Network Middle East - Sept 2010 by ITP Business Publishing

A ITP Technology Publication An

WAITING FOR VIDEO Why video conferencing has failed to take oﬀ

VANISHING CLOUD The truth behind the failure of EMC’s Atmos

TRUST ISSUES Was the Blackberry safe in the first place?

Licensed by Dubai Media City

SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 9

Contents

September 2010 Vol.16 No.09

Up close: Trust Issues 30 The oft-ignored Blackberry has been thrust into the spotlight over its potential as a tool to subvert national security. But how right were enterprises to trust it with their sensitive information in the ﬁrst place? Imthishan Giado talks to the region’s CIOs and vendors to ﬁnd out how RIM’s gadget wormed its way into the enterprise heart – and what they have to do if it needs to be cut out.

Market buzz 4

Stories making the headlines this month: Intel buys McAfee for $7.6 billion, HP acquires Fortify software, ISIT boss claims business shifting to Abu Dhabi, and Cisco income up 79% in Q4.

Up close: Waiting for video 24 Eﬀective, ubiquitous videoconferencing has long been promised as the solution to enterprise travel, yet the obstacles have only multiplied over the years. Imthishan Giado investigates.

In depth: Up and comer 17 Infrastructure specialist Allied Telesis has made its ﬁrst foray into the region, appointing regional manager Sabbah Khan. Imthishan Giado reports.

Plugging the leak 41 Alexei Lesnykh, business developer manager for DeviceLock, explains how enterprises can defend their digital borders against the threat of data leakage.

In depth: Vanishing cloud 23

When EMC closed its Atmos service, many called into question the viability of cloud services. NME delves deeper into what went wrong.

The new model 21

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology has deployed a raft of upgrades to the web appliances protecting its network. NME reports.

Registered at Dubai Media City

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

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Right stuﬀ?

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Editor’s comment

How smart was Intel in buying McAfee?

o Intel’s acquired McAfee for a massive $7.68 billion, a deal that’s the largest in security software history. CEO Otellini believes it’s adding a “third pillar” to the company, an in-house security arm that complements its push for computing efficiency. So why does it feel like a colossal mistake? After all, the history of technology firms is littered with massive acquisitions. AOL Time Warner was born from the $164 billion merger of Time Warner and the number one American service provider, America Online. Or what about trend-setting hosted e-mail firm Hotmail, which Microsoft purchased for a snip at $400 million in 1997? Oh wait, these aren’t perhaps the best examples. Yes, I know I’m cherry picking my way through technology history, but the fact is that any acquisition is one that’s fraught with danger. Just ask Yahoo! which purchased web hosting service Geocities for a cool $3.57 billion in 1999 and then

proceeded to do very, very little with it for the following ten years. The disquieting truth is that most major ﬁrms are in what can only be described as an acquisitive mood. Whether it’s Oracle buying out Sun, or virtually every single vendor in the business intelligence market being bought out by a major player, everyone’s out to buy something it seems now. Are all these buyouts a good thing? Companies acquire other ones for three reasons – to gain access to a lucrative new market, to gain access to a rival’s customer base or acquire new intellectual property that can boost their primary business. None of these reasons really apply, simply because I don’t see any real crossover between McAfee and Intel. The security market is certainly booming – Gartner suggests that software alone could be worth as much as $16 billion this year. But then, why buy McAfee – and for so much? The only more expensive ﬁrm that they could have acquired would have been

Symantec, but it would have been far wiser to go after one of the smaller ﬁrms like Kaspersky, Trend Micro or even ESET – all of which would have been several billion less, to say the least. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Intel will make this a huge security success to rival the likes of RSA which EMC purchased, or Symantec’s Verisign. Or maybe, like Microsoft, it will become another Danger which took two years to produce a phone which only lasted two months on the open market. I’ll tell you who the real, undisputed winner is – David DeWalt, McAfee CEO. In just three years, he’s successfully refocused the ﬁrm onto the enterprise products and then negotiated a multi-billion dollar buyout. Who wants to bet he’ll be the next CEO of HP?

Imthishan Giado Editor imthishan.giado@itp.com

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Juniper MX series powers BT

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Market buzz

Implementation

This was yet another strong quarter with record results, says Cisco’s Chambers.

Cisco reports massive sales rise in Q4 Implementation Networking vendor Cisco has reported strong fourth quarter results, with sales shooting up 27% to US$10.8 billion. Net income on a GAAP basis was $1.9 billion for the quarter, representing an exceptional 79% rise over Q4 2009. “This was yet another very strong quarter with a number of record financial results for Cisco, closing the fiscal year in a tremendous position of strength – a compelling financial model, a welltuned innovation engine and solid execution on our growth strategy,”

said John Chambers, chairman and chief executive officer on the earnings announcement. For the fiscal year, on a GAAP basis the company had a net income of $7.8 billion on sales of $40 billion, a 26% improvement compared to the last year. Chambers believes the firm’s success continues to swim

$10.8 billion Cisco’s fourth quarter sales, which was up 27% on Q4 2009

against the global tides of recession: “Whether the global economy continues to show mixed signals or not – the strength of our financial model and profit generation serves us well. As we continue to successfully grow our business and share of IT investments, our focus is squarely on helping our customers accelerate productivity and growth. We are very confident in our strategy, and will continue to aggressively move into new areas where the network is becoming the platform, and where our customers want us to invest and innovate.”

Oracle kills OpenSolaris development Implementation An e-mail sent to a US software engineer has confirmed what many industry insiders have been suggesting for some time - that the OpenSolaris open source operating system is no more. In a post on his blog, Athens, Georgia-based engineer Steven Stallion reprinted an internal e-mail which he claims was sent to all OpenSolaris engineers working on the project. In it, the company explains that it intends to focus all its resources on the 2011 release of enterprise-fo-

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cused Solaris 11, which run on the servers it sells based on the technology from the January acquisition of Sun Microsystems. “We will distribute updates to approved CDDL or other open

source-licensed code following full releases of our enterprise Solaris operating system. In this manner, new technology innovations will show up in our releases before anywhere else. We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time while it is developed, on a nightly basis,” the e-mail stated. However, there will be still one additional release – a developer focused edition, Solaris 11 Express, which will be released before the end of the year.

BT has selected Juniper Networks MX Series Universal Edge routers as a strategic Edge platform to support its 21st Century Networks (21CN) service deployment initiative. 21CN is a global customer network, which is intended to rapidly deliver next-generation software services to BT customers on a worldwide basis, such as convergence and large scale Ethernet. The Juniper MX Series will help to deliver large scale Ethernet and high-speed MPLS VPN Services for customers outside the UK, and will also provide support for applications such as intranet and extranet multicast VPN for customers based around the world. In addition, the MX960 will be used in the first of BT’s edge network deployments, created specifically for the high-speed requirements of its demanding global financial services customers. “We chose Juniper’s MX Series for the unprecedented scalability, performance and reliability it can deliver across the network as we introduce the final phases of our 21st century network,” said George Nazi, president, 21CN Global Networks & Infrastructure, BT. “This will help enable us to serve customers and market sectors where throughput and resilience in the network infrastructure are non-negotiable.” Gert-Jan Schenk, senior vice president EMEA, Juniper Networks added: “BT is investing in Junos at the heart of its strategy, to achieve better performance at a lower TCO. This is a great example of finding ways to advance the economics of networking.”

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HP and Dubai Municipality plan cartridge scheme

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Market buzz

Implementation

Many of Palm’s key staffers have left after its acquisition by HP.

Top execs ﬂee embattled vendor Palm Industry HP’s plans to implement a new range of products based on technology from its recent acquisition of mobile specialist Palm could be in disarray, as reports of a senior exec exodus emerge. According to blog TechCrunch, Peter Skillman, vice president of design at the firm and designer of its much-toured Pre smartphone has resigned. He joins a slew of recent defectors including Michael Abbot, SVP of application software and services who left in May for a post at social networking site Twitter, and Mike Bell, SVP of product development, who

joined Intel in July. Matias Duarte, designer of its WebOS operating system, also departed in May for Google, while the designer of its notification system, Rich Gerringer returned to his former employer, Apple in June. The departures follow the acquisition of Palm – which was well known for its iconic early PDA designs such as the Palm Pilot – by IT giant HP in April for a reported $1.2 billion. Duarte, Gerringer, Abbot, Bell, and Skillman were credited with the innovative design of the Palm Pre, and with their exit, signals an uncertain future for Palm, which counts CEO

Jon Rubinstein as one of the few remaining members of the management team. The Palm Pre was unveiled in Las Vegas in late 2009 to positive acclaim from the market but struggled to make headway against the Apple 3GS. According to a report from Comscore, Palm has secured just 4.8% of the global smartphone market.

$1.2 billion Reported value HP bought Palm for back in April

Du and Injazat to oﬀer managed service Implementation du and IT services provider Injazat have signed a formal agreement to deliver managed network services to customers in the UAE. The formal go-to-market agreement will combine Injazat’s state-of-the-art managed networked IT services and both companies expertise in telecommunications and business applications, to give customers an efficient way to introduce new services without large capital expenditure. Injazat provides

managed collocation services for du’s mission-critical systems through its Abu Dhabi-based Tier IV datacentre.

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“du and Injazat share tremendous synergy in the area of managed network services. The benefits of a potential joint proposition could see customers gain significant return from their networks through greater productivity and reduced operating expenses. Not only will this potential collaboration be beneficial to the UAE’s business, but it will serve as a benchmark for the increased adoption of managed networked IT services in the region,” says Farid Faraidooni, chief commercial officer, du.

Dubai Municipality has embarked on a major recycling initiative with the help of the printing arm of HP Middle East. As part of the HP Planet Partners programme, the vendor has installed empty cartridge collection boxes in several Municipality locations. This provides a simple, onestop location for HP toner cartridge recycling. The service is active in 50 countries around the world and HP claims that 265 million cartridges have been collected so far. “We are happy to have Dubai Municipality on board in our important environmental initiative,” said Amin Mortazavi, GM for HP ME’s Imaging and Printing Group.

New Green IT certificate on offer Industry IT professionals now have another certification which they can add to their quiver – the Foundation Certificate in Green IT, which is being offered by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. Available through Core Training, a BCS-accredited provider, the new course is marking its first appearance on the Indian subcontinent, and provides prospective students an in-depth understanding of the often-complex environmental issues surrounding technology. Michiel van der Voort, director of international and professional development at the Institute says: “This is a groundbreaking qualification, and we’re delighted to offer this around the globe.”

HP makes datacentres flexible

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Market buzz

Implementation

The new service simplifies network assessments for partners, says Blue Coat’s Hawthorn.

Blue Coat unveils cloud-based service Industry Blue Coat Systems has rolled out a new cloud-based reporting and analytical service that enables partners to easily and remotely conduct an extensive analysis of a customer’s network using the vendor’s PacketShaper appliance. Blue Coat claims that VARs and consultants can deploy a PacketShaper appliance in a customer’s network within 30 minutes and then at the conclusion of a data collection period – typically seven days – use the cloud service to perform an analysis of the network traffic. The assessment points to networking issues that can be remedied by Blue Coat solutions

for WAN optimisation, secure web gateway and application visibility and control. Based on previous experience with network assessments, Blue Coat reckons some partners have reported sales closure rates of up to 80%. “The new Blue Coat Assessment Service makes application delivery network assessments easy for partners and opens up a revealing level of detail where there had previously

30 minutes Claimed time it takes to deploy the PacketShaper appliance

been a severe lack of knowledge,” said Nigel Hawthorn, VP EMEA marketing at the company. “By offering the Blue Coat Assessment Service to prospective customers, VARs and consultants can quickly deliver a valuable report, prescribe necessary solutions and reinforce their role as their customers’ trusted networking experts,” he adds. The Blue Coat Assessment Service enables remote application delivery assessments, with all analysis of customer traffic and application patterns taking place in the cloud. The service will be available to regional partners from the middle of August.

Governments advised to slash IT costs Industry Gartner has outline a number of ‘radical’ steps it says governments need to aggressively introduce in order to increase the cost efficiency of managing networks. Amongst the analyst house’s suggestions were including introducing public cloud services and allowing staff to work remotely. It said that by looking at ways of reducing IT expenditure now, while they still had the ability to look carefully at their option, they

could avoid a slash-and-burn approach further down the line. “Government organisations in most of the Western world have already gone through one or two cost-cutting cycles during the past few years,” said Andrea Di Maio, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. It also advised governments to cancel high-risk, high-profile programmes, as well as those citizen facing channels that were proving ineffective, and instead focus

on linking interoperability frameworks in order to reap the cost synergies that can be brought by the approach. “The aftermath of the most recent global financial crisis, the sluggish recovery in some countries and the significant levels of debt require continued and increasing cost-containment discipline and are forcing government organisations to explore new avenues of cost reduction,” she continued.

HP has introduced a new design for building enterprise scale datacentres which it says can cut capital requirements for build out by half. The new HP Flexible Data Centre (HP Flexible DC) design relies on a standard, modular approach to designing and building datacentres, which is more energy and resource efficient. The HP Flexible DC uses a butterfly-fly shaped design, with four prefabricated quadrants centred on an administrative core. Through use of industrial components, building time and cost can be kept lower, while sections have been designed for optimal power and cooling efficiency. The design includes different options for power and cooling, including air cooling systems, rather than watercooled mechanical systems, which can drastically reduce the amount of water and power used. The new-approach datacentres are being offered by HP’s Critical Facilities Services, which provides consulting and engineering and architecture services, and will work with customers to assess and implement solutions to meet their requirements. Kevin Miller, customer project manager, for critical facility services at HP Middle East commented: “Clients, such as financial service providers, and cloud and co-location hosts, will find the scalable and modular nature of HP Flexible DC a compelling option. HP can help clients innovate the way they build and operate a greenfield data centre for greater savings over its life span.”

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IBM extends Power 7 range

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Market buzz

Implementation

Many of the orders ISIT are presently executing have been in the pipeline for many years, says ISIT’s Vaidya.

ISIT conﬁrms customer shift to Abu Dhabi Industry The CEO of Dubai-based systems integrator ISIT has confirmed what many have long suspected – that Abu Dhabi has profited heavily from the drop in Dubai IT sales over the past two years. “The major impact we have had was in Dubai, but it was actually compensated by business from Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia,” says Mahesh Vaidya. “2009 was a tough year for most of us. Even though we had capacity growth of 30% or more, the revenue growth was not much across the Middle East. Luckily for ISIT, we had revenue growth of more than

100%. In 2010, if you compare the Middle East growth with worldwide numbers, I think we are quite well off, we are looking at something north of 50% growth when it comes to capacity and maybe more than 20% growth when it comes to revenue in 2010,” he says. He is quick to add however that the business forecast for Dubai continues to improve, although not enough to stem the tide of business flowing southward in the UAE. “If you look at this year, I wouldn’t say too much would shift because in Dubai we see a

huge improvement happening now. Towards the end of last year, it was a bit dull but now we are seeing a big improvement in the Dubai market,” he speculates. Vaidya also reveals that much of his current storage business comes from purchase decisions made well in the past – but that enterprises only now have the budget to execute. “Last year people tried to delay their storage purchases. Most of the deals which we are getting now were in the pipeline since last year. You can delay purchases for some time, but eventually you’ll have to buy it,” he says.

Global security spend to blast past $16 billion Industry Worldwide security software revenue is expected to top $16.5 billion this year, according to a new report from analysts Gartner. This represents an increase of 11% from 2009 levels, when revenue reached $14.8 billion. Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner notes that the market looks to be in a period of extended good form: “Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of

variation is expected between the more-established and lessmature technologies. Overall, security will remain one of the

Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow, says Gartner’s Contu.

fastest-growing areas within the enterprise software market.” According to the report, Forecast Analysis: Security Software Markets, Worldwide, 2009-2014, 2Q10 Update, the market for endpoint protection software is expected to provide revenues of $3 billion this year, which puts it firmly in second place behind the consumer segment, which has predicted revenues of $4.2 billion. “Shrinking discretionary budgets have heightened competition,” continued Contu.

IBM has announced a range of updates to its Power7 systems range. The latest additions, which include new servers, software, virtualisation technology and an update to IBM’s AIX operating system, which are intended to help companies to deal with intensive computing workloads. IBM says that the Power7 systems have contributed to its strong growth in the $13bn Unix market, where it has increased revenue share by 14% since 2005, and gained 285 customer’s critical business workloads from Oracle and HP systems this year alone. The new releases include a high-end Power7 795 system, which uses IBM EnergyScale technology to vary frequencies depending upon workloads, which means the server is able to achieve five times better energy efficiency than comparable HP and Oracle servers, according to IBM. The system supports up to 8 terabytes of memory and four times as many processor cores as prior systems, and uses the latest PowerVM virtualisation software to allow customers to run over 1,000 virtual servers on a single physical system. It claims to be able to achieve energy reductions of up to 75% for equivalent capacity. IBM also announced Power Flex, a new environment composed of two or more Power 795 systems, PowerVM Live Partition Mobility and a Flex Capacity Upgrade on Demand option. The set up allows users to shift applications between systems to perform maintenance without downtime, helping to balance workloads.

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September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Data Crunch

The continued global downturn has meant that many are now looking to shore up their security perimeter.

EMEA leads the charge for enterprise security Implementation The global enterprise security market is expected to maintain its current rapid pace of growth through 2010, as analysts Canalys forecast end-user spend to hit $15 billion by year’s end. Europe, Middle East and North Africa remain the second biggest spenders behind North America at projected figures of $5 billion versus $6.9 billion. However, its growth in 2010 as compared to 2009 is slightly higher at 15.2% versus 13.5%. The firm believes that budgets that were suppressed by years of caution during the global financial crisis are now gradually start-

ing to be released to the market and overall growth from 2009 is a sizeable 13.8%. Of this growth, Canalys experts predict that infrastructure security appliances will be the most popular, generating close to 48.7% of the total value. On the other hand, client security software is expected to deliver more modest returns of just 6.9%. The much touted idea of delivering software-as-a-service, meanwhile, is still on hold as vendors have yet to deliver significant capabilities. Nevertheless, Canalsys expects this to be an growth area and eventually, a market worth $1 billion by 2014.

Latin America

16% Asia Pacific

46% North America

33% EMEA

Worldwide Enterprise Security value in 2010

Netbook sales slow as iPad continues upward rise Canalys has also released its quarterly report on the worldwide PC market, and the results show that Apple has continued its breakneck pace of growth, becoming one of the top five PC vendors worldwide. The iPad drove a significant portion of this success, capturing 6% of the portable PC market despite only having been available since June. The market for tablet-style devices like Apple’s product is expected to number 12.5 million units by the close of

this year, growing to 66 million in total by 2014. Canalys VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones said that rivals would soon have to offer innovation or create copycat products: “Apart from the Apple effect, the iPad owes its success to a lack of advancement in other portable computing segments, such as netbooks. To capture share moving forward, PC makers will have to take the netbook to the next level or go after new customer segments with their own pads.”

2014

2010

12.5 million

66million Pad market size in millions of units

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September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

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Cisco: Threat landscape is leaving CIOs behind Cisco is warning that IT managers and security professionals are failing to keep up with the emerging threat landscape, according to its 2010 Midyear Security Report. The company says that there are ‘tectonic shifts’ in the information security sphere, as the ongoing boom in social networking, virtualisation and mobile devices continue to drive change in the market, and lead to security threats outstripping measures to prevent them. Tarek Houbballah, systems engineering manager, Cisco, commented: “Technological innovations are fundamentally changing the way people live, work, play, share information and

Avaya’s latest updates to its product range includes improved collaboration options.

communicate with each other. Because consumers are typically the early adopters, enterprises often struggle to adapt existing polices to address their employees’ preferred use of technology.

With a number of tectonic forces converging in the marketplace, now is the time for enterprises to transform their IT model to accommodate the emerging borderless network.”

EDITOR’S CHOICE

The Cisco report includes ﬁve key recommendations for IT security managers to protect against threats, including enforcing granular, per-user security policies for application and data access, particularly on virtualised systems; strict limits on access to business data; creation of corporate policies to manage mobile device usage; investment in tools to manage and monitor cloud activities; and guidance for employees on usage of social media in the workplace. Cisco did warn however, that corporate policies on social media may not prove eﬀective, with 50% of respondents to the Cisco global survey ignoring company policy at least once a week.

MOST READ NETWORK MIDDLE EAST STORIES

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Global security spend to blast past $16 billion Cisco sales shoot up nearly 30% in Q2 TRA signs cyber security pact with Microsoft

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Up and comer

In depth

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Infrastructure specialist Allied Telesis has made its first foray into the region, appointing regional manager Sabbah Khan. Imthishan Giado reports. Why has Allied Telesis decided to establish a direct presence in the region? Typically, we have a strong presence in the West, Europe, Far East and the Indian subcontinent as well. However, the Middle East and Gulf region was typically left alone – the reason for that is that the Gulf is supposed to be a part of EMEA’s territory. But for the past few years, the EMEA guys were really busy with their own stuff and a lot of business was coming in from Europe. Recently, people said that they wanted to diversify in EMEA because thing were a little shakey in Europe. I would say the recession has awakened people to address all markets available to them. The Gulf is a big one and the competition is doing extremely well. We have competition that has been in this market that has perhaps half of our portfolio so we definitely understood that this was a huge untapped market and we wanted to grab this opportunity. How long have you operated in the region outside of the direct model? For the past two years we’ve been having very few partners

and operated through a 100% indirect model. When we decided to come to the region, we had some solid plans because we knew that there is a huge potential and marketshare available to us. Normally what countries do is to hire one or two people in a home-office type of arrangement and start driving business. Allied Telesis didn’t do that – we invested first in a sizeable office in DIC. Then they hired me to manage the region. I’m now in the process of hiring and developing my own team. As we speak, we are interviewing technical people to start with. By the end of the year we should be having a team of four to five people on board. Which vendors would you describe as your biggest rivals? Our target market is SME moving upwards to enterprises. We don’t operate in the SMB segments, don’t compete with D-Link, Netgear and all of those guys. However, we do compete head on with HP ProCurve, Cisco to a certain extent and other names like Juniper and Brocade. What will comprise your unique go-to-market strategy for this region?

The biggest challenge that we have in the region is creating the brand awareness. If it was about case studies, we have ample references to provide globally. It’s more about market penetration through brand visibility, which is going to be our focus for the next few years. The biggest challenge that we have in the region is creating the brand awareness. If it was about case studies, we have ample references to provide globally. It’s more about market penetration through brand visibility, which is going to be our focus for the next few years. The other aspect we are focusing on is training partners and end users. That’s where the bulk of our marketing budget will go for the next year or so. Once people have actually dealt with our products, they’ll really understand the value. We’ve been a weak marketing company globally, but we’ve been a very strong technology company which we are addressing now. We are putting more efforts into R&D and into marketing our name as well. Another USP is the fact that since our cost base is not the likes of Cisco and HP, our pricing is in accordance to that, which makes the total ROI very effective for people dealing with our products. Is price still a key driver for the regional market? I would think so. What is happening now is that customers are leaving it to the partners to decide which product they want to position. That means they are willing to consider different products from different vendors, but it’s based on whether the partner can support them from a technical perspective and obviously pricing.

18 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Cisco is losing market share drastically. Competition is beefing up in terms of pricing but that’s not the only thing, let me emphasise. As Cisco loses market share, HP is penetrating into this space, Juniper is penetrating into this space. Allied Telesis has therefore considerable market share to address. Which markets are you going to focus on? We’ve divided our plans into different phases. Phase one includes UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The next wave will cover North Africa and the rest of the GCC countries, in 2011. The plan will be chalked within the November-December timeframe. The plan is to have people on the ground to support the partners and the customers. What major challenges remain for regional networking vendors to address? The challenge for all networking vendors is that considering the recession, not many people are willing to spend a lot of money on new equipment. That’s what I feel is going to be our key success – our cost base is not so high, we like to oﬀer good quality products at the right price to people and eventually start winning deals in the region and start developing some references for us. The problem is with the other vendors are that looking at the past growth, they increased their

cost base too much and now it’s not under their control. It’s very difficult for them to justify pricing versus the cost base. We are conscious of this and want to deal with it very carefully. At the end of the day, we’re here to sell. If our pricing and cost structure doesn’t allow us to sell, that means that we’ve taken some wrong decisions. Why is it so difficult for vendors to provide exact data on the size of this market? All the vendors are not able to determine the exact value of this market in terms of dollar value. There’s a lot of export business happening. I read in Channel Middle East that roughly 30% of the goods go off-site. I think that’s a conservative number – I think it’s much more than that. Other vendors might be happy with the figures they have right now but realistically they need to understand that by showing these fabricated numbers, they might

be able to please a few people at the top level, but that’s not going to run for long. Controls and checks will build up and become a problem for everybody. This is in the interest of the business here. I strongly believe that, even at the cost of lower volumes. That’s OK – once you determine the right size of the market, then you can have the right kinds of cost structures. Has a grey market emerged for network infrastructure? I feel that recessions always are a source of grey business. Whatever one says, recession will always lead to grey and parallel business. Everyone wants to do something and have a cost base. They might not be into that kind of business but once they see the opportunity, they tend to fall into that trap.

The new model Since we upgraded to the latest version of Blue Coat’s appliances, we haven’t had any problems managing our bandwidth, says KACST’s Abbas.

he network infrastructure for your average university is one of the harshest environments to manage. Think about it – while a normal administrator might have to deal with 200 or 300 users, a run-ofthe-mill university will be looking at a nightmarish scenario of several thousand users logging in and out each and every day; not to mention, hundreds of guests workers with their Wi-Fi connections as well. In a region where bandwidth isn’t cheap, this situation demands the utmost efficiency in managing data usage, while simultaneously ensuring that malware and other web-based threats are kept at bay. Faced with such a challenge a decade ago, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) decided to opt for Blue Coat’s range of web appliances and has recently completed an upgrade which has brought IPv6 functionality into the mix. As Hesham Bin Abbas, director of the Internet Services Unit at KACST explains, the university had very specific requirements when it first implemented the devices: “We need to have both proxy filtering and caching for

In depth

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology has deployed a raft of upgrades to the web appliances protecting its network. NME reports. the website, but we specifically needed it as a hardware appliance, not as a software product. “We always monitored the traffic and took care for the future, but the demand kept increasing. Last year in October, we responded by upgrading the entire system, and we haven’t had any problem since,” he continues. Abbas has been with the university for the past 16 years, and when Blue Coat first entered the picture, he vividly remembers how it bested rival products. “We choose it based on a range of technical evaluations. We had some demos performed and several evaluation criteria. After trying a range of different solutions that were available, we decided that Blue Coat was the best. With the new upgrade, we didn’t look at any one else – we went straight to Blue Coat for our new systems because we already had so many of their their boxes in our branches,” he recalls.

With the latest round of upgrades, Abbas says that the existing SG8000 devices were unable to keep with the rapidly scaling needs of the university. Accordingly, they upgraded 15 boxes in two locations – Riyadh and Jeddah – to the new ProxySG and ProxyAV devices. The new devices were received by the university in October 2009 and took one month to implement with no issues to report. While the ProxyAV devices are tasked with ﬁltering out spam, malware and viruses, the ProxySG boxes are tasked with a more difﬁcult role – acting as a guardian to prevent viewing of undesirable web addresses, while simultaneously speeding up internet access through intelligent caching. Interestingly, it also supports IPv6 – something which Abbas notes was no accident. “It’s not the main driver but one of the requirements. We need to have our machines

supporting IPv6 because we migrated two years ago from IPv4. So we needed boxes that supported everything through to IPv6,” he confirms. The upgrades have already begun having significant effect at KACST. The ISU has already recorded a 50% improvement in the speed of filtering out malware, while the new proxy appliances have enabled a doubling in existing bandwidth. Abbas also reports a 35% drop in CPU utilisation, coupled with a 50% smaller memory footprint. For the future, Abbas plans to look at ways of combining the Blue Coat appliances with its newly-installed load-balancing system from Foundry Networks. “We are a non profit organisation but consider ourselves as part of this achievement because this is a new technology. Many will benefit from this combination of BlueCoat with Foundry products,” he concludes.

It’s not the main driver but one of the requirements. We need to have our machines supporting IPv6 because we migrated two years ago from IPv4. So we needed boxes that supported everything through to IPv6.

Vanishing cloud is cloud computing as a means of storing your data? Anthony Harrison, senior principal solutions specialist for storage and server management at Symantec, thinks that despite these early setbacks, cloud computing services will still gain traction – but burning early adopters is rarely likely to build goodwill in a cautious region like the Middle East.

EMC: On the record

In depth

When EMC closed its Atmos service, many called into question the viability of cloud services. NME int delves deeper into what went wrong.

EMC will leverage Atmos Online as a developer environment , says Mohammed Amin.

une 29th was a normal day like any other. It wasn’t April 1st, or January 1st – days with any particular cultural relevance or historical significance. But for the world of IT, it’s a day that many might now choose to remember – because this was the first time that a crack showed in the impossibly-hyped world of cloud computing. On June 29th, EMC wrote a post on the website for its Atmos cloud storage service, shuttering the offering. Henceforth, the post read, the site would only be available as a development environment while Atmos technology would be instead be offered through the variant offerings of its many service provider partners. Customers were informed that they would no longer have any form of support, and were “strongly encouraged” to migrate their critical data elsewhere. To date, EMC has refused to elaborate on whether the service had any Middle East customers (see boxout) but the closure of Atmos has serious repercussions for cloud computing. To be clear, it’s not really about Atmos, but more about the technology as a whole. If EMC can suddenly pull the plug on services and leave customers ostensibly the lurch, how secure

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

“It’s like banking. Instead of keeping your money at home, people are comfortable handing their assets over to a third party as long as they know what’s happening to it. You get a monthly statement and so on. We still don’t have that level of maturity with cloud,” explains Harrison. “Now those early adopters who were prepared to take a risk and move to something like Atmos

Mohammed Amin, VP and regional manager for EMC Turkey, emerging Africa and the Middle East provided a statement regarding the closure of Atmos: “As the number of service providers adopting EMC Atmos technology continues to expand, EMC decided not to announce the general availability of the Atmos Online storage service for production usage. The strength of the Atmos ecosystem is predominantly based on the service providers who deliver Atmos based services and ISVs who integrate with the technology. EMC will focus on evolving this ecosystem and allow Atmos Online to take a supporting role.” “EMC will leverage Atmos Online as a developer environment where EMC helps ISVs and developers integrate to the technology in order to accelerate the delivery of their solutions across a host of Atmos-based service providers. Atmos Online will continue to act as a reference architecture for service providers who intend to deliver Atmos-based cloud storage services. Customers around the world and in the Middle East looking to move to production are encouraged to use one of the Atmos-based service providers using the same leading technology for their production requirements,” he continued.

– when they closed that service down – they have some operational challenges. The natural tendency of customers here is to not be in that early adopter stage. It’s more the sort of late majority,” he continues. Steve Bailey, director of field operations for emerging markets thinks there’s there a deeper story to the Atmos closure. “I’m talking to some of my colleagues at EMC that were particularly involved in the programme. It was not confidence in the technology, it was confidence in the security and the compliance,” he reveals. “The idea with cloud is that it doesn’t matter where it lives, but actually, it is important when you get individual countries that have different compliance regulations. They were finding that it was too much red tape,” believes Bailey.

Mixed signals Whatever the reason, it’s crystal clear that cloud services still have a lot of work if they’re going to gain the trust of local enterprises and their precious data. Future cloud service providers would be well advised to remember that few people here remember the success stories; but failure is rarely forgotten.

Feature Partner

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Up close

Waiting for video Effective, ubiquitous videoconferencing has long been promised as the solution to enterprise travel, yet the obstacles have only multiplied over the years. Imthishan Giado investigates.

t’s been nearly half a century. And we’re still waiting. I’m not talking about ﬂying cars. I’m not talking about matter transporters. I’m not even talking about a uniﬁed world government, or a perpetual motion machine. What I’m very simply asking for is something that’s been promised to us since before many of those reading this magazine were born, something

that cinema has depicted effortlessly and that vendors has been promoting as the natural progression of all communication. I’m talking about effective, widespread, cost-efficient video conferencing. And as everyone who works in a company that doesn’t have a videophone on its desk knows (which makes probably all of you), it’s still not here yet.

Of course, to say it does not exist at all would be a specious argument, since in actual fact most PC users have had some experience with videoconferencing through the various consumergrade experiences such as Skype. But in the enterprise space, it seems that few have gone for the full-house Telepresence systems which include dedicated rooms, large screens and

generally replicate the in-person experience. And fewer still have any videoconferencing rooms in-house at all. This however, is not a description you could apply to Dubai Aluminium, whose vice president of IT, Ahmad Al Mulla has had a facility inhouse for more than ﬁve years. The metal-producing company uses the system to communicate with overseas partners

Feature Partner

but as he admits, it’s not the most popular way of reaching out. “We do have it, but we don’t use it much. It’s basic. It’s not a dedicated room, but was in one building which we have used during one project. Now we are using it but in a very limited way, deﬁnitely not replacing business travel,” he says. “We are connecting to Europe, Australia mainly and sometimes

The reality is that with business travel, you can do a lot more things. You can prepare, discuss face-to-face, you can see the environment, take a break, come back – things are a bit different when you are face-to-face. It’s just a different feeling. If you compare well-organised business travel to video conferencing, I don’t think you find a cost saving. September 2010 Vol.16 No.9 25

Feature Partner

Videoconferencing can have costs as low as $10,000. They could actually go all the way up to the very high end as the emerging telepresence products, which could cost half a million dollars. It really depends on what the customer’s application is and what he wants to achieve. When comparing video conferencing and the emerging telepresence, the diﬀerence is quite signiﬁcant.

The heart of the problem For a company that’s famous for its expertise in this arena, Cisco’s regional manager, Saeed Agha is unexpectedly forthright about the reasons for the lackadaisical regional adoption of videoconferencing solutions.

26 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

“Traditionally VC was not widely spread because of the following reasons: it was diﬃcult to use, there were too many formats to choose from which lacked interoperability and the quality of the actual meetings. Bandwidth cost is another key challenge for the wide adoption of VC,” he explains. “Still, we are seeing a lot of innovation on reducing the bandwidth cost driven by customer demands. For example, currently Cisco Telepresence can be oﬀered as a service or as a managed service where customers do not

All inclusive

to the US as well. It is a problem because of the timing but usually we need it when we need something quickly or during a scheduled meeting. You have to set a time which is as convenient as possible to everybody. It is really the time you save travelling, and helpful also if you want to have multiple parties at the same time. Otherwise our use is very limited,” he states. Tareq Mandou, product manager, for the Information Worker Business Group at Microsoft Gulf believes that the reason many companies struggle with videoconferencing is because they focus on speciﬁcations rather than ﬁnding the best way to use it. “To achieve widespread adoption, video conferencing users must become aware of the business value of the product and not necessarily become product experts. Training should not necessarily focus on “how” to use the systems but rather on “why” to use the systems. Remember, video conferencing has to be perceived as easy to use,” he says.

have to take the burden of the initial capex nor the bandwidth opex – so it’s really about oﬀering video-conferencing-as-a-service,” he reasons. One of the key words he mentions is costs and indeed, it’s something that’s often associated with videoconferencing in a negative context. KS Parag, MD of FVC says that this can be something of a misnomer, as many associate the high-end, Rolls-Royce level equipment with the average experience. “Videoconferencing can have costs as low as $10,000,”

he reveals. “They could actually go all the way up to the very high end such as the emerging telepresence products, which could cost half a million dollars. It really depends on what the customer’s application is and what he wants to achieve. When comparing video conferencing and the emerging telepresence, the difference is quite significant. Telepresence is closer to faceto-face meetings. The impact of telepresence is higher on travel – companies have seen 50% to 60% reduction on travel. “Today, telepresence still has a higher cost. Secondly, the bandwidth associated with it is higher so the operating cost of managing telepresence is higher. Typically, the cost would be broken into two. One cost would be the network infrastructure which would actually cost not less than $8,000 to $10,000 a month. It’s now coming down to $5,000$6,000 range. Add maintenance costs on top of that – which could typically be another four to five

Munzer Aloush, regional manager for the Gulf, Central Europe, CIS and Pakistan at Tandberg, says while there has always an element of elitisim attached to videoconferencing, it should now be open to everyone to use in an enterprise. “At Tandberg, we believe it should be extended to all levels. Today, organisations use video for more than just meetings from conference room to conference room, it can also be a very personal experience for people at all levels of an organisation,” he says. “Looking in-house, with an average of 75,000 video calls each month, Tandberg experiences the beneﬁts of face-to-face communication ﬁrst hand. Every employee has access to personal video, so we can communicate visually with teams, and with partners, suppliers and customers at a moment’s notice. Using video to replace business travel, the Tandberg team saved over $45 million and 21,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, and gained about 38,250 productivity hours over the past year,” continues Aloush.

Our team gained about 38,250 productivity hours over the past year, says Tandberg’s Aloush.

Coordinating information, talent, and expertise. Now that’s collaboration. Anything that helps your employees collaborate better makes them more productive—and pays real dividends directly back to you. Cisco delivers collaborative experiences so your people can do business like never before. With Cisco, your team can connect with the right people and information— faster and more reliably—to help you execute projects more efficiently. The reliability and expandability of our equipment and services give you the all-important investment protection you need to keep costs down. And, with built-in security from Cisco, you can be sure that your collaborative efforts are well protected. Collaboration is key to your success and Cisco delivers it. For more information on our line of collaboration-enhancing solutions and services, visit www.cisco.com/go/collaboration.

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Feature Partner

Cultural Revolution While the technical and cost barriers may still be eroding, there will perhaps always remain individuals like Dubal’s Al Mulla, who fervently believe that there are some things a videoconferencing room will never replace. “The reality is that with business travel, you can do a lot more things,” he says. “You can prepare, discuss face-to-face, you can see the environment, take a break, come back – things are a bit different when you are faceto-face. It’s just a different feeling. If you compare well-organised business travel to video conferencing, I don’t think you find a cost saving. It’s much better than before but it’s still not really like face-to-face.” Surprisingly considering this scepticism, Al Mulla is looking at a more advanced telepresence set-up. Even more surprisingly, he doesn’t plan to use it for communicating with the outside world – but rather, with his own staffers. “We are looking at these now actually even for internal use. It’s more effective than moving

28 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

We are seeing a lot of innovation on reducing the bandwidth cost driven by customer demands, says Cisco’s Agha.

from one building to another for example. These will be the future; deﬁnitely video conferencing as it stands today will, I think, disappear,” he declares. FVC’s Parag understands Al Mulla’s recalcitrance, explaining that in this region, there is often a deep seated opposition to any meeting that isn’t in person. “The Middle East is a marketplace where face- to-face meeting are extremely essential to the way to doing business. If you see the Arabic way of meeting, it’s extremely warm and hospitable with a face to face conversation which is part of the culture. Yes, it is happening, we are looking at a slow change in terms of the dynamics going from a very face to face meeting, which everyone is used to over the last decade – that is now changing more into video,” he says.

Wild card While video conferencing continues to seem to be the perpetual bridesmaid, there’s another angle to consider – the so-called Apple effect. With the introduction of FaceTime on the iPhone as a means for Wi-Fi connected owners to talk to each other for free, the technology may yet receive a fillip from the consumer market. Cisco’s Agha doesn’t think it’ll have much effect: “It will complement the desired video com-

munication and collaboration currently being provided by VC and telepresence solutions. I cannot imagine executives meeting over a mobile phone or engineering/research groups conferencing over a low-resolution screen. Telepresence solutions will be still needed for the important and eﬀective meetings.”

Are we there yet? So as always, videoconferencing, video phones, or in fact, anything that looks like the technology people dreamed of in the 1960s still feels one tantalising step away. But as Cisco’s Agha says, it’s more likely to succeed now than ever before.

The burden of money

thousand dollars. So you’re talking about a $10,000 cost in terms of operating telepresence, including bandwidth,” he continues. Allan Scott, head of marketing for uniﬁed comms and collaboration at BT, thinks cost concerns are largely a hoary chestnut that’s a thing of the past: “We are growing our base by 20%+ every year and as interoperability between systems becomes more common place, we expect this growth to continue. Cost originally was an issue for fully immersive systems but new codecs are reducing the bandwidth require all the time without compromising quality. As super fast broadband becomes a reality, this will also drive connectivity charges down.”

“When it comes to communications, it’s all about the experience. Can you build a trust relationship? Can you make an emotional connection? And it’s only when you can build trust long-distance that you can actually be comfortable to do business that way. As companies face travel freezes, employees find a unique opportunity to showcase the technology as a way to vastly improve voice-only conference calls, or as a way to reduce travel budgets. Video conferencing moved from “Nice to have” to “Must have” especially after the global economical crisis. Businesses want to increase productivity and reduce cost – high-definition video conference and telepresence were the solutions,” he states. For Dubal’s Al Mulla, , there is a growing acceptance that his successors will be more comfortable with the idea. “The cultural resistance will go away, but it will take time. For my generation, it will not disappear. The new generation might be more used to it. It is definitely a cultural issue. But as it gets more into classrooms, teachers and students, it will happen. But that will take time.”

Microsoft’s Mandou says that while videoconferencing is far from cheap, organisations need to take a holistic view to its use. “It certainly is not a matter of cost only. In addition to the signiﬁcant cost saving associated with travel, communications and IT administration, organisations can also improve business outcomes by maximising individual productivity and fostering team collaboration,” he says. “Whereas there are items that push organisations to consider a conferencing solution (such as high cost of communication, transportation or travel) there are also items that let organisations decide not to opt-in for such solution that saves cost and time) if the cost of communication is relatively low, or there is plenty of time to get things done. Those items will certainly let any organisations consider such decisions,” continues Mandou.

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Up close 30

Trust issues?

The oft-ignored Blackberry has been thrust into the spotlight over its potential as a tool to subvert national security. But how right were we to trust it in the ﬁrst place? Imthishan Giado investigates. the average Blackberry. Mix that up with equally vast amounts of corporate data including e-mail and documents and you have the beginnings of a security problem. One would be remiss in not considering the current state of Blackberries in this part of the world, as both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are threatening bans on the services provided by the devices unless Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of the phones, provides a way for them to monitor all traﬃc. But that’s not the question we’re asking. What we’re asking is quite simply: how did the Blackberry explode in popularity so quickly

Crossed wires

en years ago, if someone asked you if it was safe to put personal data on mobile phones, you’d probably have laughed out loud. After all, what could you possibly have stored on the devices of the time? Even the best handsets circa 2000 lacked colour screens, expandable memory, sync capabilities – the list is endless. For that matter, most struggled to store more than 150 hundred contacts which today wouldn’t even scratch the surface of anyone’s Facebook friend list, let alone a thousand Blackberry Messenger (BBM) contacts. But today, we expect so much more from our handsets. Who remembers telephone numbers any more? Store it in your mobile phone. Who remembers what time a ﬁlm’s starting? Check it online via your 3G internet connection. Who bothers selecting a playlist for your music? Just bring it all with you on a memory card. And who bothers to check their e-mail via their laptop’s copy of Outlook, when you can always be up to date with a Blackberry? When one considers that most people are now also integrating their social media proﬁles and associated data into their handsets or often engage in bouts of online shopping via their phone’s built-in web browser, you’ll start to understand that there is a not-inconsquential – in fact, frankly serious – amount of personal data being stored on

among enterprises? Is e-mail really all they’re used for? And most importantly – if governments don’t trust them, can the average enterprise aﬀord to?

Popularity breeds contempt Blackberries have been in use in the enterprise world since the late 1990s, yet they only oﬃcially arrived on the shores of the region in the mid-2000s. But many who travelled overseas to Western Europe and the US found themselves enamoured of the device. Guru Prasad, GM, strategic alliances and channel development at regional distributor FVC was

one such individual. His firm has officially been using it for a year and a half but as a frequent business traveller, he’s well versed in its vagaries. “Personally as a corporate user, I’ve been using it for 11 years now. Before that we had push e-mail on various kinds of devices from Symbian to Windows-based OSes. Before that, we used primarily Nokia with Nokia IntelliSync. The experience was not optimum, it left a lot to be desired and also more importantly was the convenience and the costeffectiveness. The Blackberry servers bring all three advantages together which

Dubal’s Ahmad Al Mulla breaks the current situation down for the many who have diﬃculty understanding what’s currently transpiring in the GCC. “What is going is nothing to do with security. What is going on is to do with national security. What happens is that on the Blackberry, things are encrypted. If you try to do anything, the national security guys cannot see interfere. For me, this is security, that is why it is a national concern,” he believes. “I fully support what the government is doing. They are absolutely right. What they are saying is that they will ban it – a lot of people spread rumours or say things using the BBM. Also, the internet is open and people can access any site from it. It’s also a very fast media to distribute news. That is a big concern from the national security point of view. From the enterprise security, there are absolutely no issues. It’s good security for the enterprise – my e-mail is going out and I know it’s secure Our people expect that you receive the e-mail – you can’t come and say that you and encrypted,” he ends. weren’t in the office, says Dubal’s Al Mulla.

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9 31

I quite often walk through restaurants, hotels and offices and there’ll be Blackberries lying on the desk, says Trend Micro’s Black.

other solutions couldn’t do at that point of time.” Ahmad Al Mulla vice president of IT at Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) has been using Blackberries for the past four years – actually before the official introduction, but in the beginning experienced a mixture of distrust and hostility from his senior management, who did not quite understand why they needed it. Fast forward to the present, however, and he says they are now a highly integrated part of his workplace. “The main use really is e-mail, which people can conveniently access from anywhere. It replaces your mobile as well, so other features are there. It helps a lot because if you go to meetings outside of the office or wherever, you don’t get a call or an SMS, you receive an e-mail. You can actually proactively approach people. Our people expect that you receive an e-mail and then respond quickly – you can’t come and say that you weren’t in the office,” he warns.

If Blackberry were banned, I’d switch to iPhones, says Interactive Intelligence’s Haque.

It’s no secret, says Nick Black, technical manager for the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa at Trend Micro why all these companies opted for Blackberries – it’s because they were built with enterprises, rather than consumers in mind. “Blackberries generally are pretty user friendly. The fact that they were the ﬁrst to have a fully comprehensive enterprise solution on a handheld device is also important. The ﬁrst people to enter a market typically dominate for some time afterwards. They really were the only solution available at the time. Recently though, their competitors have caught up with them and in some cases overtaken them,” he states.

Fashionably late There’s certainly been a mad rush among virtually every regional enterprise to adopt the devices and support them. But where did security lie in the priority list – and were people simply following the overseas fashion

trends? For Black, the answer is not clear cut. “The question that is raised in my mind is, is the adoption of Blackberry an enterprise decision?” he asks. “Is it one that was made six or eight years ago that enterprises would individually decide that Blackberry were the preferred handset – or was this driven by consumers liking the aesthetics and the userfriendliness of the device itself? “To be honest, the correct answer is a combination of both. The second part of that answer, is, at the time that Blackberry really ramped up their sales, security and cloud computing was not even on the horizon so I guess security was less of a concern at that time. Now if you take what Blackberry did eight years ago and combine that with the security concerns that are valid today, I’m not sure that they would have been quite so successful,” he ponders. And then, there’s the milliondollar question that many have

There is always a doubt. Whenever it’s a managed service, there’s no such thing as a complete assurance that your data is safe. It’s only the commercial viability of our data being misused being someone like Blackberry which comes into reckoning. But it really doesn’t matter in the biggest sense. We’ve got to trust someone. 32 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

been asking since the controversy erupted, that many had not even considered previously – is the Blackberry safe for your business? Is it even perhaps – as RIM claims it’s unable to provide access to its encrypted network – too safe? Could employees use it to harm their organisations? “You could ask me that question about any device that has data on it on the face of the planet and my answer would be no. The hardware device itself is irrelevant, unless you’re talking about physical security. With the current controversy about how secure or insecure Blackberry and other phones are – if you went and spoke to those individuals who actually owned them and asked what they did with them at night; if they go to a restaurant, is it on the table or the handbag? Where is it? Is physical security or encrypted data more or less of a concern? That’s my question. I quite often walk through restaurants, hotels and oﬃces and there’ll be Blackberries lying on the desk,” asks Black. For Dubal’s Al Mulla, he’s faced down these questions about security before, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s impossible to keep tabs on everything employees do. E-mail records are traceable and trackable, but beyond that, it’s the purview of the relevant law enforcement authorities. “Employees can do things that we’re not aware of in several forms,” Al Mulla explains. “If they

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Employees can do things that we’re not aware of in several forms. If they use e-mail, we’ll be aware of it because it connects to your e-mail server where records are kept. When it comes to using mobile or any other facilities, they are accountable for it. If they misuse it in a certain way against the country’s laws, then it’s their own personal problem.

34 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Letter of the law Most of the individuals interviewed for this feature agreed that the Blackberry provided security that was safe enough for the purpose of enterprise e-mail. However, the question of government access to the data has many worried that their conﬁdential data will be visible to all. In theory, Black says, this is possible: “Technically you can do anything you want. Legally that allows RIM allowing an enterprise to put a Blackberry server into their environments. I’m aware that the demand is there, yes. Whether that was followed through and RIM have allowed people to put Blackberry servers into their organisations and what the regulations are to be able to do that, I’m unaware of – it’s not my core business. “All the data is currently exported to Blackberry servers in Canada. Would RIM allow their services to move out of their datacentre, out of their security realms and out of their control into an enterprise or even an country where a government would then control it? I’m not sure. I’m not convinced. They haven’t done that so far, I’m not convinced that they would want to do that now,” he questions. And what would happen if Blackberries were to be removed from the equation? Stripped of their e-mail, it’s little more than a regular mobile phone. For Saji

Oommen, general manager for Group IT in the UAE’s Al Batha Group, he thinks it will be difficult to find a replacement. “I’m fairly confident that the matter will be resolved so I don’t think we have any serious need to look for alternatives. If it is banned we will need to start evaluations, but I don’t think there is any device available which can match the Blackberry’s functionality in terms of being able to support different applications,” he confirms.

Bare necessities

use e-mail, we’ll be aware of it because it connects to your e-mail server where records are kept. When it comes to using mobile or any other facilities, they are accountable for it. If they misuse it in a certain way against the country’s laws, then it’s their own personal problem. If they are downloading a lot of data and so on, we see their bills and they are also accountable for that. “As an enterprise, we don’t need to monitor BBM. It is not our concern at all. They use Blackberry Messenger in their own way. It is like SMS, right? I am not concerned what they do there with BBM. If they it to do a company transaction, that has to be eventually formalised within the system. BBM is not a means of conducting a formal business transaction,” he continues. FVC’s Prasad agrees, and extends this trust to the service provider as a whole: “Whenever it’s a managed service, there’s no such thing as a complete assurance that your data is safe from all forms of loss. It’s only the commercial viability of our important data being misused by someone like Blackberry which comes into the reckoning. “But it really doesn’t matter in the biggest sense. We’ve got to trust someone in the end. If you’re going with a managed service, there has to be some element of trust with your provider,” he continues.

If the matter does not fall RIM’s way, the way forward for enterprises is complicated. Al Mulla says laptops are still a temporary option. FVC’s Prasad thinks mobile devices will still reign supreme and perhaps PDAs might even stage a comeback. And others might turn to competitors, but rest assured, their loyalty lies with RIM’s oblong favourite. Shaheen Haque, Territory Manager Middle East and Turkey of Interactive Intelligence and a Blackberry user since 2007, sums everything up rather neatly: “I hope this situation does not arise. But should there be no resolution between Etisalat and RIM – and Etisalat do in fact carry out their threat of termination of BB services, than I guess I would have no choice but to revert to the e-mail services available by the other vendors: iPhone , Android. But I would switch back as soon as a resolution was reached.”

Saji Oommen, general manager for Group IT in the UAE’s Al Batha Group has also been using it for the past ﬁve years, but believes that initially, it wasn’t really meant for enterprise use. “I went for it initially because my usage of data was much higher than the voice usage,” he recalls. “I had found a lot of limitations with the previous devices I was using. I used a Nokia Communicator earlier and diﬀerent versions of i-Mate devices. I had problems in most of these devices in terms of battery life and available functionality. Then I found the Blackberry to be the most optimal one for my type of use.”

I went for it initially because my usage of data was much higher than the voice usage, says Al Batha’s Oomen.

Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the Haia, is aiming to set up a unit to combat cyber crimes. According to Arab News, the Haia will establish a cyber crime unit at its Riyadh headquarters, which will initially focus on the issue of women being blackmailed online. Saudi has recently seen an increasing number of reports of men attempting to blackmail women by threatening to post their photographs online. Use of mobile phone cameras has increased the circulation of photographs of women’s faces. which under the Kingdom’s strict traditions and customs, should not be revealed to non-relatives.

Kaspersky and IceWarp tie up for unified comms Kaspersky Lab and unified communications specialist IceWarp have announced a new technology partnership to bring enhanced security to communications solutions. As part of the alliance, Kaspersky Lab antivirus technology has been integrated into IceWarp Unified Communications Server 10, the company’s leading unified communications server. “The threat that malicious content poses to business is ever present,” explained Ladislav Goc, IceWarp’s Director of International Business Development. “Kaspersky Lab’s long track record of reliability and expertise in this area is practically unmatched. We know our customers are safe.”

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Saudi Haia to set up new cyber crimes unit

Security focus

Roman Valeba (far left) promises that Arabic support will arrive two months after the office is established.

TrustPort sets up shop in the UAE Security software firm TrustPort has announced the launch of its operations in the Middle East and will be setting up marketing, operations and 24/7 technical support services for the region in the United Arab Emirates. TrustPort, a member of the Cleverlance Group, is headquartered in Brno in the Czech Republic, with regional offices in Latin America, North America, India, Western Europe, and now the Middle East. TrustPort security software is used by companies and home users in over hundred countries. It has just released its 2010 PC

Security Edition, which destroys viruses and spyware, and prevents hacker penetration. One key difference that makes TrustPort stand out from other competitors in the security space is the fact that their products come with features like data shredding using methods approved by the US government, data encryption both on a document and hard drive level, and electronic signatures. TrustPort also beat leading names including McAfee and Symantec to come out on top in long-term independent tests carried out by Virus Bulletin and

AV-Comparitives, which it credits to its products being based on multiple scanning engines. Key products will now be available in the Middle East but without Arabic support, which Roman Veleba, international sales manager says will come “a couple of months” later. TrustPort Middle East will take care of all business activities, including technical support, product manufacturing, distribution and shipping. “In particular, we will promote our end-point products, TrustPort Antivirus and TrustPort PC Security,” added Veleba.

Gulf youth want more web restrictions Nearly half of the teenagers and young adults in the Middle East would like more restrictions on the Internet, a pilot study by the American University of Beirut has found. The study, which analysed the media habits of MENA youth, surveyed 2,744 university and high school students in Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates between the ages of 13 and 28 years. Their results showed a split in attitudes towards

online restrictions. ‘More restrictions’ was the most popular choice (about 40%), followed

by ‘less restrictions’ (a little over 30%), ‘no restrictions ‘ (slightly more than 20%). Over 5% said the Internet needs to be ‘fully restricted or banned’. Other significant findings from the study that asked students about their media consumption, production habits and their attitudes towards certain media, found that the majority spent “considerable time consuming new and traditional media, but much less time producing media content”.

Microsoft issues largest ever security update September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Security focus

Sticky fingers could grant unwanted access to a prized smartphone, warns the University of Pennslyvania in a report.

Fingers pose smartphone security risk Sticky fingers and smudged touchscreens could pose a security risk to smartphones, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers from the University’s Computer and Information Science Department investigated the possibility of extracting password data from ‘smudges’ of oily residue from fingertips, that builds up during normal use of touchscreens, according to The Register. The researchers found that not only were patterns of smudges easily extracted from handsets, but that the smudge patterns

were also surprisingly resilient, making so-called ‘smudge attacks’ a security threat. The study tested two models of Android-based smartphones, the HTC G1 and the Google Nexus One, which both require a user to trace a repeated pattern on a 3x3 square grid on the screen, in place of a password. The handsets were photographed using standard camera and lighting set ups, and then photo editing software running on PCs was used to analyse the patterns of smudge marks. The researchers found that 68% of the time, the full password pattern could be retrieved,

while a partial pattern could be recovered 96% of the time, even after the phone had been held to the face, to simulate taking a call, which creates a smudge across the whole screen. The research white paper stated: “We believe smudge attacks are a threat for three reasons. First, smudges are surprisingly persistent. Second, it is difficult to obscure or delete smudges. through wiping or pocketing the device. Third and finally, collecting and analysing oily residue smudges can be done with readily-available equipment such as a camera and a computer.”

Cybercriminals bet on jailbreak ruling Jailbreaking iPhones many have e just been ruled legal in the US, but cyber criminals are already rushing to d exploit the demand for software . The US Library off Congress ruled this al week that it was legal es for owners of iPhones and other digital devices which are supupplied with software to

prevent prev installation of unauthorised u third par programs or use party o of other telephony pro providers, to ‘jailbr break’ or unlock such de devices, to remove th protection. the Now secur company rity BitDefender is warning of a Trojan that is hidden on a fake webpage that offers free unlock-

ing software. The web address for the page is being circulated as a spam e-mail, offering free unlocking if you simply click the link. Visitors to the page however, will then find that Trojan. Generic.3010833, a keylogger attempts to download to their PC. The keylogger will attempt to log all data entered to the PC via the keyboard, and then transmit it to a control site. BitDefender is warning all users never to open suspicious links without scanning them first.

Microsoft has issued its largest ever security update, to address a range of vulnerabilities in applications. The latest release in the second week of August are part of Microsoft’s ‘Patch Tuesday’ monthly security update, includes 14 bulletins to address 34 vulnerabilities, the largest ever number of bulletins released at one time. The bulletins are also ranked high on Microsoft’s security scale, with eight bulletins rated as ‘critical’ and six as ‘important’. Affected applications include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft XML Core Services and Server Message Block.

Quick Heal moves swiftly to beef up channel numbers Internet security software vendor Quick Heal has given its Middle East growth aspirations a major boost by appointing authorised distributors for its local markets. In the UAE, Quick Heal has signed Croma Trading as its second distributor, while Nexgen Techno and The National Trading House have been engaged for Kuwait and Bahrain respectively. Shobhit Mathur, regional director and managing partner at Quick Heal says the company is keen to strengthen its business. “We are relatively new to the Middle East as we only entered the market last year. Since January, we have been establishing our distribution structure,” he explained.

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Security revenue to hit $16.5 billion September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Security focus

McAfee brings us incredibly talented people with a track record of innovation, says Intel’s Otellini.

Intel scoops up McAfee for $7.68 billion Intel has announced that it will buy security company McAfee, for $7.68 billion. The deal, which values McAfee at $48 per share, a 60% premium, has been approved by both boards, and is subject to regulatory approval. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that the deal will give Intel a ‘third pillar’ in computing, to complement its drives for power efficiency and connectivity in future models. “In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of

what people demand from all computing experiences,” Otellini said in a statement. “The addition of McAfee products and technologies into the Intel computing portfolio brings us incredibly talented people with a track record of delivering security innovations, products and services that the industry and consumers trust to make connecting to the Internet safer and more secure,” he added. McAfee will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel, under its Software and Services Group. The two companies will also work together to explore

future product concepts, to strengthen security across computing models. David DeWalt, CEO of McAfee, wrote in a company blog that the deal would help to develop new ways of securing different types of device, to provide a more robust model of security than is possible at present. “This is incredibly exciting to me as it reflects what we at McAfee have been saying for some time: security is a fundamental component of modern computing and it is increasingly relevant in a completely connected world,” he wrote.

HP set to acquire Fortify software outﬁt HP is to buy software security assurance specialist Fortify Software, for an undisclosed amount. Privately-held Fortify Software, which creates software for security testing of applications through all stages of the development process through deployment, will be integrated over time into HP’s Software and Solutions business unit. The two companies have already collaborated on an advanced security analysis technology, ‘Hybrid 2.0’. HP says that

it will now be able to accelerate development of this technology to give clients the prioritisation they need around security vulnerabilities to build scalable enterprise security programs.

Cyberoam’s CR15wi supports up to eight virtual access

“Businesses operate in a world of increasing security and compliance challenges, and the applications and services that they rely on are core to the problem and the solution,” said Bill Veghte, EVP for Software and Solutions for HP. “With Fortify’s leadership in static application security analysis combined with HP’s expertise in dynamic application security analysis, organisations will have a best-in-class solution to improve the security of their applications and services.”

Worldwide security software revenue is expected to top $16.5 billion this year, according to a new report from analysts Gartner. This represents an increase of 11% from 2009 levels, when revenue reached $14.8 billion. Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner notes that the market looks to be in a period of extended good form: “Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of variation is expected. Overall, security will remain one of the fastestgrowing areas within the enterprise software market.” According to the report, Forecast Analysis: Security Software Markets, Worldwide, 2009-2014, 2Q10 Update, the market for endpoint protection software is expected to provide revenues of $3 billion this year, which puts it firmly in second place behind the consumer segment with which has predicted revenues of $4.2 billion. “Security software vendors that have a balanced mix of channel, new licence and maintenance revenue streams and flexibility in contractual terms, such as software as a service (SaaS), open source and outsourcing, have the strongest options for continued growth and to even out the risk. Shrinking discretionary spending budgets have heightened competition for new maintenance and license revenue streams,” continued Gartner’s Contu. “During the next six to 12 months, products delivered as SaaS will continue overtaking traditional software licensing as the preferred purchasing methods,” said Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst at Gartner.

Expert’s Column

September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

Plugging the leak Alexei Lesnykh, business developer manager for DeviceLock, explains how enterprises can defend their digital borders against the threat of data leakage.

re you running a small or medium- size business? If you are, the challenges you face everyday is how to maximise business performance and manage your costs. Bet you didn’t realise that you could be losing one of your most priceless assets, costing you a fortune every year while you are focused on other areas – your company’s information. DLP which stands for data leak prevention is a major concern here in the Middle East region, mostly because regional small and medium businesses are still not completely aware of the risks caused by data leakage or the heavy costs to those businesses. Negligence is one of the main reasons why data leaks happen. “In practical ﬁgures alone corporate data loss can cost com-

panies between 20% and 25% of their overall revenue because data leak prevention solutions and security policies are not properly set.” Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3 percent increase from IT spending of $3.2 trillion in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. The IT industry will continue to show steady growth with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass $3.5

trillion, a 4.2% increase from 2010. (Gartner, 2010) This means that companies are investing more and more in IT. At the same time, also the employees of these same companies are investing more in IT on a private level. They all own the simple USB flash drive to share and archive documents, many of them have an iPod to listen to their favourite music on their way to the office and, finally, almost all have a

smartphone either an iPhone or a BlackBerry; and in all these cases, the data transfer to such personal memory-bearing devices from the company computer is extremely easy. Companies need to be more up to speed with the growing interest in technology from their employees and take the safety precautions. Without DLP policies in place for endpoints in corporate IT networks, data leaks

Companies need to be more up to speed with the growing interest in technology from their employees and take the safety precautions. Without DLP policies in place for endpoints in corporate IT networks, data leaks are bound to happen.

are bound to happen. Within a company’s IT infrastructure, USB drives and ﬂash memory cards are a major threat of this kind as are network communications from employee’s computers. Now, apart from numbers, it is essential to understand that data leak prevention is a key issue especially in small and medium size businesses as the data of your company is an important facilitating attribute of any business. A big company has its business set by its name and reputation as well as the information it owns;

what you represent in your business, whoever abuses or steals your business data is actually stealing a key part of you! With data loss prevention solutions, IT security administrators are able to proﬁle the role of each employee in the company, group or department regarding their endpoint data transfer and peripheral device access, keeping each of them to the minimal set of operations required for their role. This reduces overall the risk of data leaks and helps organisations to better comply with

sation-specific risks related to its business filed and industry – for instance, an unusually high value of corporate Intellectual Property (IP) assets. When the businesslevel data protection policy has been developed and approved by the organisation’s executive management, it should be then interpreted (in other words, translated) into a corporate-wide data leak prevention (DLP) policy. Content specifications in this policy should define “what” kind of information this policy protects, for example, intellectual

The scope of the data protection policy should be defined based on applicable government regulations, industry’s information security standards (for example HIPAA, Basel II, etc.), as well as take into account organisation-specific risks related to its business. but a small company fights everyday in the market to compete and succeed, and one of its strongest weapons is its data. Your data is your businesses core identity, your data and all the information you use at work makes you who you are; it is your business identity card. It is unique and it differentiates your company from anyone else’s in the market! This may sound just like a mere metaphor but eventually data is who you are at your work and

42 September 2010 Vol.16 No.9

applicable IT security regulations and industry standards. IT managers or dedicated information security officers should at first design the corporate data protection policy as an integral part of the entire corporate information security policy. The scope of the data protection policy should be defined based on applicable government regulations, industry’s information security standards (for example HIPAA, Basel II, etc.), as well as take into account organi-

property (IP), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), corporate confidential information, or customer data. At the same time business-level context parameters and conditions in the policy should specify “who”, “where from”, “where to”, and “when” is allowed or denied to transfer the specified information, or any data in general. Only when the corporate DLP policy has been designed, can it be mapped “down” to the specifics of the endpoint computing environ-

ment of the organisation to form the endpoint-level DLP policies including access privileges, content filtering rules, as well as the rules of personal device use. The next step would be deploying the DLP solution and turning its policies to monitoring mode. The aim of this project phase is two-fold: at first, it facilitates the refinement of the baseline data protection policies for all endpoint computers and their users. The second goal is to identify the most malicious users of the corporate network during this first DLP deployment phase. When the baseline DLP polices have been fine-tuned, IT managers can switch DLP agents from “monitoring only” to enforcement mode while at the same time logging peripheral device access related user actions, as well as their data transfer operations from and to endpoint computers. It’s at this very moment that forensic investigations into the most serious data leaks should become a routine part of the IT department operations. The company should defend all of its property including corporate endpoint computers used by its staff whether in the office or at home. Protecting your data is protecting your business reputation. It goes without question that you put so much effort to set yourself apart in the market and you want to guarantee that your reputation won’t get compromised. Isn’t that sensible?

September 2010 Vol.17 No.9

The inside line

Medicine man

The top men in networking reveal their secrets for success Luis Perfetti, CIO of Al Ain’s Oasis Hospital

What is your career progression to date? I was made vice president and CIO at the hospital this year. Before this, I acted as the information systems director (leading the department of IT and department of Medical Records) from 2008. I initially joined in 2005 as the IT manager. Previously in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I worked as the IT Manager for Curtiembres Fonseca, a large manufacturing company, and have also worked as an ERP implementation project consultant. What would you describe as your finest achievement? Well, the implementation of the enterprise wide solution for the manufacturing company I worked in Argentina was quite a complex and extensive project which took several years and modules to get the organisation to become much more efficient and lean. It was a very complex solution that gave the decision makers the information they needed in one click. There have been many smaller projects that have also been fine achievements in my current job: being the first hospital to implement electronic claims for insurance in the emirate of Abu Dhabi using the new regulation to help the Health Authority to prove the concept, brought a lot of recognition, although

technically speaking it wasn’t that much of a challenge.

d technology and being inspired by its potential.

What drives you towards excellence in IT? That has to do with my purpose in life and the notion that I don’t do things to serve myself, but I do them for God himself. God has done all things for us with excellence and I feel compelled to imitate him.

What emerging technology do you think will have the biggest impact in IT? I think the widespread adoption of smart devices (smart phones, iPads and so on) by the enterprise in its business core will be key in changing the way IT works – also the extension of social networks to the enterprise space will also have an eﬀect.

Given the option, what choice would you have made differently in your career? Considering the big milestones in my career, I don’t have any regrets. I had experienced failed projects but I believe from this we learn some valuable lessons. Who has been the biggest inspiration to you thus far in your career? I have to say that it’s my father: even being 86 years old, he manages very well to setup his Skype to speak to me in a video conference, and maintains his Facebook account. It’s an inspiration that is never too late to change and adapt. He always has been an early adopter of

Which enterprise professional do you most admire, and why? I know many professionals I admire, such as some of the ones serving selﬂessly in our hospital who surprise me very often. But to mention a public ﬁgure, Dr. Philipp Vetter, head of strategy from Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) is someone that has gained my admiration. Since he came from the Statistics department and data management, he has convinced the HAAD leaders about a data exchange strategy that has changed drastically the way things are done in the healthcare sector in the Emirate. I admire his systematic view and

conviction of the strategy chosen even when many times he’s misunderstood and has to keep repeating himself until others grasp the ideas. I admire that as a foreigner he really defends the best strategy for the Emirates. Outside of the office, what is your foremost passion? If I have to qualify it as “passion” then I would say it is building my relationship with God. I spend a lot of time doing this. But I can also say that I enjoy playing music (guitar, flute) and playing football. What advice would you give to young professionals seeking to become the CIO of their organisation one day? I would advise them to find balance in their lives at all levels. Balance between technology and business, between being specific and being general, between work and non-work, between leadership and being a servant to those they lead, between mind, body and spirit.

If I have to qualify it as “passion” then I would say it is building my relationship with God. I spend a lot of time doing this. But I can also say that I enjoy playing music including the guitar and ﬂute and playing football.