The 2023 Saudi edition of Future Workspace Summit & Awards highlighted hybrid workplace trends and concerns
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AI has the potential to impact all domains of human knowledge and work. An industry expert, I spoke with opines that AI is permeating all domains and enhancing all processes with AI features no longer a unique proposition with most kinds of software. With generative AI, there is the opportunity to be more effective by leveraging the resources in the right way and expanding the possibilities of what can be accomplished.
On the manufacturing front, it could help with countless product variations of a product design helping to opt for the best options. It can accelerate drug research in the pharmaceutical industry. On the content side, it makes it easier for the marketing of products with the ability to create essential social media posts or product briefs, etc, saving time and costs. Likewise, it helps designers expand their creative scope.
In other areas, it can help with the simulation of real-world scenarios and predictive models, helpful for various industries. It can enhance customer engagement with super-intelligent chatbots and individualized product recommendations. In fact, generative AI will enhance what traditional AI-based solutions are already performing across functions such as sales and marketing and thus help retailers reach out to customers more effectively. Likewise, this could also enhance the banking industry’s reach out to the customer with better financial management plans or respond to their queries more effectively. The acceleration of the natural language capabilities of generative AI is playing a huge role in driving a dramatic shift across our industries. As a result, automation will also see steep growth across different areas.
According to McKinsey, the deployment of generative AI and other technologies is likely to accelerate productivity growth, and this could partially compensate for declining employment growth and enable overall economic growth. It is up to Businesses to start harnessing the benefits of these new-generation technologies in their operations while preparing their workforce for the inevitable transformation.
R. Narayan Editor in Chief, CXO DX
SAUMYADEEP HALDER
Co-Founder & MD
saumyadeep@leapmediallc.com
Mob: +971-54-4458401
Nihal Shetty
MALLIKA REGO
Co-Founder & Director Client Solutions
mallika@leapmediallc.com
Mob: +971-50-2489676
on Evolving Hybrid Workplace Trends
Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, director of AI research at ManageEngine discusses the increased role of AI in ManageEngine’s solution offerings
Sammy Zoghlami, Senior Vice President EMEA at Nutanix discusses the trends around hybrid cloud adoption.
14 » SPOTLIGHT ON HYBRID WORKPLACE TRENDS
Saudi edition of Future Workspace Summit & Awards highlighted hybrid workplace trends.
11 » UAE COMPANIES SEE AI AS KEY TO RESILIENCE
Dataiku study shows 98% of UAE organizations regard AI as a major enabler and are investing more heavily.
12 » EPICOR UNVEILS VISION FOR THE CONNECTED DATA SUPPLY CHAIN
The manufacturer will help customers build a dynamic and responsive supply chain
13 » GOOGLE CLOUD OPENS NEW CLOUD REGION IN DOHA
Google Cloud’s latest significant investment in the region to support its growing customer base and partner ecosystem.
Ricardo Barcena, Co-Founder and CTO at Spotnik discusses how the company is focused on delivering innovative Smart City solutions in the region with its end-to-end expertise.
Laurent Allard, Head of Sovereign Cloud, VMware EMEA shares five key messages to strengthen your data strategy.
Jonathan Nguyen-Duy, VP, Global Field CISO, Fortinet writes that the CISO is now a key business enabler and leader.
PROVEN Robotics’ Mohammed Aldousari, Regional Robotics Lead, outlines the transition of robots to service roles.
Thanks to digital transformation, nuclear energy generation is safer says Christopher Crosby, Global Nuclear Industry Principal, AVEVA.
Edwin Weijdema, Global Technologist, Veeam says organisations need to help stop the cash flow of this criminal industry.
The partnership will ensure access to reliable, enterprise grade Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for UAE enterprises
Moro Hub, a subsidiary of Digital DEWA, the digital arm of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (PJSC), announced that the company joined the ProPartner program of Veeam, the leader in Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery. As Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partner, Moro Hub clients will have access to reliable, enterprise-grade Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).
The partnership was signed by Mohammad Bin Sulaiman, CEO of Moro Hub and Vasily Vaganov, Regional Vice President of
North-Eastern EMEA at Veeam. In accordance with the agreement, Moro Hub will be able to offer its customers Veeam-powered solutions and services to deliver cloud data management, hosted at Moro Hub’s carbon neutral data centres, one of which was recently certified as the world’s largest solar-powered green data centre by Guinness World Records, as part of Moro Hub’s commitment to accelerate the sustainability journey in the UAE. Being a part of the Veeam ProPartner program will enable Moro Hub to provide its clients with powerful and cost-efficient modern data protection that minimizes downtimes, and data loss.
Company Will Extend Universal Cloud Operating Model to Consistently Run Apps and Data Anywhere
Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, announced Nutanix Central, a cloud-delivered solution that provides a single console for visibility, monitoring, and management across public cloud, on-premises, hosted or edge infrastructure. This will extend the universal cloud operating model of the Nutanix Cloud Platform to break down silos and simplify consistently managing apps and data anywhere.
The Nutanix Central solution will greatly simplify management at a large, federated scale across endpoints.
“The reality for most enterprise customers today is that they’re managing a vast number of applications across multiple environments. This is leading to significant management challenges that are only going to increase as hybrid multicloud
deployments grow,” said Thomas Cornely, SVP, Product Management at Nutanix. “With Nutanix Central, we will extend our hybrid multicloud platform to deliver a truly universal cloud operating model to include consistent management across public clouds, on-premises, hosted and edge environments.”
Nutanix Central will provide cloud-delivered unified management and reporting of the entire Nutanix environment distributed across private, public, and edge clouds from a single place. It will also support multi-domain use cases including federated identity and access management (IAM), global projects and categories, global fleet management, all enabling IT teams to deliver self-service infrastructure at scale while remaining in control of governance and security.
Pure’s all-flash storage enables IT services provider to improve performance and enhance user experiences for digital services it delivers to Nama Shared Services
Pure Storage announced that Nama Shared Services, a leading IT services provider to the public sector in Oman, has leveraged Pure’s solutions to improve the performance and enhance user experiences for the digital services it delivers to Nama Group companies and government entities.
Nama Shared Services, a subsidiary of Nama Holding, is the centralised IT services provider to all Nama Group companies, which oversee the supply and distribution of electricity and water, and the management of wastewater across Oman. The company also provides additional IT services, including ERP, CRM and IaaS to several government entities in Oman.
As demand for these services grew, Nama Shared Services knew it needed a modern all-flash solution to deliver better service levels and improved performance for its users. IT implemented Pure’s infrastruc-
ture as part of its commitment to maintaining world-class IT solutions. “We immediately saw a 10x increase in storage performance, which translated to faster performance for every digital interaction. Previously it could take up to five minutes
to generate an invoice for one of our services, but now customers wait less than 30 seconds,” said Alfadel Al Harthy, Acting Senior Manager IT-OT, Nama Shared Services. “Even our Group’s most remote branches have seen app performance improve up to 70%.”
Pure also exceeded Nama Shared Services’ data reduction expectations and backup time. “With an impressive 4:1 compression ratio, we significantly reduced our overall storage requirements,” said Al Harthy. “While it took over four hours to backup data with our legacy storage solution, it now takes less than 45 minutes.”
With Pure, Nama Shared Services' whole team spends less than one hour per week on storage management tasks and can consequently focus on delivering innovation which will advance the digital transformation of the Group.
Study shows urgent calls for digital transformation in the form of automation and the streamlining of workflow management, scheduling and approvals
Most field workers in the UAE’s energy and manufacturing sectors report feeling hampered by inflexible daily routines, but a majority believe technology can help them alleviate their burdens, a Microsoft-sponsored IDC study has revealed.
“The ‘deskless workforce’, as we call them, number 427 million worldwide in the manufacturing sector according to the International Labour Organization (ILO),” said Ahmad El Dandachi, Enterprise Channel Lead, Microsoft UAE. “We must come up with ways to remedy what they face on a daily basis, and technology can play a pivotal role in this endeavour. Enhancing the employee experience is a critical step in preventing a second wave of the Great Resignation.”
In compiling “Empowering Field Workers in the UAE Manufacturing and Energy Industry”, IDC researchers interviewed field workers and their line managers across both sectors. Their work unveiled stress among field employees. Some 66% of those polled said on-the-job stress was leading to workforce attrition and that the source of that stress was long working hours and rigid schedules. But more than three quarters (78%) of field workers interviewed believed technology would enable them to do their job more effectively and the same percentage thought it would lead to them being more engaged with their organization. When it came to production and supply-chain managers, those figures soared to 97% and 92% respectively.
Partnership enables organizations benefit from superior detection, unmatched response and open-to-integrate XDR platform to maximize cybersecurity investments
to understand, identify and mitigate cyber risks. To help customers tackle the challenges they face today, as well as flex to meet future needs, Finesse will leverage Secureworks TaegisTM SaaS platform to prevent, detect and respond to threats, wherever data moves into, out of and through customer environments. Finesse will support customers with the Secureworks cybersecurity platform Taegis and a suite of integrated solutions and services. Finesse works with banking and financial services, energy, education, healthcare, public sector and retail organizations across the GCC. As part of its digital transformation services, it offers cybersecurity initiatives to support the growing need in the region to protect digital infrastructure.
Finesse, one of the leading digital transformation partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), has joined the Secureworks Global Partner Program to help customers strengthen their security posture against cyber threats.
Organizations of all sizes are battling an ever-increasing number of cyber threats on multiple fronts while also navigating a cyber talent and skills crisis. They need to be able to scale their internal resources and access a diverse range of skills to be able
Sunil Paul, co-founder and MD of Finesse said, “We are pleased to partner with Secureworks to provide our clients with a 24/7 threat detection and protection. In the era of digitalization, cybersecurity has become a critical component of any business transformation. By utilizing Secureworks cybersecurity expertise, we will be able to deliver greater value to our clients and navigate the complex cybersecurity landscape. We are also grateful to Wendy, CEO of Secureworks for her presence during the signing of the partnership between Finesse and Secureworks.”
Barracuda SecureEdge is delivered as a service, makes security deployment and management easier for customers, and helps protect users, sites, and IoT devices
Barracuda Networks, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-first security solutions, announced a new platform called Barracuda SecureEdge, a SASE solution that helps make hybrid and remote work easier to secure. Barracuda SecureEdge integrates Barracuda’s Secure SD-WAN, Firewallas-a-Service, Zero Trust Network Access, and Secure Web Gateway capabilities. Using a single-vendor solution enables businesses to strengthen their security posture and help to reduce costs. Delivered as a service, Barracuda SecureEdge secures users, sites, and IoT devices, is easy to manage and connects any device, application, and cloud/hybrid environment.
According to Gartner, “By 2025, 80% of enterprises will have adopted a strategy to unify web, cloud services, and private application access using a SASE/SSE ar-
chitecture, up from 20% in 2021.”
The new Barracuda SecureEdge platform makes hybrid and remote work easier to secure, strengthens security, improves performance, and reduces management complexity.
“Barracuda's new SecureEdge platform provides businesses with a SaaS solution that makes remote and hybrid work easier to secure and helps to improve security and reduce costs," said Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Network, and Application Security at Barracuda. “With SecureEdge, Barracuda offers a cloud-native SASE platform that enables customers to control access to data from any device, anytime, anywhere, and allows security inspection and policy enforcement in the cloud, at the branch, or on the device.”
Tim Jefferson SVP, Engineering for Data, Network,
Barracuda
Vantage IQ transforms modern threat detection and remediation with AI-assisted data analysis that helps security teams reduce cyber risk and speed response
Nozomi Networks Inc., a leader in OT and IoT security, introduced Vantage IQ, an AI-based analysis and response engine designed to quickly address security gaps and resource limitations in mission-critical operational infrastructure. Available as an add-on to Vantage, Nozomi Networks’ SaaS-based security management platform, Vantage IQ uses artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to help security teams do more with less, by automating the time-consuming tasks associated with reviewing, correlating and prioritizing network, asset and alert data. Teams using Vantage IQ gain fast, accurate and in-depth cybersecurity analysis that is not possible with human analysis alone. This advanced human-machine collaboration strengthens cybersecurity and resilience for critical infrastructure organizations while helping security administrators gain workload efficiencies.
Vantage IQ raises the bar on security ana-
lytics and automation, by giving users the ability to:
• Immediately understand what's happening across a network of IT, OT and IoT devices
• Quickly and easily extract process intelligence and priority tasks from massively expanding networks and data sources
• Improve response times with deeper insights, correlation and actionable intelligence
“Artificial intelligence has always been part of our DNA,” said Nozomi Networks Co-founder and CPO Andrea Carcano. “While ChatGPT has sparked the world’s imagination around the potential of AI, it’s really just one example of the emerging use case for advancing neural network technologies. In the case of critical infrastructure security, Vantage IQ is a game changer, leveraging artificial intelligence to fundamentally change the way security professionals understand and respond to operational risk. We believe it’s the way cybersecurity data will be queried, analyzed and acted on going forward.”
The integration offers several benefits including improving Pepper’s natural language understanding and encouraging flexible and personalized communication
PROVEN Robotics, a leading provider of robotic solutions, announced the successful integration of natural language artificial intelligence (AI) technology, ChatGPT, into its cutting edge humanoid robot, Pepper. PROVEN Robotics also announced a partnership with one of the largest chemical manufacturing companies in the world - the deal saw the Saudi-based chemicals specialist leverage PROVEN Robotics’ advanced robotics solutions at two of its events in the Kingdom.
The integration of ChatGPT with Pepper demonstrated the innovative spirit of the PROVEN Robotics development team, and simultaneously presented an incredible opportunity to demonstrate the ground-breaking capabilities of both ChatGPT and Pepper.
“The combination of an advanced AI language system with our highly effective Pepper robot-
ics platform provides a unique proposition for a wide range of applications, from customer service and entertainment to education and research. The ability to seamlessly integrate advanced language capabilities with the physical agility of Pepper has exciting potential, and reinforces PROVEN Robotics’ standing as a leader in the industry,” explained Mohammed Aldousari, Regional Robotics Lead at PROVEN Robotics.
The integration of ChatGPT in Pepper offers several significant benefits including improving Pepper’s natural language understanding, enabling the robot to understand a wide range of human inputs and to respond naturally; encouraging flexible and personalized communication, so the robot can engage in open-ended conversations with users in an array of environments.
New bi-directional integration between Cisco AppDynamics and ThousandEyes drives powerful customer digital experience monitoring
Uniquely positioned to deliver industry-leading Full-Stack Observability to customers, Cisco announced a new OpenTelemetry-based integration of Cisco AppDynamics application observability and ThousandEyes network intelligence. This integration is bi-directional, with data exchanged simultaneously between both solutions, in real time.
User experience has increasingly become a key performance indicator at the boardroom level. Organizations are working to ensure they can elevate digital experiences at scale via the applications that are at the heart of all business interactions today. That said, user experience can be impacted by many factors. The key is to find the root cause of impact as soon as possible and address the issue before it reaches the end user and hurts the overall performance of the application and ultimately the business.
Cisco’s solution provides insights into both the application and the network, with internet connectivity metrics for application operations and real-time application dependency mapping for network operations. The solution is automatically available without further installations, drives powerful customer digital experience monitoring from the combined application and network vantage points, and delivers differentiated business outcomes. It significantly reduces Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), closes observability gaps with actionable recommendations and helps teams prioritize network remediation based on business impact/criticality.
“Our customers are committed to delivering the best digital experiences for their businesses. However, as digital experiences get simpler for the consumers, they get more complex for companies,” said Liz Centoni, EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, and
GM of Applications, Cisco. “Customer Digital Experience Monitoring seamlessly brings together our industry leading application observability and our unparalleled network intelligence, so that customers can uncover all the application and network dependencies not visible before.”
Now companies can give their teams the productivity and innovation of emerging generative AI – while reducing risk with built-in security and governance controls over the flow of data
Cloudflare extended its single-vendor SASE platform, Cloudflare One, to generative artificial intelligence (AI) services. Cloudflare One for AI, a suite of Zero Trust security controls, will enable enterprises to safely and securely use the latest generative AI tools without putting intellectual property and customer data at risk.
Major companies have banned the use of popular generative AI chat apps because of sensitive data leaks. According to a KPMG survey on generative AI, AI is expected to have an enormous impact on business, but the majority of US executives surveyed are years away from implementing it; cyber security (81%) and data privacy (78%) are the most top of mind concerns for leaders. CISOs and CIOs need to strike a balance between enabling transformative innovation through AI and still maintaining compliance with data privacy regulations.
"AI holds incredible promise, but without proper guardrails it can create significant risks for businesses. It is far too easy, by default, to upload sensitive internal or cus-
tomer data to AI tools. Once the data is used for training AI, it is virtually impossible to get it out," explained Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "If you were going to let a class of university students rummage around in your internal data, you'd of course put clear rules in place on what data they can access and how it can be used in their education. Cloudflare's Zero Trust products are the first to provide the guard rails for AI tools, so businesses can take advantage of the opportunity AI unlocks while ensuring only the data you want to expose gets shared."
Cloudflare One for AI provides a simple, fast, and secure way for companies to safely build using the latest generative AI technologies, without compromising security or performance. With Cloudflare One, companies can gain visibility into and measure AI tool usage.
Dataiku study shows 98% of UAE organizations regard AI as a major enabler and are investing more heavily in established data science platforms to build and maintain AI models, but business users must become more involved if enterprises are to deliver sustainable culture change
Almost all UAE companies believe artificial intelligence (AI) can help them weather current economic uncertainty, but access gaps between technical and business users must be addressed, according to a new study from Dataiku, the platform for Everyday AI.
The research which surveyed 700 IT decision makers across five countries in EMEA, including the UAE, revealed that 98% of business decision makers in the UAE see AI as a major enabler when looking for ways to be more resilient amid current economic conditions. The poll further showed that this belief was reflected in widespread action, with almost three quarters (74%) of companies having either maintained or increased investment in AI programs in recent months. More than two thirds (68%) of UAE organizations are investing up to 50% of their tech budget in AI and have formalized plans in place driven by specific business goals to be delivered over the next five years.
While the UAE was aligned with the overall EMEA area on the top priority, innovation — 64% of UAE organizations chose this as a five-year business goal — the nation diverged from its regional peers on the second- and third-ranked priorities. While EMEA as a whole was fixated on cost reductions and increased revenue, UAE businesses said they would be concentrating on competitive advantage (56%) and improved customer experience (54%), which is a strong indicator of the maturity level of the UAE AI market.
“The UAE has a proud tradition with AI, having been the first country to appoint a minister of state to oversee its development,” said Sid Bhatia, Regional Vice President and General Manager for the Middle East and Turkey at Dataiku. “Once again, the report shows us that enterprises here have a strong grounding in the factors underpinning Everyday AI, as they are prioritizing competitive advantage and improved customer experience rather than trying to jump to the end of the story with financial goals like costs and revenue. We have seen that by concentrating on the fundamentals, we naturally curve towards an AI future in which revenues are boosted and costs are reduced.”
Digging a level deeper though, the study did highlight one key area of improvement if UAE organizations are to optimize their AI practices. The data showed that while almost all (94%) UAE data science and technology specialists can work with data and AI to contribute towards the attainment of their organization’s business goals, this number is much lower for business users, only
42% of whom have full access to the data they need. However, 92% of UAE respondents said they were using low-code or nocode development platforms to make AI more accessible to business users and help automate and improve daily decision-making processes, thereby building an Everyday AI culture.
Bhatia added: “Interestingly, at a time when we see unprecedented media buzz around large-language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s revamped Bing, we asked companies in the UAE if they had invested in data science platforms to build and maintain AI models over the past five years. They all said ‘yes’. That’s 100% of companies saying they have taken the AI plunge. This is great news, but we now know that to truly harness the value of AI and achieve business goals, we cannot leave progress solely in the hands of data scientists and backroom technologists. We need to fully democratize AI. The wide availability of platforms like ChatGPT and Bard serves as a great example of what that can look like. We must now apply these principles to all established AI platforms and usher in an inclusive era for these technologies — the Age of Everyday AI.”
Epicor, a global leader of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth, has unveiled its vision for the connected Data Supply Chain, helping Makers, Movers, and Sellers action indispensable insights to strengthen and optimize their own operations, as well as more closely collaborate with trusted partners and industry ecosystems for a dynamic and responsive supply chain.
“To be successful in today’s marketplace, Makers, Movers, and Sellers must make data-driven decisions faster and with greater accuracy. It’s all about the right insights, in the right place, at the right time,” said Epicor CEO, Steve Murphy. “Epicor is delivering the digital foundation to help give our customers an insight advantage, supported by our deep industry expertise, powerful data analytics, and emerging AI capabilities that will help pave the road to a more resilient and predictable global supply chain.”
Business leaders know that operational insight is key to unlocking business value. But getting to those insights – whether it’s within their own enterprise or across their supply chains – is a pervasive challenge. Many contend with managing overwhelming amounts of data, proliferation of data siloes across their organizations, as well as disconnected processes and lack of data transparency with trading partners and suppliers.
In fact, according to the most recent Epicor Industry Insights Report, nearly 70 percent of enterprises surveyed said they are looking to their ERP provider as an expert partner and resource to help them navigate a variety of data management and integration needs. In addition, more than 80 percent of respondents indicated they are interested in exploring and investing in the latest technologies to help them optimize and grow their businesses.
Through the company’s leading Industry ERP Cloud platforms grounded in contextual business intelligence, Epicor is positioned to help organizations across manufacturing, distribution, retail, building supply, and auto environments adopt a data-first strategy that lets them integrate internal and external data sources and interpret signals and indicators both within their business and across supply chains. In doing so, they can gain actionable insights to optimize and automate business flows and drive time-to-value.
Use cases for Epicor’s Data Supply Chain approach include:
• Grow, the Epicor Data Platform – At the core of the connected Data Supply Chain is Epicor Grow, the company’s full-stack, no code / lo code BI platform that combines data integration, warehousing, and visualization into one easy to use solution. This allows users across the business to quickly build the visualizations they need to make fast, informed decisions based on data from Epicor
platforms and thousands of external data sources and apps.
• Predictive Analytics Powered by ChatGPT – Through its collaboration with OpenAI, Epicor is combining the power of ChatGPT with its industry expertise to deliver predictive analytics and contextual recommendations via the intuitive Epicor Virtual Agent (EVA). Epicor users can save valuable time analyzing information across both internal and external data sources by simply querying EVA to quickly uncover the answers they need to make informed decisions.
• Supplier Integration Across Industry Ecosystems – By integrating internal and external data sources using Epicor Prophet 21 and Grow, companies can gain key insights across their supply chains, such as access to real-time inventory levels and pricing data within a supplier community, as well as automatically generated supplier performance scores to help select the best vendor to meet quality, delivery, and timing needs.
• People-Centric Automation and Experiences – Epicor is bringing together the entire Make, Move, and Sell value chain by showcasing how its technologies are helping optimize and improve the worker experience using automation and intelligent recommendation, from customer part configuration and ordering, digital work instructions on the shop floor, delivery, and field service.
“This is an era in which cloud computing, business intelligence, and AI can be applied at scale to transform the way we solve some of our biggest challenges,” said Epicor Chief Product Officer, Vaibhav Vohra. “We’re empowering our customers’ workforces – from the top floor to the shop floor – to tap into a world of innovative possibilities for how workstreams and collaboration across the essential industries get done.”
Google Cloud announced the opening of its Doha cloud region at an official launch event attended by ministers from the Qatari Cabinet and executives from leading Qatari businesses, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and Qatar Free Zone Authority (QFZ). The new cloud region will meet growing demand for cloud services in Qatar and the Middle East region and support Qatar’s National Vision 2030 that aims to transform the country into a digital economy through innovation and digital transformation.
According to research commissioned by Google Cloud and conducted by Access Partnership, the new Doha cloud region is expected to drive increased economic activity and is estimated to contribute a cumulative 18.9 billion USD in higher gross economic output to the economy of Qatar between 2023 and 2030 and support the creation of 25,000 jobs in 2030 alone. This new cloud region is the latest significant investment made by Google Cloud in
Qatar, following the recent opening of a country office and virtual center of excellence (CoE) in Msheireb.
The series of investments in infrastructure and resources demonstrates Google Cloud’s continued commitment to playing a pivotal role in advancing Qatar’s digital future and technological capabilities.
MCIT and the Qatari government have helped enable the growth of cloud across the government through the adoption of cloud policies, which facilitated Google Cloud's market entry. His Excellency Mr. Mohammed bin Ali Al Mannai, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said: “The launch of the first Google Cloud region in Qatar fits into our comprehensive vision to achieve the desired goals of Qatar National Vision 2030, including the establishment of a strong digital infrastructure with internationally agreed standards and policies that will lead us all towards a more efficient economy based on digitalization and technolo-
Travers NicholasCountry General Manager for Qatar, Dell Technologies
gy to facilitate quality of life and provide convenient solutions for various sectors. The new cloud region will contribute to giving impetus to economic and productivity growth, and will allow various government and private companies and institutions within Qatar the opportunity to achieve significant efficiency gains by adopting flexible features in dealing with digital technology.”
The new Doha region is part of Google Cloud’s global network of 37 regions and 112 zones that bring cloud services to over 200 countries and territories worldwide. The new region brings high-performance, low-latency services and products to customers of all sizes, from public sector organizations, to large enterprises, to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups in Qatar and the Middle East. Organizations in the region will benefit from key controls that allow them to maintain the highest security, data residency, and compliance standards, including specific data storage requirements.
The 2023 Saudi edition of Future Workspace Summit & Awards highlighted hybrid workplace trends and concerns
Leap Media Solutions organized the 3rd Saudi edition and the overall 5th edition of the Future Workspace Summit & Awards in Riyadh on May 17th at the VOCO hotel. The event was attended by over 300 IT decision makers from leading enterprises of the Kingdom.
The Future Workspace Summit has been designed as a platform to continue discussion around key technologies and trends that are playing a key role in redefining the workplace. This year, the discussions
included new topics creating the possibility of better shared understanding of how the workplace in general is evolving and accelerating towards a more-optimized hybrid model.
Yousef Mhana, Principal Systems Engineer at Pure Storage presented a Keynote session on 'Uncomplicate Data Storage Forever'.
He was followed by Akashdeep Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Tech First Gulf who presented ‘Beyond Conventional:
Omar Elsawi, Territory Manager KSA
Egypt Levant Kuwait - MX at Barco presented on the topic 'The Evolution of Meetings and Meeting Rooms in the PostCOVID Era'. Harish Menon, CEO of Ac-
cops Systems Pvt. Ltd gave a keynote on 'Towards a Sustainable Future'.
The first panel discussion group discussed ‘Optimising the hybrid workplace with best technology practices.’ Aijaz Regoo,
CTO, MIS Forward moderated this panel and the panellists were
• Ali Saif, Deputy Head of IT, Al Marai
• Imran Hashim, Director of IT Infra structure, Medgulf
• Mousa Al-Anizi, VP Digital Health and Director E-Health KSMC at Riyadh Health Cluster One
• Harish Menon, CEO, Accops
• Abdullah Al-Baz, Country Manager, Pure Storage
• Osama Merghani, IT Consultant Kickstarting the proceedings in the afternoon, Aamir Mushtaq Shaikh, Lead –Channel Partnership and Alliance (Middle East), Freshworks spoke on ‘Elevate Employee experience using Freshservice’
Following him, Imran Hussain, Country Manager Saudi Arabia & Pakistan at So-
phos, the next speaker of the day presented on the topic’ Security as a Service’.
The next keynote address of the day was delivered by Rejeesh Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Mindfire Technologies. He spoke on 'Reimagining Threat Response: Embracing Fresh Perspectives with Skilled Resources and Managed Programs'
Dr. Raed AlHazme, Executive Director, Information Technology Department, Ministry of National Guard - Health Affairs delivered the final keynote address of the day. He presented on ‘How DX rescued healthcare during COVID-19''.
Following the final keynote, there were three panel discussions.
The second panel discussion of the day discussed the topic ‘Managing technology skill gaps for the hybrid workplace.’ Eng. Mohammed Mahnashi, Digital Transformation & Data Management Advisor, Saudi Electronic University moderated the session.
The panellists of this session were
• Hazem Jarrar, CTO, King Faisal Foundation
• Aiman AlJabr, Head of IT at Havelock One Interiors
• K.S. Parag, MD of FVC
• Ramesh Murugesan, CIO, Al Gihaz Holding
• Suhail Akhtar, CIO, Al Kifah Contracting Company
The third panel of the day discussed ‘Addressing the cybersecurity challenges of today and the future’. This session
was moderated by Abdullah Biary -CIO, United Coperative Assurance.
The panelists included
• Abdelmajed A Saeed- EC-Council Advisory Board Member for CCISO
• Abdulrahman Al-Nimari, VP-cybersecurity, confidential
• Anas Mosa, Director of Information Technology - PIF Projects
• Moayad Alghanmi, Director of Information & Cyber Security at Emaar, The Economic City
• Mustafa Farag, Business Develop ment Manager & Presales Engineer at Paessler AG
• Charbel Ghostine, Regional Cloud Alliance Manager at Barracuda Networks - Middle East
• Jishant Karunakaran, CEO at Mindfire Technologies
The final panel discussion of the day delved into the ‘Role of AI in the evolving hybrid workplace.’ The session was moderated by Awais Ahmad Director of
technology at SolexPLUS.
The panelists included
• Kamal Farag, CTO, Speedi
• Krish J., Director of ITDirector of IT, ARASCO
• Ahmed Darwish Elsayed, Head of Digital Delivery at Bank AlBilad
• Veenu Jain, Senior Manager, Director Operations Impresapro Serviziz
The platinum sponsors of the day were ‘Dell Technologies and Redington’. Gold sponsors included Pure Storage and VAD Technologies, Logitech and Tech First Gulf, Barco and FVC, Freshworks and Impresapro, Accops and Bulwark Technologies, Sophos, Mindfire Technologies, Barracuda Networks, Paessler. The Silver sponsor of the day was Finesse.
The day also included award recognitions for several outstanding Technology leaders from different industries who are playing a key role in leading or facilitating digital acceleration and technology led workspace transformation.
Awards were presented in the category ‘Technology Accelerator of the day’ to IT Managers and several senior non CIO and CISO IT leaders who have made significant contribution to their organizations towards their digital transformation programs. CIO of the Year and CISO of the Year Awards were presented to Technology Leaders who in their designated roles have been overseeing initiatives towards embracing workspace transformation within the ongoing digital transformation pursuit.
CATEGORY CATEGORY
Abdallah Gafar
Abdullah Alfahaid
Ahmed Taman
Aijaz Regoo
Aiman Aljabr
Alaa Gharbawi
Ali Saif AlQahtani
Anas Mosa
Awais Ahmad
Dr. Arwa Alrawais
Dr. Mustafa Hasan Qurban
Dr. Raed AlHazme
Gaurav kole
Hany Almansour
Hazem Awni Jarrar
Hilal Ud Din
Imran Hashim
Irfan Ul Haq
Jayesh Maganlal
Kamal Farag
Krish J.
Mashari Al AlMusad
Mohammed Mahnashi
Mousa al-anizi
Mubarak Marie AlShahrani
Qasim Nadeem
Rafik Wassef
Ramesh Murugesan
Saud Alabdulaziz
Sayyed Jameer
Suhail Akhtar
Syed Fakruddin Albeez
Usama Alhamoud
Yousef AbdulRaqeeb
Abdul Baree
Adeem AlMurayi
Ahmed Al-Marhoon
Ashak Ali Khan
Dr. Ahmed Darwish Elsayed
Imdath Nazim
Imran Hashim
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Mehmood Iqbal
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Nadeem Aslam
Paslin Vino Maria Francis
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Shaker Hashlan
Sheik Mohamedali
Sivakumar Ganesan
Surya P. Shankaran
Tahani I. Aldosemani
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Wael Mohamed Abdelaal
Waseem Ahmed
Yazeed Alghamdi
Yazeed Alghamdi
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CATEGORY
Abdelmajed Fadol
Abdullah Biary
Abdulrahman Al-Nimari
Ala I. Asali
Ashleigh Watson
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Jamal J Felemban
Mansour alzahr
Mirza R. Baig
Moayad Alghanmi
Mohammed Al-Doseri
Nugod Salem Alqarzai
Saghir Ahmad Khan
'CISO of the Year'
VENDOR AWARD
Dell Technologies
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How has the inclusion of AI unfolded across your strategy and your product lines?
Last year, we talked about getting AI on the edge. No, now, we are adding more models to the edge. We started off with ransomware. Now we have models for malware. We have end-user entity and behavior analysis that is happening on the edge. And we see AI spreading horizontally across the stack. AI is no longer a unique feature, but it has become a key ingredient to all our products. So, there is no product without at least one AI feature today. And this year, we have been seeing faster adoption, especially in the Middle East. Middle East is the fastest-growing adopter in terms of the number of people using the features. Upon comparison, we have been noticing that the Middle East has the highest adoption of AI, across our products, and across the regions we cater to.
We have added more features to the conversational assistant. Previously it was all about reading such as giving a status reading for instance. Now the right features have also been enabled, for example, such as being able to apply patches to all vulnerable computers, restart servers under the domain, and so on. This has become possible only with the confidence we gained. Users also
have a feel for how to use it rightly, so that nobody goes and gets the wrong patch applied and so in. This of course comes with authentication so that only privileged users can do this. So, with our conversational assistant, called Zia, we have made a lot of progress. Over the last year, many of the features added have seen mainstream adoption. For instance, in our monitoring stack, we had a special AI-based Anomaly report. Now that has become the default report.
If we consider the monitoring suite or line of products, Applications Manager, Operations Manager, and even site 24/7, which helps monitor all entities in your organization, traditionally, there would be a three-sigma role to find out anomalies. But here, every monitor and every entity are different, some will have a weekly seasonality, and some will have monthly seasonality. With AI using past data, we can identify at a given point of time what is normal at a given point in time and what is anomalous. For example, the number of failed logins per minute, on a Monday morning around 9 am could be an average. If I get 10 failed logins per minute, it's normal, but the same thing on a Saturday morning at 3
am would need an alert because somebody is trying to brute force and get into my system. This contextual relevance comes when we learn from past knowledge. This is on a single variable, but we can also do with multiple variables, learn the dependence across these variables, and how these change with each other. Now, for example, if you have multiple variables to consider, you could be more effective. If let's say you're monitoring a machine, a CPU at 80% might not be an anomaly, but the CPU at 80% and RAM at 80% usage and free disk space at 5% could be. The combination is clearly an anomaly. So we are able to identify which combination is an anomaly and also given how we have always set up precedents on Explainable AI. We will be able to say why I flagged this as an anomaly and why you will have to go look into it. Because here whatever action you do is recorded, it is put on a paper trail so you are answerable to your boss and you need to at least maintain a paper trail. So Explainable AI has also helped adoption, from a user and entity behavior analysis as well. If a user, let's say particularly logs in from this time to this time on different days of the week but if suddenly, let's say the weekends have changed from Friday to Sunday. In a non-AI world, the changes will need to be manually configured to account for the new weekends, but here, the system will auto-learn from the patterns and moreover, things are constantly changing with remote work and hybrid work. The AI system is more flexible to accommodate the changes. Finding the needle in the haystack becomes very easy with these powerful AI based anomaly records.
Please elaborate on Explainable AI
AI models even today are 90% accurate; we started off with 75 but slowly moved to 90. I need to understand why an AI model has flagged this as an anomaly. And if I understand that, I will be able to take appropriate actions. And that will be added as feedback to the model itself. This ‘why’ part of the way AI has evolved, is very correlation heavy and does not have the notion of causation. An example, force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration is right. But you can also say acceleration is equal to force divided by mass, so you don't know what is causing what. In general, the assumption that we take is that whichever event happens first, causes the event that happens later. This might be true 90% of the time. But in complex interactions, like monitoring solutions, where there is a network effect, there is a cascade effect and not necessarily the first thing is the cause just as symptoms don't cause diseases although they are heavily correlated. With Explainable AI, we are trying to understand the causation and present it as a decision-making point for the user. The user can also automate that by saying, if your model is more than 80%, confident, you make the decision. If you're 70%, confident you must let a human look at it; have a human in the loop, click a button, and then get it done. If you're less than 2%, confident don't even consider. So that brings in the trust factor of AI. That in fact, is one of the reasons we see adoption to be high. After we added the explanation, we saw the adoption increasing even for the same very same use cases that we did.
We don't even charge separately for AI. And of course, there's no standalone pricing for explanation. We try and add explanations wherever possible. For example, in our ransomware model, we still don’t explain why we marked something as ransomware because that might be too complicated for the user. And the neural
network that we have deployed basically does not support any form of causation. For all anomaly forecasting, outage prediction, and root cause analysis, we have given explanation elements. Wherever possible, we are trying to add, even in our OCR stack. Wherever technically feasible, we have added explanations, and there are no separate charges for them.
Over the years, there has been a lot of fear of missing out on the AI wave amongst our customers. One thing we want to enable for our customers is identifying the next best actions at every point where AI can be in anything, in your CRM, or be your helpdesk, but identifying and giving a recommendation on what to do next. That will be the key value add for the users. And we are in the business of automating repetition, automating mundane tasks so that the human is productive elsewhere. For example, in service delivery, how many users refer to the knowledge base before raising a ticket? Now if I can have a chatbot, where I can ask the question, and if there is no answer in the knowledge base, then it can hand it over to a human, and ensure productivity to both the person asking the question and the person answering the questions. It all becomes a matter of productivity, putting your human capital to better use and automating repetitive stuff. So that is where we see the value coming. I see AI becoming an integral part of the ecosystem, it's no longer one groundbreaking technology that goes through cycles of summers and winters. Now it's mainstream and you must embrace it. AI is not going to replace a human, but a human who has access to AI tools is going to replace a human who does not upgrade themselves.
What is the current state of Hybrid Cloud adoption worldwide and what Cloud trends are you seeing in the Middle East & Africa region?
As per the global findings of Nutanix’s fifth global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, the majority (60%) of IT teams leverage more than one IT infrastructure, whether it is a mix of private and public Clouds, multiple public Clouds, or an on-premises datacenter along with a hosted datacenter. That number is expected to grow to nearly three quarters (74%) in the near future. However, this leads to challenges and 94% say they’d benefit from having a single place to manage applications and data across diverse environments.
In the Middle East and Africa region, there is certainly growing momentum in the Cloud space. According to Business Market Insights’ research, the Middle East & Africa Cloud computing market was valued at US$ 17,813.65 million in 2022 and is expected to reach US$ 54,235.27 million by 2028, registering an annual growth rate of 20.4% from 2022 to 2028. Countries in the GCC are setting their Cloud policies on a government and national level, keen to make their infrastructures and services digital to create Smart Cities.
When it comes to hybrid Cloud adoption in the MEA region, although there are no research figures for the overall region, Nutanix’s Saudi findings from its latest Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey throw up some interesting facts that might represent the larger region. Less than half of Saudi companies (45%) currently use multiple IT modes. This is substantially lower than the global average (60%). The figures indicate that enterprises in the country are in the nascent phases of their digital transformation and Cloud-migration journeys. However, they plan to boost their mixed-IT usage to 71% within three years, just a bit short of the expected global levels for the same time frame.
There are certain factors driving the trend towards hybrid Cloud adoption. One of the main ones is the need for businesses to have more flexible and scalable IT infrastructure that can handle the increasing amounts of data being generated, especially in the era of the hybrid workplace. Our customers continue to recognize the benefits of hybrid Cloud in terms of its scalability, flexibility, and cost effectiveness.
Will businesses that avoid moving to a Hybrid Cloud strategy
struggle to remain competitive and why?
The bottom line is that businesses that do not adopt hybrid Cloud strategies will be slower in their digital transformation journey – which in turn, slows their ability to scale and be agile. Hybrid Cloud allows business to scale up or down based on their business demands. And do it quickly. If companies are still operating in a 3-Tier infrastructure, they have reduced agility. They are unable to respond as quickly to market changes, which is crucial in order to remain competitive. Hybrid Cloud also enables business to deploy new applications and services quickly, especially in industries that are more ‘digital-first’ such as smart cities, or banking (although today most industries are moving towards digital-first as a response to consumer behaviors).
Cost is something to consider as well. A hybrid Cloud strategy can help businesses optimize their computing resources and reduce costs. Without a hybrid Cloud strategy, businesses may find themselves spending more money on maintaining and upgrading their existing IT infrastructure.
What are the various challenges that companies typically face when it comes to Cloud/ Hybrid Cloud adoption?
I think it important to mention that there are macro factors at play here, when it comes to, not just technology, but overall business challenges. We have a looming recession, the war in Europe, oil prices, etc. These factors are posing challenges for businesses already.
With regards to hybrid cloud adoption, there are still concerns around security, data sovereignty and most importantly skill shortage. I’ve outlined some of the main challenges below:
• IT Complexity: Hybrid Cloud can increase IT complexity in terms of a number of vendors, more support needs, more IT personnel/ teams.
• Security – 66% of IT professionals consider security to be a major challenge to Cloud adoption. The reality is that public Cloud service providers invest far more in their security than any individual company or government department ever could. A move to the Cloud doesn’t decrease security - it increases it. Overcoming this challenge is less about new security infrastructure and more about a cultural shift. It’s about asking the question ‘how can my company or government department become comfortable with
Cloud technologies?’ In our experience, the best way to do this is to start small by moving a few workloads to the Cloud and seeing if you are satisfied with the results.
• Vendor lock in - Vendor lock-in remains a serious concern for many companies. The worry is that once all systems have been moved to the Cloud, the company will be bound to the same vendor even if their prices increase. This is especially relevant given the steadily decreasing costs of Cloud services globally.
• Skills Gap - One of the most pressing challenges to Cloud adoption is a skills gap. How can a company move to the Cloud if it doesn’t have the right people to make it happen? In a 2020 PwC CEO Survey, 77% of CEOs were worried about the availability of key skills. The survey also found that those organizations that focused on expanding their employees’ skills were ahead of their peers in many ways and were more confident in their future. Aside from skills gap, it could mean an increase in IT teams. The more complex the environment, the more organizations may need to hire.
What are the steps that companies need to follow for a successful rollout of a hybrid cloud strategy? Hybrid cloud strategies are fundamental for digital transformation as well as accelerating and sustaining growth. Businesses that accelerated quickly to the public Cloud, are now realizing that it is not a one-size fits all scenario and that they may need to re-think and re-structure where they run their applications and workloads.
At the end, you must find a cloud balance in a hybrid Cloud world. Choice and simplicity will be the key factors for businesses. You will need:
1. To be Agile and secure: Take your time choosing your Cloud provider, and avoid a vendor lock-in. Avoid the need to re-platform, and determine which workloads belong in the public Cloud and which belong closer to home.
2. Empower your employees: It is never too soon to educate and build on the skills set of today (not the future). Consider building a talent enablement program (TEP) which is designed to promote and develop necessary skills. This program can help you define skills the organization needs and improve recruiting efforts. You need to find creative ways to bridge the gap.
3. Limit your re-factoring of applications: There is no need to re-invent the wheel, and in this case it is a very costly and time consuming endeavour to re-factor applications for the public Cloud. Use the time again to determine which legacy applications should remain on-premise, and which potentially newer applications can be built for the Cloud.
Back in October 2022, we announced the launch of our hybrid Cloud offering, Nutanix NC2. Nutanix aims at making Clouds invisible by allowing organizations to have a consistent operating model across all Clouds, both private and public. Nutanix NC2 is a Cloud-native solution designed to simplify and streamline
an organization's digital transformation efforts by providing a true hybrid Cloud solution. NC2 delivers a consistent and secure infrastructure for applications, data, and services, regardless of where they are deployed - on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge.
We have partnered with the leading Cloud providers such as Azure and AWS, with more hyper scalers on the way, to allow customers who are looking to move to the public Cloud, to be able to that seamlessly.
With Azure’s presence in the UAE and Qatar already, as well as the announcement of a new datacenter in Saudi Arabia, we are in a strong position to help our current customers and future customers adopt a hybrid Cloud strategy that works. With Azure, at the moment, we are available in selected regions in Europe with plans for regional availability in the next year. Although, many of our customers are running public workloads out of region within Europe, due to strong GDPR restrictions, therefore we are still able to assist there.
With AWS, we are currently available in both Bahrain and the UAE, allowing customers who are choosing AWS as their preferred public Cloud provider to benefit immediately
discusses how the company is focused on delivering innovative Smart City solutions in the region with its end-to-end expertise in technologies such as enabling digital twin and enterprise metaverse
Tell us about your operations and focus as a company Spotnik focuses on bringing innovative technologies and specific solutions in the digital transformation domain to the UAE and the region. We are pioneers in the region on urban digital twins developments and use cases.
The two key areas of focus include smart solutions that can be applied to smart cities, government departments, the public sector, and large corporations, in areas of indoor positioning, wayfinding etc, and innovative technologies related to enhancing customer experience. Last year, we developed a platform specifically for sustainability called Spotnik Smart City Studio Pro, which is an information system and a consistent digital twin or a digital replica of the city. Its advanced business intelligence systems include geospatial analytics, and real-time reporting on KPIs related to sustainability that includes mobility, energy consumption, carbon emissions, recycling practices etc. With that platform, we can investigate, analyze, and benchmark different assets, and different areas of the city, or even do simulations for planning. We have solutions and applications also in social robotics. We did some work during the pandemic with social robotics. They are hardware and software assistants primarily and can help you with different tasks. During the pandemic, it was very typical to use these robots, and are useful for interactions with users or people at airports or in hospitals.
Is the sustainability part of Smart City transformation a large focus for you?
In our platform, we are specifically defining data models for ESG, and by that that we mean we are helping the public sector, government entities, and corporations to see a mirror of their status today, and to foresee a simulation of where they could be in 5-10 years ahead in their roadmap of decarbonization and how to achieve net zero targets with our platform. The platform can ingest the data, help view in geospatial visualization within a very realistic environment and allow change of parameters such as weather conditions, demographic conditions, traffic or urban development etc. If for instance there are more parks or more business parks coming up, the impact for instance can be studied and visualized by analyzing the co2 emissions.
This is an entire data visualization model, currently available with which you can keep playing around with the variables and visualize different scenarios for the future, and this can help meet your objectives.
The solution allows you to experiment with scenarios and so it's very strategic and can be also utilized from the marketing and strategic marketing point of view. The key idea is for it to
Ricardo Barcena, Co-Founder and CTO at Spotnik
be a tool to support decision-making toward ESG objectives on executive dashboards.
Right now, it is focused more on the business side as a tool for the management enabling a very graphical and visual, interactive experience. They can visualize if a strategy is going to be actually executed correctly. It might be used for project management of specific initiatives. It might also be used for even employee engagement in a gamified way. Users can see the impact of their own activities.
In summary, there are a lot of applications possible. This is the first time such a platform is available and it's homegrown.
Tell us about the strengths of the company in the Smart City solutions domain?
As a company, we are the only ones covering the whole set of competencies in this domain as we have a dedicated team of designers, consultants, data management experts, consultants for business analysis and use cases etc. We have the consultancy and creative expertise to deliver business value from the platform. We have the full end-to-end expertise vis-a-vis other vendors wherein you can subcontract them to give you the technology, but then you need a consulting firm to work on it and they don't match, or they don't know how to make a case that suits your objectives.
We focus on the design, usability, user experience, user interfaces for the new technologies, how they are applied to the new systems, and of course, offer consultancy based on understanding the business and accordingly building solutions.
We have built a competence center in range of most advanced labs globally, making use of latest tools from NVIDIA to Cesium with any 3D Game engine and even Web3 features.
Today, there is a lot of buzz around AI or specifically ChatGPT, and its impact on society. We are concerned about the impact from the user’s point of view. For example, we look at the possible implications on the user experience point of view, if we were to utilize voice commands instead of data inputs as in the present day for changing the user interface of an enterprise system. To make the change, you need to decide not only based on how this is going to improve your efficiency but also on how this will reduce your costs and drive innovation in your company. At the same time, you need to be aware of how this is going to be impacting the transformation of your operating team as they will need to learn new tools, they need to operate the new devices. And that's where data management or decision modeling, algorithms related to data science, or anything related to AI, machine learning, data science together with data management etc come in and provide the required insights.
At one level, we offer the analytical, geospatial simulation part in business intelligence dashboards. This provides an enhancement of the business support tools available for departments in the enterprise. At the same time, it is good for reporting, for meeting all the CSD compliance requirements and for finance depart-
ments, HR departments etc to understand if they are doing well in progressing towards ESG objectives. At the same time, we can drill down into the operations. If deployed as part of the IoT infrastructure, that provides sensorial and real-time representation of what's going on in the business, then it can certainly be used for improvement of operations in monitoring and maintenance. It can be used in any context related to command and control because you can visualize much better and foresee what's going on in terms of incidents and preventive care, etc in your business.
We are in talks with government departments in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah and special government entities, and are confident since we are the only ones here locally that would be able to support them on their initiatives. Moreover, it provides local authorities with the option to make the optimum use of regional business fabric enabling them to create an impact with UAEbased technology solutions.
In the private sector, we still have the challenge of convincing as we are a smaller and local company that has to compete with the usual suspects which are larger global entities. But we are seeing more and more enquiries coming to us because of our strengths in offering end-to-end capabilities and competence, a value they cannot find in others. We have a good pipeline of projects for the year but these will take some certain time to mature.
The challenges of managing and storing sensitive and critical data are growing. The volume of highly sensitive data now hosted in the cloud is on an upward trajectory. Sixty four percent of EMEA organisations have actually increased their volume of sensitive data, and 63% have already stored confidential and secret data in the public cloud, according to IDC.
Managing this exposure of highly sensitive data, which could be financial, personal, national or critical information, is driving the need for data sovereignty – where this intelligence is bound by the privacy laws and governance structures within a nation, industry sector or organisation.
This exposure of such data in the public cloud should be influencing every organisation’s future cloud strategy and the imperative of sovereign clouds.
Yet challenges exist. To date, there is no standard definition to assess a cloud as ‘sovereign cloud’, and not even common terminology ‘sovereign cloud vs. trusted cloud’. But what is crystal clear is the set of key requirements associated with confidential and sensitive data, such as data and metadata control, residency and exposure to external jurisdiction. Agreements on data sovereignty must come first, so organisations understand how to keep control of their data and to choose the appropriate platform to host their data and innovate in a secured way.
However, this is not always understood outside of technical teams. If your organisation’s management has its head in the clouds when it comes to data sovereignty, here are five key messages to help you demonstrate the value of a secure data strategy, and explain why there is no data sovereignty without cloud sovereignty:
The days of customer information sitting in a single, monolithic database are well and truly dead. It is now essential for organisations to manage their data and applications in a multi-cloud environment, with the application, workload and data type determining the cloud used. Our research shows that nearly half (47%) of organisations understand that using multiple clouds will help
them address security and privacy concerns, while better enabling them to monetise their data. And ultimately, organisations that fail to embrace this will inevitably get left behind.
So, while it is now common for organisations to use several clouds to secure and manage their data and applications, with the drive for sovereignty, we’re seeing a review of usage to allow a mix of clouds with different levels of control and certification. This boils down to the type of data, for example its volume, sensitivity, criticality and exploitability; the data owner’s priorities in regard to it, such as its privacy or economic advantage; and regulations.
Data sovereignty therefore needs to start with the classification of data, to ensure specific assurances and capabilities on data residency, data protection, interoperability and portability. Organisations can then choose the best clouds for the job, from sovereign private clouds to sovereign public clouds to trusted public clouds - ensuring they comply with sovereignty and jurisdictional rules.
Until now much of this has been conducted with the confidence that cloud providers are upholding their promises of data sovereignty. Unfortunately, recent closer scrutiny by regulators suggests that not all providers are equal, with some being very publicly examined to ensure they’re not missing the mark. One provider is under investigation in Germany to ensure it’s meeting GDPR compliance, while another has just launched a new digital sovereignty pledge, leaving some customers questioning their track record up until now.
It’s therefore also essential that decision makers aren’t tripping themselves up by automatically assuming all global hyperscale cloud providers will support data sovereignty because the portfolio, data and applications will be limited to only what can be run in a region. The physical location of data isn’t enough to give the sovereignty stamp of approval. Almost all require jurisdictional control, which cannot be assumed to be met with a data resident cloud, particularly for U.S. or global cloud providers subject to the CLOUD Act and FISA ruling. The flow and management of the data is also crucially important, as are the consumer rights within the country you’re collecting that data from. It can be an incredibly confusing web to unweave and make sense of.
Data is undoubtably the driver of success and decision makers know this. A shining example is McDonald’s, where the company successfully used visitor data to assess the effectiveness of its iconic Piccadilly Circus billboards, and redirected marketing spend towards smaller, personalised adverts instead. This increased footfall to desired locations, and ultimately, drove up sales.
Research we conducted earlier this year shows that by 2024, 95% of organisations across EMEA will be looking to their data as a key revenue driver, with 46% recognising it as a significant source of revenue – up from 29% today. And with the data monetisation market already at $2.9 billion, and another $4+ billion to be captured by 2027, it’s no wonder that more business leaders want to tap in. According to the European Commission, the data economy in Europe is expected to grow GDP from 2.6% to 4.2% by 2025.
At the same time, companies are highly aware that their data strategies must be handled with care to ensure customer privacy. Concerns amongst consumers are increasing and getting louder in this growing discussion. There are plenty of fresh rules and regulations on the way, like DORA, which will help harmonise hard-to-reconcile regulations and reporting standards in banking across EMEA. Even with simplification like this on the horizon, meeting these regulations can be a complex journey for companies that operate across international borders.
Whilst the value of data is clear to see, there are often understandable reservations about regulations. Data sovereignty laws differ from one country to the next, with over 100 countries having their own standards on how data should be treated and stored within their sovereign borders. They also rarely stand still and change constantly. Organisations that fall foul of these can end up paying fines of hundreds of millions of dollars and be seen as unreliable and untrustworthy in the eyes of the consumer. Meta, for instance, is currently facing a €390 million fine from The Irish Data Protection Commission, after its Facebook and Instagram privacy breaches.
Most people (87%) are willing to walk away from a company if some kind of data breach happens. Their trust is just as valuable as hard currency. So, how can organisations perform this delicate dance in a way that allows them to mine customer data without betraying their customers’ trust? The answer lies in the ability to share, monetise and protect data that resides across multiple clouds.
Those looking to run without being tripped up should form relationships with one of the newly formed global networks of sovereign cloud providers who have specifically joined forces to ensure that data is protected, compliant and resident within a national territory. Working with an entity that has both national and local partners guarantees an organisation will be meeting niche requirements across the board. It also gives decision makers the ability to choose the right cloud for a specific data classification, with better governance around data mobility. By definition, these specialised clouds are operated by a sovereign entity, so they’re exempt from foreign jurisdictional control. With a sovereign
cloud, data is managed by national citizens with the relevant national security clearances.
As more organisations focus on monetising their data to capture revenue, sovereign clouds are becoming an integral part of a “cloud-smart” strategy, enabling organisations to run their business operations across multiple clouds to better serve their end customers and to gain strategic advantage. If management doesn’t have a clue about data sovereignty, make it your new year’s resolution to ensure these five key messages are understood by all. In a world where trust is everything, both between B2C and B2B, don’t let your data strategy get tripped up by misplaced assumptions about data sovereignty.
Ultimately, the reason why sovereignty is so important, is that it enables organisations to be innovative with their data and deliver new digital services. Historically, there has been a distinct lack of trust in the cloud, leading to a lack of innovation. Some of the biggest and most important creators of data, such as finance and healthcare, continue to avoid use of public cloud because of privacy fears. This significantly handicaps their ability to innovate, and means they are losing out on other benefits of cloud technology, such as cost-reduction, agility and scalability. It is therefore paramount that moving forward we avoid the mistakes of the past and ensure sovereign data from the start. Today, sovereign cloud is more and more perceived as a key enabler for a ‘data-driven’ innovation.
Jonathan Nguyen-Duy, Vice President, Global Field CISO, Fortinet writes that the CISO is now a key business enabler and leader, tasked with managing risk and delivering business value
The role of a CISO now consists of much more than just risk management and compliance. CISOs are now routinely consulted on business issues because digitized business processes are critical to any enterprise’s success, so cybersecurity is therefore a board-level concern. Indeed, cybersecurity is at the heart of most enterprise businesses because of e-commerce and the digital marketplace. For example, e-commerce, whether business-to-business or business-to-consumer transactions all depend on consistently good user experiences to deliver business outcomes. And this requires consistently good networking, security, and computing performance. Many organizations’ leadership teams recognize the business value of cybersecurity that comes from its ability to enable trusted communications and better user experiences. It’s now clear that enabling responsive computing operations is key to ensuring consistently good user experiences.
In short, today’s CISO’s role is no longer just about protecting the organization from cyber threats. The CISO is now a key busi-
ness enabler and leader, tasked with managing risk and delivering business value. Below are suggestions for how CISOs can help generate better business outcomes for their organizations.
There’s widespread agreement that more tools from more vendors is not a viable approach to addressing today’s broad array of cyber risks. Indeed, in most cases, multiple vendor relationships with the associated multiple training requirements, license management issues, consumption models, management consoles, and integration requirements, only add greater complexity and costs. Today, most CISOs are rationalizing their legacy investments from several dozen vendors, down to six to eight platforms around which their teams will build the automation for identification, protection, prevention, detection, response, and recovery. Vendor consolidation drives more consistent and responsive networking, security, and computing performance creating better user experiences.
As mentioned above, a key way CISOs can enable the business is by creating exceptional user experiences. A digital experience monitoring (DEM) solution provides IT teams with end-to-end network and application performance monitoring that helps improve digital experiences.
Because of the increase in remote work and the migration of applications to the cloud, many organizations are struggling to identify the root cause of application performance issues and traditional monitoring tools simply aren't up to the task. This is where a DEM tool can add significant value as it unifies data and helps teams to better understand networking, security, and cloud issues that may create latency in business processes, as well as see compute in terms of the cloud, figuring out CPU usage, and comprehending storage capabilities. Therefore, a good DEM solution can help IT teams spot potential problems at any point—across networking, security, and computing. This provides proactive visibility to mitigate issues that would otherwise lead to performance degradation.
Look for a DEM monitoring platform that gives your operations team good end-to-end performance visibility across networking, security, and computing. A good DEM solution should provide the ability to observe applications and services, from multiple vantage points, across any network, and even the infrastructure on which the application is hosted. Also look for features that unify and consolidate the monitoring of endpoints, network devices, infrastructure, applications, and cloud services with a single management console.
This capability enables the organization and the CISO to move from being reactive to being more predictive and proactive. Now, they can identify certain times of the day or times in the year when the network is going to need to scale up to enable customers to easily access applications.
DEM product usage is something that is happening consistently today because there is now an understanding that user experiences determine business outcomes. DEM solutions provide CISOs with the ability to demonstrate tangible results by showing how performance improvements lead to more brand interactions, e-commerce transactions, and new growth. You can really see this value over time after you've implemented solutions such as SD-WAN, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and secure access service edge (SASE).
With these types of products, CISOs can demonstrate tangible ROI in the form of fewer failed logins for better help desk productivity, which can be readily monetized. In addition, proactive network management means fewer network disruptions, which means more e-commerce transactions and revenue. Better user experiences can also be measured by better collaboration, or they can measure things over time like what's the meantime for DevOps, from code conception to launch. These
are types of things that CISOs can do today to demonstrate the value of cybersecurity.
After meeting with many CISOs and IT teams early this year, I have found there is universal agreement that it's all about the user experience. Perhaps it’s best expressed by this popular industry axiom: “The quality of service equals the quality of experience, and the quality of experience equals business outcomes.”
This statement reflects the trend that began during the pandemic. Now, everyone expects to be wowed with every interaction they have with a brand. People are demanding greater levels of customization and personalization, along with better security and privacy. There is an expectation that the data consumers generate be collected, stored, and handled by enterprises in a responsible manner. Of course, the main reason organizations want to hold data responsibly is that they need it to continuously enhance user experiences.
CISOs should keep cybersecurity as a main area of concern. However, they should also be working to maintain the quality of experience, the quality of service, and the quality of business outcomes. It's important to be compliant and have strong risk management, but that can be negated if CISOs don't deliver the outcomes. It's all about the results.
Today, for CISOs it's not just about the security threshold, managing risk, and being compliant with regulations. At the end of the day, CISOs have to enable the business as well.
PROVEN Robotics’ Mohammed Aldousari, Regional Robotics Lead, outlines the transition of robots from industrial applications to service roles that bisect and positively impact day-to-day human life.
In her book 'In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination,' novelist, literary critic, environmental activist, and inventor Margaret Atwood stated, "Human toolmakers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't changed for thousands of years because as far as we can tell the human template hasn't changed either." This statement seems true for the foreseeable future when we look back through our history, current trends, and fictional depictions of the time ahead.
Humanity has always found ways and means to improve things, whether by necessity or desire. The next stage encompasses the broader integration of robots into our personal and business lives.
Of course, robots have been serving as critical parts of engineering chains such as industrial production for many years, known as industrial robots. However, some robots, known as service robots, can operate as standalone, isolated machines that perform select tasks continuously, with minimal intervention or interruption. Service robots are relatively new to the market, and, as their name might imply, they are designed to support humans in their daily lives.
For the last few years, innovation around service robots has been limited, but that is rapidly changing, thanks to a convergence of
technologies that are bringing with them previously unheard-of levels of sophistication and capability to these machines.
As a result of increased innovation, and drivers such as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market for service robots is growing. As per a Service Robotics Market report and forecast published by Mordor Intelligence, the market is predicted to grow by CAGR of 44.9% between 2023 and 2028. As per the World Robotics 2021 Service Robot report, the market is expected to be worth US $70 billion by 2032.
Service robots offer several benefits when built to deliver specific services, including an improvement in efficiency since multiple types of routines can be specified and executed without failure, a boost in productivity due to their ability to perform tasks 24/7, and they offer safety benefits since they can take over dangerous and/or stressful jobs from people. As a result, they are ideal for several applications, such as:
• Customer services.
• Education and remote learning.
• Rehabilitation and medical recovery.
• Sanitation and cleanliness.
• Transport and delivery, and telepresence and social company. While the thought of automated services and sophisticated machinery and equipment may stir up human redundancy and retrenchment fears, the reality is quite different. With analysis, the large-scale benefits of using service robots for customers/owners and workers are evident across many fast-growing markets, which will be discussed below.
The logistic and warehousing sector is where volume goods are delivered, stacked, indexed, retrieved, and dispatched constantly. Given the repetitive, potentially dangerous, and strenuous nature of work in this scenario, service robots are the ideal fit since they can be programmed to address any of these segments of the warehousing operational processes. The form factor of these robots can be anything from autonomous vehicles to lifters and carriers and, more recently, even highly capable drones.
These relatively low intelligence machines are usually deployed in large numbers (to be helpful) and so are enjoying high demand. In fact, over the next decade, robots fitting these form factors are expected to see a CAGR of 21%.
Taking advantage of service robots in the cleaning and sanitization sector makes perfect sense as this sector is characterized by repetitive tasks that must be accomplished on a set schedule and the use of chemicals that might affect human health in the long run. Here, service robots can quickly clean and sanitize, so the environment, be it a home, workplace, place of leisure, or any other area, is fit for habitation and usage by humans.
Due to the importance of this massive sector and the raft of benefits service robots offer, the household and professional cleaning robots’ segment is the second largest among service robots. Various effective cleaning and sanitization tools can be built into service robots and can be either contact or non-contact-based, i.e., brushes and detergents or sprays and UV light. The use of service robots in the cleaning and sanitization sector was significantly pushed during the initial pandemic, as thousands of organizations deployed these robots around the world.
Service robots designed for customer service can automate many basic tasks via real-time face-to-face customer interactions. These robots can be mobile or stationary and have humanoid or non-humanoid form factors. Typically, investments in robots here result in the automation of several tasks and routines, high efficiency, workforce savings, and 24/7/365 productivity.
Several well-known service robots are already in this segment, including Pepper, Double 3, PuduBot, BellaBot, KettBot, HolaBot, Puductor 2, and Xenex. Apart from providing information and offering a limited range of services in response to customer inputs, these service robots, and others like them are important as they can gather engagement data from the experiences customers have with them. This can include parameters such as the nature of the query, success rate, time spent, and more.
Generally speaking, customer service robots enable people to locate products in a retail environment, assist with the price of an item, or even complete a particular task for the person. In addition, they can guide hospitality or retail customers through the environment. Over time, they have become more intuitive and, as a result, have become expected fixtures in retail outlets, shopping malls, and even family entertainment centers.
Pepper features face recognition software and a touchscreen display, an excellent example of a service robot designed to perceive emotions and form empathetic connections with users. Some of its successful use cases include performing airport concierge and hospital assistant duties.
Considering the benefits service robots already offer, the ongoing introduction of new, innovative, and capable robots, and a regional desire to shine as a hotspot for technology, the near future could see a tidal wave of service robot adoption within the Middle East. The key to this future is working with a qualified regional service provider that will enable you to deploy and reap the benefits of robotic innovation.
It’s been nearly seven decades since the first nuclear power station began operating. Thanks to digital transformation, this form of energy generation has never been safer - or more efficient, says Christopher Crosby, Global Nuclear Industry Principal, AVEVA
While the pandemic may have accelerated digital transformation across virtually every industry, a number of pre-existing factors have seen technological investment and innovation in the nuclear power sector rising over the past few years.
One of these is the increasing focus on sustainability. With global governments under pressure as worldwide temperatures rise year after year, nuclear power is seen as a means of meeting the energy requirements of a growing population without the need to emit the same level of emission by-products as hydrocarbons.
According to figures published by Statista, the cumulative capacity of nuclear power plants in operation worldwide reached approximately 382.5 gigawatts in 2021, a slight dip from its high of 396.6 in 20218. As of May 2022, there were 439 reactors in operation worldwide.
While safety has remained a concern for much of the general public – many of whom recall Chernobyl and, more recently,
Fukushima – a raft of technologies are helping ensure that today’s nuclear power plants are safer than they have been at any point over the six decades the world has been using them.
One of the key technologies that have helped make nuclear energy plants safer is artificial intelligence (AI). Before even building a plant, AI models can be used to simulate the behavior of nuclear reactors, and use the data collected to improve a reactor’s safety, as well as its design, performance and fuel loading.
In a running nuclear energy plant, AI can – with a combination of machine learning and physics-based models collecting data from sensors – predict possible accidents, and alert personnel to the faults in equipment that can cause these. With machine learning, scientists can analyze substantial volumes of computational data to more efficiently model reactor behavior.
The Tianwan Power Plant in Jiangsu will be the largest nuclear plant in 2027, providing electricity to millions of peo -
ple on China’s east coast. Here, engineers use the AVEVA PI System data management software to reduce the risks of radiation and extend equipment life by analyzing equipment performance parameters in real time, and by comparing their plant’s performance to other plants across China. Plant operations data is streamed into easily understandable flowcharts and dashboards, so that engineers are alerted to divergences from expected results and can quickly and proactively analyze and diagnose issues – and share these lessons with their peers and partners.
Another important tool that has seen advancement in recent years on the nuclear energy front is data analytics.
A 2018 paper by the New Mexico-based Sandia National Laboratories offers a useful breakdown of data analytics and the industrial internet of things (IOT) for nuclear power. Sensors create large amounts of structured data, which is analyzed by machine learning tools, such as neural networks, that use edge analytics to process incoming data, including from accidents and abnormal events. The incoming data is processed and streamed to plant operators.
If the data is in text form, it may be unstructured and less useful from an analytics perspective, since it relies on forms that may not be easy to read, such as an engineer’s notes. However, natural language processing (NLP) tools can help bodies such as the IAEA parse large bodies of text. Many rely on text analytic question-answer models, including IBM Watson commercialized technology.
AVEVA’s Integrated Management System (IMS), first developed and implemented for use with Finnish nuclear company TVO’s European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), factors in more than 800 pipe and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDS). The 3D PDMS model of the EPR is highly detailed, and includes all objects – including smallbore pipes, instrument lines and details of every support and anchor plate. Despite its large size, AVEVA’s 3D model can still fit on an average laptop.
Information flowing in from the model is fully automated, and not only offers alerts related to the condition of each component in the system but is also used to update AVEVA’s materials management software, VPRM, ensuring that both maintenance and procurement needs are taken care of.
The solution, deployed by the French power and renewable energy major AREVA at TVO’s Generation III+ reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland, offers reliably up-to-date design information at each location. Integrating data and work processes in ways that have not been possible before has brought greater control and achieved higher quality and consistency, leading to on-time delivery of the project. AREVA is now putting the toolset to work at new projects in France, Germany, Japan, and the US.
There is a lot of important work being done in the nuclear energy space, and technology offers a reliable, improving platform for this.
● As the world seeks out sustainable energy solutions to combat climate change, nuclear energy offers a reliable, efficient method of power generation
● While past incidents have fed public mistrust in nuclear energy, digital transformation and technology have made today’s facilities safer than ever
● AI and machine learning can build models that predict future accidents with increasing accuracy
● Data analytics, fed by IoT sensors, can both gather and analyze information coming in from a number of sources in a plant
It’s clear that advanced technologies offer a means of not only reducing the risks of accidents but also allow plants to function with greater safety and efficacy. Nearly 70 years after the world’s first nuclear power station began operating, in Obninsk in the Soviet Union in 1954, this means of sustainable energy generation has never been more valuable.
Ransomware attacks have dominated the headlines over the last two years and will continue to control the cybersecurity agenda in 2023 and beyond. While ransomware gangs continue to be successful in extorting money from businesses, those that do pay demands are financing the ransomware industry and further crime. With increasing attacks on areas like critical infrastructure and healthcare, it’s now become more than just a business issue. So how did we get here, what are the implications beyond the business world, and what do organisations need to do to break the cycle?
Cybercrime has existed since the 1980s, and since then the cybersecurity industry has been constantly evangelising (or “fear-mongering” depending on who you ask) over cyber threats. In the last five years, however, things have really ramped up, with reportedly a staggering 90% of organisations being affected by Ransomware in the last year alone. While the world becoming increasingly digitised has been a key contributor, I’d suggest the biggest driver is bad actors finding an effective way to monetise cybercrime: ransomware. Essentially just a more “commercial” form of malware, the methods of installing ransomware on a device, such as phishing or malicious URLs, haven’t changed much.
But financial gain has always been one of the leading motives for cybercriminals, so why did it take so long to reach this point? The answer highlights the darker implications of new digital innovations, as new digital technologies have given hacking groups the perfect getaway car for their crimes. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, and the blockchain technology that secures them, provide a reliable and almost untraceable method of extorting money. This has turned cybercriminal groups into money-making machines -
businesses in their own right. The term ‘gang’ hides just how sophisticated these organisations can be, leaked documents showed how Conti, one of the most notorious ransomware groups on the planet, has an HR department, performance reviews and even an “employee of the month”.
Beyond the first-hand financial and reputational damage caused by ransomware attacks, there is a bigger picture to consider. Cybercrime is an industry - it comprises experienced specialists and dedicated vendors of tools and services, it has even modernised to the point where RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) products can be bought on a subscription basis. Like any industry, it needs profits to grow, expand and develop. Paying Ransomware demands adds fuel to the fire, and it's not just businesses that will get caught up in the flames.
Governments, hospitals and critical infrastructure like transportation and schools are increasingly falling victim to ransomware attacks. Attacks on hospitals are becoming alarmingly common across the US and in Europe, and the US government convened over 30 countries to come together to address ongoing ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. This isn’t just nation-state cyberattacks (a separate issue, yet the lines are becoming increasingly blurred) but the same cybercriminals who attack businesses. Two affiliate gangs of Conti, the group previously mentioned, have attacked critical infrastructure sectors in Europe including energy and pharmaceuticals.
Even though many groups say they don’t target critical infrastructure due to ethics or fear of diplomatic repercussions, ransomware is indiscriminate - the methods used can be far-reaching,
Edwin Weijdema, Global Technologist, Veeam opines organisations need to protect themselves and help stop the (crypto) cash flow of this criminal industry.
and public services can easily be caught up in it. In fact, the volume and severity of ransomware attacks are now reaching a crisis point. As they affect organisations large and small, public and private around the world, protecting yourself and not paying the ransom are critical steps to ending the crisis. It's also a fair argument to say that organisations have a corporate responsibility to avoid paying ransomware demands and funding further crimes. But how can businesses approach this?
What businesses need to do
It might sound like the weight of the world is on the shoulders of an organisation’s cybersecurity team, and while there’s no denying that they are under a huge amount of pressure due to ransomware, we cannot stop it at the source. Instead, organisations need to protect themselves and help stop the (crypto) cash flow of this criminal industry.
Preventing ransomware takes a combination of people, processes and technology. It's also important to stress that, despite what people may think, the digital world and the real world are not that different. Open windows need to be locked at night (patching systems) double locks are better than one (multi-factor authentication), vital items or information needs to be locked away in a safe (data protection) and the biggest security risks are often people and staff (insider threats or failure to follow processes).
However, while prevention is a key element in this mission, and preventing an attack altogether will always be cheaper than dealing with one, it is also unrealistic to expect businesses to prevent all attacks at scale. The responsibility is not for businesses to eliminate successful ransomware attacks entirely but to reach a point where even in the case of a successful attack, the business is in a position where it doesn’t need to pay demands - they can say ‘no’ to ransomware.
This last line of defence is the backup and recovery processes in place. Ransomware demands can be ignored when an organisation has a backup of critical data with which to restore the encrypted system. All backups are not created equal, however. As ransomware and cybercriminals have become more sophisticated, cybercriminals now actively target backup repositories. According to a study this year, backup repositories were targeted in 93% of ransomware attacks, with 75% of these being successful.
The old rule for backups was to keep three copies of data, on two different types of media, with one stored offsite - known as the 3-2-1 rule. That offsite copy was in the case of a physical disaster, like a fire or a flood. Ransomware is however far more common than these nowadays, so in addition to a copy being offsite, modern backup strategies should include having a copy either offline, air-gapped (unreachable) or immutable (unchangeable). With this and a robust recovery process (design for recovery) in place, a business can reliably withstand and recover from ransomware attacks without even considering paying a ransom.
Ransomware has democratised data theft and turned cybercrime into a profitable, developing industry as we’ve never seen before. While it's not the responsibility of businesses to actively deal with or solve this problem at the source, enterprises do have a duty of care to other organisations and critical infrastructure around the world to not fuel the fire. Government bodies are now working towards finding solutions to the problem (if one can be found) but businesses need to invest in ransomware prevention to protect themselves from huge financial damage and the possibility of financing further crime.
"Like any industry, cybercrime needs profits to grow, expand and develop. Paying Ransomware demands adds fuel to the fire, and it's not just businesses that will get caught up in the flames."
The D-Link DSR-250v2 Unified Services VPN Router is a fantastic choice for small and medium-sized businesses looking for a reliable and high-performing networking solution. With dual WAN Gigabit Ethernet ports, the router can provide high availability for your Internet connections. Outbound Load Balancing helps to increase the performance and availability of your business applications.
The DSR-250v2 also supports mobile broadband networks using an extendable USB modem, providing an additional layer of redundancy for critical or backup applications. The secondary WAN port can also create a DMZ to isolate servers from the LAN.
Overall, the D-Link DSR-250v2 is a user-friendly, high-performance router that provides a great solution for businesses of all sizes.
The DSR-250v2 Comprehensive Management is a powerful tool that provides businesses with a range of advanced features, such as WAN fail-over, load balancing, and an integrated firewall. These features work together to help ensure that the network is reliable, flexible, and secure.
WAN fail-over is a critical feature that helps ensure network uptime in the event of a primary WAN connection failure. The DSR250v2 router can automatically switch to a secondary WAN connection to ensure that the network remains up and running. This feature is particularly useful for businesses that rely on a continuous connection to the Internet, such as e-commerce websites.
Highlights:
• Automatic failover to another link from available ISP when primary line is lost.
• Support 1 x GE WAN, 3 x GE LAN, 1 GE Configurable LAN/WAN and 1 x USB 3.0 port.
• 900/200 Mbps firewall/VPN throughput, 50,000 Concurrent Sessions, and 50/20 IPsec/SSL VPN Tunnels.
• Advanced routing, VLAN and IPsec/PPTP/L2TP/OpenVPN VPN Server/Client.
• Value-added office utilities to reduce OpEx/CAPEX.
• Traffic load balancing and Avoid complicated maintenance issues
Otis Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: OTIS), the world’s leading company for elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation and service, introduced its Otis ONE IoT service platform in the Middle East.
The Otis ONE solution combines Otis' more than 30 years of remote monitoring experience with the latest in cloud technology, machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT). It provides transparent, real-time monitoring to customers and service professionals, and can proactively identify and addresses potential issues to keep elevators and escalators running, and – in the event of a shutdown – resume ser-
vice faster. It is now available in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Powered by sensors installed on the elevators and escalators, the Otis ONE solution continuously monitors performance and can notify maintenance teams of their condition. Often, issues can be resolved remotely and before a breakdown. If technicians need to be dispached on site, they can access fault information and the parts needed for repair in advance, making it possible to quickly and effectively return the elevator to service.
more than two decades of data storage expertise and more than 20,000 SAN workload customers, NetApp is extending its leadership in NAS and Unified storage with a dedicated block storage line of products, enabling customers to collapse infrastructure silos and simplify their structured and unstructured data environments on-prem and in the cloud.
NetApp’s new ASA (All-Flash SAN Array) A-Series family simplifies the deployment of modern SAN infrastructure, while providing guaranteed availability and guaranteed efficiency with accompanying cost savings and leading sustainability. NetApp is also announcing a Ransomware Recovery Guarantee at a time when ransomware costs to global organizations are expected to rise from $20 billion in 2021 to $265 billion by 2031 .
The NetApp ASA A-Series is a new line of SAN-specific flash storage systems that delivers superior performance, scalability, data availability, efficiency, and hybrid cloud connectivity for business-critical applications and databases.
Highlights:
• Six Nines data availability guarantee (99.9999%)
• NetApp ASA delivers industry-leading effective capacity with industry-leading usable capacity combined with NetApp’s 4:1 Storage Efficiency
Guarantee
• Building on NetApp’s commitment to sustainability, NetApp ASA delivers up to 50% lower power consumption and associated carbon emissions than competitive offerings
• Modern data storage built on all-NVMe performance flash with NVMe/FC, NVMe/TCP, FC, and iSCSI protocols
• Continuous data access to all ASA arrays with symmetric active-active architecture typically found only on the most cost-prohibitive high-end arrays
• Storage Lifecycle Program, which offers customers non-disruptive upgrades to the latest storage controller technology every three, four, or five years at no additional cost
Highlights:
• The Otis ONE IoT digital service solution improves performance and equipment uptime by delivering real-time performance information and predictive insights for Otis and non-Otis elevators and escalators.
• The Otis ONE solution also powers the eView display in-car screen. During normal operation, the eView display can share information such as news and building updates with passengers.
• In the event of a technical breakdown, the screen can turn into an innovative video connection between the passengers in the elevator car and Otis experts at the OTISLINE customer center.
Worldwide government IT spending is forecast to total $589.8 billion in 2023, an increase of 7.6% from 2022, according to Gartner.
“Global challenges like inflation and workforce scarcity and their local repercussions are testing the abilities of government CIOs to respond with appropriate service delivery mechanisms and organizational accountability,” said Apeksha Kaushik, Principal Analyst at Gartner. “In addition, the “great resignation” and the competing demand from the commercial sector have forced governments to re-examine their approaches to counterbalance internal talent scarcity.”
In 2023, government organizations will sustain commitment to investing in digital programs. “Governments are increasingly spending their IT budgets to replace legacy applications. Gartner’s 2023 CIO and Technology Executive Survey showed that 57% of government CIOs plan to increase funding for application modernization in 2023, up from 42% in 2022,” said Kaushik.
This year, they will also ensure their digital projects endure mission impact. An increasing number of government institutions are already putting in place at least one digital metric linked directly to outcomes associated with their organization’s public purpose or mission. By 2026, Gartner foresees over 75% of governments will gauge digital transformation success by measuring the enduring mission impact.
In 2023, software will continue to be the highest growing segment in 2023 (see Table 1). Application modernization investments will increase supported by more software-as-a service-based solution offerings. The use of low-code application plat-
forms (LCAPs) is also on the rise and will further accelerate legacy modernization efforts.
Government spending on IT services will continue unabatedly in 2023. “Compensation constraints and limited resources to attract and retain IT talent is becoming an even bigger challenge today as many governments are facing IT talent shortage,” said Kaushik.
To continue modernizing and innovating critical IT infrastructure and applications, some government organizations will embrace a multisourced workforce strategy by optimizing the use of internal IT talent and investing in employee experience tools to empower and spark innovation, as well as partnering with external IT service providers to speed time to value.
Throughout 2023, government organizations will continue to invest in initiatives that improve access to digital services as constituents increasingly demand experiences that are equivalent to online customers.
While digital transformation remains a top priority for governments, some government CIOs have indicated they are falling short in realizing maximum benefits from their digital investments. “Government CIOs who are moving beyond scaling digital solutions across their critical services are ensuring that further investment in digital solutions can directly impact how they achieve the mission or public purpose of their organization,” said Kaushik. Source:
