISSUE Big data is an IT issue that has risen out of the basement of IT system support and into boardroom consciousness. The C-suite is starting to ask about big data, but without fully understanding its value. Despite the uncertainty, many businesses in the Middle East are looking at how they can benefit from big data, and organisations that generate and collect lots of information with the aim of deriving value from it are starting to invest in systems that enable the large-scale storage and analysis of data. Research carried out in March 2013 by IT analyst firm IDC forecasts immense growth in the area, with the market expected to reach $16.9 billion in 2015 up from $3.2 billion in 2010. The growth will come from businesses seeking to gain a competitive edge by leveraging the intelligence generated by analytics and from businesses that are complying with regulations on data storage. Whatever the motives for embracing big data, it is important to bear in mind that IT thinking has to extend beyond simply buying more and more storage. The big data playing field is already
crowded and companies will need to carefully assess the myriad options on the market before making an investment. STORAGE THAT SCALES Big data requires big storage, and a major portion of investments will occur in storage infrastructure in order to deliver a platform from which meaningful information can be derived in an insightful manner. As more companies wish to create business value out of their vast amounts of stored information, whether derived from sales figures or social media data, the need for big data storage solutions will grow, as traditional on-site storage solutions such as NAS or SAN fail to scale or deliver the required agility. Big data solutions are not static; they are dynamic platforms that fulfil both current and future storage requirements. CLOUD The need for dynamism is exactly why big data technology is suited to a cloud-based architecture, and why it is becoming an increasingly popular model. Different data
sets can be replicated, separated and located anywhere in the world, simplifying the task of scaling infrastructure up or down. Companies no longer need to build and maintain their own infrastructure, reducing costs during periods when workloads are smaller. OPEN HYBRID CLOUD Big data can reside in a private cloud, a public cloud or a combination of the two, a hybrid cloud. Private clouds are viewed by some as prohibitively expensive; they require much larger onsite capital investments in terms of IT and personnel. Public clouds on the other hand, which are purchased from a managed service provider, offer lower upfront costs but do carry with them the risk of vendor lock-in since they often rely on proprietary storage systems and APIs. To avoid this lock-in, businesses should look to a storage solution that’s flexible and can be used in a variety of environments, including on-premise, virtualized and cloud and that offers multiple access options. Big data can provide serious value for companies that are looking for ways to improve their
business or customer service, and open hybrid cloud is a promising technology for organisations that want to work on big data now or in the future. Whether or not a company takes a decision to embrace big data, we can be sure of one thing: the quantity of data that companies are generating and collecting will continue to grow. ACT NOW The requirement for a cloudinspired scale-out storage system based on industry-standard hardware and open source software is therefore relevant for every organisation. Companies not looking to take steps now to switch to a robust and scalable data storage platform are likely to encounter problems in the future with managing data. In addition, efforts to derive benefit from big data are likely to be hindered in the future by economical and logistical challenges. Open hybrid cloud is paving the way as an affordable and sustainable platform, enabling organisations to build their storage platform with their existing systems and to flexibly expand later down the road, prepared for what lies ahead. ë
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CORPORATE STORY
SERVICES
Maturing in the Services Market
Analysing the shift of the market from product to services, like many other companies Xerox too has chalked out its strategy to offer services but it doesn’t want to leave technology behind.
n WORDS:MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
Xerox, a name which has been synonymous to ‘photocopy’ from decades is a lot more than that. Apart from products, the company is on the path to transform to a service provider. “Xerox has been transiting towards a services company, we are not leaving technology behind as a part of the legacy business but we know that sometime in the future these will play a much smaller part in the strategy,” Andrew Horne, General Manager of Xerox Middle-East.
SERVICES PORTFOLIO In a 2013 report, Xerox has been named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Managed Print and Document Services (MPDS) 2013 Hardcopy Vendor Analysis for the fourth consecutive year. Xerox has expanded its Document Management Related Services to Storage, Enterprise Content management etc. One of the key differentiators of Xerox is that it is looking at content management whether it is in digital or print media. “We offer seam less integration, a package solution that can be offered only by Xerox in enterprise content management or the print management which is where we are making huge investments in services so that we can deliver such kind of proposition to all our customers. All enterprise customers are interested in MPS in the UAE across all countries,” adds Horne. Xerox would be signing some interesting deals around correspondence management, digitisation of records management, before it ends this year. It
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would have its first DR application also. “We will be offering cloud services through our partners in Disaster Recovery and Business continuity and Data Migration. We will also be expanding our cloud services,” he explains. Xerox’s move seems relevant as per the current scenraio. According to Gartner, the cloud-based security services market will be worth $2.1 billion in 2013, rising to $3.1 billion in 2015. Five years ago, Xerox bought ACS, a US BPO company. Since then, it has been integrating ACS into its business. ACS offers different BPO and IT sourcing services and transportation solution which Horne thinks is a very big opportunity in ME. One of the key aspects of the sales programme is looking at the internal process map of a larger organisation or any company Xerox deals with. “That’s truly to understand the value chain, uncover various processes that the company uses, figure out the gaps that might help in cost saving, security compliance, etc. Then we offer a solution that can help them have a benefit that can sustain for a longer period,” says Horne.
OPPORTUNITIES IN ME The IT services market in the Middle East is predicted to generate US$5.2bn by 2015 as per the data available from a recent study by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI). “Here, the service strategy is far more engaged on the ground than it was before, we have been growing 200% this year,” tells Horne. He informs that in this region, the hardware
growth is expected to be 2-4%, but the print services would be around 13% with document solutions at 20 % growth. “This is clearly an area of high growth. There is specific demand in this part of the world that they don’t want their data on the servers held in US or any other country offshore. We see a big growth in data centres in the UAE,” he adds. Xerox intends to reach the SMB market which the company feels is largely untapped and is the fastest growing in this region.
PARTNERS As the channel partners are very crucial to do business in IT, Xerox wants to enable its channel partners to have a broader conversation with their customers by offering them package cloud service. “Product centric business will definitely become less important as we improve the knowledge of our partners to present MPS in the right way,” he says. To adapt to the shift from box–selling to a solution focused approach, partners are needed to be identified and trained “The key aspect of the program is to recruit the partners who are solution driven, who can discover the gaps and can provide a value. We have done a complete profiling of the market. Typically we have looked into the resellers who are into System Integrator space. We spend a lot of time in researching those companies and we have had engagements to uncover their ambitions that – going after the transactional sales or looking for adding to value. We have identified 11-12 partners who have such
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CORPORATE STORY
background and we think they are fit to take our MPS solutions to the customers,” explains Horne. Xerox covers most of the enterprise market with its sales force but for SMBs, it needs channel partners. “From medium to large medium sized business, they are equally in need of an MPS offering or cloud services. This leads you to think that you need to have strategy to engage with partners who want to go up the value chain themselves. In SMB space, we are trying to engage with partners who are upfront willing to invest in quality sales force that we can actually educate. We have built a value proposition and we have been engaging some partners,” he adds. Xerox doesn’t wish to segregate its business into direct or indirect sales. “There is no question of direct vs indirect as your channel is an extension and if you have a partnership strategy as business, the contribution is to be looked as a team. If there is a massive opportunity that the partner is incapable to do it alone, we do it together. It should be mutually profitable as we are in a business to make money,” says Horne.
CHALLENGES “When you go from a short term selling cycle to the long term selling cycle is a really interesting business challenge. We have done that here,
ANDREW HORNE,
GENERAL MANAGER OF XEROX MIDDLE-EAST.
“We are right in the middle of maturing part of transformation process where 55% of our revenues are coming from services”
once you get there, you don’t want to get back,” comments Horne. Without winning CEO and CFO support, it is difficult to implement a solution. According to Horne, a company spends 3-5% of its revenue on documents. “We offer them an opportunity to save a huge chunk of money on multi-function devices and printers. The willingness of CIOs to engage in conversation is refreshing as they are under pressure and there is an opportunity to save 30% of printing costs,” he says. He quotes an example of Vodafone Egypt which saved 20% of the savings in paper because the print jobs got cancelled by the server as nobody printed them out. Xerox spends a colossal amount on R&D which is close to 1.7% of revenues.
FINALLY... In a year’s time, all of Xerox’s partners will have a primary focus on selling MPS solutions to medium-sized business. They will receive requests for boxes and they will fulfil that because there is a market. “The vision statement of Xerox is services led technology-driven. We are right in the middle of maturing part of transformation process where 55% of our revenues are coming from services,” concludes Horne. ë
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MY VIEWS
BASHAR BASHAIREH
SENIOR REGIONAL DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST & PAKISTAN, FORTINET
“Taking a multi-layer security solution approach” THE MODERN DAY SOPHISTICATED ATTACKS LIKE RANSOMWARE OR MOBILE MALWARE IS FORCING THE SECURITY WATCH GUARDS TO PROVIDE NEXT-GEN NETWORK SECURITY SOLUTIONS COVERING THE BROAD SPECTRUM OF THE ENTERPRISE – FROM END POINT, NETWORK, TO APPLICATIONS. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO BASHAR BASHAIREH, SENIOR REGIONAL DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST & PAKISTAN, FORTINET, TO GET HIS PERSPECTIVE ON SECURITY TRENDS IN THE MEA REGION AND THE COMPANY’S OFFERINGS IN THIS SPACE. EXCERPTS
What are the security trends in the Middle East region? Security breaches have changed a lot in recent times. The attacks have become very differ-
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ent. If we go a decade back, then at that time, threats were just infected attachments to the mail, which could download either a virus or a Trojan to the PC. Today, threats have become
very dynamic with multiple vectors, wherein having a standalone anti-virus is not enough. The cyber criminals can infect your system with DDOS attack to distract the attention of security administrators within an enterprise while a malware has somehow been injected into the end user network that has started doing a parallel job by entering into the database of the customer or end users’ accounts and probably started to transfer funds outside the organization. With the explosion of the smartphone industry and high penetration of mobile phones within the market, the availability of applications and content which encourage people to move into that direction has increased manifold. This has created the opportunity for cyber criminals and hackers to tap into these areas and spread the modern day threats. Today, we see malware on smartphones is increasing and this is becoming a concern of security administrators, especially when you talk about concepts like BYOD that is being adopted by enterprises worldwide.
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This trend which is in line with the increasing threats out there with the emergence and widespread usage of mobile phones and smartphones is called ‘Ransomware’. Earlier, we were accustomed to ‘Ransomware’ with PCs and notebooks, but this malware is now widespread on mobile phone industry. If a smartphone user accesses a website that will download that piece of malware on his device, then the smartphone will get locked and the hacker would ask for a ransom to release the smartphone. In this situation, the user has just two options to make – either pay the ransom and get the smartphone unlocked or forget about the data residing on his device, reformat it, and start using it again. This is where users should realize the importance of anti-malware end point security solutions. The organizations should also keep a backup of their computing devices. Another cyber threats that are increasingly becoming visible are advanced persistent threats (APTs) which are of long term. Here, the hacker won’t go on the spot, get the financial gain, and get out. Instead, they attack on intellectual property, probably strategic, industrial, financial and economic information. Tell us about the solutions that Fortinet offers to address the market? At Fortinet, we are pioneers of providing next generation network security solutions and we really cover the broad spectrum of the enterprise – from end point, network, to applications. With multiple vectors of attacks and threats that are out there in the market, you really need to look at multi-layer security solution approach. It is really not recommended to go and buy an independent and separated solution addressing the different threats today. It is because the components will not be talking to each other, correlating events together, and giving you the right reports in order to help you take the right decision at the right time. You have to adopt a multi-layer comprehensive solution where from a single console, you can have a centralized management and thus, giving you the bigger picture. Threats and attacks are becoming multi-vector, so you need to look at a broader spectrum of your enterprise and correlate things together so that you can take rights decisions for your organization. That’s how Fortinet addresses these emerging threats. The recent introduction of our FortiOS version 5, which we released at the beginning of this year is doing very well in the market. Its two features – customer reputation and Sandboxing – differentiate us from the others. Customer reputation really looks at the behavior of IT assets
and IT resources on your network, analyses the behavior of these resources, and do a scoring. You either positively where there is no threat or negatively where there is a threat arising. As far as Sandboxing is concerned, it looks at software that is suspicious and there is likelihood that it would constitute a threat or carry a malware. In this case, you isolate the software and put it in the Sandbox which can be either in the same machine or a virtual environment. Once it is done, you start looking at the behavior of the malware. If it turns out to be malicious, then you quarantine it. These are the unique features of FortiOS 5. Another feature is ‘wireless controller’ that comes with the FortiGate. Right now, each FortiGate can act as a secured wireless controller to the access points that we can deploy around the enterprise network. With the high adoption of BYOD concept across the businesses, you need to make sure that users or guests who come into your network are given certain rights and privileges based on their category. All this is being enforced through FotiGate as security policies through the access points around the enterprise so that each user can work according to the security policies that govern his usage for network and resources.
What has been your channel strategy for this region? Fortinet works through three tier business model globally as well as in the Middle East region. We have distribution partners who are at the first level of channel network. These are the value added distributors who have trained resources on board, stocking facilities across the region, and provide RMA services for fast turnaround and replacement of defective units. We have 4 VADs in this region viz. Secureway, Oxygen Technologies, Mantrac distribution, and Online distribution in Pakistan. This is our first line of channel. Then we go to our value added resellers. We have different levels of VAR partnerships, wherein we have Bronze, Silver, and Gold partners – depending upon the capabilities of those resellers in terms of trained and certified resources. Another category of partnerships that we have in this region are the managed security service providers. Today, the traditional Internet service providers business doesn’t really carry a lot of financial margins and benefits. These companies are really looking for that piece of value added service where they can differentiate each other. We have a very nice portfolio for such kind of businesses, whether it is CPE based
“WITH MULTIPLE VECTORS OF ATTACKS AND THREATS THAT ARE OUT THERE IN THE MARKET, YOU REALLY NEED TO LOOK AT MULTI-LAYER SECURITY SOLUTION APPROACH”
Another platform of defense that we provide is our FortiWeb that is our web application firewall. It protects your web-based applications and internet-facing data from attack and data loss. Using advanced techniques to provide bidirectional protection against malicious sources, application layer DoS attacks and sophisticated threats like SQL injection and Cross-site scripting, FortiWeb platforms help you prevent identity theft, financial fraud and denial of service. We also offer FortiDDoS family of DDoS attack mitigation appliances. FortiDDoS helps you protect your internet-facing infrastructure from threats and service disruptions by surgically removing network and application-layer DDoS attacks. You can defend your critical on-premise and cloud infrastructure from attacks while relying on FortiDDoS appliances’ sophisticated filtering technologies to allow legitimate traffic to continue to flow.
equipment or cloud-based. Our MSSP partners can either provide security-as-a-service to a CPE based model or cloud-based model or hybrid model. These are really the different categories of partners that we have on the ground. How is Fortinet growing in this region and what are your growth projections? Fortinet is growing very strongly year-on-year in this region. We have invested and opened offices in Saudi Arabia, local presence in Kuwait and Pakistan. Hence, we are investing as our business grows. According to IDC, we have 30 percent of UTM market share in the Middle East. We achieved almost 60 percent growth in 2012 compared to 2011. This year, our target is to either match that number or surpass it. In line with this growth, we are hiring more resources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE. ë
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MY VIEWS
ANTHONY PERRIDGE
CHANNEL DIRECTOR – EMEA, SOURCEFIRE
“SourceFire is all about Quality” WITH THE ENTERPRISE SECURITY MARKET IN THE EMEA REGION GROWING EXPONENTIALLY, IT HAS BECOME AN IMPERATIVE FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO TAKE A PROACTIVE STANCE IN MITIGATING THE IMPACT OF SOPHISTICATED
platform where we look forward to meeting our partners and customers as well as showcasing our solutions. What kind of security solutions do you offer? We actually have solutions for entire network – from the very core of the network to the end points. SourceFire is one of those unique security companies that can help the customer from the core to the end point and in all parts of their business.
ATTACKS. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO ANTHONY PERRIDGE, CHANNEL DIRECTOR – EMEA, SOURCEFIRE, TO GET AN INSIGHT. EXCERPTS
Tell us about the Middle East security market growth? Middle East is our fastest growing markets. It’s an area of high investment for SourceFire. The potential threat of cyber attacks in the Middle East has seen a steep growth, as has the rest of the world, and has made many enterprises susceptible to these attacks. There is an increased awareness by corporations that are addressing
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the security issues more effectively. Increasingly businesses in the region know that it is not a question of if they are attacked, but when they are attacked. The security model has changed and therefore it is critical we can manage our security, before, during and after an incident rather than purely rely on defending the perimeter. This region is very exciting for us. This is a
How SourceFire products are sold – as software licenses or appliances? Most of our business is appliance based because customers need high fidelity as well as high throughput. And to get that type of performance, often times you need to put it an appliance. Typically, businesses require custom appliance so that they get both the performance and reliability. On the other hand, our solutions are available as licenses as well, for example, if the customers want to run it on VMware in the virtual environment. So, customers certainly have the choice
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but for high speed networks, then have to go with appliances. What solutions do your appliances provide? We have a platform that can work as a nextgeneration IPS and you can also put up on this platform the next generation firewall as well as advanced malware protection. Here, the customers have the opportunity to invest in the platform and then maximize the investment by putting other security solutions from SourceFire on that platform. This is a very appealing proposition for the customers in terms of reducing the number of vendors as well as platform on their network. Who are the ideal customers for SourceFire? Which vertical markets are you focusing strongly? We sell to very sophisticated and security savvy organizations that take security very seriously. And those types of companies go to Gartner and see us right there at the top. These are the companies who go through NSS Lab0073 reports, which are independent and high respected research reports on technologies, and will see SourceFire is number one in performance
and detection. This gives us a kind of proof of concept. We don’t worry about the competition because we articulate our message correctly and our solutions are validated from Gartner and NSS Labs. Hence, we are in a very good position and have high chances to win the customers. We are extremely strong in defense organizations, government sector, telcos, finance sector, and critical national infrastructure like oil & gas segment in this region. These are the five key vertical industries that is on our radar. In terms of how we deliver the solutions, we provide them as managed services. For example, a bank needs to focus on its core job of banking and since security expertise is hard to find and retain as well as very expensive, and then it chooses to outsource it to a managed services company. So, if a customer doesn’t want to buy SourceFire as capital expenditure and want to include us in the operational expenditure, we can be delivered as managed service. What kind of distribution model you follow to take your offerings to the market? How many partners do you have in this region? Here in EMEA, we are 100 percent channel centric. We have a direct touch team wherein we go
and meet the customers, articulate our solutions and show their significance, and why the customers should select us. We work entirely through channel partners, which include managed service providers as well. SourceFire is all about quality and not quantity. In this region, we have two distributors viz. Secureway and FVC. Both have partners that posses expertise and skills to take SourceFire products deeper into the market. We don’t let our partners cut down each others’ profitability and margins, as they might loose interest in our products in the long run. Hence, we ensure that we have a very strong deal registration program. We reward the partners with extra discounts and margins for working with us and helping build the market. The other area where we emphasize on is the accreditation of the partners that would help them differentiate from the competition and helps us all in winning the business together. What kind of market numbers have you set for the next year? If you look at the history of SourceFire, every year since our formation about 10 years ago, we have grown always in the excess of 30 percent. This is not a prediction or commitment but we are historically, a very high growth company. ë
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COVER STORY
Securing the Organizational Boundaries
IT security is fast becoming a key concern amongst the enterprises in the MEA region. With organizations demonstrating an urgency to enhance their security infrastructure and planning to spend more on security technologies, the Middle East security market is poised to grow over the next few years, thereby, opening up huge opportunities for vendors to identify and tap. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM> n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
T
he demand for IT security products and services has been witnessing an exponential growth for last few years, owing to the increasing deployment of IT-enabled business solutions. Moreover, rapidly increasing malicious cyber attacks on the websites of the government and enterprises have made it necessary for these organizations to have an updated and strong IT security infrastructure so that their vital information remain secured. The Middle East & Africa region is experiencing a significant growth in its IT security markets, which is largely driven by the rapidly growing Internet adoption, and surging demand for IT-enabled business solutions in countries like the GCC region. According to RNCOS Research, the Middle East IT security software and appliances market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of more than 34 percent between 2010 and 2013. The major factor responsible for this growth is that the overall IT market in the region is growing- the Middle East expenditure on IT is
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expected to cross $20 billion this year, which represents a growth rate of over 10 percent year on-year. With security playing such a pivotal part of today’s IT infrastructures, it is no surprise then that the increase in ICT deployments has also meant a big growth of the security solutions market. As per IDC estimates, the total security appliances market has increased by more than 11.13% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012 in the Middle East region. Another contributing factor is the wide spread personal and business usage of social networks, where data can be easily disclosed creating vulnerabilities that hackers can use. The market reports also suggest that almost 50% of social networking users in the UAE have fallen victim to one form or another of cyber crime. At the same time, according to Frost & Sullivan, the Middle East Network Security market is expected to experience a growth rate of more than 18 percent between 2012 and 2018, opening up opportunities for vendors to identify and tap. While the market with lower base of security
adoption and increase in number of threats on a monthly basis will only enhance the demand for security products in the region. The Middle East network security market is all set for rapid growth as organizations in the region realize their vulnerability to increasingly complex cybercrimes. The need to comply with government’s cyber legislation has further encouraged businesses to implement network security solutions, fueling the market’s growth in the region. As per the analysis from Frost & Sullivan, the Middle East Network Security Market, the estimated revenues from sales of various IT security solutions will reach $933.6 million by 2018.
CURRENT SCENARIO The market scenario of vulnerability and threats in the MEA region is really becoming a cause of concern for the enterprises. With a lot of sophisticated attacks including Ransomware, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) happening globally, the MEA region is certainly on the radar of the cyber
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criminals, as this market has seen a rising profile when it comes to targeted attacks. Joe Schramm, Director of Strategic Alliances, Core Security, says, “Brand and IP protection are two of the main drivers we are seeing in the MEA market. These drivers surface as a result of the targeted nature of the threat landscape. Compliance and regulatory controls are always going to drive elements of technology adoption as well. Such threats are being headed off at the pass by larger entities switching to a proactive approach to security and fast tracking their way to maturity in the adoption of anti-malware, GRC, Vulnerability Management and SIEM technologies.” “The first half of 2013 witnessed a 30 percent increase in mobile malware on a global level, including this region. This has been fuelled by the increased market penetration of smart phones due to availability of online applications, content, high bandwidth mobile networks and the adoption of the BYOD model. An example of that is Ransomware, which proved incredibly successful for hackers, where this piece of malware can lock the victim’s phone and demand payment before unlocking the device. Once the phone is locked, the victim can either pay the ransom or completely erase the device losing all valuable data if no proper backup exists,” adds Bashar Bashaireh, Senior Regional Director, Fortinet Middle East and Pakistan. Due to the economic crisis in 2008 there had been an increase in the attacks in the Middle East region. The hackers have become more sophisticated in their approach and instead of attacking larger audience with small number of attacks, they have changed their strategy to smaller audiences with a large number of attacks, thus increasing their chances of success. Amongst the other rampant threats, APTs are the sophisticated attacks being targeted at highly strategic organizations. Here, the attackers target the intellectual properties in order to gain strategic, industrial, financial and military information. The hackers try to get into inside network of the end user and reside for the longer period while continuously taking phishing attempts to try and find out the right individual within the organization to give them the necessary information to penetrate or by social engineering where they can obtain necessary details to get into that environment. Some of the rcent examples in the region include the ‘Stuxnet’ worm targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and the Shamoon malware that attacked Saudi Aramco’s computer systems about a year ago. Similarly, the recent political unrest in the region has led to an increase in DDoS attacks which are commonly used by political hackers
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JOE SCHRAMM, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC ALLIANCES, CORE SECURITY
BASHAR BASHAIREH, SENIOR REGIONAL DIRECTOR, FORTINET MIDDLE EAST AND PAKISTAN
“Our additional observation is that while some large enterprises may have deeply invested in traditional IT Security tools, these organizations tend to have little room or appetite for large new investments.
“Fortinet provides comprehensive multi-layered security solutions that allow enforcement of security policies across the enterprise and the correlation of various network, database and applications events.”
“ACCORDING TO FROST & SULLIVAN, THE ESTIMATED REVENUES FROM SALES OF VARIOUS IT SECURITY SOLUTIONS WILL REACH $933.6 MILLION BY 2018”
to bring select targeted web sites down by either overloading the network bandwidth of a web service or launching an application layer attack with a huge influx of application requests. These hackers can infect a system with DDOS attack to distract the attention of security administrators within an enterprise while a malware has somehow been injected into the end user network that has started doing a parallel job by entering into the database of the customer or end users’ accounts and probably started to transfer funds outside the organization. “In the MEA region, the need of IT security solution and IT in general, is still evolving. So, there are lot of potential for IT companies and system integrators. On the other side, since many
countries in the region are still emerging, the demand would be on the rise. At the same time, customers would also be under risk more than before. Having said that, I would see the region to grow,” states Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO, EMT Distribution. In such kind of environment in the MEA region, the traction or demand for the enterprise security solutions is bound to pick up. The recent attacks in the region and increased awareness have seen enterprises giving much higher priority and making sure they have a security plan in place. In the end, all corporate data needs to be safe and within their control. Customers across verticals understand the risks and are trying to make sure their networks and data are safe.
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CLOUD & BYOD – PARTNERS IN CRIME Moreover, the arrival of new concepts like Cloud Computing and BYOD are certainly adding to the vulnerability of the enterprise. With the increased adoption of BYOD and cloud computing trends in business, the need for user based security has become even bigger. The adoption of these technologies has challenged the traditional security architecture, which has been unable to tackle increasingly sophisticated attacks in the Middle East. “BYOD and cloud computing are technology trends that hold tremendous benefits for organizations so long as they are implemented in a secure and efficient manner. Smartphone penetration in the Middle East is extremely high and it is only inevitable that employees will bring these devices to the office and expect support for the same. Attackers can gain access to the corporate network by attacking such devices though Wi-Fi and Bluetooth which is why protecting against infiltration is a must. BYOD also necessitates centralized administration to ensure that the device is secure. Today’s enterprise mobile security solutions must allow administrators to run on-demand scans, push security policies, gain an overview of the OS version with up to date information about the phones security and set uninstall passwords,” opines Neo Neophytou, MD, ESET Middle East. Adding further, Jose Thomas, MD, Bulwark Technologies LLC, states, “IT Security can be quite daunting if you don’t have the right help. Organizations are looking at securing every aspect of their IT enterprise including applications, databases, network etc. They don’t want to leave any loopholes anywhere. Customers understand that the walls of the enterprise have been blown open and today employees are out there visiting clients with corporate data in their hands. BYOD is growing in the region. Cloud technology has become popular. Big data is huge. Security threats have also increased in the region.” Today, we are witnessing a trend of increasing mobile malware and this is becoming a concern of security administrators, especially when you talk about concepts like BYOD that is being adopted by enterprises worldwide. As a security administrator, one has to make sure that if an employee is taking a mobile device outside the premises of the organization, he or she will abide by the security policies. “There are a number of security considerations when migrating to cloud-based computing. The first being the data stored in the cloud. Here, to protect against any confidential data loss, IT administrators must ensure the cloud
vendor has an access control security policy and that data cannot be leaked. As well, regulatory compliance and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) considerations need to be evaluated as part of the cloud-vendor selection criteria. When it comes to data in use, ensure the cloud vendor provides adequate protection such that data is clean of malware and co-located content is not infected as well. It’s also vital to ensure that appropriate end-point client security controls are in place so that any data that is downloaded from cloud-based services are not infected and carried into the network or back into the cloud,” asserts Bashaireh. “BYOD provides a new attack vector for the threats we face. If patching and vulnerability management is a serious problem in the enterprise, it is a disaster in the personal computing arena. BYOD essentially introduces these same personal computing challenges into the enterprise. Cloud computing can be either beneficial or debilitating to vulnerability management depending on the cloud provider. On the one hand, if you are using a well-known, established vendor, then it is quite likely that their security is better than what the enterprise can provide. Certainly most enterprises cannot secure and defend their systems at the same level of capability as Google can, as an example. However, the second tier of Cloud vendors is dramatically less capable than the first tier,” highlights Schramm. While cloud computing evokes much debate about security risks particularly from accessing corporate data and business critical applications over the internet, it means growth for security industry as the best bet of securely accessing cloud is Unified Threat Management approach with extensible architecture which integrate multiple security features like Firewall, VPN, Intrusion Prevention System, Web Filtering, and others on a single platform.
ADOPTION LEVEL AT VARIOUS VERTICAL INDUSTRIES Till some time back, there was a general perception amongst the market analysts that although IT security market is demonstrating strong growth projections, spending by large enterprises was somehow on a lower side. The logic behind this was that they have historically spent relatively little on IT security. However, this trend seems to be rapidly changing as organizations realize that cyber threats are no longer isolated to a few unlucky targets, but are actually much more pervasive. The IDC report suggests that large enterprises in the region are deploying intrusion prevention
CHALLENGES BLOCKING WIDE SCALE ADOPTION OF SECURITY SOLUTIONS • Maturity of the market and technology adoption. • Infrastructure limitations in terms of high-bandwidth mobile networks, regulatory frameworks and scarcity of online applications and content reflect on lower smartphones penetration ratio and consequently less adoption of cloud based services and BYOD model. • Many organizations having low/no dedicated budgets for IT security and many at times it is part of the overall IT budget. This prevents many companies from looking beyond the traditional solutions. • A lot of quality time is required to keep updated with the latest technologies or solutions and this becomes a real challenge for IT Managers and decision makers. • Lack of industry standards or certifications for compliance in the region like ISO 27001/22301 or PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). • The shortage of skilled labor to manage the sophisticated, technology-intensive solutions can curb investments from enterprises. • The unregulated distribution framework, which lacks structure in terms of price, profit potential and regional allocation.
systems and content management products, while small and medium-sized businesses are more interested in unified threat management products which accounted for 45 percent of the region’s end-user market revenue in the second quarter of 2013. “Our additional observation is that while some large enterprises may have deeply invested in traditional IT Security tools, these organizations tend to have little room or appetite for large new investments. An investment into something like
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CORE Security makes sense because it enables the large enterprises to greatly increase the effectiveness of their existing resources for relatively little incremental cost,” points out Schramm. Bashaireh also comments, “Based on our observations, customers are becoming more cautious when procuring for their IT security projects paying more attention to a reduced OPEX against their Capital expenditure. This involved new computing models and trends such as the adoption of cloud based services including security services, virtualization in an effort to reduce space & energy footprint, and the embrace of BYOD model as mentioned earlier to improve employees productivity and reduce IT assets expenditure. Furthermore, a significant amount of security budgets is being allocated to GRC (Governance, Risk Management and Compliance) and to regulatory & standards compliance such as the PCI-DSS and HEPAA standards.” The market is seeing a significant increase in demand for security solutions throughout the MEA region. The primary reason is that enterprises cannot afford to be at risk for security breaches and external threats and are aggressively bolstering their security defenses and predictive risk assessment capabilities. For example, as mentioned above, the Saudi Aramco breach has really raised the awareness level that almost every organization at any time can be at risk. This holds true not only for the very large enterprises but also for small- to medium-size organizations. Some of the vertical industries that have been in the forefront of adopting the enterprise security solutions are public sector, government, financial services, telecommunications, utilities, energy, manufacturing, oil & gas production, and healthcare segments. “We are seeing good growth in the sectors like education, government, hospitality and manufacturing. Positive momentum in the Middle East for these segments has also resulted in better traction. Also, the recent spate of attacks targeted at Middle East organizations has resulted in an increase in the overall security awareness of the region,” adds Neophytou. Adding further, Stephan Berner, MD at Help AG, states, “The regional awareness about IT security is growing and we definitely have seen an increased uptake of enterprise security solutions. Proof of this lies in the success we have had over the last couple years. Help AG focuses solely on IT security and given that we enjoyed an 80% year-on-year growth rate, it is evident that the market interest in security solutions is indeed strong. Since Help AG focuses solely on IT security, it comes as no surprise that the main verticals
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NEO NEOPHYTOU, MD, ESET MIDDLE EAST
JOSE THOMAS, MD, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES LLC
“We are seeing good growth in the sectors like education, government, hospitality and manufacturing. Positive momentum in the Middle East for these segments has also resulted in better traction.”
“Principal vendors trust us to take the load off their support departments. Bulwark works very closely with its channel partners ensuring that their end customers get the right value for the money.”
“SECURITY WILL BE ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EMERGING SEGMENTS OF THE IT SECTOR OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS,
that have been driving our business have been those in which security is essential to conducting business. These include banks and financial institutions, telecom, government entities and sectors like oil & gas and critical infrastructure which are increasingly being targeted by attackers.”
NEXT-GEN SOLUTIONS IN THE OFFING As modern-day businesses are becoming increasingly information-centric in the Middle East with changing technology trends, there has been a growing need amongst public and private sector companies to enhance their security infrastructure with IT becoming a critical component in their operational setups. In order to tackle the
increasingly sophisticated attacks in the Middle East, the security vendors are encouraged to offer products and solutions that are going to prove game changers in the security domain. Apparently, the security offerings of today are designed to meet the needs of next generation enterprises looking to securely embrace cloud, mobility, and social infrastructures. Like for example, Core Security believes that the most significant game changer in security, whether for the enterprise or the SMB, is the introduction of intelligent big data solutions. Some organizations have all the information they need to secure themselves. Unfortunately, the information is so massive and complex, that traditional security solutions do not turn the data
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into actionable information that the enterprise can take action on. Solutions like CORE Insight will transform how security is driven forward in the future, allowing the enterprises to understand where the real threats are, where the vulnerabilities lie, and what data they need to protect, allowing them to focus the limited resources of the enterprise security team to best effect. “Our solutions are designed to measure threats at multiple levels including those from devices outside the traditional enterprise security perimeter such as mobile devices. We also offer products such as … that allow customers to perform vulnerability tests in cloud environments. We are always staying abreast of the source of new threats as the IT trends evolve and incorporate these new environments into the capabilities of our products and solutions,” points out Schramm. Similarly, Fortinet delivers next generation network security appliances including a rich feature set such as high performance throughput, low latency and the advanced FortiOS 5.0 operating system. This recent operating system release delivers superior and innovative network security capabilities such as Client Reputation and Advanced Anti-malware detection system; Granular control of endpoints and users through behavioral analysis, allowing IT managers to apply relevant policy decisions to clients, on an individual basis. Wth FortiOS 5.0, Fortinet delivers integrated protection, control and management of the network, enabling prevention and remediation, all via one platform. “Fortinet provides comprehensive multilayered security solutions that can be centrally managed allowing enforcement of security policies across the extended enterprise and the correlation of various network, database and applications events & activities allowing security administrators to take the right decisions at the right time. Furthermore, all our FortiGate product family run on FortiOS 5.0 operating system which delivers all the necessary features earlier highlighted in order to meet the needs of next generation enterprises,” says Bashaireh. Toeing the same lines, the ESET Secure Enterprise solution provides the maximum level of protection for company endpoints and servers across multiple platforms. This solution combines the strengths of its endpoint antivirus, enterprise mobile security, file security, endpoint security, mail security and gateway security products to offer a complete security solution to the business customers. Some of the key advanced technologies features include cloud-powered scanning, device control, antivirus, personal firewall, web control, client anti-spam and mission-critical
email filtering of spam and malware before they can reach users’ mailboxes. “At ESET, we urge our business customers to ‘enjoy safer technology’. This means that we encourage them to deploy the latest solutions and embrace the latest IT trends such as cloud computing, BYOD and social media while guaranteeing that our solutions will keep their networks protected. Not only this, our solutions do so with minimal effect on system performance,” comments Neophytou.
PARTNERS ADAPTING TO THE TREND Majority of channel partners are open to learning new technologies and solutions. However they take time to implement the same with their clients. Of late, the market is seeing a real shift with more channel partners focusing on IT security with dedicated sales and support team. Additionally, the solutions that are attempting to solve the big data challenge which can also provide actionable information are gaining interest among the channel partners. Also, for many channel partners the market is crowded with many players offering the same or similar solutions. The industry players see the forward looking channel partners starting to look for new more innovative solutions that can provide their customers with new and expanded capabilities that solve real problems. As a leading partner of the region, Bulwark Technologies, partner with around 14 vendors in the region securing various parts of the IT enterprise, including the likes of Cyberoam, ESET, Accellion, Application Security, Beyond Trust, EiQ Networks, Cyber-Ark, Cryptocard, and Safenet. With properly trained and certified staff on board, the company works very closely with vendors extending their reach to customers through its channels in the region. Our scope covers positioning the product correctly, building up the channels, ensuring the availability of proper expertise and support for the products / solutions and increasing their business in the region. The solutions in its portfolio cover various aspects of the enterprise IT security. “We work as the hands and feet of our principal companies. We have trained personnel for all our offerings. So, our reseller partners can also depend on us for technical expertise, in case they do not have one available. Principal vendors trust us to take the load off their support departments. We involve them only when it comes to Level 3 or higher level support. We help our partners to provide demos and setup POCs to the end users. We also provide regular technical trainings to equip them to handle POCs and first level
ENABLEMENT OF PARTNERS IN ENTERPRISE SECURITY SOLUTIONS DOMAIN • ESET works closely with its partners to make sure that they are well equipped to implement its solutions and support customers when needed. The same is achieved through partner programs that involve sales and technical training and certifications for their technical team. Another important factor is extending the help while prospecting a potential client. The company also helps its partners with Proof of Concept assignments. • Core Security launched the CORE Secured partner program in 2012 to build a comprehensive program that provided its partners with enablement (both sales and technical), access to the technologies so that they can not only showcase them but also become proficient technically, and co-invest in building awareness and opportunities for its solutions. • Fortinet’s top priority is the training and education of the channel partners. Fortinet mobile application is a series of marketing tools delivering required information by its partners whenever they demand. Forti-Partner Program (FPP) is designed to further align with the company’s business strategy in providing end-toend network security solutions and recognize the investment made by its channel in skilled sales and technical resources, through adapted benefits in the areas of sales, marketing and training. This program includes the new FortiWireless specialization, online sales training, and four-tiered program for resellers.
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support themselves. In short, starting from lead generation to after sales support, Bulwark works very closely with its channel partners ensuring that their end customers get the right value for the money invested in solutions dealt by us,” explains Thomas. Similarly, Help AG is the only security player who is authorized to provide level 1 and level 2 support services on behalf on principle vendors like F5, Juniper, Palo Alto Networks and Infoblox. This could only be achieved by having the highest technical certifications, biggest number of certified engineers and successful completion of a 6 month trial period with all the vendors. Because of its unmatched technical expertise, the company has managed to engage with vendors on a level that is far beyond what other resellers in the region are capable of. Help AG’s resources can also avail of specific technical enablement schemes such as direct access to F5 PS resources, internal training material, and validation of Help AG’s IRule developments by F5 PS. “Help AG is different in terms of unmatched technical capabilities with over 80% of staff appointed in technical roles; capable of in-house development and enhancement of vendor solutions to meet precise requirements of customer even when vendor solutions fall short of expectations; and introducing ‘Learning Lab’ sessions which is course material developed and delivered by Help AG. These have been extremely well received by the customers who have been looking for vendor neutral and unbiased description of technical problems without the focus on pushing technology solutions or boxes,” highlights Berner. Not to be left behind, EMT Distribution acts like vendors in the region, and is trying to offer all services and requirement they need to serve to their partners and customers. The company does following activities for all its vendors, including preparing business plan suitable for MEA region, designing marketing and go-to-market strategy and plan, preparing of projects documents, training partners and customers, and providing technical support (pre- and post-sales). “We help vendors in serving partners locally. In addition, we have a program, called Business Match Making Program. With the help of our Europe office, we offer our partners new solutions and products on regular basis. We have a list of partners’ interest and we might pick only one or a few partners to focus on the solution which they need exclusively,” points out Mobasseri.
THE ROAD AHEAD In the current scenario, security is yet to reach the status where consumers see it as an expense rather than as an investment in securing their
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STEPHAN BERNER, MD AT HELP AG
MOHAMMAD MOBASSERI, CEO, EMT DISTRIBUTION
“The regional awareness about IT security is growing and we definitely have seen an increased uptake of enterprise security solutions. Proof of this lies in the success we have had over the last couple years.”
“On the other side, since many countries in the region are still emerging, the demand would be on the rise. At the same time, customers would also be under risk more than before,”
environment. Going forward, the security should be a primary focus for IT managers and they need to push their case with management that IT spending is not a secondary investment. As per the market statistics, security will be one of the most significant emerging segments of the IT sector over the next couple of years, due to sizeable impending investments from businesses looking to secure their computing environments. With this in mind, vendors are offering efficient means to assure that threats are blocked at each level courtesy of their security products. “Given the steepness of the adoption curve as well as the overall increases we are seeing with regard to IT spend, the MEA market within the large enterprise and public sectors will continue to evolve at speed. Growth in the market is significant and as a result, the future will see the MEA market in certain sectors as pioneering in terms of their approach to enterprise security,” says Schramm. Meanwhile, the industry experts are predict-
ing that the region’s IT security spends will increase considerably in the coming years. Also, technology convergence, cloud computing, and greater adoption of web applications are expected to increase the deployment of integrated security appliances in the region over the next few years. And as smartphones and tablets continue to proliferate in the consumer and business segments and hackers target portable devices, mobile security solutions will become a priority in the Middle East. “Decision makers have to make sure the necessary multi-layered security solutions covering the extended enterprise from end-points to networks to databases and applications, the needed security policies and regulatory compliances whenever applicable, are all implemented and endorsed. Finally an important factor that requires highlighting is the human factor. Unless proper training and awareness to end-users is done, enterprises won’t realize the benefits expected from deploying state of the art security solutions,” concludes Bashaireh. ë
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STORAGE
UC
‘Making Video Calling as Easy as Telephonic Calls’ Participating with its partner FVC, Polycom made a very strong show about its commitment towards its offering in UC.
n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
GARY RIDER
RPRESIDENT, EMEA POLYCOM
“We want people to be able to make video calls as easy as telephonic calls.”
DHARMENDRA PARMAR GENERAL MANAGER MARKETING, FVC SUPPORTING THE PARTNERS
P
olycom claims that CIOs would choose its solutions over competitors because of ease of use which is its primary objective. “We want people to be able to make video calls as easy as telephonic calls. We offer the lowest TCO. We can save 30% of the bandwidth of a large company. We want our competition’s partners to visit us and when they hear our story , they might go away thinking they made a mistake with the other one.” says Gary Rider, President, EMEA, Polycom. The fact that Polycom has only one business i.e. Unified Communications, Gary feels it is an added advantage. “There are no distraction and an assurance that we are going to invest in R&D to stay ahead in the game,” Rider says. Polycom is strong in education, healthcare,
FVC participated in GITEX 2013 for the 13th year and showcased its new and existing vendor partnerships.
manufacturing, and legal sectors but it doesn’t believe that the solutions are ‘verticalized’. “I think what we have got is common applications. I am not sure you could say that there are actually such unique differentiators in that industry. We are not verticalized but we have a lot of ways in which we can use those verticals,” he informs. The ME region is very important to Polycom and with FVC it is building up here. “This is the no. 1 area in EMEA where our investment will go. We will invest in Central Africa as well,” he adds. Polycom sees an opportunity to have a double digit growth. “The more connected you are with your customers and employees, the more opportunities you have to grow and with our solution you can do that at the best,” Rider concludes. ë
FVC showcased new solutions from its existing vendor partnerships along with solutions from new vendor partnerships. As far as the new vendor relationships are concerned, FVC showcased Watchful Software which provides DLP solutions. It also showied Datwyler for the first time. Datwyler is in cabling solutions including data centre solutions for cabling, racks, cooling etc. “We are showcasing the new relationship with Cyan. Cyan specialises in SDN. Their solutions help organisations move from traditional networking to SDN. We are tied up with Barco for medium solutions and showing Barco’s ClickShare,” says Dharmendra Parmar, General Manager Marketing, FVC. Polycom, Watchful Software, Barco, Cyan, Sourcefire, and Vaddio were the vendors present solely on FVC’s booth. “Take away from here is to generate leads and touch base with our partners. We are also expecting new partnerships,” he concludes.
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VAD PITCH
EMT
Exploring New Avenues After establishing its global presence, EMT is positioning itself in the Middle East market with offerings in cloud, security and virtualization n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
E
MT Distribution, one of the leading global value added distributor started its operations 15 years ago in Australia. Since then it has spread its wings with an intention to cover the whole world. It is operating in Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Austria, with few representatives in India and Argentina. Now, it is establishing itself in Dubai as well. The newly appointed CEO, Mohammad Mobasheri says, “EMT has started its operations in Dubai three months ago but in terms of working in the MEA region, we were here since
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MOHAMMAD MOBASHERI
CEO, EMT DISTRIBUTION,
“Training is a key aspect for EMT. We are launching EMT Academy very soon and tying up with various training centres”
the beginning. The products specific to this region were sold through resellers.” EMT specialises in cloud, security and virtualization with a total of ten brands on its portfolio including Kaspersky Lab, ESET, Secunia, 2X, Altaro etc. Mobasheri outlining his view point says, “Our aim is to bring the best of breed product technologies in the region and try to make them big. The product and technologies we are offering are very new and the kind of targeting the future.” The VAD has a different strategy in classifying its operations. The Europe office focuses on vendor management rather than distribution. “A lot of vendors in the world want to penetrate into different markets. It is difficult for them as it requires investment of money and time. We help them to do it easily. That’s why we have a lot of vendors who are ready to work with us even directly. This is how Europe operation works,” elaborates Mobasheri. The APAC operations are completely about distribution. As far as expansion in MEA is concerned, it is functioning through channel partners. EMT intends to hire few representatives in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and increase its head count from 10 to 20 by 2014. It is planning to conduct road shows and organise technical training. “Training is a key aspect for EMT. We are launching EMT Academy very soon and tying up with various training centres,” says Mobasheri. EMT is also coming up with a partner program by the end of this year. There are 700 registered resellers with EMT however only 125 of them are active. Mobasheri informs that EMT doesn’t believe in accumulating brands. “We have currently 10 brands and we don’t add the number just because we need to. We get a lot of requests
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VAD PITCH
AGNES AZZOPARDI, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, ALTARO ‘EMT IS THE SECURITY SPECIALIST’ Altaro, the company providing backup for systems running in virtual environment on Microsoft Hyper-V, started focusing in the Middle East soon after EMT started its operations here. “We have high hopes on EMT because it is the security specialist. We do not have presence here but the region is growing fast especially in government and education market which is one of our main focus areas,” says Agnes Azzopardi, Business Development Manager, Altaro. Participating first time in GITEX, the company believes that to grow the local market, one has to find out the local resellers. Altaro has customers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. “With Altaro, you can secure your systems from 320 Euros/year upwards. So, it offers the most affordable and best user experience,” he adds. Altaro has a partner event along with EMT. “I hope to talk to as many partners as possible in the event so as to how to enable them to sell our solutions. I have already worked with EMT and k now that this is a very good company to partner with,” Azzopardi concludes.
ALI HARIRI, REGIONAL MANAGER, MENA ‘EMT IS THE RIGHT CHOICE’ Ali Hariri, Regional Manager, MENA, 2X Software states that the reason behind partnering with EMT is that it has very strong channel partners in the Middle East. “We wanted to explore the opportunity in the Middle East and work as a local company, which is only possible through a local partner and EMT is the right choice. We are supporting them in creating PoC and training,” he adds. 2X is promoting infrastructure as Hariri believes that promoting infrastructure can be a major development help in this region. “In Middle East, there are highly developed companies and highly undeveloped companies. So in both the cases, infrastructure plays a major issue. For the highly undeveloped companies security is the major issue. So, through EMT we can easily reach out to the farthest corner of the country to address those markets,” he says. 2X participated in GITEX so as to meet new partners and to explore the cloud computing community in the cloud computing market. “We are one of the leaders in the cloud computing space. We provide product application services for enterprise solutions and data centre solutions through SaaS. We will also support local software development companies that they can host their software in the local data centre and can be competitive with the big brands,” he informs.
OUR AIM IS TO BRING THE BEST OF BREED PRODUCT TECHNOLOGIES IN THE REGION. THE PRODUCT AND TECHNOLOGIES WE ARE OFFERING ARE NEW AND ARE TARGETING THE FUTURE. from vendors; we either keep them or pass on to other distributors. EMT has strategy to go slow but in a concrete way,” comments Mobasheri. The company is adding three more brands by
the end of 2013. For the first time, EMT officially participated at GITEX 2013 for a better visibility and positioning. It unveiled new products from Secunia,
2X, Altaro, and Kaspersky. The company planned a special event aimed at its channel community along-side GITEX.
FINALLY… With the threat of increasing cyber attacks in the region, the market is offering EMT a plethora of opportunities. With its plans for training, channel expansion and vendor management chalked out, EMT seems to be rightly positioned to establish its footprint in MEA like its global presence. ë
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STORAGE
SANDISK
The ROI of FlashBased Solutions SanDisk’s entry in SSD space might be termed late but now it is ready to tap the market in a full-fledged way
n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>
S
anDisk, a global leader in flash storage solutions, shared insights on SSDs and flash memory products along with the display of latest products at GITEX 2013. It also had an SSD kiosk to demonstrate performance of Extreme SSDS. Commenting on its late entry in the SSD space, Tareq Husseini, Regional Sales Director Mediterranean Middle East and Africa at SanDisk, remarks, “We have been focusing on the US and the European market. SSD space is not an easy one. Your hardware and software have to be correct and then you start penetrating the market. Selling hardware is not the ultimate goal of SanDisk we have to sell solutions also which have to be tested first. We are probably late in some of the markets but the moment we engage in those markets, we have the entire range of solutions to offer.” The company has a total vertical integration where in hardware, the flash is coming from SanDisk manufacturing, silicon manufacturing comes with SanDisk controllers and SanDisk Software. “All put together we believe that this is one of the Tier 1 offering our in the market,” he comments. Husseini doesn’t foresee the demise of hard drives. “Hard drives will continue to have their place. However, increasingly we see that the ROI with a flash-based storage solutions actually brings the product much faster than predicted,” he tells. The advantage
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of flash based storage is that it consumes less electricity, reads and writes faster, requires less space and hence, more efficient. Connectivity, reliability, and ease of use are other advantages over hard disk. “The price of flash is declining on yearly basis. It cannot replace the hard disk at the moment as today the world wide supply of silicon wafers and flash is very limited in comparison to the supply of storage based on hard disk. From the volume perspective, gigabyte usage, hard disk outweighs flash,” he says. SanDisk’s Commercial Solutions division is under a restructuring and will put EMEA at its forefront. The sales team will go in the region and establish presence there that is separate from the retail. That team will have the resources to go through enterprise channel but first that team will identify the right distribution channel, engage with the resellers, the VARS, the System Integrators. Then, the company will start the campaign of awareness on the benefits of SSDs and Solid State Storage. Redington is SanDisk’s channel partner. “Our relationship with Mitsumi is basically to penetrate the African market where Mitsumi has a successful history in distribution. They bring us 27 countries in Africa. They are the leaders in multi-national or international brand distribution. This is why we are exhibiting with them today,” says Husseini. The SanDisk ReadyCache Solid State Drive provides a cost-effective way to upgrade desktop
TAREQ HUSSEINI
REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR MEDITERRANEAN MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA AT SANDISK
“We are probably late in some of the markets but the moment we engage in those markets, we have the entire range of solutions to offer.” PC’s performance. “With our every product range we have a good better best strategy. I think the first experience of an enterprise on SSD should be a ReadyCache, an easy solution to transform your existing hardware into an ultra fast hardware at the fraction of the cost. ReadyCache sits on the top of hard disk and hard disk is the slave, critical application on the caching device and less used ones on the hard disk. This is like a hybrid solution,. Whatever you put DDR, DRAM, the bottle neck is the hard disk. ” he explains. SanDisk’s new channel program has kicked off and the company will hopefully start reaping the benefits in the beginning of 2014. ë
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INNOVATIONS
Brocade Compact PoE Switch Brocade’s addition to the company’s campus networking portfolio with the Brocade ICX 6450-C Switch delivers enterprise-class features in a compact form, and supports the simplification and automation provided by the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture. Executing on the company’s strategy to deliver innovation for specific customer segments,
the Brocade ICX 6450-C is designed for the unique and stringent requirements of government and public sector organizations. The Brocade ICX 6450-C further expands the company’s comprehensive core-to-edge switch portfolio, a key factor in the recent announcement with Aruba to deliver secure integrated wired and wireless mobility solutions for
enterprise and public sector customers based on open standards and SoftwareDefined Networking (SDN) principles. This integrated solution enables Federal agencies to deploy a secure, modern, enterprise network that is simple to maintain and responsive to the evolving needs of warfighter and civilian missions through operational efficiency and optimal total
cost of ownership (TCO). List pricing of the Brocade ICX 6450-C Switch is $1595 with the first customer shipment on October 11, 2013 and general availability on October 31, 2013. Brocade networking solutions are available direct, through Brocade channel partners and via Brocade Network Subscription.
KEY CAPABILITIES n Enterprise-class networking switch in a compact form factor n Small, fan-less and completely silent. n Can be deployed outside the wiring closet without interfering with work activity in areas. n Runs the same software as the rest of the Brocade ICX and Brocade FCX switch families. n Enterprise-class CLI and management features for full functionality, enabling advanced management through Brocade Network Advisor. n With Layer 3 and GRE tunnel support, a fan-less design and Power over Ethernet (PoE), the switch can be easy deployed in work environments or remote locations.
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NEC DCI-COMPLIANT PROJECTOR The NEC NC1100L, world’s first fully integrated compact laser light source, DCI-compliant digital cinema projector on the market. The NC1100L is specially designed for smaller cinema screens up to 11m and is the first projector to include an integrated laser light source eliminating the need for a lamp. The laser light source boasts a lifetime of approximately 20,000 hours, making it a virtually maintenance free projector, with a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Measuring 700mm x 1042 x 315mm, the NC1100L is the smallest cinema laser projector available on the market and can easily be floor or ceiling mounted. Its 2K DCI-compliant cinema quality means outstanding image that is bright enough to display 14f-L on screens up to 11m in DCI colour (1.8 gain screen). Furthermore, there is no downtime in exhibition of content with the laser light source, producing the continual steady and reliable operation you expect from an NEC product. The NC1100L can be deployed as a complete digital cinema solution using the same Integrated Media Server (IMS) available for the highly flexible NC900C projector. This brings an ’all in one’ Integrated Media Block and 2TB Storage Server for versatile connectivity and enhanced savings as less peripheral devices needed.
KEY CAPABILITIES n 700mm x 1042 x 315mm n 2K DCI-compliant n no downtime in exhibition of content with the laser light source n lifetime of approximately 20,000 hours
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INNOVATIONS
Dell Precision M3800 Dell’s thinnest and lightest 15-inch true mobile workstation, the Dell Precision M3800, to its family of the world’s most powerful mobile workstations. Merging beautiful design in an ultra-thin form factor with workstation-class performance, Dell has delivered an uncompromising system for digital content creators and engineers looking for portability, power and stylish design to match their image and environment. Less than three-quarters of an inch thin (18 mm) and starting at 4.15 pounds (1.88 kgs), dual-cooling to allow maximum performance at all times, and up to 10 hours and six minutes² of battery life with NVIDIA Optimus technology that maximizes battery life for extended productivity, the M3800 enables editing video at a shoot, presenting CAD ideas to customers in style or rendering 3D animation and modeling on the road. KEY CAPABILITIES n Ultra-Thin and Light Workstation n Available with Windows 8.1 Pro (64-Bit) or genuine Windows 7 Professional (64-Bit) 16GB³ of memory and 4th-generation Intel Core i7-4702HQ 8 threaded quad-core processor with up to 3.2 GHz clock speeds n NVIDIA Quadro K1100M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 dedicated memory n Multiple storage configurations including up to two storage devices, with a maximum of 1.5TB of storage (HDD, SSHD, or SSD), n Beautiful Design and Visualization n Features a stylish, industrial-grade design with an aluminum frame, a strong, lightweight carbon fiber chassis, and a Corning Gorilla NBT Glass display with five-finger multi-touch on all systems. n Vivid 15.6-inch UltraSharp display available in QHD+ (3200 x 1800)
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Fujitsu Desktop Scanners The new Fujitsu fi-7180/fi-7280 and fi-7160/fi-7260 document scanners have been launched in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa). With its new series of scanners, Fujitsu is pursuing a comprehensive approach to document scanning: hardware and supporting software finely tuned to work together for perfect results. Featuring the new Fujitsu PaperStream IP driver and image enhancement software PaperStream Capture, the new generation of scanners will boost both efficiency and quality in the scanning of documents. Fujitsu devised the whole package to make clean, compact, and clear digital images from a wide range of document types, saving users’ time and demonstrating Fujitsu’s commitment to making document capture simple. In addition to the industry leading paper protection feature of the previous generations, the new models introduce a premium feature into a desktop scanner – the intelligent Sonic Paper Protection mechanism iSOP. The new fi-7180/fi-7280 and fi-7160/fi-7260 document scanners will be available at Fujitsu sales partners. Prices range from 1,430 USD to 3,510 USD plus VAT. KEY CAPABILITIES n offer USB 3.0 support n fi-7180/fi-7280 models (without/with flatbed) capture up to 80 sheets/160 pages per minute (A4, colour, duplex, 300 dpi) n fi-7160/fi-7260 models process up to 60 sheets/120 pages per minute (A4, colour, duplex, 300 dpi) n the intelligent Sonic Paper Protection mechanism iSOP
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Redefining office IT. PowerEdge VRTX.
The first and only full integration of servers, storage, networking and management in only 5U. Up until now, there hasn’t been an IT solution designed specifically for an office environment. Enter the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX powered by the Intel® Xeon® processor, an integrated end-to-end solution built specifically for the growing office. It’s the only 5U PowerEdge shared infrastructure platform design based on input from over 7,000 customers, featuring four integrated servers, 48TBs of storage, networking and systems management to simplify all aspects of IT. You inspired it. We built it. To see how we can redefine your office IT, visit www.dell.com/ae/vrtx
Dell PowerEdge VRTX is a trademark of Dell Inc. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. ©2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
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