The advantage in transforming faster PUBLISHED BY Business Media International REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City www.bmi-digital.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Raman Narayan narayan@smartsmb.net Mob: 971-55-7802403 SALES DIRECTOR Ankit Shukla ankit@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706, Mob: 971-552572807 MARKETING & EVENTS MANAGER Smitha Jithesh smitha@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 CIRCULATION MANAGER Bhawana Bhatia bhawana@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 TELE MARKETING MANAGER Jennefer Mendoza jennefer@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 FINANCE Vishal Tiwari vishal@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 DESIGN Sanal Chandra design@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706
It is quite reasonable to presume that mid-sized or SMB companies typically can take swifter decisions that make them faster to market vis-avis larger sized competitors, whose decision making processes maybe lengthier. That in fact places them in an advantageous position to be faster to adopt new technologies coming in, make and execute new plans vis-a-vis entering new markets, adding new products and services etc. This is perhaps why you would expect them to be faster to adopt digital transformation strategies. Digital transformation gives smaller companies the ability to scale up their ambitions and go global, compete with larger competitors and find bigger success. With less legacy IT infrastructure that could be a bottleneck, SMB companies can adopt cloud computing and other IT productivity tools quite faster vis-a-vis large enterprises. This could also be the case with emerging technologies like AI or blockchain based tools as well, where the UAE in particular, is taking the lead in adoption, driven by a strong government vision. With so much going for them, they should indeed accelerate their transition to new generation IT infrastructure, that also helps them save costs of operations in addition to enhancing capabilities. For the early adopters, like in most instances from history, the advantages would be much more than those who join in later. In every domain or vertical, companies that have deployed superior customer facing technologies, are better placed to serve their end customers or end users well. And if they have a robust and secure backend network infrastructure, they truly can pursue their core business objectives with greater focus. Allow me at this point, to introduce Smart SMB, a magazine that will retell stories of transformation from the dynamic and diverse midmarket. This inaugural issue includes select stories of IT deployments from different verticals that have enabled better outcomes in end user service. We hope you enjoy reading it and please do share any feedback if you have. To do so, please drop me an email at narayan@smartsmb.net
R. Narayan Editor in Chief Smart SMB Management Chairman S. N. Tiwari
sn.tiwari@smartsmb.net
Managing Director Ankit Shukla
ankit@smartsmb.net
Publisher Raman Narayan
narayan@smartsmb.net
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@2018 Business Media International LLC. All rights reserved.
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CONTENT
CONTENTS NEWS
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IMPROVING CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Feature A DIGITAL AWAKENING
Talkpoint
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Youssef Fawaz, GM at Al Rostamani Communications discusses how the company is enabling clients towards digital transformation
Opinion INVESTING IN YOUR WORKFORCE
SMB companies will need to adopt digital transformation as a strategy to get ahead
Zaki Ameer, CEO and Found of Dream Design Real Estate (DDP) explores why every business owner and team leader should invest in their workforce.
Case Study ENHANCED CONNECTIVITY
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An advanced suite of WiFi solutions from Aruba has set up the Steigenberger hotel in Business Bay to offer world class seamless network connectivity
AN INSIGHTFUL FUTURE
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Multiplex International LLC opts for an ERP deployment from Epicor
ENABLING CONNECTED LEARNING
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WIRELESS: BIG BENEFITS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
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Morten Illum, VP of EMEA, Aruba, a HPE company discusses the benefits of a fast, reliable WiFi network
VAT GAINS
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Vikas Panchal, Business Head at Tally Solutions, opines that GCC residents benefit from the cheapest tax rate
D-Link’s deployment of unified wireless solutions at Al Rashid Al Saleh School enabled it to adopt e-learning infrastructure
Techwatch- pg 36 Market Mirror-pg 38
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RETAIL INDUSTRY AT CROSSROADS BLOCKCHAIN SUMMIT PUTS FOCUS ON GROWING INDUSTRY
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lockchain adoption continues to grow across industries worldwide with total spending on blockchain solutions set to grow to $9.7 billion in 2021 according to IDC. Startups in the nascent blockchain industry are driving this growth and new innovations have attracted high-growth capital with investments reaching $3 billion at the end of 2017. In line with Dubai’s role in creating a world-class innovation environment, foster local entrepreneurship and attract international innovators, the inaugural Future Blockchain Summit, being held from May 2-3, 2018 at Dubai World Trade Centre, is slated to be the world’s most influential and creative blockchain festival. The event is hosted by the Smart Dubai Office and organised by Dubai World Trade Centre. Local and international startups are expected to showcase their solutions, attract investments and disrupt industries at the summit. With 47% of the startups coming from overseas, the Summit showcases the world’s best blockchain innovators from Estonia, Serbia, Singapore, China, India, UK, USA and Australia, in addition to homegrown entrepreneurs from the UAE. SMART SMB | MAY 2018
With a commitment to drive widespread adoption of blockchain solutions, Dubai is unlocking unique opportunities for innovative startups to partner with and shape the future of the Emirate from across sectors including retail and ecommerce, creative economy, healthcare, transportation, education, food, hospitality and tourism, energy, fintech and banking as well as safety and security. H.E Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General, Smart Dubai Office said, “Blockchain is poised to create multibillion dollar industry-wide impact, and startups from across the world are accelerating the growth and adoption of this innovation. H.H Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President & Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai recently announced the Emirates Blockchain Strategy, committing to 50% of government transactions over the blockchain platform by 2021. This is yet another step we have taken to embrace this breakthrough technology. With Dubai as the host of the Future Blockchain Summit, we look forward to welcoming innovative entrepreneurs, demonstrate our city’s progress, and drive dialogue about opportunities that this game changing technology presents.”
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ow the region’s leaders are reimagining retail in the Middle East was the focus of the Retail Leaders Circle MENA Summit, held in partnership with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Over two days of retail strategy sessions, 300 industry leaders met at the Four Seasons Jumeriah to discuss the evolution of the regional and international retail landscape. During the Summit, Tim Greenhalgh, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer of Fitch discussed the importance of service; ‘Shopping should be about much more than a frictionless transaction, it should be a destination built around community and entertainment. Service can be the point of difference, adding the empathy, the connection, and the joy felt by a shopper.’ The future of on and offline shopping due to the disruption of
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e-commerce was another dominant topic at the talks. “Online shopping continues to grow in the region with 32% of respondents saying they prefer to shop online, up from 29% in 2016 and now aligned to the global average. With 12% of online shoppers using their mobiles,” commented Norma Taki, Partner for Retail & Consumer at PwC Middle East, as a speaker of the Summit.
cloudworks targets increased uptake of Salesforce Technology “The power of technology was a key theme resonating throughout this year’s Middle East Total Retail Survey, and it is allowing everyone to become a competitor. Speed of delivery, differentiated offerings and loyalty are essential for Middle East Retailers to individualize themselves.” Panos Linardos, Chairman of Retail Leaders Circle MENA said, ‘Both retailer sentiment and the research published at the summit have shown that the global retail industry is at a critical crossroads. Regardless of the platform, the right technology can enable retailers to utilize data to provide a seamless and customized customer experience. The study by PwC has shown that although GCC residents are still visiting the malls, the successful retailers will be those who can engage with their customers at every touchpoint, starting with their mobile.’
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loudworks, an agile and innovative cloud consulting company and the largest Salesforce Gold Partner based in UAE, has reported a 188% revenue growth last year and is investing in enhancing its regional presence and gearing up to be the largest Salesforce Platinum Partner in 2018. Souphien Akhrif, Managing Director, Cloudworks says, “Salesforce has evolved from being merely a customer relationship management centred company, to becoming the ‘backbone’ that supports a lot of businesses, with features for critical business processes like lead management, sales data, and marketing automation, to name a few. The problem however, is in realizing the full potential of Salesforce. When organizations try implementing the platform on their own, its not just a time consuming and difficult task, but also counter productive.” “This is why in 2015, we started cloudworks, and since then we’ve been assembling a team of certified
and highly skilled Salesforce experts with years of experience working on successful Salesforce projects with businesses in different industries across UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia.” cloudworks is currently investing in increasing its staff count and has just moved to a new, larger office premise in Dubai. With a representative office in Saudi Arabia, cloudworks plans to expand its team and establish a larger footprint in the Kingdom in view of the country’s drive towards digital transformation and maturity of the market in terms of acceptance of cloud computing. The company has over 50 customers across the GCC and has completed over 95 successful Salesforce projects. Salesforce today has found favour with large enterprises as well as SMB companies that are looking to have enterprise grade solutions without the high cost of on-premise solutions or paying very high fees.
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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LINKEDIN DATA Tejari and JAGGAER relaunch regional operations REVEALS SKILLS
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ejari and JAGGAER re-launched in the Middle East following the recent acquisition of strategic procurement company, BravoSolution. The acquirement comes as JAGGAER identifies the Middle East as a key growth market now making the company the largest independent, vertically focused spend management solutions company in the world. During the highly anticipated relaunch events in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, JAGGAER CEO, Rob Bonavito, and CTO, Zia Zahiri, highlighted JAGGAER and Tejari’s future vision for the region including plans for developing the spend management industry’s first “super suite” that will offer businesses new, powerful options from the pooled technologies.
and innovative tools, JAGGAER Tejari has reliable, vetted solutions that will enhance the technology and service investments of existing, and potential, customers in the region. Robert Bonavito, CEO at JAGGAER / Tejari, said:
Tejari was founded in the year 2000 under a decree from then Crown Prince of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and now as an integral part of the JAGGAER network has over 1,850+ customers connected to a network of 3.7 million suppliers in 70 countries, served by offices located in North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and, the Middle East. With highly engineered, world class
growing economy and help innovate and deliver new technologies to businesses.” JAGGAER’s product suite offers complete indirect and direct eProcurement solutions with advanced spend analytics, complex sourcing, supplier management, contract lifecycle management, savings tracking, and intelligent workflow capabilities.
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
“This region is an important part of our growth plans, and we are committed to supporting the region to become one of the most technologically advanced in the world. Procurement tools support organizations to develop solutions that add value to the strategic decision making and drive results. With our latest innovative procurement capabilities, we can support our customers in a way that contributes towards the region’s
MISMATCH FOR SALES PROFESSIONALS
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n in-depth analysis by LinkedIn about sales professionals in the UAE has revealed key supply and demand issues within the UAE sales job market, stressing the need for UAE sales professionals to develop more ‘hard skills’. Comparing the top skills listed on LinkedIn profiles for sales professionals in the UAE with professionals in Europe, UAE sales professionals list more ‘relationshipbased sales’ skills in their profiles. The data reveals a clear mismatch
between skills listed and in demand skills that employers are seeking from candidates. According to the data, sales professionals in the UAE should focus on developing skills in strategy, contract negotiation, business planning, forecasting and budgeting which were the most in demand sales skills in the UAE in the last 6 months
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in 2017. In comparison, the most listed skills on LinkedIn profiles in the UAE are business development (32%), customer service (32%), team management (26%), negotiation (26%) and sales management (25%). Stefanie Fernandez, Head of Sales Solutions, LinkedIn Middle East and North Africa, LinkedIn, said: “Our analysis showed that not one of the top skills that UAE sales professionals listed matched the most in demand skills for UAE salespeople on LinkedIn. With over 137,000 sales professionals listed on LinkedIn in the UAE, it is vital that they ensure they are employable locally. To do so, they need to focus on further developing strategic skills as well as advanced leadership skills to ensure they are able to be found by potential employers and connect to the right opportunity for them. In addition with social selling becoming an increasingly popular sales technique, it’s vital that sales professionals have solid social media skills in today’s current climate.” Of the UAE sales professionals, 32% of them are at least manager or above in their company. The data showed that these senior sales professionals adopt more social selling on LinkedIn - they have on average 43% higher Social Selling Index (SSI) than average sales professionals. (37.4 vs. 26.1). SSI measures the level of social selling on LinkedIn platform, ranging from 0 to 100. Comparing the distribution of SSI in January 2017 compared with 2018, there is an increasing trend in SSI – 16% more sales professionals have SSI of 40 or higher. Comparing with EU, sales professionals in UAE do not list ‘social media’ as their skills whereas 11% of sales professionals in Europe do so. There is still room for growth in the realms of digital selling.
AVAYA APPLAUDS DIGITALTRANSFORMATION BY SAUDI CUSTOMERS
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vaya recognized some of the outstanding efforts by organizations in Saudi Arabia for driving competitiveness through investment in digitalization, during Experience Avaya KSA. The customer awards were the highlight of the Experience Avaya KSA events, which took place on March 19 in Riyadh and March 21 in Jeddah. The awards recognized key organizations in the Kingdom that are leveraging Avaya’s customer experience and unified communications solutions to offer competitive differentiation, increase operational efficiency and enhance the customer experience. During Experience Avaya KSA, the following companies were recognized: National Water Company - Best Contact Center General Directorate of Narcotics Control - Best Digital Transformation Initiative Arab National Bank –Customer Experience Transformation Award King Faisal Specialist Hospital Patient Care Innovation Award King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology - Avaya Loyalty and Commitment Award
Saudia – Outstanding Loyalty and Dedication Award University of Jeddah – Best Team Engagement Project in Higher Education Bupa Arabia – Excellence in Customer Journey “Saudi Arabia’s plan to build the Kingdom’s competitive capabilities by leveraging emerging technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, is a clear call to action for all organizations. The customers that we recognized at Experience Avaya KSA are all playing a key role in propelling the Kingdom into a top spot on the Global Competitiveness Index, ensuring promising sectors harness innovation, and grow stronger together. The competitive advantage remains with organizations that deliver superior experiences by innovating through digital partnerships and collaborations,“ said Fadi Hani, VP of Avaya MEA & Turkey. Avaya has active partnerships with many of the leading systems integrators in the country, working with enterprises of all sizes – from SMBs to the largest oil and gas providers – to develop the latest communications solutions that deliver real business results.
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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NEWS
PROOFPOINT & EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS REINFORCE ADVANCED PROTECTION
MIMECAST HIGHLIGHTS CYBER RESILIENCE FOR EMAIL
FORTINET DISCUSSES SECURITY TRANSFORMATION
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xclusive Networks, a regional Value Added Distributor (VAD) for Proofpoint,a leading next-generation cyber security company, is preparing to work with Proofpoint by offering Proofpoint solutions with its highly successful Cyber Attack Remediation & Mitigation (CARM) framework and kick-off a series of targeted initiatives to educate new partners. The vendor and VAD are re-enforcing the existing relationship, with the latter paving way to capitalize on the growth opportunities presented by an expanded Proofpoint cybersecurity product portfolio across the Middle East, now incorporating SMB-aligned solutions, as well as leading targeted attack protection offerings. This expansion complements the vendor’s long-standing market leadership in secure email gateways. “Our Channel Partners can now benefit from Proofpoint’s extensive portfolio offering a market leading Secure Email Gateway, Email Fraud Defense, Digital Risk Management, SaaS Protection and Advanced Threat Protection. Furthermore, the region is witnessing an enormous adoption of Microsoft Office 365, where the need to safeguard users against advanced threats, empower insight and keep users connected during the events of downtime is crucial. Proofpoint is a key to ensure that this migration and new service layer is protected,” says Oliver Downs, Alliances Manager, Exclusive Networks ME. Nik Churchley, Director, EMEA Channels for Proofpoint said, “Email continues to be the number one threat vector used by cybercriminals. This relationship will allow Exclusive Networks to offer our advanced email protection offering, providing EMEA organisations with best-in-class multi-layered defence against email fraud, ransomware, advanced malware, bulk mail and email downtime” SMART SMB | MAY 2018
imecast Limited, a leading email and data security company, will address the growing issue of targeted cyberattacks at this year’s Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference, taking place from 1-3 May 2018 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. Mimecast will highlight the continuous challenges organisations face in defending against malicious attachments, dangerous file types, impersonation attacks and spam to help provide customers with Cyber Resilience for Email. By showcasing its full-range of advanced email security and data protection services, including new enhancements to Targeted Threat Protection, Mimecast will highlight the importance of building a cyber resilience strategy in an evolving cyber threat landscape. Cyber resilience expert, Hany George, will give a talk and perform live hacks to reveal simple techniques that hackers use to infiltrate organisations. These demonstrations will show how organisations can protect themselves against advanced cyberattacks like impersonation fraud. “A defence-only security strategy does not protect against the level and volume of advanced attacks that lead to financial and intellectual property loss, unplanned downtime and decreased productivity,” said Brandon Bekker, Managing Director at Mimecast MEA.
ortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, is participating at GISEC 2018 with the aim of driving the Security Transformation in organizations that are focused on digital transformation efforts. “2018 is lining up to be the year of Digital Transformation. Just about every organization looking to remain viable in the growing digital marketplace has some sort of digital transformation in progress or one in the planning stages for this year. However, digital transformation without an equivalent security transformation is leaving organizations more vulnerable,” said Alain Penel, Regional Vice President- idle East, Fortinet. “Digital transformation is one of the key strategies organizations are utilizing to achieve growth as well as associated business objectives. The process requires an equivalent security transformation, and we are utilizing our presence at GISEC 2018 to demonstrate how the Fortinet Security Fabric enables digital business and provides organizations with broad, integrated and automated protection from IoT to multi-cloud environments.” At GISEC, Fortinet will also introduce the industry’s first purpose-built NOCSOC solution that bridges workflows, analysis and automated response across operational and security processes.
FEATURE
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A DIGITAL AWAKENING
The changing face of traditional ICT towards newer technologies and consumption models is quite naturally bound to have a significant impact on SMB companies, and those who adopt digital transformation as a strategy will get ahead
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t is well understood that the SMB segment in the region and UAE in particular is quite a significant part of the economy in terms of total workforce employed and in terms of diversity of activities.
even to just stay relevant, digital transformation, is a journey almost all of them need to undertake, sooner than later. That would be key to the growth of the massive SMB segment in the region.
While diverse, most companies across sectors, irrespective of their size, have various ICT technologies enabling their day to day operations internally with employees and externally with end users and suppliers. Businesses must therefore constantly consider adoption of new technologies, that would give them an added competitive edge. Whether it is to enable real time gathering of business intelligence to assist decision making or to achieve success with an ambitious paperless initiative or any other Business objective, there is no alternative to adopting relevant new technologies that bring in more efficiencies. Not just to leapfrog competition but
“The SMB segment is the economic force that employs around 17 million people in the GCC, and contributes around one third (30%) to the GDP of the UAE. In order to amplify this contribution, SMBs have to grow and the most important factor to aid this growth is embracing the digital transformation. Within the coming years, digital transformation will not just be an opportunity, but essential for survival,” says Hany Fahmy Aly, Executive Vice President - Enterprise Business, du. The common refrain among industry experts is that SMBs stand to gain on immediate and longer term basis by just adopting the right digital
technologies that will let them focus on their core business rather than IT itself. According to Pui Chi Li, Head of Marketing for the Middle East and Africa at Xerox, “The benefits of Digital Transformation are particularly pertinent to small to medium business. The opportunity to automate many of their internal and external processes, save time optimizing day-to-day tasks while delivering operational efficiency and improved customer experience all help business owners to focus on delivering their goods and services to their customers. For example, a simple yet effective technology such as scanning can reduce the cost of printing documents by at least 30 percent and facilitates delivery to multiple recipients in no time.” Sakkeer Hussain, Sales and Marketing Director at D-Link MEA opines that SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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FEATURE
despite the fact that the SMB market is today the largest spending sector for all kinds of technology products, SMBs are still challenged by limited IT budgets, the rapid pace at which technology is changing and the cost of implementing some of the technology solutions available in the market today. They need to be guided towards adopting OPEX consumption models of IT. He elaborates, “While there is no denying that digital transformation offers opportunities for the SMB segment, the SMB is by far the strongest performing sector for D-Link and for this reason, we are encouraging partners that serve this market segment to help their customers upgrade to new IT infrastructure. Guiding customers to look at the OPEX model rather than CAPEX is one sure way of encouraging SMB customers to spend on the latest technologies and cloud-based investments are a safer bet for SMBs.” It is encouraging that there are many companies from the region’s SMB fraternity that are indeed making good progress towards the pursuit of digital transformation.
SAKKEER HUSSAIN Sales & Marketing Director D-Link MEA
Hemayun Bazaz, Regional Manager - Channel Sales, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Aruba,a HPE company opines, “SMB customers today are more than interested in upgrading their infrastructure. They are also aware that investment in new solutions has become a necessity as it provides them better speed to market, gain better employee productivity and offer better customer experience.”
PUI CHI LI
Head of Marketing, MEA Xerox
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
While more in the SMB segment are beginning to adopt newer technologies that help streamline their operations, the upswing in adoption is expected to gather major boost across verticals in the region. Pui Chi opines, “A majority of the SMBs in the Middle East have at least planned out the process of updating their IT infrastructure and technologies if they haven’t already started implementing this digital upgrade. For example, we have witnessed a boost in the adoption of digital printing technologies across production teams as well as back offices. It is expected to continue growing, especially across the retail and online enterprises, banking, financial services and healthcare sectors in the region.” As the SMB segment is seen as a major engine for economic diversification, they are being encouraged more in the region through government initiatives. They can leverage the conducive Business environment better by adopting new technologies to grow their capabilities and flexibility in addressing growing customer expectations for enhanced quality of services and transactions. According to Khalid Khan, Director of Cloud & Midmarket Segment at
Avaya International, “The small and medium sized businesses (SMB) in the Middle East are a driving force for the region’s economic diversification agenda, comprising the vast majority of regional organisations. As part of the region’s economic diversification strategy, we are seeing increasing support for the SMB sector, leading to considerable improvements in the ‘ease-of-doing-business’ ranking especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The increasing trend towards digital transformation and the rise of so-called disruptive technologies is also allowing digitally smart SMBs to overcome traditional hurdles.”
Fueling ambition with redefined IT Without adopting new technologies, organizations will find it almost impossible to be among their domain’s best. Conversely, it would be true that in all domains or verticals, companies that hold leaderships positions would have some of the best technologies deployed in enabling their business processes. Hany opines that unlike larger enterprises, SMBs need to rely more on adoption of advanced technologies to compete against larger competitors. He says, “Technology providers like du make it possible for enterprises to not only achieve the positive aspects of technological transformation, but also avoid the negative aspects associated with digital expansion. For SMBs, the primary disadvantage of this process is the financial toll. To compete in a market saturated with similar businesses in size, scale, and even offerings, success for SMBs depends heavily on their adoption of advanced technologies.” According to him, working with partners such as du that offer business related services and solutions from connectivity and device management to advanced managed services will enable companies to scale, reach
HANY FAHMY ALY Executive Vice President Enterprise Business, du
more customers, increase efficiency, manage costs and eventually grow without making huge investments in technology. “Moreover, it empowers them with the peace of mind that their connectivity requirements are taken care of, so that they can concentrate on doing business, catering to customers and improving their bottom line,” he adds. The fact that the UAE, driven by the vision of its leaders, is championing the use of technologies including cloud, blockchain and AI, is also driving the adoption of these technologies in the mid-market as with the larger enterprise segment. Khalid adds, “From legacy family businesses to the ambitious smaller organizations, the region’s government-backed SMB segment is poised for monumental growth. Another critical outlook is the segment’s embrace of emerging technologies. From cloud to AI and Blockchain, we encourage partners to leverage the power of vertical specialization to capture relevance in that way. Take for example cloudbased solutions that are rapidly being adopted by SMB customers who find OpEX models, requiring less upfront investment, more appealing.”
He adds that Avaya has in line with growing demand, continued to focus on the SMB segment’s need for enterprise-level connectivity without an enterprise-level budget. SMB companies indeed need enterprise level technologies but at a more affordable price point. “That is why our cloud solutions are built on a fully open architecture that supports true compatibility and limitless interoperability, such as Powered By IP Office, our cloud-based communication and collaboration platform,” he says. According to Hany, “The rapid development of smart technology, combined with our increased reliance on cloud services and the explosive impact of internet, big data and IoT (internet of things), has redefined the way companies do business. This has compelled telecommunications service providers to adapt to new market realities and companies to seriously consider making the necessary investments in their IT infrastructure.” Reinventing its approach towards the SMB segment, du offers solutions and plans that cater specifically to them. Hany elaborates, “For example, we
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offer Office 365 services on any device with our business plans at an affordable price, together with activation and support services. That way, business owners need not worry about investing in expensive hardware and physical licenses. SMBs can also take advantage of our web hosting and domain registration services. These cost-effective solutions are available for SMBs to operate with top-notch software and technologies. Furthermore, SMBs gain
have your back. Moving to cloud is cost efficient and does not require an upfront investment, thereby reducing OPEX while enabling a business to embrace the digital transformation.” Aruba, an HPE company, is focused on deploying enhanced WiFi networks, that offer additional value propositions such as location based services to improve business. Hemayun opines, “We are not selling
HEMAYUN BAZAZ Regional Manager Channel Sales, META Aruba, A HPE company
in more Business efficiency and control in operation and gain speed to market. For instance, in retail environments, whether in malls or in standalone retail, today they use wireless solutions with our Meridian beacons to navigate through their retail spaces, creating marketing notifications that can be pushed out, communicate location based promotions to customers etc. In addition, analytics helps identify where footfall is more or less and accordingly make decisions that enhance business.” Aruba Meridian is a cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that is part of Aruba’s location services portfolio. It includes both mobile engagement and asset tracking capabilities. Customers can start with wayfinding, proximitybased notifications or digital asset tracking and add functionality as needed via simple subscriptionbased licensing. According to the spokesperson from Xerox, the paperless strategy is key to their strategy in working with the SMB segment as is offering better security. Phu Chi adds, “One of our main regional objectives is to work in line with the global paperless initiatives through the development of “eco printers”. In that way, we would be able to help users print data via cloud technologies and access the material required wherever they are in the world. We have already started bringing this goal to life using our ConnectKey product series. Another extremely important technological aspect that comes hand in hand with the use of cloud is ensuring security. Xerox has a key vision to develop these types of solutions to help businesses excel in their digital transformation. Similarly, we had an extremely successful VersaLink product launch last year, which is particularly well positioned for SMB customers.”
the valuable element of proactive, long-term support that can only be ensured by trusting the experts to SMART SMB | MAY 2018
WiFi solutions as WiFi per se but as facilitator of digital transformation for SMB organizations to bring
D-Link’s Sakkeer highlights the fact that, a robust network is key to utilizing cloud based platforms and
FEATURE
services which can drive the digital transformation faster. “As the cloud has taken off with varying degrees of understanding of the what cloud really offers, most SOHO and SMB customers are looking for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), managed security services, unified communications as a service (UCaaS). To be able to use any of these services, SMB’s customers need to have a robust network that enables their business to access these services.” He adds, “SMB companies are looking for technologies that make their employees to no longer be bound to their desks and 11ac networking technology is one such technology. D-Link as a manufacturer of the latest 802.11ac products believes SMB customers are benefiting from the wireless improvements promised by 11ac products.”
Mapping the journey ahead
various opportunities, including the growing SMB segment – which is also a market that is driving economic diversification in the region.” According to Sakkeer, the UAE is at the forefront when it comes to networking technology adoption and wireless enhancements and is opening up opportunities for channel partners to offer the right networking and wireless solutions to SMB customers. He adds, “Having more people connected to the Internet be it a consumer, SOHO, SMB, big corporate, a college or university benefits everyone as people are now in a better position to access the many services offered online or via a cloud hosted model. What this has done for D-Link and it partner ecosystem is identify verticals and countries where jointly we supply products to suit those environments.” Khalid also comments that SMB organizations are today quicker to try
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out new technologies, often ahead of the larger sized companies in the enterprise. “Interestingly, while adoption of cutting-edge technology used to trickle down from the enterprise to the SMB sector, the trend has reversed: today, SMBs either adopt technology in parallel with enterprises or they lead the way. Our partners have optimised on this by working alongside the SMB sector, understanding their pain points and leveraging Avaya’s flexible platform to build solutions that deliver business success.” For vendors, especially for those who have a good focus in the mid-market, it has meant not just a repositioning but also an opportunity to revamp their platforms or technologies, to make them more suitable and easier to adopt to the customer needs in their future.
Solution providers who help deploy the infrastructure and solutions at the customer site and partner with vendors whose solutions they take to market, have a large role to play in the wider spectrum. The onus lies with these companies to provide the confidence to SMB companies looking to embark on the digital transformation journey. Vendors in turn need to enable these solution providers who are their partners. Khalid says, “Naturally with change, challenges remain, yet an open, collaborative approach within clear rules of engagement set by vendors, will allow partners to do what they do best – address customers’ real challenges. A focus of 2018 Avaya Edge program strategy is to enable cloud delivery, integration and management, and we do this by on-boarding partners through comprehensive training and enablement programs. This empowers partners to capatilise on
KHALID KHAN Director of Cloud & Midmarket Segment Avaya International
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY
ENHANCED CONNECTIVITY “AN ADVANCED SUITE OF WIFI SOLUTIONS FROM ARUBA HAS SET UP THE STEIGENBERGER HOTEL IN DUBAI TO OFFER WORLD CLASS SEAMLESS NETWORK CONNECTIVITY TO ITS GUESTS”
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he Steigenberger hotel in Business Bay is a state-ofthe- art 5 star hotel operated by Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts, a global chain that has its HQ in Germany and is part of Deutsche Hospitality. The hotel is operated on behalf of Twenty14 Holdings, the hospitality investment arm of the Abu Dhabi based LuLu Group International which owns several prestigious properties globally. Centrally located in the heart of Dubai’s busy Business Bay district, the hotel boasts of round the clock peak occupancy by guests, constituting of both executives on business visits and families on leisure visits. The hotel benchmarks itself against the top tier hotels in the city and prides itself on
AS PART OF THE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE HOTEL INDUSTRY, WE WANTED TO ENSURE OUR HOTEL PROVIDED THE BEST HIGH SPEED INTERNET EXPERIENCE TO OUR CUSTOMERS. WE HAD ALREADY INVESTED SMART SMB | MAY 2018
providing the best facilities to guests. The hotel commenced operations in the second half of 2015 and in the months preceding the inauguration, the IT team was tasked with setting up IT infrastructure. The IT Director of the hotel, Dinto Joseph with his team did due diligence on the requirements and looked for various solutions from different vendors who had shown interest in providing solutions. The hotel finally built up its network and IT infrastructure with core and edge switches from HPE, telephony solutions form Avaya, PCs and servers from Dell, firewalls from Fortinet and VPN from Cisco.
DINTO JOSEPH
IT Director, Steigenberger Hotel Business Bay, Dubai
IN GETTING A HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION FROM THE TELECOM PROVIDER AND THEREFORE WANTED TO ENSURE WE INVESTED IN THE BEST OF BREED SOLUTIONS TO EXTEND THAT CONNECTIVITY TO OUR CUSTOMERS.”
CASE STUDY
A case for high speed WiFi
The hotel had identified the need for high speed WiFi connectivity as one of the pre-requisites identified in offering guests the best of breed facilities. Dinto says, “As part of the highly competitive hotel industry, we wanted to ensure our hotel provided the best high speed internet experience to our customers. we had already invested in getting a high speed internet connection from the telecom provider and therefore wanted to ensure we invested in the best of breed solutions to extend that connectivity to our customers.”
cabling, so we wanted to use wifi access points in individual rooms. The Aruba access point models we chose were capable of running IPTV signals through their additional Ethernet ports. So we saved on the need for pulling additional wired cabling to each and every other room in the hotel, which was one of our requirements when we were looking around for solutions.”
The first phase of the wireless solutions were almost in tandem with setting up of the wired infrastructure. One of the key considerations was to avoid excessive cabling and rely on a robust WiFi to get effective connectivity. Dinto says, “We deployed both network and wireless solutions during the pre-opening time about two and half years ago. We were looking for suitable WiFi AP to carry the IPTV signals across guest rooms.” He adds, “In some of the rooms we were unable to get the IPTV connectivity from existing structured
The hotel went in for a controller based solution with the Aruba Wireless Mobility Controller – 7210. Optimized for 802.11ac, the 7200 series features a central processor with eight CPU cores to support over 32,000 devices and stateful firewall policy enforcement at 40 Gbps. New levels of visibility offered by AppRFTM technology allow IT to see applications by user, prioritize them, and control access based on policies. It also manages authentication, encryption, VPNs, IPv4/IPv6 services, the Policy Enforcement Firewall, Adaptive Radio Management, and RFProtect spectrum analysis and wireless intrusion protection. Further with the Aruba WiFi mobility controller 7210, there has been no need to manually configure wireless access points as they automatically register and configure when placed in defined locations. The controller also gives the visibility to monitor the network performance and take corrective measures as necessary.
The company looked around at options and finally opted for solutions from Aruba based on key considerations. Dinto elaborates, “The network infrastructure is built on HPE Aruba combination with core and edge switches from HPE (HP Enterprise) and Aruba controller based wireless solutions. We did look at Ruckus wireless apart from Aruba and also considered Cisco and HPE for the networking infrastructure. We chose to go with the HPE Aruba combination since Aruba had become part of the HPE family and was easier to deal with one vendor and excellence support.
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The entire wireless deployment was achieved in two phases. The first phase included WiFi for the gust rooms and the conference rooms. In the second phase about a year later, the hotel upgraded some of the access points to higher throughput models and also included deployments across more of the surrounding public areas. Dinto says, “While in the first phase, we deployed WiiFi for the guest rooms and the conference rooms, in the second phase, we upgraded the access points in the conference rooms and also deployed access points for all the meeting rooms as we realized the demand from meeting rooms was more than from the public areas.”
Dinto says, “We can define locations and assign names and we also have the monitoring element. We can see glitches if any and receive failure alerts of access points or possible interference with another AP. It also helps in detection of rogue devices. So we are in a position to fix the problems proactively and this keeps up our efficiency.”
The Setup The deployment was set out in two zones, one for the rooms and one for the public areas. “We wanted to have two wifi zones. For the guest rooms, we wanted to ensure signal strength within - 60 dBm (decibel milliwatts). Aruba also had access points catering to provide coverage for individual rooms only of specific dimensions. We opted for the 103H model in the rooms. This is a very sleek access point that has been deployed in our guest rooms, hidden behind the TV.” SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY
AP-103H hospitality access point (AP) maximizes mobile device performance in moderately dense. Wi-Fi environments while minimizing interference from cellular networks. The AP- 103H installs in minutes and easily mounts to an electrical or data wall box. For the public zones, the hotel preferred to go with a higher throughput model and an even higher speed one for the Banquet rooms.
Enhanced support
Dinto says, “In the public areas, we opted for the higher throughput, ceiling mounted 205 which gave connectivity in the lobby and the restaurants. For the conference and ball rooms, we have considered the model 305 which can provide coverage for up to 40 clients and which has up to three antennas. We deployed 3 access point in each ball room to handle a large number of clients.”
“In the second phase, there were some upgrades and we also eliminated dead spots such as in lift landing areas, surrounding outdoor areas of the hotel such as the poolside, restaurant etc. We were provided competitive pricing for the additional Access Points and we got the older ones re-fixed in areas where there were no signals earlier for staff access.”
AP 205 are from the 200 series 802.11ac wireless APs that maximize mobile device performance in mediumdensity enterprise Wi-Fi environments, deliver wireless data rates of up to 867 Mbps to 5-GHz devices with 802.11ac technology leveraging two spatial MIMO streams while simultaneously supporting 2.4-GHz 802.11n clients with data rates of up to 300 Mbps.
Maxtouch Computers LLC is a leading SMB Solutions Provider in the UAE and was responsible for the implementation of the Aruba based WiFi network. The hotel had chosen the solution provider from among others owing to the high caliber expertise its engineers possessed.
The entry-level Aruba 300 Series Access Points (APs) deliver high performance user experience for medium density environments and enable an all wireless digital work environment in a cost effective manner with a maximum concurrent data rate of 1,300 Mbps in the 5GHz band and 400 Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. For the immediate outdoor surroundings, the hotel deployed the Access Point- 275. Part of the 270-series outdoor APs from Aruba, these deliver fast and reliable 802.11ac Wi-Fi performance under any weather conditions and also enables 802.11n mobile devices to operate up to three-times faster at the same distance from the AP. Purpose-built for the harshest outdoor environments, 270-series APs can withstand extreme temperatures, persistent moisture and precipitation, and are fully sealed to keep out airborne contaminants. SMART SMB | MAY 2018
The second phase achieved the twin objectives of eliminating dead spots in uncovered areas and upgrading to higher models based on needs. The hotel was offered good pricing support and support by the vendor through its partner Maxtouch Computers LLC.
“There were other contenders in terms of solution providers offering Aruba solutions, but we chose Maxtouch after interviews as we found their engineers to be quite senior and knowledgeable about the solutions, which was an assurance that the project would be in good hands.” For approvals, while Dinto oversaw from the hotel side, the project needed the go ahead from the German HQ of the hotel. “We had to send them the final POQ with vendor recommendations and site survey analysis for their approval. As HPE Aruba was on their approved list of suppliers already, this was achieved quite easily and they approved the solution from Germany.”
The Outcome The hotel is quite satisfied with
the deployment in terms of meeting expectations and while early reviews had helped identify dead spots and take corrective measures, subsequent periodic reviews have suggested that there are no complaints across all areas, in rooms and the public spots. Moreover, it has enhanced the operations of the hotel staff. He says, “The solution has been quite satisfying and a big relief from the IT operations point of view as we don’t get any complaints about dead spots from guests staying in the hotel rooms. Our surveys of the connectivity has been satisfactory and it is through survey initially that we identified that there were some dead spots in public areas, when we were perhaps too focused on fixing the wifi in the guest rooms. Therefore, we decided to upgrade the access points in the public areas.” Adding further value to the high speed WiFi connectivity, the hotel also has also deployed a housekeeping solution from Optii solutions for the staff that runs on the wifi and is part of its facility management solutions, critical to its operations and optimized use of staff man-hours. The High speed WiFi ensures there is always real time exchange of information available for the housekeeping staff to ensure guest rooms are always ready without delays. Dinto says, “The housekeeping staff start their work day with their smart phone to access the housekeeping solution and when they are done cleaning up a room, they will click finish. This is interfaced with our property management system and monitored by a coordinator at the central control room who is responsible for letting the housekeeping staff know which room is to be prioritized for cleaning. So there is optimization and helps real time communication, eliminating the need for phone calls.”
CASE STUDY
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AN INSIGHTFUL FUTURE Multiplex International LLC opts for an ERP deployment from Epicor which brings the desired results of real time insights for better decisions
I
n retail business, there is a constant need to make decisions based on realtime insights. For that to happen, there is a need for a robust ERP in the background that can manage the volume and velocity with which the business generates data. A legacy ERP application is very unlikely to respond to the need for real time information from across departments, across product lines, brands etc. This can then in turn
hamper the progress of the company’s business operations. Facing such a similar situation, convinced Multiplex International LLC, a leading distributor of FMCG and Cosmetic products in the region, which also operates successful retail outlets under Exquisite Trading across the UAE, to look for a superior ERP that could address their needs. The Group’s business volumes across
distribution and retail has been clocking significant growth over the past few years as the cosmetics and food business flourished. Until a couple of years ago, the group had a legacy ERP in the background which wasn’t able to support the requirements of the fast growing business. Subramaniyan Iyer, Head of Finance at Multiplex International says, “We had a locally developed application which SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY
The lack of good reporting and sales performance comparison across years was a significant bottleneck as the solution could only manage one year’s data in a database. If a comparison for instance had to made between 4 years of data, the data had to be extracted from four different databases of each of those years and reports generated manually in excel.
MAJU KUMAR
IT Manager, Multiplex International
served its purpose for some time but then issues started cropping up. These included limitations on many fronts including reporting, cost of sales, stock and customer aging etc. Further, the system wasn’t secure.” The limitations were many with the old solution The invoices could be changed by anyone with access to the system as there were no controls on their access. The solutions couldn’t support Landed costs. It didn’t feature sub-ledgers and was challenging to manage different vendors. The cost of sales while creating product bundles was manually derived and was prone to errors. The fact that there was no user control was a significant challenge. Potentially, anyone with access to the system could amend the data at any point and so data integrity was always vulnerable. Further, the ERP couldn’t handle the volume and velocity of data from the large number of SKUs (stock keeping units) that the company operated in its line of business. Iyer adds, “Anyone could submit an entry anytime in the inventory. There was no control on user rights, function rights and so on. It could SMART SMB | MAY 2018
also not handle the volumes that was generated because of the large number of SKUs in our cosmetics business. The system wasn’t able to handle the complexities of 30000 SKUs, each with a unique barcode. We ended up splitting database each year and stock valuation reports were difficult to run. Further, the report generation was cumbersome.”
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SINCE THE DATABASE EVERY YEAR HAD TO BE SPLIT, THE REPORTING WAS IN SILOS AND DIDN’T PROVIDE THE INTELLIGENCE ON PERFORMANCE OF BRANDS AND THE BUSINESS ACROSS DEPARTMENTS. THE VENDOR DID SUPPORT US BUT THE SOFTWARE HAD LIMITATIONS. SO THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT WASN’T ABLE TO ANALYZE BRAND WISE PERFORMANCE, DEPARTMENT WISE PERFORMANCE AND ITEM WISE PERFORMANCE ETC ON AN IMMEDIATE BASIS.”
Maju Kumar, Head of IT at Multiplex says “Since the database every year had to be split, the reporting was in silos and didn’t provide the intelligence on performance of brands and the business across departments. The vendor did support us but the software had limitations. So the Finance department wasn’t able to analyze brand wise performance, department wise performance and item wise performance etc on an immediate basis.” From the operational side, they were facing challenges as they were unable to know stock levels for ordering. Tracking of expiration dates for food items was also a completely manual process that had to be managed in Excel, making it a nightmare. “In the foodstuffs business, which we had commenced in 2014, we faced the challenge in tracking expiry dates of foodstuffs as the the earlier software didn’t have the tracking feature. We had to do this manually on Excel, which was time consuming and prone to errors.” adds Maju Kumar.
LOOKING FOR SUITABLE SOLUTION There was complete consensus within the management and the teams that the group had to go in for nothing less than a fully integrated ERP that would give them a bird’s eye view of sales performance and issues across departments, brands, products. In 2016, the company began to look around at options to deploy a full fledged integrated ERP that will be able to provide real time intelligence
CASE STUDY
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that can help it stay on top of its business operations at all times. The team did look around at options available in the market including solutions from leading ERP vendors. sure to various key considerations, they finally settled down with the choice of deploying Epicor ERP. “We started looking for a suitable solution. We looked at options from over 8 vendors. Everyone was in agreement because of the reporting limitations with the earlier solution. Epicor’s ERP solution emerged as the favorite among contenders as it was able to meet functional capabilities that the group wanted and further it came at an affordable price, making it the most suitable candidate. In addition, Epicor and its partner were committed to do the deployment within the narrow window of six months as per the requirements of Multiplex. “Epicor was able to commit to meet our target of going live by Jan 2017. With other vendors, that wasn’t looking possible with likely time frame of 9 months to one year of implementation likely in those cases,” says Maju Kumar. The solution was deployed by Cork Information Technology, a leading Epicor partner in the region. Epicor provided extensive POC (proof of concept) demos before Multiplex decided on the solution. The presales was done by Epicor and thereafter, everything else including POC, implementation and post sales was done together with the partner. In-depth POC was provided across the entire process cycle and scenario wise, from purchase booking to expense booking to invoicing, warehouse management etc before proceeding with deployment. As targeted, the deployment itself was completed in record time within six months and the group was able to deploy the ERP across its various businesses, bringing centralized control over the operations on real time basis.
SUBRAMANIYAN IYER
Head of Finance, Multiplex International
“
WE WERE USING A LOCALLY DEVELOPED ERP APPLICATION
IT SERVED ITS PURPOSE FOR SOME TIME BUT THEN ISSUES STARTED CROPPING UP. THESE INCLUDED LIMITATIONS ON MANY FRONTS INCLUDING REPORTING, COST OF SALES, STOCK AND CUSTOMER AGING ETC. FURTHER, THE SYSTEM WASN’T SECURE.”
Kumar elaborates, “We did look at options from Oracle, Microsoft, SAP etc. While we looked at all aspects, the major factors were feasibility and the cost benefit analysis. While several of the options we looked into were excellent products, the Epicor proposition looked to provide the best cost to benefit ratio. The entire deployment took 6 months with the distribution part going live in Jan 2017 as targeted. For retail, it took longer as we went store by store. It took two additional months. There are 35
retail stores and each of these wee migrated to the new Epicor software.”
REAPING BENEFITS Multiplex has gone for implementation of most modules that are part of Epicor ERP. The product bundling function has been included as the group needs it often Business to create new product bundles, which then are effectively seen as new items. Iyer says, “With the earlier solution, product bundling was a laborious process as costs had to be entered separately on Excel and manually managed. With Epicor, the cost control of bundled SKUs is managed automatically and it has become much easier to create new product bundles for our retail customers. So that has reduced the possibilities of errors in costing.” A key benefit with Epicor ERP has been at the point of sale registers. It has now become feasible to execute discounts for specific stores and also have real time stock updates. Iyer elaborates, “We couldn’t do implementation of discounts at the POS in stores earlier. For instance, if we wanted to have a 5%discount SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY
in the store at Dubai mall, we would have to do for all stores as the provision for a single store discount wasn’t there. That is resolved and enabled with the Epicor solution. Further, the stock update wasn’t in real time which is also now resolved with real time data uplink.” Reporting and control were key challenges that Multiplex sought to sort out with the new deployment. Aging of stocks beyond a year has been a key feature that has helped bring more insight into the state of stocks across departments, product lines and brands. “Aging of stocks beyond one year wasn’t supported by the solution we had. As we have different departments which are cosmetics, food, non-food, retail etc, we required the capability to generate department wise financial reports. Stock aging, Branch wise and item wise reports are key indices for our group and this is possible with Epicor,” says Iyer. Accounts Receivables has been an issue that needed to be addressed with the new implementation. The accounting team now has a better control of all accounts receivable for all customers which has benefitted the business bottomline. “We have a range of A class to D class customers in retail, between 3000 to 4000. With Epicor ERP, we are generating reports on time and are in better control as to how our collections cycle stands with all customers,” adds Iyer. While the Finance team has access to all financial reports as and when they need basis, it has also given them greater control on securing data integrity. With Epicor ERP every entry is duly processed and entered with proper control and validation. On top of the ERP, the group’s IT team has deployed a dashboard which was developed in-house for top managers. This is mobile based and can analyze six years data, pulling data from Epicor database and from earlier data sources. The rich reporting features SMART SMB | MAY 2018
has enhanced capabilities and improved productivity across teams. “The ability for any user to easily create their own customized reports enables more time to focus on other business-critical applications. For the purchasing team, the rich reporting has translated into better vendor relations and inventory management,” added Kumar. According to Kumar, in the 15 months since going live, the support has been quite good from the vendor and its partner and they have been able to create several custom reports.
FUTURE PLANS The group has invested into modernizing its IT infrastructure over the past couple of years including virtualized servers. The vision is to manage fo the next few years of growth with this infrastructure as mainstay. Kumar says, “We have virtualized our servers on HP solutions. we have also implemented local back-up as well as cloud back-up of data. We have DR facility in place in one of the three warehouses that we have in Jebel Ali and all our data back-up is done regularly. We have connected all our stores on VPN using Fortinet solutions and anti-malware solutions as well. Our plan is to manage our growth with these investments and there is no immediate plan for additional cloud investments.” However, the staggering growth in data because of the sheer number of SKUs they have to contend with in their fast moving line of Business is bringing to the fore the challenge of managing a huge volume of data year on year. “In just 15 months since going live with Epicor ERP, our database data is about 150 GB. So in five years the data size would be quite huge. We may need to think of cloud based storage options,” concedes Kumar. They also plan to use more features which are partially used at the moment.
“The Asset management module is being used by Exquisite retail, which is quite useful for them and while Multiplex LLC isn’t using it at present, we could in future. Likewise, the Budget module is also something we could use in future, which gives ledger wise breakup of expenses,” says Iyer. The solution also came with VAT friendly features and therefore the VAT implementation was very smooth, well in time before VAT came into effect . “It was a criteria at the time of implementation. That hardly took two days for configuration,” adds Kumar. As it stands now, 15 months since going live, the group’s overall operations have been better streamlined and with accurate performance data available at any point for decision making, there seems to be no looking back. Armed with a robust ERP in the backend, the group which has completed over 25 years of operations is all set to expand business further across new markets and product lines.
KEY BENEFITS •
The industry-specific Epicor ERP solution seamlessly addressed the customer expectations
•
The solution was deployed in the short span of six months by Cork Information Technology, a regional Epicor partner
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Ability to restrict access based on user roles has enabled Multiplex’s finance team to set strict process controls and ensure data integrity and security
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Ability for users to easily generate customized reports, based on their requirements, has significantly improved ability to take better, real-time decisions for business growth
CASE STUDY
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ENABLING CONNECTED LEARNING D-Link’s deployment of unified wireless solutions with seamless roaming at Al Rashed Al Saleh School, enabled it to adopt e-learning infrastructure
T
he UAE boasts of some outstanding infrastructure in the education segment and most educational institutions are investing in new e-learning tools to give students access to leading edge learning resources. It is with a similar intent that Al Rashed Al Saleh School, one of the oldest schools in Dubai, established in September 1971, also decided to
upgrade their wireless connectivity and network in the campus. The school that has a student strength of over 2700 students and has 138 teachers, had a simple wireless network earlier but its limitations in terms of signal strength and reliability meant that it could not support the school’s ambitions to bring in e-learning infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, the school decided to look for an unified wireless solutions with seamless roaming via which an E-learning platform was to be enabled in the school. Each of the classrooms with typically 30 students were to be enabled with video streaming capabilities of e learning applications, that could be made possible by optimum performance of the wireless network.
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY
“
WE WERE USING A WIFI NETWORK BEFORE, BUT IT WAS A SMALL SETUP LIMITED TO SPECIFIC ZONES.BEFORE CONSIDERING D-LINK, WE HAD TRIED OUT A SOLUTION FROM A DIFFERENT VENDOR BUT THE RESULTS WEREN’T SATISFACTORY FOR ADEQUATE CONNECTIVITY TO COVER NEEDS OF OUR 2700 PLUS STUDENTS AND 300 STAFF. ONCE WE WERE MADE AWARE OF D-LINK’S SOLUTIONS AND THE SUPPORT BEING OFFERED, WE WERE QUITE HAPPY TO ASSOCIATE WITH A TRUSTED BRAND.”
Libinson Joseph
IT Administrator at Al Rashed Al Saleh School
D-LINK PRODUCTS AND SERVICES USED: Equipment
Model
Features
Wireless Controller Switch
DWS-316024-TC/E
20 x 101000/100/BaseT + 4 combo SFP (nonPoE) wireless controller Switch, support 12AP to 48 AP per controller
DGS-312024-PC/ESI
20 101000/100/BASE-T + 4 Combo 101000/100/BASE-T/SFP PoE ports with embedded SI image L2 Stackable Managed Switch (stacking cable and SD card are not included),(PoE Power Budget: 370W, 700W with external RPS-700)
DWL-6600AP/EEUPC
11n 2.45/ Ghz Wireless Access Point with built-in PoE, 4 option antenna interface, Green enabled, (use with DWS-4026/DWC1000/DWS-316024-TC or standalone)
L2 Managed Switches
Unified AP Dual band 300 Mbps
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
CASE STUDY
Sakkeer Hussain, Sales & Marketing Director at D-Link MEA says,”Providing a highly robust Wi-Fi network solution, where all 2,700 students are connected to the Internet anytime, anywhere throughout the campus, is quite a challenge. The school’s previous Wi-Fi network had not been performing well with lots of down-time since they failed to offer the right solution as required by the school, hence, we are very happy that all applications are now running much faster and smoother than before.”
Sakeer says, “We deployed controller based wireless solution for the school. 105 AP’s were deployed each AP in a classroom scenario which helped students to stream wireless seamlessly. Data network was provided for the administration team.”
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optimal performance. D-Link switches met the high price-to-performance standards demanded by leading health care sectors. Hussain adds,” We are extremely pleased about the outcome of this project, which is the result of major planning and coordination efforts between D-Link, Unitech and Al Rashed Al Saleh School. All involved parties have proven great management and organizational skills, turning the initial vision of the setup into reality. Our System Integration Partner Unitech did a wonderful job in assisting with the technical implementation.”
BENEFITS End-To-End Business Solutions by
The decision to look for a new solution and the decision making on D-Link solutions as the preferred choice was arrived in consultations between the vendor, the school principal, the educational advisor & the IT administration of the school. Libinson Joseph, IT Administrator at Al Rashed Al Saleh School says, “We were using a wifi network before, but it was a small setup limited to specific zones.Before considering D-Link, we had tried out a solution from a different vendor but the results weren’t satisfactory for adequate connectivity to cover needs of our 2700 plus students and 300 staff. Once we were made aware of D-Link’s solutions and the support being offered, we were quite happy to associate with a trusted brand.”
The solution: The solution itself had to achieve a few key objectives.The Video streaming had to cover a minimum of 30 users in each classroom whose devices would be connected to to a single Access Point (AP). The Bandwidth management per user and per AP had to be managed. The Management of the AP’s was centralized.
2700 plus students are connected on the e-Learning platform without any disconnections or streaming delays. The centralized management solution helps admin team to handle the
network efficiently. Hussain says, “With D-Link’s stateof-the-art controller-based solution, Al Rashed Al Saleh School is now also enjoying the benefits of a centralized network solution which can be managed easily by network administrators even remotely, facilitating the management and reducing thereby resources previously utilized for their network management. All 2,700 students of the school are now able to stream the contents from the Internet much easier and faster, as per the latest government initiatives of smart learning.” D-Link provided a cost-effective switching and storage solution that met the company business needs and budget constraints. D-Link’s Professional Services team worked to execute and tune the network for
Libinson adds, “We have been quite satisfied with the solution offered by D-Link and the support. The deployment was for in excess of over 100 Access Points, 100 CCTV Cameras and 25 Management switches and I am happy to note that we haven’t had any issues at all with connectivity and I believe their solutions are perfect for educational institutions like ours.”
Support All D-Link Business Solution products are covered by limited lifetime warranty of 5 years. D-Link provides extensive online portal for partner to access online tools, resources and content updates. Onsite technical support and premium advance hardware replacement options are also available. Libinson says, “During our association, we never had faced any sort of problems as their services are good. Whenever we have any doubts or queries, they are always available 24 round the clock. Their services are really appreciated.” SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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TALK POINT
IMPROVING CLIENT EXPERIENCE Youssef Fawaz, GM at Al Rostamani Communications discusses how the company is enabling clients towards digital transformation
Discuss how Al Rostamani Communications has responded to the transformation in the ICT landscape? The landscape of IT continues to transform and at s an IT solutions leader in the region, we need to keep pace with these changes to be relevant to our customers. We have brought in a renewed focus to our go to market approach in the past couple of years. We decided we didn’t want to lose our focus by trying to be everything to everyone. So, what we have done is to adopt a vertical focused approach and build our strengths around taking specialized solutions to those key verticals. While we have been traditionally strong in the service provider segment, we have strong focus and solutions for the financial sector, Healthcare, Hospitality, Education, Contracting & Real Estate etc, where we leverage our strengths and add value to customers. For instance, we have been a strong player in the ELV space and combined with our strong focus in IT solutions including emerging areas such as IoT, we bring greater value enabling smart buildings. This is across both residential and commercial segments SMART SMB | MAY 2018
that are coming up, especially as we approach the 2020 World Expo scheduled to be held in Dubai.
WITH THE GROWING EMPHASIS ON ENDCUSTOMER HAPPINESS AND HAPPINESS METERS, ESPECIALLY AS YOU SEE WITH RECENT INITIATIVES IN UAE, BUSINESSES ARE LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS THAT CAN ENRICH CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH THEM AND ENHANCE THE HAPPINESS QUOTIENT. THIS STARTED WITH THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND IS NOW BEING EXTENDED INTO THE PRIVATE SECTOR.�
How does your team approach customers from these different verticals? Our engineers have worked previously in these industries and they bring that domain knowledge into their customer interactions. This helps to understand customer concerns better and be able to position tailor made solutions for their clients that positively impact their business bottom-line, rather than just deliver off the shelf box products. The earlier approach is no longer valid as customers want solutions that truly make a difference to their business objectives.
Elaborate on the shift in focus towards customer experience enhancement and its impact on your go to market strategies? With the growing emphasis on endcustomer happiness and happiness meters, especially as you see with recent initiatives in UAE, Businesses are looking for solutions that can enrich customer experience of doing business with them and enhance the happiness quotient. This started with the public sector and is now being extended into the private sector.
TALK POINT
These elements will improve the client experience and result in returning customers and more recurring business. At the end of the day, the bottomline will improve. We are looking to engage with our clients on a partnership basis and take them through the process of digital transformation. We are helping them go towards everything digital and adopt the paperless initiative. We understand that the core business of our clients is not IT and help them to focus more on their core business and serve their customers better by supporting them on the IT front. We assist them through our managed services to do this in a very cost effective manner without very big investments. We help them all the way to meet their KPIs and deliver effectively on customer experience. As an example of how we deliver the value to our customers, while previously high speed Internet was a luxury, today excellent internet connectivity is taken for granted by guests frequenting 4 and 5 star rated hotels and any downtime could disrupt customer experience. As a managed services provider, we help hotels pre-empt such instances by alerting them to such issues even before customers face them, and thereby help correct the problem beforehand. Our business is done on a one to one basis and client intimacy is key. Since there are always others who offer similar products, the difference is in how we serve our customers. The quality of services that we offer and how we can help them meet their objectives as enablers, with the required technology, is the crux of our client strategy.
Besides the vertical focus, please give us details of the breadth of solutions you offer? While we have expertise per vertical, we also have a strong focus in all IT solutions. IT comprises building blocks, right from the physical infrastructure to the 7th layer of Applications and with everything in between. We have expertise across each of these lines of business and so we can be the one stop shop to our customers regarding their IT requirements, but to specific verticals that I mentioned earlier. In Advanced Infrastructure, we offer everything around ELV;
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CCTV solutions inclusive of analytics featuring face recognition, heat map etc for both security and retail; Home Automation solutions, where we are quite specialized as well as Networking inclusive of WLAN range of solutions etc. Additionally, we could add value on top of the wireless existing infrastructure such as enabling asset tracking or security. Similarly, we could add analytics on top of a CCTV solutions that a customer may have deployed as many as five years ago or more. We offer the entire range of telephony solutions (call centre and contact centre) for full client experience from receiving and making calls, to CRM integration and sometime even integrating voice analytics on top. We offer the next generation datacentre solutions inclusive of compute solutions, AI, database etc. Then there is a focus on emerging technologies like commercial drones meant for surveillance across large outdoor properties like theme parks and zoos, IoT smart meters for utilities etc. Finally, in business applications we offer solutions for specific industries like time attendance for an organization with a large remote based workforce.
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TALK POINT
Discuss how the organization has approached the shift towards a newer go to market approach internally? Business transformation is a journey, it doesn’t happen overnight. So we have people who focus on the long term vision and then there are those who are responsible to look after shorter term business objectives and bring in improvements as required. These approaches go hand in hand.
market is now ready in terms of maturity and we have the required knowhow to tap into the opportunity. We strive to be early adopters as typically 30% of the market belongs to early adopters.
How do you look at re-skilling of resources for new technologies? There has been re-skilling and education as people needed to learn
W
E ARE LOOKING TO ENGAGE
WITH OUR CLIENT ON A PARTNERSHIP BASIS AND TAKE THEM THROUGH THE PROCESS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. WE ARE HELPING THEM GO TOWARDS EVERYTHING DIGITAL AND ADOPT THE PAPERLESS INITIATIVE”
While we have to do improvements for maintaining and growing the running business, for the longer term, we possibly look to make changes to the business model. For instance, one of the changes we brought in is offering the leasing model, where the user leases on consumption basis instead of buying and incurring a huge upfront capital expenditure. Similarly, to shape up for the emerging trend of IoT, we started with IoT investments three years ago. The SMART SMB | MAY 2018
about new solutions. ELV and IT were separate some years ago but they seem to have merged as everything is IP based. For instance today, guest room management system is purely IP based but it needs to integrate with BMS and this is where education is required. It has been the same for people who were selling traditional IT but are now looking to sell smart home solutions for instance, which are IP based.
Similarly, there used to be legacy telephony solutions exclusively and then IP telephony solutions came in. There used to be a separate focus for every telephony system even at ARC but now there is one team that understands communications and have fluent understanding of both the legacy and IP telephony solutions.
How do you look at the size of customer accounts in terms of your focus? There are different approaches in the market. There are some who look from the point of view of the number of computing endpoints such as we do and there are others who will look at from the perspective of total value of operations. For instance, there might be as few as 10 employees in an organization, but which may have infrastructure worth millions of dollars and also a large turnover So it isn’t always the case that the number of people is equal to size of company or operations. After all, the end goal of IT has always been about bringing in more efficiency and achieve more efficiency with less people.
How has the year been so far and how do you look at growth and expansion? We have seen success with our approach towards services rather than moving boxes. We have been able to make more inroads and beat some bigger rivals in key wins, although in general everyone has their own strongholds. We celebrated 15 years of operations last year and the UAE market continues to give us ample opportunities to grow further.
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OPINION
INVESTING IN YOUR WORKFORCE Zaki Ameer, CEO and Found of Dream Design Real Estate (DDP) explores why every business owner and team leader should invest in their workforce.
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CFO asks THE CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” The CEO replies, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?” The most effective management practices aren’t incidental, they are tied directly to your company’s values. Most leaders can agree that employee development is a critical part of creating a lasting business. However, many leaders assume that they can put the onus on the individual to provide their own path to personal and professional development. The fact is, if you’re not investing in your people, you’re not investing in the future of your business. Investing in your team is an important part of creating an engaged workforce SMART SMB | MAY 2018
and an effective way of reducing turnover for your business. It is important to understand that an investment in your team can range from personal development to financial incentives, to activities that bring ‘happiness’. Firstly, you must invest in their personal and professional development. Typically you will see a positive correlation between personal and professional progress. To be clear, the person I am talking about is someone who is making real growth as a professional, and making increasingly better contributions to the success of the business. This shouldn’t be confused with the workaholic type who appears to be doing well at work, but who may only
be working harder than he or she has to, and whose health and wellbeing may actually be suffering as a result. Often business owners worry that if they invest too much in developing their team, then those employees will become more valuable in the marketplace and potentially move on to other companies. Ironically, this fear leads to a strategy that does more harm than good, and virtually guarantees the very outcome they were trying to avoid. When workers feel like they’re stagnating or heading towards a dead-end, your employees will undoubtedly look for employment opportunities elsewhere. So, how can you invest in your team’s personal and professional
OPINION
development and ensure this doesn’t happen? One example to consider is something called an Individual Development Plan (IDP). An IDP is a fantastic tool to help employees set and reach both short- and long-term goals. IDPs empower individuals to ask themselves, “Where am I now, where do I want to be, and how will I get there?” To really get the most out of each IDP, managers and their direct reports need to conduct some type of monthly check-in. If you aren’t helping your employees consistently track against their goals, then they won’t make any real progress. Another great strategy is to subsidize employee growth via books, conferences, and courses that are related to personal or professional development within your businesses scope of work. This will of course only benefit your organization in the long run. Hosting team building activities is another great way to invest in your workforce. Gallup found that close friendships at work boost employee satisfaction by 50% and people with a best friend at work are 7x more likely to engage fully in their work. While you obviously can’t force friendships in the workplace, there are ways you can foster it. For instance, Offsites give your team a chance to step away from the day-to-day work and build camaraderie. Give your team an opportunity to
have some “play in the game” For example incentivize your employees to take ownership of a certain task or project. Assume that the job will be done better and faster if you offer some type of incentive, such as commission or bonus based monetary opportunities on the achievement of the goal set. If you’re growing your business with plans to eventually sell, consider offering an employee stock option program (ESOP). This is another great way to give your employees a real sense of ownership in the business. Create a healthier work environment. Researchers from Harvard found that medical costs decrease by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs. When you also consider that 87% of employees consider health and wellness offerings when they choose an employer, it’s obvious that focusing on health at work is important to both the employee and employer. Create weekly recognition events and monthly achievement awards, to make sure your employees feel appreciated at work. To really succeed in creating an environment where employees consistently feel appreciated, I suggest integrating it into weekly and monthly activities. Celebrate employees anniversary with something personal. A study conducted by Entelo found that people are most likely to leave their
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jobs after their first, second, and third year at a company. Given this data, it’s crucial that employers make people feel awesome on their work anniversaries to help combat the yearly spike in voluntary turnover. Allow your talented team members to move laterally within the business. Often times, you’ll hire a younger employee who is still figuring out which career path they want to pursue. They may be driven and motivated, but their passion may lie in another area of your business than the one hired for. Promote from within and help that person make the transition into a new department. When they focus on their passions and interest, your employees will be a lot more likely to be engaged and do a better job for your business. Offer the perks and benefits that matter to them. When it comes to perks and benefits for your employees, there is no magic bullet. In order for your perks to be effective in keeping your employees happy, they need to be tailored to their specific needs and desires. Give them time to volunteer during work hours. Today’s workers (especially Millennials) want to work for companies that benefit the greater good, so it’s vital that your company has some sort of social tie. Show your commitment to community and social responsibility by giving your employees a couple of hours each month to get out of the office and participate in community service. Investing in your employees is not only great for the individual, it’s also beneficial for your company. You don’t have to spend lavishly either. Many of the ideas mentioned won’t cost you very much to get started. But, more importantly, they will make a difference in the lives of your employees, and that’s something that will help create loyalty to your business.
Zaki Ameer
CEO and Founder Dream Design Real Estate SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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OPINION
WELCOME TO WIRELESS: BIG BENEFITS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES Morten Illum, VP of EMEA, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company discusses the benefits of a fast, reliable WiFi network with ease of management
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ery few SMB owners have a fully functioning IT department. But they are still expected to provide modern and engaging experiences for their customers, using the latest technology. And the network is where it all begins. But how many non-IT people know the first thing about how to set up and secure a network? It’s time we addressed the demands of the smaller business, and made network management simple. Recent studies suggest that 66 percent of small to medium businesses (SMB) consider the use of the cloud, applications and mobile devices to be a strategic priority. They recognise that they stand a good chance of improving their customer experience by making such investments. But it’s down to us, the technology providers, to make that investment as easy as possible. A truly robust network requires you to manage filtering for a million websites, create individual user profiles and set security protocols for different applications. That’s too much for many business owners - so they need management tools and software that SMART SMB | MAY 2018
does the hard work for them. From a retailing perspective, consumers are constantly using their smartphones in store, creating the obvious need for network speed, security, and availability. From here businesses can not only be sending push notifications, but analysing the data provided by consumer devices, helping shape in store layout for example. In a larger business, you will find a network that has a solid infrastructure, with the ability to keep incorporating new applications as the business grows. Why shouldn’t smaller businesses have the same features as well? Your wireless solution, as an SMB, should be able to handle any business application easily. It has to accommodate a growing number of mobile users and have built-in security as a given. And quite simply, it should just work. This is why straightforward set up and quick, precise remote monitoring and troubleshooting should be a feature for all new technology made available to the SMB.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES Smaller businesses, by nature, employ fewer people. But there are still opportunities for these smaller teams to reap the same benefits from technology. With a network that is securely and simply managed, SMBs can benefit from:
• Ease of management – customers now expect to use apps to get a simpler and quicker technology experience, so why should managing the network be different? Through using automated management software, the business owner will now be able to easily set network controls through a mobile app, and even sign in using social media profiles. Easy. • Super-fast, reliable Wi-Fi
to keep employees connected and productive, have critical applications running at top speed, creating mobile experiences that customers can rely on.
• An automated and intelligent network that can
act as an instant security barrier by detecting and isolating, any device that displays a potential risk.
OPINION
THE FUTURE With the technology back-end taken care of, businesses are left free to innovate. With the rapid shift to create new customer experiences, for example using location-based services via mobile apps, it’s important that tech admin does not get in the way. Your network must work at the pace of your ideas. To enable this, the support you receive from a technology provider is as important as the solution. For example, any business owner that doesn’t want to manage their own cloud can have a partner do this as a managed service.
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From a reseller point of view, there is increased opportunity to work closer with the small business market and offer a high-value solution, while at the same time improving their own offerings. And for the time-strapped, costconscious businesses who are looking for wireless solutions they can count on, it’s important to have access to technology providers that can deliver. Just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a network than can deliver everything your customers need.
MORTEN ILLUM EMEA VP, Aruba, A HPE company
ARUBA EXPANDS AI POWERED NETWORK DIAGNOSTICS
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PE Aruba is strengthening its WiFi portfolio with the recently announced acquisition of Cape Networks. This will expand Aruba’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered networking capabilities with a sensorbased service assurance solution that gives customers a simple, proactive, and network-agnostic tool for measuring and monitoring SaaS, application, and network services. The solution helps organizations deliver the best possible end user experience by enabling IT to get ahead of service quality issues before they occur, accelerate time to resolution, and lower cost of operations. Due to the proliferation of mobile, cloud and IoT, the need to diagnose end-user application availability and performance of mission critical services has become essential for business success. By applying a
sensor-based and network agnostic approach to service assurance, Cape Networks proactively tests the availability and performance of services and applications, alerting IT professionals of issues before they impact the user or the business. Cape Networks delivers easy-to-use insights with a simple and intuitive dashboard that helps eliminate the guesswork for IT. Cape Networks’ solution complements Aruba NetInsight, and together will deliver comprehensive AIpowered analytics and assurance so that customers can quickly
adapt to changes in the user, device, application, and network environments. The AI-powered automation added to Aruba’s portfolio furthers its innovation in the era of autonomous networking where IT must deal with constant change, increasing complexity, and limited resources. This innovation gives IT the agility they need to move away from manual and repetitive tasks and to focus on innovating and delivering new services to meet the changing needs of the business. SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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OPINION
VAT Gains G
overnments all over the world impose and implement taxes to strengthen their economic development and enable it to be a real competitor among the world’s advanced economies. Value Added Tax (VAT) also known as Goods and Services Tax (GST), is a major source of revenue for governments around the world. When the International VAT/ GST Guidelines were first published in
added tax (VAT) from the start of 2018. The United Arab Emirates (UAE)and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have been the first countries to roll out VAT in the GCC from early 2018 while other Gulf countries have time till the end of next year to implement the new tax system. The rate for VAT is set at 5 per cent and all business that exceeds the
projects which, in turn, will boost a number of industries in the country including investments in artificial intelligence, ICT and other traditional investment sectors. That’s not all, the government has no plans to raise the rate of VAT for the next five years. As the tax rates are ultimately passed to the consumer, businesses in the UAE have not been affected much. Post
VIKAS PANCHAL, BUSINESS HEAD AT TALLY SOLUTIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, A LEADING INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING AND COMPLIANCE SOFTWARE PROVIDER OPINES THAT GCC RESIDENTS BENEFIT FROM THE CHEAPEST TAX RATE
2016, around 165 countries operated a VAT regime, more than twice as many as 25 years before. While each country has its own agreed rate, Hungary poses the highest VAT rate at 27 per cent standard followed by a 5 and 18 per cent reduced rate for certain items. Croatia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway follow next with a standard VAT rate of 25 per cent, followed by Finland, Greece and Iceland at 24 percent. As VAT continued to spread across the world, GCC states have also introduced a region-wide value SMART SMB | MAY 2018
minimum annual aggregate turnover thresholdof Dh375,000 as confirmed by their financial records are required for compulsory registration with the VAT system. At just 5 per cent, UAE’s tax system is among the lowest in the world. The success of the UAE tax system is, therefore, a shared responsibility and requires strategic cooperation based on three pillars, the government, the business sector and the community. Additionally, studies indicate that the government will be pumping back tax funds into the development
VAT implementation results have been positive as the economy has not only witnessed a new direction to move forward, but also been able to boost its reputation. A study by the Alliance Business Centers Network (ABCN) indicates that among Arab countries, Tunisia imposes the highest VAT at 18 per cent while Algeria imposes a rate of 17 per cent and Egypt 14 per cent. Just like very giant leap that leaves behind an impression, the consequences of VAT in the UAE have marked the same, but for a positive beginning!
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CASE STUDY TECH WATCH
Epson LightScene EV-100 Series The new 2,000-lumen WXGA accent lighting projector targets retail, galleries and museums
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pson has announced a new type of projector that expands the company’s presence in the signage and lighting sector. With a sleek, low-noise design, available in black or white and created to blend into the background, the 2,000-lumen WXGA EV-100 can work as either a projector or a spotlight without distracting viewers from the subject. The LightScene EV-100’s unobtrusive design is ideal for curated visual environments such as retail showrooms, shop window displays, museum exhibits and art installations, where minimal visual clutter is key. It can be used to provide information, show video or moving patterns, and even projection map imagery onto small objects. Epson’s flexible laser technology gives the EV-100 a huge variety of mounting options – it can project from any angle, and can be ceiling-mounted, floor-standing or attached to a lighting track, all without requiring specialist installation or set-up. It is also capable of projecting in portrait, and multiple units are capable of edge blending for larger displays.
As with all Epson laser projectors, the EV-100 offers tested fit and forget reliability, with a sealed filterless structure to boost dust resistance, and a 20,000-hour, five-year warranty. Highlights: •
Integrated lighting and digital display that project dynamic, experiential content to engage audiences in retail, hospitality and event spaces, showrooms and museums
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Create head-turning digital signage to illuminate and project on virtually any surface or material, for digital art, commercial signage and décor applications
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Sleek, white spotlight design easily blends into its surroundings, offering vertical and horizontal rotation, with flexible mounting on tracks, floors, walls or ceilings
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Breakthrough laser technology provides up to 20,000 hours of virtually maintenance-free operation
HP Elite slice for meeting rooms HP transforms meeting spaces with new Collaboration PC
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he HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms G2 and an all-new 55-inch diagonal 4K conferencing display are part of HP’s growing ecosystem of PC-based conferencing tools and displays designed to make the collaboration experience simple, scalable and versatile. HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms G2 with Skype Room Systems (SRS) SMART SMB | MAY 2018
provides a seamless technology experience for the unique demands and needs of businesses and their workforce. This innovative collaboration PC enables a highquality audio and video experience using Skype for Business. Curated for collaboration, HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms SRS is designed with a variety of features to
make the meeting experience simple and pain-free. To reduce time spent setting up calls, the optional Center of Room Control is a 12.3-inch diagonal touch screen that easily manages conference calls, and includes the HP Presence Sensor that senses when a participant enters the room to start the meeting.
TECH WATCH
Highlights: •
The device features 90 dBa audio for sound and clarity, a far field microphone that can capture sound up to five meters away, HP Noise Cancellation to avoid unwanted sounds/conversations in a room, and a tri-colored light ring that indicates volume level and mute.
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To avoid the dongle drama and cable clutter experienced in many conference rooms, HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms SRS features a wireless display module that eliminates the use of cables with easy sharing via Skype for Business. There is also an option to allow guests to connect directly to the device through the HDMI port.
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HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms SRS is as easy to deploy, secure and manage as a traditional PC, with a standards-based user interface, HP Manageability Integration Kit, and a tool-less set up. As conference devices are typically shared across multiple users, always on, and often unattended for long periods of time, HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms SRS features HP Sure Start with Dynamic Protection and is the only conferencing solution with a self-healing BIOS.
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MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP Device incorporates most popular features from across the award-winning Surface family and is aimed at every type of user, from classroom to boardroom
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icrosoft has announced the general availability of the Surface Laptop across UAE. The perfect productivity companion for everyone, from students to boardroom executives, the Surface Laptop is the optimal blend of all the features that Microsoft customers have been asking – combining form and function, power and portability, security and performance. Powered by Windows 10, the Surface Laptop weighs in at just 2.76lbs, measures 14.47mm at its thickest point and comes with a 7th-generation Intel Core processor and more battery power allowing 14.5 continuous hours of video playback. Memory options extend to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD storage. The Surface Laptop brings together the best innovations from across the Surface family. Battery life, display quality, storage capacity and mobility take central roles in the device designed for a range of lifestyles. Microsoft also announced the availability of Surface Pro with LTE Advanced, the most connected device in its class, for consumers and businesses in UAE. Availability and Pricing With prices starting at AED 4,199 for the Surface Laptop, and AED 4,507 for the Surface Pro LTE, both devices can
be found at all major electronic retail stores and with commercial resellers across UAE. Highlights: •
With a brilliant 13.5-inch PixelSense Display and composed of edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass 3, Surface laptop has the market’s thinnest LCD touch screen display, with 3.4m pixels, each colour-calibrated to give a vibrant, immersive canvas.
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The Alcantara-coated keyboard with soft palm rest gives a new level of typing comfort during the school or a work day. The device comes in an array of striking colors and finishes including Platinum, Graphite Gold, Cobalt Blue and Burgundy.
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The CAT-9 modem delivers one of the fastest LTE-enabled experiences on the market, and with 12.5 hours of battery life, users can remain productive all day, every day.
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Surface Pro with LTE Advanced supports 20 LTE bands and cellular connectivity means users no longer need to worry about the security of public Wi-Fi networks.
SMART SMB | MAY 2018
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CASE STUDY MARKET MIRROR
IT SPENDING IN SMB SEGMENT ON THE RISE
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ccording to a recent forecast by IDC, total IT spending by small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) to be nearly $602 billion in 2018, an increase of 4.9% over 2017. Spending by businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees on IT hardware, software, and services, including business services, is expected to reach $684 billion on in 2021. Mid-market firms will account for the largest share of total SMB IT spending even though they are farther along in technology deployment than small businesses. Over two thirds of global SMB IT spending will be driven by firms with 100-999 employees through 2021. Within the mid-market segment, medium-sized businesses (100-499 employees) will spend $229 billion this year, while large businesses (500-999 employees) will spend $182 billion. Hardware, software, and IT services will each account for around 30%
VERTICAL TECH
GLOBAL MARKET FOR IOT SENSORS IN HEALTHCARE GROWING SMART SMB | MAY 2018
of total SMB spending in 2018 with business services delivering the remainder. While hardware is currently the largest category of spending, IDC expects it to be overtaken by software in 2019 and IT services in 2021. Software will experience the fastest spending growth over the 2016-2021 forecast with a CAGR of 7.5%, followed by business services with a CAGR of 6.6%. Devices will be the largest category of technology spending in 2018 with SMBs allocating $115 billion to personal computing devices, peripherals, and mobile phones. Applications will be the second largest spending category at $99 billion, led by investments in enterprise resource management (ERM), content applications, and customer relationship management (CRM). Content applications and CRM will also see some of the fastest spending growth over the five-year
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he maturation of communication capabilities to allow data transmission over a network or into a control system and the increasing use of MEMS technologies are pushing growth in the healthcare sensor market. In a new report, BCC Research estimates the global market for Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in healthcare will reach $1.1 billion and $1.9 billion in 2017 and 2022, respectively, indicating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7%. The healthcare industry faces growing demand for data collection, aggregation, analysis and two-way feedback to support increased provider productivity and improve quality of care. However, none of this interaction is possible without a robust array of sensor technology placed at system endpoints or within a device to trigger data activity. Sensors can either continuously or periodically transmit a state based on
forecast with CAGRs of 10.6% and 10.0%, respectively. Collaborative applications will see the fastest growth at 12.2% CAGR. The next two largest technology categories in 2018 – technology outsourcing and project oriented outsourcing – will support SMB efforts to implement these new investments in pursuit of their DX strategies. Highlights: •
Medium-sized businesses (100499 employees) expected to spend $229 billion this year on IT
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Hardware, software, and IT services will each account for around 30% of total SMB spending in 2018
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Applications will be the second largest spending category at $99 billion
a predetermined condition or activate a processor system receiving a signal. Sensors have long been a critical part of the healthcare landscape, but the extent of their value is significantly increasing as IoT extends its reach. The market for Internet of Things (IoT) sensors for healthcare is growing at a rate of more than 25% per year, driven by new applications for monitoring vital signs, providing alarms and notifications, feeding data to IoT platforms and administering medical therapies. Long-life expectancy and the growing healthcare expenditures of emerging economies are driving the demand for new applications of medical sensors. Also, more stringent regulations – specifically in the mature U.S. and European markets – has compelled medical device manufacturers to launch sophisticated devices that incorporate new materials, focus on in-depth indications and generate additional new data.