APRIL 2019
EDITORIAL
MANY BRIDGES TO THE FUTURE 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 EDITOR Diksha Vohra editor@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706, Mob: 971-506395616 CIRCULATION MANAGER Bhawana Bhatia bhawana@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 TELE MARKETING MANAGER Jennefer Mendoza jennefer@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 FINANCE Akhilesh Pandey akhilesh@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-8825706 DESIGN Ali Raza ali@qnamarcom.com Tel: 971-4-8825706
T
echnologies are all about enabling better lives and better future. They help us envision new possibilities. The relentless pace of technology innovations over the past couple of decades have taken us quicker into the future than the pace at which earlier generations were accustomed to. The pace may only further quicken henceforth and coping with the technology disruptions will be quite a task. For individuals and Businesses, the need to leverage technologies for their own benefit will always have to be reckoned with. As for the Businesses, those who get the permutations and combinations right in their digital transformation journey, early on will gain an invaluable advantage. Among perspectives shared in a Round table discussion Smart SMB recently organized, the importance of enhancing the customer experience was seen as a key objective in taking up the transformation journey. Businesses need to ensure that their customers reap the benefits of digitalization in addition to enhancing the company’s own operations. On another note, cybercriminals are always lurking on the internet, ready with sophisticated toolsets that can take away your peace of mind with data theft or worse. Indeed, protecting data has become one of the key challenges over the past many years and cybersecurity is clearly no afterthought. For Businesses, small or large, the need to have a holistic strategy towards cybersecurity is worth emphasizing again and again. In this context, GISEC, year on year brings to the fore attention towards newer security technologies. A multilayered security strategy that can protect your data not just with on site workloads but those workloads being deployed on the cloud as well is highlighted as the right approach. The challenge ahead is not just about being able to unveil new innovations in products and services that digital technologies can enable, but it is also about ensuring your digital assets are secured.
R. Narayan Editor in Chief Smart SMB
Management Chairman S.N. Tiwari
CEO Saumyadeep Halder
Publisher Raman Narayan
Managing Director Ankit Shukla
sn.tiwari@smartsmb.net
narayan@smartsmb.net
saumyadeep@bmimea.com
ankit@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@2019 Business Media International LLC. All rights reserved.
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 03
CONTENTS APRIL 2019
CONTENTS Cover Feature
Talkpoint
ENABLING CYBER RESILIENCE
08
A New Era for SMBs and Cloud Computing
16
Streamlined to compete better
28
Crypto exchange through Gold
26
At this year’s GISEC exhibitors are expected to focus on highlighting some of the more advanced technologies that are now key to architecting a more robust cybersecurity strategy.
Spotlight 10-11 COMEX 2019 sees impressive attendance Leadership Day with Epicor’ held at SEWA HQ
Smart SMB Summit & Awards Oman concludes on a high 22
Are SMBs ready to embrace the 4th Industrial Revolution? 30 Customer centricity on the transformation journey
32
Business Insights
18
How to make the most of networking to grow your business
12 Is Sharjah going to be the next Silicon Valley for business? 04 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
Column Realizing the value of Data
34
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NEWS APRIL 2019
ANNUAL INVESTMENT MEETING 2019 TO HOST AIM-OBOR FORUM
W
ith more than 1,700 projects worth USD 1 trillion, China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road Initiative aims to positively impact 4.4 billion people, or 65 percent of the world’s population that equals to about 40 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). Spanning across to 70 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania, the One Belt, One Road Initiative has been allocated over $340bn in construction contracts secured by Chinese companies. These statistics were released in conjunction with the upcoming Annual Investment Meeting which will be held from 8th to 10th April in Dubai focusing on ‘Mapping the Future of FDI: Enriching World Economies through Digital Globalization. ’This year, the forum will put a spotlight on China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road Initiative through a full-day special forum, which will be held on the second day of
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the event. It will provide participating high-ranking Chinese officials with an international platform to present the plans for the One Belt, One Road Initiative and to strengthen investor confidence on the same. In addition, the workshop will brief the business community worldwide with various investment opportunities running around the mega project. “The Belt and Road Initiative will pave the way for a stronger trade ties within Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Targeted to be completed by 2049, the landmark project will bring about inclusive growth, spur unprecedented development, and enhance cooperation, trade, and investment worldwide. AIM is founded based on these objectives too, thereby prompting us at the organizing committee to host this special event this year to keep with our commitment to highlight investment opportunities around the world under the
support of respective governments,” said Dawood Al Shezawi, CEO of Annual Investment Organizing Committee. During the forum, renowned keynote speakers will tackle various fundamental aspects of the project. There will be four sessions which will focus on infrastructure development, new technologies, renewable energy, and agriculture and food security. While One Belt One Road Initiative will be a key topic at the upcoming Annual Investment Meeting, the premier international foreign direct investment (FDI)-focused platform will also offer high-ranking policy makers, business leaders, regional and international investors, successful entrepreneurs, leading academics, and celebrated financial experts an opportunity to discuss best practices and economic issues of global importance.
APRIL 2019
NEWS
FITCH LAUNCHES MXP RETAIL TECHNOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST FITCH, the world’s leading brand and retail consultancy, is launching its ground-breaking MXP technology in the Middle East. For the first time outside of Asia-Pacific, the leading operating system is set to transform malls and retail destinations in the United Arab Emirates by connecting retailers and consumers to deliver a new level of service. FITCH developed MXP to allow malls and destinations to deliver a higher level of seamless service to digitally native consumers, connecting a destination’s digital touchpoints such as interactive kiosks, websites, apps, incentive programs, social media and advertising. It helps destinations manage content, analyze data, connect touchpoints, and drive engagement through the ease of a single platform. This gives mall operators an opportunity to deliver a greater level of direct service to shoppers through integrated Physical, Human, and Digital touchpoints.
“Mall operators are actively reviewing their direct relationship with the shopper, understanding the need to engage more directly across multiple touchpoints in today’s connected world,” says Jonathan Cummings, Chairman of FITCH Greater China. “As we see retail shift from a mere transactional relationship to one requiring a higher level of involvement and service delivery, we developed MXP as a future facing platform to meet the evolving needs of malls.” Amongst other clients, FITCH is transforming Swire Properties malls and mixed-use developments throughout Greater China with the implementation of MXP. The platform serves as a foundation for a digital ecosystem that’s intelligent, data-rich, and futureproofed for a rapidly evolving landscape, and ever-dynamic customers.
“The United Arab Emirates has showed its determination to be the vanguard of future city development” says Kevin Doherty, Managing Director of FITCH Dubai. “We are therefore delighted to be the first region to launch MXP outside of Asia and look forward to helping the region take another leap forward in retail experience”.
LIV. INTRODUCES OLIVIA, AI-POWERED CHATBOT Chatbots are AI-enabled computer programs designed to simulate human communication, allowing them to answer customer queries in real time. As AI uses human interaction to constantly adapt, grow and learn, Olivia was ‘trained’ by Liv. customers in a voluntary mentorship program prior to her launch. Over 3,000 mentors interacted with the chatbot using natural or conversational English, offering Liv.’s customers a chance to co-create a more intuitive and personalised customer experience. Liv., the lifestyle digital bank by Emirates NBD and the fastest growing bank in the UAE, has partnered with US-based Kasisto, the creators of the KAI Banking AI platform for finance to introduce Olivia, Liv.’s conversational AI (artificial intelligence) based chatbot. With the launch of Olivia, Liv. customers can get account information and insights on their spending as naturally as texting a friend. Olivia has a deep understanding of Liv.’s banking and lifestyle offerings. The chatbot can help customers get quick answers on how to make a local transfer or to block their card; text back account balance or how many Livions have been earned. Olivia can also answer queries on how much customers have spent last month on groceries or in restaurants, helping them plan and manage their finances better. Furthermore, Olivia can seamlessly hand over the conversation to the Liv. team if customers prefer to chat with a customer service agent.
“Virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important part in our daily lives and our new chatbot Olivia will offer millennial customers a new way to engage with and receive information and instant insights on their spending and finances,” said Jayash Patel, Head of Liv. “Our partnership with Kasisto helped us leverage KAI’s agile platform with built-in banking expertise and complemented by customer feedback, to humanise and train Olivia in line with our goal of serving as a financial buddy to customers.” April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 07
COVER STORY APRIL 2019
C
ybersecurity is an integral part of corporate strategies looking to secure digital assets. Bringing that into sharp focus, GISEC 2019 returns with a larger showcase this year. According to IDC’s latest findings, the worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services is forecast to reach $103.1 billion in 2019, an increase of 9.4% over 2018 and the upswing is expected to continue for the foreseeable period ahead. The report also mentions that Banking, Manufacturing and Government services seem to be among the leading verticals that will drive the spending but other verticals like telecom seem to be close behind. Managed security is gaining further traction this year while Network security hardware, integration services and endpoint security software are also in focus.
ENABLING CYBER RESILIENCE At this year’s GISEC exhibitors are expected to focus on highlighting some of the more advanced technologies that are now key to architecting a more robust cybersecurity strategy.
By R. Narayan
Maher Jadallah
At this year’s GISEC exhibitors are expected to focus on highlighting some of the more advanced technologies that are now key to architecting a more robust cybersecurity strategy. Jeff Ogden, General Manager – Middle East, Mimecast, who are exhibiting at GISEC for the third year now say, “The security industry continues to grow quickly, with new solutions and vendors popping up all the time. No organization is immune to cyber threats. Large enterprises are prioritizing security, have security teams in place and have several solutions to protect their infrastructure. Smaller organizations on the other hand still have a long way to go and these are the businesses that need the most guidance.” The focus is on enhancing awareness around the need for building cyber resilience for cloud deployments and removing apprehensions of security risks that remain when it comes to cloud hosted workloads. Jeff adds, “GISEC is important for global companies like Mimecast as it allows us to meet with key decision makers and to introduce the local market to our full suite of cyber resilience solutions. With cloud gaining momentum among organizations, we’re expecting more questions about how to build additional security into hosted or cloud email migrations.
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Regional Director - ME, Tenable
Jeff Ogden, General Manager Middle East, Mimecast We’ll use the show to educate organizations on the importance of cyber resilience in the cloud. We’re also using this year’s show to talk about the importance of actionable threat intelligence and how it is an essential component in any cyber resilience strategy.” Tenable is also retiring to GISEC as exhibitor for the third time and the company will focus on promoting its Cyber Exposure platform and demonstrate its latest Predictive Prioritization approach to customers and partners in this region.
Maher Jadallah, regional director - Middle East, Tenable says, “ GISEC is the largest and most anticipated cyber security exhibition in the Middle East. It is a great platform for us to showcase our innovative cyber security solutions, increase our brand visibility and raise our company profile with a niche audience. Our participation in GISEC 2018 was a success. We received a great response for our technical demonstrations, met with existing and potential customers and partners from across the Middle East under one roof, and generated quality leads from regional organizations. We look forward to a bigger and more successful participation this year.” The company’s showcase will focus on highlighting approaches to ensuring there are no security gaps where IT and OT systems are working together. He adds, “At the event, we plan to highlight how Predictive Prioritization will help our customers focus on the vulnerabilities that matter most. We will also demonstrate how we can help customers to close the IT/OT Cyber Exposure gap, especially when it comes to industrial operations spanning IT and OT with siloed security controls that lead to a fractured view of risk across the converged IT/OT attack surface.”
APRIL 2019
For Cyjax, this would be the first ever participation at GISEC and the security vendor will be showcasing capabilities of the Cyjax Technology Stack, a portfolio of custom-built technologies designed to provide automated collection, processing, monitoring and advanced analytical capabilities of threat intelligence information. It will also demonstrate the Cymon User Dashboard, a simple, intuitive user experience that brings all the information outputs together to provide custom views of real-time threat intelligence data, alongside an essential set of advanced tools, that deliver cutting edge analytical capabilities to end users. Mark Pearce, Chief Marketing Officer at Cyjax says, “We are seeing daily cyber-attacks targeted at entities in the Middle East. While these attacks range in their sophistication and their motives, the troubling statistic is that well over 70% are targeted at government or stateowned entities, using threat vectors such as fake job ads or sophisticated APT type attacks. As such, threat intelligence should be an integral part of any cybersecurity strategy as it focusses on existing and emerging threats and identifies internal and external risks to the organization, its infrastructure and brand reputation. “ He adds, “Based on our approach, we believe we have a competitive advantage over other vendors in the market. And having already secured our first deal with a major UAE government entity, we are fully committed to the Middle East market and believe that the time is right to make direct investments in to the region.”
Ned Baltagi
Managing Director, Middle East & Africa, SANS Institute
COVER STORY
Part of the SANS mission is to help educate the world about cyber security to make it a safer place, and as we continue to grow in MEA it is important that we share our knowledge where we can. GISEC gives us the platform to do this.”
Rick McElroy
Head of Security Strategy Carbon Black
The company is expected to open a permanent office in Dubai in etc in the next few months. Carbon Black, a leader in next-generation endpoint security delivered via the cloud, is participating at GISEC for the fifth consecutive year. Carbon Black will launch its third Global Incident Response Threat Report. Aggregating qualitative and quantitative input from 40 Carbon Black IR partners, this report aims to offer actionable intelligence for business and technology leaders, fueled by analysis of the newest threats and expert insights on how to stop them. Rick McElroy, Head of Security Strategy at Carbon Black says, “There are growing concerns around advanced threats across the Middle East and companies in the region are keen to build and maintain strong change management and quality assurance practices to combat cybercriminals. During GISEC 2019 I’m particularly looking forward to launching our new research which addresses the growing global threat landscape and also addressing ways in which organizations can redress the balance.” SANS Institute will be making its maiden appearance at the largest security event of the region this year and Ned Baltagi, Managing Director in the Middle East at SANS Institute says, “GISEC is the largest cyber security exhibition and conference in MEA, and one of the largest in the world.
He adds, “In addition, SANS is the most trusted and by far the largest provider of cyber security training and certification to professionals at governments and commercial institutions worldwide. Training is an increasingly critical part of the defense against cybercrime as organizations in the Middle East and globally struggle to fill a diverse number of cyber security roles. SANS is playing a key role in helping to upskill existing practitioners and in working with organizations and governments to identify and bring new talent into the industry and to quickly get them up to speed for their first cyber security role. As such, we felt it was important to be part of GISEC, the key cyber security event in the Middle East region.
James Mason
Intelligence Analyst, Cyjax
Courtesy the myriad security solutions vendors and other companies who will be participating at this year’s GISEC, the attendees at the show will get a more holistic understanding of what it takes to build a mullti-pronged strategy towards cybersecurity. These insights would be handy for decision makers of Businesses around the region who will need to be more committed towards necessary spends on IT security, especially in the era of disruptive digital transformation.
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 09
SPOTLIGHT APRIL 2019
COMEX 2019 SEES IMPRESSIVE ATTENDANCE Oman’s biggest technology show Comex got bigger with its latest edition that was organized over three days at the Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre . The event with the agenda‘Digitalising the Future’ was held under the patronage of H H Sayyid Kamil bin Fahad al Said, Assistant Secretary General for the office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Cabinet Affairs. Also held within Comex Business, the Smart City and Industry 4.0 Summit took place from 18 to 19 March 2019. The focus was on industrial applications of AI & IoT that were outlined through themed sessions covering smart living, smart city solutions, Industrial IoT, worker safety, data disruption, enterprise IT across oil & gas, manufacturing, transport, tourism, education & healthcare industries. As many as twenty-three government entities and a large number of private sector companies were part of Comex. In addition to Oman based companies, firms from Canada, the US, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, India, Singapore, Japan, France, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Germany, and Spain participated at the expo. One of the highlights of COMEX 2019 was the ITA’s Oman government portal launching its first robot Chatbot: ‘Manshood’, an interactive chatting programme operated by AI technology around the clock. The chatbot introduces government services to the public and highlights local occasions, key to enhancing customer experience. Exhibitor companies included Omantel that is playing a leading role in bringing digital transformation to the country. Companies including Dell Technologies, Huawei etc had a strong participation at the showcase with demos of their new technologies. Regional companies like Oman Data Park and Infocomm were also key exhibitors
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Among several announcements at the show, one of the highlights was the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that Oman Data Park (ODP) signed) with Dell Technologies, initiating a landmark project to provide Professional Services as a Service (PSaaS) to its customers. The MoU was signed at COMEX Technology Show by Eng. Maqbool Al Wahaibi, CEO of Oman Data Park and Havier Haddad, General Manager – Gulf at Dell Technologies, further strengthening their existing seven-year-old partnership. The exhibition also included workshops, meetings and competitions that kept the event highly engaging right through its course. There were several new launches as well during the exhibition. True to its objectives, the event was able to highlight the growth in ICT within Oman’s current and emerging industries. The impressive footfall at the event right through the three days was something that several of the exhibitor companies pointed out. Smart SMB also was an exhibitor at COMEX and was the only mid-market focused media company among the exhibitors there. Following COMEX, Smart SMB also held the Smart SMB Summit & Awards Oman focusing on mid-market decision makers at the Sundus Rotana that was well attended.
APRIL 2019
SPOTLIGHT
‘LEADERSHIP DAY WITH EPICOR’ HELD AT SEWA HQ By R. Narayan
The ‘Leadership Day with Epicor’ held at SEWA HQ saw an impressive turnout of attendees from several leading manufacturing companies based out of the UAE. The session organized by Smart SMB on behalf of Epicor set out to examine in detail what is driving the need for transformation in manufacturing. The purpose of this discussion was to enhance the shared understanding among the participants from manufacturing sector about best technology practices for their organizations to accelerate growth strategies via digital transformation. The discussion was chaired by Hesham El Komy, Regional VP, Epicor. In setting the agenda for the discussion, Hesham said, “The purpose is to listen in to views of people on digital transformation and what different approaches organizations are adopting in terms of changes that need to be done, so that they are not left behind. History shows there have been multiple forms of transformation and we now are in an age referred to as industry 4.0. This is now significantly transforming manufacturing and there is a strong impetus to transform and stay competitive.” During the session, some of the participants shared stories of implementations that are giving an integrated view of their workflow at their manufacturing sites and how the integration was helping address issues of lack of real time information when the systems were not integrated. Among perspectives shared, the importance of enhancing customer experience was perceived as a key objective in taking up the transformation journey. Customers must also reap the benefits of digitalization in addition to enhancing the company’s operations. The concern for potential of mass employment with automation was addressed. Some had fears of such reckoning but overall the impression gathered from views of different participants is that while automation will go on to a greater extent, yet there would be roles for the human interventions, albeit as redefined roles. There would of course be impact on routine receptive tasks that can be automated. The transformation of eras from companies that had real products to an era where companies like Uber thrive encapsulates the world we live in, was one of the observations shared. The fact that the UAE is leading the digital transformation journey was also underlined by one of the participants. One of the important perspectives shared was that “every company will have a different digitalization journey.
From deploying an ERP to implementing RPA to enhancing customer experience etc, there are different facets and companies are typically at different stages in their adoption of the new technologies.” Epicor’s spokesperson highlighted the future road ahead with the concept of the of the connected factory that enables a complete view of shop floors on a dashboard via mobile interface. Tracking productivity in real time across shopfloors in different locations was never so easy for the busy top executives of companies. One of the attendees mentioned how they had embarked on including IoT sensors in their compressors and which helped in providing details of oil levels, pressure drop, alerts to change consumables etc. He went on to add that such IoT enabled features would soon be a standard feature that customers come to expect. It was also detailed that one of the typical issues manufacturing companies face is having different databases. Integrations of the many databases is one of the challenges ERP providers face. But this integration is key to unifying the whole into one system. It was also underlined that digitalization is not an end in itself but needs to be mainly achieve faster innovations. While new designs took a longer time earlier, now designs can be done faster. There is also the advantage of simulating customer experience before you embark on manufacturing a new product design. Finally, a concern raised was that the smaller companies don’t have the luxury to spend like the bigger companies to adopt to the level of quick changes like the large companies. Smaller companies need affordable consultancy for identifying potential roadmaps towards adopting digital transformation and the fact that the smaller companies are typically more innovative can not be ignored. Hesham concluded the session by elaborating how each company needs to look at the journey of digital transformation differently based on their needs. He added that the companies need to ensure they are sure of the tradeoff between the cost of going in for the transformation and the cost of not doing it. April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 11
FEATURE APRIL 2019
IS SHARJAH GOING TO BE THE NEXT SILICON VALLEY FOR BUSINESS? SETTING UP IN SHARJAH PROS AND CONS Sharjah has been a popular destination for residents because of its affordable living but even for entrepreneurs, setting up in Sharjah can cost them less relatively. There are more reasons that are in favor of Sharjah.
During the last decade, Sharjah has emerged as an entrepreneurial hub with various Government initiatives in place to attract investors and innovators to establish their companies in Sharjah. But is it actually worth investing in the emirate in today’s date?
A
By Diksha Vohra
lmost a decade ago, Sharjah was called the ‘Cultural Capital’ of the UAE. The emirate has in-fact long been known for its traditional roots, heritage preservation and its artistic architecture. Sharjah, however, has witnessed a drastic change over these years and has become an entrepreneurship hub in the region. With more than 30,000 companies establishing themselves in 2018 alone, the emirate is thriving with new ideas, startups and subsequent development.
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“We were known for our culture preservation and today we’re known as the city of education and entrepreneurship, and that has to be entirely credited to our Ruler - H.H. Sheikh Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi who’s vision was to transform Sharjah into a knowledge based economy,” says Saeed Alnofeli, Venture Creation Manager at Sheraa (Sharjah Entrepreneurship Centre). Indeed there is no doubt that the city is where it is today because of the relentless efforts of the visionary Ruler and the Government of Sharjah who’ve supported his vision by launching many new initiatives to help SMBs grow in their respective businesses. In-fact, entrepreneurship has thrived so much in the region that you’d often find people who’ve started something of their own outside their regular jobs. “It went from something a few had to something everyone has,” says H.E Sara Al Madani, Member - Sharjah Chambers of Commerce. “People in the government, private sector employees, all have small businesses past their work hours, and that’s what makes Sharjah a place where everyone is given the opportunity to develop their vision into a tangible reality.”
As per H.E. Sara Al Madani: “Most important advantage is the affordability. Especially for SMBs, cash-flow is an issue. So the emirate provides them an opportunity to establish here without burning much cash, allowing you to use it elsewhere, and test the market.” Since the initial startup costs are low, if the business does not work out for an entrepreneur, at least he wouldn’t loose as much he would loose otherwise. She further adds that the other factor that sets Sharjah apart is the location. The emirate is in the middle and quite close to all other emirates. Hence commuting and doing business with other emirates becomes easier. Also, Sharjah has closer access to all ports which is an added advantage to people especially in the trading or industrial production lines. “Even the license fees is a lot lesser than other emirates,” says Saeed Al Nofeli. But while the fees is lower compared to other emirates, for startup companies, it is still high. Ruba Hasan, founder of 3Dinova, a 3D printing company feels that in general it is difficult to setup a company in the UAE, and considering Sharjah is encouraging startups, it should lower the costs further.
FEATURE APRIL 2019 “I wished we had cheaper licenses and easier facilities to open bank accounts, at least in the first two years,” says Ruba. For a new entrepreneur, shelving our AED 10,000 - 15,000 for the license in the first year of business is difficult. Moreover, opening a company bank account requires a physical office and hence renting an office when you’re not really sure if you’d succeed is quite risky. Sheraa, however, has considered these points and has tied up with a couple of firms to provide better facilities for their members. “At Sheraa, we’ve partnered with Shams who provide with cheaper licenses. We not only provide advisory help, we also have a system in place whereby we can connect them with investors and vice versa so that both parties benefit from each other’s resources.”
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
A
s mentioned previously, H.H. Sheikh Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi has always focused on developing the city into a knowledge based economy for which he established the American University of Sharjah 20 years ago. Recently, he also announced that he will be opening research parks in Sharjah to commercialize on the resources. He wants to develop a complete ecosystem to allow entrepreneurs to flourish. Moreover, we see the presence of many entities to support traditional businesses but this is not the case when it comes to start-ups and new businesses. Sharjah aims to eliminate this issue and has established multiple entities which work together to ensure that the support systems for a start-up to grow and flourish are in place.
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Saeed Alnofeli
Venture Creation Manager, Sheraa These include centers such as Sherri which not only provide opportunities for new ideas to expand but also train people to create a skilled workforce. “When we started off, we realized that the people in our region aren’t equipped with the right skills to launch startups, and that’s where we came in,” says Saeed. “Sheraa aims to educate these budding entrepreneurs with the necessary skills to create their brand, their product, their pitch and even connects them with the right investors to help them access the global markets.” While Sheraa is doing this, SRTI Park, another entity setup by the ruler himself focuses on creating solutions for a number of innovation challenges. “The strategy of the park is to create solutions for a number of innovative issues, in order to build a technical scientific base for development in the fields of water technology, renewable, environment technology, transportation technology, information technology, industrial design and architecture,” says H.E. Hussain Al Mahmoudi,
H.E. Hussain Al Mahmoudi CEO of SRTI Park CEO of SRTI Park. SRTI Park has already succeeded in attracting a number of international companies, as well as there are talks of non-governmental organizations such as the United Nations establishing technological laboratories in the future. With these initiatives in place, Sharjah is advocating entrepreneurship in a way it has never before. With perks, initiatives and start-up centric entities, it is aiming to capture the imagination of anyone with an idea. People from any nationality, background and walk of life are welcome here, they just need an idea. With the growing need for more businesses in its economy and a student population beaming with innovation, could Sharjah be the bright new spot for innovators? “We have the minds, we’re building the resources and we’re developing world class technology,” says H.E. Sara Al Madani. “If everything goes as planned, in a few years time, Sharjah could be the next Silicon Valley for startups and businesses.”
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TALK POINT APRIL 2019
A NEW ERA FOR SMBS AND CLOUD COMPUTING With an increasing demand for cloud computing in the market, are SMBs making the right decisions by choosing cloud solutions? We explore the same, over a candid conversation with Chris Kozup, Senior VP, Global Marketing at Nutanix. By Diksha Vohra
How are the services provided by Nutanix useful for SMB companies today? Nutanix believes in engaging with customers in a journey and not just providing them with services or products. This involves a series of steps, in which a company can prioritise their needs and make changes according to their goals. The first step involves the modernisation of data stored on cloud platforms. In the second step, you think about how you can run or expand various existing and new applications. The third step simply involves the extension of these applications into the cloud. This results in a reduction of footprint, ease of operations and a significant amount of money saved. Furthermore, these solutions are not limited to a certain type of company. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an SMB or a large-scale company, Nutanix uses the same dynamic to ensure better results. The company also believes that more SMBs will be looking towards public cloud solutions in the coming years. While this is a welcome change, Nutanix believes it is not always the right step for customers. While we love everything about the cloud, a look at the applications strategy as a leading point is required to determine the type of infrastructure which will be best for it. And a key component to finding that pivotal strategy is simplifying data and the data centre itself. 16 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
There is a lot of talk about the benefits of cloud computing for larger companies but not enough when it comes to SMBs. Tell us about cloud solutions for SMBs. A great thing about SMBs and cloud computing, especially in the U.A.E, is the high adoption rate seen here. A lot of companies are quickly taking to public cloud and this is largely due to the type and size of the companies; which are mostly mid-sized. For a smaller company, the simplicity that public cloud offers makes much more sense. Cloud allows for an ease of abstracting IT and applications and also helps you run it in an environment where someone else takes care of it for you. While this does seem like a good deal in the start, companies will soon realise the shortcomings attached with it as well. While public cloud will be more suitable for bigger organisations with apps which offer more stability, this might not be the case for SMBs, for whom IT is fundamental to their core strategy. Therefore, as an SMS, it would make more sense to own cloud real estate rather than renting it. This will allow SMBs to offer more options to the users, with their cloud systems present on their own premises.
APRIL 2019
“A great thing about SMBs and cloud computing, especially in the U.A.E, is the high adoption rate seen here. A lot of companies are quickly taking to public cloud and this is largely due to the type and size of the companies; which are mostly mid-sized.”
TALK POINT
To give an example, many companies in the U.A.E might have multiple offices, including smaller branches in remote locations. Having a dedicated IT personnel for such a small setup might not make a lot of sense, and that is where our software comes into play. You can easily transport and setup our software in these remote locations, without the need for a dedicated IT expert. We offer a variety of our own hardware platforms and also the option of providing software which relies on third-party hardware such as that from Dell or Lenovo. This means we provide you with both flexibility and simplicity. One of our offerings, specially made for SMBs, is called ‘Beam’. Beam allows you to measure and understand your usage in the public cloud. This will in turn, allow customers to have visibility about the kind of expenditure which is happening and whether it is in the right place, which is a huge advantage for smaller companies.
What would be some handy tips you could offer for SMBs venturing into the cloud arena? As an SMB, you first need to identify the type of company you are and therefore, the type of strategy you need. Identify your needs and start by creating an application strategy which will be the basis for your choice of infrastructure required. This will ensure you are being driven by your targets, setting you in the right direction.
What are some of the high-level results of Nutanix? One of the key elements that we do globally is conduct surveys. The surveys help both us and our customers in various ways. We can gauge and understand the global market and also give insights about the market, using these surveys. This not only helps us positions ourselves in a better manner, it also helps the customer. With this knowledge, the customer can compare themselves to the market and figure out whether they are on track, as far as their goals are concerned. A huge finding, especially regarding the companies present in the U.A.E, is the presence of legacy infrastructure. This is the use of older, three-tier infrastructure which most companies paid a lot for. Due to this, they tend to use it for a longer period of time. This traditional method makes operations even more complex and also can result in overspending in many cases. But we believe that over the years, there will be a realisation to separate certain applications for on-premise use. This shift, will signal the rise of Hybrid IT.
How important is the SMB market to Nutanix and what specific solutions do you have for it? The SMB market is an extremely important segment for us. As mentioned before, we use the strategy of simplicity. Simplifying databases, will result in the simplification of operations, which is what smaller companies need. Nutanix provides infrastructure with a type of one-click simplicity which you won’t find anywhere else. April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 17
BUSINESS INSIGHTS APRIL 2019
How to make the most of networking to grow your business? By Diksha Vohra
I
t is 6.15 on a Sunday morning and Jawed Sheikh, Managing Director of Value Vision Decor Technical Services is already on his way to the Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club for his weekly BNI (referral business group) meeting.
Jawed Sheikh, MD
Value Vision Decor Technical Services
With so many networking events and groups around, it is often quite difficult to understand which ones you should choose to grow your business. We interview some experts and find out what kind of networks should growing SMBs be a part of and how to make the most if it. 18 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
He arrives there and meets with more than 25 other business heads. Before they start with their structured meeting, they discuss weekly developments, new services and update each other about the latest happenings in their lives. Once the meeting starts, Jawed gets busy in jotting down what other members of his team are looking for and prepares his referral list. While he passes on five referrals, others pass on six referrals to him. “That’s how structured networking works,” says Jawed. “You meet potential clients or existing business partners on a regular basis to maintain your business relationship and generate referrals which can be used to identify new clients/ business opportunities to further your business growth.” In today’s world, with the onset of technology, lack of personal connection and increasing competition, it has become very difficult for SMBs to grow. Where do you find your ideal clients and how do you get qualified leads? That’s a question many businesses get stuck with. To help such businesses, networking events were organised where people could connect with each other, understand each other’s business and then work together. This, however, got divided into two main categories - free to attend events and membership based events. The free to attend events are mostly like industry related conferences and workshops. The membership based events are where the members pay a certain fee, get added into a referral group of
their choice, meet with their groups on a regular basis and then pass business to each other. “Networking is like creating a web the way spider does,” says Amitava Banerjee, Director of Business Development, CEO Clubs Network. “Each networking platform has some value to offer. However, it depends on the networker how he/she extracts the value out of that platform. Networking in an art and getting to know the other person in a short time is a bigger art, and to create an impression about oneself within that time is the biggest art.”
THE FIRST IMPRESSION With free to attend networking events, that’s the biggest challenge - how do you impress someone enough in five minutes to get them to encourage them to pass business to you? Bijay Rajnikantt Shah, National Director of BNI says: “It’s like making a cold call but in person. It does take a skill set to connect and start a conversation with strangers and not many people are proficient in this. Most SMBs who choose to attend these events assume they can literally use this opportunity to try and sell to the new people they meet.” With structured networking, however, that’s not the case. SMBs network in a closed group and since they meet regularly, they have ample amount of time to talk in depth about their services. “Being an entrepreneur, I have always believed in structured networking where the objectives of a networking group are clearly outlined and expectations are mutual from a networking group, and therefore I personally prefer structured networking over free events,” says Anishkaa Gehani, CEO of Yardstick Marketing, Dubai.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS APRIL 2019 BEING ACTIVE AND BUILDING TRUST The next essential, after impression and visibility, is being active. “Active members are those who contribute to the growth of other members while ensuring their business gets its due benefit,” says Jawed. Commitment to the objectives, involvement in the activities, engagement with the members, eagerness and efforts to help other members in the group in their business are the key attributes for any business to grow through networking.
Bijay Rajnikantt Shah National Director, BNI
SAY NO TO AGGRESSIVE SALES Bijay, however, feels that even unstructured networking can benefit one provided they don’t try to pitch sales right in the first meeting. Anishkaa too seconds his thought as she too believes that hunters and aggressive sales people put others off. Instead, if one tries to understand the other individual’s business, takes interest in the same, keeps in touch and passes on business to them, it helps them build credibility and that’s what can get your ball rolling. But most businesses fall into the trap of collecting several business cards at unstructured events, sending emails to them and connecting. Does that work? According to Amitava: “Networking is not limited to collection of business cards and send courteous emails as a onetime action. Value of networking starts when one makes the effort to reach out to the other person and stays in touch. Out of sight is actually out of mind so to occupy in one’s mind space you need to be visible.” With structured networking, however, that’s again possible because the groups meet regularly. 20 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
mutual trust. Businessmen are more likely to give business to those who have a similar thought process and share a similar level of commitment.
GIVE BUSINESS AND BE PATIENT “It’s more about farming then hunting,” says Bijay. “If you’re expecting to get results overnight, that might not be possible because it takes time to build trust and you need to invest that much time to derive benefits.” On an average, an SMB can start expecting major results after 12-18 months of strong networking. The second most important thing is to give enough business.
“ Value of networking starts when one makes the effort to reach out to the other person and stays in touch. Out of sight is actually out of mind so to occupy in one’s mind space you need to be visible.”
Once you’re an active member, you’re more trusted and that’s how real business will start coming your way. From his experience, Amitava notes that the biggest merit is trust. When a member meets another member at regular intervals, he gets more opportunity to know about that person; his business and many other details which helps build a relationship on
That’s where understanding the business of people you’re networking with comes into play. The more you give, the more visible you are and people are more likely to deal with you. In conclusion, there is no perfect way of networking. As Jawed says, it is important to understand and analyse whether the ‘event’ enlightens you and broadens your understanding of the subject and how much you gain in terms of knowledge. As long as you’re evaluating your goals from tiem to time, learning and developing, you’re sure to succeed through networking. “A perfect networker is like a soluble object example sugar mixed in a drink. You consume the drink you get the taste of sweetness but can’t see the sugar,” concludes Amitava.
Anishkaa Gehani
CEO, Yardstick Marketing, Dubai.
SPOTLIGHT APRIL 2019
SMART SMB SUMMIT & AWARDS OMAN CONCLUDES ON A HIGH
Oman became the third country in the region after the UAE and Bahrain to host Smart SMB Summit & Awards. The flagship platform targeting mid-market decision makers that held it first Oman edition on 20th March at the Sundus Rotana in Muscat, saw an impressive attendance right through the day. The successful show indeed underlined yet again the utility of ‘Smart SMB Summit’ as an ideal platform for the mid-market Businesses across countries by helping bring to the fore discussion on subjects of great relevance such as digital and business transformation. The Summit lined up an impressive cast of speakers with strong industry expertise for the keynote addresses as well as panel discussions. R. Narayan, Editor in Chief and Publisher of Smart SMB in his brief opening address highlighted the continued commitment of the organizers, Business Media International, to expand the platform across the region. Samer Semaan, Regional Channel Manager, Gulf, Dell Technologies presented the first keynote of the day and he spoke on ‘Realizing your Digital Future’ which brought to light the important pivots that need to be addressed in going down the road of digital transformation. Following him, Mansoor Sarwar, Director Technical Services & Pre-Sales, Sage Middle East presented his keynote on ‘Impact of Digital Transformation on ERP’ and highlighted several facets including. Ankit Shukla, MD of Business Media International, said, “We are quite pleased to see that the Summit has been received so well here in Bahrain. We are hopeful that the platform will continue to play a key role in driving awareness of technologies that enhance competencies of businesses to compete better.”
22 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
Shino Thomas, Head of Digital Transformation Projects, National Bank of Oman, Kashif Adeel, Senior Delivery Manager, Technology Projects, Bank Dhofar and Georges El-Khoury, Senior Channel Sales Manager at Dell EMC were the participants of the first of the three panel discussions of the day. The discussion highlighted ‘digital transformation’ as an opportunity for the smaller and medium size Businesses in Oman to expand their horizons in terms of new capabilities, new markets to address etc by leveraging new technologies. Mohammad Ather Ansari, Senior Expert at Omantel gave an incisive presentation on ‘The transformational impact of IoT and edge computing’, helping enhance the understanding of the attendees on the subject. Following him, Duha Awayes, Director Protiviti Oman, presented an engaging address on ‘Leadership in Digital & Business transformation’. She highlighted why the ‘Super Chicken model’ does not work in the digital age and why it is about the value each team member brings to the table and the diversity that will be among the defining ingredients of success. This was followed by a panel discussion on “enabling the digital workplace’ and the participants included Mansoor Sarwar, Technical Director Sage Middle East, Les Johnson, Director of Digital Technology, British School Muscat, HARISH DANANI, Senior Consultant ICT, Infocomm Group and Sabahat Nasim, Channel Sales Manager, HPE Aruba, Gulf. The session brought out insights including the challenges faced within some workplaces as to the lack of basic enablement of digital technologies to the significant momentum organizations attain with relevant deployments of technologies in their respective verticals.
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This was followed by a panel discussion that focused on ‘Women leaders in IT transformation’ that saw Samer Semaan, Regional Channel Manager, Gulf, Dell Technologies as the moderator and a group of women executives from corporate and Ministry departments. The participants included Dr. Fatma Mohammed Abdullah Al-Balushi, Director of Human Resources Management Systems Department Ministry of Civil Service, Raya Aziz Al-Oufi, Director IT, Ministry of Environment and Climate Affairs, Duha Awayes, Director Protiviti Oman and Laila Al Barwany, Technology Manager, InterContinental Muscat. The participants shared many interesting insights on how women leaders effectively balance their work lives with family time and leave a strong imprint in the growth of their organizations.
SPOTLIGHT
Mansoor Sarwar, Director Technical Services & Pre-Sales, Sage ME
Samer Semaan, Regional Channel Manager, Gulf, Dell Technologies
Mohammad Ather Ansari,
Nayaz Mohamed,
The final keynote of the day focused on Cybersecurity in the age of digital transformation and was delivered by Nayaz Mohamed, Partner - Africa, India and Middle East (AIM) at EY Oman who emphasized that cybersecurity should not be an afterthought as the attacks are becoming more sophisticated all the time with the rising number of IP devices attached to typical networks. Ankit Shukla, MD of Business Media International said,” Smart SMB Summit & Awards continues to grow from strength to strength. This edition proves further how effective the platform is becoming in getting the mid-market leaders to get together and listen in to some important talks and discussions around digital transformation while at the same time also get to do purposeful Business networking on the sidelines.”
Senior Expert at Omantel
Partner (AIM) at EY Oman
Saumyadeep Halder, CEO of Business Media International said, “We are quite happy with the massive response that the Smart SMB Summit has seen in Oman. We look forward to bringing more such initiatives to the country soon.” The sponsors for the event included Platinum sponsors- Dell Technologies and Arrow, and Gold partner Sage. The Silver sponsors included Microsoft, Redington and Epicor.
Duha Awayes
Director Protiviti Oman
The Exhibition partners of the event were Infocomm, Aruba, Gemalto and Exclusive Networks. Protiviti was the Knowledge partner. The Smart SMB Awards for digital transformation were presented following the Summit. Recognition for organizations across verticals was based on their digital transformation initiatives and enablement over the past year.
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 23
SPOTLIGHT APRIL 2019
WINNER: British School Muscat
WINNER: Golden Tulip Nizwa Hotel
WINNER: Bank Dhofar
WINNER: Modern Exchange
WINNER: Al Ahlia Insurance
WINNER: Omantel
Best Digital Transformation in Education
Best Digital Transformation in Hospitality
Best Digital Transformation in Banking
Best Digital Transformation in Financial Services
Best Digital Transformation in Insurance
WINNER: Genetco
Best Digital Transformation in Trading
24 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
Best Digital Transformation in Telecom
WINNER: Khimji Ramdas
Best Digital Transformation in Retail
WINNER: Dell Technologies
Best Digital Transformation Vendor
APRIL 2019
WINNER: Sage Software
WINNER: Aruba
WINNER: Arrow ECS
WINNER: Redington Gulf
WINNER: Exclusive Networks
WINNER: Infocomm
Best ERP Vendor
Best Digital Workplace Vendor
Best Digital Transformation VAD
Best Digital Transformation Retail Distributor
Best Mid-Market Distributor
WINNER: Ammar Aissou CEO of the Year
SPOTLIGHT
Best Digital Transformation System Integrator
WINNER: Shino Thomas CIO of the Year
WINNER: Zainab Hassan Hussain Al.Shuhaim CISO of the Year
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 23
TALK POINT APRIL 2019
CRYPTO EXCHANGE THROUGH GOLD
Karatbars International, a renowned name in the gold and mining industry, are now providing full crypto exchange and banking services in Karatbars worldwide. Over a conversation with Dr Herald Seiz, we discuss what makes Karatbars crypto venture different and unique.
By Diksha Vohra
What inspired you to start Karatbars International? Its a long story. I started working in the financial industry when I was 19 years old. It was in 2004, while I was working for an insurance company, that I actually began feeling out of place and felt like doing something better, more secured for people around me. That’s when I thought about Gold and in 2011, I finally started my own venture Karatbars International to sell gold.
What is Karatbars International and what does the brand mean to you? Karatbars International is a big family, I would say. We were the first of its kind allowing people to buy gold in small quantities like one gram, five grams and more, and we created a payment system with gold too. Karatbars, to me, is everything. It is the where many individuals have invested in and many have made a living out of it too.
From selling gold to cryptocurrency, what brought about this major transition? In 2017, when cryptocurrency had become popular, I saw many of my employees and friends running behind it and wondered why. In anticipation, I did some research over the internet, educated myself and understood the concept and its pros and cons. The fact is that most of the cryptocurrencies weren’t pegged to something tangible. You can burn paper but you can’t burn gold. It has been known for more than 5000 years and it was pegged to the USD in 1971. So the security that a gold backing provides, nothing else does. Hence, I decided to bring gold and cryptocurrency together and launched the idea. We received our first Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in September 2017 and since then we haven’t ever looked back. 26 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
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Apart from these, how else is Karatbars cryptocurrency different from the rest in the market? A cryptocurrency is a currency, we’re a financial system on our own. In November last year, we created our own financial exchange. We launched our own blockchain technology. Hence our KBCs and our payment systems run on blockchain. We’re different and more reliable in every manner. We’re a direct selling company. In-fact, the coins which very initially priced at 0.5c per gram are now priced at 7c. That’s a big advantage for our investors and partners.
Is the Karatbars cryptocurrency only meant for investment? Not really. We’ve provided two options to our customers. Either invest with us or work with us and grow with us. With the first option, customers can purchase from our different packages and invest in the coin. In the second option, we allow the customer to join us, begin direct selling and thus keep earning continuously with every sale.
Dubai is a lifestyle city. The general vibe of the city is enchanting and that’s what attracts everyone. They’re the first to do everything today so with anyone who identifies himself with groundbreaking work, Dubai is the first city that comes to mind. We’ve recently launched a new phone called K1 and I honestly couldn’t think of any other country better than Dubai to launch the same.
In that case, tell us more about your new phone - K1? How is it different and what new are you bringing to the region? K1 brings the first of its kind of technology in the world. We have no competitors because no one has ever tried it. It is the most secured phone you can ever think of. Each phone is unlocked by a unique private key. And since we’re into block-
TALK POINT
chain, our system ensures that the codes are changed every 10 minutes. The codes are 60 characters long and decoding 60 characters in 10 minutes is extremely difficult. So nobody can hack your phone, listen to your private calls or get any kind of access to it.
In conclusion, what investment tips would you like to give our readers? Be open minded yet careful. There are too many things happening around. Learn about everything, do your research and then go for something only when you’re 100% sure. Always double check the commodity to which the currency is pegged to ensure that you’re not investing in paper. Take your time but stick with the choice you make.
What are some of the risks associated with investment in Karatbars Cryptocurrency? See, every cryptocurrency has an idea which becomes popular only when people start to develop trust in it. But if the company undergoes issues or if the management takes some wrong decisions, you loose money. With us, however, its less likely to happen as we’re linked with gold which has a history of not going down in value in 5000 years. That’s why our coins are also more successful because inherently, we are a gold company.
You’ve an office in Dubai too. What inspired you to expand your business in Dubai and how popular is your brand becoming here? April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 27
TALK POINT APRIL 2019
STREAMLINED TO COMPETE BETTER
Mohammed Alkolak, ERP Manager at Emirates Metallic Industries Co.(EMIC), a leading manufacturer in the region of metal packaging for food and other industries speaks to Smart SMB about how the manufacturer has consolidated its operations By R. Narayan
Please elaborate about your manufacturing operations? EMIC is a manufacturer of empty tin cans and components. The company was established in Sharjah in 1989. We have been based out of Sharjah industrial area with two sites and now have a new larger site that is getting ready, where we will move to next few months, consolidating our operations at one site. In addition, we have a branch in Saudi Arabia with a manufacturing site. We have a significant customer base in the UAE. The products include from 120 gms Tuna cans to 20 litter cans for edible oils, tuna, ketchup, mayonnaise etc as well as paints. The company has three production departments and many sections within the departments. We do have different sizes of square cans, cylindrical cans, conical drums and rectangular cans which are used for packaging paints, chemicals, lubricant, edible oil, ghee and other products. In addition to clients in UAE, we have customer in countries including Oman, Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria etc. Our customers are in different field of industries such as paints, chemicals, lubricant oil, bitumen, foodstuff, vegetable oil, ghee, tomato paste, canned food and others. Our Business is growing steadily up over the years.
Elaborate on the focus of the company vis-a-vis competitors? The market is divided with manufacturers addressing different requirements unto 200 liter cans.
28 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
We focus on requirements unto 20 liter cans which is our strength and we don’t look to address segments, where the demand is already fulfilled by others. We focus on producing quality products and this has resulted in large customers preferring us as their trusted suppliers visa-vis our competitor. For instance, we have cameras installed in our food section that will detect any flaws including scratches or other damages as these cans are produced at high speed like 300 to 400 units in a minute and damaged pieces would get automatically rejected. Our plant is full automated. We are also certified with ISO 9001; ISO 2000 for our food section and ISO 14000 for health and safety.
Please elaborate on the IT upgrades the company undertook to streamline operations? In 2015, the CEO approved funds for procuring new IT software. This gave us the opportunity to look for good software options for HR, manufacturing, finance etc. We did have some software earlier for manufacturing and finance but not for HR. Anyways, these were not integrated. We needed good options that could integrated our various functions. So instead of looking for a single module of HR, we thought it better to go for a complete overhaul with a full suite of ERP implementation. We looked at some of the top vendors and found out from our communication that the Epicor team was able to understand our manufacturing processes the best. We had challenges with the other vendors we were talking to as they couldn’t meet our expectations and respond to our questions convincingly. Epicor was able to demonstrate the scenarios and responses very clearly on screen. That was an eye-eye-opener for us. The team was quite good and surprised us pleasantly.
Customization is very important for us as we are committed to continual improvement and that was something that Epicor addressed. Epicor also shared a customer’s list and one of them happened to be our customer as well. We met with the other customer and the feedback was above expectations again. That convinced us to go ahead. Of course, the challenge was there taking into consideration that it wasn’t just about the software upgrade but about sizable requirements including upgrading servers.
Were there any challenges along the implementation process? There was a challenge for the 1st stage live production. We pushed for an earlier date and the Epicor partner, Knowledge Web Consultancy supported us well. There were several challenges in integrating the workflows of different departments from Finance to HR to manufacturing. Deciding how much historical data needs to be part of the The implementation started on January 1st 2017 and took around six months. It was a challenge when transitioning from old to new. . For instance, the Finance ran the new system concurrently with the old systems. The production department couldn’t handle two systems beyond the month. We therefore stopped the old system after the first month. It took some time for the workforce to accustomed to the new screen and dashboards with the Epicor system. We got the support wherever we needed from the Epicor partner.
What is your outlook on the company’s growth? Our business is growing at a healthy pace of growth. We have integrated all our systems and that has helped us streamline our operations.
Epicor ERP Positioned as a Visionary in Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Midsize Enterprises
TALK POINT APRIL 2019 4IR is a fairly new concept and we’re still getting used to it. How will it impact the world in the in the coming years? In my opinion, 4IR will change the way everything works around us. There is not even a single industry or a vertical which hasn’t or wouldn’t be affected by it. 4IR has the power to change every aspect of our daily lives. It will unleash new journeys of discovery that will, in turn, force society to challenge a number of its core values and principles. As technological advancements continue to push new boundaries, we will constantly need to re-evaluate and balance the benefits of those advancements against the moral, ethical, social and economic impacts. What makes the Fourth Industrial Revolution different and perhaps harder to comprehend is that humans will be biologically interconnected with future technology, developing an interdependency and a reliance on its outcomes.
As industries come to terms with this changing world and start adapt to 4IR, is there a technology is expected to dominate the 4IR? The 4IR wouldn’t be dominated by a single technology or a corporation. In-fact, the 4IR represents the convergence of many different elements that would impact our interactions and experiences in the physical and virtual worlds. Both traditional and physical worlds will be reshaped by new game-changing technologies facilitating human interconnectivity, using science, mathematics and biotechnology. We’re entering a world with immense uncertainty and opportunity which all industries must embrace if they’re to thrive.
30 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
ARE SMBS READY TO EMBRACE THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION? By Diksha Vohra
With the onset of the 4th Industrial Revolution, the world has witnessed a lot of developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, explosion of data and disruptive technology. But there are no free lunches in the world. Now the big question is whether the SMBs are actually ready to embrace the 4IR? If so, what are the results they should be prepared for? Over a candid conversation with Ian Fletcher, Director - IBM-IBV, we discuss the above in detail.
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Experts have been talking about the risks we’re facing due to the technological advancements. How true is that and can you explain with an example what kind of risks are associated could be associated with it? It is true that this technological breakthrough will come with real, but unintended risks to our personal and professional lives when they start to blur the boundaries between the physical, digital and biological. Its clear to me that new technologies will solve problems we could only imagine but business and society as a whole need to decide what they are prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve progress. Let’s take Quantum Computing for example. Quantum computing’s algorithmic power could also be used to advance the next generation of machine-learning technologies that use self- adaptive neural networks, in real time, to drive autonomous robotics. With its exponential speed, quantum could become the tool of choice in healthcare, being particularly well suited today to oncology or finding cures for other life changing diseases . Let me explain why this could be possible. When a traditional computer reads a book, it does it line-by-line and pageby-page. Quantum reads an entire library – simultaneously. Or, put another way, what might take a traditional systems a million years to perform a task, a quantum computer could complete in seconds. Quantum represents a new paradigm that has the potential to reinvent the worlds of business, science, education and government.
While security remains a big issue for businesses, could this technology also pose a risk to companies? Yes definitely. Given the current developments of quantum computing, all electronic applications may eventually become insecure. In theory, quantum computers could provide a vehicle for hackers to crack our numeric PIN codes in seconds.
Do you think 4IR would further broaden the rift between economic parity too? Yes, of course, we need to recognise that when technology is introduced to the market, it is expensive. Over time, with increased demand and supply, the prices decrease. We are entering a time when SME’s, startups and millennials won’t build and own their infrastructure, they will consume it, finding more efficient ways to tap into the technology to solve business problems. For example, Ayann Esmail, a 14-year-old entrepreneur who is the co-founder of Genis uses nanotechnology and quantum physics to significantly reduce the time and cost of gene sequencing. Genis allows an average person to sequence the genome, and to have access to personal medical treatments and bio-hacking tools. In 2008, the cost of extracting one genome was in the millions. Now it costs around $1,000.
In your opinion, which verticals are more likely to be adversely affected by the 4IR? Eventually, all businesses will be affected by 4IR because everyone wants to progress and implement latest technology to provide better services to customers and to not be left behind in competition. We’ve already seen in the Fintech and the banking industry particularly effected through change of business models and mutually beneficial ecosystems evolving such as Fintech Hubs. I recall a famous quote from the Bank of America years ago saying “we will all need banking but not necessarily from Banks” We are also seeing the workforce changing and humans being replaced by machines to boost efficiency. It’s clear that with its continued development AI will effect a 100% of jobe in one way shape or form. We must prepare for this eventuality and embrace the change.
But in this case, wouldn’t entrepreneurs eventually start training their employees to adapt to the new technology?
TALK POINT
As per a survey, it doesn’t seem like. Only 38% of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) surveyed indicated their organisation had an obligation to retrain or upskill workers impacted by AI. And when AI ethics are considered, most executives feel that data responsibility is the most important issue to be sorted, which means that they’re more concerned about the impact of AI on their enterprise rather than the society at large, which in turn poses a real challenge to the workforce in the future. I strongly encourage business leaders to see the bigger picture though and recognise their moral and ethical obligations to secure the future of their workers.
Considering all of the above, in your opinion, are SMBs actually ready to embrace the 4IR? I don’t think so. I feel that society and businesses at large are quite unprepared to absorb the magnitude of the change. According to a recent study by IBM’s Institute For Business Value – Artificial Intelligence Ethics – executives are either unprepared for the changes or don’t understand the magnitude of what’s coming their way. While they recognise that AI is becoming central to business operations, they must consider how to address and govern potential ethical issues. Business problems will come from not being agile, lack of investment in skills, ecosystems, changing business models and innovation. The biggest threat will be through companies adopting short term strategies, which may have larger than expected adverse consequences. However, if businesses wish to thrive and be ready for the 4IR, recognising the interconnected evolution from human-to-automation-to-digital-to-smart human, they must adapt agile business practices and develop continuously. They should develop long term plans based on innovation and transformation disruption, preparing themselves for the problems people 10-years down the line would face. The focus needs to shift from surviving today to creating a better tomorrow.
Yes this is essential, but in many cases business are too slow to adapt.
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 31
TALK POINT APRIL 2019
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY ON THE TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY By R. Narayan
Please elaborate on the essential approach Dell Technologies takes to digital transformation for midsize companies with solutions it has on offer? Technology is transforming the way we live & work and creating what everyone is now calling the next industrial revolution which is predominantly driven by Data. As a result, and irrelevant of the size, companies are facing an imperative to transform or be at risk of becoming obsolete. At Dell Technologies, we help our customers in their journey through a four-pronged transformation strategy which includes Application transformation, IT transformation, Workforce transformation and Security transformation. As part of Application transformation, we help customers increase the speed of their innovation cycles with software development to deliver new digital products & experiences faster, more efficiently and while minimizing risk. This allows them to adopt new models of continuous improvement from idea-to-market to new idea and back, fueled by data, powered by software and focused on their customers. Organizations of every size have repositioned IT to become a primary driver of 32 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
innovation and modernizing the infrastructure alone allows them to see and pursue new opportunities immediately. Under IT transformation, we empower our customers to seize those opportunities by providing the right solution through three pillars: modern infrastructure, modern & consistent operations & modern service delivery. When, where and how people do their jobs is undergoing the biggest change in history. In fact, every employee today wants technology that lets them work the way they want and enables them to collaborate with colleagues in a natural, seamless way. Dell Technologies’ comprehensive portfolio of solutions, from devices to management tools and services, are designed to meet and adapt to today’s Workforce Transformation. Traditionally, risk was always holding back companies and we must help them change their mindset. Today we believe in security at the speed of business and we help our customers in embracing new technologies with confidence. under our comprehensive Security Transformation approach, security is first built into the infrastructure, whether on the edge (clients & devices) or at the core (network, compute & storage). Second, we provide
advanced security operations by helping customers build their own SOC or providing security operations as a service.
Dell Technologies was an exhibitor at the recently concluded COMEX where it showcased its technologies for enabling digital transformation. Charbel Zreiby, Senior Manager, Channel Specialty Sales, Dell Technologies, who was at the event speaks to Smart SMB about the company’s approaches to digital transformation, IoT and its commitment to the Oman market.
APRIL 2019
TALKPOINT
Dell technologies now has an IoT suite of solutions. Please elaborate if there are any regional piloting of projects with the IoT suite included?
As we enter a multi-cloud era, how is Dell Technologies looking to ensure it is able to make deeper inroads with its cloud marketplace strategy?
We’re really excited about IoT as it represents a massive opportunity in the market today and in order to gain the most value from the IoT, you have to do more than simply connect things. You have to be able to transform the data things generate into business value as data flows from the edge to the distributed core (which we define as on-prem data centers) and into the cloud. We enable you to do this by architecting for continuously better outcomes on your terms, today and tomorrow, while de-risking your digital journey.
While having a cloud-first mentality can be great, understanding the nuances of why and how these workloads operate is imperative and takes time. Because of that, we guide our customer on their journey by following key pillars: Architecting for flexibility, creating a consistent operational experience & continually improving capabilities. Our Dell Technologies Cloud Platform spans hardware, software and services that can help our customers in any part of their multi-cloud journey. Whether it be modernizing workloads through our CI or HCI solutions, building a private Infrastructure-as-a-Service, leveraging a platform or licensing our numerous Software-as-a-Service solutions we partner with our customers on this journey and prove to them that when the best infrastructure components work together as a family they can dramatically reduce your TCO to solve company-wide issues with multi-cloud.
Our IoT portfolio covers solutions at the edge (gateways, PCs, etc… all equipped with the required processing power), at the core (Compute, Network, Storage, HCI, etc...) and in the cloud (Virtustream, Boomi, Pivotal, etc…). This makes us uniquely positioned to help our customers & partners take advantage of the move to IoT with our broad portfolio, domain expertise, services as well as our award-winning partner program. This topic is getting a lot traction in the region and we’re already engaged with our customers in many IoT projects, not just pilots.
Please elaborate on the DIY converged infrastructure designs from Dell Technologies? Is that being made available in the region as well?
Discuss your objectives with you recent participation at COMEX?
“Organizations of every size have repositioned IT to become a primary driver of innovation and modernizing the infrastructure alone allows them to see and pursue new opportunities immediately”
We’ve announced the DellEMC Ready Stack almost one year back at Dell Technologies World 2018 which allows our partners to build & sell their own converged infrastructure solutions. A Certified Reference System is a pre-integrated, vendor-certified system containing server, storage, networking and management software. Dell EMC Ready Stack combines all these elements and more, and features validation by Dell EMC’s expert engineering team, the original pioneers and continuing leaders in converged infrastructure.
DellEMC Ready Stack enables the accelerated deployment of full-stack converged infrastructure solutions by connecting you with the best in terms of product, platform and portfolio combinations. The products are built with the best technology building blocks, all from Dell EMC (Servers, Network, Storage, Data Protection, etc...) The platform supports top virtualization and IaaS platforms, including VMware, Microsoft, bare metal, and cutting-edge container platforms. Finally, the partners have access to the unmatched depth and experience of the Dell Technologies engineering and technology portfolio. DellEMC Ready Stack makes it easier, faster, and less risky for partners to build & deploy their own converged infrastructure solution and is available to all our partners globally.
Comex is the major Technology exhibition event in Oman and being a leader in that field, we wanted to participate to show our commitment & support to the Omani market. Also, Comex offers us the opportunity to showcase our Dell Technologies solutions portfolio and how we can help our customers plan & execute their Digital Transformation journey. Comex offers us the possibility to network, in few days, with key decision makers from both existing & potential customers in the public & private sectors and actually we’ve been fully engaged with multiple top C-Level executives meetings at the Tech Execs VIP club.
Comex also is a platform that provides us with an opportunity to generate effective leads and business opportunities jointly with our distributors & partners.
How significant is the Oman market for Dell Technologies? Which have been key verticals of growth here? Dell Technologies has been present and committed to the Oman market since over a decade and we consider it strategic and definitely significant. Fact is that today we cover the Omani market, mainly through our resources & capabilities from different functions that are based in Oman and operate from our office in Muscat as well as the regional resources that are present in Oman on a weekly basis. We’ve witnessed growth year over year almost in all segments and we had successful projects generally across the verticals and specifically Banking, Oil & Gaz & SME/B. April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 33
COLUMN APRIL 2019
REALIZING THE VALUE OF DATA
Providing a “single pane of glass” view so that the full view of one’s environment allows data management to evolve from a reactive measure, focus on remediating issues that have already occurred, to a proactive measure, preventing any loss in availability through advanced monitoring, resource optimization, capacity planning and built-in intelligence. Stage Three: Activation - Leverage your well-managed data for additional use cases that unlock greater business value or accelerate business initiatives. Gain full operational insight into data along with the ability to glean business insights from data to drive better business decisions and outcomes.
Claude Schuck, Regional Manager for Middle East at Veeam discusses the five stages Modern Businesses are adopting to realize the value of Data Today’s businesses face the dual challenges of not only managing and mining the data they produce and use, but also ensuring that the digital experience that is generated using the data is always-on for both internal and external customers. To solve these challenges, business leaders need a deeper understanding of how data is changing and how new technologies and approaches can unleash its full value. • The Criticality of Data - The need to ensure that data is secure, protected and in compliance is increasingly a mission-critical ask for business outcomes. • The Growth of Data - The sheer amount of data, its rapid growth, changes, and related costs of managing it, is a massive challenge for businesses. • The Sprawl of Data - Data is generated from a wider variety of sources than ever before. Managing and mining this data is an increasing challenge. To meet this new reality, where data is scattered across many different clouds and systems, it’s not enough for data to be backed up, secure, and available. Data must move to a new state of intelligence, automatically able to anticipate need and meet demand, securely, across multicloud infrastructures to meet the expectations of the mobile, always-on world.
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Businesses need to become ‘Available’. To achieve this, Veeam has introduced the Five Stages of Intelligent Data Management. Through this journey, your business gains the insights and agility to deliver innovative digital services and new experiences that improve how we live and work.
The Five Stages of Intelligent Data Management for the Modern Business Stage One: Backup - Protect all workloads using backups, complemented by snapshots and replication where appropriate, to ensure they are always recoverable and available in the event of outages, attack, loss or theft. Provide for the security of data from a systemic perspective; secure, back up, and recover your data wherever it is so it can always be protected against outages, attack, loss, or theft. This stage is about making sure you can get your data back if it is lost or compromised, and that your business can survive; however, there are minimal data insights at this stage, and data is often stored in individual silos.
Stage Two: Visibility - View the full breadth of your data, accompanied by the infrastructure that it passes through and resides on, so that you that can pivot from reactive to proactive management for better business decisions
Stage Four: Orchestration - Optimize data utilization across multi-cloud environments with workflows that ensure consistent execution of otherwise manual and complex data management tasks. Ensure that data is always on the right infrastructure, always protected, always ready to do work. This stage delivers orchestration capabilities so that workloads can move more easily from one infrastructure to another, providing business continuity and resource optimization via automation informed by policies. Getting from here to the next stage moves us beyond policy-based mechanisms to true automation.
Stage Five: Automation - Data becomes self-managing by learning to protect itself with appropriate SLAs, methods, and locations in order to meet business objectives or comply with broader IT initiatives. Data becomes intelligent, location-aware, and self-managing. It learns how to make itself easier to access, back up, recover, and use; how to best interact with and optimize the infrastructure on which it resides and through which it moves to meet its obligations to the business, to security regulators, and to users of the company’s services. And how to react automatically to anomalous behaviour in the system. At stage five, you achieve true Intelligent Data Management in your business.
TECH WATCH APRIL 2019
KINGSTON DATA CENTER DC500R ENTERPRISE SSD
SYNOLOGY DISKSTATION DS2419+ Synology DiskStation DS2419+ is a high-capacity, desktop form factor NAS helping growing businesses to tackle all application workloads. The 12-bay desktop NAS enables small- and medium-sized businesses deal with rapidly growing data from diverse applications. IT administrators can now be liberated from coping with continuously growing data as businesses grow. DS2419+ is designed to help growing businesses effortlessly deploy a vast and scalable storage solution which can readily fit into an existing office environment.
K
ingston Digital, the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., announced the Data Center DC500R Enterprise SSD optimized for read-intensive applications. This is the first drive in the DC500 series that implements Kingston’s strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements to ensure predictable random I/O performance as well as predictable low latencies over a wide range of read and write workloads.
Highlights:
DC500R is ideal for read-intensive applications such as boot up, web servers, virtual desktop infrastructure, operational databases and real-time analytics. Cloud service providers and software-defined storage architects can leverage the drive’s consistent I/O and latency performance to deliver the QoS needed in demanding read-centric environments. At .5 DWPD (drive writes per day), DC500R allows IT administrators to maximize their investment in storage hardware with a drive that delivers on performance, endurance and reliability. DC500R is available in 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB and 3.84TB capacities.
• Data center’s hosting databases and various web-based applications can leverage the predictable I/O and latency performance.
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• Responsiveness from low latency and consistent I/O performance delivers businesses the QoS needed in demanding read-centric workloads. • An exceptional balance of consistent I/O delivery and high read and write IOPS performance to manage a wide range of transactional workloads.
• ECC protection with advanced read/ disturb management safeguards against data corruption for end-to-end data protection. • Reduce the possibility of data loss and/ or corruption on ungraceful power fails via power capacitors and firmware.
With the capability to support up to 12 drive bays in a single desktop chassis, DS2419+ provides immense storage space equivalent to a standard 2U rack server. Storage volume can further be expanded up to 336TB when connected to one expansion unit DX1215. DS2419+ runs on DiskStation Manager, the advanced and intuitive operating system for Synology NAS devices, with quality applications offered to enhance data security and work efficiency.
APRIL 2019
TECH WATCH
ZOHO’S NEW OFFICE SUITE
T Highlights: • The 2.1 GHz quad-core CPU is capable of handling various storage tasks and the on-board 4GB DDR4 SODIMM can further be expanded up to 32GB. • Users can choose different add-on options depending on their usage scenarios. In addition to the four built-in 1GbE ports, an optional network interface card is available to elevate networking throughput to 1,700 MBps. An M.2 NVMe/SATA SSD adapter card, M2D18, is also available to boost random IOPS performance. • By leveraging the availability of Btrfs file system, DS2419+ supports state-of-theart data snapshot technology. Offering schedulable, near-instantaneous data protection ensures business data in shared folders, and virtual machines in iSCSI LUNs, remain safe and available in the event of disaster.
he new version of Zoho Office Suite, announced recently includes four sophisticated, cloud-based productivity software applications— Zoho Writer , Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho Notebook —enhanced with Zia , Zoho’s AI-powered assistant. Zoho Office Suite provides deep contextual collaboration to meet the diverse, end-to-end business needs of users, whether they are part of a small business or enterprise. Applications in the Zoho Office Suite are not only integrated among themselves, but also with Zoho’s communications tools (Zoho Mail and Cliq , a cross-platform messaging app), Zoho’s collaboration tools ( Zoho Projects and Zoho Connect , a private social network for business), as well as Zoho’s several other business applications. These contextual integrations, for example, enable users to merge data from Zoho CRM into a document and send it for signature through Zoho Sign.
Highlights: • In Zoho’s document creation software, Zoho Writer, Zia detects context-based grammar mistakes, rates the readability score of each document, and suggests style corrections to improve overall writing quality.
• In Zoho Sheet, Zia offers deep insights into users’ data sets by automatically showing the most relevant charts and pivot tables for their data. Zoho Sheet also supports Natural Language Querying where users can ask Zia questions about their data and Zia will respond with the appropriate function, chart, or pivot table, which can then be added to their spreadsheet. • Zoho Notebook is the newest addition to Zoho Office Suite and one of the most advanced note-taking applications on the market. Zia Voice, Zoho’s conversational AI, can help users create a customized recipe “smart card” by grabbing the relevant visuals, instructions, and shopping lists from their favorite website—all initiated by voice command—and organizing it neatly into the application. • Zoho Writer features a new automation hub with document merging, fillable documents, form-based document creation, and one-click signature collection capabilities. • Zoho Writer can work completely offline on web, mobile, and iPad editions, syncing everything to the user’s account upon reconnection. •Zoho Sheet is the first spreadsheet software to offer data-cleaning capabilities to address inconsistencies and eliminate duplications.
April 2019 / SMARTSMB / 37
MARKET MONITOR APRIL 2019
MORE GCC CIOS ARE SCALING AND REFINING THEIR DIGITAL INITIATIVES Thirty percent of CIOs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are now scaling and refining the results of their digital initiatives, according to Gartner, Inc.’s annual global CIO survey. This is an increase from 27 percent last year. Digital has become a paramount focus for local CIOs in 2019. “Digital business has reached a tipping point among GCC CIOs,” said Partha Iyengar, distinguished vice president and research analyst at Gartner. “Not only are more local CIOs applying their digital initiatives at scale, but 32 percent of them are positioning digital initiatives as their No. 1 priority for 2019 ahead of operational excellence (27 percent).” Gartner analysts presented the survey findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2019, which is taking place here until Wednesday. The 2019 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey gathers data from 3,102 CIOs, including 106 from the GCC. The GCC sample represents $283 billion in revenue/public-sector budget and $7.8 billion in IT spending. IT budgets in the GCC are projected to increase, on average, by 2.8 percent in 2019.
More Than 40 Percent of GCC CIOs Report Changing Their Business Models The increase in CIOs scaling their digital business initiatives enables their organi38 / SMARTSMB / April 2019
zations to change business models and look to IT for help.
GCC CIOs. Data analytics is at No. 2, identified by 22 percent of respondents.
“Scaling of digital business makes business model change inevitable,” said Mr. Iyengar. Forty-one percent of GCC CIOs report that their organizations have already changed business models or are in the process of doing so. The CIO’s role in the business model change is pivotal. “Sixty percent of respondents in organizations experiencing business model change are taking the leading role or are heavily involved in that change,” added Mr. Iyengar. For 32 percent of GCC organizations making a business model change, the major driver is evolving consumer demands, which include reacting to culture changes and preserving brand reputation. The survey showed that GCC CIOs are focusing their efforts on improving the customer experience by making engagement with their organizations easier (62 percent), and using digital business to reduce service costs (46 percent).
“There are some interesting use cases of AI emerging in the market,” said Mr. Iyengar. “For example, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), Dubai’s regulator, is working with an AI start-up in using AI and machine learning to predict students who are at risk of dropping out, to estimate the employability of graduates and even a teacher’s chances of success in a school. This becomes an important initiative in light of the broader long-term “Emiritization” effort of the UAE government to develop and deploy local skills.”
AI and Data Analytics Are Game-Changing Technologies in 2019 Spending on disruptive technologies will increase this year, and IT budgets in the GCC are projected to rise, on average, by 2.8 percent in 2019. Artificial intelligence (AI) is identified as the No. 1 game-changing technology in 2019 by 38 percent of
Deployment of Cybersecurity “Cybersecurity is, today, a given and is the responsibility of the CIO. Forty-four percent of GCC CIOs are accountable for cybersecurity in their organization,” said Mr. Iyengar. The survey also found that 86 percent of GCC respondents have already deployed cypersecurity or plan to do so in the next 12 months, which is an increase of 26 percentage points year over year. However, cybersecurity is still seen predominantly as a “technology” issue within the GCC. “CIOs need to work with their business stakeholders to sensitize them to the fact that cybersecurity is very much a ‘business risk’-related issue and give it the required focus and importance,” concluded Mr. Iyengar.
HPE and AMD deliver Around-the-Clock performance, security & savings
32
Up to cores per socket HPE and AMD: A future of innovation
33%
more memory capacity
Dual-socket power in a single socket server.
2TB
RAM per socket
More memory per core means more VMs and workloads per server
Exceed customer expectations and service-level agreements
Rated the most energy-eeicient
Up to
128
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delivers agile software-defined storage solutions
Footnotes: 1- Based on a comparison of the SPECvirt_sc2013 results for the HPE ProLiant DL325 Gen10 with 1 AMD EPYC 7551P. SPEC and the benchmark name SPECvirt_2013 are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). The stated results are published as of 06-05-18; see spec.org 2- The stated leadership results are published as of 8-15-2018 to SPEC; see spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/res2018q2/power_ssj2008-20180410-00808.html
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memory channels per CPU Reduces latency
Silicon root of trust: protection from power on
PCIe Gen 3 lanes
Delivers outstanding performance
Fast data security from hardware encryption
Real-time user and data monitoring
25%
better processor-performance value Increased agility helps you deliver increased value
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