Value Journal | Issue 21 | April 2018

Issue 21 // April 2018

MICROSOFT TO BUILD FIRST MIDDLE EAST DATA CENTERS The two centres will deliver Microsoft Cloud services from data centres located in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Microsoft has announced plans to build its first Middle East and North Africa data centres in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The two centres will deliver Microsoft Cloud – comprising Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 – services from data centres located in the two emirates with initial availability expected in 2019.

Microsoft also announced new cloud regions for Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland, as well as the expansion of cloud options for customers in Germany and the general availability of Azure and Office 365 from new cloud regions in France.

Over the last three years, Microsoft has more than doubled the number of Azure regions available.

“Driven by strong customer demand for cloud computing, local data centres were

the logical next step given the enormous opportunity that the cloud presents,” said Sayed Hashish, regional general manager, Microsoft Gulf. “In areas like digital transformation, and the development of new intelligent services, our ambition is for the Microsoft Cloud to form a strategic part of the backbone for regional economic development.”

Hashish added that the UAE was Microsoft’s country of choice in the region for a combination of reasons. “The UAE isn’t just a technology hub in region, it also has a clarity of strategy and use Continued on page 3

Dell EMC announces Virtual Edge Platform family New platform family and software bundles enhance SD-WAN to speed digital transformation and expand opportunities for service providers and enterprises.

Dell EMC has introduced its Virtual Edge Platform (VEP) family, the first-to-market software-defined wide area network solution (SD-WAN) with the new Intel Xeon D-2100 processor, to help speed digital transformation by connecting the enterprise edge to the cloud via universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE). The new virtualized solutions will enhance or displace expensive fixed-function access hardware.

As a leading use case, the Dell EMC VEP provides next-generation access to the network via SD-WAN. By enhancing WAN operations and economics, service providers and enterprise customers can drive growth, strengthen competitive differentiation and improve the

end-user experience.

“There is a real need among service providers and enterprises to update network operations to address distributed and cloudbased applications and capitalise on changing economics enabled by cloud models,” said Tom Burns,

Senior Vice President, Networking and Service Provider Solutions.

“By infusing Open Networking into access networks to the cloud with the Virtual Edge Platform family, Dell EMC can help customers modernize infrastructure and transform operations while automating service delivery and processes.”

Built with advanced intelligence for network virtualization and softwareContinued on page 3

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

3 From page 1

COLUMN: REDefined

From page 1

Microsoft to...

Dell EMC announces...

of technology with initiatives around AI and Blockchain, and also the 1 Million Arab Coders initiative.”

Hashish went on to add that cloud computing has a huge scope for growth in the GCC. “We now know that cloud, while shown encouraging signs, is still at its infancy, and has a lot of opportunity and potential.”

Etisalat Digital will partner with Microsoft for integrated connectivity with Microsoft ExpressRoute as well as private cloud services using Azure Stack.

The telco is also providing consulting, migration and managed services to ensure the transition of Microsoft’s business customers to the cloud.

defined architecture, the Dell EMC VEP4600 provides an open Intel architecture-based platform to support multiple simultaneous virtual network functions (VNF).

Numerous proprietary physical devices can be consolidated into this single uCPE while maintaining the high-performance levels needed to host many. The modular design includes room to grow with front panel expandability so the platform can be easily upgraded or serviced in the field as needed.

The VEP 4600 is powered by the new Intel Xeon D-2100 product family, Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT), and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). These features help optimize compute resources and provide efficiency for growing

security workloads.

The Dell EMC VEP platform provides the performance, programmability and time-todelivery to rapidly adapt new service requirements such as routing, firewalling and deeppacket inspection. These additional VNFs can be added to the VEP by customers and/or Dell EMC in the future if needed.

For large operators and enterprises with multiple locations, Dell EMC can help smooth procurement, deployment and support through its global manufacturing scale, logistics and services with a single point of contact and accountability.

The Dell EMC VEP4600 will begin shipping worldwide on April 24, 2018.

Redington Value builds up momentum for Cambium solutions There are a series of readiness events, roadshows and trade events planned by Redington Value and Cambium in the next few months to create visibility within the partner ecosystem.

Global wireless broadband solutions provider Cambium Networks along with their Middle East and Africa master distributor Redington Value are gearing up to provide reliable, cost-effective wireless broadband offerings across the region.

There are a series of readiness events, roadshows and trade events planned by Redington Value and Cambium in the next few months to create momentum and visibility within the partner ecosystem. The companies will host two Partner Roadshows in Riyadh and Jeddah on March 12th and March 13th respectively.

Redington will deliver solutions such as broadband point-to-point backhaul, point-to-multipoint last-mile access, indoor and outdoor 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and narrowband SCADA backhaul solutions to connect industrial, enterprise, urban and rural residential locations. With wireless connectivity from two meters

Martín de la Serna, Cambium Networks

to 245 kilometers, cloud-based end-to-end management, and data rates ranging from kbps to Gbps these solutions provide affordable quality for connectivity, said the vendor.

“In a competitive wireless broadband space, Cambium Networks stands out as a leader by providing proven, reliable and affordable solutions,” said Ramkumar Balakrishnan, president, Redington Value.

“We are confident with our wide network of resellers in Middle

East and Africa we can help customers to easily expand their connectivity.”

Attendees for the roadshows will see how they can benefit from Cambium’s end-to-end wireless fabric solutions and learn about the full portfolio of wireless connectivity solutions.

“Cambium’s wireless broadband solutions are proven to provide high reliability in thousands of networks around the world and are uniquely suited for the demanding applications of the Middle East and African markets,” said Martín de la Serna, vice president, Sales, Cambium Networks.

“This partnership is a great match and complementary for both organisations. Service providers and network operators are seeking high-performance connectivity at affordable prices. Redington Value’s reach across the Middle East and African markets will increase connectivity and business efficiency across the entire region.”

Digital MarketingEvolution from an Experimental to a Foundational Strategy

By Aditya Puri, Senior Marketing Manager, Redington Value

Over the last five years, marketing methodology has evolved in the region at a rapid pace. Incremental business for vendors is dependent on how VADs successfully run ROIbased campaigns.

Apart for traditional platforms, digital marketing has taken off in a big way. Marketing is an ever-evolving field and new methods of reaching out customers is a necessity. As a VAD, we have to be instrumental in creating customer centric strategies to drive incremental sales.

To do so, we can no longer ignore the importance of digital marketing and analytics associated to it. A digital campaign, if run properly can help create a buzz in the market, followed by healthy discussion in an open forum thereby creating a transparent medium for customers to understand the technology better. At a minimum, social media campaigns in a B2B environment are a foot in the door as far as sales are concerned. Channel businesses’ outlook to marketing methodologies has changed in the last couple of years.

Businesses who earlier didn’t have websites are more than excited about running digital campaigns. Hiring of marketing managers by partners is a testimony to the fact that channel businesses are giving marketing its due importance.

Channel businesses need to see value in marketing initiatives to invest their time and money.

Digital Marketing is no longer just an experimental strategy, it’s exponentially evolved to a foundational strategy for any marketing plan.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

4

Palo Alto Networks updates Traps advanced endpoint protection offering The company unveils new cloud-delivered management service and enhanced infrastructure for improved ease of use and integration with application framework Palo Alto Networks has introduced advancements to its Traps advanced endpoint protection offering. In this latest release, version 5.0, Palo Alto Networks introduces a cloud-delivered management service, Linux support, and redesigned infrastructure for Traps. Customer organizations can now more easily deploy and manage Traps, enabling them to stop threats on the endpoint and coordinate enforcement with cloud and network security to prevent successful cyberattacks.

Attackers must complete a sequence of events in order to successfully accomplish their objective, such as stealing information or running ransomware. Nearly every attack relies on compromising an endpoint. Although most organizations have deployed endpoint protection, infections still are common.

Palo Alto Networks Traps advanced endpoint protection prevents known and unknown threats from infecting endpoints, minimizing endpoint infections by blocking malware, exploits, and ransomware. Integration with the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform delivers additional threat analysis, shared intelligence, and automated containment.

Key advancements include: • New cloud-delivered management service for easier deployment and dayto-day management.

• Redesigned user interface for a more intuitive user experience.

• Support for all major OS platforms, now including Linux, in addition to Windows and macOS. • Periodic scanning capabilities

•

to identify dormant malware on endpoints and attached removable drives, with the ability to automatically quarantine infected files to ensure that they do not detonate.

Integration with the Palo Alto Networks Logging Service allows for the collection of detailed event information for better analysis of endpoint, network, and cloud data.

“Palo Alto Networks continues to take an innovative approach to solving our customers’ toughest security challenges.

Traps advanced endpoint protection, version 5.0, simplifies endpoint security deployment and management, and enhances malware protection. With the availability of endpoint event data within the Palo Alto Networks

Traps advanced endpoint protection, version 5.0, simplifies endpoint security deployment and management, and enhances malware protection.”

Application Framework, customers can now better detect and respond to advanced threats, enabling them to prevent successful cyberattacks,” said Lee Klarich, Chief Product Officer, Palo Alto Networks Traps version 5.0 is available immediately to customers worldwide. At this time, the cloud-delivered management service is based in North America and EMEA.

Nokia to strengthen WiFi offering with new acquisition Nokia has announced plans to acquire US-based Unium, a firm specialising in solving complex wireless networking problems for use in mission-critical and residential WiFi applications.

According to the statement released, Unium’s software and intelligent mesh wireless technology complements and strengthens Nokia’s endto-end, whole-home WiFi solution and supports Nokia’s strategic objective of solving WiFi problems in the home.

Unium said it will bring Nokia “field-proven, carrier-grade” mesh technology that helps maximise in-home wireless networking speeds and ensures quality of experience across the entire home.

Both firms are ready to unlock the complete potential of the connected home, creating a residential network that understands the people, devices and applications it serves.

Together, they can deliver gigabit speeds not only to the home, but also throughout the home, said the statement.

Federico Guillén, president of Nokia’s Fixed Networks business group, said, “We look forward to having the Unium team join us.

The home networking market is booming and whole-home

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

WiFi is a key enabler for this.

Today’s WiFi solutions still have serious issues with sticky clients, interference, coverage gaps and capacity issues. With Unium inside, our Nokia WiFi solution will deliver an unmatched user experience, going beyond what standard mesh WiFi solutions deliver today.”

Martha Bejar, CEO, Unium added, “Nokia is a global leader in creating customer-centric solutions and is at the heart of our connected world. The Unium team is excited to join Nokia and

drive a unique and innovative customer experience through our intelligent WiFi solution, making every customer-touch better.”

5

HyTrust signs regional distribution agreement with Redington Value Regional value-added distributor Redington Value and global cybersecurity leader HyTrust have joined hands to revolutionize the security space across the Middle East market.

Recent cybersecurity attacks and breaches have compelled organizations to examine their existing security infrastructure.

The Middle East and Africa cybersecurity market, valued at USD 14.48 billion in 2017, is expected to reach USD 34.6 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 15.62 percent, over the forecast period of 2018-2023, according to a Mordor Intelligence report.

Customers are increasingly looking at moving their operations into the cloud and powerful security solutions are required to support their digital transformation journey.

HyTrust aims to make cloud infrastructure more trustworthy for organizations pursuing a multi-

Ramkumar Balakrishnan, Redington Value

cloud approach by delivering a critical set of capabilities required to proactively secure workloads, wherever they reside in the cloud.

“The Gulf Region has already proven to be a successful one for HyTrust as we have customers and opportunities in major universities, banks, hospitals, government and cloud providers.

These organizations are under

Security Policy Framework, offers the layered approach to reduce risk, enhance security and provide compliance support these world class customers require.” constant cyber-attack from private and state based actors. HyTrust’s unique cybersecurity offering, Security Policy Framework, offers the layered approach to reduce risk, enhance security and provide compliance support these world class customers require. Partnering

with Redington Gulf, the leading distributor in the region, will help accelerate our growth in the territory. We are very excited to be working with them,” said Patrick J Conte, Senior Vice President and General Manager for International Business at HyTrust.

Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value, said, “Customers are seeking trusted solutions that can help safeguard critical assets. HyTrust solutions will enable regional partners to distinguish their offerings and innovate in a competitive marketplace. We look forward to working closely with HyTrust and our extensive network of partners to deliver transformative cybersecurity solutions.”

Veeam announces Availability Orchestrator New orchestration solution enables enterprises to mitigate the risk caused by outdated and untested disaster recovery plans and instead easily create, document, test and execute DR plans, ensuring total compliance.

Veeam Software has announced the general availability of Veeam Availability Orchestrator – the newest addition to the Veeam Availability Platform – which enables enterprises to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) compliance.

Veeam Availability Orchestrator provides an orchestration engine rich with planning, automated documenting and testing capabilities for preparedness and compliance, with full support for Veeam replicas.

“Enterprise customers are demanding not only Availability, but also help in ensuring compliance,” said Danny Allan, Vice President, Product Strategy, Veeam. “In the event of a disaster, enterprises stand to lose millions

Danny Allan, Veeam

in downtime, $21.8 million according to our latest Veeam Availability Report, as well as damaged reputation and lost productivity. Without having a disaster recovery plan that is upto-date, tested and documented, it’s difficult to respond quickly when disaster strikes. With new Veeam Availability Orchestrator, enterprises can achieve a true

Availability platform, reduce costs, define their DR plans, and achieve the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they are able and ready to provide business continuity, even in the worst case scenario.”

Built with enterprise-class Availability in mind, new Veeam Availability Orchestrator provides a DR orchestration engine for Veeam Backup & Replication replicas. Thorough orchestration, creating, documenting, testing and executing DR plans – which are fully-prepared for C-level executive and stakeholder signoff – helps organizations reduce the time, cost and effort associated with a successful DR strategy, including: • Satisfying compliance requirements with template-

•

•

based documentation that makes it easy to build and update DR plans as the virtual environment changes; Proving recoverability at any time through automated scheduled and on-demand plan testing and readiness checks that have zero impact on the production environment; Ensuring IT service continuity through the reliable execution of multisite DR failover and failback, including service and application verification

Veeam Availability Orchestrator is now available to customers with a Veeam Availability Suite or Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise Plus license.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

6

EVENTS

Algosec Security Policy Management Technical Workshop - Dubai - 11-13 March

Aruba Mobility Seminar - Jeddah - 14 March

Aruba Mobility Session - Al Khobar - 21 March

Cambium Networks and Syscom Partner Connect - Dubai - 14 March

Avaya Equinox Workshop - Riyadh - 7 March

Cambium Networks Roadshow 2018 Riyadh - 12 March

Check Point CSSA Workshop Dubai - 18-22 March

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

Cambium Networks Roadshow 2018 Jeddah - 13 March

Campaign on AI use cases

by Microsoft & Redington - Dubai - 26 March

CyberArk Technical Workshop - Dubai - 4-8 March

7

EVENTS

Fortinet ATC Workshop - Dubai - 11-15 March

Fortinet Technical Workshop - Oman - 6 March

HPE Simplivity Solution Seminar Al Khobar - 22 March

Huawei GCC Customer Roadshow Kuwait - 27 March

Huawei Champions Trophy 2K18 - Dubai - 23 March

Huawei GCC Customer Roadshow 2018 Dubai - 20 March

Huawei GCC Customer Roadshow with Mannai 2018 - Qatar - 28 March

Malwarebytes Security Seminar - Dubai - 21 March

Huawei GCC Customer Roadshow with Mustafa Sultan 2018 - Oman - 26 March

Malwarebytes Security Seminar - Riyadh - 1 March

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

8

Microsoft 365 Launch Event - Dubai - 27 March

Microsoft Azure Roundtable - Kuwait - 14 March

Mimecast Customer Connect Roadshow - Dubai - 22 March

MobileIron Technical Workshop - Dubai - 13-15 March

Oracle MiniCluster Workshop Riyadh - 6 March

Cisco - Partner Enablement Session Ghana - 7 March

Cisco - Partner Enablement Session Nigeria - 1 March

Dell EMC - Partner Enablement Session Ghana - 13 March

Cambium Networks - Launch Event - Nigeria - 20 March

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

Microsoft - CSP Partner Roundtable Ghana - 20 March

9

Avaya - Aura Partner Workshop Kenya - 29 March

Cambium Networks - Launch Event Kenya - 23 March

Cisco - Partner Enablement Session Uganda - 16 March

Cisco - Partner Workshop on CAT9K & Meraki - Ethiopia - 13 March

Cisco - Partner Workshop on CAT9K & TNI - Kenya - 7 March

Dell EMC - Partner Enablement Session Kenya - 28 March

Microsoft - CSP Partner Roundtable Kenya -22 March

Symantec - Integrated Cyber Defense Kenya - 9 March

Oracle - Digital Transformation Hackathon - Kenya - 13-14 March

Veritas - Partner Enablement Session - Kenya - 16 March

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

10

Fortinet unveils FortiGuard Artificial Intelligence FortiGuard AI automates threat intelligence analysis and detection to stay ahead of the rapidly expanding threat landscape.

Fortinet, a global broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions vendor, has announced at its global partner and user conference, Accelerate 18, the next generation of threat intelligence and detection with the release of FortiGuard AI. FortiGuard AI is built into Fortinet’s threat intelligence services platform and delivers automated threat analysis and detection to ensure customer Security Fabric solutions are continually updated to protect against the latest threats across a rapidly expanding threat landscape.

FortiGuard AI is a self-evolving threat detection system that uses machine learning and continuous training to autonomously collect, analyse, and classify threats with a high degree of accuracy and at machine speed.

FortiGuard AI analyzes and identifies threats with speed, agility, and accuracy to provide proactive threat detection.”

Phil Quade, Fortinet

FortiGuard AI is integrated into Fortinet’s threat intelligence services platform to power all of the advanced threat detection capabilities that FortiGuard services share across the Security Fabric.

The firm also announced new User Entity and Behavioral Analysis (UEBA) capabilities, and the launch of FortiGuard

Threat Intelligence Service (TIS) as an enterprise service offering.

“Increasingly, cybercriminals and adversarial nations leverage automated and polymorphic techniques to increase the speed and scale of their malicious activity, while evading detection by creating hundreds of zeroday variants and resulting in overwhelmed defenders,” said Phil Quade, Chief Information Security Officer, Fortinet.

He adds that enterprises need a way to address such techniques and increase the attackers’ costs while reducing their own operating expenses.

Nutanix announces agreement to acquire Netsil Strategic acquisition adds next-generation application discovery and operations management to Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS Nutanix has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Netsil Inc. Netsil provides application discovery and operations management that enables observability in modern distributed cloud environments.

The closing of the acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

The increasing adoption of multi-cloud platforms has meant more complexity and an inconsistent approach to operations management, leaving application owners in the dark.

Today’s businesses rely on applications that interact with thousands of services, yet IT administrators and DevOps

teams struggle with the insight and control they need to map dependencies or monitor realtime application behavior. As popularity in microservices and containers grow, understanding all of the dependencies and the need for visibility become more critical. Netsil’s non-disruptive and easy-to-deploy solution monitors applications, services and their dependencies in real time.

Netsil is the San Francisco-based maker of the Netsil Application Operations Center, which helps enterprises gain complete visibility into all their applications and services and their complex interdependencies with absolutely no code changes required.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

Sunil Potti, Nutanix

The addition of Netsil’s technology to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software will help customers secure applications as well as identify and fix performance issues.

“Fortinet Labs’ five-year investment in automated analysis and detection of polymorphic threats has resulted in FortiGuard AI, a giant leap towards achieving that goal. FortiGuard AI analyzes and identifies threats with speed, agility, and accuracy to provide proactive threat detection at machine speed and scale,” he says. “This frees threat analysts and network operators to focus on critical threat research and higher-order problems, reduces exposure to zero-day attacks, and minimizes the risk to Fortinet customers while increasing the attacker’s costs.”

“Netsil’s innovative technology offers an original approach to simple yet comprehensive application discovery and operations management across multiple cloud environments and will be a powerful addition to Nutanix,” said Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix. “Netsil, which can be consumed as a cloud-based service, and when combined with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software, gives both DevOps and IT teams the power to quickly deploy and operate applications with confidence, in any cloud, at any scale, while ensuring reliability, performance and security.”

“Joining Nutanix gives Netsil’s technology a great opportunity to be a force multiplier,” said Harjot Gill, Founder and CEO of Netsil.

“Nutanix has built a very solid Enterprise Cloud OS platform, which when combined with Netsil’s real-time observability, becomes even more strategic when addressing a growing microservices market.”

Stu & Mitch IT Team of Two Retailer 198 Employees Technology: HPE Aruba Access Points and Switches HPE StoreVirtual HPE ProLiant Servers

IT resiliency and security for everyone.

Keep your business moving forward with secure, right-sized networking, servers, and storage from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. If disaster strikes, minimize disruption with powerful backup and recovery that delivers 99.999%* continuous data availability. See how easy it is to make uptime a key advantage.

HPE Just Right IT for any size business.

Brought to you by HPE & Intel®. Intel Inside®. Powerful Productivity Outside. *HPE internal testing on StoreVirtual VSA software-defined storage, February 16, 2016. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. © 2016 HPED LP.