EDITORIAL
PUBLISHED BY Business Media International REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City www.bmi-digital.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Raman Narayan narayan@bmimea.com Mob: 971-55-7802403 SALES DIRECTOR Ankit Shukla ankit@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885, Mob: 971-552572807 EDITOR Baraka Jefwa baraka@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885 Mob: 971 50 237 3005 CIRCULATION MANAGER Bhawana Bhatia bhawana@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885 SALES R. Subramanyan subu@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885 FINANCE Akhilesh Pandey akhilesh@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885 DESIGN Ali Raza ali@qnamarcom.com Tel: 971-4-2618885
THE URGENCY TO GO DIGITAL Conversations about embracing digital for the purposes of businesses transformation have, in recent years, been taking place in many a boardroom across different companies in different industries across the globe. These conversations are becoming more and more frequent with a rising sense of urgency because the unprecedented rise of digital native companies could be regarded as a threat to these organizations to keep pace. Various industries have over time been disrupted constantly and the challenge to embrace the new ways of Business processes needs to be confronted and reconciled with. Large enterprises, however, instead of feeling threatened by this new-age competition, are looking at ways of keeping up with them. Several such organizations are in the middle of their digital transformation journeys and are on boarding software companies to help them to better strategize and accelerate their move into the digital future. Some enterprises are even working hand in hand with their digital native competitors to get a better understanding of the shifting landscape of their businesses. There is a need for information sharing and constant benchmarking against industry peers. The second Annual edition of the Enterprise Transformation Summit & Awards, organized by Business Media International, held on 7th October at the hotel Conrad, provided this opportunity to the region’s CXOs who were privy to some stimulating keynotes and panel discussions around some key facets of digital transformation and technology adoption. A constant ongoing exchange of interactions and information between industry peers and technology experts, can favorably impact decisions around the adoption of the right technologies at enterprises. The Enterprise Transformation Awards were presented on the same evening, which provided an opportunity to recognize outstanding IT transformation deployments by companies and superlative achievers in C-level decision making roles from across all verticals, both government and private enterprises.
Baraka Jefwa Editor, CIO One
Management Chairman S.N. Tiwari
CEO Saumyadeep Halder
Publisher Raman Narayan
Managing Director Ankit Shukla
sn.tiwari@bmimea.com
narayan@bmimea.com
saumyadeep@bmimea.com
ankit@bmimea.com
Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to validate the accuracy of all information included in the magazine, the publishers wouldn’t be liable for any errors therein Copyright@2019 Business Media International LLC. All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
CONTENTS COVER STORY MAF chooses hyper intergrated platform for improved enterprise wide communication 30
REGION’S LEADING ENTERPRISE CIOS 16 TAKE CENTER STAGE
Building resilience to cyber weakness during digital transformation
INTERVIEWS Powering on with emerging technologies
COLUMN
12
The leaders’ role in transformation initiatives
13
Simplifying it infrastructure monitoring
26
Finger on scurity’s pulse
32
34
Visibility and anomaly detection in the age of iOT
35
Cios confirm workflow digitisation is improving outcomes across critical business functions
36
CASE STUDIES Al masah capital migrates to their own private cloud, cuts down on operational costs
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28 News
06
New Tech
37
Marketscape
38
NEWS
MIS TO EMPOWER KSA CYBER-SECURITY THROUGH NEXT GENERATION ANALYTICS PLATFORM
The partnership will extend the range of MIS system integration capabilities to serve the Saudi governmental and private sectors with the state-of-the-art system developed by LinkShadow. Al Moammar Information Systems, the first Saudi public listed company in the category of Information Technology and one of the largest system integrators in the KSA market, has signed a partnership agreement with LinkShadow, the next generation cybersecurity analytics platform, designed to manage threats in real-time with attacker behavior analytics, to detect cyber and insider threats. The agreement will enable MIS to provide the advanced technologies of Threat Hunting powered by Machine Learning to the Saudi market, which is considered one of the largest economies in the region. “The Saudi economy is witnessing a major transformation in governmental, economic and social sectors, led by the objectives of the Kingdom 2030 Vision. This requires a robust ICT infrastructure to form the foundation where the futuristic Saudi projects will be relying on”, commented Ibrahim Al Moammar, the Vice Chairman of MIS. He added: “Cybersecurity is a corner stone in building reliable ICT capabilities, and this is exactly what LinkShadow solutions are all about. They fortify the Cybersecurity seamlessly
with minimum requements and zero administration. LinkShadow empowered by the Machine Learning will Detect the most sophisticated attacks automatically, Hunt the attackers by detecting their behaviours and techniques, and deliver ultimate visibility and reporting for Security teams, and Managers alike. With LinkShadow CXO Visibility, IT administrators can take a glance on real-time compilation of overall security status of the entire network. They can get a performance based quantitative analysis of your security investments, identify & monitor key security metrics that matter, and enhance CISO decision making capabilities with a Single-Pane-ofglass view and cybersecurity teams can track key security metrics, in the blink of an eye. Fadi Sharaf El Dean, Sales Director of LinkShadow, said: “We deliver a best-in-class threat hunting capabilities powered by heavy and extensive machine learning algorithms. Our products detect most sophisticated cyber-attacks, and visually presents the cyber kill chain to understand and combat ransomware, security breaches, and advanced per-
Ibrahim Al Moammar Vice Chairman, MIS
sistent attacks (APTs).” He added: “We decided to choose MIS as our partner for the Saudi market because we needed a system integrator with high capabilities and qualified security experts, as well as broad reach across the major government and business entities. We believe MIS fulfills all our needs to deliver a successful partnership, bring higher levels of cybersecurity to the Saudi economy and the Kingdom’s ambitious 2030 vision.” MIS was ranked as the 4th System Integrator company in the Saudi market according to the latest report released by IDC Report 2019. It is also representing more than 50 leading technology vendors and has delivered many of the critical ICT projects in the kingdom.
MINDWARE LAUNCHES MICROSOFT AZURE MARKETPLACE
New marketplace to offer superior transactional experience to the channel community as well as a wide variety of cloud solutions and services.
Karim Hanafy
Microsoft Area Services Partners Lead, One Commercial Partner - MEA Mindware, one of the leading Value Added Distributors (VAD’s) in the Middle East and Africa, announced the launch of its new cloud Marketplace. Offering superior transactional experience to the channel community as well as a wide variety of cloud solutions and services, the Mindware Marketplace will increase cloud adoption for partners and their customers. The new Marketplace which is hosted on Microsoft Azure, will, in addition to making cloud services purchase easy and intuitive, offer Mindware’s regional partners the ability to set up and manage their own “white labeled storefront”, thereby offering cloud solutions directly to end-customers. Vijay Kumar, CTO and cloud Director at
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Mindware said, “There has been an acceleration in cloud adoption in the region as a result of major cloud service providers such as Microsoft establishing physical data centers in the Middle East. Organizations are more comfortable with consuming these services now that data sovereignty and security matters are no longer a concern. As a leading regional distributor and in line with our ‘partner experience first’ philosophy, we realized the need to offer a feature-rich platform to enable our partners to develop their capabilities and offerings and to take their business to the next level.” “We’re transforming the way our partners define their growth, and we’re helping them drive digital transformation in their customers’ businesses. Mindware is a great example of how partners are differentiating themselves today and recognizing the changing digital technology to solve problems utilizing cloud computing. There is a huge opportunity around cloud migration and together with
our partners, our goal is to help our customers find the right solution at the right time,” said Karim Hanafy, Microsoft Area Services Partners Lead, One Commercial Partner - MEA. The new marketplace, which can be custom-branded by partners, has several new and enhanced capabilities including a robust and customizable billing engine, which allows partners to easily automate ordering and billing the entire Microsoft portfolio including Office 365, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft ESD. Partners can monitor and control their customers’ Microsoft Azure consumption with automated provisioning of cloud services and utilization-based billing. The Marketplace will allow partners to deliver hosted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings via the platform. The interface is intuitive and helps partners to place orders faster and it offers recommendations when products are being purchased to provide an optimized solution.
NEWS
A10 NETWORKS APPOINTS REDINGTON GULF AS VALUE ADDED DISTRIBUTOR IN MIDDLE EAST Organisation targets strong channel support to grow their share of the enterprise market. analytics.
A10 Networks announced a value added distributor partnership agreement with Redington Gulf across United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Under the terms of the agreement, Redington will promote A10 Networks’ entire portfolio of leading solutions including service provider network security to support IoT in the age of 5G, multi-cloud management, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) with Zero-day Automated Protection (ZAP), carrier-grade networking (CGN) and application visibility and
Ehab Halablab, Regional Channel Manager – MENA at A10 Networks said, “As our company continues to increase focus and investment in the Middle East region, we require strong channel support to grow our share of the enterprise market. We believe that Redington, with its vast channel network, can help us to recruit new reseller partners into our Affinity Partner program. We will also rely on their sales and marketing expertise and technical training services to promote the A10 Networks brand and increase our partners’ knoweldge of our company’s technologies.” “Redington has a strong portfolio of security vendors that provide solutions like SIEM, IPS, DLP, packet broker and forensics, that complement those of A10 Networks. This plays well for both our companies and provides growth opportunities. We look forward to growing our footprint in the region through this new partnership.” With the addition of A10 Networks, Redington can now build and offer partners and customers a robust, end-to-end solution, integrat-
ing complementary solutions from various vendors in the company’s portfolio. It also gives Redington the opportunity of revisiting existing customer accounts and using A10 Networks’ solutions to cross-sell/up-sell. Redington will be investing into a ‘train your trainer’ scheme, which involves a dedicated employee getting trained by the vendor. The distributor will then act as an Authorized Training Centre (ATC) and build scheduled technical workshops to deliver high level technical training and updates to resellers and partners, including certification programs. “5G and Multi-cloud environments are two of today’s biggest trends that will transform the market. 5G and multi-cloud environments require the most automated and reliable security solutions to ensure that business-critical applications are protected and always available. A10 Networks has proven market leading technologies in these areas, and as such, the vendor is an invaluable addition to our portfolio. We are excited to be able to offer the company’s security solutions to our partners and customers across the region,” concludes Sayantan Dev, Senior Vice President at Redington Gulf.
AVAYA, MICROSOFT PARTNER TO BRING CONTACT CENTER SERVICES IN THE ARAB GULF The two companies are working to integrate the market-leading Avaya IX-CC platform with Azure. Avaya Holdings, a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration, and Microsoft announced that they will join forces to bring contact center services to the cloud. Avaya IX-CC, a next generation Contact Center as a Service platform, will be available on Azure, hosted in Microsoft’s cloud data centers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The service will be introduced initially in the Arab Gulf region with plans to expand the offer to other global regions in the future. “Avaya is a trusted leader in contact center solutions,” said Ahmed Helmy, International CTO Avaya. “Our partnership with Microsoft allows us to expand our feature-rich applications on a cloud-based microservices architecture and platform – giving our customers the flexibility in deployment they have come to expect from our brand. They will also have the welcome assurance and flexibility to run their workloads across multiple clouds.”
The two companies are working to integrate the market-leading Avaya IX-CC platform with Azure. The Avaya IX-CC next generation Contact Center as a Service platform is expected to be available to customers in H1 2020 with voice capabilities, followed by omnichannel features later in the year. “Through our work with Avaya, Microsoft now has the opportunity through our marketplace to offer enterprise-grade CCaaS solutions to businesses of any size delivered through Avaya and running on our Azure cloud,” said Sherif Tawfik, Executive Director, Channel, Alliances, Startups, and SMEs. “At Microsoft, it is our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Every application that makes its home in our intelligent cloud takes us a step more down that road.” Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, said: “The contact center market continues to evolve quickly putting pressure on
organizations of all sizes. The cloud offers companies a fast path to a modernized, Omni-channel solution. However, one size does not fit all when it comes to cloud contact center.” The announcement was made at a special event today during the 39th GITEX Technology Week. Ahmed Helmy, Chief Technology Officer from Avaya International and Sherif Tawfik, Executive Director, Channel, Alliances, Startups and SMEs at Microsoft UAE, were on hand to explain how customers across the region – and soonafter, the world – would be able to accelerate digital transformation, engaging customers, empowering employees, optimizing operations and reinventing business models, through the power of CCaaS.
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NEWS
FOCUS SOFTNET LAUNCHES ITS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM Automation of processes for efficiency, voice driven commands, face recognition and reallocation of human capital costs, are key drivers for adoption of artificial intelligence solutions.
Ali Hyder
Group CEO, Focus Softnet Focus Softnet, the leading software development and enterprise applications provider, announced the launch of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, AIFA (Artificially Intelligent Futuristic Applications). AIFA is an advanced, automated platform meant to enhance business, increase productivity, and reduce investment in human training. “Businesses in the region are now ready to leverage digital technologies to improve efficiencies. Focus Softnet has developed AIFA that can be used by organizations to automate all types of functions. These could be from the front office, top executive, managerial, and back office. With CIOs and IT managers under pressure to do more with less funds, AIFA as a workforce assistant can be used across multiple departments and across multiple roles,” explained Ali Hyder, Group CEO of Focus Softnet, during the launch of AIFA. Businesses can analyze data, support their customers, or assist end-users in data entry task. As an advanced AI chatbot that uses machine learning, AIFA will understand
queries and respond smartly. Businesses can get insights and predictive analysis to lower their operational costs and improve services. AIFA also helps in marking automatic attendance of employees using AI face recognition feature and gets integrated with any Payroll & Attendance system. The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) feature in AIFA allows organizations to automate routine tasks that can be integrated with business application. Further, the face recognition feature also helps in contributing to the increase in sales by getting maximum information of walk-in customers in retail sales. According to a recent PwC report, analysis conducted by IDC estimates that spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence systems in the Middle East and Africa region will grow from $37.5 million in 2017 to over $100 million by 2021, representing a growth rate of 32%. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have demonstrated strong commitment towards the development and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies. AIFA can be used in most popular languages. There is no need to employ customer service personnel, specifically for any language. It can provide analytics for questions asked. The end user company can use this to identify areas that need improvement. Focus AIFA can be reached through a phone call, mobile app, website, Alexa, Google Home, Facebook,
WhatsApp and other such platforms and devices. "We have also made significant innovations around voice recognition, allowing customers to build triggers and alerts with call to action and data embedded in them. Customers can customize these alerts as required and can create a culture of proactiveness when they are sent and heard by recipients on the move, rather than read as text or email messages at a later time, often too late for action," Mr. Hyder added. The most defining capability of AIFA is that it is not just a work assistant but can work as a customer service executive as well. By interacting with AIFA, customers can access their data, and get answers to basic questions such as balance, limit, due date of bills, last payment, service request, location request. Unlike humans who cannot be available during holidays or during the night, AIFA can work 24 hours, 365 days of the year. Businesses can deploy this advanced AI assistant, that has inbuilt accelerated computing for extreme performance and big data workloads. End-users can use AIFA to get information about product, bills, statements, services, status of service requests and other such information. Top executives can use AIFA as a data mining tool to get quick access to information they need, in any format such as voice, text and reports.
DGW, FINESSE TO COLLABORATE IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY Global software system integrator will digitally automate numerous services and offer analytical solutions to facilitate operational excellence
Dubai Government Workshop (DGW) has revealed that it has reached a collaboration with Finesse to assist with the acceleration of its digital transformation journey, which aims to redesign traditional processes that support various business functions and decisions. As part of the partnership, Finesse will oversee digital automation of numerous services and provide analytical solutions to ensure operational excellence at DGW.
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Fahad Alraeesi, Deputy of CEO, DGW, said: “DGW is committed to maintaining and enhancing our services and increasing operational efficiency through significant investment in technology. Keeping pace with the latest technological innovations aligns with our commitment to achieving digital transformation; and implementing digital solutions ranging from automation of customer journey touchpoints and internal processes, along with the provision of business insights to executive management and employees, will elevate our
user experience to the next level.” Eljo JP, Global Business Development Director, Finesse, added: “Our collaboration with DGW is strategic for Finesse as we comprise our solutions to meet specific public sector requirements, in line with the vision of the wise leadership. Our solutions for analytics and RPA will significantly transform the entire business process at DWG, ensuring the Department has the latest technological innovations at its disposal moving forward.”
NEWS
RASHID CENTRE FOR PEOPLE OF DETERMINATION UNVEILS COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM FOR SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION The solution helps streamline communications between staff, students and parents, thereby elevating learning experiences, enhancing student safety, and simplifying administration. Mariam Othman, Chief Executive Officer, Rashid Centre for People of Determination, launched the foundation’s ground-breaking communications and collaboration platform for special needs institutions, co-developed with Avaya. “It has been our vision to use technology to elevate the quality of education and care that we provide to this inspiring segment of society. We thank Avaya who have partnered with us to design a truly unique solution that makes our vision a reality,” said Mrs. Othman. The new platform helps make remote learning and virtual classrooms a reality and helps to
enable seamless high-quality video collaboration between staff and parents ─ all while reducing the Institution’s communications-related operational expenses. With inbuilt fleet management, the system can efficiently track school buses in real-time, giving parents peace of mind while their children are being transported to and from the Center. Appealing to the technology industry to make ‘accessibility for all’ a guiding principle in solution design, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International said, “Communication is at the core of the human experience and we believe it should be a fundamental right for any individual, irrespective of their abilities.
Our work can only be considered as true progress when it delivers equality of experience for all. While Avaya remains firmly committed to championing this cause, it is my sincere hope that our industry peers will also rise to the challenge and embrace accessibility by design, so every innovation can have the potential to benefit all segments of society.”
ETIHAD AVIATION GROUP ADOPTS MICROSOFT OFFICE 365
UAE aviation group rolls out Yammer, Teams and Exchange Online to enhance group-wide collaborative framework; Power Platform used for automation across business units Microsoft announced that Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, has adopted Office 365 to boost collaboration and scale productivity, which will further empower its employees to achieve more. Etihad’s 20,000 employees, from more than 150 different countries, fly to over 80 destinations from its hub in Abu Dhabi and serve 18 million passengers annually. Chief among its digital goals are the automation of processes and the empowerment of employees through collaboration and communication platforms. “Etihad is proud of creating a unique travel experience for our guests while empowering our employees to be effective innovators,” said Mike Papamichael, Vice President Technology and Innovation, Etihad Aviation Group. “To provide the best service, you need to not only have the best people in place, but the best tools to help them collaborate and make decisions in real time. We are pleased to partner with Microsoft towards this goal.” Yammer now forms the heart of Etihad’s employees’ social network and acts as a collaboration tool and a platform for sharing company-wide news in real time. Adopting Office 365 with its power platforms has helped Etihad with a 30% growth in their process optimisation target. In alignment with Etihad’s optimisation targets across departments and
subsidiaries, Microsoft Power Platform – which brings together Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow – has been leveraged to enhance the company’s business processes, freeing up employees to commit time to more innovative activities. More than 260 live applications across Etihad’s business units now rely on the new platform to optimise operations. And some 17,000 Etihad Business Users now keep in touch with co-workers and customers through Exchange Online, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams. Etihad is also using Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and especially InTune to secure access from mobile devices and provide the flexibility to be connected from anywhere, any device, at any time. “Etihad’s adoption of Office 365 to boost collaboration is the perfect illustration of the power of digital transformation to engage, empower, optimise and reinvent,” said Sayed Hashish, General Manager, Microsoft UAE. “The group’s journey was diligently managed, carefully designed, and now shows measurable achievements – real metrics, such as gains in time and the ROI that brings. We will continue to partner with organisations in the region to ensure they have the tools they need to achieve more.”
In addition, Etihad formed an Office 365-development pod consisting of fresh UAE local graduates who were nurtured by the Etihad leadership with the appropriate tools to upskill. They also developed a number of mobile and desktop friendly applications. Tamm is one of their recent success stories, an application that centralises all maintenance requests at the touch of a button, and Shukran, a peer recognition tool built in PowerApps. Etihad will also be one of the first organisations in the UAE to migrate to Microsoft’s new cloud region in Abu Dhabi, one of two recently launched in the UAE. Microsoft’s new datacenters, one in Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai - now enable thousands of digitally innovative organisations across the Middle East, as they seek to engage customers, empower employees, optimise operations and reinvent products and services. “Etihad is a prominent adopter of Microsoft Azure services, with the Etihad Enterprise Data Hub running on Azure. It has proven to provide huge value to Etihad business users, allowing them to drive better insights around the business and have a data driven culture”. adds Hashish, Microsoft
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NEWS
ABU DHABI MUNICIPALITY EMBARKS ON DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRANSFORMATION PROJECT WITH ARUBA Institution intends to create a smart workplace that will enables creativity, collaboration, speed, and freedom Abu Dhabi Municipality has overhauled its legacy networking infrastructure and deployed powerful new Wi-Fi 6 technology from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, that has laid the foundation for its Smart Digital Workplace initiative, which will transform digital experiences for employees, suppliers and citizens. Mr. Ahmad Al Hammadi, IT Manager at Abu Dhabi Municipality says, “We understand that the future of work will be defined by smart work experiences enabled by the right technologies. Our intention was to create a smart workplace that will enables creativity, collaboration, speed, and freedom. Our legacy networking infrastructure was a big hurdle in achieving this objective, with operational complexities and security issues, and hence we decided to work with HPE Aruba, a pioneer in the wireless networking space. They were one of the vendors capable of delivering a unique wireless ecosystem, thus acting as an overall solution provider for all our mobility needs.” Aruba’s latest 802.11ax AI-powered WiFi 6
solutions were selected for the deployment across Abu Dhabi Municipality’s headquarters and 35 branches across the city. As defending against internal threats was a critical security requirement, the government agency automated security access control across its entire access network with Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager, and enforced the continuous analysis of Network Traffic and User and Entity Behaviour with the deployment of Machine Learning technologies provided by Aruba’s threat detection platform, Introspect. With a high speed, secure wireless infrastructure as the foundation, Abu Dhabi Municipality will introduce a number of new applications that will enable employees to utilize their smartphones to become more productive. One such application will allow employees to book meeting rooms on their smart devices. The implementation will benefit third party suppliers who visit the Municipality, who will now be able to connect securely and speedily to the new network and transact business without having to go through slow and lengthy authentication procedures. Citizens visiting the four customer happiness centres in
Ahmad Al Hammadi
IT Manager, Abu Dhabi Municipality Abu Dhabi will also experience gigabit speed browsing capabilities when connecting to the new wireless network. “We are proud to have been able to play a role in Abu Dhabi Municipality’s digital transformation journey by delivering a robust wireless ecosystem, incorporating high-speed connectivity, secure access, BYOD support and centralized monitoring and management in a single solution. We hope to be able to continue this partnership as the Municipality’s digital aspirations evolve in the future,” concludes Gamal Emara, country manager – UAE at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
ALARIS DEMONSTRATES COMMITMENT TO MIDDLE EAST CHANNEL WITH PARTNER CONFERENCE
Executives from company delivered a number of informative sessions including latest insights into the future of information capture and management, the latest hardware, software and service solutions and how these could help grow revenues and profitability for partners’ businesses
Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business, successfully hosted its Middle East Partner Conference October 2nd– 3rd, 2019 in Dubai. 70 partners from 20 countries across the region attended the event, which was held aboard the historic Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) floating hotel and retired ocean liner. Executives from Alaris delivered a number of informative sessions including an overview of the company, latest insights into the future of information capture and management, the latest hardware, software and service solutions and how these could help grow revenues and profitability for partners’ businesses. One of the highlights of the event was an interactive session focusing on the value of the Alaris partner program and latest updates including
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the launch of a new partner portal – a one stop location for sales, marketing, competitive and training materials and other valuable resources that will help partners grow their businesses. A sales master class on generating more demand and new customers leveraging the power of social media saw strong interest from partners. There was a dedicated session on the Alaris network scanning portfolio with a focus on the recently launched Alaris INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution and the Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus Scanner that automate business processes by seamlessly connecting document capture to existing business systems and the cloud. The conference also included a ‘Solutions Expo’ where partners were given a demo of the unique capabilities and features of the company’s software portfolio including Alaris Info Input Solution. Naji Kazak, General Manager - Middle East,
Africa, Turkey & Russia at Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business said, “The Alaris Middle East Partner Conference is our flagship partner event in the region and presents our company with an opportunity to connect with our key partners to share the latest product updates and insights into our future strategy. It also gives us a chance to understand our partner’s pain points and address them. The event agenda and networking opportunities provide the insight and content our partners need to build a comprehensive plan to successfully grow their business with Alaris products.” “It’s clear that the team at Alaris is committed to their partners’ success and expect that same level of commitment in return. The interactive training sessions during the partner conference ensured that we remained focused so the company’s message was properly received,” said Bren Miscia, Managing Director, ScanServ (Pty) Ltd.
INTERVIEW
POWERING ON WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES Marwan Abdullah Bin Dalmook, Senior Vice President, ICT Commercial & Business Development, Enterprise solutions, Du, discusses how emerging technologies such as IoT, Blockchain and AI are helping enterprise businesses and government alike to leap frog their services for the future and enable a better digital transformation. By Baraka Jefwa
Where do you think the region is in terms of adopting 5G technology? What role will 5G play in improving emerging technologies? Whenever any new mobile technology comes up, it takes a while for the handsets to be developed based on the standards for the technology to be certified and approved. When we were transitioning from 2G to 3G, for example, the technology was ready, the ISPs implemented the networks and then the handsets came later. 5G is going through the same process and right now the handset providers are coming on board slowly. However, from my perspective I see 5G as more for enterprise businesses and government rather than consumer business. Most government entities have their own mobile networks, today this is not needed anymore as we can deliver services for them on networks dedicated for them using 5G. More use cases will start coming up based on 5G technology, as I believe that this technology will be one of the enablers of emerging technology to be adapted faster. Customers are not focusing on technology itself but are instead more interested on the use cases.
Kindly touch on some use cases based on emerging technologies that DU is involved with? We have several use cases; I will however address two with one in the education sector and the other in the finance sector. In the education sector we found out that students and parents face challenges when moving from school to school as they must wait for a long time to get the right certifications for this.
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We had discussions with multiple government entities and private sector in searching for a solution to this issue. We explored a use case with a leading university about using blockchain to approve students’ certifications. In another of our use cases, we had a discussion with a finance house in Abu Dhabi about connecting to blockchain and uploading their customers’ documents on the platform in order to make their journeys with the company easier. We are providing a platform for our customers to digitally transform their services faster.
Marwan Abdullah Bin Dalmook SVP, ICT Commercial & Business Development, Enterprise Solutions, Du
What are some other solutions leveraging emerging technology that you offer to enterprise customers?
We offer AI- as-a-service, where organisations can send their data to a machine which will start learning from this data and provide prediction analytics on what exactly they need. This kind of exercise is lengthy and would require a lot of experimentation and POCs with the customers to get everything right. We are bringing this kind of technology in the country. The value we are offering is that we have the right platforms and we can re-productize and re-develop the solution because we have the cloud, services and connectivity that allows us to make it easier for our customers to adapt to such services.
What advice would you give to CIOs looking to embrace emerging technologies in their digital transformation journeys? service providers are the best bet when it comes to multi-talent environments. If organisations decide to build platforms for themselves, it will cost them a lot of time and money. What we are saying is that we are taking this burden away, because we have been doing these exercises for a long time. We have implemented these platforms for many customers, this is the same concept we have for emerging technologies. We build the right platforms and the use case is up to the customer.
INTERVIEW
THE LEADERS’ ROLE IN TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES
Hashim Saeed, Group Head of Information Technology, AZIZI Developments, one of the most valuable and admired Real Estate development companies in the UAE, gives his thought on what digital transformation means to their organization and how both business and IT leaders should view technology in order to transform their companies. By Baraka Jefwa
Describe your job role and responsibilities. I am responsible of overseeing the overall of the IT operations across the organization as well as setting up the IT strategies and roadmaps while providing direction, guidance and vision for the IT department.
Describe the innovation culture in your organization and the emphasis towards improvement. Establishing a culture of innovation is one thing; sustaining that culture is another. The way we sustain a creative, exploratory culture is by rewarding employees. Having the employees motivated and empowered the Head of Departments with the authorities they need, have made dramatic improvement on the overall of the organization.
How does your organization define digital or business transformation?
Hashim Saeed
Group Head of IT, Azizi Developments
We define digital transformation as the fundamental rethinking of how we use technology, people and processes to radically change the business performance; that is a change on the way we deliver value to our customers. We have already started working closely with our customers and getting them engaged through the use of technologies that enable them to view our products, select them, book then pay using our secured customer portal.
What is the role of business heads in driving digital or November 2019 CIO ONE - 13
INTERVIEW business transformation Since Digital transformation is an ongoing journey and not a destination, the role of the business heads is to have a truly clear picture of where they want to go? What’s the end game for their transformation? Is it customer obsession, revenue growth, cost reduction, process improvement, greater competitive differentiation, accelerated innovation, increased market share, improved shareholder value, all of the above, or perhaps something more? Depending on the different business units, the business heads should have strategies and roadmaps towards digital transformation, which eventually improves their business performance. These strategies must be aligned with the overall organizational strategy. They need to list down and prioritize them based on the importance and urgency in a sequential manner. They have to work closely with the technology leader of their organisation to understand how technologies available in the market can help them achieve their business transformation objectives and dreams. The business heads must ensure that the digital transformation vision is shared with both internal and external entities that they deal with as this may introduce changes on the traditional style and approach of how things were done. The expectations must be set clearly and agreed prior to implementation else this may fail. Having the business heads eager on digital transformation is a golden opportunity for the technology leaders as it makes their lives much easier to proceed with the technologies that support their business goals.
What is the role of technology heads in driving digital or business transformation? Digital transformation offers an extraordinary opportunity for technology leaders to step forward and take a leadership role in helping their organizations leverage technology to automate more of the operations, address growing customer needs, break into new markets, and stay relevant for the long term. Since the technology leaders are the closest and most familiar with the new technologies that are driving this transformation as well as have unique view across the enterprise, their role is to work closely with the business heads to see the interdependencies that exist between organizational functions and business units. This distinct perspective allows them to identify opportunities for streamlining systems and processes and apply transformative business improvements.
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In order for them to successfully drive digital transformation efforts, they overcome a number of hurdles, and among the biggest is the cultural challenges associated with convincing organizational leaders and their teams to embrace digital transformation, particularly since it typically involves making changes to their workstyles and traditional business processes. Technology leaders need to make sure that everyone understands what the end goal is and their role in making these changes. This starts with clearly communicating the vision for the digital transformation objectives across various roles and organizational teams. Once the digital vision has been shared with all stakeholders, the technology leaders must determine how they can optimally structure their team to deliver these business objectives. They may need to consider bringing in fresh talent from outside and continually building up the knowledge base of the internal team.
What is your metric of success or failure of a digital or business transformation initiative? Digital transformation brings in series of changes; therefore, it’s very important that we really think through leading indicators that will help us measure the impact of our digital investments ahead of the actual impact on things like revenue and customer satisfaction. Digital transformation metrics must be aligned with measuring where traction is achieved in a digital capability versus the results achieved at the end of a transformation. This helps assess and refine transformation efforts continuously.
Having the business heads eager on digital transformation is a golden opportunity for the technology leaders as it makes their lives much easier to proceed with the technologies that support their business goals. be measured no less than weekly. It’s the only way to gauge and generate momentum.”
2. Customer experience In order to look for signs of improved customer experience, we need to be able to measure how successfully our customers can navigate across our ecosystems. We advocate measuring share of voice, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value, ultimately improving retention rates. We aim to have our customers on our platform so that they are able to view their statements, available units, payment plans, make online payments, check their payment status, receive campaigns and finally communicate with each other directly within the same platform.
3. Financial impact
Requisite measures vary from industry or even company wise; however, In the Real Estate industry, we need digital transformation metrics that span functions and can be measured on a continuous basis to provide the most insight into what’s working and what’s not. Our metrics fall under the following categories:
We as the digital transformation leaders are being held to significant growth targets. We should seek out measures that are meaningful when monitoring the progress on a daily or weekly basis, which should provide a good indication whether efforts are heading in the right direction.
1. Operational improvement
However, it’s critical to look for financial measures that provide incentives for the entire enterprise to embrace ongoing digital change even though the impact on revenue or margins does not happen overnight.
Digital transformation is a continuous improvement initiative as much about changing the mindsets, behaviors and cultural shift, which is very difficult to measure. Operational metrics may include task automation, productivity, or application performance that result in improved business performance. To do this, we need to ensure that our employees adapt to the changes and start using the tools that we have deployed. Adoption metrics can be a great proxy, “Adoption should
We illustrate the financial value of the painful efforts by tracking increase in productivity or revenue per employee. By freeing up brainpower, we get more new initiatives as we reduce the number of repetitive tasks, which is more efficient for our business line, while simultaneously being a more attractive and innovative place to work for our talent.
ETS ROUND UP
REGION’S LEADING ENTERPRISE CIOs TAKE CENTRE STAGE Summit highlights technology shifts that are rapidly transforming enterprise IT The second edition of the Enterprise Transformation Summit & Awards held on the 7th of October, at the Conrad Hotel, Dubai, saw a large turnout of many of the UAE’s leading CIOs and Senior IT leaders from both government and private sector enterprises. The summit serves as an elite platform for the region’s top CXOs and IT Heads to converge and enhance their understanding of technology shifts that are rapidly transforming enterprise IT. The event focused on the continued efforts and shifts towards embracing new age technologies and looking to highlight how enterprises in the region are enhancing their competitive edge by deployment of technologies.
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“The second annual edition of the Enterprise Transformation Summit & Awards underscored the fact that digital transformation has gathered speed in the region. The adoption and integration of relevant digital technolgies by companies are helping them in their objectives towards better efficiencies. The many sesions of keynotes and panel discussions at the summit followed by the recognitions for many oustanding transformation initiatives by companies celebrated and highlighted the growing relevance of digital transformation as a long term strategy,” said Raman Narayan, Editor in chief and publisher at Business Media International. The day’s program was divided into two
halves which saw a summit high on content, in the first half of the day. The Awards gala followed in the latter part of the evening and saw many high achieving CIOs and senior IT leaders recognized for their outstanding efforts in driving IT initiatives across their organizations. “This year's edition followed up on the oustanding success we had with the very first event last year. I am happy to note that this year, there was better particaption from some of the region's top CIOs from across all verticals and a good representation from the government sector,” said Saumyadeep Halder, CEO of Business Media International.
ETS ROUND UP
“We have proven our commitment to holding such focused industry events that put the spotlight on digital and busines transformation, providing the platform for exchange of ideas and perspectives between industry experts, to the benefit of all who attend our events. We ensure our events deliver the value that attendees look to when they participate at such events,� said Ankit Shukla, MD at Business Media International. The summit put the spotlight on several pertinent themes that are part of the ICT driven transformation in the enterprise segment through keynotes by eminent industry speak-
ers and panel discussions that saw participation from several industry IT stalwarts from different enterprise verticals. Dell Technologies and Mindware were the Platinum sponsors of the summit while Zendesk was the gold sponsor. Epicor and Rital were the silver sponsors. D-Link, Mindfire technologies, MDS Computers, Finesse, Commnet, Value Mentor, DVCOM, IceWrap and Simpra, were Exhibition partners. Mimecast and Talentonlease were networking and talent partners respectively.
November 2019 CIO ONE - 17
SPOTLIGHT / KEYNOTES POWERING THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY The keynote presentation by Fehmi Sakkal, Consulting Systems Engineer at Aruba Networks, an HPE Company, was focussed on the topic, Powering the Experience Economy. Sakkal emphasised that digital transformation is turning workplaces into digital workplaces and thus setting high expectations for the customers, pointing out that before embarking on a digital transformation journey, it is important for companies to have a proper strategy in place. Sakkal further explained, “it is important to power the edge with the correct technology as it is where people work, learn, roam and experience. Recent statistics show that there will be $4 billion invested in the edge in the next 4 years,” “The future is at the edge where we have different technologies that are cloud connected and take the data to an IoT powered edge to lead to an experienced based economy. This is what we (Aruba) are helping to build today,” he added.
Fehmi Sakkal
Consulting Systems Engineer, Aruba
He points out that an essential factor of digital transformation is going through a learn, adapt and change cycle, adding that Aruba has different solutions and platforms that power the edge and allow this cycle to take place seamlessly and allowing for the main stakeholder in this, the IT administrator, to have less headaches when choosing the right solutions for digital transformation.
BEST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES STARTS WITH THE CUSTOMER Owen McConnell - Regional Sales Manager – Zendesk, in his presentation, titled: “best customer experiences starts with the customer”, informed audience members that customers should be at the centre of what their organisations do every day, noting that delivering an omnichannel support is a key strategy in trying to achieve this. Pointing to Zendesk’s recently released customer trends report which looks at what businesses are doing with the Zendesk Benchmark. The data was collected from 45,000 businesses using Zendesk across 140 countries. With this information the top trends in customer support were identified, helping teams understand how they’re performing against their peers, and how to improve their customer experience. Some of the takeaways from the report included: Omnichannel is the way- whereby customers like switching between channels and picking the channel that best meets their needs. Invest in your customer data platform- Your platform is the gateway to customer data. It’s the secret sauce to creating a seamless experience for customers and agents.
OWEN MCCONNELL
Regional Sales Manager, EMEA Zendesk
ROLE OF EMAIL COLLABORATION IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Pramod Sharda, CEO Middle East & India, IceWrap, took the stage to present on, “Role of Email Collaboration in Digital Transformation”. Sharda informed the audience that emails are currently a commonly used thing in the world, promting him to pause the question, how can email change the future when it is already available? “At first email was only used on desktop and laptops, but as technology continued to change and we moved to mobile phones we started using emails there as well. This prompted for all applications used on desktop with email to be required on mobile. This has made email essential and when we have collaboration integrated with this it can make our lives easier,” he explained. Sharda pointed out that the demand for technologies in businesses is on the rise as companies want to go to market faster. He added that companies should understand that the core of adapting technologies is to collaborate, communicate and connect but the challenge is to get all departments to work together.
Pramod Sarda
CEO ME & India, Icewarp Tech. 18 - CIO ONE November 2019
“At IceWrap we believe that we believe that a simple thing like email collaboration can make the adoption of technology easier,” he said.
SPOTLIGHT / PANEL DISCUSSIONS THE CIO AS BUSINESS LEADER The first panel discussions of the day involved Hashim Saeed, Group Head of Information Technology, AZIZI, Sunil Paul, Co- founder and COO, Finesse, Joji Jacob, CIO, Yusif Bin Yusif Fakhro, Aiman Mahmoud Al Jabr, Head of IT, Havelock One Interiors and Ashith Piriyattiath, CEO, Guardian One Technologies. The panellists tackled the topic, “The CIO As Business Leader”; whereby they highlighted the evolving role of the technology leader.
CLOUD ERP IMPLEMENTATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES The second panel session featured: Jayakumar Mohanachandran, Head of IT, Precision Group, Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head, Bin Dasmal Group, Saymaad Mansoor, Head of IT, Siddco Group, Mohammad Shahzad, Chief Information Officer, RDK Group and Tamer Hamed, Head of IT, Ducab Group (Dubai Cable Company). The panellists discussed the topic, “Cloud ERP Implementation: Opportunities & Challenges”, where they gave their own experiences in this kind of implementation.
5G AS A CATAYLST OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION The third panel session of the day, titled: “5G as a cataylst of Digital Transformation”, featured: Ashith Piriyattiath, CEO , Guardian One Technologies, Tabish Asifi, IT Governance Lead (Digital Transformation), MAF Holding, Mohamed Abdulwahed Alajmani, I.T Project Manager, Government of Sharjah Department of Seaports & Customs, Muhammad Rafeeque, IT Manager, Channel4 Radio Networks, UAE television Ajman and Tamal Chakravorty, Group Head IT, Landmark Hospitality
November 2019 CIO ONE - 19
AWARDS ROUND UP
REGION’S TOP INNOVATORS FETED
Enterprise Transformation Awards is a celebration of talent, success and achievement in the IT industry.
This year’s edition of the Enterprise Transformation Awards, the GCC region's largest technology awards show, was held in the presence of the finest technology leaders from the private and government sectors at the glitzy Conrad Hotel in Dubai. The awardees were truly trailblazers in their respective categories and thoroughly deserving of the accolades. Some of the top winners during the awards included: Veeam Software, Dell Technologies, Dubai Future Foundation and Etihad Airlines who were among other winners to be recog-nized for their extraordinary commitment in driving technology adoption throughout 2019. The awards recognized individual leaders and companies in both the private sector and govern-ment who in their respective capacities are driving the adoption of newer technologies
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to increase productivity, efficiency, improve customer service and enhance security. Some of the leaders to walk away victorious on the night included: Mr. Amir Qureshi, Director of IT, Atlantis The Palm, Ms. Fatema Al Malki, Head of Information security, RAK e-gov Mr. Aiman Mahmoud, Head of IT, Havelock One Interiors, Bahrain and Mr. Ahmed Salim Nasser, Director of IT, Ministry of Health Directorate General of Health Services Al Dhahirah Gov, Oman. The night was capped off by the launch of Business Media International’s new publication, dedicated to the Enterprise CXO community in the region and focuses on providing them insights into the latest industry trends and new technologies to help decide on technology roadmaps for their organizations., to which Mr. R. Narayan, Editor in Chief and
Publisher at BMI commented. “this was a night of celebrations for not only the exceptional awardees who were felicitated on stage, but also for Business Media International, as we take a leap forward with the launch of a new magazine, CIO ONE,” The event was supported by leading technology companies in the region with the platinum spon-sors being Dell Technologies and Mindware; gold partner Zendesk; along with silver partners Ep-icor and Rittal. The exhibitor partners at the event included: Dlink, Mindfire Technologies, MDS Computers, Finesse, Commnet, Value Mentor, DVCOM Technology, ICEWarp and Simpra In-ternational. Mimecast and Talent on lease were the networking and talent Partners respectively while both CIO One and QNA Marcom were the media partners during the event.
AWARDS ROUND UP
Backup & Recovery Transformation Vendor of the year
Digital Transformation Vendor of the year
Veeam Software
Dell Technologies
Networking Transformation Vendor of the year
Education Transformation Project of the year
Aruba
University of Bahrain
Customer Service Software Vendor of the year
Email Security Transformation Vendor of the year
Zendesk
Mimecast
Network Security Transformation Vendor of the year
Blockchain Solutions Provider of the year
Sophos
Tech Mahindra
Best Cybersecurity Project of the year - Private sector
Enterprise Applications Integrator of the year
NAFFCO
Finesse
Managed ICT Service Provider of the Year
HCI Solution Provider of the year
Kalaam Telecom
MDS Computers
Networking Integrator of the year
Security Integrator of the year
Commnet Systems Consultancy
ValueMentor
Mobility Solutions Provider of the year
Simpra International
Emerging MSSP of the year
Mindfire Technologies
November 2019 CIO ONE - 21
AWARDS ROUND UP
Unified Communication VAD of the year
Digital Transformation VAD of the year
Dvcom Technology
Mindware
Best Future Acceleration Initiative of the year
Dubai Future Foundation
Best Knowledge Acceleration Initiative of the year
Mostaqbal Portal
Best Data Governance Project of the year
Best Virtualization Project of the year
Abu Dhabi Municipality
Dubai Municipality
Best Cybersecurity Project of the year - Government
Etihad Airlines
Digital Transformation Project of the year
DEWA
Best Smart Education Deployment of the year
Education Transformation Project of the year
Ministry of Education- UAE
GEMS Education
Enterprise Mobility Project of the year
Dubai Cable Company
IoT Project of the year
AZIZI Developments
Network Security Project of the year
Media Transformation Project of the year
Govt of Sharjah Department of Seaports & Customs
Al Murad Group
Retail Transformation Project of the year
Flemingo International 22 - CIO ONE November 2019
Smart Public Safety Project of the year
Abu Dhabi Police
AWARDS ROUND UP Best Future Acceleration Project of the year
Abu Dhabi Department of Energy
Best Telecommunication Deployment of the year
DU
Business Acceleration Initiative of the year
Best Cloud Project of the Year
MDCBMS
Abu Dhabi DED
Hospitality Transformation Project of the Year
Best Community Service Team of the year
RDK GROUP
Ajman Police GHQ
Digital Transformation Team of the Year - Private sector
Future Acceleration Team of the year
Bin Dasmal Group
Abu Dhabi Police
Happiness Team of the year
Abu Dhabi Municipality
Innovation Team of the year
GEMS Education
IT Department Team of the year
Digital Acceleration Team of the year
Smart Umm Al Quwain
Digital Barza
Transformation Maestro in Construction
Madhu Suthan
Group IT Manager, Bahri & Mazroei Group
Transformation Maestro in Healthcare
Ali Hakam Ghunaim CIO, Canadian Specialist Hospital
Transformation Maestro in Education
George Akhras CIO, AMSI
Transformation Maestro in Hospitality
Amir Qureshi
Director of IT, Atlantis The Palm
November 2019 CIO ONE - 23
AWARDS ROUND UP
Transformation Maestro in Manufacturing
Saymaad Mansoor
Head of IT, Siddco Group
Transformation Maestro in Media
Anoop Kumar CISO, Gulf News
Transformation Maestro in Real Estate
Transformation Maestro in Retail
Hashim Saeed
Partha Banerjee
Group Head of IT, API World Tower
CIO, Safeer Group
Digital Transformation Strategist of the year
Transformation Maestro in Information Security
Asmahan Al Zarooni
Munther Bin Amor
IT Director, Dubai Municipality
CISO, Abu Dhabi QACC
Transformation Maestro in Oil & Gas
Transformation Maestro in Digitalisation
Nehal Al Hemeiri
Hussain Alharthi
IT Strategy & Quality Assurance Section, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
IT Manager, ADDA
Transformation Maestro in Cyber security
Asma Omar Muallemi Head of Information Security, Dubai Municipality
Transformation Maestro in Civil Engineering
Ghanim Kashwani
New York University of Abu Dhabi
Transformation Maestro in Computer Science
Transformation Maestro in Cyber Security
Mohammed Saleh
Fadi Aloul
Higher College of Technology, Sharjah
American University of Sharjah
Transformation Maestro in IT Research
Khaled Shaalan
British University in Dubai
Transformation Maestro in Retail
Joji Jacob
CIO, Yusif Bin Yusif Fakhro, Bahrain
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Transformation Maestro in Manufacturing
Aiman Mahmoud
Head of IT, Havelock One Interiors, Bahrain
Transformation Maestro in Healthcare
Ahmed Salim Nasser
Director of IT, MOH - Directorate General of Health Services Al Dha-hirah Gov., Oman
AWARDS ROUND UP
Data Center Transformation Project of the year
Datamount, Oman
Lifetime Achivement Award
Barakat Alkindi
MORE WINNERS Enterprise ERP Vendor of the year
Epicor
Cloud Service Provider of the year
Guardian One Technologies DMCC
Best Education Acceleration Initiative of the year
Dubai Future Academy
Tolerance Team of the year
Area 2071
Best Customer Service Team of the year
National Ambulance
Digital Transformation Team of the Year - Government
Ministry of Finance
Transformation Maestro in FMCG
Azeemuddin Mohammed
Transformation Maestro in Cyber Security
Parvez Ahmad
Transformation Maestro in Healthcare
Mohamed Jumaa Salem Almukhaiti Al Junaibi, Head of Support Services, Ministry of
Head of IT, Al Rawabi Dairy Co. LLc. Information Security Officer, Emirates Net System LLC
Presidential Affairs - The Medical Office Transformation Maestro in Network Security
Khalfan Matar Al Hassani
Transformation Maestro in Utilities
Raed Al Ahmed
Transformation Maestro in E-Governance
Fatema Al Malki
ICT Director, Abu Dhabi Monitoring and Control Centre Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Emicool
Head of Information security, RAK e-gov
November 2019 CIO ONE - 25
INTERVIEW
SIMPLIFYING IT INFRASTRUCTURE MONITORING Jürgen Thiel (JT) - Head of Global Sales & Business Development, Paessler AG and Suresh Venkataraman (SV) - Channel Manager, MENA & India, Paessler AG describe how their organization is helping IT professionals monitor their entire infrastructure around the clock as they understand challenges of complex IT infrastructures and networks and are committed to 100 per cent uptime. The two also touch upon why their organization is fascinated by the Internet of Things.
Kindly discuss the various aspects that a network monitoring solution monitors? what should CIOs look for when choosing an effective solution? JT: There are several factors to consider. Firstly, as IT environments become more complex, it’s important to have a single view of your infrastructure. This means seeing your classical IT infrastructure, cloud services and applications, and any IoT devices you might have, all in one place. A good monitoring solution needs to bring all these disparate technologies together and provide one overview. SV: Scalability is another factor. You’ll want to consider a solution that grows with your company infrastructure. Transparency in pricing is also an important point that helps you plan your IT budget. Maybe a subscription model is the way for you to go. Besides these strategic considerations, the solution must be easy to use by your IT teams, must offer powerful dashboards for visualization, and must provide advanced notification capabilities. This will not only boost efficiency, but also make your teams happier and more productive.
How is PRTG deployed across the network - is this part of a typical NOC deployment? 26 - CIO ONE November 2019
JT: PRTG is designed to not only monitor single locations, but also multiple sites. This can be achieved with so-called Remote Probes. A Remote Probe is a Windows Application that sends out monitoring requests regardless if it is located in the local network, or in the network of a branch office. With the Map Designer in PRTG you can then visualize your data perfectly in your NOC, including data from remote locations.
What are the typical challenges a network without a network monitoring solution has to face? How does that impact efficiencies? SV: Without a network monitoring solution, you will always be reacting to emergencies instead of proactively avoiding problems. Network monitoring provides you with alerts and notifications before things happen – for example, if a server hard disk is showing early signs of failure, or there is sudden unusual traffic in the network. The other aspect of monitoring is it gives you more data about your network that lets you configure it better. For example: data from network monitoring can show you where bottlenecks might be occurring, and you can then take steps to improve the situation, like updating QoS policies or upgrading hardware.
Is network configuration management a key feature that network monitoring solutions need to address? JT: The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) developed a model called “FCAPS’ to create a definition for network management. “FCAPS” stands for Fault Management, Configuration Management, Accounting Management, Performance Management, and Security Management. Tools for network management allow you to actively access your network. They are used for operations performed directly inside the network, such as a backup or an update. Network Monitoring software such as PRTG, on the other hand, -being a Performance Management tool- is used to passively monitor your networks, systems, devices, and apps. This software sends you a message in the event of an error or malfunction, subsequently allowing you to actively go to work inside the network. Some sensors in PRTG to help you get started with network management are SNMP sensors, packet sniffer sensors, WMI sensors and netflow sensors.”
How are IoT deployments in network increasing the challenge for network monitoring. Elaborate on the IoT focus in PRTG solution
INTERVIEW
Jürgen Thiel
Head of Global Sales & Business Development, Paessler AG
JT: With technology like LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area-Network), the IoT is already on your doorstep, whether you use it to transmit environmental data (like temperature, humidity, or measuring water pressure in pipes) or location data (like tracking cargo containers). The responsibilities of IT teams will change— and PRTG has functionality in place to help bring IoT devices into your monitoring view. Many IoT devices offer a RESTful interface for accessing information. PRTG provides a Rest Custom Sensor that can be configured to query these REST APIs of IoT devices. PRTG utilizes REST API, MQTT & HTTP technologies to monitor IoT devices. PRTG also has a strategic partnership with Sigfox, one of the world’s most important LPWAN providers, to provide you with even more options for monitoring IoT devices.
Please elaborate on the subscription model you have launched recently with PRTG plus?
With PRTG PLUS we offer increased scale and architectural flexibility for large IT environments, allowing you to deploy 50,000 or more sensors across an unlimited number of PRTG core servers. Its a flexible and transparent OpEx-based cost model that allows you to scale PRTG according to your specific needs.
across on premises and cloud deployments concurrently?
JT: Besides its on-premises solution, Paessler also offers PRTG as a cloud-based solution. This offers you the maximum flexibility based on your setup. Furthermore PRTG offers various sensors that enable you to keep an eye on your classical IT infrastructure (servers, switches, bandwith, traffic, etc.) as well as dedicated sensors for cloud management services (e.g. Amazon CloudWatch monitoring or cloud HTTP monitoring).
Elaborate the major verticals of focus for the company in the region? SV: Right now the focus is on two industries, namely healthcare IT and retail. With healthcare IT, we now have a situation where there is a lot of overlap between tradi-
Suresh Venkataraman
Channel Manager, MENA & India, Paessler AG tional IT infrastructure like routers, switches, and so on, and medical devices and systems. To get a patient from the hospital reception desk to an imaging examination (like X-Rays), and then to get those images to the attending doctor for a diagnosis, requires that multiple systems are up and running. This means to keep hospital workflows operating smoothly, system administrators need a monitoring overview of everything: traditional IT and the medical infrastructure. PRTG has functionality to help with this. For Retail, you generally have large chains of stores at different locations with Point of Sales systems, printers, switches, firewalls and servers. With PRTG, it’s easy to have a core server at a single location – usually at head office – and then monitor the infrastructure at each location using remote probes. The network status of all locations can then be shown on a single dashboard.
JT: With PRTG PLUS we offer increased scale and architectural flexibility for large IT environments, allowing you to deploy 50,000 or more sensors across an unlimited number of PRTG core servers. Its a flexible and transparent OpEx-based cost model that allows you to scale PRTG according to your specific needs.
Discuss how the solution is able to manage monitoring November 2019 CIO ONE - 27
CASE STUDY
AL MASAH CAPITAL MIGRATES TO THEIR OWN PRIVATE CLOUD, CUTS DOWN ON OPERATIONAL COSTS Guardian One Technologies (GOT), Al Masah Capital’s IT company, has ensured that their digital transformation journey is on track, by leading migration to the cloud.
By Baraka Jefwa
Al Masah Capital, which is domiciled in the Cayman Islands with offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates, is one of the leading independent advisory and asset management firms in the GCC, (write full name first and initials in brackets and then refer to the initials later in the paper) with a global reach, that provides an array of investment offerings and advisory solutions tailored to the needs of our broad client base. The group focuses on providing in-depth expertise, generating performance and value. A culture of innovation is an essential part of its DNA as it strives to stay ahead of its clients’ needs. With technology being a key catalyst of innovation today, the company is still determined to stay ahead of the curve as it embarks on their very own transformation journey. The man in charge of this journey, Ashith Piriyattiath, the group’s Head of Information Technology, is one with more than 17 years of experience in the Information Technology field. Prior to joining Al Masah Capital, Ashith Piriyattiath worked at Aspen Health Care as Regional Head of IT for EMENAC Region, focusing on IT Business Application Management, Infrastructure Management, Change Management and Development and implementation of IT Strategic plan for the region.
A NEED ARISES “Four years ago, when I joined the organisation, I could feel that the group was having IT as a decoupled function. So, I proposed to the
28 - CIO ONE November 2019
Ashith Piriyattiath
Hthe group’s Head of IT, Al Masah Capital Limited
CASE STUDY
management to make it a centralised function. At the time we were focusing on private equity sector business and the board was not interested in centralising the organisation’s overall IT function. However, I was given permission to centralise segment-wise,” said Piriyattiath. “Later on, with all the digital transformation projects we were undertaking, we realised that we were spending over $2 million for IT operations. I approached the board again, this time explaining that the operation expense was high and that there were a lot of third parties involved in the business; we were lacking inskilled resource and this was causing a lot of money to go outside of the organisation. I proposed to the board to centralise IT and make it a profit centre. The board in turn approved and agreed with me to go for an IT company and that is how GOT was born,” he added.
GUARDIAN ONE TECHNOLOGIES According to Piriyattiath, GOT services Al Masah Capital’s internal IT divisions which includes 138 internal assets. The organisation started supporting external business in midApril and is currently one of the pioneers in Data Centre, Managed Hosting (is this correct? Check on it) and Cloud Infrastructure Services in the UAE. The company owns and operates Data Centres in the UAE and Singapore, delivering Managed and Dedicated Server Co-location Services, through reliable infrastructure, 24/7 support and guaranteed uptime. “We have an established managed services portfolio and a large customer base including small, medium and large enterprises. We also offer a complete stack of Managed Services and have extensive industry experience and insights from working with customers across various industry sectors such as, Information Technology, Healthcare, Retail, Logistics, F&B and many more,” Piriyattiath further added. Wearing two hats as Al Masah Capital, Group Head of IT and CEO of GOT, Piriyattiath notes that being CEO is a new transformation for him, at a personal level, as he had never been involved in the business side of running an organisation. “As we started the business, the management wanted me to be involved as a stakeholder and a board member of GOT as they wanted me to lead the business. The difference between being CIO and moving to CEO for me is that
I was coming from a purely technical background. Even though as CIO I was focused on the strategic plans and vision of the group, as CEO I am now responsible for the profits and losses of the company,” he explained. “In my role as CEO, I’ve found my 18+ years of experience as a CIO to be very helpful as I’m able to view the business from a customer angle and thus can keep clients happy, as I know what they expect. On the other hand, managing the profits and losses is a new responsibility completely, but my experience helps me to structure the products and services we are offering in packages that make sense,” he continued. One of GOT’s customer, Al Najah Education, was able to achieve a reduction in operational IT expenses by 30% at record time. GOT migrated all of Al Najah’s group of schools into its consolidated co-location data centre and implemented a new state-of-the-art School Management System to drive innovation and simplify operations. Piriyattiath explained further, “At Al Masah Capital, we are still on the digital transformation track, the major transformation that has happened this year is that we have moved our complete group platforms to our own private cloud. So, at GOT we have products to sell to external customers, and on the other hand we also look after IT functions for all our internal entities; we have a digital innovations team sitting in our office in India. The team does research on IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence and robotics. There are multiple in-house projects coming up where we will have 360 solutions focusing on automating the organisation,”
The organisation begun its journey in 2015; it migrated all its emails from on premise infrastructure to office 365. The next step for the organisation was to migrate all its file servers, active directories and business applications to the cloud. Piriyattiath notes that the organisation considered both local cloud service providers and major players before it settled on a major player. “The biggest risk for us with major players was not understanding their offerings in terms of latency. We got a good proposal from a major player who ended up hosting us in Paris. The latency was rectified, and everything seemed to be working well. However, we later realised that the cost of being hosted was too high, and being in the financial industry we thought of investing in our own cloud data centre so that we could cultivate revenue from our own internal business and extend our offerings to external customers,” The organisation’s move to private cloud was accelerated as the group continued to grow in stature. Piriyattiath says that as a start-up they could heavily rely on IBM, but as they continued to increase the number of entities. The management thought that it would be best to have their own data centre to help them in better data management. “With our move to private cloud the key thing is that we have complete control over data sovereignty and data ownership. It is important for CIOs migrating to cloud to have a cloud entry and exit strategy to ensure that their organisation data is safe and secure. In terms of impact to the business, our migration has helped us cut on costs, and the data centre is an asset for us.” Piriyattiath concluded.
November 2019 CIO ONE - 29
CASE STUDY
MAF CHOOSES HYPER INTERGRATED PLATFORM FOR IMPROVED ENTERPRISE WIDE COMMUNICATION Leading retail brand integrates Apigee and Auth0 for an enterprise wide, integration platform, for enabling cross talk between a complex ecosystem of heterogeneous applications and systems, spread across multiple operating entities and geographical boundaries. By Baraka Jefwa Founded in 1992, Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is the leading shopping mall, communities, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. MAF has since grown into one of the United Arab Emirates’ most respected and successful businesses spanning 15 international markets, employing more than 43,000 people, and obtaining the highest credit rating (BBB) among privately held corporates in the region. Tabish Asifi, Group IT Governance Lead (Digital Transformation), Majid Al Futtaim said, “I come from a mix of consulting and industry background, having worked in IT leadership positions in this region for more than 12 years. I joined Majid Alfuttaim Holding (MAF) a little more than a year ago, as a group IT governance lead. In line with the "digital first" strategy of MAF, I play a key role in the areas of governance with respect to its digital transformation journey,” Asifi says that his first and foremost responsibility as part of IT governance, is to ensure business and IT alignment, to direct the digital initiatives of MAF, towards fulfilling its most strategic business goals. “The other two focus areas for me are to ensure benefit realization and performance measurements for our digital initiatives. The overall endeavour is to increase transparency to business on the value we deliver through various digital initiatives and establishment of centres of excellence,” he added.
Tabish Asif
Group IT Governance Lead, Majid Al Futtaim
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DRIVERS OF CHANGE As one of the leaders responsible for driving the digital change in the organization, Asifi explains that the reason for MAF embarking on its transformation journey was their
CASE STUDY “The API monetization feature of Apigee, is also something we are still exploring, and I believe it will prove to be of great value once we move to a micro service architecture model, which is already in the roadmap. There are many other useful features of the platform, but I have touched on these few just to give some flavour.” senior management and the board, as they had already been sensitive to the digital potential and risks. In-fact it was mentioned in the MAF investor presentation of 2017, where MAF leadership had identified key drivers for change in line with a new set of strategic direction. "Going Digital" was one of them. “It was an adaptive response to changing customer expectations in the market, especially in terms of the customers evolved need for more personalized services, better omnichannel experience etc. When I joined last year, we were already getting started on the transformation journey,” Asifi said. “The situation was ripe, and the expectation of the higher management was set. We were unified in our understanding that our next stage of evolution would be built on the foundations of transformative digital capabilities. I was on-boarded as part of a core strategic team that was positioned under MAF Holding under "corporate development and strategy" function, to give structure and direction to this journey and to scale up as and when deemed fit,” he added. According to Asifi the team was positioned to drive three major goals for MAF as a group (including MAF business units). The first one was to further develop, refine and detail the group’s overall digital strategy, while understanding the complexity and uniqueness of various business units operating in different verticals within the conglomerate. The second key focus area for the team was to develop an enterprise architect perspective for the technology landscape of MAF and to give it a future safe direction. The third focus area was to identify, qualify and execute high potential / high impact initiatives and programs from a shared (cross opco/ business units) perspec-
tive. “This could be for example, driving a cross opco program like development of a single, all-encompassing MAF loyalty application for enhancing MAF customer experience (crossing boundaries with various MAF business units) or developing a centralized HIP (hyper integrated platform) capability that would allow us to connect and facilitate cross talk with various disparate applications and technology components in order to build up higher value offerings, while leveraging our existing capabilities within MAF,” said Asifi.
TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS Asifi further explained, “in terms of building the foundations of technology as an enabler to take us to the next level of digital agility, there were two major areas that really needed to be worked upon as priority. One was in the area of integration of heterogeneous systems across different MAF operating companies, and the other was in the area of cloud migration of many in-house technology components,” The cloud migration challenge was, according to Asifi, the easier area they had to work on. A roadmap was developed to move all of the qualified systems and apps over a period of around two years largely on AWS (Amazon cloud) while also exploring the Google Cloud (GCP) options as and where it seemed to be a better fit. The more challenging area for the team was to work on the development of an enterprise wide, integration platform, for enabling cross talk between a complex ecosystem of heterogeneous applications and systems, spread across multiple operating entities and geographical boundaries. Giving more detail on the hyper integrated platform (HIP) earlier mentioned, Asifi said, “we consulted with a tier one consulting firm and hired a lead architect in our team. The nature and complexity of the project demanded that we involve specialists in this area since it was going to impact almost all the layers of the technology stack for any shared projects that we would execute for MAF soon. Also, since it was essentially a capability building effort, to be actualized in form of an integration platform, it was largely irreversible and had strategic importance for us. So, there was not much scope for error or misjudgement,” After due diligence the team zeroed in on two key technology components to be established in the first phase, which would give them the maximum ground coverage in a relatively short time frame. One was, the establishment of a centralized API orchestration/management layer and the other was a centralized au-
thentication/authorization layer. For the centralized API management their choice rested on Apigee (part of google cloud). And for the centralized authentication/ authorization platform they opted for Auth0.
Results “For us Apigee, was a great choice, even in hindsight. Initially, our positive leaning towards it was primarily because of it being recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2019, under the "API Management" category. We used that platform, for enabling integration between the new loyalty system implemented for MAF (known externally as "Share"), with the other underlying, loyalty systems (still functional), residing within MAF Carrefour and Vox for example,” said Asifi. “In this phase of discovery and competency building, for the Apigee platform, we realized more of its true potential as our team became familiar with its intricacies and capabilities. The first and the most important plus point, of the integration platform itself, was the quick adoption by the developers. That's typically one of the first hurdles that comes with the introduction of any new digital platform. We got through it the easy way,” he continued. According to Asifi, the system is inherently easy to use and get familiarized with. Availability of lots of reference documents and forums, just adds to the ease of adoption by developers. On top of that, as a platform it is fairly comprehensive, covering the full life cycle of API management i.e. designing, developing, publishing and even versioning of API's. “I don't want to sound like a brand ambassador for the Apigee platform and I am sure there are other equivalent platforms out there, but our experience with this platform has been great till date. The API analytics engine from the Apigee platform was also particularly useful and relevant for us. Since implementing these technology elements, we are also continuously enriching our business case by capturing its value generation, and the analytical insights in terms of % utilization, increased performance, better control, increased time to market etc helped us fill in the details in an objective manner,” he explained. “The API monetization feature of Apigee, is also something we are still exploring, and I believe it will prove to be of great value once we move to a micro service architecture model, which is already in the roadmap. There are many other useful features of the platform, but I have touched on these few just to give some flavour.” Asifi concluded.
November 2019 CIO ONE - 31
INTERVIEW
FINGER ON SCURITY’S PULSE
Abdul Rehman Tariq, Regional Sales Director – MEA at pulse secure reaffirms why enterprises of every size and industry have been trusting their solutions to enable secure access seamlessly in their organizations.
Discuss your secure access solutions for hybrid IT infrastructure? what are the major concerns of CIOs with digital transformation you address with your range of solutions? Secure Access ensures that authorized users can securely connect to applications and information at any time, from any location, using any device, over any network. Traditionally, security has been primarily about control. Secure Access, in contrast, is designed with a seamless, protected user experience in mind. It is a model based on enablement rather than restriction. The objective is to deliver simple and frictionless access to enterprise information, applications and services without compromising security. Pulse Secure provides easy, comprehensive software-driven Secure Access solutions for people, devices, things and services that improve visibility, protection and productivity for our customers. Our suites uniquely integrate cloud, mobile, application and network access to enable hybrid IT in a Zero Trust world. Over 20,000 enterprises and service providers across every vertical entrust Pulse Secure to empower their mobile workforce to securely access applications and information in the data center and cloud while ensuring business compliance.
Do you see adoption rates for software-defined Secure Access solutions increasing in the region? what are the driving factors for the same? The Middle East region has a very high rate of adoption to Software defined solutions. We are working very closely with our existing customers, as well as new ones, to help them define their Secure Access strategy. There is a strong focus on consolidation of different point solutions to provide one Single provider
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of the Software Defined Security Perimeter, and Pulse Secure is the pioneer of the SDP offering. With adoption technologies like IoT, BYOD, Hybrid Cloud on the rise, our Software defined solution is perfectly placed to provide the Security needed to deploy these technologies, while ensuring compliance and security,
Are your solutions available for both on premise and cloud-based delivery? Workers demand seamless connectivity and access from their office, coffee house, car, home, train, hotel, and plane to applications and resources increasingly in the cloud. Pulse Secure’s Access Suite offers complete, endto-end usability, visibility and protection to enable remote, mobile and cloud access to hybrid IT services and applications from any device. The Suite offers procurement ease with flexible capabilities, deployment and licensing to provide reduced total cost of ownership. We provide the ability to deliver all our solutions On-Premise, through the Cloud, or as a mixture of both.
Elaborate on securing IOT applications - is this requirement rising in the region? IT organizations have been undergoing a fundamental shift in the types of devices they have to support that have been connecting to the network in the past decade. The days are long gone when IT staff had to support only desktops and laptops. Mobile BYOD devices represented the first wave of devices to change the status quo in terms of opening the network beyond corporate owned devices. IoT devices are the new wave of devices that are connecting to enterprise networks. While these devices bring with them ease of use and management along with monitoring capabilities by virtue of being IP enabled, they also
Abdul Rehman Tariq, Regional Sales Director - MEA, Pulse Sequre
present unique challenges for enterprise security teams. Previously adopted security practices must be relooked at to mitigate risk and ensure compliance to policies in light of the changing threat landscape. The increased attack surface is proving to be a new vector of attack that hackers are using to gain access into other parts of the network through lateral movement. There is a definite requirement in the region for securing these applications, and Pulse Secure along with its ecosystem of alliances and partners can address these needs in the region.
Elaborate on support your provide customers directly and via any local partners? Pulse Secure offers 24 x 7 x 365 Global Customer Service for partners and customers. The Global Support team handles support issues and security vulnerability issues for all Pulse Secure products. Our support team includes Customer Care, Global Support Center (GSC) engineers, and Global Escalation Center (GEC) engineers. Escalation Managers are available 24x7 to assist with case escalations for urgent issues or when the customer needs faster progress. On top of this, we also offer Partner level support via our Elite partners. This enables a customer to open L0,L1 cases through the local partners who own the SLAs with the customer. It also allows partners to be profitable as well when selling PAR support.
COLUMN
BUILDING RESILIENCE TO CYBER WEAKNESS DURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION No organization functions in a zero-risk environment but digital transformation is rapidly exposing weaknesses in the cyber security fabric of an organization, prompting risk assessment and continuity planning, explains Yasser Zeineldin, CEO, eHosting DataFort. For regional businesses, it appears their exposure to risk is continuously moving upwards. In the past, risks were limited to acts of nature, macroeconomic volatility and depending on the geography of the country, possible hostilities with adjacent countries. Today, there are additional variables that need to be brought into the assessment of risk for businesses. The exposure of an organization to cyber threats and the added vulnerability of an organization due to its embarking on a digital transformation journey, are recent variables whose risk impact needs to be added into the overall equation of resilience. Booz Allen Hamilton estimates that the annual global losses from exposure to cybersecurity threats is $600 billion, bringing the average loss per cybersecurity breach to an estimated $3.86 million. Moreover, the intensity and frequency of cyberattacks are being amplified by the adoption of digital transformation technologies. Digital transformation technologies are rapidly removing silos and barriers that used to exist due to legacy technologies and, analog industrial control systems. This is making organizations more interconnected and can contribute to a domino-like cascading effect in the case of significant breaches into regional enterprises. The rapid adoption of digital technologies is also throwing legislation into a catch-up game and bringing information technology departments, CIOs, CISOs, into the forefront in terms of interpretations and implementations of new guidelines and compliances. All put together, the working environments of both business and information technology are becoming more complex to manage, raising the possibility of costly and unpredictable errors. Booz Allen states that growing complexities stemming from rapid digitalization and
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changes in legislation are having a dizzying effect on businesses. Organization heads are still grappling with the speed of digital transformation and the impact of growing interconnectivity on their business landscape. They have had even less time to factor in the additional challenge of their vastly exposed cybersecurity landscape, amongst all these numerous other challenges. Lack of adequate risk management in the face of advanced cyber security threat attacks, growth of interconnected enterprises, and rapid adoption of digital technologies, are eroding 10.2% of annual profits on an average of global organizations, through unplanned errors.
So, what is the way forward now? Organizations adopting digital technologies such as Cloud, analytics and artificial intelligence, mobility, Internet of Things, must adopt a two-pronged approach towards building their future resilience. No organization can operate in a utopian climate of zero risk and hence as the first step an organization should perform an objective assessment like a SWOT analysis (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunity-Threats) or equivalent to identify the organization's strength and weaknesses including a rigorous cyber security related Threat and Vulnerability assessment. The second step is to build a recovery and continuity process through any disruption to keep the organization functioning with minimum of loss and performance�. During the first stage of planning, as a process of risk management, it is important to identify all the risks that can cause disruption in an organization's capability to function. This includes weaknesses in an organization's cyber security framework, and the probability of their exploitation. Following this, is the busi-
Yasser Zeinekdin
CEO, eHosting DataFort ness impact analysis, to quantify the business loss from the impact of each of these possible cyber security disruptions. This will lead to a matrix of incidents between most probable and most disruptive to an organization's functioning and performance. Some of the numeric metrics used at this stage are the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD), the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). The second stage, involves detailed planning on how critical processes within the organization can continue to function and meet the expectations of MTPD, RTO and RPO objectives. However, this planning may not be of much use unless it is practiced and tested and improved, across the organization. Feedback and open communication across the organization, on improvement of such continuity process planning, are an important part of building resilience during adoption of digital transformation, amongst others.
COLUMN Historically, organizations have struggled to gain visibility of what users, devices and applications are accessing their network infrastructure. If the maxim “you can’t protect what you can’t see” holds true, then the prospect of the Internet of Things (IoT) business transition which will result in billions of devices connecting to IP networks is a nightmare in waiting. Identification and classification of IoT devices is particularly problematic because the range of new device types leveraging the IP network is going to explode making it harder for IT security teams to manage and control policies that protect these new devices from themselves and the existing IP connected services. Beyond controlling accessing and setting policy, IoT also presents a sizable headache when it comes to detecting breaches and enabling effective response. The plethora of protocols that IoT devices will leverage, spanning a broad range of vertical industries from Healthcare to Retail will make it hard for traditional security platforms to detect breaches. Malware sandboxes whose expertise is identifying abuse of well-known operating systems such as Windows servers will have a steep learning curve to apply the same detection for the bespoke applications running on proprietary software platforms. Instead organizations will have to rely heavily on secure IoT endpoint platforms to try and reduce the potential attack surface area. Surely there must be a simpler way to approach these problems. A common denominator that can cope with the breadth of platforms and devices that IoT will present. That common denominator could well be an infrastructure that is already prevalent across all IP networks, whether they be corporate network, public clouds, next generation data centers and even the Internet. That infrastructure would be the DHCP, DNS and IP address management (DDI) infrastructure which for the past 30 years has provided internet scale to all IP connected devices. How could this ubiquitous infrastructure be applied to the address the challenges of IoT?
DEVICE IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION Starting with device identification and classification. IP connected IoT devices are going to require an IP address. If the addresses are statically provisioned organizations will need an IP address management platform to manage the IP address space, even more so given the dramatic increase in consumption of addresses. Even if the devices are going to use IPv6 where address space is not constrained, managing and tracking those addresses is an important operational need. Similarly, if
VISIBILITY AND ANOMALY DETECTION IN THE AGE OF IOT
Craig Sanderson, Senior Director of Security Products at Infoblox writes that IoT presents a sizable headache when it comes to detecting breaches and enabling effective response the devices obtain their addresses dynamically, they will still need a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server to provide those addresses. In either case the centralized platforms that manage the IP address space will have a comprehensive view of what devices are on the network. More so, through the static address management process there is the opportunity to classify the device at the moment of provisioning. In the case of DHCP, the DHCP request from the IoT device provides a fingerprint that would enable the DHCP server to classify what devices is requesting an address. There does not seem to be any better common way to identify and classify the broad range of IoT devices than with an IP address management and DHCP platform.
THREAT DETECTION
Craig Sanderson
Senior Director of Security Products, Infoblox
In the case of threat detection there is an advantage to protecting devices over users. Anomaly detection for users is difficult because it’s hard to predict what a user’s normal behaviour is. Machines on the other hand tend to be far more predictable which means anomaly detection could be a fruitful way of identifying compromised machines. One common means of applying anomaly detection across the breadth of IoT devices would be to leverage their DNS activity. Since statically configuring applications and services is impractical and not scalable, most IoT devices will leverage DNS to dynamically locate the services and platforms it needs to interact with. DNS provides that flexibility enabling services to be re-located between networks whilst maintaining a common point of reference: the fully qualified domain. On this premise, it’s possible to monitor and model the services the IoT device seeks to
communicate with. If for example there is an IoT thermostat made by a manufacturer in Germany, it may communicate back to the manufacturer for software updates, leveraging DNS to resolve the address of the update server in Germany. DNS servers could model that behaviour and if the device began to deviate from its typical pattern of behaviour, perhaps by attempting to resolve services in a previously unknown location, that would provide an indication of compromise. The common need for IoT devices to use DNS to locate services provides a simple, scalable and consistent model for detecting potential breaches. Given the looming challenges of IoT, it’s worth considering how the DNS and DHCP platforms that serve IT infrastructure today could be repurposed as a scalable tool for device classification and breach detection.
November 2019 CIO ONE - 35
COLUMN
CIOs CONFIRM WORKFLOW DIGITISATION IS IMPROVING OUTCOMES ACROSS CRITICAL BUSINESS FUNCTIONS ServiceNow study reveals weaknesses in people and process are holding back digital transformation results
CIOs across EMEA report that digitisation is increasing the effectiveness of key business lines, including customer service, HR, finance, IT and legal, yet a large proportion face challenges in continuing that impact because of weaknesses in their organisations. That’s according to research from ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the leading digital workflow company making work, work better for people.
partners: While 51% of CIOs say their collaboration with external partners is mostly effective, for many, the value they get from those relationships remains a work in progress. Only 17% say they’re highly effective at working with external partners to drive digital transformation projects. 3. Aligning digitisation goals to business
goals. Just 18% of CIOs report that they are highly effective at setting business goals that permeate all areas of the business. 4. Embedding IT into an organisation. Few CIOs excel at embedding IT across the business, with just 15% agreeing their organisation is highly effective at building out specialised teams across functions to carry out digital transformation.
The global survey of 516 CIOs conducted by Oxford Economics, reveals that around twothirds (66%) have automated at least 50% of the processes and workflows in their organisation. By 2022, 96% of CIOs will have digitised at least half of their company’s workflows.
5. Tracking results and adjusting strategy. There’s substantial room for improvement on how digitisation efforts are shared with the business, as only 18% of CIOs think they are highly effective at measuring progress and presenting results to leadership.
However, CIOs are facing challenges in fully realising the potential impact of digitisation because of weaknesses in their organisation, which are undermining digitisation strategy.
“CIOs are playing a pivotal role in driving digital transformation strategies and their efforts are improving outcomes across multiple business areas, including HR, finance, IT and legal,” says Chris Pope, VP Innovation, ServiceNow. “Yet many CIOs are struggling to push through lasting benefits.”
To advance digitisation and drive greater success across business functions, EMEA CIOs should consider these five steps as being critical: 1. Collaborating with c-suite peers: While 61% of CIOs say they collaborate with their company’s COO to standardise workflows through digitisation and 50% of CIOs say they collaborate with their CEOs, far fewer work with other execs. In fact, 21% say they alone are responsible for workflow digitisation. 2. Collaborating with external
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Chris Pope
VP Innovation, ServiceNow
“To really make an impact with a digitisation strategy, CIOs need to address the people and process aspects within their organisation. By addressing the challenges of cross-organisation collaboration, embedding IT within every business line and ensuring complete alignment of IT and business goals, CIOs will accelerate the realisation of benefits including innovation, better financial performance, and enhanced employee performance,” adds Chris Pope.
NEW TECH
MICROSOFT INTRODUCES TEAM-EMPOWERING SURFACE HUB 2S TO UAE MARKET Company brings intelligent edge to life at region’s premier tech expo, showing how the newest addition to the Surface family connects to a rich ecosystem of Windows 10, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Microsoft Whiteboard and the intelligent cloud – to unlock the productivity of teams Microsoft recently underscored its commitment to enriching teamwork across the region, when it unveiled its Surface Hub 2S device, which delivers unprecedented battery-enabled mobility and collaboration in a 50-inch powerhouse. “We designed Surface Hub 2S with the region’s teams in mind,” said Mirna Arif, Surface Business Group Director at Microsoft Middle East and Africa. “With the latest addition to our Surface family, we have built a bridge between the digital and physical workspaces, in deference to how the nature of work continues to evolve. The modern workplace demands more from employees, and crossskilled teams collaborating continuously has become the new norm.” Bringing together Windows 10, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Microsoft Whiteboard and the intelligent Microsoft Cloud, Surface Hub 2S enables teams to work in entirely new ways and gives them the flexibility to come together wherever they work best. It takes something that has long been a fixture in the conference
room – the shared screen – and transforms it into a mobile computer, built for teams. Surface Hub 2S packs 50% faster graphics performance than the original Surface Hub and offers the thinnest edge and smallest bezels in its class, bringing you closer to your content and your team and integrating seamlessly into any office environment. 40% lighter than its predecessor, and with a 60% thinner display, Surface Hub 2S fits easily into any space, from a traditional conference area to a compact meeting room. When paired with the Steelcase Roam Mobile Stand and APC Charge Mobile Battery, Surface Hub 2S creates a mobile collaboration experience that frees teams from the conference room and allows your ideas to be as mobile as you are – no AC power connectivity required. A vibrant 4K+ 50-inch multi-touch display offers a lustrous canvas for collaboration, with the best pen and touch experience and the highest resolution found in a device in its class. The enhanced 4K camera, crystal clear speakers and far-field mic arrays help every-
one on the team – local or remote – see and engage with the meeting content and each other, making it feel almost like everyone is in the same room together. “At Microsoft, we work tirelessly to help individuals and organisations achieve more,” Mirna Arif added. “The empowerment of employees promised by digital transformation has essentially become the empowerment of teams, so we have designed Office 365 to put collaboration front and centre and let people work together in real time from any device. Microsoft Teams is a secure virtual huddle where teams can access all the tools they need to innovate effectively, and Microsoft Whiteboard has been enhanced with new AI that allows teams to work smarter.” Surface Hub 2S, with prices starting at AED 34,870, comes with one Surface Hub 2 Pen and one Surface Hub 2 Camera included, and is available now from selected Surface Hub partners.
November 2019 CIO ONE - 37
MARKETSCAPE
79% OF UAE BUSINESSES IDENTIFIES A DATA-SAVVY WORKFORCE AS BUSINESS-CRITICAL Study commissioned by Alteryx confirms the urgency in fostering a culture of analytics to achieve digital business transformation An Alteryx-commissioned research uncovers the benefits and impact of data analytics in digitisation projects across six of the most digitally advanced countries in the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Europe. In the United Arab Emirates, Alteryx surveyed 500 UAE businesses to understand how data and analytics are driving their businesses to thrive in this data-led world.
Data is permeating every part of business and is key to success Data insights are seen as key to delivering better customer experiences through deeper relationships and helping to propel businesses to new heights. With more than three-quarters of the UAE survey respondents (79%) agreeing that data is a critical corporate asset for driving the business forward it’s clear that businesses are taking advantage of what seems to be insurmountable data sources across industries and internal functions. When it comes to where businesses are in their analytical journey, almost two thirds (62%) of the UAE businesses class themselves in the advanced stages of their journeys. For those companies leveraging data for insights over two fifths (41%) report the major business benefit as increased productivity. Highlighting its status as one of the most advanced digital economies, nearly three quarters (70%) of the UAE businesses believe that data has become so valuable it’s equivalent to a new currency.
Businesses can’t win in analytics without the human element As the shortage of data scientists continues to persist, businesses are asking those in analytics and line-of-business roles to do more, to know more and to answer pressing business questions with data. With digital skills classed as a major priority for businesses, over four in five (83%) agree that everything they are investing in data and analytics is useless without people who understand it. Proving that businesses simply cannot tackle the existing technical challenges in a data-driven industry without the right workforce, more than two fifths (41%) reported that it was easier to access the talent needed to manage analytics than last year, while almost one in three (32%) have a team of dedicated data scien-
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tists for all their analytics work. The trend is apparent with nearly half of (40%) the UAE businesses prioritizing a focus on employee data skills and talent to avoid being left behind as the world of data-driven analytics heats up around them.
A culture of data and analytics is needed to transform data into actionable insights, but we aren’t there yet Companies recognise both the tremendous potential for data and the urgency in fostering a culture of analytics to achieve digital business transformation, but still point to a gap in data literacy across their organisations. In an increasingly data-driven world, over two thirds (70%) of respondents agree that data progression is also key to career progression. Many respondents (35%) noted that a culture of data and analytics will be the biggest game-changer for analytic success. However, more importantly, two fifths (40%) state they need more focus on employee skills and talent to drive transformation.
Technology can be an enabler or a constraint to data analytics success Creating and maintaining a data literate organisation requires the right technology, people and culture in place. Proving data will always be at the forefront and one of the most important drivers of success and true digital disruption, businesses across the UAE reported the top three technology enablers having the greatest impact on their business today as data and analytics (42%), artificial intelligence/machine learning (36%) and blockchain (33%).Technology can also be a constraint to a data-driven business, so it’s crucial for organisations to continually modernize their analytic journey in order to accelerate time-to-insight and break barriers. Almost one-third of data science professionals are requesting significant investments in their data platforms and services to support a spectrum of analytic game-changers such as predictive analytics, AI/ML, R/Python and other tools to support the advancement of data and analytics in their organizations. UAE businesses anticipate the biggest technology game-changers for data analytics success within the next five years to include
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