CXO DX July 2022 by LeapMediaSolutions

July May 2022 2022

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» EDITORIAL

REIMAGINING THE ORGANIZATION IN THE POST PANDEMIC ERA The pandemic has compelled many organizations to reinvent themselves, from their processes to go to market strategies. Many organizations have adopted an omnichannel approach to reach out to their customers and at the back of this transformation is the adoption of a whole set of new technologies. With a greater set of capabilities than ever before, organizations that have been quite prompt in their drive to adopt new solutions with a well-founded set of objectives, are poised to compete smartly for a larger slice of the market. Speed and agility are the outcomes for companies that have gone ahead with adopting new tools and processes. What they must ensure is that the changes are hard wired into their structure and that there is no rolling back to the ways of the past. A metaverse economy that blends VR, AR, sensors and spatial computing into a bundle of digital experiences for consumers is perhaps not too far away. It could be a lot easier for digitally native companies to be successful in the Metaverse. Against this context, companies must never shy away from exploring how some of the new emerging technologies can be constantly introduced into their business models and in interactions with customers, and to possibly figure out how they can benefit from having a presence in the Metaverse as and when it shapes up. There are a growing number of use cases for many of the new technologies including AR, VR, IoT etc across verticals such as retail, healthcare, hospitality etc. We are still in early stage of understanding the potential of these technologies and as we conceive more use cases, the benefits would be a lot more and the digital experience for the consumer more enriching. In the post pandemic era, companies must be aware of the significant shift in how consumers are engaging with digital platforms and the impact on the Gen Z. This who make the first move in increasing their digital engagements with their customers will gain credibility faster.

R. Narayan

narayan@leapmediallc.com Mob: +971-55-7802403 ......................................................

Sunil Kumar Designer

SAUMYADEEP HALDER Co-Founder & MD

saumyadeep@leapmediallc.com Mob: +971-54-4458401

......................

Co-Founder & Editor in Chief

MALLIKA REGO Co-Founder & Director Client Solutions

mallika@leapmediallc.com Mob: +971-50-2489676

.......................................................................................................................................

RAMAN NARAYAN

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Editor in Chief, CXO DX

Nihal Shetty Webmaster

PUBLISHED BY - Leap Media Solutions LLC

REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City | www.cxodx.com JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» CONTENTS INTERVIEW

27 » SECURING AND ACCELERATING WEB CONTENT DELIVERY Bashar Bashaireh, Managing Director, Middle East & Turkey, Cloudflare discusses how the company is strengthening its operational focus in the region

12 SPOTLIGHT

12 » FUTURE WORKSPACE SUMMIT & AWARDS 2022 SEES A FULL HOUSE ATTENDANCE The second annual edition of the Future Workspace Summit & Awards was held successfully at the Address Skyview Hotel in Downtown Dubai. The event organized by CXO DX, the leading media platform for CXOs in the region and Leap Media Solutions, brought to the fore various aspects of Technology’s impact on the future of work.

FEATURE

28 » BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION WITH REAL TIME CX The need for real time CX as a Business enabler is an undeniable fact the ‘new normal’ consumer era where consumer expect a seamless experience through all transactional touchpoints

CXO DX / JULY 2022

31 » A GROWING PRESENCE Syed Faizan Ahmed, Business Development Manager at TP-Link discusses how the networking vendor is advancing its market penetration with its cloud enabled Access Points and other solutions

32 » TRANSFORMING WITH A UNIFIED PLATFORM APPROACH Prabhu Ramachandran, the founder and CEO Facilio, an established leader in the connected buildings and facilities management software space discusses how the company has been delivering on the collective vision to enable true digital transformation within the property operations space.

COLUMN

34 » IDENTITY AS THE NEW PERIMETER Joseph Carson, Chief Security Scientist and Advisory CISO at Delinea says security in the hybrid world requires recognising identity as the new perimeter.

36 » BALANCING RISK AND INNOVATION: SECURITY’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Haiyan Song, EVP and GM, Security & Distributed Cloud at F5 discusses the neeed to adopt a security-first mindset

38 » THE MOVE INTO HYBRID: WHY WE NEED TO RETHINK THE MEETING ROOM As part of the great reshuffle, reviewing office tech is key says Sujit Menon, Display & Client Peripherals Lead, MERAT, Dell Technologies

REGULARS

06 » NEWS 36 » TECHSHOW 38 » TRENDS & STATS

» NEWS

DELL TECHNOLOGIES GROWS IN ENTERPRISE STORAGE SYSTEMS MARKET The vendor’s data storage portfolio includes end-to-end infrastructure solutions dle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region, according to IDCs Quarterly Storage Tracker for Q12022. The company attained the number one position in META, gaining 45.6% of share, up 19.3% YoY, as demand for Dell’s software defined storage portfolio increased. As per the report, Dell grew faster than the industry average despite a diminishing Total Addressable Market (TAM), recording quarterly gains across all storage categories.

Mohamed ElZomor

Regional Sales Director, Storage Platform Solutions, META, Dell Technologies Dell Technologies achieved a record double-digit growth in the Enterprise Storage Systems market category across the Mid-

Across the META region, Dell maintained its leadership position in the Enterprise Storage Systems sector as follows: 1 in Gulf with 64.4% share 1 in SELL with 62.6% share 1 in UAE with 49.1% share 1 in Emerging Africa with 39.9% share 1 in South Africa with 30.3% share

1 in Turkey with 29.5% share Dell’s performance in enterprise storage reflects the company’s focus on innovation and drive to empower regional customers to address pressing business demands. Mohamed ElZomor, Regional Sales Director, Storage Platform Solutions – META, Dell Technologies said, “Across the META region, as digital transformation continues to accelerate, we remain focused on executing our strategy to consolidate and modernize our offerings that enable our customers to navigate through today’s fast-changing business environment. As businesses today struggle with data growth and data management costs, our end-to-end enterprise storage portfolio enables businesses to get the scalability, intelligence, and cloud integration they need to unlock the value of data.”

REDINGTON GULF ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC COLLABORATION WITH AWS TO ACCELERATE CLOUD ADOPTION CloudQuarks platform for cloud subscriptions, renewals and billing will play a central role in enabling partners Redington Gulf, a leading value-added distributor across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, announced a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The expanded collaboration with AWS builds on an existing relationship that Redington Gulf has as an accredited AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and AWS Distributor. The new multi-year agreement is designed to advance the adoption of cloud solutions as well as develop innovative new services and products. By strengthening its partnership with the cloud leader, Redington Gulf will work closely with its extensive channel network to develop competencies and be a true consultant for customers’ end-to-end cloud journeys. The distributor’s CloudQuarks platform for cloud subscriptions, renewals and billing will play a central role in enabling

CXO DX / JULY 2022

partners operating across the region to bring solutions to market quickly and efficiently. Commenting on the new AWS collaboration, Rajiv Srivastava, Managing Director, Redington, said, “The new agreement with AWS is a further testament to our strengths as a leading cloud value-added distributor. Together with our partners, we house technical skills, technologies, and reliable resources to help customers build ROI from their cloud investments. Redington Gulf continues to be well-positioned to support our channel partners as they empower customers in the digital era and help address business challenges.” Vittorio Sanvito, EMEA Director of Partner Development at AWS, said, “As an AWS distributor, Redington Gulf brings in a deep understanding of AWS offerings to help channel partners support custom-

Vittorio Sanvito, EMEA Director of Partner Development at AWS and

Rajiv Srivastava, Managing Director, Redington Group

ers in their cloud transformation journeys. The Redington team is developing novel offerings for their partner network that help achieve customers’ business outcomes and drive cloud adoption. We are excited to grow this collaboration to new heights over the coming months.”

» NEWS

ZOHO (MANAGEENGINE) NAMED A LEADER IN THE IDC MARKETSCAPE FOR UNIFIED ENDPOINT MANAGEMENT Company Recognized for Capabilities, Strategy and Market Presence ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, announced that Endpoint Central, its Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) offering, has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software 2022 Vendor Assessment), the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software for Apple Devices 2022 Vendor Assessment and the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses 2022 Vendor Assessment. It has also been positioned as a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide UEM Software for Ruggedized/ Internet of Things Device Deployments 2022 Vendor Assessment. The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide UEM Software 2022 Vendor Assessment re-

port notes, "Patch management is one of the main capabilities across Windows and Mac platforms, as well as extensive patch and vulnerability management support for third-party apps and software on both platforms. It also supports broader automation of PCLM routines such as patches, deploying software and OS imaging (in addition to mobile device management) and application management." "In today's increasingly digitized workforce, enterprises have to ensure a positive employee experience while battling a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape. Organizations need contextual insights to identify and investigate incidents in addition to implementing preventive mechanisms without hampering employee experience," said Mathivanan Venkatachalam, vice president of ManageEngine. "This recognition from the IDC MarketScape validates our vision, which has been to consistently add security capabilities to our UEM portfolio

Mathivanan Venkatachalam Vice President, ManageEngine

to give enterprises the endpoint management and protection and incident detection, analysis and response capabilities they need."

SAUDI ARABIA’S MINISTRY OF HEALTH EMBRACES MULTI-CLOUD APPROACH Ministry of Health’s multi-cloud platform, built on VMware Cloud Foundation, enables provision of cloud services to public healthcare providers across the country MoH is responsible for the country’s public healthcare service which caters for a growing population of more than 35 million people. MoH accelerated the transformation of its IT systems with the onset of COVID-19. MoH simplified its IT infrastructure by deploying VMware Cloud Foundation as the unifying platform for its cloud environment, spreading workloads across the clouds of service providers including STC and Mobily.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health (MoH) has deployed multicloud solutions from VMware to digitally transform the country’s public healthcare sector. The MoH can now offer secure, cloudbased services to public healthcare providers including hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, significantly boosting their efficiency and enabling them to grow and innovate.

“The Ministry of Health seeks to achieve the highest levels of excellence in healthcare in line with the aims of Saudi Vision 2030. This means having the best multi-cloud foundation to optimize operations, raise efficiency and drive innovation across the country’s healthcare providers,” said Eng. Khalid Almedbel, CIO, Ministry of Health. “Thanks to our digital transformation with VMware, all public healthcare providers will have access to best-in-class cloud services that will improve operations and boost healthcare provision for citizens and residents.” With VMware Cloud Foundation, MoH benefits from a complete set of highly secure software-defined services for compute, storage, network, security, Kubernetes and cloud management. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» NEWS

CLOUDFLARE EXPANDS ITS ZERO TRUST PLATFORM Vendor sees 100% year over year customer growth and 6X growth in daily traffic Cloudflare, the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today announced several new capabilities for Cloudflare One, its Zero Trust SASE platform, making it the only cloud-native Zero Trust solution with global network scale. New features for Cloudflare One include sophisticated email security protection, data loss prevention tools, cloud access security broker (CASB), and private network discovery. Now, any organization can use Cloudflare One for a comprehensive and deeply-integrated Zero Trust security and networking solution to protect and accelerate the performance of devices, applications, and entire networks to keep workforces secure and productive. "When I sit with customers, they share that one of the most daunting aspects of Zero Trust security is simply where to begin. Making matters worse, every vendor has a different definition for Zero Trust, turning a critical approach to security into

a misunderstood and overused term," said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “We believe Zero Trust must extend to the entire network, all the way from email to data centers, and accelerate user and endpoint connections, not slow people down. And we want to give every customer a step-by-step guide for what they can do today, this week, and this month to make themselves more secure regardless of what vendor they use." Cloudflare One unifies network security as-a-service built natively into one of the world’s largest networks, providing fast, reliable global connectivity; cloud-based security; and better visibility and control through a common dashboard and API. With Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform organizations can easily secure their applications and employees against the modern threat landscape without the complex integration costs or disrupting employee productivity like many legacy systems.

Ettiene van der Watt Regional Director – MEA Axis Communications

Cloudflare One provides a comprehensive Zero Trust SASE solution that is built natively into Cloudflare’s global network, spanning more than 270 cities in over 100 countries.

CISCO LAUNCHES APPDYNAMICS CLOUD AppDynamics Cloud is a cloud-native observability platform for modern applications which are based on increasingly complex, distributed architectures and services. 360-degree visibility and insights, and the ability to take action that leads to extraordinary application experiences every time,” said Liz Centoni, EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, GM of Applications.

Cisco announced the launch of AppDynamics Cloud at Cisco Live. AppDynamics Cloud enables delivery of exceptional digital experiences by correlating telemetry data from across any cloud environment at massive scale. It leverages cloud-native observability to remediate application performance issues with business context and insights-driven actions. “AppDynamics Cloud delivers power and usability in a single, intuitive interface. It puts the focus where it needs to be—on

CXO DX / JULY 2022

AppDynamics Cloud maximizes business outcomes and customer experiences by continuously optimizing cloud-native applications. It accelerates detection and resolution of performance issues, before they impact the business or the brand, with intelligent operations. Investment protection is derived from continuous data integrations with OpenTelemetry standards and technology partnerships with cloud solutions and providers. The platform enables collaboration across teams including DevOps, site reliability engineers (SREs), and other key business stakeholders to achieve common benchmarks like service-level objectives (SLOs) and organizational KPIs. While many organizations still run their mission-critical and revenue-generating systems with traditional applications, modern business apps are increasingly built using DevOps initiatives and must support distributed architectures and services.

» NEWS

DRAGOS LAUNCHES OT-CERT TO ADDRESS CRITICAL GAPS IN SECURING INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE Dragos OT Cyber Emergency Readiness Team (OT-CERT) will provide free industrial Cybersecurity Resources for the ICS/OT Community Dragos, a global leader in cybersecurity for industrial controls systems (ICS)/operational technology (OT) environments, announced the launch of its new Dragos OT-CERT (Operational Technology - Cyber Emergency Readiness Team), a cybersecurity resource designed for industrial asset owners and operators to help them build their OT cybersecurity programs, improve their security postures, and reduce OT risk. Delivered via the OT-CERT portal, member organizations will have free access to OT cybersecurity best practices, cybersecurity maturity assessments, training, workshops, tabletop exercises, webinars, and more. In addition, OT-CERT will coordinate with OEMs regarding disclosures for vulnerabilities discovered by Dragos threat intelligence researchers, as well as cyber threats detected by Dragos targeted at the OEMs’ products. OEM

partnerships are critical to coordinated vulnerability disclosures and effective threat response to protect and support industrial infrastructure in the escalating cyber threat environment. Dragos OT-CERT addresses a serious gap in securing industrial infrastructure: the lack of OT-specific resources readily available to the industrial infrastructure community. The gap is especially critical among small and medium sized businesses that often have limited expertise and resources to address ICS/OT cybersecurity risks. “Dragos’s stated mission is to safeguard civilization, and that means protecting all industrial infrastructure, not just the most skilled or the best resourced organizations,” said Dawn Cappelli, Dragos’s newly appointed OT-CERT Director. “Our goal for Dragos OT-CERT is to be a useful, relevant, and actionable

Dawn Cappelli

OT-CERT Director, Dragos

community resource for industrial asset owners and operators by aligning them with the resources, training, partnerships, and community needed to make securing their OT environments possible.”

GOOGLE CLOUD AND NANA DIRECT PARTNER TO TRANSFORM ON-LINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE IN KSA Google Cloud’s Fleet Routing tool helps Nana deliver handpicked groceries, fresh fruits & vegetables from 39 cloud-based stores within a 15 minute window grocery stores and supermarkets, and ensuring the delivery of handpicked and packaged fresh fruits, vegetables and groceries right to their doorstep within a 15 minute window. Nana’s on-line grocery shopping experience available through the App or on the website, is completely powered by Google Cloud. Running the entire IT backend on Google Cloud enables Nana to grow and scale their business as they continue to expand in the Kingdom Working with Google Cloud’s unique AI and data warehousing solutions like BigQuery has transformed how the team at Nana analyze data and make well informed business decisions accordingly. Google Cloud announced a collaboration with Nana Direct, a pioneering online grocery shopping and delivery startup, which provides Saudi households with a convenient online grocery shopping experience. Through the collaboration, Google Cloud and Nana Direct have been transforming the on-line grocery shopping experience in the Kingdom, connecting households with local

CXO DX / JULY 2022

With on-time delivery being a unique differentiator of Nana, the team relied on Google Cloud’s Fleet Routing tool as the solution to help enhance fleet utilization. The solution also helped in dispatching trucks for deliveries using Google Maps to identify the most efficient routes in the Kingdom, which ended up optimizing fleet utilization with better on-time delivery by 40%.

MANDIANT UNVEILS DIGITAL RISK PROTECTION SOLUTION New intelligence-led solution helps organizations stay relentless in the fight to protect their digital assets, supply chain and brand against persistent cyber attacks Mandiant has announced the launch of its digital risk protection solution that harnesses the power of the Mandiant Advantage multi-vendor XDR platform to enable an intelligence-led view of an organization’s global attack surface and business-impacting activity on the deep and dark web. The solution is comprised of Mandiant offerings and is designed to allow security leaders to proactively mitigate threats before they disrupt business operations. As part of the launch, Mandiant also announced the general availability of Mandiant Advantage Digital Threat Monitoring, a key driver of Mandiant’s digital risk protection solution. Mandiant’s digital risk protection solution provides organizations visibility outside of their network, including high risk attack vectors, malicious orchestration from the deep and dark web as well as campaign execution on the open web. Comprised of Mandiant Advantage

Digital Threat Monitoring, Mandiant Advantage Attack Surface Management and Mandiant Advantage Threat Intelligence, Mandiant’s digital risk protection solution is available as both a standalone, self-managed solution and comprehensive professional service. Digital Threat Monitoring is designed to continuously monitor the internet––including the deep and dark web to help organizations uncover chatter about their brand, senior executives, technology resources and third-party suppliers/partners. “Internal attack surface visibility is no longer good enough. To stay relentless against increasingly sophisticated and persistent cyber attacks, defenders must gain insight into the external attack surface as well,” said Chris Key, Chief Product Officer, Mandiant. “Driven by Mandiant’s frontline intelligence and

Chris Key

Chief Product Officer, Mandiant expertise, Digital Threat Monitoring and Mandiant’s digital risk protection solution empower defenders to quickly and easily transform insight into action to mitigate risk and help stay ahead of threats."

THALES AND PALO ALTO NETWORKS DELIVER NEW SECURITY INTEGRATIONS Cloud transformations will be seamlessly secured through adaptive, multi-factor authentication and access security controls, reducing threats of breaches safeguard their networks. A long-standing collaboration between the two global cybersecurity leaders, Thales and Palo Alto Networks, will help support this widespread cloud migration, allowing organisations to implement Zero Trust security systems at scale. Through three technology integrations, businesses will gain access to Internal Resources within a robust, highly resilient security architecture.

Tana Rosenblatt

VP Technology Partnerships, Palo Alto Networks

As organisations continue their digital transformation journeys and move more of their workloads, networking, and security frameworks to the cloud, there is increasing pressure for businesses to rollout sufficiently robust security solutions to

The integrations will minimise the threat of data breaches from identity compromise by implementing strong, adaptive authentication at the network edge and by ensuring automated remediation workflows in the event of an untrusted access event. By integrating Thales’ SafeNet Trusted Access across Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, GlobalProtect, ML-Powered Next Generation Firewalls, and Cortex

XSOAR technologies, businesses will be able to deploy a Zero Trust model across a suite of solutions. Organisations will benefit from secure and adaptive multi-factor authentication, access management across edge solutions, network security policies, incident response and threat intelligence management. “Thales has partnered with us to help support customers through their digital transformation journeys, and in collaboration we are well primed to provide a zero trust approach with authentication, SOC security and ZTNA solutions. With these integrations, businesses are able to seamlessly secure access to hybrid and cloud environments, detect suspicious account activity, automatically trigger alerts and enforce stronger access policies in real-time,” said Tana Rosenblatt, VP Technology Partnerships, at Palo Alto Networks. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

A FULL HOUSE AT FUTURE WORKSPACE

SUMMIT & AWARDS 2022

The second UAE edition of the Future Workspace Summit & Awards continued the spotlight on the evolving trends that are reimagining the future of work

he second annual edition of the Future Workspace Summit & Awards concluded on a very successful note yesterday at the Address Skyview Hotel in Downtown Dubai. The event organized by CXO DX, the leading media platform for CXOs in the region and Leap Media Solutions, brought to the fore various aspects of Technology’s impact on the future of work. Various keynotes by speakers from leading vendors and 4 panel discussion involving several leading CIOs shared their insights with a very interested full house of attendees.

Charbel Zreiby

Director, Data Center Channel, Dell Technologies

Pramod Sharda

CEO, IceWarp, India & Middle East

“This was the second edition of The Future Workspace Summit in the UAE and continued the ongoing discussions on how work is being transformed by the availability and adoption of several collaborative, security, and cloud services. We are happy to have seen a great turnout of attendees at the event and believe they did benefit from listening to some great talks and discussions pertaining to the topic at the event,” said R. Narayan, co-founder, and editor in chief of Leap Media Solutions. The pandemic has continued to reshape the world of work across the globe. In the past couple of years, remote working became

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Panel discussion on 'Components of a Digital Workplace'

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

Panelists of the discussion on ' Cybersecurity to secure workloads and data' our new normal followed by the hybrid work model. During the summit, there was recognition for UAE born companies and organizations who have been taking the lead in digital enabling better services for customers and better experiences for employees “We had an ensemble of many leading Technology vendors focusing on different domains whose presence at the event showed their appreciation of the relevance of the theme. It a was a day of great conversations around technologies enabling remote and hybrid work as well as a celebration of some outstanding achievements at the awards ceremonies,” said Saumyadeep Halder, co-founder and MD at Leap Media Solutions. The sponsors of the day included Platinum Sponsors, Dell Technologies and Mindware. The Gold Partners were Zoho, Veeam, Mindfire Technologies, D-Link, Logitech, Ingram Micro, Valto, Accops, Freshworks, Redington, Pure Storage, VAD Technologies, NetApp, Logicom, Fanvil and Ben Infotech. The e-mail and collaboration partner was Icewarp. Silver partners included Cloud Box Technologies, Finesse, Linksys, Acronis, Virsec, Eset, Yellow.AI, Raqmiyat and Mitsumi Distribution and the support-

Elie Kamel

Regional Channel Manager, NetApp

Ali Shabdar

Regional Director, MEA, Zoho

Channel Manager, Middle East, Pure Storage

ing partners were Exclusive Networks and Asbis. Charbel Zreiby, Director of the Data Center Channel at Dell Technologies Middle East was the first keynote speaker of the day and he spoke about ‘Living On the Edge’. Ali Shabdar, Regional Director of MEA at Zoho spoke on ‘Hybrid Conversational Workspaces - from Idea to Implementation’. Elie Kamel, Regional Channel Manager for the UAE, Gulf, North Africa at NetApp, the third speaker of the day spoke about ‘Unleash the power of Data to successfully transform your IT and meet business demand’. Islam Afifi, Advisory Systems Engineer Gulf at Veeam Software delivered his keynote on ‘Are you ready to recover from Ransomware attack’. Following him, Samer Semaan, Channel Manager Middle East, Pure Storage gave a presentation on ‘Reinventing a Smart Data Experience’. The next speaker Aamir Mushtaq Shaikh, Lead – Channel Partnership and Alliance (Middle East), Freshworks spoke on Measuring returns on employee experience.’ Next, Rajeesh Kumar, Director Technology and Services at Mindfire Technologies presented his perspectives on ‘Managed Security, a Key Part of Security Strategy’. This was followed by a remote video address on Securing Digital workspace for future of Work’ by Vijender Yadav, CEO, CTO & Co-Founder, at Accops Systems Pvt. Ltd. Next, Pramod Sharda, CEO, IceWarp India and Middle East spoke on ‘Unlocking Email & Collaboration for the Hybrid Future of Work.’ In the final keynote, Loubna Imenchal, VP / Head of Enterprise Business at Logitech Africa Middle East spoke about 'The new LOGI of work'. There were four engaging panel discussions during the summit. The first panel discussed “Learnings from the Past Year – Advantages and Challenges of a Hybrid Workplace”. Mubarik Hussain, Director of IT, Bloom Holding moderated the session and the other panelists included • • •

Panel discussion on 'Learnings from the Past Year – Advantages and Challenges of a Hybrid Workplace'

Samer Semaan

•

Mario Foster, Group CIO, Saeed & Mohammed Al Naboodah Group Sunil Nair, Head of IT at AL Falah University Loubna Imenchal, VP / Head of Enterprise Business at Logitech Africa Middle East Sunil Paul, co-founder and CEO at Finesse

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

Panel discussion on 'Stepping up the Digital Workplace Evolution: The CIO's Priorities'

Islam Afifi

Advisory System Engineer Gulf, Veeam Software

Loubna Imenchal

The second panel discussed ‘Cybersecurity to secure workloads and data’. Anoop Kumar, Information Security Manager, Gulfnews moderated the session and the panelists included the following: • Jeevan Badigari, Director‑IT Governance and Security, DAMAC Group • Bader Zyouud, Senior Information Security Risk Management Specialist, Sharjah Govt • Rahil Ghaffar, Regional Director for MEA,Virsec • Islam Afifi, Advisory Systems Engineer Gulf, Veeam Software The 3rd panel discussion was on the topic ‘Components of a Digital Workplace’ which was moderated by R. Narayan, the editor in chief of CXO DX. The panelists were • Piyush Chowhan, Group CIO,Lulu Group International • Padam Sundar Kafle, Head IT and Automation, Healthcare IT, Aster Hospitals UAE • Mohamed Gamal Abdelmksoud, Group IT Director,United Eastern Medical Services • Sheridan Moodley, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Masafi • Ali Shabdar, Regional Director MEA, Zoho • Aamir Mushtaq Shaikh, Lead - Channel Partnership and Alliance (Middle East) at Freshworks The final panel discussion was on ‘Stepping up the Digital Workplace Evolution: The CIO's Priorities’ that was moderated by George Akhras, CIO of AMSI. The panelists for this session included:

Rajeesh Kumar

VP, Head of Enterprise Business, Logitech MEA

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Director Technology & Services, Mindfire Technologies

• • • • •

Aamir Mushtaq Shaikh Lead-Channel Partership & Alliance, ME, Freshworks

Soheyl Kadjani, SVP IT Strategy, Transformation and Digital, FAB Yassar Haneef, Cloud Delivery Director, Fine Hygienic Holding Damir Jaksic, CIO, KEO International Consultants Charbel Zreiby, Director of the Data Center Channel at Dell Technologies Middle East Sameer Semaan, Channel Manager Middle East, Pure Storage

The summit had an awards segment celebrating innovative companies at the Smart Innovation Awards held between the Summit sessions. Later in the evening, there was an Awards gala where Awards were presented to some of the leading CIOs, CISOs as well as companies who have done some outstanding deployments around enabling remote work using several collaboration technologies, AI solutions, cloud services and cybersecurity solutions. Awards were also presented to leading vendors, distributors and SIs in different niches as well as to some outstanding individuals from Sales & Marketing roles at leading vendors and distributors. “The Awards for CIOs, CISOs as well as Sales and Marketing professionals, recognized their excellence of individuals in their key functionary roles within their organization leading to transformation and growth for their companies. Smart Innovation Awards and the Workspace Transformation Awards recognized the vision and execution of innovation and transformation at different companies,” said Mallika Rego, co-founder and Director client solutions at Leap Media Solutions LLC.

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

SMART INNOVATION AWARDS WINNERS

African+Eastern

Alef Education

Al Ramz Corporation

Ankabut

Danube Home

DAMAC

Aster Hospitals UAE

Bisdesk

Emirates Driving Institute

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

SMART INNOVATION AWARDS WINNERS WINNERS

Ennoventure

Ittihad International Investment

MeatoDoor

Sterling Perfumes

CXO DX / JULY 2022

FJ Group

Udrive

Zstartup.com

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE CIO AWARDS WINNERS

Padam Sundar Kafle

Mohamed Gamal Abdelmksoud

Mudassar Ali

Nithin Geo Thomas

George Akhras

Fahem Alnuaimi

Head IT and Automation, Aster Hospitals UAE

Head of IT, Amity University Dubai

Director of IT, UEMedical

CIO, AMSI

Head of IT, International Modern Hospital

CEO, Ankabut

Sunil Nair

Mustansir Aziz

Soheyl Kadjani

Piyush Kumar Chowhan

Head of IT, AL Falah University

SVP IT Strategy, Transformation and Digital, First Abu Dhabi bank (FAB)

Head of IT, Automech Group

CIO of Lulu

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE CIO AWARDS

Santhosh John Thomas

Damir Jaksic

Sheridan Moodley

Muhamed Noufel

Group IS Manager, african+eastern

CIO KEO International Consultants

CIO of Masafi

Cluster IT Manager, Royal Continental Hotels & Suites

Anish Thyparambil Varughese

Mario Foster

Mubarik Hussain

Shinoj Sebastian

Tabish Asifi

Nagesh Aswartha

Director of IT Skelmore Group

Head of Group IT at Royal Technology Solutions (Royal Group).

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Group CIO, Al Naboodah Group Enterprises

Group IT Governance Lead at MAF Holding

Director of IT at Bloom Holding

Head-Information technology, Public Service Department govt of RAK

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE CISO AWARDS

Mohannad Hennawi

Anoop Kumar

Shahabud din

Abbas Sabuwala

Amit Bhatia

Jeevan Badigari

Saqar Al Ali

Bader Husni Zyoud

Group IT Manager at NAFFCO

Group-IT Infrastructure & Security Manager, Ittihad International Investment

Head of Information Security at Maximus Gulf

Director Of Information Security Office at Sharjah Finance Department

Information Security Manager, Gulfnews, Al Nisr Publishing

IT Security and Operations Manager at DMCC Authority

Director - Information Security at DAMAC Properties

Senior Information Security , Risk Management Specialist & Security Incidents Manager, Government of Sharjah

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF WORKSPACE TRANSFORMATION AWARDS

Al Naboodah Group

ABC International Limited

Royal M Hotel Fujairah

DHL Worldwide Express

Sharjah Customs

Metito

Emrill Group

Oaiss Clinics

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Public Service Department, RAK

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE VENDOR AWARDS

Digital Transformation Vendor of the Year

Cloud Data Protection Vendor of the Year

Applications Security Workload Vendor of the Year

Remote Work Security Vendor of the Year

Multi-Cloud Data Management Vendor of the Year

Business Software Solutions Vendor of the Year

Digital Workspace Software Vendor of the Year

Cybersecurity Vendor of the Year

Endpoint Security Vendor of the Year

Cloud Networking Vendor of the Year

Collaboration Hardware Vendor of the Year

Email & Collaboration Software Vendor of the Year

Dell Technologies

Accops

Freshworks

D-Link

Veeam Software

NetApp

Acronis

Logitech

Virsec

Zoho

ESET Middle East

IceWarp

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE VENDOR AWARDS

Enterprise Storage Vendor of the Year

Pure Storage

SMB Networking Vendor of the Year

Linksys

Emerging IP Phones Vendor of the year

Fanvil

WINNERS OF THE DISTRIBUTOR AWARDS

IoT Solutions VAD of the Year

Ingram Micro

Enterprise VAD of the Year

Mindware

Digital Transformation VAD of the Year

Storage Distributor of the Year

Applications Security Distributor of the Year

Cloud Marketplace of the Year

Network Security Distributor of the Year

Datacenter Solutions Distributor of the Year

Logicom

CloudQuarks by Redington Value

CXO DX / JULY 2022

VAD Technologies

Exclusive Networks

Bulwark Technologies

ASBIS Middle East

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE DISTRIBUTOR AWARDS

Volume Distributor of the Year

Collaboration Solutions VAD of the Year

Mitsumi Distribution

DVCOM Technology

Document Solutions Management VAD of the Year

Valto Technologies

WINNERS OF THE SI AWARDS

Enterprise Solutions Integrator of the Year

Digital Transformation Integrator of the Year

MSSP of the Year

Infrastructure Solutions Integrator of the Year

Raqmiyat

Mindfire Technologies

Finesse

Cloud Box Technologies

WINNERS OF THE SALES & MARKETING AWARDS

Excellence in Distributor Management Award received on behalf of

Kamlesh Lal from Dell Technologies

Excellence in Brand Marketing

Vaishnavi Soundarrajan from Zoho

Excellence in Field Marketing Award received on behalf of

Nagham Halabi from Veeam JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE SALES & MARKETING AWARDS

Excellence in Brand Marketing

Excellence in Channel Management

Excellence in Enterprise Marketing

Excellence in Digital Marketing

Excellence in Marketing Operations

Excellence in Marketing Innovations

Excellence in Channel Activation

Excellence in Marketing Campaigns Award received on behalf of

Excellence in Campaign Management

Mareva Koulamallah from Acronis

Gautam Sampath from Freshworks

Tarannum Mohammed Saqib from Ingram Micro

Excellence in Channel Campaigns

Swathi Ravindra

Nichola Banerjee from ESET

Bindhya Ramadasa from Forescout Technologies

Shaed Khader from Logicom

Excellence in Channel Sales

Samer Semaan from Pure Storage

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Mohammed Iqbal from Logitech

Widad Abdalhadi from Cisco

Akshat Gaur from Exclusive Networks

Excellence in Channel Management

Aamir Mushtaq Shaikh from Freshworks

Excellence in Cloud Sales

Alam Shaikh from Redington

» FUTURE WORKSPACE | SUMMIT & AWARDS

WINNERS OF THE SALES, MARKETING AND BUSINESS LEADERS AWARDS

Woman Executive of the Year

Channel Leader of the Year

Enterprise Sales Leader of the Year

Marketing Leader of the Year

Vendor Executive of the Year

Business Strategist of the Year

Brand Leader of the Year Award received on behalf of

Partner Enabler of the Year

Distributor Executive of the Year

Maya Zakhour from NetApp

Ben McDonald from Dell Technologies

Hassan Hamadani from Pure Storage

Business Leader of the Year

Sunil Paul from Finesse

Sakkeer Hussain from D-Link

Amanulla Khan from Linksys

Charbel Zreiby from Dell Technologies

Loubna Imenchal from Logitech

Santosh Varghese from Toshiba

Mario M. Veljovic from VAD Technologies

Entrepreneur of the Year Award received on behalf of

Jishanth Karunakaran from Mindfire Technologies JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» AWARDS WINNERS AT A GLANCE WINNERS OF THE CIO AWARDS ALI HAKAM GHUNAIM CIO, Canadian Specialist Hospital PADAM SUNDAR KAFLE Head IT and Automation, Aster Hospitals UAE ALIASGAR BOHARI Senior Director – IT, Zulekha Hospital MOHAMED GAMAL ABDELMKSOUD Director of IT at UEMedical MUDASSAR ALI Head of IT at International Modern Hospital. NITHIN GEO THOMAS Head of Information Technology at Amity University Dubai GEORGE AKHRAS, CIO, AMSI SHAH E ROOM KHAN IT Head & CIO of Education, Emirates College of Technology FAHEM ALNUAIMI, CEO, Ankabut SUNIL NAIR, Head of IT, AL Falah University. YAH YAH PANDOR, CIDO, Fine Hygienic Holding UMESH MOOLCHANDANI, CIO, Bin Dasmal Group SAMIT JHA, Director of IT, Laticrete International, Inc. MUSTANSIR AZIZ, Head of IT, Automech Group EYAD KASHKASH EVP, Group Head of Information Technology, Al Ramz Corporation PJSC SOHEYL KADJANI SVP IT Strategy, Transformation and Digital, First Abu Dhabi bank (FAB) PIYUSH KUMAR CHOWHAN, CIO of Lulu MOHAMMAD RAHMAN Head- IT infrastructure, Apparel Group

ARUN KUMAR MOHTA, Group IT Head, FJ Group MANISH BINDRA, CIO, Galadari brothers VINAY SHARMA Group Director Information Technology, Gulftainer. SANTHOSH JOHN THOMAS Group IS Manager, african+eastern. DAMIR JAKSIC, CIO KEO International Consultants. SHERIDAN MOODLEY, CIO of Masafi MUHAMED NOUFEL Cluster IT Manager, Royal Continental Hotels & Suites ANISH THYPARAMBIL VARUGHESE Director of IT Skelmore Group. GIGI MATHEW THOMAS Group Head – IT & Digital Transformation, Ittihad International Investment MANOJ RAMACHANDRAN Group CIO Al Babtain Group of Companies MARIO FOSTER Group CIO, Al Naboodah Group Enterprises MUBARIK HUSSAIN, Director of IT at Bloom Holding. SHINOJ SEBASTIAN Head of Group IT at Royal Technology Solutions (Royal Group). TABISH ASIFI, Group IT Governance Lead at MAF Holding. JACOB MATHEW, IT Consultant, Government of Abu Dhabi ABDALLA AL ALI, IT Director, DMCC NAGESH ASWARTHA Head – Information Technology, Public Service Department govt of RAK

WINNERS OF THE CISO AWARDS MOHANNAD HENNAWI Group IT Manager at NAFFCO

AMIT BHATIA Head of Information Security at Maximus Gulf

HUSSEIN BAHGAT SHAFIK CISRO, Standard Chartered Bank

MOHAMAD MAHJOUB CISO, Veolia Middle East

ASWIN SIDHARTHAN CISO, Ahalia Hospital

JEEVAN BADIGARI Director – Information Security at DAMAC Properties

ANOOP KUMAR Information Security Manager, Gulnews, Al Nisr Publishing

SAQAR AL ALI Director Of Information Security Office at Sharjah Finance Department

SHAHAB UD DIN Group – IT Infrastructure & Security Manager, Ittihad International Investment ABBAS SABUWALA IT Security and Operations Manager at DMCC Authority HAFIZ SHEIKH ADNAN AHMED CIO at Azaan GRC & Consulting Services

CXO DX / JULY 2022

BADER HUSNI ZYOUD Senior Information Security , Risk Management Specialist & Security Incidents Manager, Government of Sharjah RAMACHANDRA RAJU Head of Information Security, Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone

» INTERVIEW

SECURING AND ACCELERATING WEB CONTENT DELIVERY Bashar Bashaireh, Managing Director, Middle East & Turkey, Cloudflare discusses how the company is strengthening its operational focus in the region

Bashar Bashaireh

Managing Director, MET, Cloudflare Discuss the recent opening of the new office in Dubai for Cloudflare and some details about your intended operations in this region. Today, Cloudflare’s network currently spans over 75 cities in the EMEA region including 16 physical locations in the Middle East and Turkey. Cloudflare first invested in the Middle East in 2015. Now with data centers spanning more than 270 cities in more than 100 countries worldwide, the company continues to grow its presence to be even closer to Internet-connected users everywhere. Cloudflare has about 30 team members from different functions covering the Middle East. We plan to have a team of approximately 20 people working in Dubai by the end of 2022 and are currently planning to grow that number to over 30 by the end of 2023. We are hiring! What are the opportunities that you see for Cloudflare in the region? Cloudflare has been associated with delivering fast content over cloud in a most reliable and secure manner, accounting for at least 20% of the global Internet traf-

fic. Cloudflare can cater for and support all types of organizations (businesses and public sector) including those with a social mission. The Middle East and Turkey as an emerging market is characterized by a relatively young population, with 70% of it being under the age of 30. This dynamic youth segment has an insatiable demand for both content and knowledge. To that extent, there has been a rapid uptake in Internet use, and digital transformation initiatives have significantly accelerated over the past couple of years. This trend represents an opportunity for Cloudflare to add considerable value to regional enterprises and in doing so, increase its footprint and market share. In addition, the region made up of 13 countries with fast-growing and innovation-driven economies presents a unique growth opportunity for Cloudflare to tap into. I can confidently say that this market is at the forefront of technology and early adopters of disruptive technologies such as cloud on a global scale. This is being driven by many factors such as Digital Transformation where several countries have embraced ambitious programs transforming them into true digital economies. Cloud uptake has accelerated over the past few years in the region and the necessary regulatory frameworks and related compliance policies are now in place to propel enterprises into the next phase of leveraging the benefits of cloud. This transformation is further accelerated as earlier mentioned, by a mostly young and content demanding population-that content being gaming, entertainment, educational, sports or online retail. The recent pandemic has for sure played a major role in building up this momentum and increasing the urgency in speeding up such a transition.

How is Cloudflare positioned to help Businesses in the current threat landscape? The parallel increase of cyber threats and associated breaches, puts Cloudflare in an unparalleled and unique position to deliver the required content in a reliable, fast and secure manner to individuals, businesses and public sector alike, elevating the levels of productivity and performance in addition to reducing complexity for users. To do that, Cloudflare has built a global network and infrastructure across 275 cities around the world with 27 in the MET region, delivering the same connectivity at 50ms performance for more than 95% of customers. The innovation path is stunning. Not only do we provide best in class cyber security solutions with Cloudflare’s SASE security platform, Cloudflare One, a Zero Trust network-as-a-service platform that dynamically connects users to enterprise resources, with identity-based security controls delivered close to users, wherever they are, but we also offer an open strong developer platform with Cloudflare Workers. What are your immediate priorities as regional head? Over the last two years, Cloudflare has grown its EMEA team by more than 100 percent and counts approximately 700 employees. For the Middle East and Turkey, the initial functions prioritized for the region include launching new data centers, increasing market share by building partnerships, and expanding our customer base. One of my priorities is to build a successful team through empowering current team members and attracting future talents that would all contribute towards this journey. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FEATURE

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION WITH REAL TIME CX The need for real time CX as a Business enabler is an undeniable fact of the ‘new normal’ consumer era where consumers expect a seamless experience through all transactional touchpoints experience is like the icing on the cake but the cake has to be baked right with the right ingredients.” For Kristian Hlousek, Senior Strategy Director, Sixty Degrees, it is about enabling an end-to-end journey that is pleasant for the user and consolidating that into a sustainable relationship. He elaborates, “CX is about the end-to-end experience from the moment you hear about a business or brand or product or service, till you interact with the website, social media, the Chatbot customer service as well of course, front staff and so on, but it continues and then it's about building a relationship. It is about building that retention and advocacy, forming a relationship and forging strong bonds with customers.

Vaishali Dialani

Head of Customer Experience, NOW Money

CXO DX held a virtual panel that focused on discussing various aspects of CX strategies and what they expect from new age systems that can offer them real time insights into consumer behavior. Following is a round up summarizing some of the perspectives shared. Elaborating on what CX meant in short, Vaishali Dialani, Head of Customer Experience at NOW Money said, “I think personally CX is any initiative, that is purely related to human centric way of making sure the user’s or customer’ experience is easy. It is essentially about bringing a change in someone's life through research and through the different disciplines of customer experience.”

Vrushabh Chotalia, CX & Product at Udrive believes that customer experience is basically not just a combination of key interaction points, it is about meeting the customer's expectations and doing everything and anything, a business or an institution can do to make the experience as effortless as possible. He said, “Because you may be very proactive in your approach, you might do whatever you can to forge strong bonds. But at the end of the day, if you don't meet an expectation, which is in the subconscious mind of the customer, then the customer experience would have failed. I believe as well that it is about a beautiful memory which you can create. Memories are very hard to beat and compete with because that is so ingrained in the human itself. So, it's not about how good your customer service agents sound or how on what all other different channels you're available on. Rather, it is about what a business can do, to create a memory in a customer's life while interacting with that service or a product.”

For Kowshik Bhattacharjee, Head of Service Excellence at Medcare Hospitals & Medical Centres, CX is about enabling a memorable experience for users.

From an IT Manager's perspective into what CX is all about, Ramalingam Thyagarajan, Senior IT Manager, Sharaf DG said, “The whole organization has to put the customer at the center of your operations, and not just on transaction basis. And as they say, the very idea is that your customer should not have to be reaching out to customer service.”

He said, “Experiences are memorable because every single experience that you provide is customized and individualized for every individual. And that is the reason why experience becomes a key defining factor. In any industry, the basics don't change. Customer

Given the context of how crucial CX is, Businesses need to have an integral CX strategy for business growth. Achieving successful outcomes with your CX strategy is also about going the extra mile in delivering customer delight.

CXO DX / JULY 2022

» FEATURE

Kowshik Bhattacharjee

Head of Service Excellence, Medcare Hospitals & Medical Centres

Kristian said, “When you look at Porter’s conception of strategy, business strategy is basically about two questions: can we be more cost-effective than our competitors and create a cost advantage, or can we truly differentiate ourselves? And although this has been challenged by other approaches such as the Blue Ocean strategy, where it’s about breaking this trade-off and thus disrupting the market, differentiation is usually still quite important for businesses. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult – take for instance the hospitality market. When you go to any 4-star hotel, whether that’s in Dubai, Singapore or Munich, it will probably be well-maintained and clean, with a gym and a nice restaurant. These are table stakes, and therefore the difference can be in small but memorable details that are part of the CX. I recently checked into a hotel in Munich, and since I’m a loyalty member of the chain, the hotel already “knew me” and welcomed us in a personalised way with extra rewards. Of course, the reason why I’ll remember this hotel won’t be that they had a decent gym or breakfast buffet, but much more the welcome part and the extra personalised treatment, i.e., good CX. Of course that also goes back to technology that delivers the CX, but technology is an enabler. Similarly like with people, we remember how we were made to feel – and we tend to go back to brands that make us feel good. And these details can fact play a major part in driving business growth.” The evolution of the call center from an after-sales support function traditionally referred to as customer support into a more CX centric approach has meant that companies are focused on mapping customer journeys, right from the earliest interaction. This has meant a transition of CX towards the role of a revenue generator. Mazen Al Fawaz, Senior Territory Manager, Middle East at Zendesk said, “With that shift that's been happening the last couple of years, we have started seeing the CX strategies also shifting towards enabling more business growth, through mainly creating positive customer experiences. Under these, like, strategies, we

Kristian Hlousek

Senior Strategy Director Sixty Degrees

see many different goals, but I would like to focus on two of these. The first one is around improving CX operational excellence through a seamless customer journey through across whether it's assisted or is self- service and via real time channels. And under this first objective, we see that there's a lot of investment in new customer facing channels, but also enhancing some of the existing channels, real time channels, and for example, adding maybe conversational bots to some of the regular chat channels that that used to be there. It is also shifting from some more expensive support channels into some inexpensive ways. CX experience needs to be synced across all channels so that the customer is given a unified and good experience. The second objective is capturing knowledge from an expanded set of customer inputs in real time. Companies are expanding beyond initiatives like the traditional annual surveys, to include more insights that are generated from indirect data, getting to know of the customer emotion and experience in real time. We are in times where CX is not really a call center anymore, but it's actually a revenue generating function that is an absolutely integral part of the business growth.” While CX is a business enabler, and while there was a shift towards onboarding new CX technologies, the pandemic like in the case of all digital transformation related initiatives, has unwittingly played the role of a key catalyst in accelerating onboarding of the new CX technologies, Ramalingam says, “The acceleration has been on many fronts because of the pandemic. People were earlier hesitant to initiate new processes or change process, but in the changed context, you were forced to make the change. People are now compelled to invest in new technologies and while they may not be a CX initiative per se, some of these have customer centric functionalities. A lot of these investments that people have been towards improving visibility to customers.” Finally, a successful CX strategy is not just about the different technologies you bring in. Rather it is always about the customer. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» FEATURE

Ramalingam Thyagarajan Senior IT Manager, Sharaf DG

Kristian said, “As with any strategy, it always should start from a deep understanding of the current situation. That means above all understanding the customer – who the customer is, what are their drivers and barriers, what jobs to be done are to be addressed? A Good CX strategy should always involve the customer and there should a feedback loop, so you can measure all the relevant KPIs that are aligned with your business objectives. Mapping the customer journey is then at the heart of a CX strategy, whereby there are two cases, one is the as-is customer journey and the other one is the ideal customer journey with the desired experience you need to deliver. The customer journey covers the end-toend experience, from hearing about your brand to interacting with the website or social media and front staff to consuming the product or service and then coming back, i.e. building retention and advocacy. This way, CX should also help break down barriers between different departments such as marketing, sales, CRM & loyalty, and customer support, and help align teams around the customer.” Collaboration must go a long way in enabling the success of CX which is happening because of the digital acceleration. Vrushabh says, “Companies need to look at making two aspects strong. One is about ensuring operational excellence, observing what the customer is doing

CXO DX / JULY 2022

Mazen Al Fawaz

Senior Territory Manager, ME, Zendesk right now, and being sure about the success metrics for a customer’s positive experience, and then ensuring that that is consistent for every other customer, throughout their journey while interacting with the brand. And if a company does that it's meeting expectations. But in the future, that's just going to be a normal baseline of expectations and so the focus needs to be on what are the other aspects we can do to basically wow them every time. Look at what other memories which you can create and be ultra-proactive. If there are any unforeseen glitches, you should be able to overcome by being able to beat other baseline expectations, so that customers are always in that wow mode while interacting with the brand.” That essentially comes down to the fact that there is simply no alternative to the fact that CX has to be in real time to ensure customer retention in an era of plenty of options for the consumer. Vaishali said “In today's day and age, we live in a world where we are very competitive with all our other competitors. They have so many options out there, and so you're not the only one for them anymore. Being able to offer just in time support, right when they need it underlines the importance of the real time customer experience. And that really is about integrating your internal systems well.” Realtime CX benefits both the services

Vrushabh Chotalia CX & Product, Udrive

provider as well as the consumer. For the consumers, it provides an assurance and predictability about the whole experience. Kristina says, “Customers are comparing experiences from different industries, not just between competitors in one vertical. They want their questions and concerns addressed in real time – but interestingly, when you look at it from a behavioural science perspective, it’s often more about avoiding uncertainty than purely about speed. When you look at the experience with apps such as Uber or Careem, the main benefit is providing up-to-date information. It doesn’t mean that the customer won’t wait for the car to arrive but will always know the whereabouts of the driver and the time of arrival. It simply removes uncertainty, and that’s an important aspect of CX. We all know various situations where we wait for a business to get back to us and the main problem isn’t that we’re waiting but that we don’t know what’s exactly going on behind the scenes. Those businesses that are a step ahead of the customer and proactively inform the customer instead of waiting to be chased by them will have a major advantage.” Indeed, real time CX is a crucial building block for Businesses looking to turbo charge their transformation and business growth.

» INTERVIEW

A GROWING PRESENCE

Syed Faizan Ahmed, Business Development Manager at TP-Link discusses how the networking vendor is advancing its market penetration with its cloud enabled Access Points and other solutions How are TP-Link's Omada access points making it easier of SME Businesses to set up and manage wireless networks seamlessly? I strongly believe that a SME business should invest in the right tools and technology to support the business and have future-proof networking solutions. TP-Link Omada is a smart platform with a controller software system as the core to realize automatic deployment of network services and automatic data distribution. Our SDN is designed to solve the problem that appears during network deployment for traditional network architecture, which is difficult to maintain, and difficult to expand horizontally. The automation of Omada Cloud solution is based on the separation of network data transfer and control through centralized management and centralized policies of devices. Omada’s Software Defined Networking (SDN) platform integrates network devices including access points, switches, and routers, providing 100% centralized cloud management to create a highly scalable network—all controlled from a single interface. Discuss new launches in APs and the traction you are seeing in the market especially as most offices are back to almost normal on premise working? We believe and deliver the best innovative product line and passionate to provide integrated network solutions to all the business. The market is transitioning towards BYOD and work from anywhere.TP-Link Omada SDN offers zero-touch provisioning for efficient and affordable deployment and provides centralized management of the network wherever you are and also Omada VPN can keep your company data secure by encrypting it so only authorized users can access it, serving as an extra layer of protection for your network. There is no additional hardware controller investment and installation on customer

(High-Density Scenarios), Conference rooms, Villas, Labor camps (Wide Area Coverage) etc. Discuss the focus in the enterprise and ISP segment for your AP and Omada SDN solutions? TP-Link’s strong product portfolio includes Aginet Solution for ISP and Omada for SME to Enterprise, that meets the demand for this market. We understand and design accordingly to provide our best solution for ISP and enterprise segment to suit their expansion and growth plans.

Syed Faizan Ahmed

Business Development Manager, TP-Link

premises, Omada SDN is adding a bunch of new features to enhance its usability and versatility. Which customer segments are primarily driving the demand? Is demand more for ceiling mounted APs vs wall plate APs or the outdoor APs? The explosion of mobile devices and content, server virtualization, and advent of cloud services are among the trends driving the networking industry to reexamine traditional network architectures and it results the rapid surge in demand for enhanced networking solutions, Our solutions have always been designed to do just that and Omada cloud solution is specially designed for use in hospitality, education, retail, office, and more. Scenario-based products and robust benefits satisfy different needs in various environments such as Wi-Fi6, Wi-Fi6E APs with Wall mounted sleek design for rooms, Hotel apartments, Outdoor APs for pool or play area deployment, as well as Ceiling mount APs for offices, Lobby, Auditorium

Elaborate on how the growth for the company so far this year We are seeing double digit growth in UAE and GCC market and we are developing our partner ecosystem community for better engagement with end users to understand their pain points and enable them with the right solutions. The focus will be across all the GCC countries, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in 2022 to strengthen our brand presence further in the markets that we are already popular in. Discuss the channel strategy for the company and the recent initiatives to engage, train and recognize them. Our channel strategy’s ultimate objective is to transform best relationship with distributors & partners by strengthening the partnership to make better deals. TP-Link works with our distributors, resellers and systems integrators to cater to networking and cloud solution needs of customers. We assist them with free training/ Certifications, and we reward our SIs in UAE and GCC every year. We support SIs & Channel partners with One-on-One training Sessions on premise. We organize seminars and webinars every quarter with our Sales and Pre-Sales team to familiarize them with our new offerings/Support and product enhancements. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» INTERVIEW

TRANSFORMING WITH A UNIFIED PLATFORM APPROACH Prabhu Ramachandran, the founder and CEO Facilio, an established leader in the connected buildings and facilities management software space discusses how the company has been delivering on the collective vision to enable true digital transformation within the property operations space. Facilio offers an AI-driven property operations platform that allows real estate owners to aggregate building data, optimize performance, and control portfolio operations - all from one place.

Discuss the demand for property management solutions such as what Facilio offers globally and in the region. Have the demands for SaaS solutions been driven by digital transformation initiatives? The built environment is evolving rapidly. One one side, there are the savvy & sustainability-conscious commercial tenants demanding best-in-class facilities & services. On the other hand, real estate owners are still using legacy systems & technology from the 90’s to maintain &

CXO DX / JULY 2022

operate their buildings. If digital transformation has to be accelerated in the real estate sector, mindset shifts need to happen. It is not just sufficient to move to the cloud, and replace legacy systems with new-age technologies, it is also imperative that a unified platform approach is adopted to avoid silos created by fragmented tech stacks. So with this increasing thrust towards delivering a better tenant user experience and centralizing access to data, we have

seen a huge uptick in the adoption of SaaS solutions. How does your Connected CMMS platform solve for the needs of multiple stakeholders? Facilio’s connected CMMS platform is a unified O&M solution suite, that connects systems, people, and processes, and frees up locked-in operational data across multiple building systems, business software, and workflows, into a single pane of glass and makes it useful for multi-stakeholders

» INTERVIEW (Cx to technicians, contractors to tenants). This allows asset/facility owners to get a complete operational picture in real-time, helping them to lower their operating cost up to 20%, increase the productivity of teams, and deliver smooth customer experiences. Our platform employs machine-learning algorithms to predictively uncover energy savings (in the range of millions of $$), extends the life cycle of expensive equipment, reduces carbon footprint, and improves overall operating efficiency. Facilio has built ML algorithms that learn patterns from past operations data from building systems to predict equipment failures/performance, energy usage/demand, and create insights to operate buildings efficiently. What are some of the benefits that your customers have derived from using your connected CMMS platform? Our connected CMMS platform gives real estate owners a complete real-time view of how their buildings are performing. They get full control and visibility. Once every building function is consolidated into the CMMS, it becomes much easier to automate processes too. For example, a large building portfolio in the UAE was able to automate workflows and power a mobile workforce, thus increasing their workforce productivity by 13%. Some of the other benefits our customers have realized are a reduction in operating costs by 20%, decrease in energy spend by 15% and much smoother tenant experiences. Elaborate the importance of a data-driven approach in facilities management and how is this offered through your solution? Buildings are a powerhouse of data. But most often, due to the usage of disparate systems & tools for each use case, there is no visibility for owners into how their buildings are performing. Access to centralized building data gives a complete view of the entire operations scope for real estate owners- be it a single building or a large portfolio of buildings. This holistic view allows them to understand, and eventually influence the ‘why’ behind what’s happening in their properties. And once they gain this un-

Prabhu Ramachandran Founder and CEO Facilio

derstanding, they will be able to empower their tenants to make meaningful real-time changes to optimize energy costs, employee’s comfort, and productivity. Facilio provides a unified operations platform that brings together data from building systems, human factors, and external conditions, transforms it into 360* operational insights, and makes it actionable for operators, owners, and tenants. Is Asset Management a subset or a module of your platform of solutions? Asset management is a part of our Connected CMMS product. Our platform offers IoT based integration capabilities with assets and building automation systems to offer asset management capabilities like condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance, fault detection and diagnostics(FDD) and remote monitoring and control. What does your workplace management solution offer? Today’s workplace needs are dynamic and continuously evolving. Our workplace management module provides an entire gamut of solutions ranging from space

management & real-time space unitisation, to hotdesking, and meeting room automation and controls. What are your future plans in the region? In the past year, we have made significant strides as a progressive and innovative technology leader in the commercial real estate industry, and are proud to have global brands such as ICD Brookfield, Investa, Aster DM Healthcare, Mercatus, BritishLand UK, among others as our customers. We will continue to educate both Facility management (FM) & real estate owners about modernizing their still outdated CMMS, help them to minimize their spend on property O&M with a unified platform approach. In the region, we are committed to helping real estate owners to improve energy efficiencies in line with UAE’s vision to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. We already have 8 strategic partners in the UAE region, and we are looking to onboard more by the end of 2022. JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» COLUMN

IDENTITY AS THE NEW PERIMETER Joseph Carson, Chief Security Scientist and Advisory CISO at Delinea says security in the hybrid world requires recognising identity as the new perimeter

t the beginning of the pandemic, regional enterprises rushed to improve their IT stacks to keep employees safe and ensure safety and business continuity. However, the sharp increase of multi-cloud environments and the explosion of home working, with millions more users remotely accessing corporate digital assets, soon revealed the inadequacy of the traditional security approach. Suddenly, cybersecurity teams had to abandon their legacy playbooks centred on the notion of a perimeter protecting the company like digital walls and started focusing on authenticating each process, session, and user. Identity had become the new perimeter. Did we really go to sleep within the walls of a mediaeval fortress and woke up in a digital Wild West, peppered with fenceless

CXO DX / JULY 2022

farmlands and unforgiving wilderness? We have been there before. The crumbling of the walls predates COVID and has its origins in the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) era, characterised by a surge in phishing campaigns designed to dupe employees into disclosing information that attackers could use to hop the fences. When COVID led to mass cloud migration worldwide, the plurality of personal devices was plain for all to see. The fences were gone; and only the wilderness remained. Despite attempts to reinstate a traditional workplace, a PwC survey from March 2021 showed 91% of GCC knowledge workers to favour either hybrid or full-time remote work. Regional security, IT, and business stakeholders all know that there is no going back. The only way forward in securing what matters most is to

» COLUMN implement an identity-based approach, creating a new style of boundary. But the passwords used in most current identity-based security are also threats to that security. A 2021 global (including the EMEA region) Verizon report on data breaches revealed 61% of them to be credentials-based incursions. And in the UAE, a 2020 study showed more than 40% of all incidents to have been caused by unauthorised access, and these identity breaches were responsible for more than a third (33.6%) of incidents that had been assigned to the highest category of severity.

Only the privileged few?

Traditionally, privileged users are associated only with a handful of roles, mostly in the IT department. Since almost every user, including remote workers, has at least some degree of access to at least some sensitive data, can we not consider almost every user to be privileged? Threat actors certainly think this way, as the compromise of a single user’s credentials can allow them to gain a foothold, escalate their privileges, and stealthily creep closer and closer to the data, apps, and other targets to which organisations assign most value. At the same time, implementing a blanket policy would be counterproductive. To escape this “identity crisis”, we need a risk-based approach to privileges. All users are privileged, but different users require different levels of access, which bear different levels of potential risk. If someone only needs email and access to non-sensitive documents, then passwords with multi-factor authentication (MFA) may be sufficient. But for more risk-associated activity, a more rigorous authentication process must be implemented, and strategies like, Just-in-time (JIT) credentials, which expire at predefined times, should also be considered.

Josheph Carson

Chief Security Scientist and Advisory CISO, Delinea

Any privileged user should be trained in risks and best practices, such as how to keep passwords secret from others, avoid common passwords, and refrain from using duplicate passwords. These steps are critical, because social-engineering schemes are always on the hunt for the unwary, untrained user.

tions should be interoperable with legacy technology so a layered system of interlocking apps can be built. Many cybersecurity platforms, while functionally competent in a given area, do not integrate well with others. So, care must be taken at the procurement stage to ensure all elements of the stack are compatible. Here too, modern PAM solutions provide the interoperability, automation, and orchestration required to safeguard privileged credentials and reduce business risk, ensuring organisations stay safe and compliant without hampering productivity.

Say ‘hello’ to PAM

The elastic future

In addition to including functions that allow identities to be monitored and controlled securely, the security capabilities of modern enterprises must be centralised. When deployed, security solu-

There is nothing to be gained from trying to reinstate traditional digital perimeters. The ephemeral, twisting lines that have replaced them require an equally flexible response. Threat actors have known for some time that identities are their new prey. The hybrid world now calls for defenders to act – to protect identities and build the perimeter of the future.

Moving towards identity-based security can be a significant task, both for admins and users. That’s why IT departments need to push passwords more and more into the background and implement solutions that ensure secure frictionless access. Privileged access management (PAM) solutions provide critical capabilities to protect privileged credentials and reduce business risk. These include secure credential management, tracking of privileged activity, password masking and rotation, as well as implementing session monitoring controls. Modern PAM offers security teams the ability to randomise and manage passwords, control access to privileged accounts and isolate, monitor, record, and audit privileged access sessions, commands, and actions.

PAM can equip security teams with the tools they need to create an elastic perimeter – one which offers seamless, secure access when risk is low, with the ability to lock down when danger is detected. By focusing on interoperability, automation and orchestration, security leaders can mitigate the risks posed by threat actors that have been successful in stealing credentials, while simultaneously providing frictionless digital experiences for employees that allow them to leverage the power of the cloud-native technologies that make remote work possible.

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» COLUMN

BALANCING RISK AND INNOVATION: SECURITY’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Haiyan Song, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Security & Distributed Cloud at F5 discusses why it is important that everyone adopts a security-first mindset As a security leader, how do you best enable the flywheel of innovation that drives the business while managing the risk that’s a byproduct of moving fast to modernize your IT enterprise architecture, adopt modern application design, deploy new apps, and ultimately, deliver more value to your customers? The struggle to effectively balance risk and innovation is real— 76% of respondents to the latest F5 State of Application Strategy survey said they’d turn off security measures for gains in performance (many would even do so for relatively small improvements!). Tradeoffs like this can leave you vulnerable, and ‘good-enough’ security point solutions will erode customer trust and your reputation when things go bad. We’re seeing the challenge of deploying security that’s both highly effective and easy to use in companies across all industries—from financial services, where open banking and the use of third-party APIs can make protecting apps more complex, to government, where agencies, prompted by the executive order on cybersecurity issued by the White House or the NIS2 legislation in the EU need to take serious steps toward bolstering their cybersecurity.

Understand evolving customer needs

The traditional security perimeter is long dead. The evolution of application architectures to a more distributed model combined with the increased adoption of SaaS solutions (93% of organizations use some type of cloud-based as-a-Service offering) and edge deployments means that security must be ubiquitous. Add in the imperative to move ever faster in support of prolific product innovation—a response to the spike in remote work, and greater demand for services like telemedicine and online banking, to name a few—and it’s clear that the role of a security organization in the business has fundamentally changed. Today, security must fulfill multiple roles: as an enabler of digital transformation, a steward of customer trust, and a bulwark of organizational reputation. And it’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone in the company understands the security organization’s central role in business success. Shifting the perception of secu-

CXO DX / JULY 2022

rity from a feature to a mindset is a cultural change that requires time and effort.

So how do you get there? Make security accessible!

Instilling that cultural change throughout the organization means that everyone needs to adopt a security-first mindset. You can accelerate this shift by making security solutions easier to deploy regardless of environment, application architecture, or staffing resources. Unifying application security policy declaration and enforcement across on-premise, public cloud, and edge environments helps make security consistent for both legacy and modern applications, and reduces the time your teams spend remediating issues. By strengthening protection from the data center to the end user, you can ensure that customers enjoy a frictionless, safe digital experience every time. And you don’t have to do it alone. Or be a born-in-the-cloud company with a large security team. Take the Scottish Government’s Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate (ARE) for example. They have successfully responded to security and digital transformation challenges by opting for a managed service that enables multi-layer security across environments.

Meet developers where they are

Security can no longer be an afterthought in the development process. Just as DevOps teams partner with their product colleagues to streamline and accelerate development and deployment, SecOps can help take the toil out of building security into the application by engaging with developer teams to define and build declarative app security policies, integrate security into their preferred CI/CD toolchains, and ensure everyone can harness telemetry to fine-tune and protect the application. We admire companies, like Riot Games, with security teams committed to meaningful engagement with dev teams. By empowering app builders with easy-to-use dashboards, guardrails, and tooling, you can reduce the desire to circumvent secu-

» COLUMN rity practices while also helping developers solve their problems and moving the business forward. Companies like Audi are doing this today in their modern, microservices-based environments to spur innovation while ensuring that security is baked into the platform.

Challenge your vendors for more

In addition to these internal recommendations, security leaders must also look outward and ask vendors the tough questions: Is your vendor a thought leader with regard to security—not just helping customers solve their problems today but actively anticipating what’s coming next? •

•

• •

Is their product (or better yet platform) API-first? You’ll want that to be the case for management orchestration, inline enforcement, and easier security posture improvement of the exploding number of APIs you’re using to deliver services to your customers (contributing to the projected two billion active APIs in the world by 2030). If you are among the 87% of organizations operating both legacy and modern apps and 77% running apps in multiple clouds, do your vendor's solutions work across different architectures wherever your apps are deployed? Are they invested in integrating with major toolchains and data analysis platforms? This is fundamental because 98% of organizations acknowledge they don’t have the insights they need now to address business objectives and improve the customer experience. Are they exploring how automation, machine learning, and AI can be used to make your security faster, more effective, and proactive—with few resources? Can they enable you to increase security of applications and APIs at every point in the threat assessment and mitigation process?

Ask for the capabilities you need to protect customers and help the business deliver seamless, satisfying experiences while dealing with a scarcity of resources and talent—and if your current vendor can’t meet your requirements, consider looking elsewhere.

What’s next?

As security takes a more central role in the boardroom, you have an opportunity to champion best practices in areas such as IT modernization, cloud migration, application and network security, and zero-trust access. By mitigating the risk that comes with innovation, you can enable the business to move forward in its digital transformation without sacrificing customer trust. Start helping teams across your organization develop a security-first mindset now. Partner with other functional groups—including product and customer experience teams—to deliver the capabilities they need. And adopt platform solutions that are simple to implement and operate, require less human intervention, integrate with ecosystem partners, and adapt to address new threats and vulnerabilities. Successfully securing a digital business requires managing a spectrum of risks while not neglecting other real-world objectives. That means balancing acceptable performance, customer expe-

Haiyan Song EVP and GM, Security & Distributed Cloud, F5

rience, and cost with acceptable protection and security compliance. By making security solutions more accessible, empowering developers with easy-to-use tools, and challenging your vendors for more, you can keep the business safe while helping deliver the inspiring customer experiences that spark and fuel growth.

Unifying application security policy declaration and enforcement across on-premise, public cloud, and edge environments helps make security consistent for both legacy and modern applications, and reduces the time your teams spend remediating issues.

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» COLUMN

THE MOVE INTO HYBRID: WHY WE NEED TO RETHINK THE MEETING ROOM As the great reshuffle rumbles on, reviewing office tech is key opines Sujit Menon, Display & Client Peripherals Lead - MERAT, Dell Technologies

Sujit Menon

Display & Client Peripherals Lead – MERAT, Dell Technologies Investing in employee experience is more important than ever, as the workforce collectively ponders what it wants. After a tumultuous couple of years, record numbers are reconsidering their values, lifestyles and goals. Business leaders are looking for staff retention solutions as they open their doors to hybrid working models. The answer may be right under their noses… The new normal has arrived and many businesses are opting for a hybrid of remote and on-site working for the foreseeable future. As a result, screen time has increased significantly and the technologies we lean on to create seamless hybrid office experiences will play a key role in defining their successes. Prior to the pandemic, the rigidness of static, office technology was little more than an inconvenience. But with employees now accustomed to the

CXO DX / JULY 2022

flexibility of remote working, a pet peeve has transitioned into a deal breaker.

easily provide input? No great idea should ever be lost to impractical mute settings.

Making hybrid models work

Being able to interact with 20 touch point displays and collaborate with content sharing during live meetings, impacts inclusivity. Not to mention meeting productivity and efficiency. After 18-months of close-up screen time with colleagues, expectations remain high for strong visuals and clear representation.

Business leaders are now tasked with bedding down new, flexible working structures – while simultaneously giving employees what they want. This is a two-pronged challenge that hinges largely around focusing on human needs and technology transformations. Employees are looking for more meaningful, less transactional relationships with employers – so the office is set to become a space centred around collaboration and connection. Technology is the enabler of modern workplace contentment. The meeting room is traditionally the epicentre of office interactions. In today’s world it holds an even more vital role as the bridge between remote workers and those in the physical office. The key to 5-star meeting experiences is doing away with glitchy connections and cramped screens. As team members connect into huddles and meetings, the need for seamless connection to multiple devices and colleagues is more crucial than ever before. When it comes to creating the most productive working environment, we must explore technology that nurtures collaboration. We don’t want to lose time or destabilise a great discussion or flow of ideas because the meeting room monitor can’t connect to the laptop. We also must think about our meeting room technology from all perspectives, if you are presenting from the meeting room, can everyone hear and see you clearly? And vice versa if you are working from home. What about questions? Can both sides of the meeting

Meeting room tech: Go large, or go home Investing in large format screens supported by intelligent, responsive technology will ensure a premier collaboration experience. For example, meeting solutions offer 86”, 75”, 65”and 55” options to choose from with interactive touch screen features. Bringing teams together comfortably is an important part of creating more meaningful connections, regardless of location. Hybrid working models are new for many but ironing out the kinks now will benefit everyone. That means ensuring there is no disadvantage based on location. After all, flexible working practices aren’t new. But now they are mainstream, and employees expect this to be seamless, functional and sociable. As the job market continues to heat up, creating seamless hybrid working experiences is a competitive proof-point. Investing in technologies that underpin a highly connected and blended workplace, that embrace employees far and wide, will forge a greater sense of belonging. More than ever, it highlights the human impact of technology – and the nature of collaboration. All critical components on the route to employee retention as the great reshuffle continues.

Vibin Shaju General Manager – UAE, Trellix

» TECHSHOW

YEALINK UVC30-CP900BYOD MEETING KIT The Yealink UVC30-CP900-BYOD meeting kit is a dedicated solution for small and huddle rooms that ensure an excellent video and audio experience at a low cost. Maximally optimizing the user experience via one cable, this meeting kit not only works easily with plug & play, but also provides you with the freedom of having all kinds of UC meetings, including Teams, Skype for Business, Zoom, etc. Additionally, it is capable of charging a laptop via a Type-C cable, ensuring the endurance of your own laptop. To deploy the UVC30-CP900-BYOD meeting kit, you only need to connect the UVC30 Camera and CP900 Speakerphone to the BYOD box. With the easy plug & play setup, you can plug the Type-C cable into your laptop without installing extra drivers and save time for your big ideas. Designed for small meeting spaces, the UVC30 features auto-framing and a 120° wide-angle lens, capable of framing all meeting participants. Thanks to the 4K resolution, all participants can enjoy a life-like meeting experience.

Highlights: Yealink UVC30 4k Camera • 4k video resolution • Maximum 60FPS • 3x digital zoom • Facial detection and Auto framing Yealink CP900 HD Speakerphone • Optima HD voice • Built-in 6 MEMS microphone arrays • Noise suppression • Full -duplex technology

Yealink Byod Box • 2x USB Type A port • 1xHDMI output • 1 Type C cable for connecting laptop, support charging via USB-C on laptop • 1 Type-C port • PD Power Adapter

KODAK ALARIS I4000 SERIES SCANNERS Kodak Alaris has enhanced its Kodak i4000 Series Scanners. The Kodak i4650 and Kodak i4850 Production Scanners now deliver faster scanning speeds of up to 160 pages per minute (ppm). Kodak i4000 Series Scanners are ideal for business process outsourcers (BPOs), service bureaus, busy corporate mailrooms, government agencies, and other paper-intensive organizations that require fast scanning, superior image quality, and consistent data accuracy to maximize productivity. The Kodak i4650 and Kodak i4850 Scanners are packed with features that help scanning professionals process documents more efficiently and reduce operating costs. A

CXO DX / JULY 2022

» TECHSHOW

PURE STORAGE FLASHBLADE//S Pure Storage announced the FlashBlade// family of products with a new modular architecture built on uniquely co-designed hardware and software. The new platform leverages a nearly unlimited scalable metadata architecture, offering more than double the density, performance and power efficiency of previous versions. The platform evolves over time in alignment with customer requirements. With the latest announcement, Pure revolutionizes the market again with FlashBlade// by introducing a modular architecture that disaggregates compute from capacity. Storage, compute and networking elements can be upgraded flexibly and non-disruptively, delivering a highly configurable and customizable file and object platform to address the broadest set of modern workloads.

Highlights: •

Future-Proofing with Evergreen™ Subscription: By leveraging the full power of Evergreen subscription-based services, customers get unmatched flexibility and non-dis-

ruptive upgrades with FlashBlade//S. Organizations never have to worry about their storage platform becoming obsolete or disruptive data migrations again. •

Peace of Mind for Sustainability Demands: As end users are under more pressure to prioritize sustainability, the new FlashBlade//S family helps them deliver on these needs with better performance on key metrics such as capacity per watt, bandwidth per watt, and capacity per rack-unit, resulting in an overall smaller data

500-sheet input elevator delivers continuous document feeding with a straight-through paper path for materials such as cardstock, file folders, and long documents—all with faster throughput. The new Kodak i4650 scans up to 145 ppm and the Kodak i4850 scans up to 160 ppm. The Kodak i4000 Series also has four layers of document protection to safeguard important documents. Length detection protects papers from getting overlapped and appearing as one long document. Double document feed detection ensures that only one document enters the scanner at a time, while Intelligent Document Protection ‘listens’ for a telltale crumpling sound and immediately stops the scanning process. In addition, metal detection prevents forgotten staples and paper clips from jamming the scanner and scratching the scanner glass. An intuitive interface and one-touch scanning simplifies the user experience, and combining these document scanners with Kodak Capture Pro Software enables intelligent data processing capabilities that can significantly increase productivity.

center footprint. For these reasons Meta chose Pure to power its AI Research SuperCluster (RSC). •

Performance at Scale, Simplicity, and Efficiency of Unstructured Data: The new FlashBlade//S family, through closely engineered hardware and Purity//FB 4.0 software, pushes the boundaries of performance, scale and efficiency. FlashBlade//S will also accelerate the pace of innovation and help bring denser and more power efficient technologies to market faster.

Highlights: •

You will get crisp, clear images even with challenging originals, thanks to Perfect Page image processing.

•

Dual LED technology produces excellent OCR read rates for more precise data extraction with no loss of scanning speed.

•

The Kodak i4000 series delivers business value by finding the fastest, most efficient ways to enhance your workflows. With multi-zone barcode recognition, the driver reads barcode values to extract metadata, enabling easy integration with line-of-business systems.

•

Combine the scanner with Kodak Info Input Solution web capture software and you can manage applications, job setup, and users, as well as capture and index information from a centralized capture location.

JULY 2022 / CXO DX

» TRENDS & STATS

SECURITY PLATFORM CONSOLIDATION KEY FOR ORGANIZATIONS ware payments, fines and negotiations, up from less than 1% in 2021. Modern ransomware gangs now steal data as well as encrypt it. The decision to pay the ransom or not is a business-level decision, not a security one. Gartner recommends engaging a professional incident response team as well as law enforcement and any regulatory body before negotiating.

Executive performance evaluations will be increasingly linked to ability to manage cyber risk; almost one-third of nations will regulate ransomware response within the next three years; and security platform consolidation will help organizations thrive in hostile environments, according to the top cybersecurity predictions revealed by Gartner. Through 2023, government regulations requiring organizations to provide consumer privacy rights will cover 5 billion citizens and more than 70% of global GDP. As of 2021, almost 3 billion individuals had access to consumer privacy rights across 50 countries, and privacy regulation continues to expand. Gartner recommends that organizations track subject rights request metrics, including cost per request and time to fulfill, to identify inefficiencies and justify accelerated automation. By 2025, 80% of enterprises will adopt a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access from a single vendor’s SSE platform. With a hybrid workforce and data everywhere accessible by everything, vendors are offering an integrated security service edge (SSE) solution to deliver consistent and sim-

CXO DX / JULY 2022

ple web, private access and SaaS application security. Single-vendor solutions provide significant operational efficiency and security effectiveness compared with best-of-breed solutions, including tighter integration, fewer consoles to use, and fewer locations where data must be decrypted, inspected and re-encrypted. 60% of organizations will embrace Zero Trust as a starting point for security by 2025. More than half will fail to realize the benefits. By 2025, 60% of organizations will use cybersecurity risk as a primary determinant in conducting third-party transactions and business engagements. Cyberattacks related to third parties are increasing. However, only 23% of security and risk leaders monitor third parties in real time for cybersecurity exposure, according to Gartner data. As a result of consumer concerns and interest from regulators, Gartner believes organizations will start to mandate cybersecurity risk as a significant determinant when conducting business with third parties, ranging from simple monitoring of a critical technology supplier to complex due diligence for mergers and acquisitions. Through 2025, 30% of nation states will pass legislation that regulates ransom-

By 2025, threat actors will have weaponized operational technology environments successfully to cause human casualties. Attacks on OT – hardware and software that monitors or controls equipment, assets and processes – have become more common and more disruptive. In operational environments, security and risk management leaders should be more concerned about real world hazards to humans and the environment, rather than information theft, according to Gartner. By 2025, 70% of CEOs will mandate a culture of organizational resilience to survive coinciding threats from cybercrime, severe weather events, civil unrest and political instabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inability of traditional business continuity management planning to support the organization’s response to a large-scale disruption. With continued disruption likely, Gartner recommends that risk leaders recognize organizational resilience as a strategic imperative and build an organization-wide resilience strategy that also engages staff, stakeholders, customers and suppliers. By 2026, 50% of C-level executives will have performance requirements related to risk built into their employment contracts Most boards now regard cybersecurity as a business risk rather than solely a technical IT problem, according to a recent Gartner survey. As a result, Gartner expects to see a shift in formal accountability for the treatment of cyber risks from the security leader to senior business leaders.

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