Sm@rt SMB September 2018

Get Your Factory Fit for the Future With Epicor A profound digital transformation is currently shaping the future of manufacturing. Epicor ERP is built for Industry 4.0—supporting real-time reporting, analytics, automation, and IoT—to bring you technology that powers business growth.

Visit Epicor Booth #133324 at IMTS

to learn more and receive a free personalized luggage tag

Copyright ©2018 Epicor Software Corporation. All rights reserved. Epicor and the Epicor logo are trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation in the United States and certain other countries.

Published by Business Media International Registered office: Office 10, Sharjah Media City www.bmi-digital.com Editor in Chief Raman Narayan narayan@smartsmb.net Mob: 971-55-7802403 Sales Director Ankit Shukla ankit@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706, Mob: 971-552572807 Marketing & Events Manager Smitha Jithesh smitha@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 Circulation manager Bhawana Bhatia bhawana@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706 TELE marketing manager Jennefer Mendoza jennefer@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706

T

A case for Agility

here are many ways to be a successful company but a straightforward plan would be to be a pioneer whether in developing products and solutions, or in adopting visionary go to market strategies and then a possible third way would be to be among the most agile organizations out there that can grab opportunities without a delay. Agility is key to a company that wants to be in the forefront of its Business. While the Management’s decision making function needs to be quite up to speed to realize this facet, once that is done and out of the way, the underlying processes or infrastructure must also support the decision making for effective execution.

The underlying technology infrastructure is therefore a key factor in helping organizations make the leap towards being agile and not be pinned down by lack of capabilities to adapt to new opportunities that come up in their domains. For instance, communicating and reaching out to a wider base of target audience whether about a new product or service, in the shortest span of time, can leave an impact that it can consolidate upon. Companies with traditional Technology infrastructure could feel the pinch, when competing with companies that have new age infrastructure such as cloud for instance, driving home the point for transformational IT infrastructure upgrades.

Which brings me to the context, I want to briefly highlight here. On the 26th of September, the Smart SMB Summit & Awards that is being held with the support of DED, will witness in all likelihood the largest gathering of C-level executives from the mid-market on a single platform in the UAE. At the landmark event, they will get to hear some outstanding speakers from the industry hold forth on different facets of digital transformation and how it impacts Businesses. We are hopeful, the event will have a good takeaway value for the attendees and strengthens their resolve to embrace the digital future whole-heartedly.

Finance Vishal Tiwari vishal@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706

R. Narayan

Design Sunil Kumar design@smartsmb.net Tel: 971-4-8825706

Management

Editor in Chief Smart SMB

Chairman S. N. Tiwari

sn.tiwari@smartsmb.net

Managing Director Ankit Shukla

ankit@smartsmb.ne

Publisher Raman Narayan

narayan@smartsmb.net

Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to validate the accuracy of all information included in the magazine, the publishers wouldn’t be liable for any errors therein Copyright@2018 Business Media International LLC. All rights reserved.

4

CONTENTS Cover Feature

Vertical Watch Enhancing travel solutions

Pioneering Blockchain Initiatives

Column 12

Feature on the transformative path

20

Long strides into the future

24

Talkpoint Forging a new path Spreading the care

34

18 28

On the Cloud trail

Digitally Transforming the Manufacturing Workforce

46

The Truth About AIs Impact on Jobs in the UAE

48 Envisioning the Warehouse of the Future - 50

50

News

06

Techwatch

52

Market Mirror

54

30 The next phase of growth - 32

32

Keeping pace with changing dynamics

38

Bringing new age solutions to market

42

Rising need for interoperability standards in cloud services

SONICWALL RECEIVES STRONG NSS LABS RATING. AGAIN. NSa 2650 Awarded ‘Recommended’ !ধ2+ -2 ¥ !#9 83<6 '9; After putting the NSa 2650 through rigorous testing, NSS Labs validated SonicWall QH[W JHQHUDWLRQ ĆUHZDOO YDOXH DQG VHFXULW\ HIIHFWLYHQHVV E\ SODFLQJ 6RQLF:DOO LQ WKH FRYHWHG ‘Recommended’ quadrant of its 2018 NGFW Group Test.

98.8%

100%

100%

Block Rate

Evasions

6WDELOLW\ 5HOLDELOLW\

www.sonicwall.com

6

NEWS

SAP opens Cloud Data Center in the UAE eHosting DataFort acquires LiveRoute

e

Hosting DataFort (eHDF), a leading Cloud Infrastructure, Managed Hosting and Security Services Provider in the region, has acquired LiveRoute, a leading Cloud Solutions Provider in the Middle East.

This acquisition is aligned with eHDF’s strategy to accelerate the growth of its Cloud business and strengthen its portfolio by including LiveRoute’s Public Cloud offerings based on Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint. The strategic acquisition will also allow eHDF to provide managed services to customers having distributed workloads which could be hosted either On-premise, Public Cloud hosted internationally or on a locally hosted Data Centre within the UAE. LiveRoute, established in 2008, has grown significantly over the last decade with an impressive list of customers from different industry verticals. As a Microsoft Gold partner, LiveRoute provides customers consultancy, design, Cloud deployment, migration and support services to transition them smoothly to the Cloud. Apart from providing Office 365 and SharePoint, the company also expanded its services to include Microsoft Azure.

“By acquiring LiveRoute, eHDF will gain access to key end-users who are making progress in their Cloud

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

journeys and focusing on Microsoft application workloads. LiveRoute, on the other hand, will gain access to key infrastructure services offered by eHDF, such as Hosting, Managed Security Services, Disaster Recovery, amongst others,” said Yasser Zeineldin, CEO of eHosting DataFort and General Manager of LiveRoute.

“This well-timed and strategic acquisition of LiveRoute, complements both our business models with respect to Public Cloud and Microsoft application workloads. eHDF’s investment in compute infrastructure and footprint of top-tier Data Center facilities in the country will enable LiveRoute’s client base the option of using Managed Hosting, Private and Hybrid Cloud services. With this acquisition, eHDF will continue to expand its Public Cloud portfolio and will be better positioned to help regional enterprises invest in digital platforms and new business models,” Zeineldin added.

According to Gartner, spending on Public Cloud services in the Middle East and North Africa region is expected to reach $2 billion by 2020.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will exhibit the highest growth rate.

S

AP has announced the opening of its first cloud data center in the UAE. SAP is among the first multinational technology companies to open a cloud data center in the UAE, providing secure, and scalable innovation solutions to further the UAE vision 2021 and the industry digital transformation. The launch marks a major milestone in the company’s 5-year USD 200 million investment plan for the UAE. “The UAE is already at the forefront of technology innovation, and the UAE organizations that digitally transform on the cloud first will seize market share and business competitiveness,” said Gergi Abboud, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SAP Middle

NEWS

7

East South. “Our cloud data center will support UAE Vision 2021’s goals to accelerate diversified economic growth and Smart Cities, support innovative startups and entrepreneurs, and fuel youth job creation in the fast-paced technology sector.”

The SAP Cloud Data Center allows UAE organizations to subscribe to SAP’s cloud solutions across 25 industries. The SAP Cloud Platform is now live to support SAP customers’ digital transformation together with SAP Ariba procurement software, SAP C/4 HANA customer relationship suite, SAP HANA in-memory platform, SAP S/4HANA real-time suite, as well as the SAP SuccessFactors human resources management system.

In the Middle East and North Africa, more than 60 percent of all companies, and about 75 percent of the digital leaders, are investing in the cloud through 2019, according to the recent SAP and Oxford Economics Digital Transformation Executive Study.

Alongside the cloud data center, SAP is also investing in enhancing and expanding its channel partner program. Channel partners are essential for guiding public and private sector organizations in their digital transformation, including which digital solutions and skills sets best meet their business needs.

“Over the past five years, the cloud has moved from an “if” question to a “when” question in the UAE,” said Julien Bertin, Managing Director, SAP UAE and Oman. “In response to our customer demands, our cloud data center will provide secure, scalable solutions needed to drive digital business innovation.

UAE organizations of all sizes and verticals – from government organizations, to mega-events, and ports and logistics – can now fully digitally transform.”

Investor confidence in Dubai remains high I

nvestor confidence in Dubai as a competitive global hub and the business development potential in the emirate remained robust through the month of July 2018 with the Department of Economic Development (DED) witnessing 24,489 transactions related to business licensing and registration. A total of 1,651 licenses were issued during the month in addition to 12,532 License Renewals and 2,175 Initial Approvals, according to data recorded on the ‘Business Map’ digital platform of DED’s Business Registration & Licensing (BRL) sector.

The ‘Business Map’ tracks business registration and licensing in DED and seeks to reflect the economic realities in Dubai by providing vital data on each license category, including their numbers and distribution as well as investor trends on a monthly basis. Overall business registration and licensing (BRL) activity and its distribution across sectors and areas in the emirate reaffirms improved investor confidence in the expansionary spending policies and growth potential in Dubai.

Among the total transactions recorded in July 2018, 3,128 were related to Trade Name Reservation and 1,268 to Commercial Permits.

Auto Renewal transactions amounted to 5,918, Instant Licenses to 101, and 102 transactions were related e-Trader licenses.

BRL activity in July 2018 reflected momentum across all sectors as new licenses covered the Commercial (60.5%), Professional (36.8%), Tourism (1.4%) and Industrial (1.3%) categories. The outsourced service centres of DED retained their edge in providing competitive services to BRL customers, accounting for 67% of the total transactions completed in July 2018.

The region-wise distribution of new licenses shows Bur Dubai accounted for the lion’s share with 798 of the licenses, Deira had 712, New Dubai 133 and Hatta, eight. Among the top 10 sub-regions, Burj Khalifa had 14%, New Dubai 8%, Al Marar 5.9%, Port Saeed 5.8%, Dubai World Trade Centre 1 had 4.6%, Naif 4%, Al Garhoud 3.3%, Al Karama 2.8%, Al Muraqabat 2.1% and Hor Al Anz, 2.1%.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

8

NEWS

Takaful Emarat to adopt Deviceas-a-Service for Apple devices

IoT and AI driven FM tech start-up Facilio expands footprint

F

acilio, an Atlanta-based FM Tech start-up, has already established a strong foothold in Dubai across IoT & AI-driven applications designed to unify building performance in realtime, within its first year of operations in the Middle East.

T

akaful Emarat (“the Company”), the DFM-listed Shariah-compliant Life and Health Takaful provider announced it will use Device-as-aService solution for Apple devices through MDS. Takaful Emarat has quickly deployed Apple devices for their sales force as well as back-office operations, leveraging cut-tingedge technologies. The Device-asa-Service solution for Apple device speeds product sales, service and delivery through paperless processing and ultimately improves efficiencies by reducing costs of using and maintaining enterprise devices.

Mohammed Al Hawari, Managing Director, Takaful Emarat said, “The insurance industry of tomorrow will look entirely different to what it is today. At Takaful Emarat, we are always looking to stay ahead of the curve and sell our products in a seamless way that is flexible to the needs of each and every SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

individual customer. Using Deviceas-a-Service model in our customer service centre is one of the steps we have taken towards being a truly agile business.”

Fadi Hindi, CEO, Takaful Emarat said, “We are pleased to announce that we are the first insurance company in the Middle East to invest in a new technology pioneered by Apple iOS devices. With the help of MDS, we have reduced our IT de-partment’s work load so that they can focus on strategic initiatives to grow our business.”

Roger Kakhia, Executive Vice President, MDS said, “Adopting a paperless strategy and using digitised files instead enables firms to take advantage of other emerging technology trends — especially mobile devices and the cloud.

Takaful Emarat is the first insurance company in the Middle East to implement this emerging technology and adopting best practices makes them a game changer in the industry.“

Expanding its global footprint with a key focus on the Middle East, the company announced several successful client wins in the region, acquired in the short span of a year since securing funding from international venture capitalists Accel, who have also funded ventures like Facebook, Dropbox & Flipkart.

The company has also on-boarded several global partners to offer joint solutions and services to Middle East’s burgeoning real estate sector.

The company has secured 8 contracts globally, managing a substantial 20 million sq. ft. of built space within six months of its commercial product availability.

NEWS

9

Despite billions of dollars’ worth of investments in automation of building management, there still continues to be massive scope for improving operational efficiencies. Harnessing innovative technologies to drive a continuous flow of efficiency and sustainability in building management is something that CRE’s and FM’s are already demanding. Facilio’s solution addresses this compelling need-gap in the building management space.

“Facilio has always aimed to take the complexity out of managing buildings.

By bringing in tech-driven efficiency in building operations, Facilio empowers F.M.s and CREs by putting them in the driver’s seat, enabling them to focus on their core function by ensuring a superior customer experience for building users and creating greater economic value for owners through cost-effective and sustainable management of buildings.

The solution ensures a superior customer experience for the tenants.

Facilio increases the lifecycle of an asset by 20-25 percent, and saves nearly 30 percent on operating expenses”, says Facilio Founder and CEO, Prabhu Ramachandran.

The market has welcomed a software-driven approach to deliver real-time, predictive maintenance and enhanced operational efficiencies by harnessing the intelligence potential of technologies like AI & IoT. “Humans today spend nearly 80% of their time inside buildings. This has brought into sharp focus, the need for efficient building operations due to its impact on the wellness of the billions of occupants and users, as well as the environment”, says Prabhu.

“Providing superior customer service while safeguarding the environment is a key objective in managing buildings in Dubai. And this progressive approach is evident in the leaderships’ Smart vision for the city. Commercial Real Estate Owners, Building Managers and FM’s have been eager to adopt advanced tech solutions to provide a seamless experience to their customers, while optimizing efficiencies.”

Arabian Gulf Switchgear deploys IoT-enabled IFS solution I

FS, a global enterprise applications company, announced that Arabian Gulf Switchgear (AGS), a leading manufacturer of low-voltage (LV) switchgear in the UAE, has selected IFS Applications 10 to support its engineer-to-order operations.

To cope with the tremendous construction activities in the Gulf region, AGS has quickly scaled its operations to manage production and storage. The company had outgrown its legacy system that was operational for the past 25 years and required a single, integrated enterprise solution that could modernize all core business processes including finance, supply chain management, customer relationship management, projects, manufacturing, document management, HR and payroll.

“We selected IFS Applications 10 because of its technology platform, which can run on any device, its intuitive interface and lobbies,” said AGS managing director George Pandehis. “Furthermore, IFS’s strong

manufacturing solution coupled with strong service capabilities ensures we can scale as our business grows. Our ambition is to expand the service business to better support our customers and I am looking to digitally connect our assets through the IFS IoT Business Connector by using the resulting data stream to help automate everything from re-osrder to dispatch of a service technician.”

Luis Ortega, MD at IFS MEA and South Asia said, “IFS Applications is perfectly suited to AGS’s projectbased manufacturing business and its functionality can support them as they grow. Increasingly, manufacturing businesses in the Middle East are looking to grow service revenue streams, and AGS can capitalize on the servitization trend with IFS’s leading service management solution.”

Some of IFS’s recent wins in the Middle East include Callidus, Culligan, National Paints, Port of Duqm, AIC Steel, MEPC, MAB Facilities.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

10

NEWS

D-Link finalizes GITEX showcase plans At GITEX, networking solution vendor D-Link will be showcasing its latest consumer products and business solutions in Za’abeel Hall, stands ZLB1 and Stands ZL-C1 respectively.

At the Business solutions showcase, D-Link will keep the focus on their newest cloud networking solution called Nuclias.

“Nuclias is a new cloud solution for centralised, on-the-move connectivity management for businesses especially SMBs,” Sakkeer Hussain, Director - Sales and Marketing, D-Link Middle East and Africa (MEA) said. “Visitors to both our stands will also have the

opportunity to meet with our product and technology experts to see a wide range of the latest business and consumer networking products on display.”

Nuclias provides a cloud-based management tool without the need for a local controller, reducing cost and complexity while streamlining network

infrastructure. It also offers zero-touch provisioning for ease of deployment and scalable architecture to support an unlimited number of devices.

Its multi-tenant structure allows deployment across multiple sites and companies, and its advanced traffic report and data analysis tool provide business owners and IT professionals with real-time insights.

Dell unveils new IoT solutions Dell Technologies’ Edge and IoT Solutions Division is announcing new solutions and bundles to simplify deployment of secure, scalable solutions for edge computing and IoT use cases. With these solutions, Dell Technologies is combining tools from its broad portfolio with technology from Intel and partners in the Dell Technologies IoT Solutions Partner Program. This will drive workloads for computer vision – enabled by imaging sensors – and machine intelligence – characterised by structured telemetry from sensors and control systems.

Dell Technologies has collaborated with Intel, who has helped advance these solutions with their computer vision and analytics technologies.

“Workloads and use cases for computer vision and machine intelligence require different combinations of tools, but the computing infrastructure elements are the same,” said Joyce Mullen, SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

partners can realise value today and build a foundation to support these workloads and case studies in the future.”

The deluge of video data creates too much data for humans to costeffectively monitor for real-time decision making. Applying analytics, such as Artificial Intelligence, to these data streams automates powerful, actionable insights. Events driven by computer vision and analysed together with telemetry from machines – including data that imaging sensors cannot provide, such as voltage, current and pressure – results in even more powerful insights. president, Global Channel, OEM and IOT Solutions at Dell Technologies.

“Dell Technologies provides a scalable, secure, manageable and open infrastructure – spanning edge to cloud – so customers and

The IoT Solution for Surveillance is specifically built to transform and simplify how surveillance technology is delivered with an easy to deploy and manage hyper-converged, software-defined solution.

12

COVER FEATURE

PIONEERING

BLOCKCHAIN INITIATIVES

An ecosystem of companies developing and promoting Blockchain solutions is seeing an accelerated momentum in the UAE

SMART SMB | AUGUST 2018

COVER FEATURE

13

In

the past couple of years, blockchain as a framework has continued to gain more attention in the shadow of the rollercoaster valuation rides of the digital currencies. Emulating the transparency and the inherent incorruptible nature that is the strength of blockchain based transactions, where every entry is simultaneously registered across an always connected distributed chain of registers and self-audited frequently, pioneering use cases are coming to life in terms of deployments.

While, these are still very much early days, an ecosystem is being evolved very rapidly, driven by visionary leadership such as of the UAE and Dubai in particular. A quick scan reveals there have been start-ups that are emerging in the UAE and there are many others venturing into the region.

There is going to be an abundance of opportunity for innovative solutions that can transform business models and build new ones. However, not all scenarios justify a blockchain implementation, a key factor that needs emphasis.

Muhammed Arafath, Executive Director at Apla, a technology company that develops blockchain solutions for governments and enterprises, says, “It is very true that blockchain is not suitable for all areas of the economy and society.

However, other than applications in finance, blockchain as a tool to record events can be implemented in the public sector across health, policing, land registry, tax and much more. The benefits of creating a single ecosystem where such data is unified, permissioned, shared and replicated can make for a more transparent and fair system.”

Apla for instance has introduced Smart Laws as an answer to transaction fidelity

MUHAMMED ARAFATH Executive Director, Apla

surrounding blockchain technology.

Arafath adds, “As for the private sector, there are also myriad deployment opportunities, but again, not for all spheres. Some of the most notable include supply chains. Blockchain is really a game changer where many parties interact within a single process and each holds and stores their own data, which presently would not be shared. Using a distributed ledger and blockchain, each party would have access to the relevant data which would be updated and stored chronologically and immutably.”

Waqas Mirza, CEO at Avanza Innovations say that for a problem to justify a blockchain solution, it must tick at least one of the factors namely, trust, transparency or efficiency. It is essential to understand if the context calls for a blockchain solution or not and it essentially needs to be solving a process that includes at least two organizations.

Mirza elaborates, “If the existing systems are unable to deliver on any of the above objectives, chances are a blockchain based solution will address a real problem. In addition to this, a problem must involve at least two or ideally more organizations to justify a blockchain solution. If an organization

just wants to solve a problem with its end customers in a B2C setting, there are probably much better nonblockchain solutions and options available. In the context of privatepermissioned blockchain solutions – and this is what’s Avanza’s focus and expertise is – we feel blockchain truly delivers its full potential and benefits when there are multiple organizations involved in a use case and that these organizations are willing to solve a trust, transparency or efficiency related problem between themselves.”

According to Ali Kassab, CEO of Centurion, an investment advisory firm based in Dubai on Blockchain, Fintech and Digital Startups, Blockchain protocols and technology have shown more efficiency in managing and dealing with customer data and enabling direct transactions with no intermediaries to process the transaction. This offers transparency on business rules application and gives control to the smart contract to execute the process, avoiding human errors as well as the conventionally longer process of reconciliations and settlement.

Kassab adds, “Blockchain Applications are justified when smart contracts apply to manage multiparties obligations/rules executions

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER2018

14

COVER FEATURE

and payments. Most of the use cases that we encounter now in blockchain are based on rewarding consumer efforts/services on blockchain : such as enabling certain information, data, actions. We can take the example of energy and renewable energy smart contracts; the use case could be to reward consumers producing renewable energy through token that can be utilized after in the ecosystem of the Government (ex. To pay certain fees or services).”

Wresting the advantage Arafath opines that the UAE and Dubai in particular, has the momentum going its way, being among the earliest to embrace the concept.

The announcement of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy, which aims to move half of all government transactions to the blockchain by 2021 is a key driver going forward.

He elaborates, “With its Vision 2020, Dubai is actively exploring the implementation of new technologies, such as blockchain, to foster further digital innovation and economic opportunity. In comparison to developed markets, investment in digital transformation throughout the UAE over the past two decades hasn’t been so far-reaching. This gives Dubai and other developing markets a great advantage since they will not feel like they have already large amounts of funds on incrementally upgrading legacy systems, but completely overhauling them.”

The impetus is for blockchain solutions providers to develop more use cases that can help wider and quicker adoption of blockchain solutions.

Working with the government sector would be key as at this point, it is the government sector that seems to be key in driving adoption.

Kassab says, “Dubai Government’s vision is to be the capital of blockchain in 2025. We are working closely with government to enable use cases on blockchain.The region need to adapt its regulation to become blockchain SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

and ICO friendly; this will help more blockchain projects too”

Building solutions As the ecosystem matures, more platforms that come up would enable quicker creation of blockchain solutions and which benefit from the learning of early stage issues. There are different approaches and different kinds of players that are part of the developing ecosystem in the region.

Apla for instance looked at some of the existing issues that currently exist in blockchain, which hinder adoption and created the concept of smart laws: a system with rules and regulations like the outside world, which allows users not to be subject to the whims of code, but to a regulated system that is defined by the community of each ecosystem.

Arafath says, “Apla has designed its very own blockchain platform using simplicity as an architecture. The idea is to make blockchain application development no different to standard app development, but with the added features of cryptographic security and distributed ledgers. For this, we’ve created a platform with a smart contract editor, database admin tools, GUI constructor, role rights management and an interface editor.”

He adds, “Our deployments are helping a number of forward-looking

“

OUR DEPLOYMENTS ARE HELPING A NUMBER OF FORWARDLOOKING FIRMS GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN IMPLEMENTING BLOCKCHAIN AS FIRST MOVERS. THESE ARE FIRMS THAT UNDERSTAND WHY THEY NEED THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE BENEFITS IT CAN BRING TO THEIR AREA OF BUSINESS.”

firms gain a competitive advantage in implementing blockchain as first movers. These are firms that understand why they need the technology and the benefits it can bring to their area of business. Those that choose our platform do so for its simplicity and flexibility.”

On the other hand, Centurion has designed a full program to help Blockchain startups kickstart their operations. It helps them establish their legal structure, build their white-papers, finalize their marketing strategy, business model, token and smart contract technology and do security audit as well.

Kassab adds, “Centurion has been involved in legal, strategy, technology and marketing for Blockchain startups. We have also recently enabled Blockchain Based Middleware to help Government and Corporate entities build easily their applications and migrate their existing one to on Blockchain by having flexible, customizable and easy to implement middleware.”

Centurion is also working to build comprehensive use cases to help governments evaluate benefits of Blockchain use and applications in the UAE. The company has also helped several projects implementing Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts such as the AI Decentralized Marketplace for Influencers and the Decentralized platform for services.

Avanza offers Cipher, a Blockchain Orchestration and Governance platform that enables organizations to adopt Blockchain technology at a much faster pace.

“Cipher abstracts underlying blockchain platforms in a way that Core ERPs and existing internal systems can easily stamp or read data or events from blockchain. Cipher is a blockchain agnostic platform that comes with ready-made adaptors for most prevalent blockchains such as Hyperledger Fabric, Sawtoothlake, Quorum, Ethereum and Ripple.

COVER FEATURE

15

Furthermore, Cipher has dozens of prebuilt MicroServices that are required to stich an end to end Solution with blockchain and nonblockchain software components.”

With these micro-services Avanza claims to drastically reduce time to market of Blockchain solutions for their numerous customers. Cipher also offers many monitoring and governance aspects that helps Organizations not only orchestrate multiple chains but also govern and monitor usage of these chains through smart views and governance workflows.

He adds, “Avanza is demystifying blockchain adoption across numerous territories and verticals and Cipher is playing a key role in all our engagements with our customers.”

Using Cipher, Avanza has developed numerous industry ready blockchain solutions for different verticals and business areas. Some of the blockchain solutions that are readily available for deployments, pilots and production grade implementations include ‘Reconciliation and Settlement of Financial and Non-Financial Transactions’, ‘Tokenization of Loyalty Points’, Procure to Pay (P2P) Platform for Upstream Oil and Gas Companies, Government Procurement Processes and Large Enterprises Procurement Processes, Bank Trust Network as well as Shared KYC and Smart Mortgages.

Reconciliation and Settlement of DubaiPay transactions across 40 government entities and a dozen banks was the first project that was awarded to Avanza back in 2017.

“We have successfully delivered this project to Smart Dubai Government (SDG) and currently the project is running successfully in the pilot phase. The main objective of this solution is to eliminate 30-40 days of wastage in reconciliation of DubaiPay transactions every month. Through a blockchain enabled solution this wastage is brought down to instant reconciliation as and when a transaction takes place.”

WAQAZ MIRZA CEO, Avanza Innovations

In addition to the above solutions, Avanza is also in the process of delivering numerous customized blockchain solutions to Government Entities, Banks and Regulators. The company is likely to unveil many of these projects at GITEX 2018.

Verticals and midmarket relevance While on-premise deployments may have steep costs, the costs of deploying blockchain based solutions is coming down due to cloud based blockchain infrastructure and services. This is likely to make it a lot more feasible for mid-market companies to consider necessary deployments as relevant use cases are developed to address their Business challenges.

Mirza claims, “With the cost of blockchain cloud solutions coming down, even for mid-market segments Capex cost of hosting a node is not high any more. These cloud based BAS (blockchain as a service) platforms will certainly help faster adoption of blockchain based solutions in the coming months. On-premise

blockchain infrastructure required quite a bit of investment not just for production environments – but also for test and integration environments.

Plus the skill set required for the house-keeping and maintenance of these nodes was not easily accessible and available. With cloud based Blockchain platforms such as Microsoft Azure – and especially in-country presence of entire Azure stack in UAE in near future – organizations across all sectors can easily at least experiment with blockchain technology and carve out their respective plans for adoption.”

Yet while Mirza says that the midmarket will be able to adopt such solutions sooner because of the cloud based options, he agrees that the government sector will be clearly taking the lead in blockchain adoption in UAE and also in the wider GCC region, followed by banking and then the other sectors. That being said, its relevance to all possible verticals can be established with proper use cases.

Quite certainly, Blockchain can fix a lot of challenges and improve processes, certify and authenticate data to make it immutable and available for the SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

16

COVER FEATURE

right users, everywhere and anywhere.

This may be more urgently relevant in critical segments like healthcare and in others like real estate.

Kassab elaborates citing a context from healthcare, “In Healthcare segment, the number of data and analysis that are required for all third parties is very important. Imagine if doctors, insurance, pharmacy, and the hospital have access to data available on Blockchain regarding patients; it can improve the analysis, feedback, etc to enhance treatments.”

He also adds that SMB entities can benefit from Blockchain applications or ecosystem to accelerate their transactions and improve business timeline.

Building templates In the process to speed up solutions to market and enable customer deployments, there is a need to have a robust agile platform and easily reconfigurable templates that can be customized to customer concerns.

Mirza says, “Cipher helps us replicate and re-use many common components that are required in any blockchain implementation. We have often dazzled our customers with our speed to deliver POCs, pilots and even production grade solutions. If the organizations’ internal systems and ERPs are ready to interface with our REST APIs, we have the ability to deliver pilot solutions within days. Using cloud based blockchain infrastructure also helps significantly in reducing the time to deliver solutions.”

He adds, “Unless we are dealing with a very complex domain or subject matter – generally our delivery time for pilots and POCs is few days or weeks. Cipher’s pre-built blockchain adaptors and MicroServices help us tremendously in achieving this agility.”

Arafath opines that creating a proof of concept for an initial idea can be done quite quickly, meaning coming up with scenarios is not a problem. However, SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

proving that the idea is valid through testing and showing that it is scalable can be a real challenge. Moreover, if looking to deploy blockchain in your organization, it is imperative that there is also a clear implementation strategy.

Arafath elaborates, “Templates are set already within the platform to make using and interacting with it simpler. At Apla, we designed the technology in a way that blockchain works without the user running into difficulty and without having to know all the ins and outs of what distributed ledger technology is and how to code smart contracts.

This ideology runs core to the Apla platform, meaning that templates are already pre-loaded into the platform, with customization possible in accordance with the client’s needs.

Building blockchain application using our Middleware doesn’t require more than 6 to 8 weeks, what takes time is the implementation process and the decision to move from a centralized world to a decentralized one”

Partnerships, the route ahead These companies are also looking to collaborate with partners in taking their solutions to more markets.

Mirza says, “We strongly feel that partnerships are the best and most sustainable model of growth. Avanza works very closely with Microsoft as our key technology partner in blockchain.

In addition to technology collaboration, we also work closely with MS for joint Go to market activities.”

Avanza also has strategic alliances with regional partners in KSA, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. It also has partners based in Australia and looking to to finalize a partner for the Nordics.

Similarly, Apla had unveiled its partnership with HalalGuide, a comprehensive ecosystem of 12 platforms that connects Muslims across the globe to valuable and unique resources including access

ALI KASSAB CEO, Centurion

to halal products and services.

This global platform has been built on a peer-to-peer network, now using Apla’s proprietary blockchain technology.

Arafath quips, “We actually have several upcoming partnerships to announce, in addition to ones which we have already made public. So watch this space.”

Similarly, Centurion has announced their partnership with SettleMint to offer SettleMint’s Blockchain technology to Centurion’s clients in the MENA region. The partnership will be leveraged to support Government, Telecom, BFSI and Healthcare in the realization of their Blockchain projects.

As more partnerships get finalized in days to come, the ecosystem for blockchain implementations will likely see a spurt and there could be more solutions providers in the fray.

Hopefully, that will also lead to some truly transformational deployments across verticals.

38TH GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK

14 - 18

OCT 2018 DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE

Zaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;abeel Hall, Stands ZL-B1 and Stands ZL-C1

18

Talk Point

FORGING A NEW PATH K

umar Prasoon in his role as Group Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the diversified Al Safeer Group makes technology recommendations for the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s executive management on the aspects of Fuzzy Analytics, Business Intelligence; BigData, IoT /IIoT, BlockChain, cloud computing, enterprise 2.0, integrated systems architecture and virtualization etc. In this conversation with Smart SMB, he discusses the growing impact of new technologies EBRAHEEM aL SAMADI in retail efficiencies and the CEO adoption of these in the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Al Samadi operations

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

How do you see IT infrastructure and tools making a significant difference in retail operations and customer experience?

Information Technology innovations in retail sector has made a significance difference and has contributed to modern retail sector in a number of ways which includes labor saving, inventory management, monitoring of checkout operations, consumer awareness and what not. Areas like EDI, Electronic fund transfer, and electronic loyalty schemes have made a sea change in the way we do retail transactions and have added value to each transaction. A huge amount of information which is required for effective management of modern retail business can be effectively handled through IT tools. These tools have made IT easier to not only stores huge amount of information safety, but at the same time to retrieve

it whenever required along with necessary processing of information to arrive at purposeful decision.

Blockchain transactions make trades indisputable and guarantee information payload integrity.

Counterfeiting risk is thus mitigated and final consumers are able to verify in each moment all product characteristics (e.g. provenance, material and components specifications, etc.). As blockchain redefines contract instruments and negotiation processes, it could streamline authenticity verification mechanisms for supply chain actors. Possible impact could be registered on trade instruments such as Incoterms, custom declaration of goods and international trade registries.

The biggest challenge from the infrastructure side is to focus on

Talk Point

BigData based Control Panel Systems with numerous nodes as CCTV , IP Cams , DVRs , Servers , Nodes, POS Machines , Biometric , ATMs , Kiosks, Business Applications , IOT Sensors, IP Devices , IP Circuits , OS , UNIX , SOLARIS , Windows , Oracle Infra , Windows , Databases , 200 + Business Applications , CRM , Call Centers , IP Phones etc and many more to get leveraged on one platform to have a RPA driven AI Maintenance in multiglobal locations.

Elaborate on the relevance of digital transformation to retail operations in various facets of operations and transactions?

Digital Transformation has changed the entire rules of the sustaining in the market and emerging out victorious. Smart Digital Analytics and Big data helped retailers a lot in contributing to the brand growth Retail industry can also use GPOMS (Google Profile of Mood States) Algorithm and other algorithms to understand the consumerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception about the brand online.

Launching a mobile application which will give information like the wish list, monthly shopping plan and the keywords they search for is also a quick win in the retail sector. Based on that data, the system will send the customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; custom promotion notifications while considering different factors like the age, gender, profitability, lifetime value of the customer and more.

As a diverse network of hypermarkets and malls, discuss how the groups goes about ensuring that it has some of the best solutions deployed from connectivity to surveillance?

We have deployed Smart Digital Analytics with various sorts of automation which provides us real time data about every movement happening in and around the mall.

This safeguards the mall from any theft and fraudulent behavior both at the customer and the employees side. These systems not only helps in providing better connectivity and surveillance but also helps in

19

providing business value by helping in Customer centric demand planning, Financial Budget Allocation, Smart sourcing, Enhanced Customer Value, Enhanced footfall and conversion and Cross Selling promotions.

Please highlight any recent solution deployments in your ratios store fronts?

Have cashless payments been deployed or is that on the agenda?

Cashless payment is in our agenda and we are definitely speaking to a lot of vendors for getting the best solution available in the market.

We have however done a lot of customizations around ORPOS (Oracle Retail Point of Sale) systems which has helped us to give a better customer experience ensuring quick check outs at the Point of Sales.

Recently we made progress towards in-house solution for keeping a track of what our customers buy using Digital Analytics, Customer Analytics, Inventory & Shelf Space Analysis and Category Wise Sales Analysis.

Since last 3 years, a lot of development has happened as we are more oriented towards maturing Live Streaming Data with Retail Analytics.

On the retail analytics side, do you have solutions deployed and how important does is retail analytics?

Recently we made our in-house solution for keeping a track of what our customers buy using Digital Analytics, Customer Analytics, Inventory & Shelf Space Analysis and Category Wise Sales Analysis. It is very important to have the retail analytics solution. Its advantages are manifold. We now have a complete set of analytical data.

Discuss some of the solutions deployed to streaamline operations

KUMAR PRASOON CIO, Al Safeer Group

under the Safeer group?

I will provide you a sneak look to the different IT solutions which we have deployed to solve our operational problems. We use industry-leading Fuzzy Analytics technology to allow retailers to optimize operations by responding quickly to customer needs and market trends. Through an interactive dashboard, merchants can harness real-time in-store analytics to create a personalized, Omni-channel experience, capturing shopper interest at every touch point. Video data is enhanced by putting it in context with other data sources such as POS, inventory with hand-held devices for the most complete picture for dynamic decision-making.At Al Safeer, we have used IT solutions to maintain a complete Digital Ecosystem that helps us solve most of our operational issues.

Are there any cloud based solutions being used?

We rely heavily on Oracle Solutions which are all SaaS based. A few reasons why we go for it are the ease of operating the solution, flexibility and customizability.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

20

FEATURE

ON THE TRANSFORMATIVE PATH Redington Value’s latest announcement of a new Data Science and Advanced Analytics practice is focused on enabling partners in addressing opportunities of Analytics deployments across verticals

Redington Value has firmed up its next phase of transformation with the announcement of its practice around Data Science and Advanced Analytics. The distributor has also announced several vendor partnerships to build this portfolio. The new sign-ups include agreements with vendors Talend and Tableau Software in addition to existing relationships with SAS and TCG Digital.

Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President at Redington Value, says, “We have signed up with Talend, a massive player in the Big Data analytics space and Tableau Software, a leading provider of visual analytics . In addition, we are partners with SAS institute, a leader in analytics software as well as with TCG and Splunk and a couple of others which will be announced soon. TCG (The Chatterjee Group) and their solution MCube have been a game changer for us, with use cases from UAE to Nigeria and many others, offering tailor-made, customized solutions. Splunk is a well known global leader and they have no competition in some of the kind of big data they are able to ingest and provide analytics insights..”

According to the distributor, the vendors it has handpicked to partner with for this practice are leaders in the Gartner Magic quadrant and have been embraced by many among the Fortune 500 companies.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

FEATURE

“That is a testimony of the fact that we are building a world class portfolio for data science and advanced analytics. We are looking at having a very robust portfolio in association with six to seven vendors of such eminence,” adds Ramkumar.

A journey of transformation The latest announcement marks the beginning of a new phase of journey for the VAD since its started off its transformation with the launch of an independent Cloud Practice three years ago.

“Over the past three years, we set out to transform ourselves from being a pure play value-add distributor towards the end goal of becoming an aggregator of services and solutions for our channel. We want to help our partners solve business problems of their customers. The move from a product orientation towards problem solving orientation unfolds a big transformation and we have been truly at it since we unveiled the new direction three years ago, and now we are making significant traction,” says Ramkumar.

He adds, “Having build our cloud marketplace to resell cloud services and having augmented our delivery capabilities to support our partners with Citrus, we are now ready for the next phase of the journey which is by launching our datascience and analytics practice.”

The distributor boast of significant credentials in the space as the only exclusive go market partner for AWS in this market and as a significant go to market partner for Microsoft Azure as well with arguably one of the highest market shares across the region.

Ramkumar says, “Our marketplace has found wide acceptance and we have more than 400 partners who are transacting with us with the run rate value of transactions at the marketplace exceeding one million USD. We have achieved many benchmarks in the marketplace; we are working with many ISPs, porting their solutions to our marketplace and the the options that customers would like to have, are a reality in the marketplace such as in terms of analytics, cross-sell or up-sell.”

“

HAVING BUILD OUR CLOUD MARKETPLACE TO RESELL CLOUD SERVICES AND HAVING AUGMENTED OUR DELIVERY CAPABILITIES TO SUPPORT OUR PARTNERS WITH CITRUS, WE ARE NOW READY FOR THE NEXT PHASE OF THE JOURNEY WHICH IS BY LAUNCHING OUR DATA-SCIENCE AND ANALYTICS PRACTICE.”

21

In the second leg of its transformation, the distributor created a consultancy arm, Citrus that augments its delivery capabilities to its partner network.

“We are possibly the first distributor globally to set up a consulting arm from a B2B, indirect to market perspective.

Between the onsite teams and the offshore delivery centre in Bengaluru in India, Citrus is today a 30 member team that provides support for all what we sell on the marketplace.

Citrus has strengthened its capabilities and is gearing up to offer 24 by 7 Multi-channel support on the cloud. They are also offering managed services.”

Citing industry research, Ramkumar claims that by 2020, the market for advanced data analytics according to industry research, should be around 27 billion USD, growing at a CAGR of 10%. In MEA, the distributor’s market sources suggest that the growth rate is even faster and is expected to be a 4 billion USD opportunity.

He says “When you look at our traditional SI and partner landscape, this is an opportunity that they aren’t able to actively participate in. This is dominated by the big 4 SIs and then the niche players who have their strengths. What we are effectively trying to achieve is to enable our partners and augment their core infrastructure services to participate in the new opportunity and from the feedback we have received from our partners, they are quite excited at the possibility of tapping into opportunities in the unfolding analytics market.”

Enabling partners for new frontiers Redington is enabling partners to engage with customers beyond the IT spectrum and understand the Business problems that need to be resolved from the perspective of LOB decision makers, CEOs, CMOs etc and not just confine to engaging with CIOs. “This practice requires a lot of domain or Business vertical

RAMKUMAR BALAKRISHNAN President, Redington Value SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

22

FEATURE

understanding and converting that into a solution on the technology plane. Again, the underlying infrastructure to serve is already in place from a cloud perspective. Our endeavor is to transform Redington Value to be the most significant player from a emerging technologies landscape perspective, including cloud, Big Data, AI, Machine Language, analytics, RPA (Robotic process automation) and going towards IoT etc.,” he adds.

customer, working with the partner.

Redington is leaping into the opportunity that traditionally large consulting firms address and it is doing so with its partners.

Sayantan Dev, vice president for VCG and Data Analytics, Redington Value, says, “ Business customers are generating enormous amount of structured and unstructured data.

The first part is abut getting the right insights from this data , which is part of descriptive analytics or visual analytics.

The second part is about statistical modeling or predictive/ prescriptive techniques and where we have signed up with SAS, a vendor who is possibly one of the oldest and most respected in the the area of advanced analytics. For data insights, visualisation and forecasting, the required data needs to be provided to the systems. There comes the need for Big Data handling. Talend is very good at MDM ( Master Data Management) and Big Data handling. So, we will break this practice into four stacks, namely data management, data cleansing or ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), prescriptive and predictive analytics as well as descriptive analytics.”

“The channel has the customer and the customer has a Business challenge to solve and we will enable our partners do that. In the emerging markets, the customer always turns to his trusted solutions provider and if he has the capabilities to do that, there is no need to go elsewhere. So we are enabling these partners to bring those capabilities to the table.”

Ramkumar says that its partners will be gaining the most as on their own, they wouldn’t have been able to build such capabilities, monetize the opportunity or achieve breakeven and profitability.

“As standalone, their addressable opportunity would have been limited. So when they can leverage the partnership with us and the investments we have made around the practice, along with our central view and reach across the META region and the last mile delivery capability while they specialize in the chosen domains they understand well, it can be a winning relationship.”

From the point of view of Citrus, it is an opportunity to help customers deliver and from Redington’s point of view, it is the ability to bring the solution proposition on table for the

“

According to Redington, the top likely verticals to address for the new practice would be BFSI, government, telco, retail and transportation where customers are earnestly looking for much better solutions from not only the data they have but from the unstructured data lying around, where prescriptive and predictive data have great potential.

Working with the solution stacks, Redington will have domain experts and then the data scientists who write algorithms,.

In turn, these would be given to coders who would implement the models in the system. On the Citrus side, the focus would be on providing delivery capabilities in terms of implementation, building and supporting the systems.

Sayantan adds, “The channel is seeing this as a good opportunity to meet the LBO managers, the CMOs, the CEOs etc beyond the typical discussions with the CEOs and understand business issues. The outcomes could include for instance a dynamic printing use case for retail, a fraud analytics case in Banking etc.

THE SMB BUSINESSES UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ADEQUATELY PROTECTED AND IN THEIR PLANNING AND BUDGETING HAVE PRIORITIZED INVESTMENT IN NETWORK SECURITY SPACE.”

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

He concurs with Ramkumar’s view as to why this is a great opportunity for the channel as he elaborates, “The challenge for partners is that they are in a specific area and our market is extremely fragmented. A channel partner for instance could be catering to five or six large clients in a local market and may have limitations to scale and

FEATURE

23

address all requirements. For a single partner to make an investment in an entire stack of solutions, even though the client opportunity is well within reach, is not feasible and which is where we come in.”

Sayantan believes, partners will benefit by focusing on specializations.

“We advise them to be experts in a specific area. Today, there are companies that are boutique analytics companies who are experts in a particular domain like healthcare or BFSI for instance. Around that, there are other components required where Redington can offer solutions along with Citrus bringing in the delivery capabilities, which altogether goes to make a win-win relationship.”

Redington is working towards a number of methodologies and marketing initiatives to create the new opportunities.

The VAD will also focus on showcasing POC to customers.

“We are sending out the messaging that as an ecosystem, we can provide the entire stack of solutions. We will have a lot of use cases which are easy to communicate-because they are vertical specific business challenges- today it is quite easy to give a POC on data science or analytics project . There are technologies available on premise or in the cloud wherein using a subset of customer data, you can demonstrate how predictive modeling or visual analytics can offer great insights of their data or completely change their forecasting mechanism. We can do this at our solutions centre or at the customer’s site.

Redington expects a good number of partners who can bring the required focus to join in on this new leg of its journey.

Ramkumar adds, “While we have been actively transacting with over 2500 partners, about 300 of them joined us on the bandwagon of our cloud journey that we started three years ago. As the Data Science and Advanced Analytics practice would be more specialized, not every SI would want to develop this practice and this is something that requires a CEO level sign-off. So while this would attract only those partners who would want to be part of this opportunity and can bring a focus to it, I wouldn’t be surprised by the end of the first year of launch if we do have as many as 80-100 partners signed up and active across the region. The number of partners who want come on board is quite significant because their customers are already demanding such solutions.”

On the customer front, the VAD believes, there would be demand from larger customers and from smaller ones as well who may just have more modest requirements that could be addressed in the form of Analytics as a service.

Ramkumar says, “There would be larger players who probably want to do advanced analytics and then there are others who just want to to keep getting insights from their data. The latter may want only reports- so

SAYANTAN DEV Vice President, VCG & Data Analytics Redington Value

analytics as a serve could become a reality in phase two of this journey. As long as data is safe and they keep getting those reports, they would be comfortable with the service. This could open up a good opportunity window for partners.”

The distributor claims that pilot deployments are already on, with several other orders nearing closing. The VAD is confident of revenues coming in from next quarter from the new practice.

Further ahead, the VAD is eyeing IoT as an opportunity but only after it has built up sufficient use cases for it.

“There are still a couple of areas around which we want to differentiate ourselves- this includes IoT, which is still an area that is work in progress. We would like to develop use cases and come out with a model that is relevant to our market, in line with Redington’s credo of being Glocal, global in thinking and local in action.”

Judging by the remarkable steady pace of growth that Redington Value has seen over the past several years with well thought out strategies, it is a sure bet that Redington Value will continue to keep pace with the winds of change as it evolves and transforms its Business.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

24

FEATURE

Long strides into the future ATLAB, part of the Centena Group, a UAE based multinational conglomerate with offices spread across the GCC, UK, India , Singapore and Srilanka , is redefining education by enabling educators to impart 21st century skills through hands-on learning to students

A

TLAB, a Centena Group company has been taking giant strides in the field of imparting STEM, robotics and coding education to students in the UAE. The company over the past three years has deployed solutions at a select number of schools and institutes and is seeing great outcomes as well as traction in terms of demand from more schools.

The method of hands on teaching is bringing in a great value add to students in these schools.

Students who are not interested in Science and Math are now showing great progression in understanding these technical streams. This could have been possible through unique approach of playful learning experience, which is closely aligned with academic curriculum as well as competency skills like critical thinking, problem solving, curiosity, collaboration, etc.

Discussing the objective with which ATLAB set out on its journey in Education, Nilesh Korgaonkar, CEO at ATLAB says, “Students are fortunate enough these days to have a multiplicity of resources that enrich their learning. It is changing from chalk and talk as well as books based teaching or learning to hands-on learning. This is the perspective with which we started introducing ATLAB solutions for activity-based learning in the Education sector. Our tagline says ‘empowering educators and engaging students’. Our solutions are meant to empower educators in making learning

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

VAT compliant accounting software.

VAT FTA Audit file

Zoho Books Online accounting software Do accounting on the go, automate business workflows for clients, and file their VAT returns with Zoho Books.

80004440824 www.zoho.ae/books

support.me@zohobooks.com

26

FEATURE

for their students a fun filled activity while teaching them essential skillsets. That will keep students engaged throughout their learning phase. Hands-on learning gives students a higher level of confidence.”

e cater to Process & Instrumentation and Simulations. We then cater to Vocational and Training institutions, which engage students who are more eager to follow a practical focused learning.”

ATLAB has collaborated with manufacturers who are global leaders in educational products and using their solutions.

It has introduced STEM curriculum in schools which is completely activity based learning methodology.

Elaborating on the adoption of innovative solutions in the education sector, Nilesh says, “The education sector is growing fast and is always looking for emerging solutions. They are preparing students for 21st century skillsets and for jobs that may not even exist today. AI (Artificial Intelligence), VR (Virtual Reality) technologies and humanoid robots are areas where we are doing pilot runs which we would like to bring to various educational institutions training students at the secondary level.”

ATLAB’s evolution can be traced to the decades long history of the Centena Group which started out in the UAE around 1980 with a focus on services for the Marine industry. While that business continue to go strong, the group subsequently grew into areas including Analytics Instruments, Access control solutions and finally into the Education segment. The latter foray, seemingly unrelated at first glance, was based on the reasoning that students need to be exposed to applications that they encounter or engage with later at their workplace.

Nilesh further says about ATLAB, “The first level of focus is K12 which is preschool and school. Beyond school, we continue our journey with solutions for the Engineering, Vocational and Oil & Gas training Centers. In Engineering for instance, we cater to Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics & Communication, Chemical etc. In Oil & Gas Training Centers

THE EDUCATION SECTOR IS GROWING FAST AND IS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR EMERGING SOLUTIONS. THEY ARE PREPARING STUDENTS FOR 21ST CENTURY SKILLSETS AND FOR JOBS THAT MAY NOT EVEN EXIST TODAY. AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE), VR (VIRTUAL REALITY) TECHNOLOGIES AND HUMANOID ROBOTS ARE AREAS WHERE WE ARE DOING PILOT RUNS WHICH WE WOULD LIKE TO BRING TO VARIOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS TRAINING STUDENTS AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL.” SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

The STEM curriculum goes hand in hand with conventional curriculum run by schools, adding value to lessons taught in classes.

According to Nilesh, “There are various curriculums adopted by different schools in the UAE. There are guidelines as to how these curriculums are taught to the students. There are other curriculum approaches which are getting popular such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) or even STREAM (with Research as an add on). We offer STEM under various approaches and train the school teachers to engage the students under the STEM curriculum with the right resources.”

ATLAB sources the learning resources from world class manufacturers. For instance LEGO Education is one of ATLAB’s principal partners who provide learning resource kits and with lesson plans that have effective learning outcomes. ATLAB is also tied up with PASCO, PITSCO & SAM Labs who are leaders in STEM. Nilesh adds that while STEM has no separate evaluation of student performance, the emphasis is on facilitating better learning outcomes. To achieve this objective, ATLAB synchronizes its curriculum with the school lessons well in advance.

“STEM is an evolving curriculum. There are no exans as to see how students performed in STEM classes. We have set of rubrics on the learning outcomes of the student. We request and get the curriculum of the schools for the full month in advance to know what lessons are being imparted and integrate our STEM model with experiments that are in sync with the lessons being imparted during that month so that students get hands on training at the same time.”

ATLAB has deployed STEM in six schools based out of the

FEATURE

27

UAE and three of them won recognition recently for Best Practices in STEM deployments. While ATLAB is active across GCC countries, it has plans to extend ATLAB STEM Academy to the Saudi market. ATLAB is also unveiling an Entrepreneurship program. This intends to enlarge the pool of empowered educators in the larger community.

Elaborating further, Nilesh says, “Educators are the change elements in the community around them. We wanted our presence to expand across the UAE with a large training team. That is not possible in the short term. Thus, we thought of another alternative and identify people who are keen to be part of the Education sector. With this objective, we wanted to create a model, wherein there is an educator who has access to activity kit, lessons plans and can offer one to one training to meet learning outcomes. Those educators interested in the model can engage with us. This has led to the creation of what we are now unveiling as the ‘ATLAB Community of Entrepreneurs’.

This community member can be anyone from housewives to students. They can create a strong alternate source of income for themselves.”

ATLAB is also building and enhancing its portfolio of solutions in imparting Coding and Robotics skills, which is considered as second language of 21st century. It is developing and has also done pilot deployments of Robots in education and service industries. That is a domain where there are ample opportunities waiting to be tapped.

Nilesh says, “Coding and Humanoid Robotics is what LEGO Robots is engaged with. This could be the basics of Education going forward. Next is AI and if you learn to program Drones, which requires coding skills. Siri, Alexa, Sophia, are all humanoid robots and there is a huge market opening up. They are now looking at unmanned cars making grocery deliveries to homes. In such fast transforming contexts, we are looking at introducing AI to secondary level of students to broaden their exposure as early as possible to such emerging technologies.”

ATLAB has an in-house app development team that is developing programs for humanoid robots. The first two developed Robots are Teach Assist Robo and a service Robot. The Teach Assist Robo has been deployed at the center for students with special needs and ATLAB is now developing more applications on it. They have also deployed a service Robot for a customer in Abu Dhabi.

ATLAB has also been bringing in world-class competitions for the student community - the FLL (FIRST LEGO League), FLL Junior, World Robotics Olympiad and now they are introducing First Tech Challenge. Winning teams have

NILESH KORGAONKAR CEO, ATLAB

immense opportunities to compete in global competitions.

With that, there are entrepreneurs that ATLAB develops with its program who could be possible coaches for these huge competitions.

As Nilesh sums up, this is yet the beginning of a long journey ahead for the company. While ATLAB seems to have made impressive strides in the past three years, the successes on the road ahead would be determined by the number of new solutions and use cases they create and enable.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

28

Talk Point

Z

ulekha Healthcare Group is one of the leading private healthcare providers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The professionally managed multi-specialty facility offering modern medical solutions is the vision of Dr. Zulekha Daud, whose modest pledge to stay committed at every level of medical attention has been the premise of Zulekha Healthcare Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work culture and ethos. Aliasgar Bohari, the Chief Information Officer & IT Director at Zulekha Hospital discusses some of the aspects of how the hospital is leveraging IT to deliver business value beyond a mere positive ROI.

Please elaborate on the role of IT infrastructure as a critical enabler in healthcare? How advanced is healthcare in the region in terms of being IT enabled?

To understand criticality of IT in healthcare, first we have to understand following requirements and challenges faced in Healthcare domain. These include instances of handwritten reports, non-standard abbreviations and poor legibility which lead to substantial errors and injuries.

There are Medical Errors as well. Patient Health information management as well as Privacy and security of patient information are critical responsibilities. Duplication of works is challenges at times and delivery of information where and when needed is an obvious requirement to be addressed.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

To address requirements and overcome challenges, business processes are dependent on IT services for High availability, Reliability, Security, and Performance.

IT services are important factors in the survival of any business. Proper planning, communications, and implementation can position your company for both present and future growth and profitability. Information technology drives the digital learning health system, and technological innovation in several key areas will be crucial in meeting future needs for security, healthcare quality and clinical and public health applications.

The use of IT in healthcare is rising in the region and is accelerating with digital transformation that is now seen making inroads into all areas of a business resulting in fundamental changes to how businesses operate and how they deliver value to customers. The healthcare industry in the region already has adopted Electronic Medical Records, CPOE, Online prescription, Tele-consultation, Digital bands etc. Now the region is moving ahead to introduce Robotic services too.

Discuss Zulekha groupsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy around IT investments on the backend as well as on frontend?

IT investments are based on requirements and not decided on fixed budgets. ROI cannot be monetarily calculated in IT but through various innovative implementations, IT assists in providing value added services to patient, and maintaining confidentiality and security of patient data. Our ROI is based on patient satisfaction therefore we invest on the requirement for satisfying patient needs.

Talk Point

29

Discuss your outlook on digital transformation?

Digital transformation is imperative for all businesses.

Defining digital transformation as the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business resulting in fundamental changes to how businesses operate and how they deliver value to customers. Beyond that, it’s a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment often and get comfortable with failure. This sometimes means walking away from long-standing business processes that companies were built upon in favor of relatively new practices that are still being defined. There are a number of reasons that a business may undergo digital transformation, but by far, the most likely reason is that they have to. It’s a survival issue for many.

How much of digitization has been achieved in terms of workflows, lab work, diagnosis etc at Zulekha? Please elaborate on recent deployments?

We at Zulekha, aiming towards paperless hospitals, and have achieved following in terms of digitization, Document management, Computer Assisted coding, Electronic forms, Lab Information System, PACS, Material management, Payroll, Time & Attendance, BI Portal, Pharmacy Management System, Electronic Medical Record, CPOE, Nursing Workbench, etc.

Recently we have deployed BFHI module (Baby friendly hospital initiative), eRx integration, and online Insurance approval system.

Are cloud solutions deployed for any specific workloads?

Since healthcare is a very critical domain, we at Zulekha believe in having on premise deployment for all our critical applications.

Elaborate on the focus in cybersecurity solutions?

ALIASGAR BOHARI CIO & iT Director, Zulekha Hopital

“

THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY IN THE REGION ALREADY HAS ADOPTED ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, CPOE, ONLINE PRESCRIPTION, TELE-CONSULTATION, DIGITAL BANDS ETC. NOW THE REGION IS MOVING AHEAD TO INTRODUCE ROBOTIC SERVICES TOO.”

Are there any in-house developed solutions that are deployed?

Cyber security has risen to become a prominent issue of global security worldwide. Cyber crime against a business affects the customers; most companies have some form of security for their networks. However, having a complicated password or a firewall are simply not enough. If you want to truly protect your business and your customers from cyber attacks, you will have to enlist the help of more advanced Solutions and experts. A security blue print for healthcare is to have easy accessibility to patient information without compromising in security.

We don’t have an in-house development team, but most of the deployments including HMIS (Hospycare) aree developed based on logic and architecture provided by our IT team.

How big is the IT team at Zulekha?

Do you work with the same set of trusted suppliers for the solutions you need?

The team is sizable and consists of experts in their respective domains. The IT Team at Zulekha consists of 20 members with different roles like Directors, Mangers, Administrators, Technician, Coordinators, call center agents etc.

Discuss if any managed services are utilized?

Presently we have only MPLS router which is managed by Etisalat. All other services are managed by the IT team st Zuleka.

While we prefer to work with trusted suppliers , there is always a room for new Vendors who can suggest smart solutions.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

30

Talk Point

On the Cloud trail

iCloud Solutions DMCC was founded in 2011 and has emerged as a leading IT Infrastructure and Information Solution provider, as a leading partner of Google in the region. Ahmed Eid, CEO of the company discusses how the company focuses on solutions across verticals.

Please discuss the company’s focus in terms of solutions and operations in the Middle east ? iCloud Solutions DMCC is an innovative IT solutions company catering to customers across the GCC. We are Google’s Premier Partner in the region and help Enterprises & Educational institutes in adopting Google Cloud Technologies.

We have direct office presence in the UAE in Dubai, Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia Amman in Jordan, Tripoli in Lebanon and in addition through our Partner Network we are spread across other GCC Regions.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

Apart from this we are working closely with Real Estate companies in Middle East for creating Smart Home Solutions. This is powered with Google’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities combined with Voice activation commands which helps in creating an Internet of Things (IoT) experience for the end users.

Elaborate the company’s focus on mid-market segment customers as well as enterprise customers?

Our focus for Cloud based solution is for enterprises of all sizes and all verticals. While the traditional

organizations are realising the benefits of moving to Cloud, the small and mid-market business have started focusing more on the technology and are using it as a business enabler. Verticals such as Retail, Real Estate, Start Ups, Technology Companies, eCommerce, FMCG, Manufacturing, Media & Entertainment have been more receptive to the idea of moving to Cloud based environment.

Almost 70% of our business for the company comes from the mid-market segment, across verticals, so we have very niche strategies to ensure that we get the customer on board.

Talk Point

As Google Cloud partner, please elaborate on the growing adoption of cloud solutions among mid-market customers?

Cost is the major factor for any organization these days. Instead, of building a infrastructure in-house and maintaining it, many of our mid-market customers chose Google Cloud as it helps them in focusing on their core business. Moving to cloud has not just help them in reducing their costs but has made them grow exponentially too. Start Ups these days who are using Cloud solutions have higher valuation and are growing faster as compared with the traditional brick and mortar companies who have been around for more than 2 decades but have refused to change their age old technologies.

What are the cloud based solutions you offer? Do you help deploy private and hybrid cloud solutions?

Our offerings are 100% public cloud deployments. We do support hybrid environment but given the current trend everyone will sooner or later move completely to Cloud.

We offer G Suite for Work - Email, Communications & Collaboration tools powered by Google for Enterprises ; G Suite for Education which are tools for classrooms of every size and every budget that enables better learning & teaching environment.

Our portfolio includes Elmoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s revolutionary Interactive Visualisers for educational institutes and enterprises and the Google Cloud Platform, which is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) & Platform as a Service (PaaS). In addition, there are Chrome Devices which include Chromebooks, Chrome Meeting Room Solutions, Digital Signage Solutions etc. Oue Smart Home Solutions have Google powered devices for Homes which works with voice commands. Further, we also do Custom App Development and help in development of products and services that our customers need from time-to-time

Elaborate on your focus on collaboration solutions- which vendors do you partner with for the same and which are the key verticals in the region in terms of demand/ deployments?

everything to cloud be it the email or applications. Companies are moving to a leaner, more agile Operational Expenditure model rather than the more complicated & complex Capital Expenditure model.

No one can work in silos and that is the way we partner with our vendors too. Google Cloud Solutions help organizations in getting Real time Collaboration. Companies of all sizes & of different verticals have been getting phenomenal benefits out of this.

Work is no longer limited to devices and people now can collaborate from any-device, anywhere and at any given point of time thus resulting in faster turnaround time and less versioning of files.

Discuss how digital transformation is seen as a driver of IT upgrades, especially among mid-market?

Discuss focus in datacenter solutions- do you provide end to end datacenter solutions?

31

Digital Transformation has been in trend off lately and the major contributor of that has always been new disruptive Technologies.

Companies these days are not just looking for mere IT Upgrades, but are looking at a bigger picture which benefits their organization in terms of ROI & gaining more competitive advantage in the market.

Our offerings are based around customer data that is being hosted in Google Data Centers which are spread across the globe and are connected with Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own undersea fiber optic cables. This is the major reason why Google guarantees a 99.9% uptime SLA for their services for enterprises & educational institutes.

As more customers move workloads to cloud, how is this impacting their own datacenter upgrades- are they spending less on etc same?

That is the beauty of moving to cloud, where one has to no longer do that extra budgeting to maintain their own datacenter. At the end of the day when the total cost of ownership is calculated and shared with the CIO he immediately tries to move

AHMED EID

CEO, iCloud Soluiions DMCC

32

Talk Point

The next phase of growth Hesham Tantawi, vice president, MENA, Asbis Middle East discusses some of the latest areas of focus for the distributor Do elaborate on the solutions focus for Asbis broadly in terms of range of products? What is the vision at Asbis around solutions?

As a distributor that for a long time has been known in the market for the components business which has been a focus within the group from inception, the company decided to evolve and develop its solutions business over four years ago. The reason for this transition was necessitated by the cannibalization of the volume business with margins declining drastically especially on the PC sales. Back then, we saw the components business as changing the character of the company. We decided to develop our Asbis solutions business to include Networking and Infrastructure, Computing, Security/ Software, Printing Solutions and Intel Haswell Processors. Although there is consolidation in the components sector, the CPU and VGA business still remains solid while the hard disk drive (HDD) business continues to grow within Asbis. We are driving our components business to new areas such as storage with high value products. We now provide our components channels with storage boxes especially systems integration partners playing in the highend segment.

Elaborate on solutions for retail from your signage to others? How is the demand and business from this segment?

Asbisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; digital signage solutions for retail are multi-touch FHD screens with embedded applications that are ideal to present, interact, connect or communicate between people and support the desire for individuality in business retail and education sector. Given the momentum in the SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

retail space especially in malls, where retailers of all types are competing with e-tailers for business and footfall, demand for Asbisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; range of Prestigio multi-touch digital signage solutions has been growing steadily as retailers look to personalize customer visits into their stores with bespoke offerings.

Discuss solutions for education vertical including multi-boards and others. Is this also a key vertical for you and your partners in the region?

Our Prestigio digital signage and smartboards solutions combine interactive boards with PC performance, multitouch FHD screens and embedded applications to Hesham tantawi present, interact, connect Vice President, MENA, ASBIS Middle East or communicate between people and support the desire for individuality in business and education. The solutions are part of daily business for approximately 30% of the total and lifestyle activities of IT-users contribution to the group coming globally, our brand products range from solutions. We have continued is developed with our commitment to develop in-country markets with to offer best solutions and stylish the various systems integrators product designs at competitive prices, we work with in the MENA market. without compromising the quality.

In addition, we have continued to cement our vendor brands and Discuss the growth in the value recently added TYAN, a leading business and business with the portfolio of HPC, storage, and cloud Systems integration channel? How server platforms and Thecus in the many active partners are associated network attached storage space. on the value side of your business?

We have also continued to augment all the solutions offered under this division by on-boarding vendor brands Since the inception of the Solutions that are complementary to existing Business, Asbis has grown it solutions within our stable. value business to now account

34

VERTICAL WATCH

ENHANCING TRAVEL SOLUTIONS Dubai and Singapore dual headquartered, Wego, is the largest online travel marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa. Wego presents an unbiased comparison of all travel products and prices offered in the marketplace by merchants, both local and global, and enables shoppers to quickly find the best deal and place to book whether it is from an airline or hotel directly or with a third-party aggregator website. Mamoun Hmedan, Wego Managing Director for MENA and India discusses the value proposition it brings to the travel industry

Discuss the services Wego provides as an online travel marketplace/ aggregator platform?

Wego is an award-winning travel metasearch engine that offers a wide range of flight, hotels and accommodations options. Using cutting-edge technology; we endeavour to provide an unbiased comparison of all travel products and prices from local and global vendors in less than three seconds. Therefore, Wego presents the perfect solution for users from the MENA and Asia Pacific regions to quickly and easily find, compare and book the best travel deals.

With several booking online aggregators there, is there room to grow a base of loyal users? is there customer loyalty in using portals for booking travel/hotel or do users go by comparisons?

At Wego, we believe that cost savings married to personalised service can inspire greater customer loyalty – no matter how crowded the marketplace is. It is this ethos that has enabled Wego to attain market penetration that is deep and sustained. By securely collecting and analysing traveller data, Wego is able to build and deliver solutions that meet the evolving needs of travellers. To further incentivize customer loyalty, our Insider Club Program offers exclusive early-bird alerts on a range of travel deals from thousands of travel providers.

How do users get the best competitive rates?

From its very inception, Wego has been negotiating the best possible deals with every airline, hotel chain, and online travel agent in the marketplace. Such diligent efforts have ensured that searches on Wego offer up the widest range of travel products, at the best market prices.

Discuss the IT enablement behind your initiatives-with so SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

mAMOUN HMEDAN

Managing Director, Wego, MENA

“

WE BELIEVE THAT COST SAVINGS MARRIED TO PERSONALISED SERVICE CAN INSPIRE GREATER CUSTOMER LOYALTY – NO MATTER HOW CROWDED THE MARKETPLACE IS.”

36

VERTICAL WATCH

many transactions right through the day, elaborate how crucial it is for the IT backbone to be most resilient? is your infrastructure mostly cloud-based?

Being an online travel solution, Wego recognizes the criticality of a solid system architecture and IT backbone in delivering a seamless end-to-end travel shopping experience. Our homegrown metasearch backend, makes it possible to aggregate and process responses from hundreds of sources with almost no delay. Being cloud-based has also helped the brand improve costeffectiveness, reliability, performance and security.

How many hotels and airlines are listed with you in the region? Is this comparable with the leaders?

For hotels: Listed on Wego are hundreds of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and hotel websites, amounting to over one million hotels worldwide and more than four million homes and villas for rent across various vacation rental providers.

Our recently inked partnership with Airbnb also increases the stay options, to include a wide range of unique

accommodation types, for travellers from the Middle East to choose from.

For flights: Wego has referred traffic to over 500 airlines this year, of which nearly 200 are directly listed with Wego.

The remainder were booked via the many OTAs (1020 at last count) that are available on Wego flights.

Discuss the focus on the Middle East among your markets worldwide Wego was one of the first travel players to recognise the true potential of metasearch solutions in the region, giving it the status of a real game-changer in the sector. Today, we operate 60 country websites; in 21 languages and local currencies worldwide; which rakes in more than 13 million monthly visits. In fact, globally, the Wego app alone has achieved over 11 million downloads.

Thanks to a promising e-commerce future and evolving millennial preferences in the MENA, Wego continues to harbor a healthy appetite for investing into expanding its footprint in the region.

Airbnb and Wego Partner

A

direct websites and other merchants. Airbnb’s accommodation marketplace offers access to millions of places to stay in more than 191 countries, from apartments and villas to castles and treehouses.

With the addition of listings on Airbnb, travellers using the Wego metasearch apps and websites will have easier access to a wide range of local homes and other unique types of accommodation in destinations worldwide. Wego users simply have to enter their destination city and dates of travel, and to follow the recommended filters to search for a wide array of Airbnb vacation rentals.

Hadi Moussa, General Manager for MEA at Airbnb, said, “We are delighted to join hands with Wego to widen travel options for Wego’s MENA-inbound and MENAbased users. The high quality range of properties on Airbnb will be a great addition for Wego customers who are seeking new accommodation options and experiences, and want to live like a local. We are confident that this partnership will be welcomed by Wego users and will contribute to diversifying the hospitality business in the region.”

irbnb, the global travel community that offers endto-end trips, has announced a partnership with Wego, the largest online travel marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa, to include properties listed on Airbnb in Wego search results in a move to offer Wego users more accommodation choices.

This announcement comes at a time when MENA based travellers and inbound visitors to the MENA region, have demonstrated an appetite for innovative travel experiences and cost-effective holiday options.

As the leading travel metasearch player across the MENA region, Wego helps users to quickly compare the widest possible range of accommodation options available in the marketplace, including hotels, serviced apartments, homes and villas and to compare rates across local and global travel agencies, hotel

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

Anna Trushkina, Director, Hotels at Wego, commented, “We are excited to be entering into this partnership with Airbnb which will significantly expand the supply of alternative accommodation on Wego and which is perfectly matched with types of demand we see from Saudi Arabia and the other GCC markets. Analysis of search and booking data from across the 60 countries worldwide that Wego operates, shows that users from GCC countries have the longest length of stay, highest spend per night and most frequent instance of multiple room bookings to accommodate family groups.”

38

Talk Point

Keeping pace with changing dynamics Levtech Consulting is a leading Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner that helps organizations drive digital transformation with solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, AX, NAV, CRM, Power BI, and SharePoint.

Deployment of business applications such as ERP, CRM and analytics is the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forte since it commenced operations nearly a decade ago.

Anilesh Kumar, CEO, Levtech Consulting discusses the shifts in the business applications landscape and the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s domains of focus.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

Discuss the shifts in the application space that are enabling businesses better in terms of decision making?

Historically, systems were deployed to automate processes and create systems of record that were meant to track different aspects of an organization. The focus was on digitally recording every transaction and automating manual processes, rather than driving efficiency and decision making on a real-time basis.

To a large extent, most organizations today, whether large or small, have business applications deployed, ranging from simple accounting solutions to industry-specific, best of breed systems. Going forward, the major thrust is to enable realtime insights from the data that the systems generate. This will help visualize business trends and outcomes, and data can be mined to enable decision making in a predictive manner.

Previously, decision making was deferred to the end of an accounting period or a periodic board meeting, when the future course of action was finalized. But, now decision-making is real-time, predictive and intelligent.

Elaborate on your focus in the Applications space in partnership with Microsoft?

We have been operating for the past decade and our focus has been on business applications automating different functions of various industries such as financial services, retail, manufacturing, contracting etc. In the application space, we are firmly aligned with Microsoft and work with customers to deploy the Microsoft business applications cloud, Dynamics 365.

In 2016 and 2017, we were admitted to the prestigious Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics, a recognition that is based on sales achievement

40

Talk Point

and implementation delivery, ranking Levtech Consulting among the top Microsoft global partners.

Over the last two years, Microsoft Dynamics has moved away from an on-premise based solution to an endto-end cloud application. They have removed the perception of ERP and CRM as silos. The acronyms that the industry has created based on product focus do not matter to an end user or business for they only recognize and understand processes. We have built strong skillsets and gained significant experience in deploying industry solutions and automating processes organization-wide using the seamless opportunity that Dynamics 365 offers.

Our industry solutions today focus on the key verticals in the regional economy, with Dynamics 365 add-ons available for contracting, real estate, retail loyalty, and payroll. With Power BI and Azure Machine Learning, we are also extending the industry flavor to include industry-specific reports and dashboards, and predictive capabilities pertinent to each industry.

ANILESH KUMAR

CEO, Levetech Consulting

Discuss the rising role of AI in Applications?

With the advent of AI, business applications have made a huge leap in the value that they bring forth to organizations. Today, Dynamics 365 is AI enabled, helping customers make intelligent decisions across different functions. Microsoft has native cloud capabilities and capabilities to deliver AI in a very scalable manner.

It has infused AI at various touch points of the application landscape so that customers do not have to invest in separate infrastructure and technical skillsets. There is a great value proposition on offer to the end customer to deploy an organizationwide business application and data platform that is AI enabled.

Discuss your products for retail?

We focus on helping retailers engage in a more meaningful manner with their customers through Engage 365, our customer engagement solution built on top of Microsoft Dynamics SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

365. Retailers are keen to increase the depth of mass personalization that they can deliver to customers through personalized promotions, communication, loyalty points, and offers. The personalized shopper experience needs to transcend different mediums across mobile, web, social and in-store and demands a business applications platform that connects and consolidates data across myriad customer touch points.

Engage 365 provides a single platform for retailers to drive customer engagement and unify customer experience, aided by AI elements and analytics. Additionally, we also automate processes across the retail value chain through Microsoft Dynamics 365 for retail and LS Retail.

Which are the other products you offer?

We also have an end-to-end real estate solution, Property 365,

on top of Dynamics. The solution provides end-to-end automation across the real estate landscape, from property leasing and sales to facility management and back-office operations. Again, the solution extends AI capabilities through Microsoft Azureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s machine learning and IOT capabilities. For instance, we are helping realtors suggest lease rates when a customer enquiry comes up. Another example is in the field of facility management where organizations prefer to handle customer interactions through a portal rather than the traditional channels such as phone calls. Customers get an enhanced experience in such interactions in the form of raising a complaint and adding a possible picture of the complaint/ issue, a leaking tap for instance, and then getting to have the right person come over and fix the issue.

Even service has an AI element with the ability to predict failures and plans to offset such failures. The real estate landscape has become quite competitive and people who take the initiative to leverage new technologies in customer service will realize rich dividends in due course.

We also offer an Enterprise Asset Management solution on top of Microsoft Dynamics 365. We serve the manufacturing and contracting industries very closely on the ERP front. While there are best of breed players, we have built the capabilities of asset management into a Microsoft Dynamics platform so that we offer enhanced value to customers who have asset-intensive businesses.

We also have a localized HR and payroll solution, Payroll 365, based on Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s HR suite, which ensures customers have an end-to-end HR management solution compliant with regional regulations. In Payroll 365, we have a chatbot that takes care of payroll queries from the employee, removing the need for the HR Manager to answer routine questions such as leave balance, end of service benefits, policy queries etc., thereby freeing up talent to serve the workforce and organization better.

42

Talk Point

Discuss how Jacky’s as a diversified group of retail electronics and solutions has internally done any process enhancements as in moving more towards digital transformation?

Bringing new age solutions to market

J

acky’s Business Solutions LLC, a division of the diversified Jacky’s Group, is an end-to-end solutions provider for major corporations seeking efficient and effective visitor management, banking and printing solutions. Ashish Panjabi, COO at Jacky’s Business Solutions discusses how the company has expanded and consolidated its solutions focus around emerging technologies

We’ve undergone a lot of change management in the last couple of years within Jacky’s. We migrated ERP systems in the last two years, which meant, we could gain a lot in terms of efficiency because we now have our CRM, service modules and other core operational areas accessible by our field sales team and service engineers. We also deployed a new cloud-based POS solution. We were also able to as a result, launch our new website in the last year that is now integrated with richer product content from our POS system.

This has overall meant that many of our internal processes have been re-engineered.

Elaborate some of the emerging technologies and solutions that Jacky’s solutions focuses on?

Within Jacky’s Business Solutions, we are largely focused on two areas, Visitor Management Solutions and Digital Printing Products.

Visitor Management Solutions was historically queuing systems, digital signage and customer feedback devices but which has now extended into areas like digital signature pads, digital document capture solutions, humanoid robotics and in-store music solutions.

Digital Printing Products was historically large format printers for graphics applications but has transitioned into large format printers for interior decoration, 3D printing products, STEM solutions, digital fabrication products and automated finishing products for the printing market.

While a good percentage of those solutions maybe focused on larger enterprise/government segments, discuss if you do have a focus on providing solutions to mid-market segment customers across different sectors?

We do always look for solutions catering to specific segments. For example, in education, we started initially with higher-end solutions that catered better to Universities but quickly added products that started to meet the requirement of secondary as well as primary schools. In humanoid robotics space, we sell Pepper from Softbank Robotics for the commercial customer but also sell Nao, which is a robot designed for the education segment.

Elaborate on the focus in Robotics and your partnerships with Softbank and others. Have there been recent deployments of your Robot Pepper in retail?

We started working with Softbank Robotics in April 2018.

We are their distributors in the Middle East and are working

Co-located with

14-17 OCT 2018

Experience Future Urbanism AT THE BIGGEST & BOLDEST TECHNOLOGY SHOW IN MENA & SOUTH ASIA

Big on numbers.

Bigger on opportunities.

At the centre of the global tech revolution and the region’s digital transformation, GITEX Technology Week brings together the most powerful innovations influencing the future – right from AI to Smart Cities to Blockchain.

4.700+

100.000+

6.238

EXHIBITORS

VISITORS

MEETINGS SET

80%

16.000+

9

EXHIBITORS SECURED OVER 2 BUSINESS DEALS

GOVT & CORP BUYERS

VERTICAL CONFERENCES WITH 100+ HOURS OF CONTENT

*2017 onsite survey conducted through a third party company

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW AT WWW.GITEX.COM #GITEX2018

44

Talk Point

to not only sell robots, but create a reseller network that includes software application developers, who can start providing localized requirements better for the region. We are also going to commence with a service centre which means most Level 1 and Level 2 repairs can be done locally in the region.

There are a number of deployments already in the region.

The most notable are Emirates NBD and DEWA but many more about to come on-board shortly and we can expect to see some announcements during Gitex from those individual clients.

Discuss interest around these solutions-do you think these would a good fit in hospitality and training for instance? can these be customized with content?

The best way to think of a humanoid robot is to compare it with a smartphone. When you buy it, comes as a piece of hardware with sensors and processors as well as an operating system. As Apps get developed and get more sophisticated, value of a smartphone increases in terms of what it can do. With each operating system upgrade, you also find many of the sensors start working better or areas like battery life improve. A robot is no different.

Think about what you did with your smartphone about ten years ago and what you can do with it now. Robots will be the same. Whilst they will and can be used in hospitality, training, banking, retail and other sectors, what they will do in each of these sectors will only improve as the use cases and applications develop.

This is why we are looking at software developers in the region to work with us. The more out of the box ideas they develop, the better it is for firmly putting the region on the map as innovators.

You offer a range of 3D printers from vendors- discuss the demand from different verticals - which are key demand driving for 3D printing so far in the UAE and across the region?

In the region, the biggest market has definitely been education. Whilst this was initially universities, we have seen virtually most schools adopt 3D printing technology now as they start embracing STEM into their curriculum.

We work with brands like MakerBot that also provide educator guidebooks.

Also, with the number of innovation centres, maker spaces and fabrication labs increasing, we’ve seen the demand for more versatile 3D printers grow. A lot of these are being used for rapid prototyping, product development or testing, which in turn means we start to see more products developed in the region.

Which are the verticals that can benefit from 3D printing SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

ASHISH PANJABI

COO, Jacky’s Business Solutions

also is this cost effective. For those who want to possibly lease on a managed print service model- do you offer that option?

Some segments have been quicker to adopt 3D printing than others primarily because of the availability of content. Most medical and dental applications already had 3D image capture which meant producing something in 3D started happening more quickly. With incubators like in5 or Government led initiatives like the Dubai Future Accelerators, we’re seeing more people move into product development mode, which has seen that market grow as well.

There are service bureaus that exist in the region that can provide turnkey solutions because just having a 3D printer isn’t enough, which is why the MPS model hasn’t taken off. The right finishing products or expertise can come by working with a service bureau that has got a bouquet of not only printers but also subtractive manufacturing products like CNC machines, routers and milling machines because 3D printing or addititive manufacturing isn’t the solution to everything just yet.

Make the Connection:

BRINGING ORDER TO DIGITAL DISRUPTION Digital disruption is driving innovation in business models, optimizing internal processes, unleashing new products and services, and radically changing how organizations engage with customers. Organizations must adapt to this multi-device, multi-mode world where quality is measured not by schedules, budgets, and defects, but by user experience. A “one size fits all” strategy is no longer an option.

A new approach to your network is critical so you can access:

• Real-time comprehensive network visibility • Automation and speeding of network tasks • Insights to optimize structured workflow The time is now for a modern campus architecture from the edge to the core.

Learn more at www.arubanetworks.com/digitalworkplace

46

COLUMN

Breaking down barriers between departments

Digitally Transforming the Manufacturing Workforce Andy Coussins, senior vice president and head of international, Epicor Software discusses why it is time to re-imagine work practices and stop relying on working in operational silos that have been created around job descriptions

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

I

t has been suggested that over one third of skills considered important in today’s workforce are likely to no longer be relevant in the near future.

Manufacturers will soon require quite different expertise from their workforce to master new technology. In fact, according to a 2018 report by Accenture Strategy, businesses that fail to upskill their workforces, so they can effectively collaborate with modern machines and technology, face the risk of missing out on revenue and growth.

Challenging and training employees to acquire new expertise can be a cost-effective way to manage staff resourcing, provide a boost to employee engagement, and ultimately have a positive impact on a company’s productivity. To this end, there are several areas manufacturers should consider when reviewing the training needs of their workforce and providing opportunities for upskilling.

With the current trend for automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies, it is time to re-imagine work practices and stop relying on working in operational silos that have been created around job descriptions.

Instead, manufacturers need to review tasks—including labelling, packaging, and shipping—rather than job roles, to reap the benefits of digital data sharing. Software platforms, such as modern enterprise resource planning (ERP), provide employees across departments with real-time information and a 360-degree picture of what’s happening in the business.

By allocating tasks to both machines and people, manufacturers can ensure an efficient level of automation, freeing up employees’ time to focus on new, less manual and more skilled tasks that deliver greater value to the business.

Identifying where upskilling needs to happen Beefing up engineering talent on the shop floor is, without a doubt, vital; however, skills gaps higher up in the business are just as pressing.

Manufacturers should therefore think about technical knowledge and skills gaps, but also consider potential gaps in management and leadership skills.

It is worth remembering that leadership skills and human ingenuity will become more important than technical knowledge, and as we dive deeper into Industry 4.0, this will become clearer. Bringing in a development and training specialist can help manufacturers perform a skills gap analysis to ensure that any training plan is not only going to address the current pressure points, but also future-proof the company.

COLUMN

Aligning training to the overarching business strategy Forward-thinking leadership teams are developing their workforce upskilling strategy—a task that has historically been the responsibility of HR—as an integral part of their strategic business planning process.

This planning process includes a comprehensive review of how external trends are affecting existing structures, jobs and skills across the business. It considers which roles are strategic and core to the business, which ones will appear, and which will change or disappear completely.

Technology can play a key role in this strategic planning process, using real-time, data-driven insight to analyse and review where training is required across an entire manufacturing business. Specifically, software such as modern enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and manufacturing execution systems (MES), can deliver actionable insight on a company-wide scale—from core business processes, to interactions with customers and manufacturing operations.

By using the insights that data from these systems can offer, businesses can uncover opportunities to educate the workforce at every level.

In addition, using new technologies can also help drive recruitment.

Recent research from Epicor Software revealed that nearly half (41 percent) of young people want to work with the latest innovations, demonstrating that implementing new technologies can make businesses very attractive to an emerging pool of new, digitallyskilled talent.

This underpins the need to implement training in time for the arrival of these new technologies on the shop floor, for both existing and incoming staff—it could even become the new competitive advantage in the Industry

4.0 era. Manufacturers need to do their research to understand which are going to be the key skills profiles needed for future success, and then develop a people-centric work environment to help the business thrive.

Understanding the scale and timeframes Helping employees to upskill in this fast-changing world of work also needs to happen at speed and to scale. The skills revolution that we are seeing goes hand-in-hand with innovations, and as new technologies emerge, the skills requirements will change.

In order to keep pace with changes in the sector, manufacturers need to consider upskilling an ongoing longterm investment and develop strategies for continuous upskilling, or ‘lifelong learning’ of their employees.

This upskilling process does not have to mean traditional classroombased training. In this digital age, personalised learning opportunities, such as on-demand training and e-learning, allow manufacturers to cater for a large workforce where

47

individual employees are at different stages of learning and acceptance of new technologies.

As the pace of technological change increases, manufacturers need to act to ensure they are not constrained by an increasing gap between supply and demand for talent. To address the growing skills gap, smart organisations will consider turning to their current workforce and investigating the transferable talent and skills it holds.

Technologies like modern ERP and MES solutions are fast becoming the foundation for digital transformation in manufacturing by functioning as the fabric that connects people, processes, data and things in an intelligent and strategic manner. A skilled and agile workforce that can successfully use these technologies can enable manufacturers to rise to the challenges presented by Industry 4.0. These companies will then, in turn, be in a strong position to navigate the ever-changing economic and international business environment, improve productivity, and drive future business growth.

“FORWARD-THINKING

LEADERSHIP TEAMS ARE DEVELOPING THEIR WORKFORCE UPSKILLING STRATEGY—A TASK THAT HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN THE RESPONSIBILITY OF HR—AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEIR STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING PROCESS.“

ANDY COUSSINS Senior VP & International Head Epicor

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

48

COLUMN

The Truth About AIs Impact on Jobs in the UAE The truth is that some jobs will be lost, but many more will be created writes Allan Leinwand, CTO, ServiceNow

A

ccording to a recent research report from PwC, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to account for approximately 13.6% of the United Arab Emirates’ GDP in 2030. However, AI is seen by many as being either a hero or a villain.

On one hand, AI is currently driving nearly every CIO’s agenda because it intelligently automates work processes, making it possible to do things that have never been done before. But on the other, many workers are scared of the rise of AI as they believe it is rising from humble beginnings to become a villain that will steal their jobs.

The truth is that some jobs will be lost, but many more will be created. It is important to understand that fundamentally, AI is not strong at creative, interpersonal or physical work. It will be used for “decision support, not decision making.” So lets debunk a few myths.

Reduce and simplify

The Mundane

As workers, we want to use automation to get our jobs done. AI will free us from having to psend long hours analyzing data and invest that time in achieving a better work-life balance.

Workers want to move to more meaningful roles. According to the Society of Human Resource Professionals, workers, particularly Millennials, want to “create outcomes within meaningful projects and may become impatient with mundane tasks.” AI can automate mundane tasks allowing new jobs to be created that are more fulfilling and meaningful. AI can make workers more productive and efficient at their jobs, while learning new skills. AI can also help workers become better organized, reducing stressors, improving productivity and overall job satisfaction.

Information technology, manufacturing, financial services and human resources will all see significant improvement and productivity gains because of AI. These industries have many repetitive tasks that can be easily automated, helping workers become more productive. For example, AI can streamline the onboarding process of a new employee.

It can alert HR when background checks are completed, and aid them with the creation of benefits packages and employment contracts. It can help IT order and provision new equipment. Similarly, it can help the employee complete and send tax forms and direct deposit information to finance.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

Financial compliance is a great example of this. Until recently, the creation of expense reports and review of submitted expenses was a very manual, mundane process requiring hours and hours of review. In the cases of expense report review, only a sample of expense reports could be

COLUMN

49

Customer satisfaction The idea behind AI is to create more satisfied customers.

Because workers can focus more on the interpersonal and creative parts of their jobs rather than the more mundane, they will treat customers better. In customer support cases, this will be done by employing AI to identify and provide a solution for the issue and utilizing a human who can react to nuances for interpersonal communications. Customers will develop loyalty because their needs are met and issues are resolved quicker, more efficiently and with a personal touch.

Let me give you an example. Years ago, many companies implemented phone trees to help route support calls more efficiently. All of us have been frustrated to get to the end of the menu realizing that we must press “star” in order to go back to the previous menu in order to talk to the right person. While this is automated support, it didn’t employ a combination of people and AI to do so. Rather than having to press the right button to move forward, imagine answering a few questions at the beginning of the call describing what the issue is or what you want to accomplish, and immediately being routed to the correct person (yes, person) who will help you or to the right menu telling you store hours. This will speed up support, improve loyalty and create better satisfaction for customers.

Convenience One of the biggest benefits of AI is the convenience to customers. AI allows nearly every aspect of business to occur faster, from identifying and fixing support issues so that workers don’t have to drive into the office on weekends to fix a server, to providing more accessibility to information, services and more.

Allan Leinwand CTO, ServiceNow reviewed in order to hopefully identify some patterns of fraud in submissions. Now, not only can AI generate the invoices, but it can sort through the hundreds of expense reports, invoices and other transactions and identify potential areas of fraud, waste and mistakes by employees, vendors and others for humans to further investigate, saving their companies billions of dollars each year.

As an example, there seem to be ATMs on nearly every corner and more bank branch locations than ever before.

However, bank teller jobs have not been eliminated because of the rise of ATM machines. Yes, there may be less tellers in general, but their jobs are more valuable to customers and their employers. When one walks into a branch at a bank, there are dozens of workers providing better value-added services with shorter lines helping customers to be more satisfied with the convenient service provided. More than likely the work these employees do have higher margins, enabling them to make more money for both themselves and their local branches.

In summary, while AI might result in loss of certain jobs, it is more likely that the amount of work each worker will need to complete will be reduced and simplified rather than eliminated. Employees will feel more satisfaction in what they do because they can focus less on the mundane and more on the strategic. Customer satisfaction will increase because customers will have more human interactions, faster, with people who know how to resolve issues they have. In addition, customers will have more convenience than ever before.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

50

COLUMN

Envisioning the Warehouse of the Future Alain Kaddoum, General Manager, Swisslog Middle East writes about how the Industry 4.0 concept brings a lot of innovative, adaptive and smart solutions that help warehouses improve efficiency The world has changed profoundly over the last couple of years. New technologies stride ahead, changing our lifestyle and also evolving many business models. The concept of Industry 4.0 becomes more and more important in intralogistics as well as the warehousing landscape has been changing significantly. Twelve years ago, when e-commerce was still in its infancy, most of us were unfamiliar with the term omni-channel. Things have come a long way since then.

And with the constant influx of information in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s digital world, change is happening faster than ever before.

In such a scenario, trying to predict how your business will be organised and operate in 20-30 years in the future will be even more difficult. Yet, having a vision of where things are going in the future can help a business make better decisions in the present. Not only that, if one analyses closely what is happening in the present, this can provide powerful clues as to what is comingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even as far as 10,30,50 years into the future.

Like many other industries, the logistics and manufacturing sector is constantly changing as well. Many businesses rely on smart and fast delivery of goods and services, so businesses operating in this segment need to be ready for the future as well. The Industry 4.0 concept brings a lot of innovative, adaptive and smart solutions that help warehouses improve efficiency in the face of constantly changing market requirements.

In this context, here are some societal and technology trends that are emerging today and that businesses should keep in mind:

ALAIN KADDOUM General Manager, Swisslog Middle East

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

â&#x20AC;˘ Globally, the population is becoming more urban and incomes are rising. In developed countries, the population is aging, and the workforce is shrinking while those trends are reversed in developing countries where birth rates are higher.

COLUMN

• There are significant technological developments emerging today that will shape the warehouse of the future. Those include predictive analytics and machine learning, autonomous vehicles and drones, robotics, and 3D printing amongst others.

• The changes in consumer behaviour we see today can also be extrapolated into the future. These include the growth in omni-channel retail in which consumers move seamlessly across channels and choose what to purchase and how based on their specific circumstances at the time of purchase. They will also continue to demand greater personalisation and customisation while looking for highquality products and services. And they will have even less tolerance for delivery delays. When they purchase something, regardless of channel, they will expect to receive it the same day.

So, what does this mean for businesses and how they should organise the warehouse of the future?

The warehouse must move closer to the customers it serves.

In the future, one expects growth in urban distribution centres that stage products close to users within large cities to enable faster delivery and a more seamless omnichannel experience. The obvious challenge to this scenario will be the space limitations and relatively high real estate costs inherent in urban markets. This will dictate compact and efficient warehouses with limited inventories that are optimised using predictive analytics, robotics technology and supported by other innovative solutions.

The space constraints imposed by urban environments will likely also impose a shared service model in which multiple sellers share space in the same facility with products from these sellers consolidated for delivery similar to how parcel shippers consolidate packages today. The urban warehouse must be equipped to produce products as well as store and ship them. With greater customisation on the horizon and the continuing maturation of 3D printing technology, the urban distribution centre will be well positioned to “print” products on demand and then package and deliver them just as they do products from inventory.

The urban distribution centre must be configured to

51

support same-day delivery or customer pickup through some combination of autonomous vehicles, robotic picking and loading, drones and mobile pickup points. Technology will play a significant role in delivering the speed and efficiency required and automating the movement of products from large regional warehouses to the urban distribution centres while enabling faster picking, loading and delivery of these products.

The journey into the smart future has begun Predicting today what will most likely happen tomorrow is a great strategy that helps supply chain and management professionals make the smart decisions based on the trends we witness today. One of such trends is the development and evolution of the Internet that has evolved into a space of sheer limitless possibilities. It is gradually breathing intelligence into every single aspect of our life.

In recent years the Internet of Things has become more meaningful in industrial processes leading to the wide adoption of terminology like Industry 4.0 and Advanced Manufacturing. The underlying idea is the end-to-end digitalisation of intralogistics and production. Machine control systems and sensors are connected with the classic production and intralogistic applications like WES or WMS and exchange information, independent of their location, through software services. Thanks to this merging, Industry 4.0 technology optimises the entire value chain of a company.

In the age of Industry 4.0, logistics systems themselves are becoming clever organisational talents. Recording all movements in the warehouse, for example, makes it easy to detect risks early on to avoid conducting facility maintenance during peak times. The list of benefits new Industry 4.0 technologies offer for warehouse operations goes on and on.

To sum up, rigid logistics is a thing of the past. The Warehouse of the Future is one where intralogistics evolves from large, rigid systems into modular, flexible software-driven solutions that are robot-supported and self-optimising.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

52

TECH WATCH

Wireless AC1750 Wave 2 Dual-Band PoE Access Point load balancing to ensure maximum performance by limiting the maximum number of users per access point.

T

he DAP-2680 Wireless AC1750 Wave 2 Dual-Band PoE Access Point is designed to support small to medium business or enterprise environments by providing network administrators with secure and manageable dual-band wireless LAN options, and uti-lizing the cutting-edge speed of Wireless AC. The DAP-2680 delivers reliable, highspeed wireless performance using the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 standard with maximum wireless signal rates of up to 450 Mbps over the 2.4 GHz band, and 1300 Mbps over the 5 GHz band1 . This, coupled with support for the Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) Quality of Service (QoS) feature, makes it an ideal access point for audio, video, and voice applications.

When enabled, QoS allows the DAP-2680 to automatically prioritize network traffic ac-cording to the level of interactive streaming, such as HD movies or VoIP. The QoS fea-ture can be adjusted through the DAP-2680 web GUI using a drop-down menu to se-lect customized priority rules.

Additionally, the DAP-2680 supports SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

The DAP-2680 allows network administrators to deploy a highly manageable and ex-tremely robust simultaneous dual-band wireless network. The DAP-2680 can provide optimal wireless coverage over either the 2.4 GHz (802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n) or the 5 GHz (802.11a, 802.11n, and 802.11ac) bands. The DAP-2680 can be ceiling mounted, wall mounted, or placed on a desktop to meet any wireless demands. To help maintain a secure wireless network, the DAP-2680 supports both Personal and Enterprise versions of WPA and WPA2 (802.11i), with support for RADIUS server backend and a built-in internal RADIUS server allowing users to create their accounts within the device itself.

HIGHLIGHTS: •

Harness the power of IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless and experience wireless speeds of up to 1750 Mbps.

• Perfect for high-demand business applications •

Maintain a highly secure network with a range of features including WPA/WPA2, wireless LAN segmentation, and VLAN support Flexible Operation Configure to use as an access point, a Wireless Distribution System (WDS), a WDS with access point, or a wireless client

• D-Link Central Wi-Fi Manager support for additional configuration options • Small form factor design for easy placement

CANON PIXMA G SERIES

C

anon has refreshed its PIXMA G Series refillable ink tank printers. The printers will now be shipped with inks that allow users to print up to 12,000 pages from 2 black ink bottles or 7,000 pages from a set of colour inks.

Designed to boost productivity and keep running costs down, the latest upgrade means users can print at high volume without changing inks.

The latest refresh of the Pixma G series allows users to conveniently preserve their memories and encourages them to print more without compromising on time or quality. Offering convenience and efficiency, the high yield, easy to use and compact PIXMA G Series printers are designed for those requiring productive printers for home, home office and small office environments.

In addition, all models within the series can produce borderless photos up to A4 and the new Auto Power ON/ OFF setting helps save energy when the printer is not in use.

The new Canon PIXMA G Series models have been available in the Middle East from June 2018 onwards.

The refreshed Canon PIXMA G series collection includes PIXMA G1411which

TECH WATCH

is designed for high volume printing at low cost per page; PIXMA G2411, a high yield multi-function printer with added user benefits of copying and scanning; PIXMA G3411 which is a high yield multi-function 3-in-1 printer with Wi-Fi connectivity that supports smartphone and tablet print, copy and scanning via the Canon PRINT app and then the PIXMA G4411, a compact 4-in-1 printer with 20 sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) and wireless connectivity to smart devices with a high page yield resulting in a low cost per page HIGHLIGHTS: • Print up to12,000 pages from 2 black ink bottles or 7,000 pages from a set of colour inks •

Front facing ink tanks make it easy to determine remaining ink levels and the design minimises potential spills or leaks

• FINE print head system to ensure durability for high volume or weighty documents • The compact printers are designed to save space while optimising both print quality and quantity • PIXMA G4411 and PIXMA G3411 both feature Wi-Fi technology • Use the Canon PRINT app for printing, copying and scanning and printer maintenance

53

Axis PTZ dome camera Axis Communications has added ExCam XPT Q6055 Explosion-Protected PTZ Network Camera with low weight and profile, to simplify installation in hazardous environments. The PoEpowered camera helps production manag-ers to ensure operational efficiency, while also meeting all safety, security and environment regulations. ExCam XPT Q6055 enables real-time monitoring of the site and visual identification if an alarm has been triggered. The camera facilitates smarter decision-making for resource allocation and actions in case of an incident.

Designed for potentially hazardous environments, such as refineries, oil rigs, food processing and chemical plants, the camera is certified for use in explo-sion-prone environments according to international standards.

The stainless-steel housing is certified to worldwide standards (ATEX, IECEx, EAC), pro-tecting against corrosion in harsh outdoor environments, as well as preventing damage from water and dust. The broad temperature range allows it to be in-stalled in arctic as well as desert conditions.

Image quality is not compromised by durability, as HDTV 1080p and 32x op-tical zoom offers superb zoomedin views of people and objects of interest, as well as focus recall to ensure the image is instantly in focus to provide light-ning fast monitoring across vast areas.

HIGHLIGHTS: • ExCam XPT Q6055 has been created for easy and quick installation to save time and labor costs. It’s ‘plug

and play’ installation is achieved by only needing one PoE (Power over Ethernet) cable for data connection and power provision.

•

It can also easily be integrated with an existing surveillance system, offering significant savings on employing specialists to install the device.

•

Furthermore, ExCam XPT Q6055 weighs less than a traditional explosion- protected PTZ camera making it easier to install and manage. This is particu-larly useful in situations like on oilrigs, where heavy winds present a chal-lenge.

• The power source, provided by the included AXIS T8154 60 W SFP Mid-span, offers a long- distance fiber connection so it can be positioned in a dedi-cated junction box on the ground. This increases safety, reduces the possible points of failure, and makes troubleshooting any issues easier as it is more accessible to the technicians.

SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

54

MARKET MIRROR

organizations are now using cloud to support production environments and business-critical operations.”

IaaS Public Cloud Services Market grows 29.5 Percent growth as IaaS adoption is being fully embraced by mainstream organizations and as cloud availability expands into new regions and countries,” said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner.

The worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew 29.5 percent in 2017 to total $23.5 billion, up from $18.2 billion in 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. Amazon was the No. 1 vendor in the IaaS market in 2017, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and IBM.

“Cloud-directed IT spending now constitutes more than 20 percent of the total IT budget for organizations using cloud. Many of these

“The top four providers have strong IaaS offerings and saw healthy

Worldwide IaaS Public Cloud Services Market Share, 2016-2017 (Millions of U.S. Dollars) 2017 Revenue

2017 MarketShare (% )

Amazon

12,221

51.8

9,775

53.7

25

Microsoft

3,130

13.3

1,579

8.7

98.2

Alibaba

1,091

4.6

670

3.7

62.7

Company

2016 Revenue

2016 Market Share (% )

2017-2016 Growth (% )

Google

780

3.3

500

2.7

56

Rackspace

457

1.9

297

1.6

53.9

Others

5,902

25

5,392

29.6

9.5

Total

23,580

100

18,213

100

29.5

In the IaaS market, the competitive landscape is consolidating around the leaders. The top four providers — Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Google — are all hyperscale IaaS providers and represent approximately 73 percent of the total IaaS market and 47 percent of the combined IaaS and infrastructure utility services (IUS) market.

Amazon is the clear leader in the worldwide IaaS market with an estimated $12.2 billion revenue in 2017, up 25 percent from 2016 (see Table 1). The largest of the IaaS providers, Amazon is also the most mature, enterprise-ready provider, with the strongest track record of customer success and the most useful partner ecosystem. Microsoft secured the No. 2 position in the IaaS market with growth of more than 98 percent on its IaaS offering, with revenue surpassing $3.1 billion in 2017.

Source: Gartner (August 2018)

options, and is expected to grow in the coming years.

Rising need for interoperability standards in cloud services The hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from USD 44.60 billion in 2018 to USD 97.64 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.0% during the forecast period, according to ResearchAndMarkets. com. The demand for hybrid cloud is expected to be driven by several factors, such as cost efficiency, scalability, agility, and security.

Hybrid cloud bridges the gap between Information Technology (IT) and businesses by improving agility SMART SMB | SEPTEMBER 2018

and efficiency, as well as by rapidly delivering IT resources at a low-cost.

The services segment is expected to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period, and the solution segment is estimated to hold a larger market size in 2018 in the market. The adoption of the hybrid cloud among enterprises has become a central part of the business process, due to the high flexibility, enhanced scalability, low cost, and secured deployment

The hybrid hosting segment is estimated to hold the largest market size in 2018, as it offers numerous benefits, such as access through a single point of contact; sharing the network infrastructure; and monitoring, delivering, and managing hosting services. Organizations are enhancing their ability to integrate co-location, dedicated servers, and virtualized environments to construct a hybrid hosting environment.

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) segment is expected to hold the largest market size during the forecast period. IaaS helps in transferring workloads from onpremises systems to the cloud during the peak demand. This advantage helps allocate resources for more important business processes.

MICROSOFT 365 BUSINESS An integrated solution, bringing together the best-in-class productivity of Office 365 with advanced security and device management capabilities to help safeguard your business.

COMES WITH OFFICE

EMAIL AND CALENDARING

FILE STORAGE

DATA PROTECTION

SAFEST WINDOWS EVER

CYBERTHREAT PROTECTION

ADMINISTRATION DEPLOYMENT

DEPENDABILITY AND SUPPORT

FOR MORE INFORMATION HTTP://MICROSOFTCSP.REDINGTON.MARKET/