Issue 05 // November 2016
REDINGTON VALUE DRIVES TRANSFORMATION
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edington Value, the value-added distribution arm of Redington Gulf’s theme at GITEX 2016 was ‘catalysing transformation’. The distributor’s focus at the exhibition was around its “fully functional” solutions centre, Red Vault and Uniplum, its new consulting
Redington Value’s new solutions centre, Red Vault
arm launched at the show. The company also shared insights and the growth curve of its integrated cloud solutions platform, RedCloud, which was launched at GITEX 2015. Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution, said, “We want to be a catalyst for the channel to help them transform. To achieve this, we are also investing in our role to partners. Continued on page 2
Dell EMC launches new partner program The new program aims to reaffirm the merged company’s strong commitment to the channel. Dell EMC has previewed the new combined partner program, set to formally become effective in February 2017. Drawing from the best aspects of the former individual partner programs, the new Dell EMC Partner Program aims to provide “unprecedented business opportunity for partners and reaffirms its strong commitment to the channel.”
Red Hat’s mobile vision to support containerized mobile app development The company has announced the release of Red Hat Mobile Application Platform as a fully containerized offering.
Cathal McGloin, Red Hat
Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Mobile Application Platform as a fully containerized offering designed to run in any public cloud, private cloud or on-premise infrastructure that supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Together with the company’s existing SaaS-based mobile app platform,
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Redington Value is a value added distributor for the following brands in parts of Middle East & Africa:
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
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REDINGTON... The consumption models are changing from traditional sourcing of IT to sourcing it from cloud. We are trying to enable partners to thrive in this market transformation through key initiatives such as Uniplum.” According to Balakrishnan, Uniplum will be focused on three important areas where the company has observed a lack of skills in the market with the channel. These are around the cloud transformation journey, Big Data and analytics and Internet of Things. The new division aims to provide consulting on new technology and solutions for numerous verticals and help partners to sell
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We are showcasing around 25 different solutions at our recently-launched executive briefing multi-vendor solutions centre, with plans to expand it further. The initial response we have got from the market has been fantastic.”
those solutions effectively. “We are showcasing around 25 different solutions at our recently-launched executive briefing multi-vendor solutions centre, with plans to expand it further,” Balakrishnan added. “The initial response we have got
From page 1
on certain technology verticals such as hyper-converged infrastructure. Going forward, the distributor will continue to focus and develop on its newly launched solutions centre and consulting arm.
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Dell EMC... Built on three core tenets— to be simple, predictable and profitable—the new program is aimed at ensuring that partners have ample opportunity, business confidence and commensurate profitability regardless of their program tier. In December, the company will announce tier thresholds for partners, providing six months for them to ramp up to the new criteria. Program tiers, developed to elevate Dell EMC partners over competitors and establish a clear path to up-level, will include Gold, Platinum and Titanium, as well as an exclusive, Titanium Black partner tier for the highest performing partners. Tier levels align with key business models of partners, enabling flexibility where needed to meet customer needs. Benefits will include generous rebates for channel partners who drive new business, attach services, sell the full portfolio and offer the portfolio exclusively, said the company. The program will encompass the merged company’s entire partner ecosystem, inclusive of solution providers, cloud service
from partners and vendors who have visited the centre has been fantastic.” The marketing initiative from the distributor termed Red Enable also enables partners through training and joint enduser demand generation focusing
Red Hat... providers, global alliances, OEM solutions partners and distribution. As part of this complete ecosystem strategy, included as well is the ‘Powered by Dell EMC’ brand programme for those businesses that embed the company’s technologies into the marketplace. The Dell EMC Partner Program will go live on 1st February 2017, with further details being announced in the coming months. John Byrne, President, Global Channel, Dell EMC, said, “The growth Dell EMC is experiencing in the channel is a brilliant illustration of our mutual success to date, and the new program is purposebuilt to continue to fuel this momentum. Our partners wanted a program without unknowns, and this program provides that transparency while ensuring predictability and profitability. The opportunities to win big with this program and with Dell EMC are extraordinary. Our goal is to excite and delight this amazing and powerful partner community.”
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enterprises now have a wider set of deployment options to integrate, manage, and scale their mobile app initiatives to meet their business objectives. The move to a fully containerized platform, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, based on docker-format containers and Kubernetes, is part of Red Hat’s strategy to provide a single, integrated platform for modern application development that is cloud native, mobile-centric, microservicesbased, and API-driven. This new generation of app development tools also support DevOps and agile processes to help businesses innovate and respond to the ever-changing needs of the digital enterprise. Deployment of Red Hat Mobile Application Platform on OpenShift provides a common platform to support mobile workloads running alongside traditional enterprise applications that need to be moved to the cloud. With the new option for a fully supported onpremise deployment capability, customers can meet their specific management, regulatory and
Red Hat offers organizations a powerful stack, based on these modern technologies, to develop, integrate, deploy, and manage mobile applications alongside traditional workloads.” policy requirements for their mobile solutions. Cathal McGloin, Vice President, Mobile Platforms, Red Hat, said, “The pursuit of digital transformation is giving rise to a new mobile enterprise, where application development is increasingly defined by emerging architectures, processes and platforms that can deliver greater business agility. Red Hat offers organizations a powerful stack, based on these modern technologies, to develop, integrate, deploy, and manage mobile applications alongside traditional workloads running in this portable cloud-agnostic containerized environment.”
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Fortinet delivers on open security fabric Through its new Fabric-Ready Partner Program and integration of FortiSIEM, the company opens the security fabric to its partner ecosystem.
John Maddison, Fortinet
Cybersecurity solutions provider, Fortinet delivers on the ‘open’ attribute of the Fortinet security fabric through its new FabricReady Partner Program and integration of FortiSIEM, providing threat intelligence
visibility across multi-vendor cybersecurity solutions. “Organizations want integrated security, from IoT to the cloud, with actionable analytics across their multivendor networking and security solutions, all delivered through a single pane of glass view,” said John Maddison, Senior Vice President Products and Solutions, Fortinet. “Fortinet’s Security Fabric has delivered on this technology vision with a complete rethinking of security for customers to implement more strategic approaches, such as internal segmentation or automated universal policy to stay ahead of the threat landscape. By opening the security fabric to our
partner ecosystem we accelerate our customers’ transition to integrated security strategies to address the full spectrum of challenges across the attack lifecycle.” The Fabric-Ready Partner Program builds on the company’s robust ecosystem of technology alliances by opening the functionality of the security fabric to complementary solutions. Partners in this program have validated technology integration with the security fabric, have committed to sharing roadmaps for consistent interoperability, and will benefit from joint go-tomarket initiatives. Initial FabricReady partners include Brocade, Carbon Black, Centrify, Nozomi
Networks, Palerra, Pulse Secure, Qualys, Tufin, UBIqube, VeriSign, WhiteHat Security and Ziften. Further extending the security fabric to multi-vendor environments, FortiSIEM, the vendor’s Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution delivers a single pane of glass Security and Network Operations Center to provide complete visibility and actionable intelligence across the entire infrastructure. The open security fabric behaves as a single entity, offering the performance, visibility and automation required for intelligent end-toend segmentation, from IoT to the cloud, and across physical and virtual environments.
FGB expands analytics capabilities in partnership with Oracle FGB has chosen Oracle solutions such as Oracle Big Data Discovery, Big Data Connectors, Big Data Appliance X5-2 and the Business Intelligence Suite as part of the new collaboration. a wide range of unique, competitive products to fit their banking needs and to help them in achieving their dreams. The announcement was made during GITEX Technology Week event, held recently in Dubai. As part of the new
Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Oracle
FGB, an UAE-based bank, will implement Oracle’s Big Data and Business Analytics solutions as part of its ongoing efforts to offer customers
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collaboration, FGB has chosen a host of Oracle’s latest Big Data and Analytics solution components to sustain its leading position in the market with better customer profiling and customer 360 insights. These solutions include Oracle Big Data Discovery,
Accurate advance prediction tools powered by Big Data Analytics are important for financial institutions to explore new opportunities and make informed decisions.”
Big Data Connectors, Big Data Appliance X5-2 and the Business Intelligence Suite. Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Senior Vice President, Tech, Middle East and Africa, Oracle, said, “Accurate advance prediction tools powered by Big Data Analytics are important for financial institutions to explore new opportunities and make informed decisions. We are confident that with Oracle Big Data and Business Analytics, FGB will be able to analyze data from a variety of sources to anticipate changing customer behaviour and incorporate the best action into operational workflow”.
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EVENTS
Amazon Web Services, Partner Roadshow, Dubai, 5 September 2016
Fortinet, ATP Framework Training, Jordan, 6 September 2016
Veeam, End User Event With Arabesque, Kuwait, 21 September 2016
Vmware, VSICM, VSD Training, Dubai, 28 August 1 September 2016
Redington Value’s new solutions centre, Red Vault has one of the largest interactive displays in the region
Cyberark, Partner Training, Dubai, 27-28 September 2016
Fortinet, Partner Roadshow, Bahrain, 4 September 2016
Intel, Internet of Things Session, Dubai, 29 September 2016
Oracle – Partner Demo Event - Dubai, 22 September 2016
Vmware – Roadshow - Riyadh, 20 September 2016
Redington Value at GITEX Technology Week, 16-20 October 2016
Check Point, Customer Training, Dubai, 2-6 October 2016
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Vmware, VSICM, VSD Training, Dubai, 6 - 8 September 2016
Technology session at Redington Value stand during GITEX, 16-20 October 2016
Dell EMC, IoT Event, Dubai, 5 October 2016
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Fortinet, Technical Day Training, Riyadh, 23-24 October 2016
Oracle, ODA, Riyadh, 26 October 2016
HPE, MS ROK Bootcamp, Dubai, 13 October 2016
Veeam, End User Event With Datataag, Dubai 13 October 2016
Oracle, Breakfast Roundtable on Oracle Database Appliance, Dubai, 17 October 2016
Cisco Partner Training, Kenya, 5 September, 2016
Cisco Partner Training, Tanzania, 20 September, 2016
Cisco Partner Training - Ethiopia, 23 September 2016
Symantec Partner Training - Kenya, 23 September 2016
Cisco Partner Training - Ghana, 4 October 2016
Cisco Partner Training - Tanzania, 7 October 2016
Dell EMC Partner Event - Tanzania, 12 October 2016
Dell EMC Partner Event - Uganda, 14 October 2016
Cisco Executive Event - Nigeria, 19 October 2016
Tripp Lite Partner Training - Kenya, 27 October 2016
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
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Symantec selects VMware AirWatch to build enhanced endpoint security integrations In a strategic partnership to bring together endpoint management and threat security, Symantec joins the VMware Mobile Security Alliance.
Blake Brannon, VMware
At the recently held, Connect 2016, Symantec and VMware have announced the development of a strategic partnership to bring together endpoint management and threat security where Symantec joins the VMware Mobile Security Alliance.
To address the challenges of increased vulnerabilities, Symantec and VMware plan to integrate their cybersecurity and endpoint management technologies. The companies will be working to enable organizations to have the ability to leverage advanced machine learning techniques through Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network with integrated identity management and unified endpoint management via the VMware AirWatch compliance engine. “By collaborating with VMware, we will work to deliver integrated solutions that include the best in security from Symantec with the best in
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It is our role in the security and mobility industry to monitor for unusual or risky behavior and take action against those devices, to protect our customers well before a threat ensues.”
management from VMware,” said Sean Doherty, Vice President of Technology Partnerships and Alliances, Symantec. “This partnership with VMware will be an opportunity for both companies to drive innovation in threat management.” Blake Brannon, Vice President, Product Marketing, End-User Computing, VMware, said, “It is our role in the security
and mobility industry to monitor for unusual or risky behavior and take action against those devices, to protect our customers well before a threat ensues. Our partnership with Symantec will be focused on addressing these needs and will offer mutual customers a validated and integrated approach to managing both device security and remediation across their mobile deployments.”
Cisco announces new education platform Cisco Digital Education Platform brings added simplicity and security for the education sector.
Cisco is committed to helping colleges and universities improve the student experience by giving learners more ways to connect, engage, learn and succeed.”
Cisco Digital Education Platform
Cisco has announced a new educational platform that integrates Cisco WebEx and Spark into existing Learning Management Systems (LMSs). These integrations allow faculty to schedule online classes easily and securely from within their LMSs. The integrations also include video and collaboration
features that enhance the education experience for students who may be on campus or online. “Cisco is committed to helping colleges and universities improve the student experience by giving learners more ways to connect, engage, learn and succeed,” said Renee Patton, Director of Education for U.S. Public Sector
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at Cisco. “With support from our partner ecosystem, universities like Georgia State, Utah State and Mercer are already realizing the value of this Digital Education Platform.” The new Digital Education Platform is based on Cisco’s highly secure core network. This helps to keep student and faculty coursework safe and secure. The platform also includes unified voice, video and wireless communications, which enhance Digital Learning and the Digital Campus.
Some new benefits for faculty and staff include managing attendance records, downloading, viewing and streaming recordings as well as other cloud-based functionality. The Digital Education Platform also supports recruitment and retention. For students, this platform provides new access to courses and coursework as well as a way to communicate about assignments from within the LMS.
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Trend Micro raises bar with XGen endpoint security The new offering is powered by the XGen blend of crossgenerational threat defense techniques.
Eva Chen, Trend Micro
Trend Micro, cybersecurity solutions provider, has announced the availability of XGen endpoint security. This new offering is powered by the XGen blend of cross-generational threat defense techniques that intelligently applies the right technology at the right time, resulting in more effective and
efficient protection against a full range of threats. The company’s approach uses proven methods to quickly identify benign data and known threats, freeing its advanced techniques, such as application control, exploit prevention, behavioral analysis and machine learning, to more quickly and accurately identify unknown threats. According to the vendor it is the first to infuse ‘high-fidelity’ machine learning into its approach – “uniquely analyzing files both before execution and at runtime, using ‘noise cancellation’ features like census checking and whitelisting to reduce false positives.” “The name XGen was carefully chosen to indicate the crossgenerational technology fueling our
approach, which is built on years of experience and provides customers with better protection against the evolving range of threats they face,” said Eva Chen, Chief Executive Officer, Trend Micro. “We’ve been using machine learning for years as part of our global threat intelligence, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. Now, we’re raising the bar by infusing ‘high-fidelity’ machine learning into our blend of protection techniques to specifically tackle more advanced threats like ransomware, while other vendors, including relatively new ‘next-gen’ endpoint security companies, only offer one or two ‘one-size-fits-all’ protection techniques.” XGen endpoint security is available as part of the Trend Micro Smart Protection Suites. The suites include a range of integrated endpoint, email and web gateway security capabilities designed to protect users in their daily activities, with centralized visibility and control to speed time to response for IT.
Veeam dominates Microsoft Office 365 Backup and Availability market The initial market response for its latest solution has exceeded expectations with more than 1,500 beta downloads in a matter of days.
Peter McKay, Veeam
Veeam Software has announced that initial interest for its latest solution, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, has exceeded expectations with more than 1,500 beta downloads in a matter of days, showing customers are eager to take control of their Office 365 Exchange Online data. Last year, more than 205 billion
emails were sent each day and this will rise by 5 percent in 2016, which proves that email remains a cornerstone of modern communications and its importance cannot be underestimated. Office 365 enables an enterprise to work anywhere and at any time without the need to maintain its own email infrastructure. However, it does not replace the need to have a local backup of email data. With Office 365, the data is owned and controlled by the business so the business is also responsible for protecting it. “Many commentators predict email’s death in the new social age, but it’s clear that email is still one of the most critical forms of communication on the planet, especially in
the corporate environment,” said Peter McKay, President and COO, Veeam. “Blending Microsoft’s historic dominance in the email space with cloud’s promise to save IT departments time, resources and cost, it’s easy to bet on Office 365 as the email platform of the future.” According to McKay, while no longer needing to manage and maintain email-related systems is a breath of fresh air for IT departments everywhere, it’s critical to remember that it’s still their business data. “They control it and it’s their responsibility to protect it. The business reigns over the availability of their data, and with Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 we’re giving them the tool to do just that for Office 365 Exchange Online,” he adds.
CloudHost unveils UAE’s first userbased cloud solution It allows users to pay a flat fee for various cloud solutions.
Nikhil Katara, CloudHost
CloudHost has announced the launch of the country’s first user-based cloud platform, which allows users to pay a flat fee for various cloud solutions. The unique structure allows its customers to move away from ‘CAPEX to OPEX’ model, taking the service offering to the next level. Nikhil Katara, Co-Founder and Director Operations, CloudHost, says the advantage of its various offerings on a per user-based subscription model allows its clients to keep the cloud deployment cost under control. “We have a clear vision of providing enterprise technology as a utility. Typically, the numerous technology components are provided separately, with separate costs for each by most cloud providers in the market, which we believe is not ‘the real cloud’,” says Katara. Within one year of its launch the company has signed up more than 50 enterprise clients. Its customer base includes government and semigovernment entities, banks, retail, manufacturing, distribution and various SMEs among others. CloudHost also provides consulting services for migrating and managing cloud applications and infrastructure across public, private and hybrid cloud. CloudHost boasts robust relationships with ISVs providing enterprise applications like Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, Focus, among others. CloudHost has a strong partner program, and is working closely with Redington Value as its distributor.
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com