Issue 17 // December 2017
NEW DELL EMC SOLUTIONS BRING MACHINE AND DEEP LEARNING TO MAINSTREAM ENTERPRISES Dell EMC and technology partners offer new products, solutions and services designed for easier adoption, faster benefits from machine and deep learning.
Armughan Ahmad, Dell EMC
Dell EMC has announced new machine learning and deep learning solutions, continuing the company’s work to bring high performance computing (HPC) and data analytics capabilities to mainstream enterprises worldwide. This enables organizations to take advantage of the convergence of HPC and data analytics and realize advancements in areas
including fraud detection, image processing, financial investment analysis and personalized medicine, said the firm. Combined with knowledge from Dell EMC experts, the new Dell EMC Machine and Deep Learning Ready Bundles are part of a new portfolio that delivers on the commitment of democratizing HPC
and helping customers achieve faster, better and deeper data insights. These Ready Bundles combine pre-tested and validated servers, storage, networking and services optimized for machine and deep learning applications. The new ready bundles enable faster, better, deeper data insights; include trusted experts and maximizes
efficiency, security and control. Dell EMC Deep Learning Ready Bundle customers will benefit from the introduction of the new Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 server, supporting latest generation NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU accelerators with PCIe and NVLink Continued on page 3
Fortinet expands security fabric visibility and protection to Industrial Internet of Things The vendor demonstrates IoT security momentum and industry-leading patent innovation Traditionally, commercial and industrial networks and their IoT devices have operated in isolation, but the mainstreaming of things like smart cities and connected homes have begun to merge these devices within local, national and global infrastructures. This is requiring
organizations to rethink how they secure increasingly converged IT, OT and IoT networks and devices. Integrating distinct security tools into a unified Security Fabric enables organizations to collect and correlate threat intelligence in real time, identify abnormal behavior and automatically
orchestrate a response anywhere across this complex IoT attack surface. FortiGuard ISS protects the most widely-used Industrial Control System (ICS) and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) devices and applications. The new
John Maddison, Fortinet
service provides vulnerability protection, deep visibility and granular control over ICS and Continued on page 3
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Dell EMC... high-speed interconnect technology. This new offering is an example of the Dell EMC and NVIDIA strategic agreement for joint development of new HPC, data analytics, and artificial intelligence products and solutions announced at ISC’17 in June. The new Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 server is an ultra-dense, accelerator optimized server platform with an innovative systems design. The PowerEdge C4140 features two Intel Xeon Scalable Processors and four NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to deliver optimized performance for demanding cognitive workloads. The Dell EMC Ready Bundles for machine learning
COLUMN: REDefined
From page 1
and deep learning will be available in the first half of 2018 through Dell EMC and its channel partners. Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 will be available worldwide in December 2017. Armughan Ahmad, Senior Vice President and GM, Hybrid Cloud and Ready Solutions, Dell EMC, said, “Our customers consistently tell us that one of their biggest challenges is how to best manage and learn from the ever-increasing amount of data they collect daily. With Dell EMC’s high-performance computing experience, we’ve seen how our artificial intelligence solutions can deliver critical insights from this data, faster than ever before possible.
Fortinet... SCADA systems and is backed by real-time threat intelligence updates – enabling organizations to restrict access and minimize the attack surface of their critical IIoT infrastructures. FortiGuard ISS complements Fortinet’s industrial-strength security appliances, which are designed to run in harsh environments. John Maddison, Senior VP, Products and Solutions, Fortinet, said, “The Fortinet Security Fabric arms enterprises with a comprehensive solution that spans the entire IoT attack surface, delivering the performance and threat intelligence required to learn, segment, and ultimately protect the varied attack surfaces created by IoT.”
Oracle: Moving to IaaS fundamental to remaining competitive A global survey revealed that more than half of the respondents believe IaaS makes it easier for businesses to innovate.
The proportion of businesses reaping the rewards of embracing cloud infrastructure services has increased significantly in the last quarter, according to a global survey of 1,610 IT professionals, said Oracle. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72 percent) believe Infrastructure-as-aService (IaaS) makes it easier for businesses to innovate, a 10 percent increase over last quarter. The research also found that 68 percent of businesses believe IaaS delivers exceptional operational performance in terms of speed and availability, a 20 percent quarterover-quarter increase.
Over half of respondents (56 percent) found their organization experienced improved productivity from their migration to cloud, while nearly half (46 percent) found their IT teams have greater scope to work on other valueadding projects. The study also revealed that two-thirds of businesses (66 percent) believe that companies not investing in IaaS will struggle to keep up with those that are using it. The index also highlighted that moving to IaaS has significantly cut time to deployment of new applications and services and slashed maintenance costs for
over two-thirds of respondents (68 percent). James Stanbridge, Vice President IaaS Product Management EMEA and APAC, Oracle said, “The index confirms that investments in cloud infrastructure are paying off. Given the strong recognition from respondents that IaaS can help deliver on transformation and innovation ambitions, we expect this return on investment to grow. However, for the minority of businesses still holding back, the research indicates the clear risk of falling behind more agile rivals.” In addition, 20 percent of respondents say IaaS is helping them disrupt their market and competitors. The findings of the survey echo the benefits that Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure customers are already seeing as a result of the high availability, high performance and cost-effective cloud-based infrastructure it delivers, said the firm.
Profitable partnerships By Rajesh Mathrani, GM Sales, MENA and Director Operations, Redington Value
The regional IT industry is undergoing colossal changes with the emergence of new trends and evolution of customer demands. Models are evolving from bulk capital purchasing to OPEX, IT-as-a-service, IT-in-the-cloud and pay-as-you-grow. Market advancements have also compelled OEMs to gradually transform into these newer models. We are seeing that the pie for the channel, between the OEM and end customers, is shrinking in terms of product delivery and sale. For partners, reskilling is the need of the hour. Those partners who stay invested and have enough working capital to manage this transition and enhance credibility in books of vendors and suppliers will stand to emerge as winners in this competitive market. The challenge for channel is to transform their organization into the new models while maintaining the current business profitability and ensuring consistent growth. It can come from partners recognizing the need to reskill their team and identifying opportunities to contribute towards the new models of business. At Redington Value, we believe that collaboration presents a massive opportunity for partners to flourish and remain competitive in 2018. Many partners have key accounts that offer significant prospects for other partners, and together they can introduce innovative solutions for customers. Going forward, we will execute business in a collaborative ecosystem.
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Huawei launches VR OpenLab industry cooperation plan The vendor aims to construct a comprehensive Cloud VR industry ecosystem. Huawei has released its Virtual Reality (VR) OpenLab industry cooperation plan, at UltraBroadband Forum (UBBF 2017), to promote the prosperity of Cloud VR, facilitate technological innovations,
THE VR OPENLAB INDUSTRY COOPERATION PLAN AIMS TO HELP UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM PARTNERS JOINTLY EXPLORE THE DEVELOPMENT PATH OF THE CLOUD VR INDUSTRY.
incubate business scenarios, and construct a comprehensive Cloud VR industry ecosystem. VR development in games, videos, and live broadcast will increase drastically in the next two years, according to Gartner’s 2017 Hype Cycle for emerging technologies. Due to the characteristics of Cloud VR, which include lightweight terminals, low costs, and cloud rendering, deployment can be achieved rapidly on a large scale, making Cloud VR an inevitable trend of future VR development, said the firm. However, Cloud VR development is still in its infancy and requires a joint effort from the entire industry
for faster development. Cloud VR poses higher latency and bandwidth requirements on the backhaul network, which means current network architecture and technologies are still unable to effectively support Cloud VR. Therefore, industry partners must seek solutions to create value and construct business models. The VR OpenLab industry cooperation plan aims to help upstream and downstream partners jointly explore the development path of the Cloud VR industry. VR OpenLab will focus on four research directions: business application scenarios, service solutions, bearer network innovations,
and operators’ service implementation. Through endto-end industry cooperation, VR OpenLab bridges the ecosystem breakpoints and fully promotes the commercial popularization of VR. As the initiator of the VR OpenLab industry cooperation plan, Huawei will focus on supporting the development of the cooperation plan relying on iLab. By providing a 1,000 m2 R&D lab, E2E network devices, and dozens of experts, Huawei will cooperate with industry partners for joint innovations, facilitating business success. Currently, 30 partners have already joined the VR OpenLab industry cooperation plan.
Cambium Networks announces new wireless broadband solutions Gigabit long-range backhaul, cost-effective rural connectivity, rapidly deployable enterprise Wi-Fi extend connectivity to reach new opportunities.
Atul Bhatnagar, Cambium Networks
Cambium Networks has announced new connectivity solutions to enable network operators to meet the rapidly
growing demand for streaming video and high throughput. “Cambium Networks continues to invest in developing connectivity solutions that extend and enrich the ‘wireless fabric’ network,” said Atul Bhatnagar, President and CEO, Cambium Networks. “Our latest developments provide affordable, reliable connectivity to extend connectivity to new areas and distribute signal to multiple locations and also provide complete indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi access.” With up to 1.36 Gigabit throughput capacity, the PTP
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550 provides the capacity that network operators need to connect more subscribers and reach new market opportunities. “The PTP 550 is a complete solution,” said Scott Imhoff, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Cambium Networks. “Spectrum is a precious commodity and the non-adjacent asymmetric channel aggregation capabilities of the PTP 550 efficiently consolidate limited blocks of spectrum to deliver the capacity demanded by advanced network operators. LINKPlanner software provides free network planning
solutions tailored to the exact source and destination points on a Google Earth map, and onboard dynamic spectrum optimization enables the link to monitor performance in real time and automatically make adjustments to maximize throughput.” The ePMP Force 300 provides up to 500 Mbps headline data rate at an affordable price point. The new 802.11ac wave2 subscriber module operates in the unlicensed 5.1-5.9 GHz frequency band and has a 25 dBi reflector antenna to support long-range connectivity.
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Malwarebytes releases new data on the efficacy of traditional AV solutions Based on data from real-world scans of nearly 10 million endpoints, Malwarebytes discovered malware compromises where a traditional antivirus solution (AV) was registered on the endpoint.
Marcin Kleczynski, Malwarebytes
Malwarebytes has released new data on the efficacy of traditional antivirus (AV) solutions. The research, Mapping Traditional AV Detection Failures, details how traditional AV solutions performed from January through June 2017, based on real-world remediation scans done by Malwarebytes. Nearly 40 percent (39.18 percent) of all malware attacks cleaned by Malwarebytes on endpoints with an AV installed occurred on endpoints that had two or more of these AV solutions registered. About 39 percent (39.16 percent) of attacks on
endpoints with a non-OS bundled AV installed occurred on an endpoint running one of the four leading traditional AV solutions. The firm consolidated data from Malwarebytes scans of approximately 10 million endpoints, the vast majority of which had one or more traditional AV tools registered on the Windows Security Center. For comparative purposes, the company also tracked the failure rate of the four leading traditional AV solutions recommended in a recent industry analysis. “The results of these scans clearly indicate the ineffectiveness of today’s traditional AV solutions and, more importantly, the unknown risks to users that depend only on these AV platforms to stay safe,” said Marcin Kleczynski, CEO, Malwarebytes. “Antiquated AV technology is no longer enough to protect from sophisticated cyberthreats. It’s crucial that consumers and businesses understand this now
before they become a victim of the next attack.” Key findings from the report include: • The most common forms of malware are bypassing traditional AV protections. The top ransomware types detected on compromised machines with a traditional AV installed were Hidden Tear (41.65 percent) and Cerber (18.26 percent). Botnets most frequently detected included IRCBot (61.56 percent) and Kelihos (26.95 percent). The most prevalent trojan types bypassing traditional AV detections were Fileless (17.76 percent) and DNSChanger malware (17.51 percent). • Deploying multiple traditional AV solutions is not enough. Real-world deployments of traditional
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AV failed to protect 39.21 percent of users from all malware attacks. These infected machines had two or more traditional AV solutions registered. The four leading traditional AV players are failing. 39.16 percent of the total security incidents caught among machines with a non-OS bundled AV installed were detected on machines with one of the four leading traditional AV players registered. Ransomware is no match for four leading traditional AV players. More than 48 (48.59) percent of Hidden Tear and more than 26.78 percent of Cerber events were found on a compromised endpoint with a non-OS bundled AV installed that had at least one of the four leading traditional AV brands installed.
Veeam releases new Availability Console Management console for service providers and distributed enterprises brings all-in-one management and visibility for virtual, physical and cloud workloads. Veeam Software has announced the immediate availability of the new Veeam Availability Console, a free management console for service providers delivering Veeam-powered services, such as Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), to more efficiently manage, track and invoice for these services. In addition, the Veeam console expands opportunities for resellers and new managed service providers (MSPs) looking to launch a managed backup service business to capture new revenue streams. Veeam Availability Console can also be used by
distributed enterprises operating in an IT service delivery model and wanting to offer efficient, centrally managed backup, data protection and disaster recovery services
Danny Allan,Veeam
across a distributed multi-cloud environment including onpremises or private cloud, public cloud, remote and branch offices (ROBO), as well as mobile or home workforces. “Veeam is dedicated to our 16,700 service provider partners who are delivering BaaS and DRaaS services to their customers,” said Danny Allan, Vice President, Product Strategy, Veeam. “Veeam Availability Console makes it easy to deploy, manage and monitor all of their customers’ Veeam-powered services, whether they provide Availability for applications and
data in the cloud, in a virtual environment, or on a physical server or laptop. Our strategy is to make it as easy as possible for our partners to provide valuable and profitable services to their customers, and the release of Veeam Availability Console is part of delivering on that strategy.” Veeam Availability Console license is free, fully supported for Veeam Cloud and Service Provider (VCSP) partners. Service providers interested in using the free solution are invited to join the VCSP program, which is free to join and requires no obligation to purchase paid Veeam solutions.
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EVENTS
Cisco Customer Security Roundtable with Partner Carrel Technologies - Kenya - 22 November
Fortinet Partner Workshop - Tanzania - 28 November
HPE Simplivity 380 Seminar - Nigeria - 23 November
Fortinet Security Seminar with Partner Ixtel - Dubai - 20 November
Malwarebytes Security Seminar - Dubai - 12 November
Malwarebytes Security Seminar Kuwait - Kuwait - 20 November
Microsoft Partner Roundtable - Ghana - 13 November
Red Hat - Customer Event - Cairo - 23rd November
Nokia Executive Roundtable - Dubai - 13 November
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
Red Hat Customer Executive Seminar with Partner Alpha Data - Abu Dhabi - 27 November
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Fortinet Partner Meet - Bahrain - 14 November
Fortinet Customer Workshop Dubai - 13-14 November
Redington Value Proud Partner of Veeam ON Forum - Dubai - 15 November
Veritas Partner Workshop - Tanzania - 24 November
Veritas Partner Bootcamp - Nigeria - 16 November
TCG Digital Launch Event - Nigeria - 21 November
Tripplite Lunch and Learn Session - Uganda - 24 November
Shavlik Partner Bootcamp - Dubai - 19 November
Splunk4Rookies Workshop - Dubai - 27 November
RSA - Partner Training - Riyadh - 22nd November
Cisco Customer Security Roundtable with Partner Carrel Technologies Kenya - 22 November
Redington Value Proud Partner at Edutech Forum with Aruba Networks and Partner Maxtouch - Dubai - 14 November
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
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AWS announces availability of C5 Instances for Amazon EC2 New generation of compute optimized instances include latest Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Skylake-SP) and custom hardware to deliver a 25 percent improvement in price-performance. Amazon Web Services, (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has announced the availability of C5 instances, the next generation of compute optimized instances for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Designed for compute-heavy applications, C5 instances feature 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Skylake-SP) up to 72 vCPUs, and 144 GiB of memory— twice the vCPUs and memory of previous generation C4 instances—providing the best price-performance of any Amazon EC2 instance. Optimized to deliver the right combination of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity for a wide range of workloads, all latest generation Amazon EC2 instance families—including
C5—feature AWS hardware acceleration that delivers consistent, high performance, low latency networking and storage resources. C5 instances provide networking through the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA), a scalable network interface built by AWS to provide direct access to its networking hardware. Additional dedicated hardware and network bandwidth for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) enables
C5 instances to offer high performance storage through the scalable NVM Express (NVMe) interface. C5 instances introduce a new, lightweight hypervisor that allows applications to use practically all of the compute and memory resources of a server, delivering reduced cost and even better performance. C5 instances are available in six sizes—with the four smallest instance sizes offering substantially more Amazon EBS and network
Equipped with our new cloud-optimized hypervisor, C5 instances set a new standard for consistent, high-performance cloud computing, eliminating practically any virtualization overhead through custom AWS hardware.”
bandwidth than the previous generation of compute optimized instances. “Customers have been happily using Amazon EC2’s unmatched selection of instances for more than 11 years, yet they’ll always take higher and more consistent performance if it could be offered in a cost-effective way. One of the challenges in taking this next step is how to leverage the cost efficiency of virtualization while consuming hardly any overhead for it,” said Matt Garman, Vice President, Amazon EC2, AWS. “We’ve been working on an innovative way to do this that comes to fruition with Amazon EC2 C5 instances. Equipped with our new cloud-optimized hypervisor, C5 instances set a new standard for consistent, high-performance cloud computing, eliminating practically any virtualization overhead through custom AWS hardware, and delivering a 25 percent improvement in compute price-performance over C4 instances—with some customers reporting improvements of well over 50 percent.”
Check Point: Cryptocurrency mining presents new threat to business The vendor’s latest Global Threat Impact Index reveals influx of crypto mining in October, with CoinHive as the world’s sixth most-used malware.
The vendor’s latest Global Threat Impact Index reveals influx of crypto mining in October, with CoinHive as the world’s sixth
most-used malware. Cybersecurity solutions vendor Check Point Software Technologies has revealed that according to the company’s latest Global Threat Impact Index, cryptocurrency mining was an increasingly prevalent form of malware during October, as organizations were targeted with the CoinHive variant. Following up on recent Check Point research that found that crypto-miners can fraudulently use up to 65% of an end-user’s total CPU resources without the end-user’s approval, the CoinHive variant entered the Index in 6th
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place in October. The malware is designed to mine the Monero cryptocurrency when a user visits a web page, without the user’s approval. CoinHive implants JavaScript, which then uses high levels of the end-users’ CPU, severely impact the machine’s performance. As in September, RoughTed and Locky remained the two most prevalent threats. However, there was a new entry to the top three: the ‘Seamless traffic redirector’ malware. This malware silently redirects the victim to a malicious web page, leading to infection by an exploit kit. Successfully
infecting the target allows the attacker to download additional malware. Maya Horowitz, Threat Intelligence, Group Manager, Check Point, said, “The emergence of Seamless and CoinHive once again highlights the need for advanced threat prevention technologies in securing networks against cybercriminals. Crypto mining is a new, silent, yet significant actor in the threat landscape, allowing threat actors to make significant revenues while victims’ endpoints and networks suffer from latency and decreased performance.”
Securing the Cloud Generation We Are The Cloud Generation. The Cloud Generation is everyone who lives and works in this unique era— as computing breaks the boundaries of desktops and data centers to embrace the mobile, social, global, crowd-sourced, always-on realities Copyright © 2017 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.
of modern life. It’s a time when critical data, applications and infrastructure are shifting from “behind the firewall” to “running on the cloud.” Some of us are “all in.” Some are only 20% there. Yes, it’s liberating. And yes, it’s chaotic. Symantec is here to help.