Value Journal | Issue 23 | June 2018

Issue 23 // June 2018

MICROSOFT, DELL TECHNOLOGIES COLLABORATE TO SIMPLIFY IOT SOLUTIONS DELIVERY Industry leaders join forces to build secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud solution featuring Dell Edge Gateways, VMware Pulse IoT Center and Microsoft Azure IoT Edge.

Dell Technologies and Microsoft are collaborating to deliver a joint Internet of Things (IoT) solution designed to help vertical customers simplify deploying their end-to-end IoT solutions, from the edge to the cloud. The combination of Microsoft Azure IoT applications and services, VMware Pulse IoT Center and Dell Edge Gateways will offer customers streamlined

management, centralized monitoring and security from devices to the cloud.

Businesses want to harness advanced services such as artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time decision making while also making sure all deployment, asset management, security and compliance requirements are met. Together, Dell Technologies and Microsoft Continued on page 3

Oracle delivers next set of autonomous cloud platform services Expands scope of autonomous capabilities with built-in AI and machine learning in its application development, integration, and analytics services.

Amit Zavery, Oracle Cloud Platform

As part of its pledge to extend autonomous capabilities across its entire Cloud Platform, Oracle has announced the availability

of Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud, Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud.

With built-in advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms, these new PaaS services automate and eliminate key tasks to enable organizations to lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights.

“Embedding AI and machine learning in these cloud services will help organizations innovate

in revolutionary new ways,” said Amit Zavery, Executive Vice President of Development, Oracle Cloud Platform. “These new cloud services are the latest in a series of steps from Oracle to incorporate industry-first autonomous capabilities that will enable customers to significantly reduce operational costs, increase productivity, and decrease risk.”

Newly available autonomous services include Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud, Oracle Autonomous Integration

Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud. These services help organizations easily build and deploy modern applications, as well as integrate and analyze critical organizational data.

Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud combines machine learning, adaptive intelligence, and service automation to create an analytics platform that Continued on page 3

Redington Value is a value added distributor for the following brands in parts of Middle East & Africa:

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Microsoft, Dell Technologies... will make IoT easier for customers by delivering a secure solution that provides consistent infrastructure management from the edge to the cloud.

The joint solution offers an underlying IoT infrastructure, management capabilities and security for customers looking to deploy IoT for scenarios like predictive maintenance, supply chain visibility and other use cases. The solution will deliver: • Intelligence at the edge with Microsoft Azure IoT Edge: This application extends cloud intelligence to edge devices so that devices can act locally and leverage the cloud for global coordination and machine learning at scale.

• Management and monitoring of edge devices with VMware Pulse IoT Center: This provides more secure, enterprise-grade management and monitoring

COLUMN: REDefined

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of diverse, certified edge devices including gateways and connected IoT devices, bios and operating systems.

This ecosystem will be built over time involving deeper integration and certification to support customer requirements.

High-performance, rugged Dell Edge Gateways: IoT devices with powerful dualcore Intel Atom processors connect a variety of wired and wireless devices and systems to aggregate and analyze inputs and send relevant data to the cloud

VMware Pulse IoT Center will serve as the management glue between the hardware (Dell Edge Gateways or other certified edge systems), connected sensors and devices and the Microsoft Azure IoT Edge. Initially, Pulse will help to deploy the Microsoft Azure IoT Edge to the requisite edge systems so that it can start collecting, analyzing and acting on data in real-time.

Oracle delivers next... breaks down barriers between people, places, data, and systems, fundamentally changing the way people analyze, understand, and act on information.

Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud accelerates digital transformation by enabling business processes spanning multiple Oracle and non-Oracle SaaS and on-premises applications through a combination of machine learning, embedded best-practice guidance, and prebuilt application integration and process automation.

Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud helps to accelerate mobile and web application development and deployment by enabling business users and developers to build these applications with no coding.

Fortinet report reveals an evolution of malware to exploit cryptocurrencies Prevalence of cryptomining malware doubled to 28%, impacting more than 1 in 4 organizations.

Fortinet’s latest Global Threat Landscape Report reveals cybercriminals are evolving their attack methods to increase their success rates and speed infections. While ransomware continues to impact organizations in destructive ways, there are indications that some cybercriminals now prefer hijacking systems and using them for cryptomining rather than holding them for ransom.

“Malicious cyber actors are demonstrating their efficiency and agility by exploiting the expanding digital attack surface, taking advantage of newly announced zero-day threats, and maximizing the

Phil Quade, Fortinet

accessibility of malware for bad,” said Phil Quade, Chief Information Security Officer, Fortinet. “In addition, IT and OT teams often don’t have the resources necessary to keep systems appropriately hardened or protected. Luckily, implementing a security

fabric which prioritizes — speed, integration, advanced analytics, and risk-based decision making— can enable comprehensive protection at machine speed and scale.”

Data indicates that cybercriminals are getting better and more sophisticated in their use of malware and leveraging newly announced zero-day vulnerabilities to attack at speed and scale.

While the number of exploit detections per firm dropped by 13% in Q1 of 2018, the number of unique exploit detections grew by over 11%, while 73% of companies experienced a severe exploit.

Partner profitability

By Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value

Over the last decade, the pace of transformation in the industry has impacted the channel significantly.

The industry has moved from hardware-centric to software and to now everything-as-a-service. This has presented challenges for the channel community. Partners’ biggest problem that they need to solve today is having to learn how to sell business outcomes rather than a solution.

Profitability for the channel also continues to be a serious challenge.

This has necessitated channel partners to identify ways to remain profitable and relevant in the future.

Profitability has become a mirage – the closer you get, the farther away it looks. The only way partners can be successful in the future is by learning to sell business outcomes.

And in order to do that, partners need to understand the industry they are trying to sell to. They need to understand that they are no longer dealing with just the IT manager.

Partners can sell business outcomes by picking an industry and understanding the challenges that need to be solved, then designing customer specific solutions. I believe partners need to get an ecosystem going and get along with companies that they historically competed with.

Collaboration is the way forward.

Also, partners need to transform their individual businesses to the digital era before they attempt to become consultants for customers. Digital transformation is fundamental and will be part of almost every single project that partners will deliver. They need to walk the talk and digitally transform their own business first to capitalize on future opportunities.

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Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centre opens in Dubai The new Customer Solution Center aims to help regional organizations collaborate, innovate and validate their efforts towards digitization.

Dell Technologies has opened its first Customer Solution Center for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa to demonstrate its commitment to enabling and shaping organizations in the region.

Set up in Dubai, the new Customer Solution Center showcases the company’s portfolio of technologies, from the edge to the core to the cloud, and aims to help regional organizations collaborate, innovate and validate their efforts towards digitization.

According to the firm, the new facility has been designed to provide a trusted environment wherein world-class IT experts collaborate with customers to explore, test and prove end-toend solutions and share best practices, that can help drive business outcomes and create a competitive advantage. In

addition, the Customer Solution Center global network enables remote connectivity, which offers the ability to engage customers from any location. Similarly, the Customer Solution Center provides customers with easy access to the whole portfolio of Dell Technologies’ solutions and ensures customers receive appropriate expertise and resources at every level to achieve their business objectives.

The Customer Solution Center was officially opened by Marius Haas, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Dell EMC, Aongus Hegarty, President, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Dell EMC and Mohammed Amin, Senior Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) at Dell EMC. “It is absolutely critical that companies leverage the latest

technologies to navigate the fourth industrial revolution,” said Amin. “With this in mind, the Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centre is designed to serve as a thriving technology hub that bolsters the position of the META region at the forefront of transformation.”

He added that through the Customer Solution Center, Dell

Technologies’ central goal is to share its vision of technology and provide organizations in the META region with holistic, dynamic and collaborative tools and resources necessary to power their digital future and ultimately, play a defining role in building an innovation-led economy that drives business success and human progress.

Redington Value partners with Nutanix to deliver enterprise cloud solutions Redington Value will deliver Nutanix’ complete range of solutions through its robust partner network.

Value-added distributor Redington Value has signed a regional distribution contract with Nutanix, an enterprise cloud computing vendor, for the Middle East market.

As per the terms of the agreement, Redington Value will deliver Nutanix’s complete range of solutions through its robust partner network.

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software melds private, public and distributed cloud operating environments and provides a single point of control to manage IT infrastructure and applications at any scale.

Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value, said, “As digital transformation

It is our priority to provide partners with a complete solution portfolio that enables continuous technology innovation.” reinforces the demand for cloud and HCI technologies, regional customers are seeking innovative solutions that can accelerate their business pace. We are excited to offer our partner community an opportunity to expand their revenue streams with the Nutanix solutions. We will continue to

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invest in educating the channel on the significance of cloud solutions to underpin enterprises’ digital drive.”

Bassam Al Masri, Senior Manager, Channel, Nutanix Middle East, said, “Our Enterprise Cloud OS software is sold through channel and OEMs, and it is our priority to provide partners with a complete solution portfolio that enables continuous technology innovation, customer delight, and opportunities to build upon with complementary services.”

Masri added that together with Redington, the firm is providing resellers with a simple but elegant data centre solution that simply works and requires

Bassam Al Masri, Nutanix Middle East

no complex legacy infrastructure heavy-lifting.

“As a leader in enterprise cloud computing and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution, we are confident that resellers and customers will enjoy the benefits such as faster time to value, lower total cost of ownership, and higher return on investment,” he said.

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Huawei’s roadshow focuses on driving digital transformation New ICT Roadshow 2018 is a collaborative platform that brings together leading Huawei experts to share their insights into technical topics.

Walid Gomaa, Huawei Middle East

Huawei, a leading global ICT solutions provider, has conducted a six-country roadshow across the region. Under the theme ‘Leading New ICT, The Road to Digital Transformation’, the Dubai edition put the spotlight on advanced ICT technologies that are driving digital transformation in the UAE and helping to achieve

the country’s development agenda in key sectors. Huawei’s global partners Microsoft, Thales, and SAP discussed the importance of a collaborative ICT ecosystem for business-driven innovation relevant to the UAE. The roadshow included several keynotes, a solution exhibition and technology workshops covering Campus Networks, Data Centers and Cloud Communication Solutions by regional Huawei experts.

The roadshow in Dubai was the second edition in the UAE after the first one held in Abu Dhabi earlier this month.

Held for the first time in the Middle East, the New ICT Roadshow 2018 is a collaborative platform that brings together

leading Huawei experts from across the region to share their insights into technical topics and best practices in multiple fields, such as allcloud network, cloud-managed campus, convergent campus, all-flash storage, and Intelligent Video Surveillance (IVS).

“Developing digital strategies has become a core priority for countries in the Middle East.

The UAE has emerged as one of the leaders in implementing core digitalization initiatives in the region,” said Walid Gomaa, General Manager Data Center Solutions Huawei Middle East.

“Huawei has been a strong collaborative partner with private and public players in Dubai to support the city’s Smart Dubai

Veeam announces vision for the Hyper-Available Enterprise

The UAE has emerged as one of the leaders in implementing core digitalization initiatives in the region.”

2021 vision. We are committed to bringing proven solutions from around the world to UAE. The six-country New ICT Roadshow is designed to support enterprises in achieving their digitalization agendas, and enable them to build better connected, intelligent ecosystems,” he said.

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Veeam Hyper-Availability Solutions provide a smooth journey to Intelligent Data Management with features for behavior-driven orchestration of data across largescale multi-cloud infrastructures.

Veeam Software has unveiled its vision for the Hyper-Available Enterprise and its strategy to guide enterprise customers on their journey to Intelligent Data Management at massive scale.

Delivered at VeeamON 2018, the company’s fourth annual user and partner conference, the firm demonstrated how customers around the world are leveraging the Veeam Hyper-Availability Platform for Intelligent Data Management to ensure business continuity, reduce risk and accelerate innovation in an era where technologies ranging from IoT, AI, machine learning and blockchain require a platform with massive scalability and ease of use for managing data.

Peter McKay, Co-CEO and President of Veeam, said, “As technologies like IoT, AI, machine learning and blockchain mature, and as customers grapple with mining massive amounts of data for better business insights, they need solutions that can do far more than ensure data Availability. We believe HyperAvailability is the new expectation for data in today’s enterprise.

The Veeam Hyper-Availability Platform, used by many of the world’s largest enterprises including Royal Caribbean, Mercedes-Benz, Telefonica and L’Oréal, is the most complete solution to help customers on their journey to Intelligent Data Stage 3, Visibility: Improve

• Peter McKay, Veeam

management of data across multicloud environments with clear, unified visibility and control into usage, performance issues, and operations; data management begins to evolve from reactive to proactive, preventing any loss of data availability through advanced monitoring, resource optimization, capacity planning, and built-in intelligence.

Stage 4, Orchestration: Seamlessly move data to the best location across multi-cloud environments to ensure business continuity, compliance, security, and optimal use of resources for business operations. This requires an orchestration engine that enables enterprises to easily and nondisruptively execute, test, and document disaster recovery (DR) plans in a highly-automated fashion.

Stage 5, Automation: Data becomes self-managing by learning to back itself up, migrate to ideal locations based on business needs, secure itself during anomalous activity, and recover instantaneously.

This stage brings new levels of automation to enterprise data management via a combination of data analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning.

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Micro Focus announces agreement with Utimaco to divest Atalla portfolio Global hardware security modules vendor to accelerate growth trajectory in payments market; committed to further security, product quality and innovation for Atalla customers.

Micro Focus has announced the intent to divest its Atalla Hardware Security Module (HSM) and Enterprise Secure Key Manager (ESKM) product lines, which were recently acquired as a result of the September 2017 merger with the former software business unit of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Utimaco, one of the top two hardware security

module vendors globally, is set to acquire the Atalla product lines pending the completion of the transaction following required customary regulatory approvals, expected fall 2018.

With the acquisition of Atalla, one of the most established brand names for electronic payment HSMs, Germany-based Utimaco, with U.S. headquarters

in Campbell, CA, is set to accelerate its growth trajectory into the payments market and further invest in the Atalla portfolio to deliver continued innovation to customers.

“As two of the leading pioneers in the hardware security modules business, Atalla and Utimaco are a perfect match, operating in complementary

As two of the leading pioneers in the hardware security modules business, Atalla and Utimaco are a perfect match, operating in complementary markets with aligned strengths that will help drive better alignment for customers and position Atalla for future growth.”

markets with aligned strengths that will help drive better alignment for customers and position Atalla for future growth,” said John Delk, Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager of Security for Micro Focus.

“We are fully committed to our Security software portfolio and our mission to secure users, applications and data. With innovations such as the recent release of Voltage SecureData Sentry, we are executing on that mission and demonstrating our ability to meet demanding data security challenges at scale, while simplifying and improving time to value.”

To provide continuity for the Atalla customer base, Utimaco has expressed its commitment to continue support for native integrations with Micro Focus software. In addition, customers can expect to benefit from Utimaco´s commitment to certified security, product quality and innovation as it commits its resources and security hardware expertise to the Atalla products.

Red Hat launches latest version of Red Hat virtualization Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 offers significant product updates from a simplified user interface to new capabilities.

Veritas Technologies has debuted an enriched partner program focused on helping the channel drive growth and profitability. The new Veritas Partner Force program is designed to create higher earnings potential for more than 10,000 global partners who want to capitalize on Veritas’ 360 data management portfolio and multi-cloud data management solutions.

The Veritas Partner Force program is dramatically simplified, making it much easier for partners to reap more benefits and rewards.

Additionally, partners will

have access to a plethora of educational offerings that will empower them to help customers solve some of their biggest data management challenges. The revamped program also offers expanded revenue opportunities to attract a new generation of worldwide resellers, service providers, system integrators and distributors.

“The channel continues to evolve as many of our partners are developing more of their own intellectual property and are focused on selling business solutions versus point-products,” said Barbara Spicek, Vice President, Global

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Channels and Alliances, Veritas. “Recognizing the changing needs of the channel, Veritas is increasing technical assets, deepening skills and enhancing opportunities to make it easier for our broad ecosystem of partners to help customers harness the power of their data on-premises and in multi-cloud environments.”

Key new components of the Veritas Partner Force program include increasing opportunities for existing partners with greater earnings potential, building new revenue streams for partners selling to commercial and midmarket accounts, expanding the

company’s Global Distribution Program to drive growth and innovation and boosting partner resources for a faster path to revenue and success.

Partners can also choose from a variety of new accreditation courses and skills evaluations, based on their business practices. Online courses such as Veritas NetBackup Architecture, Challenges in Backup and Recovery, and Risk Mitigation and Compliance are offered as part of the redesign.

New e-learning courses will be added regularly to address newly introduced Veritas offerings as well as customer challenges.

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Aruba Mobility Workshop - Riyadh - 2 May

AWS Summit - Dubai - 1 May

Fortinet NSE 1 & 2 Technical Workshop - Qatar - 1 May

Fortinet NSE 4 Technical Workshop - Riyadh - 6-7 May

Fortinet SMB Roadshow - Oman - 14 May

Fortinet NSE 1 & 2 Technical Workshop - Dubai - 9 May

Fortinet NSE 1 & 2 Technical Workshop - Kuwait - 15 May

Fortinet NSE 4 Technical workshop - Bahrain - 2-3 May

Fortinet NSE 4 Technical Workshop - Lebanon - 14-15 May

Fortinet SMB Roadshow - Dubai - 8 May

Huawei Partner Summit - Dubai - 7 May

Imperva Launch Event - Dubai - 9 May

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Micro Focus End User event with Emitac - Dubai - 8 May

Imperva Launch Event - Riyadh - 7th May

Microsoft 365 launch - Qatar - 9 May

Microsoft Azure Partner Roundtable Dubai - 14 May

Microsoft Workloads on AWS Workshop - Dubai - 3 May

Microsoft Azure Technical Training on Deployment & Migration - Kuwait - 7-9 May

Mimecast customer roundtable - Dubai - 9 May

Splunk SE1 Bootcamp - Jeddah - 14 May

Red Hat CxO Dinner - Riyadh - 14 May

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

Dell EMC - End User Event With Copy Cat Kenya - 22 May

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Fortinet – Partner Workshop - Kenya - 10 May

Fortinet - Partner Security Enablement Session Uganda - 22 May

Microsoft - Partner Roundtable - Kenya - 17 May

Microsoft - Partner Roundtable - Nigeria - 9 May

Oracle - Application Migration to the Cloud Workshop Kenya - 15-16 May

Oracle - Cloud as Disaster Recovery Workshop - Kenya - 14 May

Oracle - Digital & Cloud Accelerator Program - Kenya - 22 May

Oracle - Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for a Cloud Native Micro Services Project Workshop - Kenya - 21 May

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

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Palo Alto Networks announces intent to acquire Secdo Advanced Endpoint Detection and Response capabilities complement Palo Alto Networks leading endpoint security offerings.

Mark McLaughlin, Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to

acquire Israel-based Secdo. The acquisition brings sophisticated endpoint detection and response, or EDR, capabilities – including unique data collection and visualization – to Palo Alto Networks Traps advanced endpoint protection and the Application Framework in order to enhance their ability to rapidly detect and stop even the stealthiest attacks.

Secdo’s team of elite engineers will complement the deep security expertise and innovation inside the Palo Alto Networks research and development organization.

The company’s thread-level approach to data collection and visualization goes far beyond traditional EDR methods, which only collect general event data, hamstringing security operations teams as they try to reconstruct each step of an attack and distinguish malicious activity from normal. Once integrated with Traps and the Palo Alto Networks platform, this rich data will feed into the Logging Service and give applications running in the Palo Alto Networks Application Framework greater precision to visualize, detect and stop cyberattacks.

“We believe security operations teams need the most advanced and consistent approach to endpoint security.

With Secdo’s EDR capabilities as part of our platform, we will accelerate our ability to detect and prevent successful cyberattacks across the cloud, endpoint, and network,” said Mark McLaughlin, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks The acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal third quarter, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Nexthink announces integration with Splunk Nexthink Splunk connector gives users full visibility into organization-wide IT environment, improving analysis and speeding resolutions.

Nexthink has announced its new Splunk connector, an out-of-box integration with the leading provider of machine learning-based data analysis software.

The Nexthink Splunk Connector addresses a typical complaint of Splunk users: a lack of specific end-point information in real-time related to security, operations and IT transformation projects. Without that information, Splunk users only have partial visibility into their IT environment.

With the new Nexthink Splunk Connector enterprises can now: Seamlessly integrate enduser data from Nexthink into

their Splunk deployments, empowering them to perform end-to-end real-time diagnostics of IT incidents and gain a comprehensive view of their entire IT environment.

Add end-point compliance and real-time anomaly detection information from every end-user device into Splunk SIEM deployments, thereby accelerating the detection, understanding and resolution of enterprise security issues.

“Integration with Splunk was one of our top customer requests. Nexthink is the leading platform for endpoint analytics and end-user feedback. With the Nexthink Splunk Connector our data

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can now be integrated into the standard platform for IT and security operations, giving

IT teams a global end-to-end view,” said Samuele Gartner, VP Products at Nexthink.