CXO DX October 2021

» EDITORIAL

CHASING THE FUTURE The Dubai Expo 2020 has got off to a spectacular start, leading the way in showing that the world is getting back to business, having overcome in very significant measure the challenges that the pandemic had thrown up since last year. While the pandemic is not entirely behind us, we have the wherewithal now to subdue it, demonstrating the endurance of the human spirit.

The 2021 edition of GITEX will be yet another testament to this courageous spirit of mankind to get a move on amidst what seemed like a catastrophic phase for the whole world at large. While the pandemic may have slowed down economies, there is now the opportunity to speed up and catch up. The role of technologies as facilitators in enabling great economic progress is now very much a proven fact. Digital transformation has been truly effective for digitally native companies and for the early adopters in extracting greater value out of their businesses. Others who have lagged behind must quickly look at how they can adopt the new technologies purposefully. The quality of services to customers has improved, enabled by technologies such as AI and cloud solutions.

The pervasive impact will continue to change the way Businesses operate and how services are consumed and we will get to see more such examples of transformative technologies on display at the GITEX showcase. Alongside the gains, there have also been the growing threats from cyberattacks with ransomware and phishing attacks on the rise.

A redefined approach to cybersecurity is taking centerstage with SASE and Zero Trust solutions and vendors are responding to the enhanced threat landscape with all their commitment to meet customer needs.

Amidst all this, the hybrid work model has become entrenched and while there is a good percentage of people who have returned to their daily workplaces, there is also a percentage who work remotely. A transformed world is a reality we have to keep pace with in our journey ahead.

R. Narayan

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Pooja Panjwani Assistant Project Manager

Co-Founder & MD

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

PUBLISHED BY - Leap Media Solutions LLC

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

SAUMYADEEP HALDER

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Co-Founder & Editor in Chief

MALLIKA REGO Co-Founder & Director Client Solutions

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

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RAMAN NARAYAN

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Editor in Chief, CXO DX

Nihal Shetty Webmaster

REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City | www.cxodx.com OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» CONTENTS

30 » PARTNERING FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE 32 » A STEADY PACE 33 » DATA PROTECTION TO THE FOREFRONT

16 COVER FEATURE

16 » ENABLING SMARTER INDUSTRIES

34 » MANAGED SECURITY IN FOCUS 36 » THE POWER OF VIDEO COLLABORATION 38 » IN IN THE ACCELERATION MODE

CIO OUTLOOK

20 » BUILDING A MULTI-CLOUD STRATEGY

40 » CONTINUOUS ADVANCEMENTS

42 » THE CHALLENGES OF IPV4 EXHAUSTION

INTERVIEW

24 » SECURED CONNECTIVITY

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CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

45 » UNLOCKING DATA TO SET UP SUCCESS

48 » STEPS TO CYBERSECURITY HYGIENE 51 » THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE WORKPLACE THROUGH EDGE COMPUTING

26 » PARTNERS IN THE TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY 28 » MAKING WIRELESS SEAMLESS AND SECURE

44 » SECURING 5G PRIVATE MOBILE NETWORK

46 » THE WAY WE WORK: FROM ALL CHANGE TO YOU CHOOSE

COLUMN

22 » EMBRACING THE MULTI-CLOUD

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REGULARS

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06 » NEWS 36 » TECHSHOW 38 » TRENDS & STATS

LOOK SHARP. SOUND AWESOME.

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71%

Information workers who use video at least once a day2

#2 AND

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» NEWS

MINDWARE TO BRING BUSINESS CONTINUITY INTO THE SPOTLIGHT AT GITEX 2021 The distributor will be announcing an extensive array of distribution agreements that the company has signed over the last year Mindware, one of the leading regional IT Value-Added Distributors in MEA, has announced their presence at GITEX Technology Week. The Company’s participation will be centered around the theme of ‘Business Continuity’ with the aim of helping partners and their customers endure the current challenging environment, identify market opportunities, and eventually emerge stronger out of the pandemic era.

Nicholas Argyrides, General Manager – Gulf at Mindware says “GITEX this year is, unquestionably, a special one.

Following our absence last year due to the pandemic, after more than 20 years of participation, our aim this year is to welcome the world back to the event and to the region. The current turmoil in the market – lengthy lockdowns, ongoing budget cuts, industries bleeding losses – has been a major constraint to businesses. At Mind-

ware, we have been patiently and prudently able to withstand these challenges and even grow our business. We hope to utilize GITEX as a platform to listen, advise, guide, and support our channel partners in a similar manner, to ensure their business continuity.”

Mindware will have some of its key vendors joining at its GITEX stand – namely Dell Technologies, RSA (NetWitness & Archer), Forcepoint, and Huawei as Platinum sponsors; Acer, Barracuda, Citrix, Veritas, TrendMicro, Intel, Microsoft and Riverbed as Gold partners and Rubrik, Xerox, VadeSecure and Vertiv as Silver partners.

At the event, Mindware will be announcing an extensive array of distribution agreements that the company has signed over the last year, in addition to all the initiatives introduced to enrich, enable and

Nicholas Argyrides

General Manager – Gulf at Mindware support channel partners. The distributor is excited about the recent extension of operations into the African continent following the merging of three Midis Group subsidiaries into Mindware. This year, Mindware will be exhibiting at GITEX stand H3-D1, Hall 3.

SOPHOS ACCELERATES GROWTH OF MSP CONNECT MSPs manage Sophos solutions and services in the cloud-based Sophos Central platform, where they can oversee all customer installations ible monthly billing program. MSP Connect now supports more than 16,500 global and regional MSPs worldwide, a 54% increase since April 1, 2020, the start of Sophos’ fiscal year 2021.

Scott Barlow

VP, Global MSP and Cloud Alliances, Sophos Sophos MSP Connect achieved 67% yearover-year billings growth in the first quarter fiscal year 2022, ending June 30, 2021, and 55% year-over-year billings growth in fiscal year 2021, ending March 31, 2021, through MSP Connect Flex, Sophos’ flex-

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New to the MSP Connect portfolio is Sophos XDR, the industry’s only XDR solution that synchronizes native endpoint, server, firewall, and email security.

Sophos Intercept X with XDR and other pillar products – including Sophos Firewall and Sophos Cloud Security – share threat intelligence in real time for coordinated and automated response to threats as part of the Sophos adaptive cybersecurity ecosystem, a new open security architecture for protection. Built on a cloud-based data lake with the industry’s richest data set, the ecosystem improves based on the collective input of Sophos solutions and services, partners, customers, developers, and other security industry vendors.

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

MSPs further benefit with Sophos Managed Threat Response (MTR), a fully-managed threat hunting, detection and response service that provides a dedicated 24/7 security team to rapidly identify and neutralize sophisticated and complex threats. The customizable offering provides tremendous growth opportunities for partners and is one of the industry’s most widely used managed detection and response services, now with more than 5,000 customers.

“We’re seeing unprecedented demand for integrated security solutions and services that better protect customers and enable partners to expand their business,” said Scott Barlow, Sophos VP of global MSP and cloud alliances. “Sophos is constantly innovating, and we’re arming MSPs with the multilayered security needed for protection, visibility and compliance of on-premises and public cloud environments."

» NEWS

LOGICOM EXPANDS PARTNERSHIP WITH DELL TECHNOLOGIES IN UAE The expansion covers distribution rights for Dell Technologies’ solutions in the Server and Storage space Logicom Distribution has signed a strategic agreement with Dell Technologies, ahead of its forthcoming participation in the 2021 edition of GITEX Technology Week.

Following a successful collaboration in the GCC and the positive impact of Logicom’s marketing of Dell Technologies’ commercial desktops, notebooks, workstations, thin clients, servers and storage solutions in these markets, the two companies have agreed to extend their partnership in the UAE. The new agreement will allow Logicom to make available to its channel Dell Technologies’ industry leading solutions in the Server and Storage space.

“Logicom has maintained a strong and sustainable presence in the region for over two decades through strategic partnerships and by building a strong partner network,” said Spiros Rafailovits, General Manager

for UAE & Gulf at Logicom Distribution.

“Our core capabilities revolve around creating value for our vendors and creating and maximizing reach and awareness. We are looking forward to delivering the same high standards this year and beyond, providing our partners with the solutions and services required across all market segments in the MENA region.”

Through this collaboration, Dell Technologies will be able to continue its commitment to helping businesses on their digital transformation journey. In addition, Logicom’s value added services including supply chain and warehousing capabilities, financial support to channel, robust partner base and reach, as well as partners’ recruitment and enablement will serve as additional factors to drive business success.

This collaboration will also enhance Logicom’s offerings in the value-add space as

Spiros Rafailovits

General Manager for UAE & Gulf at Logicom Distribution the distributor continues to provide its partner community with best in class products from the top Technology vendors. The partnership will also allow Logicom to extend additional support to the channel including basic and advanced product trainings and certification, POC’s, technical support for tender and bid documents.

NOKIA EXHIBITS INNOVATIONS AT EXPO 2020 DUBAI Showcase includes innovative solutions such as the LuxTurrim Smart Pole and 5G hologram at the expo critical communications, public safety, autonomous transportation, and health and education, among others. Finland, one of the happiest nations in the world, as per the UN’s World Happiness Report, has chosen the theme of Sharing Future Happiness for its pavilion, and at this pavilion, Nokia is demonstrating technologies that that help create a more sustainable, equitable and happier world.

Nokia is demonstrating advanced technologies, including 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality at the Expo 2020 Dubai for six months from 1st October 2021 to 31st March 2022. As part of the Finnish pavilion, Nokia presents several use cases that enable society to be more productive, safer and sustainable for everyone. The demos are in line with the vision of the UAE Government to build a green economy for sustainable development.

Nokia's demonstration of the LuxTurrim Smart Pole shows how the pole can be leveraged for a range of smart city use cases such as Covid awareness detection, weather/air quality monitoring, smart lighting, infotainment, public safety and more. The smart pole is an ergonomic and compact solution that integrates a 5G base station, sensors, video cameras and other devices into a light pole. In addition, Nokia showcases a hologram using 5G

Rima Manna

Head of Middle East Market Unit, Nokia MEA technology to remotely deliver messages from Nokia executives from Finland to the visitors at the expo on specific dates to be booked in advance.

At Expo 2020 Dubai, Nokia's demonstrations cover several key areas, including

Rima Manna, Head of the Middle East Market Unit, Nokia MEA, said, “We are excited to participate in Expo 2020 Dubai, the first such massive expo in the UAE, and showcase our innovations that are aligned with the Government’s focus on the green economy. Finland is at the forefront of adopting the principles of circular economy for a sustainable world. We are proud of our Finnish heritage and to demonstrate disruptive technologies that help the word act together and increase people happiness.”

OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» NEWS

FORCEPOINT TO HIGHLIGHT DATA-FIRST SASE PLATFORM DURING GITEX 2021 The security vendor will also highlight its updated Global Channel Partner Program Forcepoint, a global leader in data-first cybersecurity, will be showcasing its full range of cybersecurity solutions at GITEX and delivering support for key channel partners as they create significant new business and revenue growth for customers transitioning to Forcepoint’s unique Data-first Secure Access Service Edge platform.

Forcepoint recently announced the company has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Security Service Edge (SSE) leader Bitglass. Forcepoint plans to integrate into the company’s Data-first SASE platform Bitglass’ best-in-class Security Service Edge (SSE) combination of CASB, SWG, ZTNA, CSPM, and DLP managed from a single cloud-based console with over 300 PoPs worldwide.

Forcepoint leads the industry in Data-first

SASE cybersecurity, enabling enterprise and government customers to add new cloud-first, hybrid-ready cybersecurity capabilities at the pace that suits their business requirements, not the vendor’s.

“Today’s reality is that people are working from everywhere, and progressive organizations must protect precious information assets in perimeter-less networking environments. Forcepoint’s Data-first SASE ensures customers can secure data access and usage by closing down attacks and opening up data us,” said Mahmoud Samy, Vice President Regional Sales, EMEA Emerging Region at Forcepoint.

designed to help partners grow faster and increase profitability, a simplification of how partners work with the company, and the opening up of partner-led services.

Forcepoint will be using GITEX to communicate the launch of its updated Global Channel Partner Program, a significant investment in systems and support and the introduction of new partner Levels

At GITEX 2021, Forcepoint is running live demos of all of its solutions with a presence on two strategic partner stands, Starlink (Hall 1, Booth C1) and Mindware (Hall 3, Stand D1).

Mahmoud Samy

Vice President Regional Sales, EMEA Emerging Region at Forcepoint

MANAGEENGINE TO LAUNCH NEW SOLUTIONS UNDER UNIFIED ENDPOINT SECURITY PORTFOLIO Senior executives and technology experts from the company will conduct live demonstrations and presentations in Hall 7, H7-C1 endpoint security offerings, along with new intelligent ransomware prevention capabilities as an add-on to ManageEngine’s flagship endpoint management solution, Desktop Central.

Rajesh Ganesan

Vice President, ManageEngine ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, will be exhibiting at GITEX 2021 and use it as a platform to launch its new endpoint data leak prevention tool under its unified

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Rajesh Ganesan, VP, ManageEngine said, “Organisations need to stay a step ahead of attackers, and that calls for a holistic approach to security designed from the ground up and augmented with tools that have intelligence and real-time information to thwart every single attack. We are excited to announce new capabilities in our security suite that significantly enhance our customers’ ability to stay on top of modern cyberattacks.”

Highlights at GITEX 2021: • Endpoint DLP, a new data loss prevention tool: Endpoint DLP leverages advanced data loss prevention strategies to safeguard sensitive information contained

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

within endpoints • Anti-Ransomware add-on: Desktop Central’s new Anti-Ransomware add-on can help organisations leverage insights to recover affected endpoints, learn from attacks and proactively secure endpoints by thwarting similar attacks in the future.

• Enhanced endpoint privilege management: The company will offer an exclusive preview of the improved PAM360 with new just-in-time (JIT) privilege elevation for Windows endpoints.

• Support for CIS compliance: ManageEngine’s vulnerability management solution with built-in remediation, Vulnerability Manager Plus, now facilitates compliance with over 75 CIS Benchmarks.

• Log360 UEBA updates: ManageEngine will highlight two key features implemented in its comprehensive security information and event management solution, Log360: dynamic peer grouping and custom anomaly model creation.

» NEWS

THREATQUOTIENT TO SHOWCASE THREATQ SOLUTION AT GITEX 2021 The efficiency and effectiveness of ThreatQuotient’s data-driven security operations with ThreatQ will be highlighted held from October 17-21. With ThreatQ, ThreatQuotient will be demonstrating a range of solutions that support data-driven approaches such as Extended Detected and Response (XDR) and Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms.

Firas Ghanem

Regional Director, Middle East & Pakistan at ThreatQuotient

ThreatQuotient, a leading security operations platform innovator, will be showcasing ThreatQ, their Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), at GITEX 2021 to be

ThreatQ is an open and extensible tool that empowers organizations to automate the intelligence lifecycle, quickly understand threats, make informed decisions, and accelerate detection and response.

It supports both standard and custom integrations, with feeds and security systems. ThreatQ also enables data-driven Extended Detection & Response (XDR).

Its adaptive data engine imports and aggregates external and internal data, curates and analyses it for decision making and action, and exports a prioritized data

flow across the infrastructure. Moreover, ThreatQ’s SOAR harmonizes disparate systems to orchestrate and automate response.

“At GITEX 2021, we plan to increase the visibility of our ThreatQ platform,” states Firas Ghanem, Regional Director, Middle East & Pakistan at ThreatQuotient. “We hope to engage with CISOs and CTI heads from across the region, as well as international visitors, to explain how ThreatQuotient can assist them in enhancing their security operations and CTI practice. GITEX is an important platform for ThreatQuotient; as the Middle East’s largest, most anticipated, and influential exhibitions, there is an excellent opportunity to connect with industry professionals, be it with our partners, existing or potential customers, or individual experts.”

WSO2 INTRODUCES ASGARDEO NEXT-GENERATION IDAAS WSO2 will demo solution at GITEX 2021 than ever for development teams to foster customer loyalty by giving them a great enrollment experience and building these users confidence in the protection of their personal information.”

As more consumers demand great digital experiences, enterprises must compete for customer loyalty via online interactions that are both inviting and secure. Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is a critical part of the experience, yet application developers often lack the expertise to incorporate CIAM into their client-facing applications. WSO2 addresses this challenge with today’s introduction of its next-generation identity as a service (IDaaS) solution, Asgardeo.

WSO2 will demonstrate the capabilities of Asgardeo at GITEX 2021, which is being held October 17 – 21, 2021 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Attendees can view the demos in WSO2’s booth, CC2-5 (Concourse 2, Booth 5).

“Organizations are accelerating their digital initiatives, but they often lose traction when applications fail to meet the com-

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Eric Newcomer WSO2 CTO

pany’s security policies. With Asgardeo, enterprises can now encode their security policies and standards to reduce development time and transform security reviews into simple check-the-box exercises,” said Eric Newcomer, WSO2 CTO. “At the same time, using Asgardeo, it’s easier

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

The early adopter release of Asgardeo, available now, sets a new industry standard for enabling developers without security expertise to easily embed advanced CIAM features into their apps within minutes. The IDaaS provides built-in CIAM best practices and workflows via a range of templates and other no code/low code options. It also lets developers integrate security code while working within familiar software development environments.

In addition, the cloud native infrastructure of Asgardeo offers the cost-effective scalability, reliability and agility that organizations creating digital experiences need while providing the privilege access control capabilities so critical to cloud native computing.

» NEWS

RIVERBED TO SHOWCASE END-TO-END VISIBILITY AND NETWORK AND ACCELERATION SOLUTIONS The vendor will have kiosks at stands of its distributors Mindware and StarLink With organizations rapidly accelerating digital transformation initiatives due to the pandemic, and the dramatic market shift to cloud services, SaaS apps, and hybrid/work-from-anywhere environments, businesses are now challenged with significantly increased IT complexity. As a result, the need for end-to-end visibility to ensure the productivity and performance of the business and digital services has never been more critical.

With strong growth in its visibility portfolio over the last couple of quarters, Riverbed recently reunited with Aternity, an independent division of Riverbed, to meet customer demand and fill a void in the market for full-fidelity, end-to-end visibility for the digital and hybrid enterprise. By joining best-in-breed technologies, Riverbed | Aternity delivers the most comprehensive offering with end-to-end visibility across networks, apps, cloud, and down to

the end-users to provide actionable data insights that drive real business outcomes.

At GITEX, Riverbed will use its participation at the Middle East’s largest technology event to showcase industry-leading end-toend visibility and network and acceleration solutions. Under the theme ‘Visibility, Security and Performance for the Modern, Hybrid Enterprise’, Riverbed intends to educate customers and prospects about how they can capitalise on new opportunities, address vulnerabilities, and fundamentally rethink how their organizations and employees can thrive in a world that’s digital-first, and hybrid by design.

“Riverbed sees GITEX as one of the main trade shows in our regional events calendar and this year is especially exciting given this announcement and its implications on the expansion and augmentation of our solution portfolio. This will translate to

Mena Migally

Regional Vice President, META, Riverbed

new and enhanced capabilities in end-toend visibility and application acceleration solutions for our customers,” said Mena Migally, Regional Vice President, META at Riverbed.

VECTRA TO HIGHLIGHT ZERO TRUST SECURITY PARTNERSHIP WITH MICROSOFT AI-driven Threat Detection and Response leader will demo Detect for Office 365 and Azure AD, the cloud-native solution attacker methods, and abandoning signature-based detection.

Vectra AI, the leader in AI-driven threat detection and response, today announced that it will participate in GITEX Technology Week 2021 at Microsoft’s stand, showing delegates how they can mitigate threats emerging from distributed and hybrid-remote workforces.

The tie-up with Microsoft follows the signing of an agreement between the two companies in July this year, in which Vectra brought the power of its Threat Detection and Reponse platform’s Zero Trust capabilities to Microsoft platforms through Detect for Office 365 and Azure AD. Vectra Cognito offers broad coverage across Office 365 attack vectors, using advanced AI that understands attacker methods as it relates to account-privilege hijacking.

Zero Trust architectures allow organi-

At Microsoft’s GITEX 2021 hub, Vectra will demonstrate the power of Vectra Detect for Office 365 and Azure AD, the industry's first AI-based detection and response solution for the cloud.

Ammar Enaya

Regional Director - METNA, Vectra AI zations to enhance their visibility of insider threats, by making no assumptions about the status of a process inside their digital perimeter. Artificial intelligence plays a significant role in the approach, building complex models of behaviors,

“Microsoft has built a robust Zero Trust framework that establishes best practices and is an excellent guide for businesses,” said Ammar Enaya, regional director METNA, Vectra AI. “Vectra offers an equally robust realization of those principles and so our partnership with Microsoft to build the Cognito-based solution ‘Detect for Office 365 and Azure AD’ was a logical step for both our companies. We now protect Microsoft customers in the cloud with some of the industry’s most reliable detection tools.”

OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» NEWS

VMWARE TO SHOWCASE CLOUD AND MODERN APPS INNOVATIONS AT GITEX VMware drives digital transformation for the new normal through multi-cloud and apps modernization Aligning with GITEX’s theme of ‘Creating a Bolder Digital Future Together’, VMware will demonstrate how organizations can thrive amid current challenges by embracing a multi-cloud approach that provides the flexibility to launch modern applications and empower a secure, distributed workforce.

Ahmed Auda

Managing Director – Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, VMware

VMware will showcase its latest innovations in multi-cloud, apps modernisation, digital workspace, and security at GITEX Technology Week on October 17 – 21, 2021.

Visitors to VMware’s stand in Hall 6 (stand H6 - B10) will experience its stateof-the-art technologies and witness firsthand how its solutions can help solve customers’ challenges. The company will showcase an enterprise-class modern applications development platform based on its Tanzu portfolio deployed across multi-cloud environments with intrinsic security. VMware will also showcase an exceptional end-user experience for distributed teams, using its cloud services to demonstrate VMware Anywhere Work-

space with security tools and governance in place.

During the show, VMware will host several technology sessions, presenting its latest technologies and their use cases.

Visitors will also have the chance to attend sessions on solutions including Network Security, VMware NSX, Anywhere Workspace, and VMware Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).

Ahmed Auda, MD – Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, VMware, said: “Enterprises increasingly recognise the value of technology as an enabler of innovation, and continuity amid challenging times.

VMware helps organisations from both the public and private sector to embrace a multi-cloud approach that opens-up a world of innovation, while enhancing security and increasing agility.”

HID GLOBAL TO SHOWCASE INNOVATION IN IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION MANAGEMENT AND SECURE ISSUANCE New Technologies Empower People and Businesses to Better Protect Physical and Digital Workplaces and Identities—Anytime, Anywhere.

HID Global, a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions will showcase its latest Identity Authentication Management Solutions (IAMS) and Secure Issuance (SI) solutions at this year’s GITEX. The complex and expanding data economy is leaving people and organizations more exposed than ever to security and privacy threats. HID Global addresses these challenges with solutions ranging from physical access control to multi-factor authentication to cloud-based printing and financial instant issuance, making it possible for people to transact safely, work productively, and travel freely.

“As the world continues to adapt to current conditions while also looking to the future, we understand that no person, device, or workplace can go unprotected.

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HID Global is supporting our end-users and partners in choosing the right Identity and Access Management and Secure Issuance solutions to ensure a safe return to work for all employees and stakeholders,” said Bilal Saleem, Channel Partner Sales Manager, HID Global. “This year, we look forward to reconnecting with thought leaders and influencers in the industry while highlighting our solutions that secure access to physical and digital resources, as well as streamlining card issuance and personalization.”

When it comes to organizations, security is no longer limited to physical security.

As businesses continue to digitize and enterprise resources continue to grow in terms of quantity and complexity, protecting every digital asset also grows in complexity.

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

Key highlights for HID Global’s solutions at GITEX include: • Advanced multi-factor authentication (MFA) – ensures that only necessary users gain access to critical networks, applications, and data—with the highest level of convenience possible.

• Secure physical and logical access management – supports Zero Trust security initiatives at all levels, including who is accessing what areas within your workspace.

• Identity management and credentialing – ensures that users and devices are securely issued high assurance factors and that their identity lifecycle is managed properly.

• Insights, analytics, and reporting tie complex data together through AI-powered intelligence, allowing for rapid decision-making as well as meeting compliance requirements on time.

» NEWS

SITECORE LAUNCHES ENTERPRISE SAAS OFFERING At Sitecore Symposium, company shares its plan to help brands capitalize on the cloud to meet increasing consumer content, experience and commerce demands Sitecore has announced Sitecore Experience Manager Cloud – the first entirely cloud-native CMS offering the design flexibility, integration-friendliness, and authoring experience for business users to create and deliver personalized digital experiences. The company also announces a range of new product updates that integrate recent acquisitions, and the launch of a subscription-based learning resource.

Sitecore’s new SaaS DXP, which is available for customers from today in most regions globally, is built on a composable architecture, so end users can buy best-ofbreed products or an integrated platform that scales to support high volume content, visitor, and data processing needs.

The composable approach enables brands to capitalize on Sitecore’s 1200+ strong partner ecosystem, extensive developer network, and deep-rooted expertise in

helping enterprise businesses manage and enhance the customer experience across all industries and regions.

This new direction for Sitecore, confirms its ambitious growth plans announced earlier this year when the company secured $1.2billion investment – the largest-ever capital investment in the martech space, which spurred the acquisitions of Boxever, Four51, Moosend and Reflektion.

Brands can take a modular approach to achieving their digital experience goals as Sitecore has integrated its portfolio via a composable architecture in the cloud.

Steve Tzikakis, Sitecore CEO said, “Our recent acquisitions have been fundamental to building the most advanced composable platform available today, something we see as the future of DXP. Customer expectations are everchanging, so it is es-

Steve Tzikakis Sitecore CEO

sential brands are empowered to work in real-time, adapting experiences to keep up with the demand. We’re supporting them with the technology to make this possible.

By bringing our portfolio together in the cloud, brands can achieve this, and enjoy a truly integrated, flexible and scalable platform – delivering personalized experiences for their customers, whatever the channel.”

BARRACUDA TO SHOWCASE HOW BUSINESSES CAN SECURELY EMBRACE CLOUD Security leader is set to demonstrate its range of enterprise-grade security solutions that offer consumer-level ease of use

Chris Ross

SVP International Sales, Barracuda Networks This year, Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, will return to GITEX with a full range of cybersecurity solutions that enable businesses to secure their mission-critical

applications and data in a digitally transformed world. The company’s technology focus will be on its Cloud Application Protection solution which provides powerful application security that is easy to use and helps protect applications deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid. Barracuda is also set to unveil expanded incident response capabilities for its Total Email Protection offering, a suite of powerful security solutions that offer protection against a wide range of email threats.

“Middle East businesses have faced unprecedented change over the last 18 months and rapid digitalisation has left many vulnerable to cyberattack. While the threat landscape is indeed daunting, Barracuda’s message to attendees is that robust protection is both affordable and easy to deploy. While packed with powerful features, Barracuda’s enterprise-grade se-

curity solutions offer consumer-level ease of use, enabling organisations to focus on realising their digital ambitions with confidence in the security of their digital services and assets,” said Chris Ross, SVP International Sales, Barracuda Networks.

In its latest report title 'The state of application security in 2021', Barracuda found that 72% of organisations got breached through web applications. Moreover, the causes of these attacks varied, with top threats including bad bots (43%), software supply chain attacks (39%), vulnerability detection (38%), and securing APIs (37%). By leveraging machine learning, vulnerability scanning and remediation, and Advanced Threat Protection, Barracuda Cloud Application Protection provides active threat intelligence for powerful protection against these and other application threat vectors.

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» INTERVIEW

ENGENIUS ENHANCES SECURITY FOCUS WITH NEW CLOUD PRO ACCESS POINTS FEATURING AIRGENIE AirGenie is an auto system that helps enable an industry-leading security platform in order to completely protect the airspace from wireless attacks EnGenius, a globally leading networking brand, is introducing the new EnGenius Cloud PRO Access points featuring prebuilt enterprise grade security features to secure the wireless networks against malicious cyber-attacks.

The new EnGenius Cloud PRO Access points ECW 622, ECW 632 and ECW 735 all feature the EnGenius AirGenie, an auto system that allows network administrators to meet their requirements and design a network architecture that provides an industry-leading security platform in order to completely protect the airspace from wireless attacks. AirGenie helps list down the list of Suspicious SSID with Type and Severity so that you could judge and action.

Alishan Zaidi, Sales Director at EnGenius says, “EnGenius has always been a pioneer of breakthrough networking tech-

nologies and with our AI enabled EnGenius Cloud, we helped deliver an unprecedented ease and efficiency in network management, right from deployment to monitoring and troubleshooting. We are now enhancing our Cloud enabled Access Points portfolio with these launches.”

AirGenie provides the advance WIDS technology for protection of wireless connection in addition to WIPS. WIDS (Wireless intrusion detection system) monitors the radio spectrum used by wireless LANs for the presence of unauthorized, rogue APs and the wireless attack tools, and immediately alerts a systems administrator whenever a rogue AP is detected.

WIPS (Wireless Intrusion Prevention System) monitors the radio spectrum for the presence of unauthorized APs (intrusion detection) and can automatically take countermeasures (intrusion prevention).

Alishan Zaidi

Sales Director, EnGenius It is able to accurately detect and automatically classify a threat and prevent the connections between the rogue AP and wireless clients.

The Pro AP comes with 1-year Pro license.

SHIVA IT DISTRIBUTION SIGNS UP AS GCC DISTRIBUTOR FOR HIKVISION’S WIFI AND SMB PRODUCTS The distributor will launch new WiFi products from Hikvision on 19th October at an event in Crowne Plaza, Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai Shiva IT Distribution, part of Shiva Group of companies and the exclusive GCC distributor for Hikvision’s Wifi products will be showcasing the latest range of WiFI and SMB focused solutions from Hikvision, a global leader in video surveillance and IoT solutions during a Product Roadshow. The Roadshow is being held at the Crowne Plaza on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai from 17th to 21st October, coinciding with the GITEX Technology Week and with a large number of channel partners expected to attend.

On the 3rd day of the Roadshow, there will be an exclusive product launch. The event will be an opportunity for partners to understand the Hikvision solutions focus in detail.

As distributor for Hikvision Shiva IT Distribution will look to address the requirements of the market for advanced WiFI and SMB focused range of products.

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dedicated team that will work closely with reseller, retailer and SI partners on Hikvision product requirements, offering training, pre-sales expertise and other hands on support as required.”

The distributor intends to have extensive virtual as well as hands on product training sessions for its partners.

Naresh Kumar Lohano

Founder & CEO of Shiva Group of Companies Naresh Kumar Lohano Founder & CEO of Shiva group of companies said, “We are happy to be appointed as distributor for Hikvision, who are a world leader in supplying networking products. We have a

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Syed Yusuf Maricar, General Manager at Shiva Group of companies said, “Our company has extensive reach across GCC channels and we have been opening new offices across the region to ensure our channel gets adequate support. We will be working closely with Hikvision to get the right training done for our partners that will enable them to succeed in winning more business within the SMB segment in their respective markets.”

» COVER FEATURE

ENABLING SMARTER INDUSTRIES

AVEVA through its extensive range of solutions plays a pivotal role in helping industries undertake digital transformation successfully

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igital transformation in the industrial sector has been a significant game changer. The ongoing pandemic has forced industrial markets to accelerate their digitalization initiatives, with organizations predominantly shifting to virtual mediums to keep their workforces connected, agile, and safe. Industrial sectors, in particular, are opting for Digital Twin, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud technologies to survive and succeed in this new and prevailing era.

Dr Tariq Aslam, Head of Middle East & Africa, AVEVA says, “AVEVA is a pioneer of the value that digitization has brought to industries. Our technology delivers data, resources, and insights that enterprises need to empower the modern workforce and yield optimal results. With our tailored solutions, we help customers become more sustainable and profitable across engineering and operations, simultaneously maximizing asset, production and supply chain capabilities.”

AVEVA has been playing a key role in revolutionizing and empowering the much needed digital transformation across industrial sectors. Further by helping companies digitalize every aspect of their business with AVEVA’s technologies, it is playing the role of an advocate for organizations achieving greater sustainability.

He adds, “Digital transformation means digital maturity, and that in turn, contributes to enhanced performance and productivity, smarter operations, and sustainable efficiency across the industrial workplace. AVEVA revolutionizes enterprises by encouraging them to re-evaluate how traditional work is conducted and

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» COVER FEATURE implementing strategic solutions that allow them to adapt their activities to progressive digital change.”

Digital technologies are already slashing carbon emissions by up to fifteen per cent, across energy, manufacturing, agriculture, buildings, services, transportation and traffic management.

“At AVEVA, we have the expertise, network, and capabilities to back this development and nurture the sustainable industries of the future, transforming linear economies into circular ones.

We recognize the responsibility that we, as pioneers of digital transformation, have in producing, maintaining, and maximizing sustainable outcomes for industries. From increasing energy efficiency, reducing waste, to boosting circularity throughout engineering and operations, sustainability is at the forefront of AVEVA’S mission. We strive to make this evident by embedding it in every aspect of our work – be that in operations, culture, or through the software we develop. Fuelling economies with clean energy and replacing coal, gas and oil-fired power stations with renewable energy sources such as wind or solar farms represents a primary pillar in our approach.”

Cities in the GCC region and around the world are now growing at an unprecedented rate, so digital twins are imperative for the successful management of the environmental impact of construction.

Digital twinning has also been pivotal in the development of the Expo 2020 Dubai. Using a digital twin allows for the connection of more than 130 buildings on site – resulting in informed decision making, valued energy efficiency and a centralised building-management system that benefits visitors and operators alike.

Utilities in the digital age

Power plant operations are becoming more digital by the day. The combination of assets with connected devices, and by extension, the data captured for each of these assets, introduces the need for technology solutions to harmonize disparate data. Due to these

AVEVA works with global biofuels leader, Neste, and drives digital innovation for sustainable outcomes across its business.

Using the AVEVA Unified Supply Chain in the cloud, the team manages model-building, and production planning in one digital space, allowing them to make quick decisions from anywhere in the world. Production is optimized automatically, and Neste is simultaneously achieving its target to become carbon neutral by 2035, as emissions are reduced from the conventional refining and production of renewable diesels with this solution.

With over 50 years of industrial software innovation, AVEVA enables 19 of the top 20 petroleum companies, more than 300 refineries, most of the world's petrochemical crackers, and 900K miles of pipeline with the most comprehensive portfolio that ties profitability to sustainability goals.

Digital Twins

‘Digital twins’ form a major part of AVEVA’s solution. Digital twins are a virtual replica of actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems and more. Such technologies can aid in testing the efficiency and safety of new equipment or procedures prior to their launch in the real world, where it becomes more expensive and complicated to fix any issues. Digital twins are also helpful in gauging the improvement of ongoing operations, as well as for training employees.

More importantly, a digital twin can help predict potential failures of their physical counterpart before they happen. Knowing the current state of an asset, the digital model can use predictive learning technology to proactively identify and even prevent potential asset failures.

“Digital twin technology is increasingly being utilized by organisations as part of their digital transformation journey, and at AVEVA, we provide a practical and efficient way of creating, integrating and maintaining digital twins to facilitate improved ways of working,” says Dr Tariq.

Dr Tariq Aslam Head of Middle East & Africa, AVEVA

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» COVER FEATURE digital expectations, power generation companies are challenged with managing rising market complexity, disruptive technology, government regulations, and an ever-increasing demand for highly trained and skilled operators.

“Our digital twinning, in combination with a cloud-first approach and asset performance management technology elevates power plant efficiency and performance optimization. What’s more AVEVA Predictive Analytics software enables operations and maintenance personnel to be more proactive in their work; instead of shutting down a section of the power plant immediately due to a hitch, the problematic situation can be assessed. It provides early warning notification and diagnosis of equipment issues well in advance of failure. For asset-intensive industrial organizations, this increases reliability while reducing operations and maintenance downtime and related expenditures,” says Dr. Tariq.

Loads can be shifted to reduce asset strain, or necessary maintenance can be scheduled during a planned outage. The software tools further allow the ordering of replacement parts so that impact on operations can be minimized. AVEVA Predictive Analytics can also forecast and determine the remaining useful life of assets once an anomaly is detected, and consequently, teams can then leverage this data to understand if the asset can be operated until the next planned maintenance outage or if an urgent shutdown is required.

AVEVA Predictive Analytics integrates with a wide variety of control and monitoring systems and can be deployed on premise or in the cloud. The system is highly expansive and can be used to monitor a single asset, plant or hundreds of remote assets across multiple sites. Moreover, the results of AVEVA Predictive Analytics models can be easily integrated with other business systems through web services.

“Our solutions for the power generation sector are formulated by co-innovating with key clients worldwide. These solutions can be applied to nuclear, fossil fuel, and renewable energy generation.

AVEVA offers organizations a holistic asset lifecycle view, and our capabilities are a perfect fit for the power industry operators seeking to digitally transform their operations,” adds Dr. Tariq.

AVEVA’s Smart Cities solutions

AVEVA’s vast portfolio of smart city solutions span facilities management, utilities, transportation, and data centres, and many cities have become “smart” using AVEVA’s software.

For instance, Nava Raipur in central India is the country’s first metropolitan greenfield smart city. It was designed from the ground up to deliver an exceptional quality of life through safety, efficiency, sustainability, and habitability. The city has established a dedicated zoning system for residential, commercial, and industrial sectors, with recreational space accounting for nearly 30% of the geography. The city was structured to be a model for smart growth and endeavours to accommodate a population of 600,000 citizens by 2031.

To form the city’s infrastructural backbone, AVEVA experts connected the city’s eight primary operational systems into an

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integrated command-and-control center (ICCC) powered by AVEVA Unified Operation Centre. This platform acts as a hub for real-time system information, situational awareness, and response, including water, power, streetlighting, public transportation, traffic management, CCTV, contact centers, and e-governance. The combined smart city solution enhances sustainability and operational efficiency, delivering civic services to citizens, communities, businesses, and other stakeholders.

Nava Raipur is delivering value to its citizens as well as municipal authorities with acute, resilient and sustainable civic services, all incorporated and executed via digitalization.

“Today, economic resilience is closely tied to a city’s digital infrastructure. With the rate of data consumption growing exponentially, cities that invest in innovative technologies and smart city solutions will be the ones that flourish in the years to come,” says Dr. Tariq.

A merger that unlocks value

In March this year, AVEVA and OSIsoft merged to meet the needs of industrial companies and accelerate their digital transformation. The combined portfolio brings OSIsoft’s data management together with AVEVA’s industrial software to unlock the concept of Performance Intelligence.

“Performance Intelligence presents organizations with crucial and reliable data they need to better measure and understand the entire industrial lifecycle. Providing greater operational agility and resilience, Performance Intelligence connects information and AI with human insight, to enable faster and more accurate decision making,” says Dr. Tariq.

Areas where Performance Intelligence is likely to have the strongest impact include organizational productivity, operational agility, and sustainability. It creates a data foundation for continuous improvement and learning – going above and beyond AI, with an integrated approach that merges smart analytics, big data, cloud and a deep understanding of the industrial sector in a solution that can be adapted to differing customer needs.

By harmonizing operational data and insight, industrial clients can predict outcomes, provide guidance, and persuade workers to act faster and with precision. This, in turn drives, sustainable digital transformation.

AVEVA Connect and AVEVA Flex

AVEVA’s common cloud platform called AVEVA Connect provides a central location to securely access the broadest and deepest industrial software-as-a-service (SaaS) portfolio enhanced by the power of industrial AI. The platform provides a flexible, powerful set of tools that turn opportunities into business value, through fast, collaborative, and secure methods.

“With AVEVA Connect, customers can remove organizational silos and enable transparent, real-time collaboration in a shared environment to allow unmatched levels of workforce efficiency.

The cloud is the key to collaboration, especially across distributed teams,” says Dr. Tariq.

» COVER FEATURE Additionally, with AVEVA Flex, organizations can revolutionize how they buy and consume industrial software, by achieving faster return-on-investment and removing traditional barriers to software adoption with a flexible subscription program. The AVEVA Flex subscription program offers any mix of cloud, hybrid and on-premises solutions across our portfolio. What’s more, with AVEVA Operations Control available via the AVEVA Flex subscription program, channel partners can now offer outcome-based solutions and services to their customers.

AVEVA’s industrial customers who employ these cloud-focused digital transformation initiatives have reported up to a 20% increase in IT agility, a 30% increase in production, a 25% improvement in workforce efficiency and significant reductions in supply chain decision time from two days to two hours through value chain optimization.

“AVEVA’s offering is remarkable because it enables simple and flexible pricing – allowing our channel partners to differentiate themselves in the market and stay ahead of their competition,” Dr. Tariq adds.

Strategic partnerships

AVEVA has strong partnerships with leading technology vendors like Microsoft and Schneider Electric. These relationships help the vendor develop innovative solutions jointly to address the needs of different industries, drawing on each other’s strengths.

“At AVEVA, we recognize the power of partnership in achieving sustainable targets. We rely on trusted partners like Schneider Electric and Microsoft to help customers build resilient, zero-carbon operations that unlock inclusive and sustainable growth,” says Dr. Tariq.

Together, Schneider Electric and AVEVA have developed a joint digital transformation solution that combines energy management, automation systems and services with innovative industrial software. The companies have worked on hundreds of joint implementations on premise, on site and in the cloud. AVEVA’s industrial software extends Schneider Electric EcoStruxure solutions for tangible results: enriched asset performance, higher return on capital, increased energy efficiency and enhanced plant sustainability.

“We have been collaborating with Microsoft to support our customer vision of creating profitable and sustainable business outcomes. Our portfolio breadth, combined with Microsoft’s technology solutions, enables customers to deploy faster, reduce energy consumption, cut emissions, and share collaborative innovation, boosting efficiency for all. Together, we have the power to elevate how the industries can operate – by marrying the power of industrial data, AI and human insight with the scale, breadth and latency of cloud,” Dr. Tariq adds.

AVEVA recently announced its participation in Microsoft’s Sustainability Global Campaign. As one of Microsoft’s leading partners, AVEVA enables customers to execute their net-zero carbon pledges through ground-breaking sustainability solutions.

"Our digital twinning, in combination with a cloud-first approach and asset performance management technology elevates power plant efficiency and performance optimization. What’s more AVEVA Predictive Analytics software enables operations and maintenance personnel to be more proactive in their work; instead of shutting down a section of the power plant immediately due to a hitch, the problematic situation can be assessed. It provides early warning notification and diagnosis of equipment issues well in advance of failure."

“Developing green industrial processes are increasingly becoming a top priority for organizations as they reduce any adverse impact on the environment, which is why we work together with Microsoft to enhance customers’ experiences across the industrial value chain. With Energy, for example, organizations deploying combined AVEVA Energy Management and Performance Solutions also benefit from using Microsoft Energy Core solutions. Through this process, customers benefit from reductions in project implementation times of up to 60%, thanks to a real-time, 360-degree view of the value chain, as well as predictive maintenance and operations,” explains Dr. Tariq.

AVEVA was further recognized as the 2021 Microsoft Energy Partner of the Year winner as well as named a finalist for 2021 Microsoft Sustainability Changemaker Partner of the Year Award.

“Our collaboration with these partners empowers us to advance our sustainability outcomes. When we partner with strategic allies who are leaders in innovation and share our sustainability values, we are confident that our software has the potential for even greater positive impact because of how it is deployed.”

With those larger goals in in the forefront, AVEVA has demonstrated that digital transformation and sustainability go hand in hand, towards enabling better smarter industries.

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» CIO OUTLOOK

BUILDING A MULTI-CLOUD STRATEGY igi Mathew Thomas, Group Head - IT & Digital Transformation at Ittihad International Investment LLC shares his views on the multi-cloud journey

jectives of what it is aiming to achieve out of the cloud journey. This could be agility, improved performance and flexibility or a vision to digitally transform the organization or even having the strategy more aligned to work on opex based model etc.

Once the objectives are defined the business and technology should be aligned to these objects and the digital strategy formulated.

Discuss what challenges confronts organizations moving from legacy to the cloud? What do you do with some critical applications that need to remain on premise?

Moving applications and infrastructure from legacy to cloud can be a big and daunting endeavor for organizations. Such initiatives come clubbed with significant challenges. Some of the key ones I have encountered in my journeys are:

On Premise and / or Legacy Integrations: There will always be pieces of the IT landscape which will be on prem. These could be active directory or file servers, legacy applications, or various operations related systems like Manufacturing Execution systems, weigh bridges systems, industrial IOT. Such systems and their links to the cloud landscape need to factor in the digital strategy to ensure business objectives are realized.

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Change management: One of the biggest challenges when it comes to cloud adoption is the people and processes associated with it and the changes which must be adopted or adapted by them. This can take time and the transitions must be well

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planned for that so that this can be a smooth exercise. When coupled with ample adoption workshops, it can reap the benefits the business looks for.

Architecture and Security: With more and more of the IT landscape moving onto the public or private cloud or even a combination of the both, a significant focus must be given to architect a robust, dependable platform and businesses should take into consideration redundancies, high availability, Disaster recovery, Business continuity plan etc. And above all this well-defined security layers to factor in new threats the business could face with the new exposure.

Clear Strategy and Business Alignment: The business should clearly define the ob-

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

Mission and business critical applications by their very definition need to function continuously in order for the business and its segments to operate and be successful.

If such applications and its related infrastructure are identified to be on-premise,

» CIO OUTLOOK one of the key aspect the IT and Business needs to define is support expectancies, SLAs, redundancy and high availability to ensure the applications are able to function even under sub-optimal or incident or worst cast disaster scenarios and circumstances. For this to work effectively IT must tier these applications and its infrastructure with the business Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans.

Sometimes such needs to have certain infrastructure to be on premise or within the region could come as part of government regulations and compliances. Generally, ERP, CRM, Operation applications, business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics would form the mission critical applications portfolio of an organization.

Does the presence of local data centres of the hyperscalers/public cloud providers boost confidence of the CIOs and other Management stakeholders in accelerating cloud deployments?

Yes definitely! First of this would help in getting over psychological barriers which the CIOs and over and above the management stakeholders would have, and this would give them confidence in considering cloud deployments in their digital strategies. Also the presence locally, would bolster confidence in private and government sector businesses as the hyperscalers and public cloud providers will have to adhere to local and international data regulation and compliance guidelines, as well as the comfort and fall back support system from the local judicial system in worst case scenario where the relations do go south. We should also take into consideration the presence of the local support and account management teams would better the relationship and its interactions between the business and the service provider.

How important is seamless applications performance for an organization that has adopted a multi-cloud environment?

This is extremely important as the applications, and the architecture are now very closely knit with the business strategy and vision. The applications failure to perform could and most likely will lead to negative consequences, in most cases causing a financial impact. Hence the landscape must be well architected to ensure seamless flow on information and transactions in a

Gigi Mathew Thomas Group Head – IT & Digital Transformation

secure and robust manner adhering to all security and service level agreements to ensure successful realization of business objectives.

Do you see the need for cloud orchestration to manage the multi-cloud environment? Is it best go build something in-house or to go with the tool made available by a vendor?

Yes, going forward, as IT evolves more and more to be a business enabler and being a business function itself, rather that just being a support unit, many of the repetitive tasks in managing the landscape and architecture need to be orchestrated.

Many of the tasks in IT platforms can be automated and once end to end processes and its related tools are mapped the same can be coordinated to be achieved

as a single automated synchronized process!! Once done, just go back and tackle the next set of processes! This will give the IT function a governance layer where such orchestration and automation can be managed in a multi-cloud environment.

Depending on the landscape and the available IT skill sets the suitable approach can be taken. Personally, I prefer working with tools made available by a vendor suited to my environments, so that I can leverage the most functionality offered as well as have a foresight on the future road map of the tool and embed that into the vision for enhancements and further automation.

Over and above, this along with minimal errors, ability to adopt standards, consistency in workflows can give IT and the business a competitive edge as well as cost savings.

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» CIO OUTLOOK

EMBRACING THE MULTI-CLOUD Samit Jha, Director of IT, International at LATICRETE International discusses his outlook towaards a multi cloud approach Discuss what challenges confronts organizations moving from legacy to the cloud? What do you do with some critical applications that need to remain on premise?

A major challenge organization may face are incompatibility and data governance when migrating their legacy applications to cloud hosting providers. It’s also important to validate compliance requirements, as well as the security standards provided by the chosen cloud platform before making any migrations. No matter how trusted the cloud providers are, organizations should understand their cloud providers’ security practices such as where their data is being stored, what options the provider offers to help encrypt the data going in and out of your system, and what regulations is the provider compliant with. In the end, it’s important to have the right strategy from start and talent for successful cloud migration and after that to realize the expected ROI. For some critical applications that need to remain on-premise, I prefer to utilize managed services model where a provider can manage the data center and we lease the equipment and infrastructure instead of buying it. It helps to cut the cost of ownership, internal skill upgrade & retention risk and having the best infrastructure & security in place. It’s also important for a global organization where 24x7 availability and support are needed Does the presence of local data centres of the hyperscalers/ public cloud providers boost confidence of the CIOs and other Management in accelerating cloud deployments?

It all depends on which industry organization belongs and what are regional policies applicable. Like it can be a legal requirement in some of the more regulated sectors like government and financial services. Technically, local cloud data centres allow organizations to access the full range of public cloud for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS while also addressing some of the challenges associated with public cloud such as latency and data residency requirements.

However, is location everything when it comes to cloud data center decisions? My answer is - no. There are many factors to consider, including connectivity, services, support and cost. But, it’s certainly true that one of the most important factors is location. Location is central not just because the geographical location matters, but because the location has an impact on many of the other factors which are crucial to data center success. These include local data protection laws, access to utilities, availability of suitable networking solutions, local infrastructure.

How important is seamless applications performance for an

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Samit Jha Director of IT, LATICRETE International

organization that has adopted a multi-cloud environment?

As we all know, adopting a multi-cloud strategy can deliver many significant benefits, such as lower operating costs, no vendor lock-in, improved overall application performance, and increased flexibility. A multi-cloud approach enables businesses to pick and choose not only solutions but also where those solutions are hosted. For businesses, it's important to have seamless application performance after adopting a multi-cloud strategy. Which include how well both clouds talk to each other, reducing latency, improving network performance, and balancing the workload. On top of that, utilizing the right monitoring tools for the cloud, performance need to be managed, monitored and proactive action need to be taken to manage risks.

Do you see the need for cloud orchestration to manage the multi-cloud environment? is it best go build something inhouse or to go with the tool made available by a vendor?

I think having cloud orchestration is equally important as successful migration. The virtual management of multi-cloud workload operation and governance can bring more ROI if implemented effectively. To meet the key drivers for cloud adoption – cost optimization, speed of innovation, and future-proofing – enterprise IT will need a management platform that includes specific functionality and the capability to integrate easily with a range of other systems, both inside and outside IT operations. I prefer to go with available multi-cloud management tools instead of building in-house. However, it’s important to select the right tool considering all use cases we are expecting, security, self-service capabilities, workflow automation and end-to-end monitoring, reporting and logging.

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For more information Come visit the Digital Guardian Pod in the Redington Stand at GITEX 2021, Hall 5-A1

» INTERVIEW

SECURED CONNECTIVITY E

Amanulla Khan

Managing Director of Linksys Middle East, Turkey & Africa

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arlier this year, Fortinet and Linksys entered into a strategic partnership to offer enterprise-grade connectivity and security to organizations that need to provide seamless and secure connectivity for their employees to efficiently work from home. Very recently, they announced a new joint Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet which is the first ever enterprise solution to deliver secure network connectivity for both corporate and personal needs in one easy-to-setup unit optimized for business applications and collaboration tools, including Zoom.

Amanulla Khan, Managing Director of Linksys Middle East, Turkey & Africa discusses aspects of the partnership

» INTERVIEW Please elaborate on the Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet solution and its focus?

With the increase in remote and hybrid work, enterprise IT teams are struggling to enable their workforce to work effectively from anywhere while protecting their organization from security threats, including ransomware, malware and phishing attacks, introduced by home networks. This leads to an increasing need for reliable infrastructures to mitigate cybersecurity risks and maintain efficiency. Linksys HomeWRK for Business is the first ever enterprise solution to deliver secure network connectivity for both corporate and personal needs in one easy-to-setup unit optimized for business applications and collaboration tools. The goal is to deliver enterprise-grade connectivity and security, with unparalleled quality of service, to organizations that need to provide seamless and secure connectivity for their employees to efficiently work from home. The partnership will also address the issue of the homework gap among students as schools are re-opening with hybrid models for learning.

Is this a retail channel product or will it also go through SI projects?

Initially, we expect the product to be sold through SIs, MSPs and ISPs to large and medium enterprise customers who would like to deliver enterprise-grade connectivity and security, with unparalleled quality of service to their employees. We are always looking to grow and offer premium solutions that make the most sense to our customers and the end consumers.

Discuss the strategic investment by Fortinet in Linksys? How does it help in terms of solution building for different customer segments? How does the partnership help Linksys as well as Fortinet?

Our customers and retail partners need reliable solutions that deliver enterprise-grade performance. Businesses are now able to offer solid networking setups for their employees without compromising on security or work performance. We’re extremely enthusiastic about our partnership with Fortinet. As a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, they bring in their expertise to safeguard against cyber threats introduced by home networks and automatically blocks suspicious malware, prevents intrusions, filters harmful content, and more. This combined with our leading expertise in wireless networking products enable us to provide reliable and secure solutions for businesses and individuals alike.

What would be the major Business solutions on focus at your stand this GITEX? We have many business solutions at our stand this GITEX. Guests will be able to demo our outstanding Linksys Cloud Manager as well as 5G routers and WiFi 6/6E solutions. They will be able to experience these products first-hand to understand their benefits and to see how they best fit into their businesses. We will also be highlighting Linksys HomeWRK for business as it starts to rollout in the Middle East.

Since the pandemic, how has the impact been on the networking solutions demand in the Business segment with office premises running at partial capacities and therefore perhaps not looking to increase on premise investments?

It is undeniable that the pandemic has impacted businesses in many ways, but we believe adaptation is key. Office premises running at partial capacities means people are working from home more than ever. This also leads to an increased need in reliable WiFi and networking from home. Not only do individuals need solid WiFi, but businesses also want to offer enterprise grade solutions so that performance and security are not compromised. Investments are shifting with this change of working environments, and we are at the forefront to support this.

Elaborate on the 5G range of products for the Business segment?

We have many 5G products for business including routers and

" Linksys HomeWRK for Business is the first ever enterprise solution to deliver secure network connectivity for both corporate and personal needs in one easy-to-setup unit optimized for business applications and collaboration tools."

modems. We offer an indoor and outdoor router as well as an industrial router which can be used on larger scales. Another useful solution is the mobile hotspot which we expect to be adopted by both businesses and consumers as flexible working becomes more common.

While you offer VPN solutions, the demand for SD WAN solutions seem to be on the up - please elaborate if the VPN range of solutions still have demand from any specific segments There is no denying that VPN is a very good solution but as networking products evolve, firewalls are being built into them which makes VPN less relevant, especially for business solutions.

Elaborate on the key verticals of focus for Linksys in the Business segment?

We will be expanding our footprint in multiple verticals such as education, hospitality, and logistics. Retail has always been a big part of our business so we will continue to grow in that space along with technological innovations. These segments need secure wireless solutions which we offer through our remote access points and Linksys HomeWRK. Ultimately, most business need secure solutions for their employees so we will continue to do our best to support this demand.

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» INTERVIEW

PARTNERS IN THE TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY Maya Zakhour, Channel Director - Middle East and Africa, Italy and Spain at NetApp discusses how the global cloud-led, data-centric software company has enhanced partner opportunities in helping customers embrace digital transformation.

Discuss how the enhancements in the partner program earlier this year consolidates the focus in new specializations and certifications?

NetApp has been on a transformation journey with our partners for some time. As the industry and market change, so do our customers’ needs. Together with our partners, NetApp has made some big shifts to deliver bigger, better outcomes. We restructured the NetApp Unified Partner Program in FY2022, to clearly differentiate our partners in ways that are relevant to customer priorities and recognizes how partners contribute to the business, regardless of their sales motion. It is a flexible Partner Program that encompasses all partner types, roles, selling motions and regional differences to develop an ecosystem of partners differentiated based on skills and rewarded based on contributions.

Maya Zakhour Channel Director – Middle East & Africa, Italy and Spain, NetApp

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The programs enhancements support expanding partner ecosystem that includes specialist partners who sell, consume or influence the NetApp portfolio – increasing relevance to more partner types. It includes simplified incentives that are streamlined to align with key initiatives, and focus areas including customer acquisition, FlexPod, consumption, cloud and more. There are new Partner Rewards for individual participants whose actions drive deal closure as part of strategic programs — such as setting meetings and registering deals. New solution specializations have been introduced to recognize and reward partners’ unique skillsets and go-to-market models for Cloud Preferred, FlexPod, SAP, AI/ML, Data Protection, Data Security, Hosting Service Provider, Infrastructure, and Spot by NetApp Preferred. There are also new services certified specializations that now include Integration Services Certified, Lifecycle Services Certified, and NetApp Keystone Services Certified, ensuring alignment with customer needs across the hybrid cloud lifecycle. The NetApp partner locator Partner Connect 2.0 has been redesigned for a better user

» INTERVIEW experience to help customers find the most specialized partners to meet their needs.

Discuss how NetApp sees data management as a key aspect of digital transformation and hybrid cloud management?

A successful a DX strategy is dependent on managing the exponential growth, intrinsic value, and movement of data. It requires incorporating and managing data in a complex, hybrid world where data resides in your data center, in the cloud, at the edge, and through externally linked applications and platforms.

The growth and manageability of that data need to be effectively governed to make sure of data sovereignty, security, and cost containment. Businesses are also under pressure to become more efficient, respond quickly to new opportunities, and improve customer experiences. They also need to effectively manage and protect their data wherever it resides—on premises and in the cloud—while reducing costs, increasing security, and operating with existing IT staff. To address these challenges, enterprises must modernize their IT infrastructure and integrate new types and uses of data into their existing environment.

NetApp’s data management solutions help businesses drive simplicity and efficiency by using software management tools designed to work together, leverage insights to make better-informed decisions, and boost performance, resilience, and protection.

We are focused on helping businesses to overcome their data management challenges and gain competitive edge and thrive in the digital transformation era. The NetApp® data fabric solutions help businesses in their digital transformation journey in this complex, hybrid cloud world. From award-winning cloud backup solutions to synchronizing and securing data seamlessly between clouds and on-premises solutions, NetApp has focused on enabling a businesses’ digital transformation journey.

How are NetApp's partners scaling up to meet the needs of customers who are deploying hybrid cloud in terms of managing the cloud?

Hybrid cloud refers to a mixed computing, storage, and services environment made up of on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and a public cloud—such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure—with orchestration among the various platforms. Using a combination of public clouds, on-premises computing, and private clouds in the data center means that customers have a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Our partners help their customers manage their data wherever it sits on prem or any cloud helping them not only archiving their data but analyzing and making the best of their assets. Our partners are building their specializations (we have 6 specializations: Flexpod, SAP, cloud,..) on top of the infrastructure specialization to ensure they become a data authority specialists and add their services to give their customers a full insight of how to manage their data.

How do you support partners who may not always the inhouse experts for a particular project?

NetApp solutions and programs enable partners to stand out and deliver new on-prem, hybrid and multicloud experiences for customers. We encourage partners to take advantage of innovative

opportunities to grow their business more quickly while delivering greater value to your customers. The program provide sales, marketing, and technical resources that empowers partners to grow their business and deliver data-driven business outcomes to customers.

In terms of the current year, how have your partners performed across markets and verticals? Which have been key markets of growth?

Building on our accelerating momentum through last year with our partners, we are off to a great start to fiscal 2022, with strong revenue, gross margin, and operating leverage across the entire business.

Cloud and digital transformation initiatives remain top customer priorities and our results underscore the value we bring to customers in a hybrid, multi-cloud, data-driven world. With focused execution and demonstrated leadership, we are reshaping the industry. We made a number of innovation announcements this quarter, and we will continue to bring industry-leading capabilities to market, further enhancing our differentiated position in cloud and software. So yes, for us Digital Transformation and the Journey to the cloud remain key areas of growth in MEA.

"We restructured the NetApp Unified Partner Program in FY2022, to clearly differentiate our partners in ways that are relevant to customer priorities and recognizes how partners contribute to the business, regardless of their sales motion."

Elaborate how Keystone Flex makes it easy for your end users? Is this seeing a good uptake in the region from different customer segments?

NetApp Keystone Flex is a storage-as-a-service that offers and delivers a cloud-like experience on premises with connectivity to the cloud—all tailored to our customer’s needs. It is a pay-as-you-grow subscription-based service that delivers a seamless hybrid cloud experience, for businesses preferring opex consumption models to upfront capex or leasing. It helps businesses better align storage costs to meet their needs with the ability to accelerate time to value, by removing the IT burdens of managing storage infrastructures and going through the lengthy procurement cycle. With Keystone Flex, businesses can focus on core business operations by managing outcomes.

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» INTERVIEW

Making wireless seamless and secure D-Link has expanded its portfolio with products that support seamless and secure wireless connectivity for today’s remote workforces. Sakkeer Hussain, Director, Sales and Marketing, D-Link Middle East discusses some of the new solutions for the Business segment users Please elaborate how you see the growth outlook for premium routers in business segment and how is D-Link placed in that segment?

Premium routers have seen significant growth especially as more and more devices are getting connected. According to a recent HNY Research report, the global premium wireless routers market, valued at $384.5 million USD last year, will grow with a CAGR of 6.08% from 2020 to 2027.

We will see wireless routers growing strongly over the next few years driven by key factors such as rising adoption of smart home technologies, growing customer preference for web-enabled devices, increasing shifts to cloud for storing large volumes of data and so on.

D-Link is one of the oldest and biggest players in this segment globally. We are geared to cater to the growing demands with unique product novelty. As a pioneering player in the region for the past decade, we are tuned in to what customers need and always come up with products/solutions that can add value to them.

Discuss the products launched for Business users in the current year. Are there any new launches before the close of the year?

Recently we unveiled D-Link’s new EAGLE PRO AI Series, which features a comprehensive range of routers to fulfill everyone’s needs for home Wi-Fi and 4G Wi-Fi. Equipped with WiFi 6 technology, the R15 AX1500 Wi-Fi 6 Smart Router, M15 AX1500 Mesh Router, and E15 AX1500 Mesh Range Extender deliver up to four times more capacity and 40% throughput increase than Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 6 enables uninterrupted, high-quality online experiences for today’s generation of users who demand simultaneous connection of multiple devices at home.

The R03, R04, and R12 Wi-Fi AI Routers are entry-level devices for emerging markets that provide the latest WPA3 security encryption for more secure connectivity. The EAGLE PRO AI series also includes 4G AI Routers G415 and G416, as well as entry-level models G403 and G412, all with two built-in exter-

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nal LTE antennas. Designed with built-in EAGLE PRO AI capabilities, the series routers analyze traffic and optimize the home network through the AI Engine.

We have also launched state-of-the-art Wi-Fi 6 routers – DIR-X1560 EXO AX AX1500 and DIR-X1860 EXO AX AX1800 – early last year. The devices are powered with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) technology, ensuring that they deliver faster speeds, greater capacity and less network congestion.

To further support seamless and secure wireless connectivity for today’s remote workforces, we also have an extensive portfolio of dual-band or triband routers including our flagship WiFi Router AC1200 Dual Band and EXO Wi-Fi Router AC2600 MU-MIMO. D-Link routers are also integrated with a Mesh Network system, which offers seamless, secure and high-performance Wi-Fi connectivity.

We are aiming to close the year on a high note with new product innovations.

How has the SMB Business grown for D-Link in the year?

D-Link is a market leader in the SMB sector with an exclusive product line for companies in this segment. Over the past year, we have seen a huge uptake of our SMB solutions as organizations increasingly invest in digitalizing their business environments. SMB customers are looking to onboard digital technologies to grow their operations in this new normal and the most important element for them to succeed is to have secure strong connectivity solutions.

We understand regional SMBs’ business needs as they go along their digital transformation journeys. From, Mesh routers – cutting-edge technology modernization for home and SMB Wi-Fi setups to pioneering remote networking solutions, cloud-based offerings, networking solutions and Wi-Fi 6 routers, we have an extensive range of products and services specially curated for this segment.

» INTERVIEW Discuss D-Link's focus in the surveillance segment in terms of solutions for Businesses D-Link is a proven leader in this segment with cutting-edge solutions ranging from IP cameras, video storage, CCTV and other related accessories.

Recently, we released our new lineup of Vigilance Solutions including a network video recorder and six outdoor surveillance cameras. Providing advanced features such as high-resolution video, storage efficiency, high flexibility, and simple management, these solutions are suitable for enterprises of all sizes and every business vertical.

We have noticed that the regional video surveillance market is displaying a rising demand for IP/ Network video surveillance systems, while demand for analog video surveillance systems are declining. Video analytics are also increasingly playing a critical role in the surveillance area and we will see more advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning being employed in this space.

You had launched contactless solutions for screening suspect cases of covid-19. Are these solutions successful in the region?

If so, in which segments?

Yes, we had launched D-Link Thermal Solution Fever Screening Kit and D-Link Temperature Measurement Face Recognition Terminal suite of products during the peak of the pandemic. It was well received as they were relevant solutions addressing an immediate need. We saw immense success for these products in verticals like retail, F&B, schools, airports and others where monitoring large busy areas became pertinent.

How is the demand for your 5G range of solutions?

D-Link Middle East is spearheading the innovations within the 5G technology space. The technology offers any benefits and we have seen regional customers embracing our portfolio of 5G offerings to transform their business.

We have introduced new 5G solutions that help customers create a world of wireless possibilities whether at home, at the office, or on the go.

D-Link enables enhanced broadband capacity, extremely low latency, super high bandwidth, and next-generation speeds with the DWP-1020 5G Outdoor CPE, DWR-978 5G Wi-Fi Router, and DWR-2101 5G Wi-Fi 6 Mobile Hotspot.

DWP-1020 is a 5GNR Sub 6GHz + mmWave CPE that is designed for installation on the exterior of a home or business building in order to maximize signal reception, especially for mmWave frequencies. And the DWR-978 supports 5G NR Sub 6 GHz frequencies and allows users to access worldwide mobile broadband networks Elaborate on your focus in the enterprise segment D-Link is a pioneering leader in both SMB and enterprise segments. Our flagship Nuclias Connect and Nuclias Cloud Remote Network Management Solutions, a part of our revolutionary remote work solutions portfolio, allows enterprises and SMBs to

Sakkeer Hussain

Director, Sales & Marketing, D-Link Middle East

"We understand regional SMBs’ business needs as they go along their digital transformation journeys. From, Mesh routers – cutting-edge technology modernization for home and SMB Wi-Fi setups to pioneering remote networking solutions, cloud-based offerings, networking solutions and Wi-Fi 6 routers, we have an extensive range of products and services specially curated for this segment."

optimize the opportunities in the digital world. We have several other offerings ranging from high-end access points, routers, switches, IP Phones and cloud-enabled solutions that large enterprises can take advantage of.

OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» INTERVIEW

PARTNERING FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE Redington Value is participating at this year’s 41st edition of GITEX Technology Week under the theme ‘Simplifying Transformations’. Sayantan Dev, President, Redington Value discusses the distributor’s focus on enabling its partners pursue their roles in turn as facilitators and catalysts of digital transformation for their customers How is Redington Value helping its channel enhance their role as agents of digital transformation for their end customers?

Organizations worldwide have been looking to achieve a lot of ambitious digital transformation goals but the process of decision making involves a lot of complexities. That’s because under the ambit of digital transformation, there are multiple subjects whether it is process automation, cost optimization, use of AI, ML and advanced analytics etc as well as making the shift to the cloud and the transformation of the security landscape and more. So this subject has become a complex one for customers and we see our role as one who will help demystify the jargons and simplify the digital transformation journey for our customers. We work with a lot of channel partners, enabling them to play these roles of helping their customers, giving them options and asking them to choose their battles, by specializing in verticals and domains.

How is the role of the channel changing or transforming?

What are your expectations from companies that want to partner with you?

We see our channel as agents of change. Our message to the channel is simple and under the overarching theme of simplification, we are asking them to specialize in their chosen fields. Within cloud for instance, there would be many areas and a partner for instance could focus on migration of specific workloads, help create data lakes and do data engineering on the cloud, provide advanced analytics etc. It is left to the choice of the partner to take up an area of specialization and invest in the same. We are there to help them.

Tell us how Redington Value sees its cloud marketplace as a crucial pivot of its strategy for enabling partners Cloud is one of the clear bets in this journey. If you look at the subjects of digital transformation, such as automation, advanced

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Sayantan Dev

President, Redington Value

analytics, AI and ML etc, these are old subjects. These have been around for years but what has changed now is the high speed of computing power and access. This has been enabled by the hyperscalers with the public cloud offerings and others with the cloud offerings who are making their resources available on demand and which are scalable. Hence the cloud is going to be a key factor in this journey. The cloud therefore is one of our top bets and the cloud marketplace that we have is going to pivotal in this journey ahead. We have taken a number of initiatives that are being driven through our cloud platform.

Again, in line with our objectives of simplifying the process, we have built the cloud platform in such a manner to keep the commerce on it hassle free, taking into account the constant feedbacks we have been getting from our customers. For instance, we have made provisioning very easy and the subscription management is quite simple on the platform. We have given our partners a single pane of glass to manage all their subscriptions. It offers dynamic pricing as well.

An ecosystem of collaboration is the new reality. There are multiple specialized partners, service providers, different application

» INTERVIEW providers, different hyperscalers and their platforms, all of whom come together to help solve a specific problem of a customer. That is what customer obsessions is all about and they are also focusing together to give the desirable outcome to the customer. We see our role in this new reality as one of an aggregator all these services.

We have published services catalogues on the portal. This includes our services as well as services of our partners, thereby also helping take their services to different regions, leveraging or reach in terms of markets and in terms of customer segments.

Tell us about your engagement with the ISV community Our engagement with the ISV community, many of who are digital natives is a key aspect of our strategic focus. They have brought many interesting solution offerings to the table. While they know how take these solutions to market, what they anticipate from us is our help in taking them to multiple territories with our reach across countries. They are leveraging our platform as their solutions get published on our platform in the ISV hub. The ISVs also want us to manage their infrastructure for them where these applications will be hosted as they want to focus on improving their solutions. Another area of opportunity we work with is helping ISVs who have provided legacy applications to helping them to achieve a SaaS model and make them cloud ready. In these different ways, we are taking the cloud practice to the next level.

Tell us how diverse and end to end is the portfolio of vendors you have as part of your partnerships?

We have built up a strong portfolio of product offerings that we take to market over the years. This cover almost each silo and category including cloud, compute and networking infrastructure, data science and analytics, security. In each of these categories, we work with the biggest known vendors and on the other hand we also work with a vast number of niche vendors who focus on helping solve specific customer issues in an interesting way.

CloudQuarks, SecureQuarks and DataQuarks services in focus Redington Value is doubling down on its efforts across three knowledge-based services in its portfolio – CloudQuarks, SecureQuarks and DataQuarks. These are in focus at Redington’s GITEX showcase

CloudQuarks

Through Redington Value’s cloud services portfolio, regional customers can leverage industry best practices and global standards of consulting, professional and managed services on cloud technologies. The CloudQuarks track features the distributor’s intelligent Cloud Management Platform TrackMyCloud.

TrackMyCloud by Redington simplifies monitoring and optimization of spending, done on managing the cloud infrastructure. The vendor agnostic and user-friendly platform allows partners to build their cloud capabilities and expand their value-added services for customers. Channel partners are equipped with end-to-end resources to help customers modernize their IT environments with Redington’s cloud services.

TrackMyCloud operates across three primary focus areas – Cloud Management Platform, Professional Services and Managed Services. Regional customers can take advantage of Redington consultants’ deep know-how on cloud computing, data analytics, information and cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning to derive maximum value across all aspects of their cloud investments.

SecureQuarks

Cybersecurity must be intrinsically woven into an organization’s digital strategy right from the conceptualization stage. The growing digital landscape, with all its undeniable benefits, has also brought serious cybersecurity concerns to the forefront and increased the attack surface. Cyber adversaries are increasingly becoming more sophisticated with their tactics and relying on advanced technologies to make the impact as damaging as possible. Credible and scalable security structures are the need of the hour to achieve successful and continuous digital transformation.

Redington’s SecureQuarks portfolio of services offers end-to-end cybersecurity to help customers defend against current and future threats. DigiGlass by Redington, a comprehensive managed security services (MSS) offering, covers applications, networks, endpoints, data, end users, infrastructure, clouds, perimeters, and more, all with a range of service levels. The distributor, together with the expertise of its channel network, enables customers to monitor networks to help detect, identify, and respond to a multitude of known and unknown threats, enabling them to prevent attacks from succeeding.

DataQuarks

The analytics wing of Redington’s services portfolio encourages customers to effortlessly transform their business through the power of data.

According to a recent report from Statista, by 2025, annual revenue from the global big data analytics market is expected to reach US $68.09 billion. Customers are looking to optimize operations within shrinking budgets and insights gained from structured and unstructured data can help achieve this.

The distributor provides an extensive list of offerings, ranging from consultation on analytics assessment, migration to modern architectures from legacy BI and data management systems, designing data pipelines and data lakes for operational analytics and ML solutions to visualizing and curating dashboard for business KPIs and software installations.

OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» INTERVIEW

A STEADY PACE Spire is showcasing at GITEX this year under the theme ‘Securing Middle East & Africa’s digital assets’. Sanjeev Walia Founder & President at Spire Solutions elaborates on the company’s progress amidst the changing landscape and some new initiatives

Sanjeev Walia Founder & President at Spire Solutions

Has the Pandemic and the hybrid work era necessitated increase in cybersecurity investments by enterprises and government sector?

Most certainly. Research and statistics show that the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation on one hand and introduced many critical cybersecurity challenges to Governments and Enterprises on the other. People, processes, data, and technologies are now distributed everywhere due to trends like work from home so CISOs and cybersecurity professionals have a much harder task in hand. This is driving them to proactively seek collaboration with solution providers from multifold advisory, solutions, services, training, and talent perspectives. Also, the board and broader C-suite are now keenly participating in cybersecurity discussions, a change that was much needed.

As a VAD, how have you kept pace with the transforming landscape of cybersecurity?

Staying in constant touch with our cus-

32

tomers and partners, associating ourselves with leading research and consultancy firms such as Gartner, participating in events and initiatives inside and outside our region and investing in learning and development of our teams are crucial for us. One of the fundamental goals of all these is to understand the changing industry landscape, emerging risks, threats, and market trends so we can continue doing what we are best at – introducing new solutions which solve regional challenges proactively, without creating any new challenges.

How has the past year been for Spire solutions in terms of growth? What are some of the investments made by the company?

Despite the pandemic, we are grateful to have grown at a steady pace last year and almost doubled our team size. Our team grew 6X in Saudi and we also appointed experienced professionals on the ground in countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, and Nigeria to support our customers and partners locally.

Earlier this year, we launched Spire Data - our bespoke big data and analytics business unit – to transform the way companies make growth decisions. Data strategy and governance, BI analytics, AI automation and advanced analytics are some of the areas we are covering.

We will shortly be announcing new initiatives and partnerships in the cloud services space too given the growing demand from our customers and partners.

Can you shed light on some of your recent partnerships and alliances?

We had several positive developments

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

since the beginning of this year including exclusive partnerships and regional partnerships with Observability data unicorn Cribl to deliver control and flexibility for logs, metrics, and events. We tied up with Threat intelligence and attribution leader Group-IB for detection and prevention of cyberattacks, online fraud, and digital risk & IP protection. We have partnered with Attack path visualization champion XM Cyber to break the critical points in the attack chain. We also have an alliance with the world’s first human cybersecurity risk management platform OutThink to empower CISOs tackle human behaviour.

What can we expect from you at GITEX this year? What types of solutions are you showcasing?

We are featuring some leading niche and unique cybersecurity solutions as well as our bespoke data analytics business which has garnered tremendous response across the region. These include the following: 1. Elastic Security for enterprise search, observability, and security 2. Gigamon to enable network visibility, packet analysis, and traffic brokering 3. XMCyber to break the critical path in the attack kill chain 4. Corelight for network detection and response platform 5. Sectrio for proven OT, IoT, IT, and 5G converged network protection 6. Spire Data to clean, structure, analyze, visualize, and monetize data 7. Cribl for better observability data to deliver control and flexibility for logs, metrics, and events

» INTERVIEW

DATA PROTECTION TO THE FORE Veeam is exhibiting under the theme ‘Modern Data Protection: Simple. Flexible.

Reliable. Powerful’. Claude Schuck, Regional Director, the Middle East at Veeam discusses the vendor’s GITEX presence in detail

Please describe the theme of your stand at GITEX 2021?

Veeam will be exhibiting under the theme ‘Modern Data Protection: Simple. Flexible. Reliable. Powerful’. The focus will be on enabling enterprises in the Middle East to accelerate their data protection strategies.

Please describe your net objective from participation at the end of GITEX 2021?

GITEX is the place to be in October – it offers a great platform for vendors, partners and customers to get together and share ideas.

Over the past several years we have used GITEX as an opportunity to showcase our products and capabilities and to meet with both existing and prospective clients and partners. I can attribute much of our success to the relationships we have built and fostered at the event and I expect GITEX 2021 to be no different. Every year we have meaningful and memorable interactions where we build relationships as well as a pipeline of business for the forthcoming year.

What are some of the products, solutions, services being showcased at your stand at GITEX 2021?

Local executives will deliver live demonstrations of the Veeam platform — the most complete data protection solution for all data — whether deployed on-premises, in the cloud or through Backup as a Service (BaaS) or Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

Trade attendees visiting the Veeam stand at GITEX 2021 can expect to learn more about the following innovations among others: • Backup Modernization: By adopting Veeam’s backup and replication platform, enterprises instantly have access to one of the most modern solutions on the market. This enables organizations to free resources that are tied-up due to the vast overheads of legacy data protection products and focus them on core innovation projects that they need.

• Ransomware Protection: Veeam’s robust ransomware protection safeguards businesses from data loss due to ransomware attacks and the associated risk of paying a costly ransom. The company’s software-first approach gives organizations the flexibility to maintain immutable storage, whether on-premises or in the cloud. The features include

Claude Schuck Regional Director, Middle East, Veeam

o o o o

Comprehensive ransomware remediation Infrastructure flexibility Automated backup verifications and Fast, reliable recovery

• Hybrid Cloud Acceleration: Migration of data remains the #1 barrier in hybrid cloud adoption. Veeam eases this challenge with seamless data management and mobility across public and private clouds. The company ensures 100% portable data across any system that is always recoverable with no reliance on proprietary hardware or continual licensing.

• Disaster Recovery (DR): End-to-end DR and compliance is simplified with Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator. It is purpose-built to meet the business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) needs of organizations with complex IT environments where non-stop business operations are the expectation. The solution eliminates manual, time-consuming and repeatable processes that hinder necessary DR planning by automatically testing, documenting and executing DR plans in as little as one-click from single applications to entire sites.

How do you see the outlook on IT security investments in the region?

Although organizations in the region, in general, spend a lot on security technologies, there is a huge gap when it comes to setting up an IT security strategy. Challenges include complexity of the IT environment, lots of legacy infrastructure, increasing incidence of ransomware and lack of skills relating to cloud migration. Against this backdrop, we are excited about the opportunity to engage with GITEX trade show attendees and discuss how they can leverage our solutions to advance their data protection strategies OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» INTERVIEW

MANAGED SECURITY IN FOCUS

The expansive threat landscape demands a next generation holistic approach to threat huntinand remediation, which is what Mindfire Technologies, a leading cybersecurity services and managed security services company based in UAE, offers its enterprise and mid-market clients. Jishanth Karunakaran, Founder and Managing Director; Vijay George, Vice President and. Rejeesh Kumar, Program Manager CyberSecurity at Mindfire Technologies discuss the expansion initiatives as well as its USP in MSSP business

Discuss the expansion plans of the company with the new office coming up in DIC- what will be the focus of the new office?

JK: We have a new office with a centre of excellence and SOC centre coming up in DIC. This is to address growing demand from the market for quality and reliable managed security and forensic services. The new SOC centre is equipped with latest technologies backed by robust state of the art infrastructure. An innovation hub with advanced threat intelligence and forensic lab with international standards are part of this initiative.

Elaborate on your managed services business- do you see a good opportunity in the MSSP space? And how are you placed in terms of capabilities to address these opportunities?

What are the advantages you offer as an MSSP? JK: Businesses who constantly looks for innovation to add value to their bottom line are increasingly realizing the importance of managed security services. The MSSP can manage security process from an off-site location which also allows businesses to focus on their business with minimal intrusion and obstruction due to security initiatives. The managed service provider would maintain a constant line of communication and seamless reporting to business. A capable MSSP like Mindfire can make sure that enterprise IT is always up to date with the status of security issues, audits, and maintenance.

Jishanth Karunakaran Founder and Managing Director, Mindfire Technologies

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MSSP practice at Mindfire has been growing tremendously off late especially this year. Organizations cutting across verticals are finding it more efficient to offload the complexities to specialized team with capabilities to safeguard their digital assets. The advantages of availing services of trusted managed services partner are manifold, apart from the cost advantage the MSSPs make it safer for the end customers business to innovate. Our services

» INTERVIEW developed, managed and refined by leading professionals helps our customers act with confidence to detect cyber threats to mitigate business impact and drive efficiency into cybersecurity operations. We offers solutions with leading cybersecurity vendors bundled with our skilled services. Our team is having extensive experience teamed up with vendors with global footprint which equips them to make a formidable force. The key aspects of our services include Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Managed Security Services (MSS). Cyber Intelligence Services (CIS), Read Team Services (RTS), Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC), Cyber Technology Integrations (CTI), Cybersecurity for IOT and Secure AIOps. Discuss the vendors you work with and what new solutions will you be showcasing at GITEX? VG: We work closely with major international cybersecurity vendors. AT&T Cybersecurity is one of our strategic partners. We work closely with VMWARE security Carbon Black and Last Line the VMWARE EDR and NDR combinations. We are an MSP of Acronis cyber protect as well. When it comes to email to resilience we have a suite with combination of email security, domain protection and DMARC as well as rights management.

On our digital risk protection platform we have managed services offering from Skurio and targeted threat intelligence with Blueliv. Our AIOPS portfolio designed to create self-healing IT infrastructure is powered by Centerity and Resolve systems. Managed digital forensic services are delivered on Binalyze platform.

What are the challenges you see as far as cybersecurity challenges go from the customer segments you address- how as a company can you help your customers address these issues?

VG: Complexity of business platform has grown up over the years and it is impossible for organization to get proper advisory and execution skills. We leverage on our key assets people process and technology help our clients address challenges in the present day emprise computing. We work as extended arm to the customer IT delivering value.

With increased cloud adoption, do you have any solutions that can address concers of clients in securing the cloud?

RK: Mindfire Technologies team is equipped with known cloud veterans in the region. As an early bird in the field, we have developed security practise on AWS and Azure platforms with tools and technics to re revolitionize cloud security. Mindfire offers solutions with vulnerability Management, Malware Detection, Misconfigurations, Lateral Movement, Identity and Access Management and Sensitive Data Detection and protection capabilities.

We have forensic platform specific to cloud workloads Can you elaborate services on digital forensics?

RKL: Mindfire provide digital forensics services, our experts specialize in the preservation, identification, extraction, and documentation of computer. We adhere to strict case management protocols, follow chain of custody procedures, and verify our findings. Raging from penetration testing, malware analysis & removal to incident response, we’ve got everything to keep your digital infrastructure secure. Mindfire Incident Response & Forensics Service is delivered by experts with deep skills and experience in cybersecurity.

Vijay George Vice President, Mindfire Technologies

"The MSSP can manage security process from an off-site location which also allows businesses to focus on their business with minimal intrusion and obstruction due to security initiatives. The managed service provider would maintain a constant line of communication and seamless reporting to business.

A capable MSSP like Mindfire can make sure that enterprise IT is always up to date with the status of security issues, audits, and maintenance."

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» INTERVIEW

The power of video collaboration L ogitech will be showcasing its products at the stand of its partner Avientek, which is exhibiting at GITEX. Loubna Imenchal, head of video collaboration, Africa, Middle East, Turkey, and Central Asia at Logitech discusses that the video collaboration leader set to demo Rally Bar and Scribe among other products

Loubna Imenchal Head of video collaboration, META, & Central Asia, Logitech

What are your plans for GITEX? We are excited to showcase a range of high calibre solutions at GITEX, with demand for collaboration tools remaining high across the region as organisations continue to embrace hybrid working models.

Among the products on show will be Rally Bar, our next generation portfolio of video conferencing solutions for small, medium and large rooms. Rally Bar is a portfolio of appliance and PCbased solutions that works with today’s leading video conferencing services such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

We will also demonstrate Scribe, an AI-powered whiteboard camera for meeting rooms and classrooms. Compatible with leading services like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, Logitech Scribe

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broadcasts whiteboard content into video meetings with incredible clarity, virtually transporting everyone into the same room. In addition to exhibiting our products on our partners’ stands, we will also offer meetings and 1-1 demonstrations at a dedicated meeting room in the Conrad hotel, close to Dubai World Trade Centre.

We look forward to meeting with customers at GITEX to demonstrate the advantages of our newest innovations and how they can help companies boost efficiency, innovation, and employee and customer satisfaction.

How do your products make use of AI? Logitech Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini feature built-in AI. Both video bars come equipped with Logitech RightSense technology and AI Viewfinder, a

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

second camera dedicated to computer vision. The camera detects human figures and processes where they are in real-time, enhancing the precision of Logitech RightSight auto-framing and camera control so meeting participants are always in focus, whether they are late joining or moving about.

With Logitech Scribe, AI enables the device to render the user invisible, so that they don’t get in the way of the content they are creating on the white board. It’s ideal for education and we’re excited about bringing it to the Middle East.

How are perceptions of video collaboration changing?

Video collaboration has never been so important. Organisations across the region have experienced the importance of keeping their teams connected during the past two years, and there is a growing awareness of the advantages of using enterprise-grade solutions. Even as many people venture back to places of work and education, hybrid models are now an established mode of operations for many organizations, and Logitech sees continued high demand for solutions that aid collaboration.

How does Logitech rank in the video collaboration market?

Logitech was recently ranked #1 worldwide in video conferencing hardware by Synergy Research , which revealed Logitech accounted for nearly fifty percent of all video conferencing devices sold in the Q1 FY21, and more than thirty percent of the industry’s revenue.

Logitech was also named the market leader in video conferencing devices by Frost & Sullivan, which recognised Logitech as the company that has achieved the greatest market share resulting from outstanding performance, products, and services.

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» INTERVIEW

IN THE ACCELERATION MODE Amel Gardner, Vice President and General Manager, Infor Middle East & Africa Stand discusses how the shift to the cloud has been accelerating since the pandemic What are your plans for GITEX? GITEX provides the perfect platform to showcase everything we have to offer to our customers, prospects, partners and new staff who want to join us. We’re using our stand creatively to feature distinct zones enabling visitors from specific industries to understand how their organization can transform and gain the full advantages of the cloud, positioning them to embrace new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Infor will demonstrate solutions including its industry-specific CloudSuites for industrial manufacturing, distribution, and healthcare, with specialists available to discuss each of these solutions. Infor will also showcase its enterprise applications and enterprise resource planning (ERP) engines that are at the heart of its solutions, and which are designed for specific industries. These highly robust solutions manage financial and operational tasks, streamlining processes, eliminating redundancies, and providing end-to-end visibility.

What trends do you see in cloud at the moment?

We see a continued shift in the industry of companies adopting cloud solutions for mission critical operations. This year we have seen some amazing multi-tenant cloud projects already and we only see this accelerating. And these are not small projects, or tactical edge products, this is mission critical processes. For instance, like in Bahrain with ASRY (Arab Shipbuilding & Repair Yard) they are conducting a transformation project in the cloud.

Then there’s Al-Jazira Equipment in Sau-

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di Arabia helping them adopt a new B2C model, and right here in Dubai we have progressive hospitals such as Clemenceau Medical Center in Dubai Healthcare City all making huge strides to a digital future with Infor. These are all committing to the AWS cloud with Infor CloudSuites right at the core of their transformations.

How has the pandemic accelerated the move to the cloud?

In terms of trends, the pandemic has been revolutionary to the enterprise software industry. Firstly, it has driven many of our customers (old and new) to the cloud as the crisis has highlighted the difficulties, hazards and limitations of having IT staff on site to physically maintain IT equipment.

So, the crisis has been a shot in the arm (no pun intended) on the move to the cloud.

The pandemic also forced us to rethink how we deliver our solutions to our customers - often remotely. This culminated in a new delivery approach which we call 60-30-10.

We recognize that whilst our various CloudSuites help provide industry specific business processes, not all business processes are created equal. Businesses need to determine which processes are most important to differentiate themselves.

How is Infor assisting enterprises in achieving relevant business objectives through the use of their solutions?

Infor has invested approximately $5 billion in product design and development to deliver industry specific CloudSuites.

Our mission-critical enterprise applica-

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

Amel Gardner Vice President & GM, Infor MEA

tions are designed to deliver more value and less risk, with more sustainable operational advantages. We are a trusted partner for the long haul that customers rely on to help overcome market disruptions and achieve business-wide digital transformation. Infor works closely in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support a faster path to transformation for our customers, through business systems that are tailored to specific industries.

The unique power of Infor Cloud built on Amazon Web Services doesn’t just come from what’s inside. It comes from the special approach we’ve used to build business software—from assembling and fine-tuning our performance enhancing capabilities to helping you increase agility and improve your business.

» INTERVIEW

CONTINUOUS ADVANCEMENTS Samer Semaan, Channel Manager - Middle East, Pure Storage discusses the enhancements to the partner program and also about the showcase at GITEX Can you please elaborate on the Pure Storage partner program The Pure Partner Program is designed to empower channel partners with everything they need to accelerate their business and drive customer impact with Pure. From day one, Pure has helped partners deliver a better customer experience with innovative and award winning solutions. By listening to partner feedback on what they need most, Pure delivers continuous program advancements to help partners thrive and move their business forward.

sales while curating a unique technical community they can depend on. The program offers partners access to exclusive events, dedicated content and training.

Pure’s training resources have evolved to meet the partner’s needs and enable them to grow their knowledge with the portfolio. Partners can now follow a personalized learning path based on their specific role.

The training can be consumed in a self-serve fashion with on-demand courses, as well as instructor-led training, featuring hands-on demos, all online. New training courses are also available on selling subscriptions and new use cases for file and object storage.

We have launched a new Partner Portal that provides the latest sales and technical resources, training, personalized marketing campaigns, a digital asset library, social selling content and more, all at the partners’ fingertips. This is part of our continuous evolution of our partner programme.

Pure is offering additional incentives to partners who are recruiting net new customers. At the same time, given a shift in customer preference for more as-a-service consumption models we are further incentivising partners who are selling Pure as-aService. Pure also rewards loyal partners with VIP points, allowing them to redeem for rewards based on their transactions.

Due to partner demand, last year, we debuted an invitation only, global technical partner community, known as Pure WaveMakers, that provides partners with extra resources to help them succeed, accelerate and expand

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Have you made any specific changes to your program over the last 12-18 months to account for the pandemic?

In the past year, Pure has brought several new program upgrades to Pure partners, including opportunities for increased incentives, new selling solutions for a virtual world, and enhanced marketing support.

What is your strategy when it comes to partner recruitment?

Our partner pool has deliberately been kept small. They buy into the same motto we have, that we are obsessed with our customers’ happiness and success: it's good business, key to survival and helps partners differentiate.

We will continue to innovate and invest in our partners to ensure they have the products, skills and resources to be successful.

At the same time, we work with partners that are willing to invest time and resources into building a Pure practice, driven, passionate about technology and most importantly, committed to helping customers solve real world data-challenges.

CXO DX / OCTOBER 2021

Samer Semaan Channel Manager - ME, Pure Storage

We are always interested in meeting like-minded partners and would encourage prospective partners to get in touch or complete the online application form.

What are some of the key products that you will be showcasing at GITEX On September 28, we announced the launch of two new solutions — Pure Fusion and Portworx Data Services — that will significantly progress our vision of modernizing how customers work with data. Visitors to our GITEX stand will get an opportunity to learn how Pure is meeting the demands of modern business by making data infrastructure fast to deploy, provision, and manage. With Pure, infrastructure is automated, API-driven, and transparent, and application developers are accelerated with access to the fully-integrated and deployment-ready database tools they need.

» COLUMN

OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES OF IPV4 EXHAUSTION As hundreds of regional communications service providers rush to deploy broadband and add thousands of new subscribers to their networks, they face a long list of tasks and budget items to be addressed.

Back in the core network, one of the important decisions—and one that needs to be made early in the planning process for a network buildout or expansion—is how to approach IP connectivity writes Amr Alashaal, Regional Vice President, Middle East at A10 Networks

A

s hundreds of regional communications service providers rush to deploy broadband and add thousands of new subscribers to their networks, they face a long list of tasks and budget items to be addressed. Most of the budget and buildout schedule will focus on the physical deployment of the fibre (FTTH) or wireless access. However, back in the core network, one of the important decisions—and one that needs to be made early in the planning process for a network buildout or expansion—is how to approach IP connectivity.

Given the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, and the cost and complexity of migrating from IPv4 to IPv6, operators need to think carefully about how they will provide an IP address for every customer. After all, a network won’t run without IP connectivity.

This isn’t just a technical decision. The choices made now can make a 15% difference in annual operating expense, with a direct impact on how effectively the business will be able to grow and scale over time. In this article, we’ll discuss the issues and options around IPv4 exhaustion, including whether to acquire additional IPv4 addresses, the feasibility of migrating to IPv6, and how operators can address the co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6 within their existing network infrastructure.

Why IPv4 Exhaustion Is an Issue

In a sense, IPv4 exhaustion results from the internet being too popular for its own good. When the IETF introduced the standard in 1981, the more than 4 billion addresses it encompassed seemed more than ample. Within a decade, though, it had become apparent that far more would be needed. IPv6, a successor specification

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introduced in 1998 and ratified as a standard in 2017, can accommodate virtually unlimited IP connectivity.

However, making the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has proved anything but simple. Due to a lack of backward compatibility, IPv6 compatibility is required across every element of communication: devices, networks, and content. With IPv6 adoption uneven in all these elements, communication service providers must continue to support customers’ connectivity to IPV4 resources regardless of their plans for migrating their own infrastructure to IPv6.

As they face this complex situation, operators have three basic choices. They can seek to acquire IPv4 addresses to expand their existing pool. They can try to accelerate their IPv4 to IPv6 infrastructure conversion while applying a transition technology to address uneven adoption. Or they can extend their existing IPv4 investment while planning for migrating to IPv6.

What IPv4 Exhaustion Means for Rural Broadband Providers

Many regional or rural broadband communications service providers have built their networks on IPv4, simply dedicating a public IP to each subscriber or household served. Now, as these operators expand their coverage to previously unserved areas, acquire new subscribers through acquisition, or respond to increased demand for upgraded broadband access from existing subscribers, they are finding that their allocation of IPv4 addresses will soon be inadequate. And the faster their subscriber base grows, the larger and more urgent their IPv4 exhaustion challenge becomes.

» COLUMN Deciding Whether to Acquire Additional IPv4 Address Space

As communications service providers consider their options for IP connectivity, they need to consider the long-term growth of their subscriber base and its economic implications. This is especially true if they choose to buy IPv4 address blocks—an approach that can quickly become expensive.

In some ways, it’s not true that we have run out of IPv4 addresses; in fact, there are IPv4 addresses available to be acquired, mostly through third-party brokers. Technically, IPv4 addresses are not bought or sold, they are acquired from a third party (usually at an auction price), then assignment is transferred through a regional internet registry (RIR). However, they’re not cheap, and their quality can be questionable. Since 2015, when IPv4 addresses could be acquired for about US$ 5 each, the price has skyrocketed 5X. On today’s open market, IPv4 addresses cost up to US$ 31 each, or US$ 312,000 to support 10,000 subscribers. With an annual growth rate of 23% over the past three years, this price could nearly double by 2023 to almost US$ 58 per address, or US$ 587,000 to support 10,000 subscribers.

Even at the current price, US$ 312,000 is a lot for a fast-growing communication service provider to spend on IP connectivity.

Consider that the capital budget for a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) location is roughly £1700, the operator could build out 183 more locations for the same amount of money—and accommodate that many more subscribers.

Alternatively, the regular addition of IPv4 addresses as subscribers are added over time can add nearly 15% to operating expense.

The Fiber Broadband Association has estimated that the average operating expense for FTTH is US$ 51 per subscriber, per year.

Assuming an average of US$ 30 – 51 per subscriber to buy IPv4 address space, and spreading this cost over five years, operators face an additional expense of nearly eight dollars per subscriber, per year—almost a 15% increase over the base operating expense.

What about Migrating from IPv4 to IPv6?

While migrating to IPv6 will likely be inevitable in the years to come, for large enterprise and regional SPs with extensive legacy infrastructure, full conversion from IPv4 to IPv6 is often not practical in the short term. This is a long, costly, and complex process that can involve inventorying and evaluating all existing network elements and devices; reconfiguring routers; changing out incompatible customer premises equipment (CPE); and managing customer communication. There are ample opportunities for things to go wrong along the way, bringing the requirement for extensive testing and troubleshooting to reduce risk.

Extending IPv4 blocks with CGNAT

Given the problems posed by either buying IPv4 addresses or attempting a full IPv6 migration, many rural and regional broadband providers are turning to the third option: extending their existing IPv4 investment while preparing for migrating to IPv6.

This approach hinges on carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), a technology that makes it possible for one public IP address to be shared across multiple subscribers, most commonly at a ratio of 32:1 or 64:1.

Amr Alashaal Regional Vice President, Middle East, A10 Networks

Developed specifically to address IPv4 exhaustion, CGNAT helps service providers extend the life of existing IPv4 network infrastructure without the need for acquiring additional IPv4 addresses. CGNAT, combined with one of the many available transition technologies, can help operators make a simultaneous and seamless IPv6 migration.

" Due to a lack of backward compatibility, IPv6 compatibility is required across every element of communication: devices, networks, and content. With IPv6 adoption uneven in all these elements, communication service providers must continue to support customers’ connectivity to IPV4 resources regardless of their plans for migrating their own infrastructure to IPv6."

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» COLUMN

SECURING 5G PRIVATE MOBILE NETWORKS Pablo Molinero, Senior Director of Product Management for Telcos, Fortinet elaborates on aspects to think about when designing a proper secure 5G Mobile Private Network Creating your own private mobile network doesn’t go without risks in terms of cybersecurity. Protecting operational technologies is already critical. If you are adding to this IIoT devices, fueled by the 5G capabilities such as hyper scalability, ultra-low latency, support for machine communications, predictability, agility and high precision, within a tailored made network, you are facing many challenges in a fast-growing attack surface.

There are multiple architectures for deploying private mobile networks, which vary based on the enterprise and industry requirements, use cases, and a spectrum of regulations and allocations per country. A company looking to build its own private mobile network may involve a myriad of different architectures and actors to create and manage it. Prior to deploying it, cybersecurity implications must be top of mind for all organizations. Companies should start by assessing their cyber maturity and be aware of the skills and technology required to detect, block, and respond to cyber threats.

Pablo Molinero

Senior Director of Product Management for Telcos, Fortinet In the Industry 4.0 era, critical industries from manufacturing to transportation to energy and utilities view 5G as the catalyst furthering change. 5G has the potential to accelerate the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0, and drive further innovation, automation and efficiency. To extract the full potential of 5G, operators need to look beyond the public network. While public networks offer a lot of capacity with high bandwidth connectivity to everyone equipped with a 5G compatible device, it’s not yet configured to support industrial needs. This leads critical industries to create their own private mobile networks that while offering improved performance, reliability, and connectivity also bring with it cybersecurity risks.

In a 2020 study done by ABI Research, they predicted that private networks built by Enterprises will go beyond public networks by 2036. And for good reason, as private cellular networks can be quickly deployed and customized to serve key and time-sensitive needs for automation, control, physical and process safety. Here we are talking about ultra-reliable communications for low latency applications as well as massive machine-to-machine communications for IoT and IIoT applications.

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Here are some takeaways to think about when designing a proper secure 5G Mobile Private Network: • The first security aspect involves micro-segmentation and access control of the different production networks and devices. Security needs to create a virtual air gap in production environments to protect against threats, contain and limit their progression and impact.

• Industrial devices are often not updated in time in order to not jeopardize the availability of the production chain. They can live with a well-known vulnerability for weeks or even months. In this case, the security infrastructure in place should provide a virtual security patch by preventing vulnerabilities to be exploited until the devices are upgraded.

• Predictable low latency is also a key aspect. A few extra milliseconds can slow down, bring to a halt or even harm an entire production line if the inputs and outputs used by the industrial control application arrived too late to be usable.

• Finally, the security elements need to have a very low footprint and in some cases be able to work in environments of high temperature or humidity, which require ruggedized solutions.

In summary, it is well known that factories and logistics hubs are very attractive targets for denial-of-service attacks, ransomware raids, disruptions or industrial espionage. Operators and industrial players are well aware of it, and they are making cybersecurity an integral part of their 5G private network in order to avoid risking losses greater than the network investment they are making or the productivity gains 5G is bringing. Segmentation, access control and network-wide visibility are all key to secure these Private Mobile Networks.

» COLUMN

UNLOCKING DATA TO SET UP SUCESS Middle East organizations need to embed resilience, create new revenue streams, and maintain relevance in the new economy says Jules de Meester, Senior Director, Solution Engineering - Middle East and Africa, Salesforce Whereas Middle East companies used to build one-to-three year transformation plans, today technological advancements and customer expectations are changing much faster. Everything companies do has to be driven by flexibility, agility, and customer centricity. To digitally transform entails everything from connecting with and serving customers, to building the right data architecture, to embedding an open data culture throughout their organization. It also involves training their workforce to share and leverage data effectively and transparently.

In many cases it is not technology that is holding companies back.

Rather, this is caused by the ways which companies have set up their systems to handle data. According to MuleSoft’s 2020 Connectivity Benchmark Report, 85% of organizations admit that integration challenges stall their digital transformation efforts.

Disparate systems create siloed insights with negative knock-on effects on customer experiences.

CIOs, previously seen as too expensive and service-oriented, are today tasked with reconceptualizing their organization entirely. By aligning the business and its objectives with integrated data architectures, and through rapid deployment of cloud-based systems, they can help generate business results in months rather than years.

This explains why in the digital economy we will see more CEOs with a digital background, and more CIOs becoming CEOs.

Setting companies and customers up for success

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, many businesses were not as streamlined and resilient as they once thought. Companies that entered the crisis with a compelling digital customer experience have benefitted at the expense of those which did not. The growth of Amazon’s market share over retail is just one example of the pandemic’s acceleration effect.

Rather than think vertically, in terms of sales and brand recognition, companies increasingly need to know about their interactions with customers. That includes how they interact with them, in what ways, and how they can put the customer at the centre of everything that they do. Bringing key customer information together, for instance, enables sales teams to request meetings and communicate key customer information, and setting customers up for success faster.

Reimagining the ways they do business

Whereas traditionally data has helped companies to be more ef-

Jules de Meester

Senior Director, Solution Engineering Middle East and Africa, Salesforce

ficient, today it is entirely reimagining the ways they do business and make timely decisions, helping them find new ways of dealing with their suppliers, employees and wider stakeholders.

Take employee onboarding processes for instance. What can be a confusing time for new hires is made more challenging by keeping employee data in separate silos. Having a 360-degree view of employee data will free managers up to welcome and build relationships, and ultimately provide a greater hiring experience.

Data is also transforming the employee help desk experience.

Where previously employees haven’t been able to find information they needed on their intranet and IT case volumes have become overwhelming, by consolidating an migrating data from older systems companies can set up self-service and improved help-desk functionality, improving issue resolution timeframes and increasing workforce productivity.

Digital transformation can be a difficult shift for Middle East organizations, but the power of weaving data into the fabric of businesses is clear. More and more, having a complete view of an organization and its customers is essential to embedding resilience into businesses, helping creating new revenue streams, and ultimately maintaining relevance in the new economy.

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The Way We Work: From All Change to You Choose Ian Jones, Global SVP for Professional and Education Services at F5 points out how organizations now need to find the right balance between traditional and remote working path for enabling remote work. Now, as the context continues to change, those paths are diverging, and organizations are having to think harder about what works for them.

These decisions should not be treated as binary equations. Over the last 12 months, we have learned a lot about both the benefits and drawbacks of remote working.

Ian Jones

Global SVP for Professional and Education Services at F5 In 2020, we saw a generation’s worth of change to working habits over the course of a few months. Remote work, which many parts of the business world had been gradually moving towards, became an overnight necessity for swathes of the global economy, including the delivery of IT professional services.

As the world hopefully begins to emerge from the shadow of COVID-19, most businesses will have the opportunity to be more deliberate. First and foremost, they can bank the dividends of more flexible working practices while also deciding how to optimize and evolve existing physical workplaces.

Last year clearly imposed several unavoidable demands, but 2021 will likely present more choice. Do we work at home or in the office? Should we host a meeting virtually or in-person? Is travelling really needed? Previously, every company found itself on broadly the same

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Many of the costs and benefits are now widely understood. However, the ultimate influence of all these major changes to working practices should be measured in years, not months. For example, it is still too early to be fully confident about the long-term effects of remote working on things like recruitment and retention, individual career development, and collective productivity.

From the perspective of information technology training and consultancy, I believe there are also some hidden costs we should be aware of. While much training can be—and is—delivered to an outstanding level through self-managed online learning, there are some obvious limitations. We all learn differently, yet with e-learning everyone gets an identical experience. By contrast, an experienced trainer in situ can adapt to the needs of a particular group or the individuals in it, personalizing and deepening the session. Moreover, a classroom module deliberately takes people out of their normal working routine to limit distractions. 30 minutes of staring at the same screen you use for work cannot create the same conducive atmosphere for learning complex concepts or techniques.

The same is true of consultancy. Any agreement will have a fixed number of criteria that need to be met for the assignment to be successful. But any consultant will tell you that these requirements are only

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table stakes. The real value comes from an experienced consultant observing their environment, making specific recommendations, and delivering beyond the brief. Is that kind of intangible value, so dependent on being integrated in a customer’s working environment, possible in a remote setting?

Looking ahead, there are two key factors professional service providers need to carefully consider. The first is the importance of casual interactions, serendipitous meetings and the ability to observe an organization at work. That simply doesn’t happen when your working world shrinks to the size of those you digitally communicate with.

Second is the challenge of providing added value within a remote context. A consultant working virtually on a longterm project risks becoming a face on a screen rather than a fully embedded member of the customer’s team. You want to be seen as a trusted adviser, not a commodity service.

Neither of these points deny the huge value remote working offers both professional services suppliers and customers. Indeed, F5’s training and consultancy teams were already delivering the majority of their assignments remotely before the pandemic occurred. In the past year, we’ve all been surprised by how much can be achieved to a high standard virtually.

This includes training methods that we would never have previously attempted.

In the (hopefully not too distant) future, many of our training and consulting engagements will surely embrace a hybrid approach, with face-toface meetings used to discuss task execution and confirm expected outcomes.

This will also help to build trust between all parties. The challenge for organizations now is to find the right balance between traditional and remote working: blending the urge for efficiency with the imperative for effective teamwork. The ultimate goal should be a working environment that maximizes the contributions of all concerned—not just employees, but professional services suppliers and partners too.

Quick Fire with Jerry Caponera on

Risk-based Cybersecurity Jerry Caponera, Head of Risk Strategies at ThreatConnect, discusses the main challenge for CISOs, how risk-based cybersecurity can benefit businesses and how they can get started with cyber risk quantification.

Why has cybersecurity become a top-three business concern?

Caponera: Every business’s top concern is money.

A cyberattack can cost a company millions of dollars, end jobs, and in extreme cases cause the company to go out of business. There are plenty of examples of small companies going out of business due to a ransomware attack — it’s just a matter of time before a larger company ends up dealing with something similar. Effectively managing risk can help

Quantification (CRQ) to translate cybersecurity into financial risk and business impact. This enables them to justify decisions, achieve better ROI on security spending and also secure a competitive advantage.

How critical is it to be able to financially quantify the impact of cyber attacks?

Caponera: Most companies spend money on cybersecurity because they have to — not because they want to. They

build resilience and limit damage or disruption.

can’t see the direct link between cyber security investment

From your experience, what’s the main challenge for CISOs today?

let’s be honest, no one likes paying expenses. But, if CISOs

Caponera: The main challenge for CISOs is shifting internal culture and attitudes towards cybersecurity.

This really comes down to how it is communicated with key stakeholders. Often, cybersecurity reporting is too technical and focused on implementing controls, rather than reducing risk. But now that CISOs have a seat at the executive table and the attention of the Board, it’s time to talk in a common language. This comes back to financial

and revenue generation, so it is treated like an expense and can effectively communicate the risks (and opportunities) with senior leaders, then they will be in a better position to respond to risks and adapt to the environment. This will set them apart from competitors.

How can organizations get started with cyber risk quantification?

Caponera: Every organization is different; so if you are starting out, it is valuable to work with someone with

measurement which is less subjective.

experience because CRQ isn’t easy. We’ve been building

How can a risk-based approach to cybersecurity help organizations?

years now. It’s designed to look at a company’s technical

Caponera: A risk-based approach to cybersecurity helps prioritize resources to protect what matters most to the business. Traditional measurement methods have been too subjective. Savvy-CISOs are adopting Cyber Risk

and evolving ThreatConnect RQ for more than four landscape (vulnerabilities, controls, and threats) to put together a picture of the financial exposure they face.

That exposure is then evaluated to determine the best investments to make — based on ROI — to buy down risk in financial terms. Please contact us to see how CRQ can benefit your business.

» COLUMN

STEPS TO

CYBERSECURITY HYGIENE

Wissam Saadeddine, Senior Manager - MENA at Infoblox discusses how Government Agencies can prevent cyberattacks through good cybersecurity hygiene and employee education

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hile working in the public sector and private sector have many differences, one characteristic is similar: cybersecurity and threats. Both sectors feel the pain of not having a sufficient community of trained and available security staff to hire, both are constant targets of phishing and related social engineering attacks and both are trying to balance the three-pronged attacks of the pandemic, the relocation of employees to work-from-home status and increased risks from attacks on cloud assets.

The current pandemic is having a major impact on all levels of government. Aside from the financial impact the pandemic is having on the private sector, government IT professionals also are facing the following challenges: • • • •

Workers are being required to work from home IT and security staffs must provide WFH employees with new equipment, which has major implications for IT budgets Users are connecting to government networks from untrusted and often compromised home networks Users are employing personal equipment and IoT devices to connect to government networks and clouds that might not be secured to the governmental agency’s security standards

However, governments have other concerns as well. Government operations potentially can impact much larger groups of people than a corporate attack. Depending on the government entity targeted, the effect could impact critical infrastructure at all levels.

The COVID-19 effect of draining critical financial resources to fund purchases of hardware and software for newly displaced employees, plus expenses for significant increases of cloud services and, in some cases, a forced digital transformation from on-premises data center to cloud-based assets, is putting a strain on both financial and staffing resources.

From the citizenry perspective, the pandemic has opened the proverbial Pandora’s box of fake “official” websites devoted to COVID-19, misinformation from websites purporting to be the

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government and medical facilities that actually are watering holes for malware and ransomware attacks on hospitals delivered in emails purporting to be information about COVID-19.

A joint advisory group from U.S. and U.K. security agencies also was formed to protect the intelligence communities from becoming victims of attacks, particularly from advanced persistent threats from groups targeting individuals and organizations with malware. In March 2020, Infoblox observed a malicious spam (malspam) email campaign that used a fraudulent Coronavirus alert from the World Health Organization (WHO) to deliver Trickbot banking malware. We also observed a series of campaigns using COVID-19 or Coronavirus-themed spam emails to distribute the Agent Tesla information stealer (infostealer).

What can government agencies do to defend themselves against such attacks?

While public and private sectors have some differences when it comes to issues such as disclosure and confidentiality, the basis is the same. At the core is user education. Helping government employees understand good cybersecurity hygiene is essential. With the vast majority of office-based government employees working at home, agencies need to focus on the basics of identity management; implementing zero trust in order to protect networks from untrusted users, devices, applications and network connections; and ensuring that data is protected from unauthorized egress and access.

For those governmental agencies without existing threat intelligence capabilities, now would be a good time to invest in a comprehensive program that includes a mix of traditional data feeds, specialized feeds focusing on specific requirements for a given agency, an open source intelligence (OSINT) feed and greater emphasis on understanding the threat intel an agency already is generating from its existing SIEM systems and related log systems.

» COLUMN Government agencies also should take advantage of several emerging technologies to further enhance their existing security policies. For example, security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) enhances the speed and reliability of existing operations. For cloud-based operations, a cloud access security broker (CASB) is on-premises or cloud-based security policy enforcement placed between cloud server consumers and providers.

It interjects enterprise security policies as cloud-based assets are accessed.

Continuous management and monitoring add another dimension to protecting government networks. As a key target of bad actors and nation-state cyberattackers, continuous monitoring is essential; any lapse can let attackers have access to a system, even if just momentarily.

So, how can government agencies protect themselves and their employees from potential losses? Generally, the best practices for corporations apply to government agencies as well.

Cybersecurity Guidelines for Government Organizations • • • •

• • • • • • • •

•

Use advanced DNS protection to defend against the widest range of DNS-based attacks Use a DNS firewall that automates malware protection.

Detect and prevent data exfiltration by utilizing DNS-based analytics.

Use a centralized, cloud-managed, provisioning, management and control solution, designed with the modern borderless enterprise in mind. This is what is needed to eliminate the management complexity and bottlenecks of the traditional branch office DDI (DDI is the integration of domain name system, dynamic host configuration protocol and IP address management into a unified service or solution).

Deploy a virtual DDI appliance on a public or private cloud, which can enable you to deploy robust, manageable and cost-effective appliances.

Have an Incident Response and Backup Plan. Test the plan on a consistent basis and adjust as necessary.

Have a consistent security policy across all platforms. For example, if you are leveraging cloud services, ensure they are secured as you would on premises.

Ensure you are actively monitoring and managing DNS within your organization.

Use comprehensive threat intelligence to proactively block malicious DNS threats.

Monitor and manage the behavior of DNS in your environment — black-lists are not enough, you need to ensure that the protocol is behaving as appropriate.

Restrict use of DNS over TLS (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS (DoH) on assets and on the network.

Know where your users (assets) are going from a DNS perspective, no matter where they are located (on premises, working remotely, etc.). Have a 360 degree view of all assets.

Automate responses where possible to leverage your current infrastructure. There is no silver bullet when it comes to security, but you can solidify your posture by using defense in depth and automation.

Wissam Saadeddine

Senior Manager – MENA at Infoblox

" With the vast majority of office-based government employees working at home, agencies need to focus on the basics of identity management; implementing zero trust in order to protect networks from untrusted users, devices, applications and network connections; and ensuring that data is protected from unauthorized egress and access."

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THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE WORKPLACE THROUGH EDGE COMPUTING Rick Vanover, senior director of product strategy at Veeam writes that the key to edge computing success lies in focusing on the outcome, before looking at implementation The pandemic has hit each market across the Middle East differently but a common theme regarding the workplace is that data is increasingly born, created and modified in different places. While the future of work is well and truly here, businesses are still navigating uncharted waters in this space.

This begs many questions of decision makers: What’s the best way to capture and protect data? Does my edge approach meet privacy and security needs? There has been a significant shift in the approach to remote work and there’s a way that businesses can best set their employees up to ensure business continuity. It lies with edge computing – a key technology to futureproofing the new workplace environment.

Rick Vanover

Senior Director of product strategy, Veeam It’s been a year and a half since we first learned about Covid-19, but the pressure on businesses to accelerate their digital transformation (DX) efforts has not abated.

Of particular note is the rise of the hybrid work model.

There are two things the pandemic has proven about the ‘new’ workplace: 1) DX in businesses is essential, and 2) Technology was intrinsic to a transformational overhaul of this scale.

That technology is edge computing: The ability to optimise and extend the capability of cloud computing by bringing computation and data storage closer to the devices where it’s being gathered. It’s a fairly amorphous concept that has been around since the 1990s, but thanks to the pandemic, it has given rise to edge computing’s dark horse: the remote worker.

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Don't let implementation dictate the outcome

According to Juniper Research, edge computing is on a growth path to U$8.3 billion spend globally, in less than five years . This has no doubt been exacerbated with the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. According to a report by AT Kearney Research, the IoT solutions market in the GCC will be worth $11 billion by the year 2025, generating potential value for the economy of nearly $160 billion².

As our new workplaces constitute more and more remote points of presence – mobile, tablet, smart speakers – which sees a vast amount of data being generated on the outer edge of computing networks, the task of implementing an edge strategy may fall into the too-hard basket for many, and simply out of reach for some. However, the key to edge computing success lies in focusing on the outcome, before looking at implementation.

Every business wants to analyse and acti-

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vate their data, at speed, but the power of edge computing does not mean all data has to be analysed and activated. Rather, it helps businesses ascertain at which aggregation points is best to consume data, preserve it, make inferences from, where analytics is applied, and knowledge is gleaned from. For one business, the impact could simply be installing on-site servers capable of real-time analysis. For another, it could be installing IoT sensors to help transmit data from security cameras.

Like any technology solution, implementation for the sake of doing so is not going to benefit any business. However, the edge is relevant for any business that has digitally transformed their processes, especially in the last 12 months. Edge computing allows businesses to focus on how to get the most out of their most important data, and in turn, keep up with the pace at which the workplace is transforming.

Securing the edge

An edge strategy doesn’t mean data protection, security and compliance efforts have to be more complicated. Traditionally, endpoint backup has been the most underrated rack of technologies but as the benefits of edge computing gain traction, its use case takes on a whole new level. And the good news is that there isn’t much ‘reinventing the wheel’ involved.

Why? The edge isn’t entirely new – it’s an extension of what we’ve known. As an accelerant of digital transformation, it’s breaking down the data centre walls and pushing cloud capabilities outwards. Businesses need to remember that the edge must be treated as part of hybrid cloud architecture, of which technologies are already being used by employees to provide a seamless and secure IT experience. Edge computing is critical to ensuring a seamless transition from the traditional workplace setting to the future of work. It is here now, and it’s hybrid. To realise its full potential, businesses must focus on the outcome rather than the implementation of the technology.

» TECHSHOW

LINKSYS HOMEWRK FOR BUSINESS | SECURED BY FORTINET To enable enterprise IT teams of all sizes to ensure enterprise-grade security and high-performance connectivity for remote and hybrid workers at home, Fortinet and Linksys are launching Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet. This offering builds on Fortinet’s commitment to build a safer Internet by protecting people, devices, and data everywhere, and delivers the following key benefits for enterprise organizations: Built with the latest Wi-Fi 6 tri-band technology and Linksys’ powerful Velop Intelligent Mesh software, Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet enables high-performance, secure corporate and personal networks for users at home via a single device. Enterprise IT teams can easily distribute the provision-free hardware to employees to replace their existing home router to establish both corporate and personal networks. With a blanket of mesh Wi-Fi coverage, employees can enjoy fast and consistent whole-home Wi-Fi connection, without worrying about a weak signal or deadspots.

Fortinet and Linksys have teamed up with Zoom, a leader in video communications, to provide the best experience for video conferencing, voice calls and screen sharing.

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The solution is integrated with industry-leading Fortinet security to safeguard against cyber threats introduced by home networks and automatically blocks suspicious malware, prevents intrusions, filters harmful content, and more.

This joint solution showcases the power of Security-Driven Networking; by placing security in the home office on the device itself – converging networking and security together – it delivers a much better user experience.

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The zero-touch provisioning solution streamlines the employee onboarding experience with simple plug-and-connect devices that don’t require physical assistance from corporate IT teams to install.

The solution also includes a guided app for ideal placement of nodes at home.

An intuitive management console enables enterprise IT managers to monitor and diagnose the performance of all devices connected to the corporate network in real-time via a single portal.

Protect remote employees’ privacy with support for multiple networks for separate personal use.

ION 1200: INTEGRATED 5G SD-WAN APPLIANCE Businesses have been replacing MPLS with broadband using SD-WAN for many years.

Now, with the rollout of 5G at scale around the world, cellular WAN has become a viable primary WAN connection for branches, ATMs and kiosks, or as a backup connection to improve branch resilience. When implementing cellular WAN, however, customers have had to deploy multiple appliances at their branches, which increases cost and complexity.

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Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN is expandng its appliance portfolio to include the ION 1200 with integrated 5G. With the ION 1200, organizations can accelerate their SASE deployment to branch offices by leveraging 5G connectivity without the hassle of installing additional 5G hardware in the branch. Organizations can use 5G as the primary WAN connectivity to enable the rapid deployment of ATMs or kiosk systems or as a secondary backup link to improve the resilience of the branch WAN.

» TECHSHOW

LOGITECH TAP IP Logitech expanded its video collaboration portfolio with Tap IP, a network-based meeting room controller, and Tap Scheduler, a purpose-built meeting scheduling panel for any meeting space.

Fully integrated with leading collaboration platforms and connected by a single Power over Ethernet (PoE) cable for clean, simple installation, Tap IP and Tap Scheduler were created to help make scheduling and joining video meetings remarkably easy as many hybrid workers return to the office.

Tap IP and Tap Controller were designed from the ground up to provide secure, enterprise-grade performance; elegant design including sleek cable retention; and compatibility with the major market service players -all at an affordable price.

Meetings start with just one touch with Logitech Tap IP, a touch controller for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android, Zoom Rooms, and other popular video conferencing services that - together with a Logitech conferencecam - deliver a reliable, consistent experience from room to room. Logitech Tap IP delivers the same one-touch meeting join functionality as Logitech Tap, at a lower cost and easier installation via IP-based connection to the network.

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With clean and secure cable management plus flexible mounting options, Tap IP can be smoothly and securely installed virtually anywhere in the meeting room.

Featuring a sleek, intuitive design, Tap IP has just the right presence in the room, so teams can focus on collaboration.

Making it simple to find and claim the right meeting space in the office, Tap Scheduler’s spacious 10.1-inch touchscreen allows for easy reading of meeting information, and its built-in lighting system signals room availability from a distance.

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Placed just outside the meeting room, participants can use Tap Scheduler to quickly claim rooms for ad hoc meetings or book them in advance.

It is compatible with Teams, Zoom Rooms, Robin, and Meetio, a cloudbased meeting room management company recently acquired by Logitech.

Designed for deployment at scale, Tap Scheduler is easy to install for virtually any collaboration space, with included mounts to help secure the panel to various surfaces, and cable management for a professional and tidy setup.

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Prisma SD-WAN ION 1200 is a next generation software defined enterprise branch device integrated with 4G or 5G cellular network access.

With the introduction of ION 1200, accelerate your SASE deployment to branch offices by leveraging 4G or 5G connectivity without installing additional hardware in the branch.

or as a secondary backup link to improve the resilience of the branch WAN. •

Zero touch provisioning

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High-speed LTE backup

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Dual SIM support

Use the 4G or 5G network as the primary WAN connectivity to enable rapid deployment of ATMs or kiosk systems

OCTOBER 2021 / CXO DX

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» TRENDS & STATS

INDUSTRYWIDE FUNDING FOR AI EXPECTED TO INCREASE THROUGH 2022 One-third of technology and service provider organizations with artificial intelligence (AI) technology plans said they would invest $1 million or more into these technologies in the next two years, according to a new survey* from Gartner, Inc. The vast majority of survey respondents (87%) with AI technologies as a major investment area believe industrywide funding for AI will increase at a moderate to fast pace through 2022.

“Rapidly evolving, diverse AI technologies will impact every industry,” said Errol Rasit, managing vice president at Gartner.

“Technology organizations are increasing investments in AI as they recognize its potential to not only assess critical data and improve business efficiency, but also to create new products and services, expand their customer base and generate new revenue. These are serious investments that will help to dispel AI hype.”

Compared with other emerging technology areas such as cloud and IoT, AI technologies had the second-highest reported mean funding allocation. Respondents whose organizations invested in AI reported their highest planned investment in computer vision, at an average of $679,000 over two years (see Figure 1).

“Very few respondents reported funding amounts of less than $250,000 for AI technologies, indicating that AI development is cost-intensive compared to other technology innovations. This is not an easy segment to enter due to the complexity of building and training AI models,” said Rasit.

Barriers to AI Adoption and Integration Remain

The survey also highlights the relative immaturity of AI technologies compared

to the other innovation areas. Just over half of respondents report significant target customer adoption of their AI-enabled products and services. Forty-one percent of respondents cited AI emerging technologies as still being in development or early adoption stages, meaning there is a wave of potential adoption as new or augmented AI products and services enter general availability.

Technology immaturity is cited as a top reason among AI-investing organizations leading to failure when integrating an emerging technology. Furthermore, product leaders investing in AI whose implementations are progressing slower than expected reported product complexity and a lack of skills as the main hindrances to their progress.

Source: Gartner (September 2021)

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