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www.networkworldme.com | Issue 148 | July 2011
Stephan Berner, CEO, help AG
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ISSUE 148 | JULY 2011
contents COMMENT 04 Achilles’ heel BITS 06 ICANN okays new top-level domains 08 Cyber security now a top issue 10 Equinox Egypt achieves Cisco gold 12 IBM turns 100 TREND ANALYSIS 14 Join the conversation 16 Getting ahead with BPM 18 Intel outlines cloud vision
IN ACTION
20
Beyond classroom: Abu Dhabi Education
Council uses latest networking technologies
to transform education
38
FEATURE 23 Navigating the wireless landscape: With
802.11n, enterprise wi-fi networks are
shifting from convenient to critical.
32
Doing more with less: Thin provisioning can
help you optimise storage utilisation and
reduce costs
EVENT REPORT 36 Reseller Middle East 2011 Conference:
Partner up
COVER STORY
Security lockdown: How to safeguard your sensitive data
18
40
TEST 46 Ubuntu breaks from the Linux pack
NEW PRODUCTS 48 A guide to some of the new products
in the market
LAYER 8 50 All the news that’s fit for nothing Quick Finder Page 6-26 ICANN, HP, GBM, Equinox, Ericsson, Juniper Networks, IBM, help AG, Genesys, Software AG, Intel, Cisco, Motorola Solutions, Aruba Networks, Aerohive Network,
Page 26-52 NetApp, Symantec, Intel, help AG, Ubuntu, Western Digital, Fluke Networks, Leviton, Lenovo
EDITORIAL Publisher Dominic De Sousa
Achilles’ heel
COO Nadeem Hood
We’d recently organised a roundtable discussion on the very esoteric topic of SCADA with regional security experts help AG, which has thrown up some interesting findings. SCADA, for the uninitiated, is the lifeblood of any modern energy or utility company. The discovery of number of serious vulnerabilities in these industrial control systems, first brought to light by the now-famous Stuxnet incident, has raised serious concerns, as a successful attack can cripple a nation’s most critical industrial infrastructure. SCADA has never been a fodder for discussion at security seminars before as these systems have been written with the assumption that it would always be on a trusted LAN, not connected to the Internet or the outside world. In other words, these systems were not designed with security in mind, and definitely not for a connected world. However, lately many energy companies are being forced to expose their process control systems to the outside data environment to augment their business efficiencies. But, hacking SCADA systems no long requires a physical access. As a security expert puts it “all it takes is just a network connection, a way to route packets to the logic controller and a way to bypass the traffic filters, which are all activities that hackers understand.” You might recall that Stuxnet spread through removable media, not the Internet. With the stakes being so high, what needs to be done to make sure that our critical infrastructure which is essential for society and economy to function is safe? The recent flurry of vulnerabilities has forced SCADA developers to take a closer look at the security aspect, and energy and other utility companies have been urged to deploy the appropriate monitor and intrusion prevention systems to protect these networks. One of the troubles with SCADA security is that many companies in the region don’t have expertise in this domain, and those in the SCADA field are also not as open as other software companies about exchanging security tips and knowledge. To make things worse, SCADA systems are often old and haven’t gone through proper security audits even though systems control critical infrastructure. It’s heartening to see that bodies such as Critical National Infrastructure Authority in the UAE have taken the lead, which has started auditing of all the major oil and gas companies in the region. Critical infrastructure is always an attractive target for cyber criminals and it’s an area where we can’t afford to let our guards down.
Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9126 Sales Director Raz Islam raz@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9129 EDITORIAL Dave Reeder dave@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9106 Senior Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9109 ADVERTISING Group Sales Manager Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9131 Sales Manager Sean Rutherford sean@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9136 CIRCULATION Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9147 PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9112 Designer Froilan A. Cosgafa IV froilan@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9107 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9108 DIGITAL www.networkworldme.com Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma
Jeevan Thankappan Senior Editor jeevan@cpidubai.com
online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100
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bits
ICANN okays new top-level domains HP appoints new ICANN’s Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the
biggest changes ever to the Internet’s Domain Name System. During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet address endings – called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net. “ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. This decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows
GBM bags SI award
Cesare Cardone, CEO of GBM, accepts the award for ‘System Integrator of the Year’ at the Reseller World Middle East Awards
Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has received the System Integrator (SI) of the Year Award at our sister publication Reseller Middle East’s (RME) Partner Excellence Awards. The prestigious award was presented to Cesare Cardone, CEO of GBM, at the award
TRUE FACT
$3.3 billion 6 Network World Middle East July 2011
the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Virtually every organisation with an online presence could be affected in some way. Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organisations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways. ceremony which was held at The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi Beach Resort & Marina on June 12th. This was part of a series of awards for excellence and appreciation given to organisations that have contributed to the development of IT market in the region over the years. GBM has previously been recognised and awarded for their achievements and innovative initiatives, solutions and offerings. The awards include Public Sector Partner of the Year and Services Partner of the Year at the Cisco Partner Summit in 2011, Cisco Enterprise Partner of the Year (Emerging East, UAE) at the Cisco Partner Summit and Best ICT Solutions Provider at the Bahrain eGovernment Excellence Award in 2010 and Cisco Enterprise Partner of the Year (Gulf & Pakistan) at the Cisco Partner Summit in 2009.
ESSN director
HP has appointed
Alaa AlShimy to the position of Enterprise, Storage, Servers and Alaa AlShimy Networking (ESSN) Director for the Middle East, effective June 1st. Alaa has taken over from Fawwaz Qadan who has been appointed as the Director of HP Networking for Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa (MEMA). In his new role, Alaa is responsible for managing growth and cost control for the ESSN revenue streams in Middle East focusing on the end to end business and operational management in the region. Prior to this role, Alaa was the Regional Director for HP Networking for the Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa (MEMA) region, and grew the networking business by over four times in the last two years. Alaa has more than 22 years of experience in the IT industry and joined HP 11 years ago, where he has held various management positions including channel management, country management (as Country MD), business unit management and sales management. He holds an MBA from the London Business School.
Is the expected revenues from mobile ads for all of 2011. This represents more than double the $1.6 billion earned in 2010 and global mobile revenues are expected to hit $20.6 billion in 2015. Source: Gartner
www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 7
bits
Cyber security now a top issue Dale Meyerrose, the first Senateconfirmed chief information officer for
the United States’ National Intelligence Community and an expert on cyber security called on the UAE media last month to discuss the some of the cyber security supply chain problems for both government and private sectors. Meyerrose is VP and GM of Cyberspace Solutions at US-based Harris Corporation, which last year launched a joint venture with local telecommunication systems and security provider Atlas Telecom to focus on bringing industry-leading technology to the region. “Everyone is talking about network, enterprise and cyber security but no one is mentioning how vulnerable supply chains are to an IT compromise,” said Meyerrose. “Governments and commercial entities are channelling billions into offensive and defensive technology but few are addressing cyber-threats to the supply chain. Not only is supply-chain security frequently overlooked, but very few companies use cyber-security products that are equipped to monitor technologies
help AG becomes Palo Alto service partner help AG, a leader in strategic information security consulting,
has been officially awarded as the region’s first Support Service Partner for Palo Alto Networks, the network security company. help AG began working with Palo Alto Networks in January 2010 and currently has the highest number of Palo Alto Networks certified engineers in the entire Middle East region. 8 Network World Middle East July 2011
throughout the supply chain from end to end. Meyrrose stressed the need for a change in the approach that organisations take towards threats. “We have to be more concerned about how information can be exploited, stolen or put at risk through a supply chain compromise. We need to tilt the capabilities scale against these increasingly sophisticated attacks because the potential for damage is extremely real.” “At Harris we want to help drive the adoption of a sustainable system of supply chain management and believe that we have a differentiated cloud offering which will better protect and utilise sensitive and valuable data. The Harris Global Trust Repository (“GTR”) is one way that we are looking to solve the issue of securing a network. It is a cloud service which provides the world’s largest known-provenance whitelist database comprised of commercially available and open source software enabling service providers and tenants to perform advanced assurance functions including supply chain validation of software.”
In cyber integrated solutions, Harris Corporation helps commercial and government enterprises move their operations to a trusted cloud environment in the most effective and efficient manner – reducing costs, expanding IT service delivery, increasing security and compliance, and establishing a new level of organisational agility. As an established cyber integrator, the company is looking to introduce its innovative trust methodologies and technology to the Middle East.
This partnership with Palo Alto Networks defines help AG as a single point of contact for enterprise customers. help AG’s Palo Alto Networks-certified and hands-on experienced, technical consultants will be providing 24-hour, 7 days a week, local advanced support services under the service level agreement (SLA) through local phone, email and onsite support services. In addition, help AG SLA customers will also have access to the help AG online Support Centre where they log their support requests, download minor and major software releases, utilise the extensive
knowledge base and monitor the support cases at any point in time. “From the very beginning we have invested strongly in our Palo Alto Networks partnership and as of today we are the only Authorised Service Partner and the only Authorized Palo Alto Training Partner in the Middle East,” explained Stephan Berner, Managing Director, help AG. “Palo Alto Networks provide the most advanced Next Generation Firewall platforms on the market, allowing customers to focus on their organisations core business by utilising the added value support services provided by help AG.”
Dale Meyerrose
www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 9
bits Equinox Egypt achieves Cisco gold Equinox Egypt has achieved Cisco Gold Certification in Egypt. To earn Gold Certification, Equinox Egypt had to meet rigorous standards set forth by Cisco in networking competency, service, support, and customer satisfaction. “Achieving Cisco Gold Certification concludes an important chapter in our growth and success story; however, it also marks the beginning of an even more challenging chapter where the expectations are even higher and more difficult to attain,” said Osama Qadan, Managing Partner at Equinox International, the holding company of Equinox Egypt. “We are extremely excited by this achievement and want to assure our clients and partners that Equinox will continue to be their default choice whenever they seek quality and unparalleled customer satisfaction. Today, Equinox is the choice for clients who strive to work with an industry leader excelling in project management, technical strength in delivery, training and competency development – all existing in a single center of excellence”. The Cisco Resale Channel Program provides a framework for partners to build the sales, technical and Cisco Lifecycle
Osama Qadan
Services skills required to deliver Cisco solutions to end customers. Through the program’s
specialisations and certifications, Cisco recognises a partner’s expertise in deploying solutions based on Cisco advanced technologies and services. Using a third-party audit process, the programme validates a partner’s technology skills, business practices, customer satisfaction, presales and post-sales support capabilities, and other critical factors that customers consider when choosing a trusted partner. As a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, Equinox Egypt has met the requirements for attaining the broadest range of expertise across multiple technologies by achieving Cisco advanced specialisations in unified communications, routing and switching, security, and wireless LAN. In addition, Equinox Egypt has integrated Cisco Lifecycle
New area VP for Juniper Juniper Networks has appointed Adrian Pickering to the role of area vice president, Middle Adrian Pickering East and Africa. Based in Dubai, Pickering will be responsible for driving sales and operations across the Middle East and Africa region for both service provider and enterprise
10 Network World Middle East July 2011
markets reporting to Sean Dolan, senior vice president, EMEA. “I am joining Juniper Networks at a pivotal moment with strong sales, support and headcount in the region,” said Pickering. “Recent high profile customer deployments and increased investment in training and channel partners locally have provided great momentum and gives me a great platform to continue driving activity and expansion with my team.” Pickering joins Juniper from Cisco Systems where he worked for many years, most recently as a senior director in the emerging markets East team.
Services into its offerings and is required to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. Cisco Gold Certification provides Equinox Egypt with access to comprehensive sales, technical, and lifecycle services training and support available from Cisco.
Ericsson to acquire Telcordia Ericsson has reached an agreement to acquire Telcordia Technologies for $1.15 billion. The deal will reinforce and expand Ericsson’s position in the operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) sector. These systems are used for network optimisation and real-time charging, according to Ericsson. The acquisition is a “perfect fit” when combined with its network equipment and services organisation, Ericsson said. Today, operators are looking for new ways to charge for their services, including mobile broadband, and the acquisition of Telcordia will allow Ericsson to help operators with that part of their business as well. Telcordia’s systems will help monetise the traffic and products that operators sell, Ericsson said in a statement. For Ericsson, it also means a bigger presence in the North American market, where it was recently announced that Clearwire is outsourcing the management of its network to Ericsson for seven years to cut costs. The Swedish telecom equipment maker is acquiring 100 percent of the shares in Telcordia from Providence Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus, and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, taking effect during the first three months of next year. Telcordia is based in Piscataway, New Jersey. www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 11
bits GOOD
BAD
UGLY
Gartner upgrades worldwide IT spending forecast
IBM turns 100
Gartner has upgraded its forecast for worldwide IT spending, saying it will grow 7.1 percent this year to $3.7 trillion as companies migrate to the cloud and spend more on software and IT services. The research firm previously forecast a growth of 5.6 percent in worldwide IT spending compared to last year, in which spending totalled $3.4 trillion and increased 5.9 percent from 2009. Growth in IT spending will continue through 2012, said Richard Gordon, research VP at Gartner, in a statement.
GOOD
90% of companies say they have been hacked
If it sometimes appears that just about every company is getting hacked these days, that's because they are. In a new survey of 583 U.S companies conducted by Ponemon Research on behalf of Juniper Networks, 90% of the respondents said their companies' computers were breached at least once by hackers over the past 12 months.Nearly 60% reported two or more breaches over the past year. More than 50% said they had little confidence of being able to stave off further attacks over the next 12 months.
BAD
Researchers discover 4.5 millionstrong super-botnet
Millions of PCs around the world appear to have been quietly infected by the dangerous TDSS 'super-malware' rootkit as part of a campaign to build a giant new botnet, researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab have discovered. Malware and botnets come and go, but TDSS is different. First detected more than three years ago, TDSS (also known as 'TDL' and sometimes by its infamous rootkit component, Alureon), it has grown into a multi-faceted malware nexus spinning out ever more complex and dangerous elements as it evolves. If active, this number of compromised computers could make it one of the largest botnets in the world, with the US portion alone worth an estimated $250,000 (£155,000) to the underground economy.
UGLY
12 Network World Middle East July 2011
IBM marked the 100-year anniversary of its founding on June 16, 1911. To celebrate the milestone, the company released a book, “Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company,” debuted a new film “Wild Ducks” and marked the anniversary by ringing the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange. During its first century, IBM has played a leading role in transforming business, science and society. The company’s history can be seen as a succession of key milestones – from investing in a research lab in the depths of the Great Depression, to developing the first hard disk drive that created the data storage industry, to working with the U.S. government to develop the Social Security System. It continued with such “big bets” as a radical new computing model, the System/360 mainframe, the invention of the UPC code, the invention of the IBM Personal Computer that launched the PC revolution, and the recent development of Watson, the computer that triumphed on the TV game show Jeopardy!. “IBM Middle East has worked alongside many of the region’s largest organisations and academic institutions to bring its latest technologies to the region since 1947. We’ve formed a strong relationship with many countries in the Middle East thanks to our leadership across a huge
range of technologies, including supercomputers, integrated solutions, software, services and technologies catering to small and medium businesses as well as large enterprises,” said Takreem El-Tohamy, General Manager, IBM Middle East and Africa. “As IBMers across the world celebrate 100 years of great achievements and take pride in having the best resources of scientific expertise that have transformed and touched just about every aspect of our daily lives; we are planning hard for an even more innovative 100 years to come.” Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano identified the key lesson IBM has learned over 100 years: In order to succeed for the long term, you must manage for the long term. “For IBMers, long-term thinking means continually moving to the future,” he said. “IBM has survived and thrived for 100 years by remaining true to our core values, while being ready to change everything else. This has allowed us to transform technology, business and society through our first century, and we believe it will enable us to achieve even more in our second.” One of the oldest living IBM alumni, Luis A. Lamassonne is 105 years old and resides in Miami, Florida. He joined IBM in 1933 and worked at the company for 38 years, rising to become an executive in Latin America. Reflecting on IBM’s Centennial today, Lamassonne said, “IBM has always been one of the best companies. The company is special because of the people. I have faith that IBM will survive for many more years, for another century.” www.networkworldme.com
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trend analysis | call centre
Join the conversation Unlike virtually every other IT company, Genesys’ recent G-Force EMEA conference in Prague stayed resolutely away from technology, despite the recent release of a major upgrade to its core technology. Customers, benefits and industry trends were to the fore, as Dave Reeder discovered
T
wo decades in and one decade from its launch European
customer event in Prague the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Applications company Genesys returned to the city. More than 1,000 customers of the leader in customer service applications met with partners and experts with global quality customer implementations with BT, Emirates Airlines, Orange, T-Mobile UK and Swedbank forming the heart of the general sessions.
Paul Segre, President of AlcatelLucent Applications Group
14 Network World Middle East July 2011
For once, despite a number of technology sponsors and the availability of the innovative Genesys Conversation Manager, technology discussions were sidelined in favour of customer experience and a timeline of how far the call centre space has evolved over the last 20 years. The game changer, as keynote speaker Tom Eggemeier, GM of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise EMEA, explained was that “service centres now talk to thousands of millions of people in real time”. Social networking, he explained, is changing the relationship of customer or potential customer to company. “We now trust our peers more than we trust companies. There’s a ‘loyalty loop’ that companies need to be aware of.” Take as an example, he suggested the event hotel, the Hilton Prague. One Tripadvisor.com, the hotel has received 500 reviews – some good, some not so good. “But each one has had a response on-line by a Hilton manager – that’s an excellent example of responding to what we call crowd sourcing.” So social media is changing the way people do business. Most of us get that. But what does it mean to the call centre? “You have to catch up to where your customers are, to how involved they are in it. The problem you face is that you don’t hold the history of social media customers and all the advances to the www.networkworldme.com
A typical customer interaction, for example, might take place over five channels. call centre industry over the last decade need to be carried forward into the call centre space.” Those advanced have been matched by the major releases of Genesys’ main product – in the 1990s when the industry was focused on phone calls, Genesys 6 (G6) focused on that; in the 2000s, G7 moved to interaction; and now, in the 2010s, G8 is all about ‘the conversation’. That is, the combination of interactions between customer and business through social networking, call centre activity, personal contact, the Internet, back office operations and mobile contact. “The reality is that with social media, our ability to proact has really increased,” stressed Paul Segre, President of AlcalelLucent Applications Group. “The issue we’re facing is that a customer’s experience may be by voice, text, chat, Web, scanned documents and so on, but the links between a company’s departments such as back office or marketing and the contact centre are not always clear.” So the problem is simple: modern forms of customer interaction are not being recorded by contact centre staff and so valueable customer data is lost. “We need to track individual interactions across communications channels and time.” In effect, the contact centre is merely facing the same issues that other parts of the business are facing coping with so-called ‘big data’ – the largely unstructured information that modern forms of communication and interaction are throwing up. Business analysis – and therefore better response to customer – means that we need to fully understand customers. It’s not rocket science, but for many businesses
it still seems a step too far. The reality of creating, recording and then analysing an end-to-end view of customer interaction over time is daunting. “But it’s important,” stresses Segre. “In contact centres, people represent 60-70% of the cost but 100% of customer satisfaction. They need the right tools to deliver.” This is important because there seems to be decreasing correlation between customers’ experience and loyalty, according to recent research. Does this mean that we should stop trying to delight our customers, asks Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, CMO of AlcatelLucent Enterprise? “No, but we need to understand the changing nature of loyalty. Good service is now expected whilst bad service is increasingly being punished and the word on that going out through social media – the notion of social vitriol. The truth is that the notion of customer service has dramatically improved over the last two decades but the bar of expectation has been significantly raised.” If excellence is a given, then we need to understand what it is that customers want, de Kouchkovsky believes. “They expect you to be reachable through multiple channels. They expect you to be responsive – the right resource with the right knowledge. They expect your response to be relevant to them. And, finally, they expect you to know who they are. All this means you need to personalise the interaction based on historical context and shift from a multichannel approach to customers to a cross-channel one.” As an example of the new way that customers expect to be dealt with, he spoke of the US-based Zipcar, a fully
digital car hire service. Based solely on mobile phone usage, the service finds the nearest location of a suitable car, sends GPS directions to the site, unlocks the remotely when you arrive and does the opposite at the end of the flexible rental period. The whole operation is mobile – there is no human interaction at all. “What we’re understanding now is that the smartphone is a hub – voice, text, video, Internet and, increasingly, a notification channel and directory. So the challenge we face is scaling customer service across new channels. That doesn’t mean that your job will get easier but that conversation is a model that can help.” A typical customer interaction, for example, might take place over five channels. Firstly, a customer browses and checks products and services over the Net, then speaks to an call centre agent before using social media to make some checks. That’s three channels already with an SMS query and a faceto-face meeting with a specialist making up the five. And feedback on the interaction at any of those points or the business’ inability to link e-mail queries with an agent conversation, for example, make ideal fodder for potentially helpful or harmful Twitter conversations. “What this means is that we need to virtualise access to all parts of the customer-facing experience. A customer sees a seamless conversation but it’s not easy to deliver. A recent project with United Airlines, for instance, meant combining 35 different apps in order to make customer context universally accessible. The shift we need to make is from an interaction-driven business to a conversation-linked one.” Judging from the animated discussion between sessions, it seemed to me that the conversation had begun already. July 2011 Network World Middle East 15
trend analysis | BPM
Getting ahead with BPM Business process management is the key to business transformation, according to Software AG
F
or IT, it is all about processes. It’s become an imperative for CIOs to
have a better handle on processes if they have to anticipate problems before the business encounters them. This was the central theme of the middleware giant Software AG’s annual Process World event, which was held in Berlin last month. The event, which attracted 900 participants from 34 countries, centred around the overarching theme of process knowledge for business transformation. Process World was flagged off by the company’s CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich, who urged companies to connect people, process and technology to drive business vision. “Focus on process excellence to unlock the potential of your organisation. In order to innovate, you have to integrate your infrastructure to be better connected, and optimise and automate your processes. The key to ensuring unique flexibility and agility is enterprise business process management that can speed up your transformation,” he said. Streibich said his company’s vision is extreme collaboration where technology comes closer to influencing the way people think. “Technology on its own doesn’t achieve anything. Technology and people do.” Wolfram Jost, CTO of Software AG, said agility is the key to achieve continuous business transformation. “We are at an inflection point. In one or two years, the way we do business will change. As applications are not designed for change, we have to add a process layer on top of the application layer for agility.” 16 Network World Middle East July 2011
Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO, Software AG
Wolfram Jost, CTO, Software AG
At the event Software AG has announced the acquisition of Metismo, which develops mobile development platform that allows applications to be deployed natively on multiple smartphone systems. “Mobile computing will change business process models and BPM and mobile will come together,” said Jost. Metismo’s Bedrock platform allows
developers to write applications using Java. The company’s CrossCompiler then converts the source code into native applications than can run directly on Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and smartphones based on Android, BlackBerryOS, Windows Phone and webOS. Software AG has also acquired Terracotta, which will allow the software vendor to develop more advanced cloud services and increase the performance and scalability of its business software management tools using Terracotta’s in-memory technology for Java. In-memory computing holds data in RAM instead of reading it from disks, providing a performance boost and better scalability. Terracotta’s technology can store up to a terabyte of data, according to Software AG. The first priority is to integrate Terracotta’s technology with Software AG’s webMethods and the Aris business process management software, said Jost. Software AG’s goal is to ship a version of Terracotta’s in-memory tool in the fourth quarter that can be applied to existing Software AG installations with no additional configuration. “Speed of application and processes is a success factor. We should build apps in a different way, and offload data from data warehouse to in-memory caching because memory is cheap,” said Jost. Terracotta’s in-memory processing will also play a key role as Software AG rolls out cloud versions of its products. The company said it will release cloud-enabled versions of webMethods and Aris in the third quarter. It plans to let users choose whether to run their Software AG applications in a public cloud or a private one. Terracotta’s cloud tools allow standard enterprise Java applications to be rolled out in cloud environments. The tools manage all the aspects of server creation and software provisioning, according to Terracotta’s website. The integration of Terracotta’s technology and Software AG’s cloud platform will bear fruit next year, Software AG said. www.networkworldme.com
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Aptec Distribution FZE LLC P.O.Box 33550, Dubai Internet City, Dubai, UAE Tel: (+971 4) 3697111 Fax: (+971 4) 3697110, email : info@aptecme.com, www.apteconline.com Aptec Egypt: Tel: (+202) 6444264 / 6355030, Aptec Kuwait-KFTZ: Tel: (+965) 4610280 Ext. 215, Aptec Pakistan: Tel: +9221 2788736, Aptec Lebanon: Tel: (+961) 4718891, Aptec Saudi: Tel: (+966 1) 4601950, Aptec Turkey: Tel: (+90 212) 259 0064. July 2011 Network World Middle East 17
trend analysis | cloud
Intel outlines cloud vision Intel spelled out its cloud 2015 vision and how it plans to achieve it at a media event. Jeevan Thankappan encapsulates the processor giant’s vision and strategy
T
he year 2015 is going to be a watershed year for IT in many ways.
Analysts predict that by then we will have one billion more Internet users, 15 billion connected devices and one zetabyte of Internet traffic. As Internet and device expansion drives new requirements for data centres, it also represents an opportunity to save $25 billion in annual ‘excess’ IT spend by 2015 by having a smarter infrastructure in place. In this context, Intel presented its cloud vision for 2015 at a recently held event in Belgium. Intel’s cloud vision is built around three pillars- federated, automated and clientaware. Federated means communications, data and services can move easily within and across cloud computing infrastructures. Intel’s cloud vision calls for a level of federation that enables the movement of workloads and data from one service provider to another. Automated means that cloud computing services and resources can be specified, located and securely provisioned with very little or zero human interaction. Finally, client-aware
18 Network World Middle East July 2011
means users can optimise services based on service capability. “Right now, the biggest concern related to cloud computing is security. It is not just about putting your confidential data but also how do you change the operation model and yet maintain the level of compliance. You have to look at what kind of leverage are IT organisations going to get by more consolidation. Though virtual servers increased efficiency, it didn’t reduce operational expenses,” said Dylan Larson, Director of Server Platform Marketing at Intel. Intel says it is driving the vision into action by continuing to invest in platform capabilities to improve efficiency, to drive scale and deliver on the promise of automation and federation. A big area of focus is Cloud Builders initiative, which will utilise proven reference solutions to ease cloud deployments. This broad ecosystem engagement is aimed at driving cloud solution delivery, with a technical repository of reference architectures, educational tools, and solution information.
Intel Cloud Builders brings together systems and software solutions vendors to deploy, maintain and optimise a cloud infrastructure based on Intel architecture. Currently, Intel has 33 reference architectures available while 11 usage models from the members of the initiative were demonstrated at the event. “These are 33 documented solutions that have been tested in labs with substantial details right down to the configuration script. These are built on Intel technology to accelerate cloud architectures for IT and service providers. We are not just talking to technology leadership audience but also to consumers of technology with our open data centre initiative,” said Larson. The Intel open data centre initiative is the company’s comprehensive engagement with ecosystem partners and end customers to help speed the delivery of technology that enables more secure, efficient, and simplified cloud data centres that preserve IT flexibility. Intel is also an advisor to the Open Data Center Alliance, which is an initiative to drive the industry to open interoperable cloud solutions, and currently has 280 members. The Alliance will define a roadmap of the highest priority usage models for cloud and next-gen data centres and lay out the requirements to address with multi-vendor, interoperable solutions that embrace standards. “Intel responds to these usage models and others that we identify though our end-user engagements to deliver products and technologies that meet the requirements of the usage models. Open data centre alliance has recently delivered the first user driven requirements with the publication of eight new usage models,” said Larson. Intel says is cloud is still a work in progress, and the biggest focus is on getting to an operational model. Larson said Intel is investing heavily to evolve the system architecture to optimise the cloud by pioneering the concept micro-servers for high density environments and policy based power management, which provides real time server power monitoring. www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 19
in action: ADEC
Beyond classroom Abu Dhabi Education Council transforms education with the help of technology
A
s part of the government, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) develops and
implements educational policies, plans, and programmes to improve education in accordance with the highest international standards and to support national development goals. ADEC’s vision is to become one of the five best public education systems in the world, enabling students to become worldclass learners able to fully participate in a sustainable, knowledge-based society. To achieve this, ADEC wants to enrich the learning environment and enhance student performance using technology that meets the needs of 21st-century learners, educators, and organisations.
20 Network World Middle East July 2011
An optimised learning and working environment is equally essential for recruiting teachers and staff. ADEC hires teachers from around the world, most of whom are accustomed to having technology resources in the classroom. However, the school system’s networking infrastructure could not support its ambitious goals. The schools were not connected to each other or to the main data centre, and only a few schools had Internet connectivity. Without comprehensive
connectivity, teachers and administrators were not able to easily share learning resources or Internet-based courseware. Each school had independent information systems for student admissions, curriculum management, examination records, and operating finances. Many of those systems were paper-based. ADEC wanted to increase administrative productivity and improve consistency across the schools by centralising these important systems in the data centre. At the same time, ADEC wanted to maximize its project budget without compromising service and solution quality. An aggressive timeline and the complexity associated with deploying new infrastructure in a data centre and approximately 270 schools meant that ADEC also needed project management assistance. “Technology is essential to reaching our goals, but we needed more than just the technology,” says Mohammed Younes, ICT division manager for ADEC. “Implementing
www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 21
in action: ADEC
new technology in our data centre and across 270 schools was a major logistics challenge. We needed a solution that delivered everything – the technology, project expertise, and investment protection.” After several in-depth studies and market analysis, Younes and his team recommended Cisco to the ADEC executives. Cisco Services was engaged to deliver a complete end-to-end Borderless Network Architecture. Designed to connect all school buildings, the architecture will provide secure access to critical information, transform the student enterprise information system (SIS), and create a technology-based learning and collaborative environment. The council also asked Cisco to establish a project management office to manage information, resources, and change to reduce risk, resolve problems quickly, and keep the project on track. Cisco and ADEC took an architectural approach to transforming the school system’s network and data centre. This approach began with thoroughly understanding what ADEC wanted to achieve and determining the IT strategy that would be needed to implement its vision. The Cisco team reviewed ADEC’s existing infrastructure and security strategy against best practices. Based on this assessment, they developed a conceptual Borderless Network Architecture, network roadmap, strategy, and detailed design for connecting the 270 public schools. The data centre features the Cisco Nexus 7000, Cisco Unified Computing System, and Cisco IronPort security. The network infrastructure in each school includes a WAN router, core and access switches, wireless LAN, and Internet connectivity. Comprehensive connectivity enables staff in the data centre to centrally manage
all of the schools’ information systems. Altogether, the new infrastructure will support 150,000 students, teachers, and administrators. Cisco Services’ infrastructure and wireless teams provided comprehensive planning, design, and implementation services to meet aggressive implementation deadlines. The teams expect to have completed deployment of all schools by the end of 2011 through dedicated teamwork. Etisalat, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, was selected as the prime system integrator responsible for supplying Cisco equipment, installing it, and providing project management support for cabling and network connectivity, including interoperability with the national telecom service provider. Cisco Services provides consultative support for implementation and has full deployment responsibility for the Cisco network infrastructure in all of the schools. After deployment, Cisco will provide ongoing technical support through the Cisco SMARTnet service. Cisco SMARTnet gives ADEC’s IT staff direct, anytime access to Cisco engineers, the Cisco Technical Assistance Centre (TAC), and an extensive range of online resources. ADEC receives fast, expert technical support, flexible hardware coverage, and personalized capabilities to help them resolve critical network issues. The Cisco Services project management office helped ensure steady progress toward the project completion. ADEC has implemented the Oracle eBusiness Suite into the architecture, initially using the Human Resources, Procurement, and Finance modules. A system-wide student registration system is also in production and will replace numerous, diverse paper-based systems. The data centre security and core system upgrades are being finalized and the
next steps include implementing Active Directory for authentication and remote desktop services, as well as deploying teaching and learning management tools. Results The Cisco Borderless Network Architecture
will be a cornerstone for transforming education across Abu Dhabi. Approximately 150 schools will be fully deployed by late summer 2011. The schools that are already completed have Internet access, content filtering, and end-to-end wireless capabilities in place. The Cisco networking solution supports ADEC’s vision for the future, helping to create a student-centric, technologybased learning environment that builds community for learning and collaboration. As a result of the successful schools initiative, the Abu Dhabi government has also recommended Cisco and Cisco Services for projects within high-level government. “Already we have seen significant improvement in network availability, bandwidth, and stability,” says Younes. “Administrators are now able to take advantage of enterprise-class applications and 16,000 teachers have email and self-service access to a portal for sharing resources.” The borderless network architecture provides ADEC with investment protection. The Cisco network platform can easily be expanded to accommodate advanced applications that ADEC might add in the future. High scalability will enable new applications and capabilities to be added over the next three to five year with minimal adjustments. ADEC expects to implement physical security, RFID equipment tracking, online testing, eLibrary, remote instruction, web- and video-based training and collaboration, and Internet research capabilities. Cisco Unified Communication solutions will be implemented for developing teacher After deployment, Cisco will provide ongoing technical proficiency and enhancing support through the Cisco SMARTnet service. productivity.
22 Network World Middle East July 2011
www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 23
feature | WLAN in association with
Navigating wireless landscape With 802.11n, enterprise Wi-Fi networks are shifting from convenient to critical. They’re becoming the preferred and primary network access for users – which means IT groups have to rethink how they deploy, secure, manage and run the wireless LAN
E
vidence from the front lines of IT shows that it’s easy to squander the 3x to 5x improvement in Wi-Fi data rate and throughput that 11n offers, as compared to 802.11abg. If that happens, WLANs that were expected to easily handle the surging number of Wi-Fi clients, absorb the sharp uptake in latency-sensitive multimedia traffic, and deliver consistent, high throughput across the enterprise fail to live up to their potential.
24 Network World Middle East July 2011
Rapidly evolving characteristics are forcing IT professionals to rethink their approach to WLANs. Designing a WLAN that can meet specific throughput targets to support those applications; and creating an “infrastructure” that goes beyond just the access points and controllers to include network and user security, endto-end network management, continual monitoring, and a trained WLAN response team and help desk. www.networkworldme.com
in association with
Here’s what you need to be aware of to take your enterprise WLAN to the next level. Design for capacity not coverage: With 802.11n, a relatively few access points can create a Wi-Fi blanket wallto-wall in the enterprise. But with the evolution of traffic types, applications and clients, that’s no longer enough. Designing and building for capacity means taking into account the actual use-case of a given area, and deploying enough APs to meet your performance expectations. A key element in such an approach is an understanding of how access points perform under the expected types and volumes of traffic, number of users, and applications. Thorough testing will clarify client requirements, what the AP can deliver,
that your investment is used, look for a wireless system that can determine if client devices that attach to the network are capable of 5G operation and actively steer them towards those channels.” Treat 802.11n migration differently: An 11n network is
not just “faster Wi-Fi.” It comes with higher speeds, but also higher expectations. To meet those expectations, IT groups may need to formalise new deployment schemes, or update existing ones. Don’t forget the back-end:
The best designed WLAN can be crippled because back-end services are overlooked. Two examples are RADIUS servers and DHCP servers Aruba says its AirWave network management portfolio that for various reasons delivers operational efficiency for teams managing rapidly start fumbling when changing networks and supporting mobile users who connect hit with a flood of Wi-Fi via the wireless LAN as well as wired Ethernet ports. requests. In addition, DHCP an important role in determining how servers often are not aware that a Wi-Fi and how and where to deploy them to efficient the network is. “It is therefore user has disconnected, or may not meet service level requirements. important for the initial design to be release IP addresses in a timely manner. One practice has been to deploy Wi-Fi done by a competent design engineer, That can lead to the WLAN running out networks that have traffic prioritisation using the right simulation tools and/or of IP addresses. combined with bandwidth limitations planning/estimation tools such as site for applications or users; this is part of Manage WLAN management: One survey software.” an overall focus on constantly optimising emerging issue for some enterprise Matthew Gast, Director of Product wireless performance. However, Wi-Fi networks is radio management Management, Aerohive Network, says designing the WLAN from the outset for challenges as the number of access the cardinal rule in building an efficient the emerging multimedia challenge may points and wireless clients grow. Wireless network is to use the 5 GHz spectrum. be a more effective long-term solution. LAN vendors have been adding an array “There are many more channels for Tariq Hassan, Regional Sales of innovative features to address the radio management algorithms to pick Manager, Motorola Solutions, says issues, and to automate the network’s from, and most devices support using architecture is important. “It should response. But large-scale WLANs 5G channels. Every laptop supports be scalable. Wireless is a dynamic continually stretch those innovations. them, as does almost every device that’s environment and large networks “Using outdated tools to manage wireless not a telephone. A dual-radio AP is only require continuous tweaking either networks leads to frequent escalations a small additional investment above automatically or manually.” of routine issues to increasingly scarce the cost of a single-radio AP, but it can He adds network planning is network engineering resources, poor move twice as much traffic. To ensure important as the initial design will plays Ammar Enaya, GM of Middle East, Aruba Networks
July 2011 Network World Middle East 25
feature | WLAN in association with
Wi-Fi Direct is still finding its stride
W
i-Fi Direct is still scarce in announced or shipping products, but it would be wrong to reach a gloomy conclusion about the new peer-to-peer technology from the Wi-Fi Alliance. The Alliance, which puts the stamp of approval on all Wi-Fi gear, started certifying products with Wi-Fi Direct in late October. Wi-Fi Direct is a specification for devices to communicate via Wi-Fi without an access point. The capability could have a range of uses, including linking peripherals to PCs, doing quick file transfers anywhere, and connecting home entertainment gear. Wi-Fi Direct can deliver typical Wi-Fi speeds, and peer-topeer networks can be set up with the technology as long as one of the devices involved is equipped with it. The new technology is the first realistic option for peerto-peer networks in the Wi-Fi family of standards. The previous mechanism, called “ad hoc mode,” was too complex for most users to set up and worked poorly even when they could. The new standard has attracted support from most of the major Wi-Fi silicon providers. Intel, Atheros, Broadcom and Marvell all have had components certified for Wi-Fi Direct. Intel itself plans eventually to include Wi-Fi Direct in all its wireless products.
26 Network World Middle East July 2011
Tariq Hassan, Regional Sales Manager, Motorola Solutions
appropriate tools. Today most WLAN vendors have tools that can cater to almost all management requirements, including configuration management, remote troubleshooting, audit reporting and so on. So the key really is for the enterprise to recognise and assemble a good set of tools which can take care of foreseen and unforeseen needs.” Aruba says its AirWave network management portfolio delivers operational efficiency for teams managing rapidly changing networks and supporting mobile users who connect via the wireless LAN as well as wired Ethernet ports. With its easy-touse interface and user-centric approach, AirWave lets businesses’ service desk triage connectivity issues while their valuable network engineering staffs focus on more strategic work. Expand the repository of Wi-Fi best practices: Research by Aberdeen Group
Matthew Gast, Director of Product Management, Aerohive Network
network performance and rapidly increasing support costs. With thousands of new wireless users and whole new categories of wireless devices coming online — VoIP phones, printers, handhelds, asset tags and more — the problem is getting worse every day,” says Ammar Enaya, GM of Middle East, Aruba Networks. Agrees Hasan from Motorola Solutions: “Yes, WLANs are growing bigger by the day. It is not unusual to see a 1000 plus AP network deployed in sites such as university campuses or retail organisations. Management of these networks can be a challenge if adequate attention is not given to arming the administrators with
has found that enterprises with the best WLAN performance, reliability, and user satisfaction are those that bring together clusters of best practices, to address different parts of the overall wireless network. These clusters mutually reinforce each other, improving network reliability and performance. For example, top performing WLANs tend to be those with centralised Wi-Fi management, a wireless intrusion detection/prevention system, bandwidth priorities, and spectrum analysers for continuous troubleshooting and network fine-tuning. Each of these has a group of associated practices: IT policies and schedules ensure the spectrum analysers will be used regularly, for instance, while site survey applications can use the data to map fluctuations and identify trouble spots. Likewise, intrusion control systems complement regular site-wide assessments of security vulnerabilities, security training and certification for IT staff, and security-awareness education for users. www.networkworldme.com
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opinion | mobile UC
The right sizing of mobile Unified Communications What you need to know
Y
ou don’t have to look too far to realize that consumer
technology trends are driving significant changes in enterprise IT. Smartphones, tablets, Facebook, and YouTube - all have made their way into the enterprise, often for legitimate business reasons. With the pace of innovation in consumer technology accelerating, organisations must 28 Network World Middle East July 2011
determine how to best adapt new technologies to the needs of the business. Companies should pay special attention to the intersection between Unified Communications and mobility. The promise of high quality, lower cost communications to your mobile device can mean significant cost savings for the business. The availability of highly secure, reliable wireless networks is
allowing enterprises to “right size” their access networks, resulting in cost savings due to a reduction in the number of Ethernet switches required for connectivity. New applications like Skype and Facetime are challenging legacy PBX and video conferencing systems. The next phase of right sizing – driven by consumer voice and video applications on mobile devices – has arrived. www.networkworldme.com
Imagine a world where the air is the Internet. Where networks understand people and movement. Where iPads速 and Smartphones connect securely without intervention. Where mobile voice and video are crystal clear. Now imagine all of this in a single, cost effective solution. Int Introducing MOVETM from Aruba Networks.
People Move, Networks Must Follow.
Learn how www.arubanetworks.com/move July 2011 Network World Middle East 29
opinion | mobile UC
Gartner Research forecasts that the growth of PC softphones, mobile softphones and IP-enabled wireless telephones will pass that of wired IP phones in the business telephone market by 2015. According to Gartner, TDM wireless telephones and both analogue and digital telephones are in decline. The rapid adoption of softphones on mobile devices and wireless phones is driving this transition and underscores the need for a highly-secure, intelligent wireless network. Over the same period, the Middle East is expected to outpace the rest of the world in terms of the growth in IP-traffic with the latest numbers showing a 52 percent compound annual growth rate. Voice and video traffic is playing a significant role in this acceleration. Chris Kozup So what does this mean for enterprise IT? With the right number of access points deployed and the preparation, IT can demonstrate significant number of clients each serves. When scaling cost savings to the business by taking the infrastructure, several factors must advantage of the plethora of new mobile be considered, including how and where voice and video applications. However, the access points are placed, their ability preparation is the key. to dynamically adjust channel and power The first step is to ensure pervasive, high settings and support for intelligent load performance wireless connectivity. Wi-Fi balancing and multicast video. has long been the preferred connectivity In a recent demonstration of these method for bandwidth-hungry mobile capabilities, the University of Ottawa (an applications. IT departments have embraced Aruba Networks customer) conducted a new standards like 802.11n and shifted test to showcase the delivery of multimedia network design principles to favor Wi-Fi applications at scale over the wireless as a primary access network. Of course the network. The test, conducted in a real quality of voice and video communications auditorium-style lecture hall, consisted can only be as good as the network that of six leading multimedia educational carries the traffic. As such, IT should applications; each delivered concurrently evaluate the ability of the Wi-Fi network to to 100 iPads. Each of the applications was deliver the intelligence required for voice delivered simultaneously to all 100 iPads and video applications at scale. with the highest quality and without any As a second step, IT should understand noticeable performance degradation. the scale and density requirements of The test clearly demonstrated the ability these mobile applications and devices, of wireless networks to support scalable and then architect the wireless network so delivery of voice and video to mobile devices that it can ensure appropriate application like the iPad, even at high client densities. service levels. For the most part, a Wi-Fi Wireless networks should also be able infrastructure’s scale is defined by the to identify the applications they carry 30 Network World Middle East July 2011
and adjust the quality of service accordingly. This is important because voice and video applications behave differently than traditional data applications. For example, the network may need to give higher prioritisation for voice traffic than it would for email traffic. The ability of the network to do this type of dynamic “application fingerprinting” allows the appropriate policies to be applied and helps to ensure smooth performance for realtime communications and multi-media applications. Aruba Networks recently showcased this application fingerprinting capability in partnership with Microsoft. The two companies vigorously tested the use of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 for voice and video communications over an Aruba wireless network. The tests concluded a significant performance delta between the Aruba network with application fingerprinting and those networks without. The Aruba network delivered a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of greater than 3.9 – an industry standard that ranks the quality of voice on a 1 to 5 scale – signaling high quality voice performance. With the advances in wireless throughput, design best practices and intelligence like application fingerprinting, IT can now start to realise the promise of the mobile enterprise. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, more than 100 new tablet devices were introduced – each of these destined to seek a connection to your network sometime soon. Before we can consider the chapter closed on the best practices for delivering highquality mobile unified communications, we must also ensure IT can define an acceptable use policy for any mobile device, securely and with confidence. About the author: Chris Kozup is the Senior Director, EMEA Marketing of Aruba Networks
www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 31
feature | thin provisioning
Doing more with less Thin provisioning can help you optimise storage utilisation and recue costs
W
hile provisioning all the capacity of an external disk to a given application, known as full provisioning, ensures the app has plenty of growth potential, it results in poor utilisation rates, a costly problem that can be addressed with thin provisioning technology. Research shows that storage utilisation rates achieved by most companies is 40% or lower. That means buyers are acquiring more capacity than they really need and the very existence of that extra capacity requires more space and cooling. Furthermore, the traditional method of provisioning leads to increased management workloads due to the fact that the extra but unused capacity still needs to be monitored and managed. If applications reach their capacity limits and IT managers have to re-provision capacity, complex management tasks can
32 Network World Middle East July 2011
be involved. More management requires more human resources, further driving up costs associated with storage management. Additionally, if an application is taken offline to reprovision capacity, it is then unable to serve business needs and can lead to revenue loss. Thin provisioning provides a way to address these limitations. By automatically allocating system capacity to applications as needed, thin provisioning technology can help achieve up to 90% storage utilisation, while at the same time significantly reducing power consumption. Thin provisioning allows users to allocate a large amount of virtual capacity for an application, regardless of the physical capacity actually available. At initial setup, thin provisioning does not physically allocate capacity to the prescribed data
volume, and the actual space is used only when data writes occur. This on-demand method for capacity allocation not only optimises storage utilisation, but also greatly simplifies capacity planning and management. In order to help users easily monitor capacity utilisation, storage systems automatically issue notifications when the total capacity utilization is reaching the threshold set by the user. If users wish to expand capacity, they can do so non-disruptively. “Thin-provisioning technology is synonymous with efficiency. It provides the storage administrator a way to substantially reduce over allocation of storage to users and manage the capacity based on usage instead of allocated size. This allows the administrator to maintain a common, unallocated storage space that is readily available to other applications on an as-needed basis. The storage community is interested in thin provisioning because of the enormous benefits and flexibility it offers,� says Martyn Molnar, Regional Area Director of NetApp. With traditional provisioning, it is difficult to move data across logical partitions in a storage architecture. If thin provisioning is applied, storage capacity from different logical partitions can be consolidated, enabling it to be dynamically allocated. From the opposite perspective, this means that the storage controller can move data dynamically across logical partitions based on how resources are designed to function. Traditional methods of storage allocation and provisioning tended to fall into two categories. You can either estimate total requirements for storage three years and provision the storage once or estimate initial requirements and add capacity when a certain threshold has been reached. “Each has its relative pros and cons; with the first, the storage admin has less work to do (one job), but storage sits unused for the majority of the time and may not even be used at all during the three years. It is locked to that application and cannot be www.networkworldme.com
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feature | thin provisioning released for more urgent requirements. With the second approach, you are not having storage sit idle and unused, but your operational costs associated with the job of adding storage are higher – over three years you could have many jobs to increase storage capacity. Thin provisioning gives you the best of both worlds – you only need to provision once and you don’t actually allocate the space unless the application writes data to it,” says Anthony Harrison, Senior Principal Solution Architect, Symantec EMEA. He adds that it allows you to over-allocate your physical storage and aggregate multiple requirements so that the peaks and troughs balance each other out. “ You move to a model of ‘just-in-time’ provisioning instead of ‘just-in-case’. You can then achieve far greater actual utilisation rates than before without thin provisioning.” Furthermore, thin provisioning opens the door for other advances in storage design, including automated storage tiering. Storage tiering involves grouping data into different categories and assigning these categories to different types of storage media in order to optimise storage utilization. Automated tiering ensures applications have access to the performance levels they need. High-performance applications can be assigned to high-performance tiers featuring drives such as SSDs or SAS, while applications requiring less performance can be assigned to lower tiers featuring lowperformance drives such as SATA. This ensures that no storage resources are wasted and that applications can function properly. In addition, this technology helps automatically migrate data based on usage patterns. If data in higher tiers has not been used for an extended period of time, it is demoted to lower tiers. Conversely, if data in lower tiers is frequently accessed, it is promoted to higher tiers. Storage efficiency can be greatly improved with this technology. The benefits in a nutshell In terms of tangible benefits, the overarching
result of using thin provisioning is it helps significantly reduce costs. With thin 34 Network World Middle East July 2011
Anthony Harrison, Senior Principal Solution Architect, Symantec EMEA
Martyn Molnar, Regional Area Director of NetApp
provisioning, utilisation can be greatly increased and you can get more out of your existing capacity, reducing the need to add new HDDs (hard disk drives). This can generate significant cost savings, which can be particularly important for companies with limited budgets. With thin provisioning, capacity is dynamically allocated to applications from a consolidated storage pool, eliminating the need for the allocated but unused capacity in full provisioning. The benefits of delaying new HDD acquisitions are further magnified by the fact that HDD prices continue to decline. Delaying acquisitions thereby becomes even more worthwhile. Another major benefit is power
consumption can be reduced considerably, leading to more cost savings. Since you do not need to buy as many HDDs as before, the rack space needed for a storage solution can also be reduced. Storage management also becomes much easier with thin provisioning. There is less to manage with a smaller number of HDDs, and you spend less time allocating capacity to applications. Furthermore, when capacity limits are reached, capacity can be added nondisruptively, eliminating the hassles associated with downtime. If you end up turning to thin provisioning for the benefits outlined, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the technology: • Claim as much virtual capacity for applications as possible: This reduces management tasks and ensures applications have access to sufficient capacity as long as physical resources are available. • Monitor physical storage capacity utilisation: Even though large virtual capacities can be allocated, each storage pool still has physical limits. Monitoring physical capacity utilisation is thus extremely important. •Set physical capacity utilisation thresholds based on pace of data generation: By creating notification mechanisms for when these thresholds are reached, sufficient time will be available to properly plan storage expansion. Setting a correct threshold is most important. For example, if an application fills 10% of capacity within only a few days, setting the utilisation threshold at 90% could lead to major problems, as the user will not have enough time to plan capacity expansion in order to ensure that an application can continue to operate normally. The benefits of thin provisioning are numerous and can generate considerable cost savings. With thin provisioning technology now widely available in the storage market, it should be a key consideration for companies planning to acquire new storage solutions. www.networkworldme.com
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July 2011 Network www.iomega.com World Middle East 35
event report | RME conference
Nassir Nauthoa, General Manager, GCC, Intel Corporation
Partner up
Top notch speakers at our sister publication Reseller Middle East’s first 2011 Conference covered a wide gamut of topics including upcoming technology trends, value addition, vendor-partner relationships, cash flow and social marketing.
O
n 12 June, Reseller Middle East kicked off its first conference
directed at the reseller community. The conference was a daylong, single track event, held at Westin Dubai, UAE. The highlights of the conference were intended to be the wide range of channel issues tackled by a high-level team of experienced industry leaders selected from vendors, distributors and consultants. The presentation content of each topic was set to appeal at an operational level rather than at a conceptual level. The conference was kicked off by a short welcome address by Reseller’s senior editor Arun Shankar, after which the key note speaker was invited to the stage. The keynote address for the conference was presented by Nassir Nauthoa,
36 Network World Middle East July 2011
General Manager, GCC, Intel Corporation. There were a number of important highlights in the presentation. Nauthoa drew the attention of the audience to the increasing purchasing power of the emerging markets. The index used to track the changes in purchasing power of the markets is the number of weeks of income required to buy an average priced consumer laptop. In 1994, it required 151 weeks of income to buy a laptop in the emerging markers versus 6 weeks of income in developed markets. In 2010, the same comparison has changed to 12 weeks of income in emerging markets versus 1 week of income for developed markets. This shows that a vast segment of population in the emerging markets is moving towards affordable ownership of a PC or a laptop.
Today, one billion people own a PC device, but 2.2 billion people can afford a PC and have not invested in such a device. A further 3.5 billion people still cannot afford a PC device. The engine of the emerging markets is so compelling that by end 2011 and early 2012, the total number of PCs shipped to the emerging markets will overtake the developed markets. Nauthoa also pointed out the changing nature of the personal computing device. It is not just PCs and laptops which the growing segment of population will use for computing. By 2015, only 56% of mobile traffic will be generated by laptops. Rest of the traffic will be generated from smart phones, home gateways and others. The forms of computing devices are changing and the all-in-one PC screen, ultra-book, smart TV, tablet and netbook are all possible variants of today’s desktop PC. However is the PC dead? Nauthoa indicated that the death knell of the PC was announced in 1997 with the network computer; again in 1999 with internet appliances; in 2005 with the cloud; in 2007 with the smart phone; in 2009 with the netbook; and in 2010 with the tablet. In 2010 there were one million devices shipped per day. All forecast indicate that by 2015 there will be two million shipped per day. So the PC is not dead! Intel’s vision of the future: by 2020 there will four billion connected people, 31 billion connected devices and 25 million applications. The key drivers for computing devices will remain performance, security and connectivity. After Nathuoa’s visionary address, there was a round table discussion on the growth dynamics across the Middle East. The participants were jointly made up of speakers from the Reseller Conference and some special invitees. The speakers of the conference who sat on the panel included Nassir Nauthoa, Intel Corporation; Meera Kaul, Optimus Technology and Telecommunications and Hesham Tantawi, Asbis. www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 37
interview | help AG
Security lockdown Stephan Berner, CEO of help AG, outlines some of the critical initiatives regional organisations can adopt to deal with the ever-changing threat landscape
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ith the prevalence of data loss and the proliferation of Web 2.0 applications, mobile computing and the rise of sophisticated, blended attacks, businesses – regardless of their size – are struggling to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. How can companies in the region mitigate these risks? I have a saying, ‘there are many people
that want to take a shower without
getting wet’. If you want to do something – do it right. Yet organisations today fail because they don’t really know what they are doing due to the lack of visibility when it comes to their information security and if you cannot see, you will fall into a dark hole. Data Loss Prevention, for instance, is a big hype these days, but everyone is misusing the word and it is considered an IT project currently by the IT
department of many organisations. I am faced every day with the fact that many people still do not take information security too seriously but when it comes to information security there is no half-baked solution - do it right or not at all. Given the fact that thread landscape is evolving, Information Security as a subject needs to be taken much more seriously across all layers within the organisation, starting from the management level. You can only control and mitigate what you are aware of. The lack of visibility into confidential data coupled with missing policies, procedures, and processes lead to critical situations and severe security incidents. Visibility of information and data is the key, yet in most situations today there is visibility in point-to-point communications but not the entire communications. Organisations need to assess, manage, and treat the risks as per their aligned business and IS strategy. This can be achieved by introducing and maintaining an Information Security Management System according ISO27001 and focusing on the technical security controls as well. To mitigate the risk you need to have right visibility. What we see with our end customers is a huge lack of security procedures and processes. If a security-related incident happened within customer’s organisation today, in most cases, there is simply no incident handling in place. The customer might discover there has been an attack but nobody knows what the next steps should be. A broad spectrum of IT people, including those close to security functions, appear to have little awareness of key security issues impacting their organisations. How important is security awareness and education? As a matter of fact, in information
security we are always late! This has to do with the dynamic and changing 38 Network World Middle East July 2011
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environment. Therefore the security awareness and education became a necessity. Generally, employees are good network citizens. Yet it is the employee behaviour that is the primary source of costly data breaches. Speaking of Data Loss Prevention, more than 75% of the incidents are related to employees’ unintentional mistakes driven by the lack of awareness and education. Actually only around 10% of data loss is related to malicious codes! These good network citizens, without having any bad intentions, compromise information security of their organisations. The only secure system is the one that’s unplugged, turned-off and locked in a safe. Since it’s not practical to leave our systems turned off we need to understand the risks and prepare ourselves to defend them. Preparation begins with understanding and that’s where awareness kicks in. The human factor is the biggest threat to any information system. IT security heads should raise awareness within their organisations themselves, train and educate everyone who somehow interacts with computer systems and information, and propagate at least the basics of information security. Any implementation of a security policy should be followed up with an awareness campaign for the users especially within a big enterprise where daily interaction between IT and the users may not be achievable. Most users will accept the limitations implemented in a security policy when they understand why but if they don’t understand why, it is easy for them to forget or neglect it. An awareness campaign doesn’t need to be an expensive or time consuming exercise. As an example, one of our clients is promoting the five best practices of the security policy by a centrally controlled screen saver, which means
that it can deliver the message to all employees in an undisrupted and easy communication channel.
exempt from controls. At the end of the day this puts the organisation at risk as well as the CEO.
What are some of the challenges related to new opportunities such as cloud, social networking and mobility? Do you think existing security tools can deal with the risks posed by these new emerging technologies? To me social network and mobility are
Do you think currently IT security regulations and standards are adequate to keep pace with the fast changing threat landscape? These standards are either international
not really new opportunities but rather a part of our lives already. People have been using Facebook, for instance, for a long time already, same with the iPhones and BlackBerries. However, when it comes to applying the right security levels organisations are reluctant to enforce them. It can either be because they are not seen as user friendly or too complex to manage, which in reality is not really the case. Actually most of the available solutions, especially for application-based requirements follow the concept of simplicity, which is the reason why Palo Alto is becoming more and more successful. Security tools are always available and capable to deal with the new risks, it is the organisations that are not. Usually if you look into the kind of customers we’re dealing with we always have exceptions like VIP users and VVIP users where the common pitfall is that security policy is not applied to all individuals in the same way. For example, VIP users may be exempt from the policy because IT security managers are reluctant in enforcing any controls on these individuals. However, these people now become a great risk to the organisation especially because their user profile typically has a very extended access to information. For example, a CEO of an organisation holds a lot of information and should probably be the one in the organisation with the least access, however, often he is completely
like ISO27001 or local such as ADSIC (Abu Dhabi Systems & Information Centre). Before anything these are frameworks that help enterprise customers and government entities establish an organisational and technical baseline. The standards are something, which caters for most of the requirements coming from the market, they do not dictate to the organizations how they should do what, it simply assist in what needs to be done. These standards are going through revisions to handle some of the changing threat landscape. They are definitely not as dynamic and they shouldn’t be as dynamic as the IT industry itself - if you build a house you do it with an objective to live in it for years and not for months. Dr Angelika Plate, who is the Director of Strategic Consulting at help AG is also the chairperson for Standard Committee (SC) 27, which describes the Information Security Management System (ISMS) and is actively involved in developing and revising the standards, so we have pretty good understanding in that business consultancy market segment. Typically it takes three to four years to revise a standard. Of course, if you compare it to the fast changing threat landscape it is not going to address all security threats, but it never has been developed with this purpose in mind because it is a framework and this framework going to make sure how to manage customers information security whenever the incident happens. The international standard wasn’t designed to be technical in nature on the first place. ADSIC, however, is much more technical. July 2011 Network World Middle East 39
opinion | mobile feature BI security
Raising the security bar Securing mobile devices requires enterprise and service provider controls
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nterprises are adept at securing and managing computing endpoints
such as desktop and laptop computers, but most do not have the same controls and processes in place for what is likely the fastest-growing computing platform: smartphones and other smart mobile devices. Though the amount of malware designed to target mobile devices still pales in comparison to that targeting traditional computing devices, there has been a marked increase in mobile malwareand the trend shows no signs of stopping. Combine that with the fact that mobile devices are often lost or stolen, and you get a major enterprise vulnerability. To help achieve the necessary levels of security for mobile devices and the sensitive data they access, the mobile industry as a whole must begin shifting toward a complete approach to security and management. This approach should focus on strengthening the security of both the enterprise side -- the endpoints where the data is created, used and stored -- and the service provider side -- the carrier networks through which the devices connect and communicate with corporate backends. As mobile devices become more sophisticated, provide greater corporate access and store more data, they are becoming a higher-priority target for attackers. As a result, companies need to stop making exceptions for mobile devices and treat them as they would any other endpoint. Using security and management software directly on the devices is key. By implementing solutions focused on protecting and managing the devices themselves -- much like those used to secure and manage the data on PCs -- enterprises can ensure that mobile devices are not a glaring chink in their otherwise strong IT security armour. The solutions include: Mobile device management: It has been said that a well managed device is a secure device. It is imperative that smart mobile devices remain properly configured and managed at all times. IT cannot rely on end www.networkworldme.com
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feature | mobile security
users to do this. Mobile device management, or MDM, solutions provide the necessary visibility and control over devices connecting to company networks and resources. By increasing IT efficiency with over-the-air deployment of configurations, applications and updates, management solutions help ensure devices have the required policies and applications and that they are configured correctly and kept up-to-date. This not only ensures security vulnerabilities are not present on the devices, but it improves enduser productivity by managing mobile device health as well. Mobile security software: Creative cybercriminals have found ways to exploit smart mobile devices through viruses, Trojans, SMS or email phishing, rogue applications and snoopware(mobile spyware that activates features on a device without the user’s knowledge, such as the microphone or camera). It is therefore growing increasingly important to employ the mobile security solutions that provide a barrier against these attacks, similar to their laptop and desktop counterparts. Security solutions that feature network access control capabilities can also help to enforce compliance with security policies and ensure that only secure, policycompliant devices can access business networks and email servers. Authentication technology: Most enterprise networks require a username and password to identify users, but usernames and passwords can be compromised. Using twofactor authentication technology provides a higher level of security when users log in. Effective authentication technologies extend the same safety measures for when users log in from a mobile device. Also, as enterprises develop custom business-oriented mobile applications, they need to look at extending the authentication to these apps as well. Information protection: Despite the recent uptick in mobile malware, the biggest threat to mobile devices remains the risk of loss or theft. As more companies use these devices as simply additional endpoints, the data stored 42 Network World Middle East July 2011
and accessible through them is put at even greater risk. Corporate email and data from line-of-business applications on smartphones often contains intellectual property or information subject to government regulation. Thus, the loss or theft of the device exposes sensitive data and may result in financial loss, legal ramifications and brand damage. Strong password/PIN policies prevent unauthorised access to mobile devices and the data on and accessible through them. Mobile encryption technologies also provide protection for data communicated and stored on mobile devices. Remote wipe and lock capabilities enable an enterprise to remotely delete all of the corporate data on the device to ensure that the data cannot be breached. As individual-liable mobile devices permeate enterprise networks, organisations need a granular control over these remote wipe capabilities so only the corporate-owned data can be wiped. And finally, enterprises need to make sure that the appropriate data leakage prevention policies are in place to reduce the flow of sensitive data out of mobile devices. Securing the service provider side As these new smart enterprise endpoints
access service provider networks directly, enterprises need to feel comfortable that these vital channels are also free of attacks and threats that could proliferate into their own infrastructure. Carrier network security should include the following elements: Next generation network protection: As malicious threats designed to propagate via mobile networks increase, so too must the measures implemented by providers to block these threats. Service provider networks should be protected at their edge, never allowing these threats from getting in. By building a network-wide policy control and enforcement system, these networks are guarded against malware. This network-wide solution must include an application-level security policy that protects against the predominant types of traffic entering the network, including the Web, SMS, MMS
and so on. By putting this application-level policy in place, service providers can identify and evaluate new threats from devices as soon as they appear and prevent them from reaching other enterprises and end users. In addition to improving overall security, a network-wide policy control and enforcement solution has additional benefits. It empowers providers to offer revenue-generating protection services for both enterprises and consumers. These include enterprise-level control capabilities over where users may browse the Web or by controlling devices connecting to the enterprise infrastructure. These capabilities can be sold as a security as a service to corporate customers to drive corporate customer retention and acquisition. They can also be offered as consumer-level control capabilities, providing individual subscribers control over their mobile presence across all services. Network security visibility: In order to protect network stability, performance and subscriber trust, it is critical that service providers have real-time insight into what types of activity are occurring on their network. In addition, service providers must comply with increasing regulatory requirements being placed on them. An intelligent security solution designed to identify, manage and report suspicious activity -- in real time -- enables a proactive approach to improving network efficiency by ensuring only valid traffic traverses the network. Additionally, operators must ensure they properly store and make retrievable application-level traffic requested by enterprises, helping meet regulatory requirements for data retention and recovery. The challenges of securing mobile devices are big, but what’s need is an industry-wide holistic approach that stops making exceptions for mobile devices and treats them as true endpoints. Ideally, this would include integrated protection solutions for end users, enterprises and telecommunication service providers. www.networkworldme.com
July 2011 Network World Middle East 43
techupdate
Selecting metrics to demonstrate IT value IT is a considerable financial outlay for most businesses, and IT organizations must continually prove their strategic value. They can effectively demonstrate the value of their contributions by selecting and reporting metrics, but the challenge is to choose the right metrics
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n order to select the right metrics for your key performance
indicators (KPIs) you must gain a clear understanding of metric characteristics. An effective metric meets the following criteria: Is tied to a business goal. Is important to the customer. Measures a single condition or event. Is easy to measure and report. Has specific results that support decision making. Use the fewest metrics possible but enough to verify that you are receiving adequate information to make informed decisions. This approach helps you to focus on priorities. Metric characteristics form a boundary that separates possible KPIs from all possible metrics. A good example of a metric might be “percentage of IT budget supporting projects.� This metric is tied to the goal of responding quickly to business pressures. It is important to the CIO and the business customer. It measures the value IT brings to a business, is somewhat easy to
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measure, and gives management an idea how well IT responds to business pressures. Another metric, such as “number of service level agreements (SLAs),” may not be valuable if no SLAs currently exist and no efforts are underway to build any. Just as IT organisations will change in maturity, so will the metrics used to measure success. The situation on which the metric is reporting may be usurped over time by other, more relevant situations, or the maturity of what is measured may move to a “steady state” condition. Progress may limit the value of a metric over time. The concept of metric aging can be demonstrated by the following example: IT strives to become more efficient by eliminating shadow IT (work by IT that is adding value but is not measured). The plan is to eliminate shadow IT by edicts and by preventing IT employees from receiving credit for incident resolution without creating a ticket.
incident.” It’s important to re-evaluate your metric choices once a year. It’s valuable to put metrics into categories to help verify you are covering the breadth of the situation you need to measure. Select the minimum number of KPIs needed to deliver the message, and consider the target audience for the metric. When selecting a metric, its breadth or level of detail should be appropriate to the audience. Potential audiences could be a business profit-and-loss owner, IT management, a process owner or even a customer. Once metrics are categorised, it is easier to see if focus areas are over or under represented. Mean time to restore service (MTRS) is a metric that could be used in multiple categories. It is a valuable exercise to build the category structure that has relevance for your organisation. This is essential for determining the optimal selection of KPIs. Metrics provide information about progress toward business goals.
know “percentage of calls resolved at Level 1.” Follow these steps to build your metric strategy: 1 Select a business goal. 2 Determine how IT supports this goal or in which specific focus areas (processes or activities) IT needs to improve. Analyse the focus areas in parallel. 3 Determine the maturity of the process or focus area. 4 If maturity is too low, determine the scope of metrics needed to measure progress. 5 Review current metrics to make sure they meet the characteristics of valuable metrics. 6 Select new metrics, if needed. 7 Review metrics for effectiveness, completeness and aging. It’s important to use technology to automate and standardise manual tasks. A metric that might help measure the move from manual to automated tasks could be, “percentage of tasks that are automated.” The challenge becomes determining the right percentage Use the fewest metrics possible but enough to verify and knowing if the information you that you are receiving adequate information to make are receiving is informed decisions. This approach helps you valuable. to focus on priorities. Many successful enterprises are working toward a goal of having By eliminating shadow IT projects, Sometimes it is impractical to collect metric-managed IT organisations. such metrics as “number of incidents detailed metrics on every activity They are more closely aligning captured by the service desk per related to a process or situation. It IT with business expectations for month” can be expected to go up. As may be possible, however, to collect a providing value, while also further users learn to open tickets to get their sampling of metrics that will suffice defining IT as a strategic partner to issues resolved, the number of service for a meaningful evaluation. Sampling the business. Start with a subset of desk tickets is likely to increase. As has risks, such as when one metric the metrics that you consider most time goes on, however, the number doesn’t paint the whole picture. For important and build on that subset of service desk tickets per month may example, the metric “average service as the value of your metrics becomes level off. If this occurs, the metric loses desk Level 1 call length” could be apparent. Review metrics over time much of its value, and it may make artificially low because too few calls and watch the perceived value of sense to replace it with a new one, are resolved at Level 1. This does not such as “the average cost of a desktop show the whole picture unless you also your IT organisation grow. July 2011 Network World Middle East 45
test
Ubuntu breaks from the Linux pack Ubuntu 11.04 (nicknamed Natty Narwhal) marks a decided change in direction for the Linux-based operating system. The biggest change is that Canonical, the organiser of Ubuntu, is replacing the Gnome/KDE desktop environment with a new user interface called Unity
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his is a market response by Canonical to the perceived
superiority of the MacOS and Windows7 user interfaces. While Linux has always been a “what’s under the hood” rather than “sleek styling” operating system, Unity immediately draws comparisons to Windows 7 and MacOS. You might like it and you might hate it, but Unity provokes. It’s a radical departure for a Linux desktop distribution to eschew both Gnome and the KDE desktop environment — although both are available for those
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that must use them for application or hardware compatibility reasons. Canonical also changes direction with the latest Ubuntu server version, although not quite as radically. Several important FOSS (free and open source software) components have been added or changed, and with them, the tone and direction of Canonical’s server operating system towards clusters and cloud use. Canonical also added AppArmor to its server editions, which helps bring Ubuntu server into wider roles where application sandboxing is needed.
Drastic desktop The Unity desktop is a beautiful, if
occasionally frustrating, change from the old default Gnome environment. Unity comes in two- and three-dimensional versions. The 3D version is more beautiful, and requires advanced resources — not any old slug laptop or VM will do. The Unity 2D version is the backstop and it’s easy on the eyes after one gets over figuring it out. On several machines that we tested, drivers or the Unity2D version itself had to be obtained from repositories. Gnome is used if hardware graphics display drivers can’t be found. The features of Unity combine both MacOS and Windows 7 user interface-like layout. There’s a vertical task management panel dubbed “the launcher” that’s similar to the MacOS dock. The application iconography represents applications, but not instances of the applications (which are re-instantiated along the launcher in a list). Unity also searches and finds files and internal data quickly, and worked with many applications — the default launcher supports the recently updated LibreOffice suite — but the menu bar does not. There is also a global menu bar very similar to MacOS global menu bar placed across the top of the screen area. Its context will change depending on what app we used. We also saw non-production (the dreaded “advanced look”) primitives for Unity-based touch pad controls, including multi-touch — which seems poised towards a pad or tablet device. We can’t comment on its potential usefulness, only its potential competitiveness. The Unity 3D user interface is most preferred, and in future editions might give Apple a run for its user interface money. Full Linux with Unity on an advanced tablet might give Android a competitor, too. As LibreOffice 3.3.2 is included as the default “office app suite,” Ubuntu changed a few accessory components, as well. RhythmBox has been replaced by Banshee. www.networkworldme.com
Firefox 4.0 is included. All of these work with Unity’s window arrangement, except as noted.
the Open Virtualisation Alliance side are Attachmate/Novell/SUSE, Red Hat, Intel, IBM, HP, BMC, Eucalyptus and others — some of who are FOSS and not FOSS purveyors. UEC cloud images can be comprised of instances that are containers under a Linux kernel para-virtualisation feature known as LXC. The containerized images can run at the speed of a kernel module, rather than as an application; there is no traditional Unix “fork and execute” overhead when applications/instances are used in this way. While it’s seemingly dangerous, properly constructed, modules have less overhead and have a decided speed advantage — at the cost of being an essential root kit as processes run inside the kernel essentially as root — although the processes are in a “jail”.
deploying multiple Ubuntu (or other Linux) instances simpler. It can be used for virtual machines over hypervisor structures using KVM, Xen, qemu, or physical machines. Server, cloud and images Cobbler is similar to a combination of The server editions include many components used to build servers, like PXE components that poise Ubuntu Server boot, dhcp, DNS, all in one deployment towards cloud environments, largely package. Cobbler can be combined with blurring server differentiations into cloud “kick-start” files to have a fully automated and VM use profiles. Ubuntu Server focuses install complete with packages, preon multiple instance deployment, use, configured settings, all ready to roll. and management as a virtual machine, or The cloud-init package is updated and member of a larger set of server instances. it handles early initialisation cloud VM After we downloaded our review copies instances for Amazon UEC or EC2 image use. of Ubuntu Server and Enterprise Cloud Cloud-init wraps metadata information for versions of 11.04, Canonical announced that cloud instance deployment including things it’s going to move away from its primary like establishing the VM’s default locale, cloud management toolkit, OpenEucalyptus, hostname, SSH key generation, mounting points, and other characteristics. Other server component changes in 11.04 include PowerNap, which uses new Canonical also changes direction with the latest Ubuntu methods to reduce power consumption, but also to report on other hardware server version, although not quite as radically. Several important states (CPU load, activity, and process FOSS (free and open source software) components have been I/O), and network activity (wake-on-LAN added or changed, and with them, the tone and direction of settings, and specific port I/O activity). Canonical’s server operating system towards clusters and cloud use. Overall, the server and virtualisation/ cloud components are becoming blurred which we enjoyed using in our first look Along with OpenStack comes another and server features are now highly poised in Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud(UEC) in the server management component, the towards multiple instance use — whether on Ubuntu 10.04 release. MCollective. The MCollective is a framework physical machines, or as virtualised or cloudOpenStack, a collection of applications that controls parallel task execution through resident instances. In turn, the instances we’ve seen before, will be the direction that a communications infrastructure that’s might be on an internal cloud or in a thirdUbuntu supports in the future. We had highly extensible. Using Ruby, large numbers party hosted cloud — especially Amazon’s. decided difficulties with the Eucalyptus of systems can be set within the framework Summary commercial versions for cloud control to become members of a broadcast domain. Canonical has pushed Ubuntu along, and and openEucalyptus will continue to be MCollective-controlled servers listen teased us with potential tablet offerings. supported while OpenStack is ramped up. for instructions, and execute via a In the server space, where things are more OpenStack is a pure FOSS set of “nonserver-side message filtration system. It serious, Ubuntu now deploys more quickly denominational” (meaning hypervisor reminded us of a legitimate “bot” control and sensibly into a variety of virtualised agnostic) app suites sanctioned by NASA system, but with open programming instances and joins one of two prominent (among others) to manage cloud resources, features. The MCollective can do things cloud organisational camps. Ubuntu wants to be they internal or externally used. like provisioning large groups of servers be taken seriously for cloud use, but also for OpenStack competes with the Open almost simultaneously, start them, send desktop use. Virtualisation Alliance. On Canonical’s monitoring information, all via Ruby side in OpenStack are NASA, Rackspace, scripts. We were fascinated. fOR MORE PRODUCT REVIEWS, LOG ON TO: Dell, Cisco, Citrix, and other organisations The Ubuntu 11.04 server load also www.networkworldme.com promising FOSS code and components. On includes cobbler, an application that makes July 2011 Network World Middle East 47
toolshed tools & gadgets
Fluke rolls out OptiView XG
WD’s Nomad rugged case WD has introduced the WD Nomad rugged case, a durable case designed to protect My Passport portable hard drives from drops as high as seven feet, moisture and spills and other mishaps associated with active, on-the-go lifestyles, such as those of outdoor photographers, adventurers and other road warriors. The WD Nomad rugged case features a polycarbonate exterior and shockabsorbing elastomer cushion inside. It conforms to strict military standards (MILSTD-810G) for ruggedness. The heavy-duty latch and silicon liner seal out dirt, dust, and moisture. The WD Nomad rugged case is ideal for hikers, business travelers, outdoor and travel photographers, and others who professionally or personally bring their digital equipment and assets with them. The uniquely functional design includes an opening for the drive’s USB connector, so the user can access the drive while it remains in the case. In addition, a molded exterior ring allows users to attach a carabiner, cable, or nylon strap for more convenient accessibility.
Fluke Networks has introduced the OptiView XG, a network analysis tablet that provides the fastest solutions for network and application problems for both wireless and wired access – anywhere in the network. The tablet expedites network and application problem solving by automating root cause analysis and providing guided troubleshooting to address problem areas. OptiView XG is an instant, integrated window into your network in a form factor – the tablet – that you can take from the data centre, to the production floor, to the office desktop. The OptiView XG is designed to provide a wide range of functionality necessary to adapt to the dynamic and diverse networks of today through various features including customisable dashboards that can be personalised for each user or help transform data into reports for employees at all level of the organisation – from technicians to managers. It also offers path and application infrastructure analysis that automatically discovers the path between two points in the network and monitors performance along that link to identify network issues that can impact application performance. This reduces the time required to isolate network versus application problems.
Leviton rolls out new solutions The Opt-X Unity 40/100G Fiber System which is a pre-terminated MTP system featuring new cable, connector, and termination technologies. For the first time, customers will be able to use a 24-fibre pre-terminated MTP system to transmit 100GbE speeds utilising multi-mode or single-mode fiber. The Opt-X Unity system was designed specifically to meet IEEE 802.3ba requirements and new 100GBASE-SR10 and 40GBASE-SR4 equipment. It allows for a straightforward migration path to 40G or 100G performance, and is backwards compatible with existing Gigabit or 10G networks. The system meets the tight optical cabling channel insertion loss (IL) requirements specified in the IEEE standard. The 24-fiber MTP system offers at least double the density in fiber enclosures than legacy 12-fiber cabling, and allows for fewer cable pathways and improved air flow in datacenters. Also, customers are less likely to require the assistance of contractors with 24-fiber cabling due to streamlined, simplified installation. 48 Network World Middle East July 2011
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Tablets with Intel’s Oak Trial processor The first tablets based on Intel’s processor code-named Oak Trail started shipping, with the initial models targeted at businesses. Fujitsu’s Q550 and Motion Computing’s CL900 tablets have Intel’s Z670 processor and Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. The tablets have 10.1-inch screens and provide eight hours of battery life. The single-core Z670 processor runs at a clock speed of 1.5GHz, and has on-chip features such as accelerators to decode 1080p video. In addition to Windows, the chip is compatible with Google’s Android 3.0 and Intel’s MeeGo operating systems. The tablets have specific security features that could make them attractive to businesses. Fujitsu’s tablet has a fingerprint reader, while Motion Computing’s device is bundling Absolute Software’s Computrace Complete software, which helps track lost tablets. Both tablets include Trusted Platform Management 1.2 (TPM), a hardware-based cryptography and authentication technology to enhance security. Oak Trail tablets will complete with Apple’s iPad which is finding growing interest in the enterprise. However, analysts have said that the iPad is geared more for consumers, while Oak Trail tablets will blend into IT infrastructures with compatibility for existing Windows or Linux applications.
Lenovo rolls out singlesocket servers for SMBs Lenovo has introduced low-end servers with new Xeon chips and remote management features aimed at cutting maintenance costs. The single-socket ThinkServer TS130 and TS430 rack servers include software modules and virtualisation capabilities
to remotely configure and troubleshoot servers. The TS430 also includes software that allows administrators to remotely patch the server. The servers are targeted at small businesses with few or no IT staff. The remote management capabilities make it easier to maintain servers and PCs and minimise the need for specialised IT personnel, Lenovo said in a statement. The remote management software modules on the TS430 allow an administrator to access the server remotely and use it as if they are in front of it. The tools can be used to power down a server, view event logs or access drives connected to the server. The servers support remote management features from Intel’s AMT (active management technology) manageability tools, which provide remote access independent of the operating system to manage, upgrade or repair servers. The servers come with Intel’s latest E3-1200 server processors with up to four processing cores, which were announced in March. The new chips are up to 30 percent faster than the previous processors based on the Westmere microarchitecture, Lenovo said. July 2011 Network World Middle East 49
layer 8 Toyota wants US to relax car radar system rules
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SETI sets up $200,000 challenge
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he SETI Institute wants to get its Allen Telescope Array (ATA) system, out of hock and get it back in the radio astronomy business and has announced a community challenge to raise $200,000 by August 1 to get that job done. The group has set up a public challenge, known as SETIstars to “galvanize community action with clearly defined fundraising goals as well as a place to engage with and recognize supporters and contributors to the SETI Institute - both financial and non-financial. We are starting with a simple site with a clear mandate: raise funds from the community to help bring the ATA back on line.” “Bringing the ATA back online is a critical first step. However, sustaining operations is also of vital importance. SETIstars will be a rallying point for future community engagement and fundraising efforts,” the group stated.
ooking to develop new applications and enhance vehicle safety systems, Toyota has asked the Federal Communications Commission to change the rules regarding vehicular radar systems operating in the 76-77 GHz band. Specifically, Toyota says it wants to eliminate the requirement that vehicular radars decrease power when the vehicle on which the radar is mounted is stopped, or not in motion. Car radar systems include collision warning, blind spot detection, lane change assist and parking aid systems. According to a posting in the Federal Register, the existing separate in- and not-in-motion emission limits were adopted to prevent unnecessary and prolonged harmful human exposure to radio frequency radiation. “The motion status of the vehicle was given special consideration due the fact that vehicles that are not in motion could result in human exposure to radiation for longer time durations than a moving vehicle. However, because the proposed emission limit of 88 μW/cm is below the current average threshold limit of 1 mW/cm adopted for human exposure to RF radiation, the in-motion and not-in-motion criteria become unnecessary for safety purposes,” the FCC states.
IBM exposes top future networked healthcare devices
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BM came out with a study that looks at what future healthcare applications and devices, be they PCs, tablet or smart phone might look like. The study notes that medical device makers have in the past few years successfully targeted consumers who are extremely health or fitness conscious as well as those who need to be regularly monitored because of a serious health problem. But the IBM study says those devices and services could now go a step further and integrate mobile and home-based devices with web-based resources, electronic and personal health records to help people make more well-informed medial decisions and actually help manage their healthcare situation more proactively. According to the study, device companies will need to strengthen their collaboration and partnering skills since it is unlikely any single firm has all the capabilities required to offer a total package. These companies may need to collaborate with software companies that develop user interfaces, or publishing companies that supply healthrelated information and content.
50 Network World Middle East July 2011
Cell phone radiation scams
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s soon as the new concerns that cell phones might pose a radiation risk to users, scammers were sharpening their online skills to take advantage of the situation. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission has told cell phone users to avoid products that supposedly “shield” users from cell phone emissions. According to the FTC, there is no scientific proof that so-called shields significantly reduce exposure from cell phone emissions. In fact, products that block only part of the phone, such as the earpiece, are totally ineffective because the entire phone emits electromagnetic waves. By interfering with the phone’s signal, phony shields may cause it to draw even more power and possibly emit more radiation, the FTC said.
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