Issue 20 // March 2018
REDINGTON REVEALS NEW GLOBAL LOOK Celebrating its 25th year, the distributor has unveiled a new logo and tagline. Redington, the $6 billion distribution and supply chain provider for international brands in the IT and mobility sectors, has unveiled its new global brand identity – a new logo and tagline – ‘Seamless Partnerships’. According to the firm, as it steps into its 25th year since inception, the new branding builds on Redington’s well-established reputation in the industry.
The new brand identity reflects the core values of Redington as a contemporary and innovative company, which has developed its messaging strategy to reflect its evolution as a brand and its global role as one of the largest provider in the supply-chain solution industry. The distributor said that the new logo and tagline epitomizes the new direction that the company would like to take in the years to come. Redington’s Managing Director, Raj Shankar, said, “I am proud to launch our rejuvenated brand and visual identity that Continued on page 3
Oracle demonstrates advances in autonomous cloud Self-driving services use AI and machine learning to help organizations lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights
Oracle President of Product Development Thomas Kurian demonstrated the latest advances in its Cloud Platform, expanding its Cloud Platform Autonomous Services beyond the Oracle Autonomous Database, to make its Cloud Platform services self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing. With its enhanced suite of autonomous Cloud Platform
services, Oracle is setting a new industry standard for autonomous cloud capabilities. The firm is applying AI and machine learning to its entire next-generation Cloud Platform services to help customers lower cost, reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and get predictive insights. As organizations focus
on delivering innovation fast, they want a secure set of comprehensive, integrated cloud services to build new applications and run their most demanding enterprise workloads. Oracle’s cloud services can automate key operational functions like tuning, patching, backups and upgrades while running to
deliver maximum performance, high availability, and secure enterprise IT systems. In addition, to accelerate innovation Continued 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
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COLUMN: REDefined
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Oracle demonstrates...
fully reflects what we stand for as an organization. This is not a mere change of brand identity but a coming of age for Redington, a transformation that the company is engineering to take it to the next level. The new identity carries forward our core values on which our company is built – adaptability, collaboration, know-how, objectivity, simplicity, transparency and trust. We look to expand our horizons from being a ‘Brand behind brands’ to a platform that enables ‘Seamless partnerships’.” He added that Redington is committed to do everything to achieve its ultimate goal of being the preferred company for connecting buyers and sellers.
and smarter decision-making, Oracle Cloud Platform is incorporating additional autonomous capabilities specific to application development, mobile and bots, app and data integration, analytics, security and management. “The future of tomorrow’s successful enterprise IT organization is in full end-toend automation,” said Kurian. “At Oracle, we are making this a reality. We are weaving autonomous capabilities into the fabric of our cloud to help customers safeguard their systems, drive innovation faster, and deliver the ultimate competitive advantage with smarter real-time decisions.”
In addition to the Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Platform autonomous capabilities for application development, mobile and bots, integration, analytics, security and system management, are scheduled to be available in the first half of calendar year 2018. Oracle also demonstrated a single Oracle Digital Assistant for users to interact across the firm’s SaaS and PaaS services including analytics. Oracle Digital Assistant provides centralized connection for the user to converse across the user’s CRM, ERP, HCM, custom applications and business intelligence data and uses AI to intelligently correlate data and automate user behavior.
Huawei unveils new solutions at Mobile World Congress 2018 The new offerings include Intent-Driven Network and AUTIN Automation and Intelligence solutions. At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, Huawei launched over 20 new products, among those are the Intent-Driven Network and AUTIN Automation and Intelligence solutions. The Intent-Driven Network will bridge the gaps between the physical network and business goals by creating a digital twin of the network infrastructure. These technologies will enable softwaredefined networks (SDNs) to evolve into intent-driven networks, and maximize business value. Making use of cloud, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, Huawei has launched the Intent-Driven Network solution to deliver networks driven by business logic and service strategies based around end user experience. They are usercentric networks, incorporating intelligence, simplicity, ultrabroadband, security, and openness. Kevin Hu, President, Huawei
Kevin Hu, Huawei
Network Product Line, said, “Intent-Driven Networks can accurately read a user’s intention, and make it happen, because network configuration is automated from end to end. These networks can also sense the quality of the user experience in real time, and perform predictive analysis so that they can proactively optimize performance.” He added, “The Intent-Driven Network solution will usher in a new era of network evolution. It will be extensively used in both
the enterprise and carrier sectors. The march toward autonomous networks will help us embrace the intelligent era.” The second solution launched at MWC 2018 is AUTIN, which is an Operations Consulting and Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for Digitized Operations Services which helps operators manage complex hybrid ICT environments. AUTIN delivers AUTomation and INtelligence to modernize and reshape operations for the digital era. Building on its award-winning Operation Web Services (OWS), Huawei’s new AUTIN brand is introducing new functionality and machine learning for intelligent operations. AUTIN leverages big data and AI to help operators move from a reactive to more proactive and predictive operations. The solution is vendor and technology agnostic and can manage multiple technologies and services in a constantly changing environment.
Enabling partners
By Sunil Zarekar, Regional Sales Manager, West Africa, Redington Gulf - Value Division
The economies of West African (WA) countries have recovered to a fair bit over the last two years. One of the main growth drivers is the rapid technology adoption rates in the region. Factors such as stable exchange rate, increase in oil prices and availability of US dollars have further contributed to the increasing receptiveness of technology in the WA markets. High-speed and affordable internet coupled with steep increase in mobile users have driven implementation of several largescale government projects. Internet of Things (IoT) technology is also seeing a swift growth in the region. Regional governments are now emphasizing on the need for digital processes to control, not only corruption but to provide ease-oflife to citizens. Redington’s approach continues to be solutions-centric rather than a product-centric one. We have played a significant role in supporting our partners to help them structure their deals with financing tools, which have helped them win big contracts. Partners should look at investing in technologies such as infrastructure modernization, cloud, cybersecurity and advance analytics to be successful. Early movers to new technologies will reap the benefits quicker. Our endeavor continues to be enabling partners and aid them to add value to their customers. Redington will play a vital role in this market for the years to come and we look forward to winning together with our partners.
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Redington Value onboards cybersecurity vendor PhishRod The partnership will extend across the Middle East and North Africa region. Cybersecurity vendor for phishing readiness and security awareness automation PhishRod has signed up with Redington Gulf to be its authorized distributor across Middle East and North Africa region. The partnership is aimed to leverage the strong footprint and experience of Redington Gulf in value distribution coupled with solutions from PhishRod for phishing readiness, security awareness and advisory management, said the company. Ali Abid, Chief Commercial Officer, PhishRod said, “Despite having the most complex and advance technology based solutions in place, organizations keep suffering from cyber-attacks. It’s simply because that the hackers
Ramkumar Balakrishnan, Redington Value Distribution
now target the end-users. Socially engineered attacks such as phishing are becoming the most widely used mechanism to drop malwares.” He added that in the current threat landscape, technology and process are important but no cybersecurity strategy would be a success without engaging the end-users.
“We are extremely excited to announce this partnership with Redington to achieve our common goal that is to prepare end-users to take on the fight against cyber-attacks.” According to the company, PhishRod helps organizations to identify vulnerable end-users and automates the entire cybersecurity awareness program. PhishRod suit comes with PhishRod Simulator to identify vulnerable end-users and determine phishing index of an enterprise. PhishRod Security Awareness Manager is a complete solution for analytics and KPI driven cybersecurity awareness across the organization while the PhishRod Advisory Manager helps to cascade
the threat intelligence to the end-user level using the PhishRod Reporter. PhishRod supports both English and Arabic language for security awareness and comes with both on premise and cloud-based solution. Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution said, “Analytics driven phishing readiness and cybersecurity awareness is a high growth area in cybersecurity. We are glad that we have PhishRod onboard now that covers the people part of cybersecurity strategy from a 360-degree perspective. We are looking forward to work very closely with PhishRod to expand this portfolio across the Middle East and North Africa region.”
Dell EMC expands converged infrastructure portfolio Designed to support workloads of all types, the VxBlock 1000 includes a substantially broader choice of storage arrays, data protection and compute than previous-generations. Dell EMC has expanded its converged infrastructure (CI) system with the addition of the next generation Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000. The new system breaks the physical boundaries of traditional CI and offers enterprises even greater simplicity and flexibility to help accelerate their IT and digital transformation efforts, said the firm. Designed to support workloads of all types, the VxBlock 1000 includes a substantially broader choice of storage arrays, data protection and compute than
previous-generation VxBlock Systems. This new system’s all-inone, multiple-technology design expands upon CI’s promise by further simplifying IT infrastructure lifecycle management through extensive pre-validation, according to the company. “When customers deploy CI, what they are really looking to do is invest in technology that removes data center cost while, ultimately, improving outcomes,” said Jeff Boudreau, President, Dell EMC Storage Division. “Our role is to deliver CI innovation that
Our role is to deliver CI innovation that has the right mix and capacity of IT resources and data services that evolving applications require, but with pooled resources, so the data center is more efficient.” For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
has the right mix and capacity of IT resources and data services that evolving applications require, but with pooled resources, so the data center is more efficient even as workload requirements change. We offer this with a focus on reducing administrative burden for IT teams under constant pressure to deliver more with less.” The VxBlock 1000 builds on Dell EMC’s industry leadership in CI with a host of new capabilities. These help enterprises reap greater benefits than ever before from a wider breadth of technologies than previously supported. These are in addition to traditional CI advantages such as lower operating expenses and a five-year return on investment of up to 640 percent. Compared to previous generation Dell EMC VxBlock Systems, the VxBlock
Jeff Boudreau, Dell EMC
1000 offers improved business agility, data center efficiency and operational simplicity. The Dell EMC VxBlock 1000 is available globally via Dell EMC and its channel partners.
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SonicWall unveils new capture cloud engine SonicWall Capture Labs security researchers have engineered an advanced method for identifying and mitigating threats through deep memory inspection.
Bill Conner, SonicWall
SonicWall has revealed that a new Capture Cloud engine has discovered hundreds of new malware variants not seen before by sandboxing technology. Through the use of previously unannounced patent-pending technology, SonicWall Capture Labs security researchers
engineered an advanced method for identifying and mitigating threats through deep memory inspection — all in real time, said the firm. “Threat actors have been so far ahead of the game they’ve been able to create highly evasive malware without the greater industry even knowing,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “This new real-time deep memory inspection technology (RTDMI), coupled with more than a decade of machine-learning experience, will help level the playing field and eliminate some of the most challenging attack vectors. The new engine is the latest addition to our Capture Cloud Platform that reinforces our leadership position.”
Operational for a while, the new SonicWall Capture Cloud Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI) technology and engine is discovering hundreds of malware strands not detected by sandboxing technology, said the firm. SonicWall said it is unveiling this new technology to strengthen the company’s automated real-time breach detection and prevention platform. SonicWall RTDMI is a patent-pending technology and process utilized by the SonicWall Capture Cloud to identify and mitigate even the most insidious modern threats, including future Meltdown exploits. The new RTDMI technology proactively detects and blocks unknown mass-market malware
via deep memory inspection in real time. It detects and blocks malware that does not exhibit any malicious behavior and hides its weaponry via custom encryption. It forces malware to “reveal” its weaponry into memory. It identifies and mitigates sophisticated attacks where weaponry is exposed for less than 100 nanoseconds. SonicWall deployed the RTDMI engine into the SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform and is leveraging the technology to support SonicWall’s layered security platform, which includes next-generation firewalls, wireless network security, email security, secure mobile and remote access offerings, as well as cloud and IoT solutions.
Nokia unveils new services to cater to the digital era Operators can white label Managed Security Services to enterprises under their own brand, which offers revenue potential in the enterprise security market and optimizes time to market. To address rising security threats to telecom networks, Nokia has launched its Security Risk Index assessment service and Managed Security Service. According to the firm, together, they form a “unique, holistic approach” to targeting security challenges across mobile, IP and fixed networks in the digital transformation era, when new services and virtualized systems also introduce new vulnerabilities. In addition to addressing their own security needs, operators can white label Managed Security Services to enterprises under their own brand, which offers revenue potential in the enterprise security market and optimizes time to market, according to Nokia. Nokia is offering an integrated approach that starts from
assessing operators’ security risks across various security domains, benchmarking against industry peers, and providing a 360-degree gap analysis and suggestions for performance improvements. This is the essence of the Security Risk Index, said the firm. After the assessment, a managed service, powered by Nokia NetGuard software, will complete the holistic security
Operators must be prepared for a security breach. A dynamic, managed security proposition is needed to eliminate possible threats.”
approach. Nokia experts design the network security infrastructure, information management and monitoring systems to ensure that critical information assets are adequately protected against known and unknown threats, and that the operator meets applicable security compliance standards and regulations. Having secured their own networks, operators can go on to offer the Managed Security Services, or selected elements of it, to their enterprise customers. In partnership with Nokia, operators can implement a security portfolio to open a new revenue source and increase customer loyalty. “Operators must be prepared for a security breach. A dynamic, managed security proposition
is needed to eliminate possible threats, so we are taking a comprehensive approach to security from assessing risks to managing and maintaining our customers’ security infrastructure,” said Friedrich Trawoeger, Head of Managed Services, Nokia. “This is the best approach to defend against attacks. In addition, the resale white label model will allow our customers to monetize the security opportunity.” The company said that its security services also utilize Nokia NetGuard, a portfolio of end-toend software solutions that detect, prevent and mitigate cyberattacks by securing traditional and cloud-based network architectures and protecting endusers and IoT devices.
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EVENTS
Cisco - Partner Enablement on C-Space product & Market positioning - Kenya - 21 February
Cisco - Security Workshop - Kenya - 8 February
Dell EMC - Partner Enablement Session - Kenya - 22 February
Fortinet - Partner Workshop With Africa Neurotech - Kenya - 23 February
Dell EMC - Partner Enablement Session Ethiopia - 13 February
Dell EMC - Partner Enablement Session - Tanzania - 20 February
Red Hat - End Customer Event With Adex Technology - Algeria - 6 February
Splunk4Rookies - Riyadh - 4 February
AVAYA Partner Technincal Session14 February - Riyadh
Oracle - Partner Hub Launch Event - Kenya 21 February
Veritas - Partner Enablement Session Kenya - 22 February
Check Point CSSA Workshop - Qatar 18-20 February
ARUBA RED Techtalk -14 February - Riyadh
Fortinet & Bahwan IT Security Seminar - Oman 19 February
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
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Fortinet FortiMail Workshop - Kuwait 19-20 February
Fujitsu Partner Enablement Session Dubai - 6 February
Microsoft Azure Roundtable - Qatar - 7 February
Microsoft Partner Roundtable - Oman - 21 February
Jellyfish Exclusive Seminar with B Infosec Bahrain - 6 February
Microsoft Azure Incubation Training 7 February - Riyadh
Fortinet SMB Workshop - Kuwait - 11 February
Huawei GPON Post Sales Workshop with Ensure Services - Dubai - 20-22 February
Red Hat Technical Workshop - Dubai - 5 February
Fortinet SMB Workshop - Qatar - 5 February
Rising towards the Cloud with Oracle IaaS and PaaS with Partner iApps Dubai - 13 February
Sage VAT Enablement Session - Dubai - 1 February
Journey to Automation - Red Hat and GBM Roundtable Seminar - Oman - 19 February
AVAYA Partner Tech Session 7 February - Riyadh
Mimecast Partner Enablement Session Dubai - 25 February
PhishRod Partner Enablement Session Dubai - 14 February
Fortinet Partner Tech Session -14 February - Riyadh
For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
Red hat Customer Event - 6 February - Riyadh
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Fortinet announced FortiOS 6.0 The firm delivers third generation of network security with the evolution of its Security Fabric Fortinet has announced at its global partner and user conference, Accelerate 18, the evolution of its Security Fabric architecture with the release of FortiOS 6.0. Michael Xie, Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer, Fortinet, said, “As the speed and scale of cyber threats expands, security must take on its own transformation by integrating into all areas of digital technology and be able to translate user intent into automated business response. FortiOS 6.0 delivers new capabilities that were designed to provide the broad visibility, integrated threat intelligence and automated response required for digital business.” With more than 200 new features and capabilities,
security capabilities across the key solution areas within its Security Fabric architecture, including management and analytics, multi-cloud, network, advanced threat protection, unified access, web applications, email, IoT and endpoint security. Industry-leading secure SDWAN functionality, threat detection services, and expanded visibility from IoT to multi-cloud networks protect the vast attack surface resulting from digital
transformation (DX) strategies. The Fortinet Security Fabric is an integrated and automated security framework designed to protect today’s dynamic networks, said the firm. It provides the broad visibility, integrated detection of advanced threats, and automated response, combined with the continuous trust assessment required to secure today’s digital business. FortiOS 6.0 is available in Q1 2018
Michael Xie, Fortinet
enterprises will benefit from new levels of security operations automation and advanced protections for their expanding digital attack surfaces. Fortinet introduces new
As the speed and scale of cyber threats expands, security must take on its own transformation by integrating into all areas of digital technology.”
Red Hat unveils decision management offering Red Hat Decision Manager 7 is designed to enable organizations to quickly build applications that automate business decisions. Red Hat has introduced Red Hat Decision Manager 7, a decision management platform that simplifies the development and deployment of rules-based applications and services. Red Hat Decision Manager 7 is the next generation of the company’s business rules management offering, Red Hat JBoss BRMS, and is designed to enable organizations to quickly build applications that automate business decisions. Low-code development tools such as Red Hat Decision Manager enable business users to take a more active role in application development, and by fostering greater collaboration between business and IT stakeholders, can accelerate the application development process.
Red Hat Decision Manager 7 delivers an improved user experience and a more robust set of tools specifically designed to enable business users and citizen developers to directly modify business logic, which can help IT re-prioritize resources to support other tasks. Feature highlights include support for the direct execution of models expressed in Decision Model and Notation (DMN); redesigned decision tables and a new decision table editor; and an improved data modeller. Built for both traditional and cloud-native applications, the offering can be used to create rules-based decision and planning microservices that can be deployed on-premise within a customer’s data center, or as containerized services
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on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Red Hat OpenShift enables customers to enhance business value and accelerate digital innovation for their processdriven applications using DevOps capabilities such as automated testing and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and to govern them using practices designed to provide greater security, scalability and interoperability. Red Hat Decision Manager is available for download by members of the Red Hat Developers community. Customers can get the latest updates from the Red Hat Customer Portal. Mike Piech, Vice President and General Manager, Middleware, Red Hat, said, “The notion of low-code development is less
Mike Piech, Red Hat
about eliminating code or cutting traditional programmers out of the application development process, and more about helping business and IT users to do what they need to do quickly and efficiently, and in a complementary manner. Ultimately, what low-code tools should offer, and what we have built with Red Hat Decision Manager, is not a platform geared toward one or the other, but rather a rich and tightly integrated feature set designed to provide a better user experience regardless of whether you are a business analyst or hard-core developer.”
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.