April | Issue 07
TheGrid RAISING THE BAR Transforming business processes for continued growth prospects
CONTENTS
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TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
Published by
03
Management speak
04
Awards
05
Events
06
Arcserve
08
Avocent
10
Cheetah Networks
12
EMC
14
Emerson
16
Intel Security
18
Juniper Networks
20
Microsoft Gulf
22
Riverbed
25
Symantec
26
Veritas
www.mindware.ae
Management speak
On a growth trajectory
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Gilbert Lacroix, GM, Mindware
Profitable liaisons
Arkan Saleh, Chief Operating Officer, Mindware
www.mindware.ae
ost evaluation of the political and economic situation in the Middle East region, we believe the regional market will go through a consolidation process. As a consequence, we are implementing new strategies to benefit from these evolving trends. Mindware is in a strong position drawing its strength from its parent company Midis Group and 25 years of uninterrupted active presence and growth in the region. Mindware is in a strong position to cover the market from all levels. The traditional means of distribution is through large SIs, who then approach big end-users. However when we go to mid-market, more efforts are required such as ( but not limited to) face-toface interactions, effective use of social media and telemarketing as well as other digital mediums, new business tools and strong financial support. To achieve such paradigm, in addition to what we just mentioned, our “must� is, and will be, a unique combination of highly talented staff, the Mindware Team, bringing excellence to the field. The most vital element of choosing Mindware is the assurance you get from dealing with a stable company, no matter what the economic condition is. As a leading value-added distributor, our aim is not to increase the number of vendors in our portfolio but offer value in building solutions that the market needs, helping our partners to save on efforts and costs. Partner enablement is a key element in our channel strategy. Only through regular enablement initiatives, can channel partners move to the next level. Our focus for the year is to be the partner of choice for Vendors and SIs. Our aim is to continue to grow and be profitable and to help our partners to be stronger and highly successful.
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indware has had a resounding success in both enterprise and SMB business within the region. This year we plan to work even more closely with our vendors to fulfil our commitment to them on market reach and demand development. We are going to put together strategies in place to garner more SMB business, which will benefit our vendors as well as ourselves. Our main aim is to support our vendors in a much deeper way to create profitable collaborations. This will also help us to reduce credit risk and related challenges in the market. From a market perspective, we aim to continue our focus on all the markets where we already have a presence. Dubai has been and continues to be a very stable market for us. Other markets such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman might have a slight decline, largely due to the impact of shrinking oil prices. We will continue our investments in Saudi and have plans to invest more in Qatar and Kuwait. We will also enhance our reach in Bahrain and Oman. We will continue to focus on our market initiatives in Jordan and Lebanon. This year we are also planning to increase our focus on North and English-speaking Africa. We will have more people on ground and increase our activities to slowly mature this investment into having a strong local presence in Africa. Partners can rely on our support and expertise to boost their business. We will continue to build strategic relationships with our partners. We are a company that values long-term associations and therefore will be selective in choosing the right partners who can deliver our vendors’ solutions to the market in the best way possible.
April 2016 Issue 07 | TheGrid
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Awards
Citrix recognizes Mindware
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eading regional value-added distributor, Mindware was recognized as the ‘Distribution Managed Partner Growth – Mid Market Segment’ for having the largest coverage in Middle East at Citrix Partner Accelerator 2016 event,
which took place on 7th March, 2016 at Al Murjan Ballroom, Madinat Jumeirah. Additionally, Kiron Thomas, a system engineer from Mindware was awarded ‘Citrix Partner System Engineer’ at the event.
Mindware wins Networking VAD accolade
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indware, the regional value-added distributor, announced that it has won the prestigious ‘Networking VAD of the Year’ at the recently held Network World Middle East 2016 awards, hosted by Computer News Middle East. Mindware’s Manoj Panchal, Sales Director, and Rania Al-Khatib, Regional Marketing Manager, MEA, accepted the award on behalf of the company. Now in its seventh year, the Network World Middle East Awards has established itself as the major ICT event. The Awards honors the best and brightest talent including IT and business professionals who demonstrated innovative leadership across the industry. 4
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
Intel Security recognizes partners at Channel Kick-Off gala
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ntel Security, recently held their Annual Channel Kick-Off for the Middle East at Fairmont, The Palm, Dubai. The event brought together seventy-five partners from 15 countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. Intel Security laid out the 2016 channel priorities, and recognized key partners for their contributions in 2015. Regional value-added distributor Mindware took home the award for ‘Best Distributor of the Year’ in recognition for maintaining the highest market share, developing business in many new accounts and markets and sharing their expert resources to support partners and the team in driving new business and growing the revenue base. “This award is truly a testament to the outstanding collaboration between Mindware and Intel Security and the many successes we have had in the MEA region. We are honored to have received this prestigious award and would like to thank Intel Security for their tremendous support, for the trust they have placed in us and for recognizing our contribution to the channel,” said Eyad Al-Eriksousi, Sales Director, Network and Security, Mindware. The company also presented two contributor awards to the individuals who have shown a great commitment and contribution to Intel Security in 2015. Mindware’s Vivek Patil was awarded for ‘Best Presales Individual Contributor’ while Rania Al-Khatib won for the ‘Best Marketing Individual Contributor’.
www.mindware.ae
Events
Secureone partner programme In a joint event, Mindware and Symantec introduced Symantec Secure One, the most recently enhanced partner programme designed to help partners thrive in the fast-growth security market and optimise benefits.
Mindware and Intel Security organised a screening of ‘London has fallen’ for regional partners.
EMC XCHANGE 2016
Reseller MEet 2016
EMC XCHANGE 2016, sponsored by Mindware, explored opportunities and challenges along with ideas on how to invest in new areas of growth. Organisations had a chance to learn how to redefine businesses towards digital models.
Mindware, is a strategic innovation partner, at the upcoming Reseller MEet 2016, hosted by Reseller Middle East, scheduled to take place on 27th April, 2016. Connect with the company for accelerated business opportunities.
www.mindware.ae
April 2016 Issue 07 | TheGrid
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Arcserve
Data security Rami Nasser, EMEA Sales Director, Growth Market, Arcserve, on the company’s latest version of UDP, which is equipped with innovative features.
Arcserve, Simple and Unified Data Backup & Replication for Physical & Virtual include Disk, Tape, Cloud Backups with build in Global Deduplication. One solution fit all! What are the enhancements that have been added?
Rami Nasser, Regional Sales Director, EMEA Growth and Emerging Markets, Arcserve
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an you give an overview of UDP6?
Arcserve UDP is based on next generation unified architecture for both virtual and physical environments. Its unmatched breadth, ease of use, and assured recovery capabilities set it apart from other data protection solutions. This unified solution offers innovative features.
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
New Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) eliminates Recovery Time with Continuous Availability, Instant Recovery and Replication across Cloud, Virtual and Physical Environments. Arcserve reimagines data protection with Linux and Windowsfocused support, wizard-driven setup and faster, more flexible recovery options.
extensive capabilities, Arcserve UDP is easy to use while providing remarkable results – up to 92 percent reduction in data size – which means back up more data at less cost, and provide superior protection for customers.
What are some of the key tools available for partners to sell the solution more efficiently? We are a 100 percent channel company. We provide – welcome pack and onboarding trainings to new partners. We support our partners with regular Bootcamps, certifications, joint events and Incentive. Campaigns in the box (emailing, web, banners) are built to help our partners to get leads and more presence on their market.
How does the latest version stand out from competition? Arcserve is more than one product and so doesn’t have any equal competitors. Thanks to the enhancements, it now offers more than back-up and recovery. Real time replication and high availability are some of the solution’s strengths, which no competitor can provide with backup today.
Anything else you like to add? How can partners better position its new features to customers? Arcserve partners leverage Arcserve UDP to accelerate revenue opportunities, and expand their market reach. With its
Arcserve is simple and Unified Data Backup and Replication for physical and virtual, which includes disk, tape, cloud backups with build in global deduplication. One solution fits all. www.mindware.ae
Avocent
Managing efficiently How partners can optimise opportunities with Avocent’s Out-of-band management software.
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an you give us an overview of Out-of-band management software? Capitalizing on its deep infrastructure management expertise, Emerson Network Power offers a unified, scalable solution to solve the problems of managing today’s complex, heterogeneous and geographically dispersed data centers. The solution is both hardware and software architected together to deliver unified management of the data center’s IT and facilities infrastructure. The elements of the solution are: • Avocent® Universal Management Gateway appliance – the real-time data collection engine for monitoring all assets in the data center as well as the access and control interface to the rack assets (Servers, switches etc) • Avocent DSView™ management software – the centralized management software for remote access and control What are the various tools available within this solution? Emerson Network Power has leveraged its recognized expertise in infrastructure management technologies to deliver a single solution that eliminates the need for multiple, fragmented tools. The Avocent Universal Management Gateway appliance consolidates management of IT and facilities equipment, making it possible to securely execute a unified approach. Infrastructure management technologies can be classified into two different categories: 1) access and control and 2) monitoring. Today, IT infrastructure is managed with access and control technologies such as KVM, serial console and embedded server technology. Facilities infrastructure is managed through the real-time data collection and monitoring of those 8
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
physical assets. Because the Avocent Universal Management Gateway appliance integrates access, control and monitoring in a single chassis, data centers no longer need multiple infrastructure management tools. Auto-Sensing and Device Discovery– The appliance has the ability to automatically sense and connect to new devices directly connected to a physical port on the appliance, thus eliminating the time-consuming task of manually reconfiguring infrastructure changes. The appliance has 40 ports and can automatically detect if the port is connected for KVM, serial or service processor management. Device discovery occurs over the network and the appliance can automatically discover, identify and connect up to 1,024 embedded service processor targets. Heterogeneous Server Support – Using Avocent access and control technologies, a single console management tool can be used to manage servers, regardless of vendor or operating system, and embedded service processors, regardless of technology. From a partner point of view, how can they leverage the opportunities present here? Reduce and recover capital expenses – Data centers can eliminate the need to purchase and maintain multiple tools for monitoring the infrastructure with this unified, multi-purpose appliance. Data centers can save as much as 75 percent of rack space. • Support green initiatives and cut power consumption – With fewer devices, power usage can decrease as much as 30 percent. • Reduce operating expenses – Time and costs for managing, maintaining, securing and training users is
significantly lower with fewer devices and an intuitive user interface that eliminates multiple management consoles. • Enhance deployment flexibility and efficiency – Auto-sensing enables rack reconfiguration with virtually no manual intervention, allowing devices to be monitored dynamically as they are connected. • Improve disaster recovery at lower cost – Secure, remote access removes the need to maintain staff at remote disaster recovery locations or spend money on expensive travel while decreasing mean time to repair. • Future-proof infrastructure investments – The built-in flexibility and heterogeneous vendor support provide the perfect solution for managing current and future infrastructure assets, such as enabling convenient transition from legacy KVM into embedded access technologies, ensuring the data center will not outgrow the Avocent Universal Management Gateway appliances. www.mindware.ae
Cheetah Networks
Creating prospects Seraj Hoda, Regional Sales Manger, Cheetah Networks, explains the value to data center energy cost through its Cold Aisle Containment solution to channel partners.
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ealing with data center temperature problems can be quite challenging when there is Zero Down time windows. Cold Aisle Containment is specially designed for today’s data center cooling systems. Its unique airflow management strategy can produce significant and measurable economic benefits. The majority of data centers are designed with the IT equipment on the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS)-backed power and with elements of the supporting infrastructure such as cooling systems on the generator-backed power. In the event of a power failure, the IT equipment on the UPS system keeps running and keeps dissipating heat into the room where Cold aisle plays important role. Features Cheetah Cold aisle by providing a regulation of the air circulation within a server room by segregating cold air from hot air allows efficient cooling system and effective heat dissipation, which in turns results in solution for energy and cost savings. It provides good cooling effect, significantly improves cooling efficiency than a single cabinet, improves cabinet equipment installation density and saves space of the server room. Top cover of cold alley makes sure of a magnetic locking system controlled by the fire extinguishing system; in situations of power failure, the top covers will automatically open up under its own weight, providing a safe and reliable system; entire cold aisle is modularly retrofitted, allow for easy and convenient installation. 10
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Seraj Hoda, Regional Sales Manger, Cheetah Networks
Advantages 1. Uniform temperature across Cabinet height (within containment) 2. Increased heat dissipation and better heat management 3. Eliminating hot spots within the aisle. 4. Preventing air short circuits (which is mixing of hot air and cold air) thus improving the energy efficiency. 5. Reduction of operational expenditure and cost saving solution 6. Increases mean time between failure of the equipment 7. Using cold aisle containment, may require less air conditioners, reducing the initial capital expenditure. Challenges Major challenge is in design and initial installation of the operating cost and though containment solutions can improve data center cooling efficiency, they often come with unanticipated lighting and fire protection problems. Other challenges include working in existing data center – site constraints as it cannot be installed and managed in a small area.
Doors on both sides of cold aisle are of sliding or electrical type, which provides for space saving. Hinged type swinging metal solid door or glass door are optionally available. Cheetah Cold aisle doors are equipped with a number locking system or can be integrated to a locking system as per required. Top cover of cold alley made of transparent organic glass allowing for maximum illumination; distance from top cover to floor, which minimizes safety hazards and space oppression to operators and users. Available options of adding humidity, temperature and smoke sensors connected to fire extinguishing system. Cheetah highdensity vented front door and rear door of cold aisle enable ventilation rate above 75 percent as well dustproof provision of brush on the front and rear door of cold aisle improves cooling efficiency.
Conclusion The goal of a cold-aisle containment system is to create a smaller area to cool and focus the cooling on the fronts of the systems. As a result, a cold-aisle system is typically used in high-density data centers because it is more efficient to direct cold air onto densely populated racks than to cool the entire room. As highdensity architectures gain popularity, cold-aisle containment systems are becoming increasingly common. Data center densities continue to increase to meet growing demand for IT services within the confines of limited space and resources. At the same time, organizations are taking a hard look at the power used by these ‘web-scale’ data centers amid rising energy costs and a growing emphasis on green initiatives. Power consumes an increasingly large portion of the data center operational budget. www.mindware.ae
EMC
Integrated offering Odile Aboumrad, Senior Partner System Engineer, Gulf and Pakistan, EMC, details the benefits of the company’s hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. applications — enabling you to support a growing number of use cases with built-in resiliency and less stringent availability and performance requirements on infrastructure. VxRack Systems can incorporate alternate software-defined storage technologies, a choice of hypervisors, and bare metal workloads. VxRACK systems deliver ultimate agility, simplicity and assurance of adapting to the varying applications, scale, and flexibility needs for diverse operational models.
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an you give us an overview of EMC’s hyper-converged infrastructure solution? Hyper-converged infrastructure integrates the key types of IT components such as compute, storage, network and virtualization in a scalable appliance allowing you to modernize your data center with simplified management, improved performance and elastic scalability. VxRAIL and VxRACK are EMC hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. VxRail is the only fully integrated, preconfigured, and pre-tested VMware hyper-converged infrastructure appliance family on the market. Based on VMware’s vSphere and Virtual SAN, and EMC software, VxRail delivers an all-in-one IT infrastructure transformation by leveraging a known and proven building block for the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). Built on the foundation of VMware Hyper-Converged Software, VxRAIL extends and simplifies VMware environments providing: scalability, flexibility, data protection and availability in a cloud enabled solution. VxRACK systems are well suited for the rapid growth in next-generation 12
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Odile Aboumrad, Senior Partner System Engineer, Gulf and Pakistan, EMC
What are the advantages for an organization if they deploy these solutions? Hyper-converged infrastructure appliances deliver many benefits, which include: • Simplified management: Hyperconverged infrastructure provides centralized management that enables faster, better, and simpler management of consolidated workloads. • Built to start small and scale: IT organizations can start small and easily scale capacity and performance by non-disruptively adding appliances to the cluster without the investment or up-front planning required with traditional infrastructure. • Optimized workloads: Through a variety of native automation tools, hyper-converged infrastructure optimizes and simplifies the deployment of a variety of use cases including virtual desktops, businesscritical applications, and remote office infrastructure. How can enterprises leverage the benefits of EMC Flash solutions? Flash is a fundamental pillar in Enterprise Modern Datacenter. As modern data center includes different applications with low latency, different workloads and
DR requirements, EMC has a broad portfolio to support any of these: • Unified Hybrid and all flash arrays with EMC VNX, EMC VMAX solutions • SAN based All Flash Arrays with EMC DSSD, EMC XtremIO solutions • EMC Hyper-converged all Flash solutions with EMC VxRAIL
How do you think the space will evolve over the next few years? In order to capture new revenue streams, develop smarter products and deliver the vastly improved experiences that customers demand, companies need to undergo significant digital transformation. Along with running those large enterprise apps for automation, companies need to develop consumer-grade mobile applications and embedded software to transform their products, their services and the way that they engage with the world. The only way to achieve both of these goals– to innovate and optimize – is to transform the technology we use to deliver IT services. The first step is to modernize the infrastructure components on which IT is built. Modern Data Centers are built on four key attributes: flash, scale out, software defined, and cloud enabled. This is where all customers will be investing now. The next critical step for running a modern data center is to automate the delivery of IT services to linesof-business and application owners. IT must at every level deliver a selfservice experience that is built upon a well-designed, API driven, management and orchestration toolset– and one that frees up development teams and other innovators from IT road blocks. The third step will be to transform IT operations. Transforming IT operations is all about transforming the people and processes that deliver value to the business. Skills and processes must be modernized to support and understand Modern Data Center priorities. With these three steps, we are describing a hybrid cloud environment, with on-premise and off-premise workloads running and being managed in a seamless, integrated way. This is the direction in which most customers are expected to be moving within the coming few years. www.mindware.ae
Connect. Share. Give. Take. Solve. Save. Smile. Unify. Introducing Unify. Unifying business communications for the new way to work. unify.com
Contact your Authorized Distributor: Copyright Š Unify GmbH & Co. KG, 2015
MINDWARE, Cayan Business Center , Tecom, Dubai , UAE +9714 450 0600 | unify@mindware.ae | www.mindware.ae
Emerson
THE SHARPEST EDGE
Pierre Havenga, Managing Director, Emerson Network Power MEA
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dge computing isn’t just a buzzCONCEPT. During 2016 it has the potential to impact business in numerous pragmatic and immediate ways. In fact many organisations are already deploying edge strategies to deliver competitive advantage - whether through accelerated data analytics or more responsive customer service. Technology innovations are becoming the primary driver of business innovation - so IT leaders need to show they’re adding value as the steward of these developments. Businesses must keep pace with customer demand or die out. And this is where edge computing can deliver. Edge will help redefine how a business can develop its services, deliver them to its customers and then efficiently manage its own operations. Change is coming. 14
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UNDERSTANDING EDGE Edge computing is the process of moving computing power away from the core of the data centre to the edges of the network, closer to where customers are based and digital interactions are taking place. This approach offers several key benefits: Speed of delivery: Edge computing reduces the need to transport information to a core data centre, which can lead to delays in data being received and processed Availability: By enabling computing resources at the edge, it is possible to keep these remote sites functioning irrespective of failings at the core Storage: Edge can allow critical data to be stored closer to the point of consumption, making more relevant data constantly available Data analytics: By placing analytics at the edge businesses can derive actionable insight faster, helping them to stay ahead of competitors and customer expectations GETTING STARTED WITH EDGE Edge computing brings with it both opportunity and challenge. IT leaders must act as a consultant to the business, managing the diverse expectations of the lines of business. It will be critical to understand the types of data and transactions that need to be accounted for, and the practicality, cost and commercial value of each deployment node. If IT leaders are to truly own the edge computing strategy, they will have to address a number of complexities which sit both inside and beyond their traditional remit: Data centre nodes: Each edge node will require performance IT and networking equipment. This
will vastly multiply the number of sites with enterprise-grade rack enclosures - each containing precision cooling, uninterruptible power, rack PDUs, and wiring management ●Standardisation: The massive increase in sites and devices will accentuate the pressure on IT teams. Standardisation - from the equipment procured to the processes followed, will help reduce this complexity ●Security: Getting your edge strategy right will involve robust, multi-layered security. IT teams not only need to detect security threats, they must also have the capability to seal off and protect the wider system, likely involving advance endpoint solutions ●Corporate culture: As with any major technology implementation, the technology itself is not the only factor that needs careful management. Organisations pursuing an edge strategy cannot forget the cultural changes that will be required to deploy it effectively The delivery of an effective edge computing strategy isn’t going to happen overnight. It will challenge IT professionals on many fronts, but with this risk comes an enormous reward as IT performs an increasingly pivotal role within the business. Emerson Network Power helps organisations advance their edge computing strategy through intelligent convergence of infrastructure technologies. We can customise and provide standardised, easily scalable and reliable and infrastructure platform for any edge configuration. If you believe we can help you, contact us on +971 4 811 9003 www.mindware.ae
Intel Security
Winning with partners Robert Percy, EMEA Channel Programs Manager, Intel Security, discusses the enhancements made to the company’s partner programme. necessary to grow. As customers are facing challenges with an ever expanding attack surface, a need to detect and respond to threats faster, a shortage of qualified security talent, and a changing consumption model, they need to build relationships with partners that can deliver the security outcomes for their business. Intel Security has the strategy to deliver on these outcomes through our threat defense lifecycle approach and become our customers’ number one security provider. Our partners have never been more important to us in delivering on this.
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hat are the company’s business priorities for the region in 2016? Our priority in 2016 is to become our joint customer’s number one security partner. As a 100 percent channel focused business in the region, this means that we need to be the #1 security vendor for our channel partners. Can you elaborate on the enhancements to the partner programme? We made two key changes to the Intel Security Partner Program in 2015. These were the improved Partner Profitability Program and the introduction of the Sales and Partner Rules of Engagement. Since this introduction, we have seen our top partners across the Middle East grow by 40%. What was the thought-process behind these enhancements? Our partners have been telling us that they want help from us in guiding and supporting their businesses to deliver the customer outcomes 16
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Robert Percy, EMEA Channel Programs Manager, Intel Security
What are advantages for a reseller to partner with Intel Security? As a 100 percent channel business in the region, we know that our success is closely tied to that of our partners. To that end, we are committed to enabling and supporting our partners in the region to deliver on the threat defense lifecycle and provide positive customer outcomes. We will drive this through stronger account engagement, engaging earlier and more often. The Sales and Partner Rules of Engagement was a good first step and we will continue to work with our partners to drive mutual profitability. The Intel Security Partner Program allows our partners to differentiate themselves and expand their market opportunity through the provision of unique security specializations, in depth training, marketing support and profitability incentives that creates more profitability on every deal. What have been the new additions to the product portfolio? Last year, Intel Security announced new solutions that will each serve as a foundation for future technologies and products. McAfee Endpoint Security 10.X delivers a new streamlined and agile endpoint services platform,
enabling protection for devices with faster scanning and deployment. McAfee Active Response, a new endpoint threat detection and response solution, supplies on-demand and continuous visibility into an array of endpoint activities with powerful, automated tools to respond to and monitor threat events. The solutions can be used together using Intel Security’s broadly adopted centralized management platform for a high-speed, high-accuracy, closed-loop approach to the threat defense lifecycle. Intel Security also now supports the Structured Threat Integration Expression (STIX) and Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator Information (TAXII) standards designed to enhance detection of threats through sharing of threat intelligence. Can you elaborate on your channel plans for the next quarter? For 2016, we will continue to make the strategic changes required to deliver stronger customer outcomes and will go deeper and align with our partners that have the capabilities that our customers are looking for. We will continue to work with our partners to develop the necessary skills in core detection, analytics and management so that they can strengthen their offerings in the threat defense lifecycle. We will also engage with our partners to build Business Plans that establish a clear set of priorities for 2016. I would encourage our partners to, one, engage with us and execute on our strategy alignment, it is a strategy designed to win with our customers and most importantly to win with our partners. Secondly partners should focus on the new products and solutions and finally deliver customer outcomes. Our singular focus will be to help our partners ascend to new heights with Intel Security. www.mindware.ae
The future of technology is more secure than ever.
Intel® Security combines the expertise of McAfee® with the performance and trust of Intel to deliver secure computing to consumers and businesses worldwide. We believe that as technology becomes more deeply integrated into life, security must be more deeply integrated into technology. Because when everyone has the confidence to use technology to its full potential they can achieve their full potential. Visit intelsecurity.com.
McAfee is now part of Intel Security. 2014 © McAfee Inc. McAfee and the M-shield are trademarks or registered trademarks of McAfee, Inc. The Intel logo is the trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Juniper Networks
Cloudy conditions ahead Claire Jones, Regional Partner Director, Middle East and Africa at Juniper Networks, explains how partners can remain profitable in a cloud-led business environment.
Claire Jones, Regional Partner Director, Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks
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loud computing is becoming firmly entrenched in most organisations today and has moved from hype to the mainstream. Investment is pouring into the Middle East, especially Dubai due to the build-up to World Expo 2020, with governments and businesses moving faster to compete in an increasingly complex environment. According to Gartner, cloud services spending continue to outpace other parts of the IT marketplace and in the Middle East and North Africa region, growth is expected to be even higher, around 20.2 percent. The move to the cloud has challenged and disrupted the way that the channel has traditionally
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
created and delivered technology to end-customers, impacting service providers’ and system integrators’ ability to serve the enterprise. Specifically, virtualisation has created a new level of agility and enables a significantly faster time to market than in the past. Industry giants, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, have driven competition and industry innovation. Closed and overly complicated legacy infrastructure can no longer cope in the dynamic cloud environment, security solutions are being redeveloped and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has started to usher in a new business case for integrated services. As with any type of industry change, there are pros and cons. To take full advantage of these shifts, the partner community must re-think their roles within the channel to help enterprises maximise the business benefits of the cloud. Traditionally, service providers have focussed on managed services and the sometimes-clunky physical hardware that goes with it. It was not uncommon for this hardware to take up to two years to go to market and was specifically designed with longevity in mind. The advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and virtualised services has given companies the ability to bring a product to market in weeks (or even days) and services are now created for flexibility, thereby putting pressure on service providers to deliver not only at speed, but with agility. Cloud-based delivery models make sense. They are the means for service providers to deliver the widest array of services to their customers. For the greatest effectiveness they also
need to consider the right network architecture, which should be both scalable and intelligent to provide new content and services at speed. System integrators too are facing new business processes. Until now, they have largely concentrated on managed services but the rapid uptake of virtualisation has meant that they can now deliver hybrid cloud solutions and multitenanted data centres that can host assorted services at greater levels of integration. This shift has caused system integrators to re-think their offering and role in the market. Traditional resellers who have in the past relied on vendor innovation, new technologies and vendor demand creation. They in reality have a great opportunity to help service providers and system integrators embrace the challenges of speed, agility, dynamism and integration. Not only can resellers provide value-added services in the way of technical support, but they also have the skills and capabilities to help service providers and system integrators move quickly and deliver a portfolio of more specialised products in the cloud. With the Middle East partner industry continuing to rapidly evolve, Juniper Networks believes that the emerging virtual model and shift in IT spending presents opportunities to all parties. The virtual world is re-defining enterprise technology and re-shaping the way the channel operates. As investment in the region continues to grow, system integrators, service providers and resellers can finally fully leverage this environment to meet customers’ needs and deliver scalable services to market in a timely and nimble fashion. www.mindware.ae
Microsoft Gulf
Enable with cloud AbdelKarim Abu Jaber, Gulf Distribution Manager, Microsoft, shares insights on how the channel can optimise opportunities present in the cloud space. database, mobile, networking, storage, and web—for moving faster, achieving more, and saving money. Customer engagement from Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which is our cloud based CRM application, helps companies deliver exceptional customer experiences, creating long-term relationships based on knowledge and trust. Positive customer experience is an increasingly important ingredient for companies to win and retain customers.
AbdelKarim Abu Jaber, Gulf Distribution Manager, Microsoft
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hat have been some updates from Microsoft on the cloud front? Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more in this mobile –first, cloud-first world. Microsoft have the complete array of open and flexible cloud and data services, available from any geography, will give the required agile, responsive and competitive edge. Our cloud will deliver what customers need to automate the basics plus differentiated cloud services embedded with intelligence. Using integrated analytics and machine learning, the intelligent cloud will quickly adapt to the evolving business and customer needs. We’re designing the intelligent cloud to meet customers wherever they are, so whether they want to go all in on cloud, or go hybrid – now everyone - every business, IT organization, and developer – can unlock the benefits of the cloud to differentiate themselves. Microsoft Azure for example, is a growing collection of integrated cloud services—analytics, computing,
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Are partners reaching their potential when it comes to leveraging the cloud solutions from Microsoft? Our partners play a critical role in helping us deliver on our promise. We’re fortunate to have the largest channel network in the industry, and for over 40 years we’ve been investing in that channel to create a thriving ecosystem. And as we have grown and evolved to meet the changing needs of our customers, so have our partners. As technology is woven more and more into the fabric of society, businesses are changing how they approach IT, and our partners are responding to new challenges in novel and innovative ways. When it comes to the changing world of IT, the cloud has become a primary driver for business transformation. And customers are in the driver’s seat. According to the research, more than 80 percent of customers are either deploying or embracing cloud technology. What more can be done by the partners to remain profitable? How is Microsoft enabling partners to reach the next level? We are committed to helping our partners take advantage of this opportunity and support
them through their business transformation. We are focusing on one of the greatest profitability areas for partners today, the cloud. And digging into deeper insights, including what customers are saying about the cloud and how cloud technology powers other areas of innovation. We are working closely and encouraging our partners to adopt four successful attributes of a modern partner transforming into the cloud: 1. Differentiate to stand out. Differentiation is key to standing out in a competitive cloud marketplace. Partners are differentiating their businesses by targeting verticals or industries, establishing a technology specialization and building intellectual property. 2. Modernize sales and marketing. Estimated that 65 percent of the buying decision-making process is completed online before a customer even talks to a vendor. With this dramatic shift in the customer buying process with the cloud, it is critical that partners invest in modernizing their sales and marketing engines, and invest in digital marketing. 3. Optimize business operations. One of the most critical elements of running a profitable business is to look for every opportunity to create efficiency and scale. We always encourage partners to think about how they can optimize their businesses across people, process, tools, and technology to create a more streamlined, profitable business. 4. Deliver customer lifetime value. It is important to think about how to build lasting relationships and over time increase the customer lifetime value or average revenue per customer. www.mindware.ae
www.mindware.ae
April 2016 Issue 07 | TheGrid
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Riverbed
Transforming networks Taj ElKhayat, Regional VP, METNA, Riverbed Technology, explains how SD-WAN is an agile enabler of enterprise movement towards the cloud.
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one is the time where IT assets were limited to a handful of data centers. Gone is the time where users and applications were all bound by one unified MPLS network. Today, businesses are increasingly mixing off-premises assets to their existing IT infrastructure. Productive users are everywhere, on-premise but also on the road or at home. The Internet is becoming the backbone of enterprise communications. As enterprises are becoming more hybrid, the shape of the network itself is dramatically changing. The underlying networks are getting more diverse in terms of performance and security. MPLS is now combined with the Internet using a variety of transports from DSL to fiber and even 4G/LTE. With HD Internet Video or Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC), the traffic mix and the communication requirements are getting richer and more dynamic. The network has never been so heterogeneous, distributed and complex. Architectures built for the 22
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
Taj ElKhayat, Regional VP, METNA, Riverbed Technology
network as it was 10 years ago are rapidly losing relevance. • Managing multiple WAN paths and distributed local Internet breakouts is becoming crucial but lacks efficient solutions. • Being too static, mechanisms like QoS become a nightmare to manage. • While network performance can be controlled and optimized on-premise, guaranteeing performance for mobile users and/or off-premise applications is extremely challenging. • Holistic visibility on the traffic requires more instrumentation devices than ever. • Visibility on the performance delivered by off-premise cloud service providers is a new problem without a practical solution. Over the past few years, a novel architecture has emerged to solve similar problems at the data center level: Software Defined Networking (SDN). Today, vendors are emerging with solutions to deliver guaranteed application performance to the modern users and workloads of the hybrid enterprise, by applying the SDN principles to the WAN in the form of so called SD-WAN solutions. While the market for an SD-WAN solution begins to emerge, the requirements for an excellent SD-WAN solution appear clearly: • Optimization capabilities for onpremise and cloud-based applications like Office 365 or Salesforce.com. • A network and application aware path selection capability to direct traffic on the appropriate network (MPLS, Internet…). • Dynamic tunneling with central control plane allowing secure backhauling of branch traffic to the corporate data center across the Internet.
• A simple interface to zScaler or other cloud-based security services enabling local Internet breakouts without requiring further investment in on-premise Internet security appliances. • Inbound QoS to manage local Internet breakouts and protect business Internet against surges in recreational Internet. • Deep and wide visibility on all assets interconnected by the SD-WAN with holistic visibility on network usage, performance and integration with end-user experience monitoring of on-premise and SaaS applications. In addition, a proper SD-WAN central management console is one that marks the start of an era of dramatic improvement of manageability and usability of control capabilities like QoS, path selection or VPN management. Ideal SD-WAN management consoles expose to the users an intuitive interface and management plane based on high level abstractions like applications, sites, uplinks or networks that matches the way they see their IT environment. Ideal SD-WAN solutions shall rely on a control plane designed to support intent based configuration that provides a translation of global parameters into local policies. Thanks to SD-WAN, customers should be able to implement new, more efficient, configuration and change management workflows that make hybrid-networking capabilities really usable. SDWAN has the potential to deliver to the business, the performance and agility they need for business critical applications, while controlling and reducing network costs at the same time. www.mindware.ae
With all our apps in the cloud, we get high-quality products to market faster. Riverbed makes it possible. Timothy Weaver, CIO
Del Monte Foods is all about quality and value, and that requires business agility and speed. With all their apps in the cloud, Del Monte runs on Riverbed for superior application performance. More than 26,000 companies rely on Riverbed for end-to-end application visibility, optimization, and control. Riverbed.com/performance
The Application Performance Company™
Š2015 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved.
Symantec
Secure businesses
Georges Kaed, Distribution Success Manager, Symantec Corporation, explains the key features of its Endpoint Suite solution and the benefits for partners.
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an you elaborate on the benefits of Symantec Endpoint Suite from Symantec? Symantec™ Endpoint Suite can help increase your deal size and margin, by simplifying the sale of multiple security technologies with predictable subscription pricing. Offering Symantec™ Endpoint Suite is an easy method to deliver an unparalleled combination of award-winning technologies from a world leader in security and data protection. Selling Symantec™ can increase account loyalty and make you a trusted advisor by delivering layered protection that is easy to deploy and manage, all backed by one of the largest civilian global threat intelligence networks. What are some of the challenges that are solved with this protection suite? Keep the business and IT environment running smoothly Need best in class protection technologies from a recognized industry leader to ensure my business, employees, and IT environment is running optimally. Protect the business from increasingly dangerous threats Need a multi-layered defense strategy for endpoints, mobile, encryption, and email to protect against today’s complex threats and secure the IT environment against malware, data loss, and email-based threats including spam. Drive down costs and stretch IT budgets Need to simplify and consolidate the number of vendors to reduce the procurement and operational complexity and cost of managing numerous technologies and vendors www.mindware.ae
Symantec™ Endpoint Suite can increase your deal size and margin by simplifying the sale of multiple Security technologies with predictable subscription pricing. Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange—Prevent the spread of threats amongst employees
Georges Kaed, Distribution Success Manager, Symantec Corporation
while eliminating products that the business is unsatisfied with. Can you share what protection features are included in the Suite? Symantec Endpoint Suite comes in two versions: Symantec Endpoint Suite and Symantec Endpoint Suite with Email. The Email version includes Symantec Endpoint Suite with Email includes licenses: Symantec Endpoint ProtectionProtect against APT malware Symantec Endpoint Encryption— Protect against theft or data loss Symantec Mobile—Protect mobile phones and tablets Symantec Messaging Gateway— Prevent spam, stop data loss at the perimeter Symantec Gateway Email Encryption— Encrypt/decrypt email without software
How can channel partners maximize the opportunities present here? Create bigger deals with more margin • Symantec™ Endpoint Suite can increase your deal size and margin by simplifying the sale of multiple Security technologies with predictable subscription pricing. Increase deployment services and management revenue • Symantec™ Endpoint Suite can increase your deployment and ongoing management revenues while increasing your penetration into customer accounts. Have more satisfied, protected, and productive customers • Symantec™ Endpoint Suite is the easiest method to deliver the best security software backed by one of The world’s largest civilian threat intelligence networks to commercial and enterprise customers. April 2016 Issue 07 | TheGrid
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Veritas
Stop the ROT Amer Chebaro, Regional Director, Gulf & KSA, Veritas, explains why losing the Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT) data crippling IT budgets should be top of every technology leader’s list in 2016.
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hasing the dream of digital transformation, CEOs in every sector are leaning on their technologists to replicate the speed with which today’s internet giants and unicorn start-ups are able to innovate, pivot and scale as they blaze a rampant trail of disruption. And the fuel for digital transformation is data - but only the right data. Companies are currently hoarding the stuff in the hope that one day they’ll get round to mining it for something useful. The result is what we at Veritas identified as the ‘Databerg’, through a global survey covering 22 countries and 2550 IT decision makers (including 75 in the UAE): a typical UAE organization reports Dark Data rates of 49% (EMEA avg. 54%), ROT (Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial) levels of 43% (EMEA avg. 32%), leaving just 8% (EMEA avg. 17%), of identifiable Business Critical data. This equates to wasted corporate resources of up to AED 3.27tn in EMEA by 26
TheGrid | Issue 07 April 2016
Amer Chebaro, Regional Director, Gulf & KSA, Veritas
2020 if companies don’t change their strategy and culture around information management. This is rarely seen as a single figure as it sits across all cost centres and is hidden in CAPEX and OPEX. But if it were a single line item on the CFO’s report, answers would certainly be called for, not only on the financial waste it represents but also on its potentially dangerous occupation of essential storage burst headroom. And there is additionally the environmental and further cost impact of powering of this wasted storage to consider. No one could have predicted the sheer scale of the explosion in data ¬in recent years, and IDC expects that the digital universe will reach an inconceivable 44 zettabytes by 2020 as more and more devices and people become connected. This is placing an enormous amount of pressure on IT leaders, whose budgets have remained static at best ¬– in most cases, CIOs are doing a good job to simply keep the lights on. Sold on the myth that storage is cheap, they’re adding bolt-on capacity with little thought given to the costs involved in managing these vast acres of information. The ‘free storage’ myth is seductive. It makes businesses believe they have no need to worry where their data resides as they freely adopt cloud applications and storage. We need to minimise ROT data by securely deleting it on a regular basis. And we need to use the right technology to shine a light on dark data to weed out compliance risks which could have a devastating
We need to minimise ROT data by securely deleting it on a regular basis. And we need to use the right technology to shine a light on dark data to weed out compliance risks which could have a devastating impact on brand reputation, whilst capturing the business-critical information which could have hidden value. impact on brand reputation, whilst capturing the businesscritical information which could have hidden value. Valuable data can be transformed into valuable information, valuable insights and, ultimately, competitive advantage. ROT data, meanwhile, is only a cost burden resting on the shoulders of UAE businesses. 2016 should be the year that CIOs Stop the ROT. www.mindware.ae
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