Innovation & Tech January 2017 - Issue 29

29

Cyber Security on Every Organization’s Agenda

The Future is NOW!

Mobile Innovation Wearable Tech 3D Printing Artificial Intelligence Internet Of Things Cloud Technology Smart City Big Data & Analytics Digital Ecosystem

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The Importance of Big Data Analytics

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Startups Need to Look Beyond Mobile Apps

Making Sense of Data 16

The Wonder called Hyperloop

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The Technological Revolution of Reinsurance 30 Challenges Facing the Security Industry 35 Cloud Makes Small the New Big in Business 42

Issue: 29 January 2017

Innovation & Tech

The leading voice in enterprise innovation SPI Group www.spigroup.ae www.robustrak.com www.theintelligentsme.com www.innovationandtech.ae www.innovationsummit.ae www.dubai-gbs.com www.smeworld.ae www.makeinuae.ae Publisher & CEO : Shantanu A.P. Group Editor : Auritri Chatterjee Assistant Editor : Jinal Chheda Web Developer : Raj Shekar Reddy Creative Designer : Ratheesh Viswanath Distribution : Jerry P. Sam Writers Anshul Srivastav Ashesh Badani David Whitton Dr. Steve Griffiths Dr. Rupal Shah Agarwal Haider Salloum Jean-Luc Scherer Laurent Dechaux Mohammed Al-Moneer Raj Samani

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Entertainment

Welcome to Innovation & Tech The leading voice in enterprise innovation

Publisher’s Note There is no denying that the year 2016 has been a memorable and eventful year for technological innovation. From the ubiquitous Fitbits and smart watches to the increasingly prevalent 360-degree videos, technology has captured the human mind in new ways. The world watched with interest as driverless cars made their test runs and the Hyperloop promised to overhaul the entire infrastructure of transportation.

Businesses got streamlined too. Companies of all sizes started going paperless and moving everything to the cloud. There was a growing interest in the concept of Big Data and its power to detail and analyze customer habits and trends. Both cybercrime and cyber security were on the rise, trying to outdo each other. And how can we forget IoT, the all-powerful ‘Internet of Things’ that can connect everything from your refrigerator to your lighting and maintaining the security of your home.

So what does 2017 hold for us? Tech predictions look at an increased integration of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and 3D printing across all sectors. Machine learning will be further explored to address the unique needs of the customer and create intelligent content for immediate and actionable marketing decisions. Businesses would be better equipped to understand and utilize blockchain and distributed ledger in their course of work. With data being of paramount importance, cyber security would be a topic of momentous concern.

On a consumer level, there will be an increased presence of the virtual assistant like Siri and Cortana whose questions would evolve from “Can you tell me?” to understanding and gleaning evidence from the answers already provided by the consumers. And then, there’s also the delicious prospect of having a robotic cook or bartender at a smart home, activated by voice or just an app on the phone. Not to forget, our ever-evolving and resourceful entrepreneurs, who are constantly in the race to bring something big to the world of consumers and business.

The year 2017 is going to be one helluva of a ride.

Happy New Year! Happy Reading!

Shantanu Phansalkar, CEO & Publisher

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Contents 22 Startups Need to Look Beyond Mobile Apps

27

The Modernization Risk: How Companies Must Adapt to the Digital Revolution

32

Cyber Security on Every Organization’s Agenda

38 Look to the Future with an ADC Refresh 6

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30

The Technological Revolution of Reinsurance

35

Challenges Facing the Security Industry

16

42 Cloud Makes Small the New Big in Business

The Wonder called Hyperloop

46

The Importance of Big Data Analytics

48 A Dozen of the Best Apps Curated & Reviewed

40

Making Sense of Data

Benefits of Digital Records in the Health Care Industry

44

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Think Tank

Akshay Lamba CIO, Deloitte, Middle East Akshay is an industry leader in the technology arena and has been associated with innovative projects such as large IT outsourcing deal across multiple industries, extending enterprise data to mobile platforms and information security paradigms in a web 3.0 world. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School, Boston and a revered speaker, invited to a number of international platforms, widely acknowledged as a next-gen technology expert.

His forte has been in the build-up of innovative business models, with a focus on creating sustainable competitive business advantage. He is well known for leveraging strategic partnerships for both— in-house services delivery and joint go-to-market constructs.

Anthony Sayers

Internet of Things, Business Developer & Strategist at Dell A leading technologist with over 25 years of industry experience, Anthony Sayers is the Strategist and Business Developer for the Internet of Things, Dell OEM Solutions EMEA, responsible for designing Dell’s business and technology strategy for the commercial OEM market. In his day to day work, Anthony meets with customers, partners and industry experts to research customer needs and drive the relevant market solutions. Anthony regularly represents Dell at industry forums as well as speaking and writing about the future of emerging technologies.

Haider Salloum

Director, Small & Medium Business (SMB) Segment at Microsoft Gulf Haider’s professional experiences are best described by his work over the last couple of years at Microsoft Gulf . As the Director for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment, Haider is tasked with helping SMEs realize their full potential, through the adoption of innovative technology and cloud transformation.

Working with SMEs across five countries, which were once emerging markets has provided Haider with significant scope and opportunity to learn, share and explore emerging trends in innovation within the SMB community .Whilst working with national governments, entrepreneurs and corporates, Haider seeks to continuously contribute to efforts to help SMEs thrive in their competitive landscapes.

Jean-Luc Scherer Founder, Innoopolis Telecommunications veteran with more than 18 years experience in the Mobile Industry, Jean-Luc Scherer’s expertise crosses multiple domains going from Mobile Application Development, to Social Media, Big Data, M2M & Internet of Things. Passionate about the Networked Society, Jean-Luc is a regular Blogger, Social Media content curator and is also a regular speaker at IoT & Smart City industry events. As an entrepreneur, innovation coach & start-up mentor, Jean-Luc can help startups from the initial concept development phase all the way to successful market introduction.

Kazi Monirul Kabir

CIO, Spider Digital Innovations Kazi Monirul is a powerful, passionate, entrepreneurial, innovative and objective-driven leader with global perspective and strong empathy for emerging market realities. He posseses extensive Marketing, Communication, Innovation, Strategic Design and Business Development experience across Internet, telecom and consumer goods industries. Monirul comes with a successful track record of excelling across global enterprise, multinational, social enterprise and start-up environments. He is a great believer in the transformative power of Strategic Innovation in driving the growth and development of emerging countries and has chosen the digital realm as his current playground.

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Think Tank

Nadine Bitar

CEO, Placemaking.me Nadine Bitar is the CEO of Placemaking.me focusing on innovation in design for sustainability and Place sourcing – a social enterprise to design for liveability in the MENA region. She has led and participated in the design development of more than 30 large scale flagship projects including leisure and entertainment clusters, commercial complex, mixed use developments, golf and residential communities, hospitality projects and branded destinations in the Middle East and North Africa. She is active in Dubai community as the chairwoman of the Advisory Board– Interior design at the American University in Dubai, an Executive Council Member of Ellevate International and is an International Associate in the American Institute of Architects.

Roberto Ordonez

Managing Partner, AlunaCatalyst ME Roberto Ordonez, Managing Partner, Aluna Catalyst ME, is an influencer and change agent with over 20 years of industry experience in the energy sector (BP, Hess Corporation, and Occidental Petroleum). He has broad multidisciplinary expertise and has held senior management positions across the areas of Operations, Finance, Strategy, Planning, Business Development, Change Management, and Procurement.

He is a Board Member of the Kellogg GCC Alumni Association, and member of Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN). Roberto has a BS and an MS in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Dr. Steve Griffiths Vice President for Research, Interim Associate Provost at Masdar Institute of Science & Technology

Dr. Griffiths holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. At Masdar Institute, Dr. Griffiths has the overall responsibility for research, including large-scale, collaborative research programs and centers, research development, sponsored programs, technology transfer, and research laboratories. He serves as an advisor to the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science and is a Zayed Future Energy Prize Selection Committee member. He is the Associate Editor and member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal Energy Strategy Reviews and author of various works in the energy policy and energy strategy fields.

Sulaiman Al Maazmi

Vice President, Information Communication Technology, Expo 2020 Dubai Sulaiman’s role at Expo 2020 Dubai is to align business requirements with various stakeholders, support departments in order to streamline their processes when dealing with technology solutions as well as sourcing IT solutions based on current and future needs of internal and external stakeholders. Sulaiman has considerable experience in managing critical information technology projects in the Arab Gulf region, with positions in the Dubai office of the UAE Prime Minister, Thuraya Satellite Telecommunication and the Dubai Municipality, where he began his career.

Shams Hasan

Infrastructure Marketing Manager, META Shams Hasan is the Infrastructure Marketing Manager for Dell EMC in Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META). He is responsible for business and IT thought-leadership, product knowledge, and marketing programs around Infrastructure Solutions. Shams is an active industry spokesperson in many business forums and is most passionate about helping Customers drive innovative digital transformation strategies in their business. Prior to Dell EMC he has a decade of experience in digital technology leadership and strategy roles as a Customer and has worked in startup environments as an entrepreneur and large enterprises with multiple data centers. Shams has MBAs with honors and distinction from Columbia Business School and London Business School.

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Innovation & Collaboration

First-of-its-kind vehicle-to-vehicle communication deployment test planned for UAE

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he Roadway, Transportation, and Traffic Safety Research Center (RTTSRC) at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) is working on a new intelligent transportation system to enable driverless cars to communicate on the roads.

The team, led by Professor Yaser E. Hawas, director of the RTTSRC, is working on a project funded by the UAEU in collaboration with Tata Consulting Group on the inter-vehicular communication system, which is based on an algorithm that enables vehicles to use real-time route guidance in urban traffic networks.

Six years since the team first started work on the project, which is the first of its kind in the world, Professor Hawas says it is now ready for its first deployment test. “The wow factor is we are now collaborating with Tata and we are going to have a deployment test in Al Ain,” reveals the director. “We are going to equip six vehicles to do the field testing – each vehicle is going to send information to the other vehicles – and we are then going to see how this information is going to be propagated.”

The algorithm enables communication between a ‘searcher’ vehicle and ‘candidate’ vehicles whose origin matches the

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destination of the searcher vehicle, and traveling in the opposite direction. This information can then be used to calculate in the simplest way the shortest path for each vehicle from its current position to the destination.

“Currently, the fully autonomous vehicles available move in the network assuming that they know where to go,” says Professor Hawas. “But the one that we are testing enables the vehicles to change their routes and get better ones to reach the destination using the information that they receive from other vehicles. Again, it is not only simulation tests that we do here in the center but we are also going to take it to a deployment stage here in Al Ain.” The team is developing the hardware and software solutions of all the devices that will enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication between the six cars, including GPS and communication capabilities that will enable the vehicles to locate each other and redirect vehicles automatically in real-time to reach their aimed destinations in the network. Following the deployment test, Professor Hawas says the university will prepare technical papers detailing the results of the test.

Innovation & Collaboration

Final dates set for major international Robotics Challenge in the UAE

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halifa University, organizer of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC), has announced that the competition will take place from March 16 – 18, 2017 at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The contest will inevitably take up a large area of the circuit since it will consist of three challenges and a triathlon type Grand Challenge. Challenge 1 will require teams to use an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to locate, track and land on a moving vehicle.

This means that the UAV must be capable of locating the moving vehicle, navigating the path and speed of the vehicle and land on the target location while the vehicle is in motion.

Challenge 2 requires an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) to

locate and reach a panel and physically operate a valve stem on it. It will require a UGV capable of navigating the path and locating the panel, identifying the valve, and choose the appropriate tool to close it.

Challenge 3 requires a team of UAVs to work together in order to search, locate, track, pick up and place a set of still and moving objects. The Grand Challenge will require a team of robots (UAVs and UGVs) to compete in an event that combines challenges 1, 2 and 3 simultaneously.

“This will be a hard challenge,” said Dr. Arif Al Hammadi, Khalifa University’s Executive Vice President. “It will require the teams to not only utilize most known robotics technology, but also invent new ones. Undoubtedly, the resulting technologies from this competition will drive robotics research for some time and, as a university dedicated to the advancement of research and development in engineering and technology, we are eager to see what the results are.”

The 45 teams selected to take part in the inaugural challenge come from leading universities and international organizations such as the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the National University of Singapore and Xi'an Jiaotong University.

Teams from the UAE, Italy, Germany, KSA, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, South Korea, and Spain were chosen from over 316 teams from 45 countries, who expressed their interest in participating in the challenge.

Contacts: Khalifa University Momen Khaiti, +971-2-401-8066 momen.khaiti@kustar.ac.ae

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Innovation & Collaboration

du empowers Dubai Taxi with WiFi UAE and smart screens in a first-of-its-kind infotainment collaboration

du announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Dubai Taxi Corporation, Roads and Transport Authority, to launch WiFi UAE access and smart screens in 500 cars of the Dubai Airport Fleet.

This effort is in line with Dubai Government’s strategy to make Dubai the smartest city in the world, and wholly embodies the Smart Dubai initiative.

“Our pre-eminent cooperation with du to provide internet connectivity and smart screens across our Dubai Airport fleet truly embodies Smart Dubai strategy to bring innovation and smart living to Dubai,” said Dr. Yousef Mohammed Al Ali, CEO of Dubai Taxi Corporation. “The importance of this agreement lies in the consolidation of our partnerships with various parties to improve the quality of services provided to the public – to reach the seven-star level Dubai is renowned for. Smart screens will allow customers to view promotional advertisements, RTA services, and give information to visitors and tourists about Dubai’s popular tourist destinations. Moreover, this service will offer customers transparency when it comes to the cost of the journey prior to departing.”

Dr. Al Ali stressed that the project is a part of RTA’s plans to provide innovative and distinguished services for its customers, while meeting the increasing needs of Dubai residents and visitors

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in time for Expo 2020.

Carlos Domingo, Chief New Business & Innovation officer, du, said, “As part of our efforts to adopt and deploy the latest services and smart technologies in line with the vision of the wise leadership of Dubai, to make the city the smartest in the world, du is excited to initiate this one-of-a-kind collaboration with Dubai Taxi Corporation. We see it as our responsibility to cooperate with the various entities in the public and private sectors to implement smart services and interconnected networked technologies throughout the city.”

WiFi UAE is a country-wide initiative by du to enable WiFi access to the public, in line with UAE Vision 2021. The smart screens will be provided through du’s partnership with Malaysian ICT solutions developer, Gigalink Solutions Sdn Bhd for Dubai Airport Taxis.

“We are excited to partner with du in this electrifying opportunity. We believe that our past experiences in similar projects in South East Asian nations will facilitate us to deliver this initiative to benefit all stakeholders. We would like to thank du and Dubai Taxi Corporation for this opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to provide the best solution,” said Gigalink Solutions CEO Muhammad Reduan Bin Abd Lah Sani.

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Innovation & Collaboration

H.H. Sheikh Ahmed: Dubai has successfully transformed innovation into a working culture in the government.

H

is Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) and Chairman of Dubai Airports, said Dubai has successfully transformed innovation into a working culture in the government and a daily practice.

Sheikh Ahmed, who is also the Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline and Group and Chairman of Dubai World Central Corporation, added, “We want to go further in the innovation path to earn the epithet of being the most innovative country and people.”

In his message in the December 2016 edition of Via Dubai (www.viadubaionline.com), the official bilingual publication of DCAA, he said it’s a matter of pride that the UAE has become a global innovation platform, a top investment destination and a key magnet for the best minds and professionals in the world.

“This we achieved by embracing innovation as a work culture and lifestyle to build a knowledge-based community led by forward-thinking innovators who support the UAE’s progress and strengthen its international position,” he said.

The publication ran a special supplement on airport security, which featured exclusive interviews with Mohammed Abdulla Ahli, Director General, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA); Angela Gittens, Director General of Airport Council International (ACI); Michael Herrero, Area Manager, Gulf Area, IATA; and Daniyal Qureshi, Group Exhibition Director at Reed Exhibitions Middle East, the organizers of the Airport Show.

Mohammed Abdulla Ahli, Director General, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) said, “Our two international airports are gearing up to serve up to 146 million passengers by 2025 and there will be corresponding huge expansion in related fields in the aviation sector. This necessitates the need for ensuring safety and security for all stakeholders, passengers, airlines and the general public.

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We are fully prepared to face this challenge by adopting advanced technology and deploying trained personnel for the job.”

Major General Ahmad bin Thani, Assistant Commander for Seaports and Airport Affairs at Dubai Police said Dubai airport authorities are in the process of selecting technology companies to provide and implement the latest technology to ensure total security at airports.

“Dubai International Airport is now the world’s busiest in terms of passenger numbers. In future, we will put in place the latest technology to handle more than 100 million passengers a year by 2020. Dubai airports keep very high standard in security, measuring up to international standards and deploy the best technology and human resources to handle over 250,000 passengers per day,” he told Via Dubai.

“What airports are currently witnessing are attacks on crowds and thus require an approach that aims to reduce crowding and queuing,” said Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI. “We cannot approach the security screening regimen the way we have now because large queues and crowds are always the targets of attackers. ACI has a different way of approaching security screening in a more risk-based manner, that is, we look at the risk profile on a technological perspective to make the process better and more secure. We are looking at those countries that have introduced risk-based measures like the US which has different levels of screening,” she added.

“The use of remote check-in options, home-printed or permanent bag tags should be encouraged as a means of ensuring landside security at airports,” Michael Herrero, Area Manager, Gulf Area, IATA, said suggesting a number of measures that can be taken to improve landside security based on reducing crowds and queues.

“Efficiency should be ensured for moving passengers quicker through immigration, baggage scanners and to the aircraft, all without compromising on security. Airports are more active than ever in adopting new and smart technologies and they are reaping the benefits with enhanced efficiencies, happier passengers,” said Daniyal Qureshi, Group Exhibition Director, Reed Exhibitions.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called on industry and governments to work together in an even stronger partnership to provide durable solutions to aviation’s security challenges.

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Breakdown

Cover Story

The Wonder called Hyperloop

Elon Musk, the genius entrepreneur and inventor of Hyperloop calls it “a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table.” It has literally unsettled the entire world of infrastructure and has made its mark in Dubai and other countries of the world too. This article aims to shed some light on this technological marvel called Hyperloop that might be in Dubai in the next five years – an ITECH cover story.

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Cover Story

I

t might look like technology has transformed the modern life in every way possible, and yet, we find new ways to conceive and incorporate technology into our lives. We live in an age of incredible progress, and with the internet having revolutionized the way information is being exchanged, futuristic technology is much more real than imagined.

Think of the sci-fi or the fantasy series. The apt way to represent the very advanced, futuristic nation has always been transportation. And though we love our bicycles, the concept of this futuristic nation is best exemplified by the invention of the Hyperloop. It is probably not as exciting as a teleporter, but Hyperloop can definitely shorten travel times on land and minimize environmental damage in the process.

What is Hyperloop?

The concept of Hyperloop was first introduced by inventor Elon Musk in 2012. The Hyperloop is proposed to be a pod-like vehicle with massive vacuum-tubes attached to each other that would travel at extraordinary speed from one destination to another.

Instead of the traditional wheels; Hyperloop proposes to introduce air bearings for the pods which will result in the pod moving through air. The tube will have magnetic accelerators planted

along the sides that would help push/propel the pods forward.

An important component for the Hyperloop to be able to travel through levitation would be a tunnel – a low pressure chamber where the air is sucked out to create a type of air cushion for the pods to move with minimal resistance at extremely high speeds. The tunnels are envisioned to be metal tubes; Musk has suggested installing solar panels on top of the tunnels making the entire transportation system extremely self-sufficient and energy efficient. Not only, would it generate enough electricity to power the complete system, it could run as an underground system too.

Why Hyperloop?

In this world of instant gratification and a demand of quick yet excellent results, the traditional means of transportation (air, water, road and rail) are becoming a sort of a hindrance.

Expensive, slow and toxic for humans, animals and nature, the conventional forms of transportation, especially road travel needs a better alternative. And with a fluctuating oil price, heavy carbon emissions and an increasing demand for non-renewable sources of energy, the future of mass transit and environmental sustainability seems to be at loggerheads.

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Cover Story

The advent of Hyperloop would transform the entire transportation infrastructure. Places that take hours and sometimes, days can be reached within minutes. Its set-up costs might run into millions, but once completely functional, over time, travel would become economical. And most importantly, it would be environment friendly contributing towards a greener economy.

Also, the Hyperloop doesn’t need to be limited only to land. It can very well be conceptualized as an underwater transport thus reducing the burden on earth.

Challenges of Hyperloop The Hyperloop technology is futuristic and groundbreaking.

However, like all groundbreaking futuristic technologies, Hyperloop too faces some challenges that would require some attention.

• The entire movement of Hyperloop is based on the creation of

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vacuum in the tunnels. However, an inherent difficulty in creating and maintaining vacuum in a tunnel is that tunnels will have stations; and any break in keeping up the vacuum might potentially render the entire system as useless.

• Hyperloop is being considered as an alternative for short distances. The speed aimed to achieve is a minimum of 700 miles per hour. As such, the practical implications of such a short start-stop journey should be considered, especially when it’s the passengers who’d go through the acceleration and deceleration sensation.

• The high speed of Hyperloop propelled by a vacuum also limits the type of terrain it can cover in its journey. The tube excludes any large turns or curves or changes in elevation thus making the system optimal for only straightforward trips across a relatively level terrain.

Cover Story

In many quarters, Hyperloop is being called as the fifth mode of transport; capable of travelling at the speed of sound.

• One of the major controversies surrounding the Hyperloop is its susceptibility to terrorist attacks. Since, these are pods/ capsules gliding through vacuum, an attack on any part of the tube would create tiny air pockets that would bring down the entire transportation system and result in the death of all its passengers at one go. Basically, any leak at any part of the tunnel, would result in a space-like death situation in Hyperloop.

• Developing or under-developed nations cannot afford a Hyperloop currently. So, Hyperloop is basically an idea for the developed countries where they already have a lot of transportation infrastructure in place and in construction. What would be their future and how does Hyperloop plan to get implemented so as to not shoot beyond budget and remain economical all the same?

Despite all these questions, Hyperloop One, the company behind

building UAE’s first Hyperloop, is hopeful that a fully functional Hyperloop would be in Dubai ‘in the next five or six years’ and revolutionize the world of transportation.

Hyperloop in Dubai The United Arab Emirates has always been known for its commitment to innovation and progress. So, it was hardly a surprise when Hyperloop One, the company to whom most of the significant breakthroughs and tests can be attributed to, inked a deal with RTA, the Road and Transport Authority of Dubai to bring its first Hyperloop technology here – transportation for both passengers and cargo.

The Hyperloop One has been working with the RTA for the past three months on the feasibility of the hybrid passenger-freight system that they are likely to build in the Emirates. With Hyperloop One already testing the tech at the Nevada desert in the US and

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Cover Story

garnering positive results, it aims to realize the dream in Dubai by 2021. Going back to the day when Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd signed the company’s first commercial deal with the local transport authorities, he remarked, “[Dubai] is our number one priority, so we will do everything to make that happen.”

One of the routes under consideration is the Dubai to Abu Dhabi route, a distance of 102 miles and typically takes more than an hour car. Hyperloop aims to cut the journey time to just 12 minutes. Another route under consideration is the Dubai to Fujairah route that takes more than 90 minutes by car, but with the Hyperloop might well be reduced to 10 minutes.

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But UAE is not the only country working with Hyperloop One. The company has been conducting feasibility studies in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, India, and in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.

The ascent and journey of the Hyperloop technology and the companies committed to make it a reality are being scrutinized throughout the world. They have the attention of the believers, skeptics and the observers. It will be interesting to see how Hyperloop One and the others perform under such constant supervision, and how the requirements and offerings of this technology evolve in such unpredictable times.

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12 Minute Hyperloop Dubai/Abu DhaRoute Map

Internet of Things

Startups Need to Look Beyond Mobile Apps The app economy is going through some real and perceived challenges.

This article by Jean-Luc Scherer shares how AI, chat bots and IoT can make apps redundant and functionality a lot more simpler for the target consumers; and why startups need to a take a note of it.

A

s a startup coach and mentor, I spend a lot of time working with teams in the initial stages of their journey. When working with founders trying to define a viable concept I always try to emphasize that having the right insights is the key for them to develop a robust value proposition. With insights I mean diverse views, different perspectives that you can learn from. These include aspects like understanding your customer's pain points, but also understanding of how consumer behaviors evolve and how technology trends could potentially provide new opportunities or disrupt what you are currently working on. Using these insights already in the ideation stage is really crucial.

So here is something to think about if you are about to develop a mobile app: How will the recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Language Recognition algorithms, Internet of things (IoT), Automation (chat bots) or Virtual Reality impact your startup? Will mobile applications be as important in the future as they are today? Reading a recent article from Daniel Burrus, LinkedIn Influencer and Tech Futurist, one should think twice about whether a mobile app is the only way to interact with the user and provide a good user experience. Quoting Daniel Burrus on this matter, he makes a strong point: "Searching for an app that is hidden in a folder of apps on page 3 of our phones is no longer deemed productive in an age of instant gratification. Our quest for personalization and simplicity has the potential to make 99 percent of apps in their current form completely irrelevant over the next

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couple of years."

You might wonder, “How is that possible? Aren't we excited any more about these applications that help us to order food, get the nearest taxi, play the music we like, or connect with our friends?”

Simplicity is really the big question. The reality today is that most of us start having too many options and what was convenience at first is often becoming a distraction. Each application you install has to learn about your preferences, your needs and you have to learn how the application works. The mobile phone in itself is not the ideal UX either. Too many apps, too much data to enter... can we do better?

Converging trends in AI, Language Recognition and IoT Language recognition, more commonly known as Natural Language Processing, is going to help with some of the problems applications are facing today. If you want to personalize your application experience you need to know the context of the user.

This is today done by automatically collecting historical data, or collecting data through social login or directly from your phone with location information for instance. But entering anything additional manually is often cumbersome; if we could use natural language processing to provide data to clarify our requests then the interactions will become much smoother.

Just think about Apple's Siri, trying to answer any type of questions... The voice recognition is getting better and better and

Internet of Things

Google Home or Amazon Echo are doing the same. Amazon Echo is actually quite amazing, because it is a device that aims to control your home and interact with you using only voice controls. Who needs a mobile app to order a pizza from home in that case? Don't need an Uber app either. The interesting thing with Amazon's Echo is that this is an IoT device that can learn new skills! The programmability is what differentiates it from many of its competitors. You can teach it, and provide rules on how a new skill is learned. This is how you start building up artificial intelligence. When you ask for certain things, especially when using skills or ordering items from Amazon, you may have to answer questions using the magic word "Alexa", for the system to fully understand what you're looking for. But

that's it. You're typically just answering questions to help Alexa figure out things in a better way. Effectively this is like having a platform that can load chat bots dealing with different needs. This has the potential to replace many applications through a single interface.

Google Home provides similar capabilities. It is voice controlled and you can ask additional questions which are contextually based on the original question. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have all heavily invested in AI, IoT, Cloud and language recognition to a point where it will be difficult for others to compete with these giants. What we see here is a battle for the home environment, which is today very fragmented, but the technology in itself will certainly become ubiquitous and be available anywhere: in the car, at work or on the move. For startup founders, this is certainly something to consider when thinking about how to reach out and engage their customers.

User interfaces will evolve User interfaces are evolving as well! We have seen the emergence of wearable devices in the last couple of years, but these are often combined with a mobile application for the interaction. But if you add voice interaction to these devices, where is the need for a mobile app, right? You might still want to visualize the data from fitness exercises on graphs and charts... but

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Internet of Things

you could equally well render this on any other screen like the TV. The point is that with voice control many devices can be interacted with directly in a much simpler ways than with a phone today.

Similarly Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can become better ways to render information, than a mobile application on a phone.

Think about this - what is the best way to collect data and what is the best way to present and consume the data.

Chat Bots, AI and Extreme Automation One more thing to consider for startup founders is how they will interact with potential and existing customers. Many companies are today experimenting with chat bots to reduce their customer support costs, and serve customers faster and better. Here again with AI you can be assured that this can lead to increased productivity as long as the bots learn properly. You might remember Microsoft’s failed attempt earlier this year when their chat bot turned crazy in less than 24 hours. But this is normal learning curve. As mentioned with Amazon's approach where you teach Echo Dot new skills, the risk is lesser that this goes as wrong as in the Microsoft experiment. Now combine that learning capability with the voice recognition, and you can start automating many customer oriented processes. I believe that all startups working with marketplaces that have created enough traction should start thinking about these opportunities to automate more and more of their processes.

Now you are probably thinking that today everybody has a

mobile phone, but not everybody has an Amazon Echo Dot or Google Home device. True, but if your horizon is two-three years from now, then that could be different. These technologies will also enter phone platforms much quicker than we think. I am sure there are already plenty of startups out there that have seen this opportunity, and are working with language recognition, chat bots and AI. I would like to here from you. Are you building anything using language recognition, AI, chat bots? Then tell us your story.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you see these trends taking more time or happening quicker?

Don't hesitate to reach out to Innovation & TECH magazine or to me directly. You can reach me at jls@innoopolis.com

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Jean-Luc Scherer Founder, Innoopolis Telecommunications veteran with more than 18 years of experience in the mobile industry, Jean-Luc Scherer's expertize crosses multiple domains going from Mobile Application Development to Social Media, Big Data, M2M & Internet of Things.

Smart City

The UAE’s Circular Innovation Opportunity

This article by Dr. Steve Griffiths outlines how an ambitious circular economy strategy coupled with innovation can transform UAE in to a more resource-efficient economy.

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Smart City

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n October 2016, the World Energy Council (WEC) released its latest World Energy Scenarios report. The scenarios each outline a distinct trajectory for the global energy system based on different views of how energy policies and markets may evolve over the course of the coming decades. What is common to each scenario, however, is the depiction of disruptive trends that are emerging to fundamentally shape a new world for the energy industry. Specifically, our planet and our energy system will be characterized by lower population growth, radical new technologies, greater environmental challenges, and shifts in economic and geopolitical power that serve to re-shape the economics of energy in the midst of what WEC refers to as ‘The Grand Transition.’

One of the WEC Grand Transition scenarios called the Unfinished Symphony outlines an energy system evolution that by 2060 achieves the best outcome for climate change mitigation among the scenarios considered. At the core of this scenario is the rise of intelligent, circular economies.

Simply put, a circular economy is one that achieves growth that is decoupled from natural resource consumption. This is achieved through the use of transformative new technologies and business models that emphasize multiple-lifecycle products, resource recovery, product life extension, sharing platforms and products as services. Although global economic growth has historically been based on the linear model of “take, make and dispose”, circular approaches to innovation are increasingly viable due to advances in digital technologies and materials science. New materials designs and manufacturing approaches are accelerating opportunities for renewable materials, product life extension and resource recovery. Pervasive digitization is providing a platform for business models that are focused on sharing and products as services. The potential impact of such developments is profound as companies increasingly design and deliver products that can be used and reused indefinitely.

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), circular innovation is both a necessity and an opportunity. Waste is a major challenge for the country as the average UAE resident produces approximately 1.8 to 2.4 kilograms of waste per day, which is about three times higher than the global average and predominantly disposed of in landfills. Looking ahead, however, the UAE has a target of diverting 75% of waste from landfills by 2021 via waste-to-energy and other approaches and has already launched sustainability and innovation strategies that are well-aligned with multiple forms of circular innovation. Dubai, for instance, has announced the Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy, which targets 25% of all personal trips in Dubai to be via autonomous vehicles by 2030 with

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particular emphasis on shared modes of transportation. The Dubai 3D Printing Strategy is focused on making Dubai a world leader in 3D printing by 2030 with focus on 3D printing for construction, medical products and consumer products. In fact, the strategy calls for 25% of Dubai’s buildings to be 3D printed by 2030. With such strategies now in place, the path forward to achieving an intelligent, circular economy for the UAE is the implementation of roadmaps, policies and regulations that catalyze the deployment of technological capabilities, such as 3D printing and autonomous transportation, for implementing circular economy approaches such as asset sharing, multiple-lifecycle products, dematerialization and product life extension.

At the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, research and innovation aimed at supporting the evolution of a circular economy in the UAE is highly aligned with our research agenda. The Institute’s research strategy is in fact built on a foundation of advanced materials and smart systems capabilities, which are platform capabilities for circular innovation. Accordingly, we work closely with the UAE Ministry of Energy, Emirates Steel Industries, Tadweer (Center for Waste Management – Abu Dhabi), Boeing, Etihad Airways, Takreer, General Electric and many other local and international partners on projects aimed at transforming waste streams into higher value products and/or developing products with multiplelifecycles. Specific examples include construction and building materials from steel manufacturing waste, biodiesel from waste cooking oil and sustainable aviation jet fuel from non-edible crops and seawater. Such projects and partnerships, which to continue to grow in number and scope, are essential to realizing the UAE’s circular innovation opportunity.

Dr. Steve Griffiths Vice President for Research, Interim Associate Provost, Masdar Institute of Science & Technology At Masdar, he's responsible for research, including large-scale, collaborative research programs & centers, research development, sponsored programs, technology transfer, and research laboratories.

Digital Edge

The Modernization Risk: How Companies Must Adapt to the Digital Revolution This article by Ashesh Badani clarifies the risk organizations and traditional industries face by not adapting to the digital world and its ecosystem.

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ith the recent collapse of retailers such as Austin Reed, the British high street is feeling the tremors of the digital revolution. Businesses fail every day, but the demise of these heritage brands has triggered a wider debate about modernization and has left business owners asking what they can do to avoid the same fate.

Retailers and other traditional industries are still struggling to grapple with the challenges of the digital age. One problem is

that many established brands are failing to take full advantage of new technology, such as increasingly sophisticated automation and Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) technology. As such, the technological revolution has been accompanied by a slowdown in the growth of more traditional businesses.

Across the world, online first is a secular consumer trend and increasingly advanced technology has led them to expect a more proactive, personalised service. The rise of technology-based

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Digital Edge

services has led to an Increasing engagement with companies like Amazon, Facebook and Netflix, which rely on technology but don’t physically manufacture or directly produce content. This points to one of the biggest trends of the current age: the rise of software-based companies. Software is providing customers with experiences that were never previously available, such as the ability to try on clothes before ordering online.

Can you imagine walking into a shop to look at a product but having to queue before you could? This is what slow site speeds do to customers online. Or not being able to turn a product round so you can see it from all angles? That is the shopping experience many consumers are met with when shopping online at older brands. Consumer behaviour is evolving at a faster pace than many businesses can cope with. Consistently, across the board, traditional firms of all sectors are failing to deliver what their customers want and expect in the digital age. And, for those that fail to keep up, the impact can be substantial.

From one perspective, business failure is part of what switches capital away from what doesn’t work and over to what does. But with the rise of the empowered consumer, software is increasingly the key to success for any business. With more computing power available through the cloud, more established companies, such as US retailer Target and global bank BBVA are adopting technology as a key differentiator. To support this trend, companies like Red Hat provide the necessary tools and

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application platforms under an open-source license that help companies develop their digital platform and SaaS offering or modernize existing applications.

This enables established businesses to become more agile and respond more effectively to customers’ needs. One retailer taking such an approach is Swiss based online supermarket LeShop.ch, which with the help of cloudbased platform-as-a-service solution OpenShift from Red Hat, has taken a more agile and adaptive approach to business.

The SaaS model has taken off because it delivers flexibility in the underlying infrastructure while taking advantage of a business’s existing IT investments. This has fuelled the rise of “weightless” companies, firms that can attain high valuations with minimal staff and capital.

With technology changing the way companies operate, there are some significant trends that can help established companies stay ahead. The first is Big Data which has transformed industries across the board by helping businesses better understand their customers and become more proactive via intensive analytics to not only responding but also predict trends. A key technology taking off alongside Big Data is the Internet of Things (IoT). With more items being tagged and more data generated every day, the smartest companies are being proactive and applying IoT technology to various parts of their business. Being able to connect more devices to the internet will give businesses more intelligence and the ability to bolster the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.

There is also a rise in containerization. Just as there has been an increase in companies virtualizing their infrastructure to make them more flexible; today we are seeing a growth in the containerization of software platforms. While this may sound abstract, it is a key enabler for DevOps that senior leaders across the world are looking to have their IT departments embrace.

DevOps fundamentally promotes a much tighter relationship between various groups so that applications and services can be released quickly to drive innovation. The concept of containerization was developed in order to get software to run reliably when moved from one computing environment to another which is a key requirement for DevOps. Because you don’t need a virtual machine for every app, containers

Digital Edge

can be quicker to create and launch. This enables a company to pack a lot more applications into a single physical server and, ultimately, do more with its resources while also speeding up development processes and updating applications with new functionality in less time.

Whether in retail or transportation, every company regardless of the business it’s in must develop a core competency in harnessing the power of technology. However, it’s not just the technology; it’s the entire culture of traditional businesses that needs to change.

In this digital age, it is necessary to learn from the Amazons of the world and foster a culture of innovation and disruption. This means taking a more DevOps approach to business. So while brands don’t have to change their prices multiple times a day like Amazon, they should aim to generate a cycle of innovation and break down internal barriers.

More than ever, there is a need to bring together different teams across the company to collaborate and share ideas. To help their organisation manage the cultural transition towards digital and a software-first approach, it is increasingly the role of the CIO to guide company strategy. The Harvey Nash CIO Survey found that in 2016, 34 percent of CIOs report directly to the CEO - the largest proportion in 11 years. And an IDG Research study found that the CIO collaborating with other departments increases productivity (87 percent); informs decision-making (83 percent); and increases end-user satisfaction (80 percent). This broadening of the CIO’s traditional role is a necessary step to

ensure organisations put technology at the heart of their strategy and don’t get left behind.

The digital transformation continues, and its pace has been steadily accelerating as a result of increasing globalisation. The technological revolution could still hold many surprises. It may create vast numbers of jobs nobody has yet imagined, or boost the productivity of less-skilled workers in entirely new ways. But for now, it is safe to say that brands which fail to adapt won’t survive long. The death of the well-established retailer is just the beginning. The death of the well-established retail model is underway. And the winners will be the businesses that think digital from the top down.

Ashesh Badani VP Cloud Product Strategy, Red Hat

Fintech

The Technological Revolution of Reinsurance The reinsurance industry is going through a quiet revolution, and technology and real-time data are at the helm of it all, reconfiguring the interaction between consumers and insurers.

Anshul Srivastav explains in detail.

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hift, Transform, Innovate and Change (STIC) is the noisiest acronym making inroads to the boardrooms. STIC is not a problem unique to reinsurers and insurers. The entire regulated world is going through a turmoil of continuous change and shift. It is majorly difficult to innovate from within, and incumbents in regulated industry/s have been laggards. And that maybe the gap which other/s like PayPal (in payments), Amazon (Shopping), Uber (transportation), Airbnb (accommodation) have challenged the traditional markets and disrupted in their respective markets. Early adopters of technology are gaining an advantage in terms of redefining the new market opportunities. P2P is taking a new shape after many centuries benefitting through technology. P2P was the way to conduct a business couple of centuries ago for any transaction, but that was limited to geographies or communities.

Re-emergence of age-old practices which used to be common a couple of centuries back was P2P wherein there were no banks or no regulations. P2P is back in the 21st century and reshaping the new world transactions.

Blockchain P2P ledger based transaction technology and P2P insurance are now being piloted across the world. A couple of countries flashed out mandates for all governments functions to shift to P2P based transactions in the next five years. With cash economies shrinking, population across the globe will see a shift

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in P2P protection and investment beyond geographies and local communities.

Virtual Malls or Marketplaces are getting created in the P2P arena. Global convergence of communities and geographies is on the rise. At this point, this might be a scratch and not a dent in the operating and strategic business models of the incumbents, especially on the financial services side.

The foundation for a reinsurance business model and its subsequent execution is Peer-to-Peer. The reinsurance model is evolved and nurtured through a Peer-to-Peer setup, and it’s all about sharing risk. Reinsurers are operating in a new way of modeling their business by moving into alternative sources of creating capacities. Factors impacting reinsurers are low-interest rates and thinner operating margins due to intense competition and declining demands for reinsurance cover. Global reinsurance capital remained unchanged at USD565 billion since Q2 2015.

Alternative capital increased further in Q3 2015 to USD69 billion, essentially doubling the property catastrophe reinsurance capacity of the market.

Historically, STIC in the reinsurance space had been cyclical in nature; but now many observers believe the current evolution to be structural. It’s necessary that the management and board of reinsurers perform a thorough review of the new opportunities available in the market to ensure their capital risk engine is

Fintech

running at maximum efficiency. STIC has scratched the surface in the reinsurance world. Reinsurers globally have started shifting strategies, transforming, innovating and are now in the mode of being practitioners of change.

Cutting edge technologies are making headway in the reinsurance world. But a significant shift is required to change for existence and remain immortal.

Reinsurers should start a major transformation in ways of doing business, rather than getting misguided by the disruptive evolving ecosystem. Reinsurers have to go back to drawing boards and proactively start crafting their strategies regarding the new evolving ecosystem – an ecosystem wherein the reinsurance industry can immediately map their strategy and start the evolution process.

Blockchain Blockchain will be the largest decentralized trust system.

Potential use case/s for reinsurance industry for blockchain can be a virtual marketplace to exchange and trade risks, and it can be a common denominator to transact. Blockchain can help reinsurers cut huge costs in transactions and reduce a substantial cost of operations by becoming automated. It will support far better rates to insurers, increased capacities and thus enable growth. The entire payment and settlement process can be through blockchain.

Reinsurance comprehensive underwriting and claims process can be automated through blockchain and can support any volume of risk data for claims and underwriting for decision analytics in real time. Reinsurers have to start checking the viability and mapping into their respective business models.

Virtual Marketplace With the advent of P2P, insurance and banking markets may converge into different ways of doing business. Traditional reinsurance marketplaces should converge with marketplaces available in digital and real time. Reinsurers should aggregate rates for any risk/s. Reinsurers should now get into risk data analysis in real time and subsequently, switch to more facultative-based arrangement rather than treat-based. The customer and partner data should support decisions on acceptance and subsequent provisioning of risk. It will empower both, the reinsurer and insurer, to decide the placement of the risk immediately. The marketplace should also support under-insured and uninsured risk to facilitate reinsurers to the level of risk acceptance.

Data and Analytics – a model for Machine Learning Data is the most important unit of truth. Data is the core unit required by reinsurers to create value and manage risk. Risk can be modeled and monitored with the right data sets. Globally, a five trillion-dollar insurance industry is sitting on large data. With access to such a huge data, the reinsurer can model and support primary insurers on end-to-end risk and capital management. The reinsurer can predict and prescribe its primary insurers on the following capacities.

• Product development, pricing, claims and underwriting • Capital Management • Accumulation of mortality risks • Automate processes for handling capacities and optimize the risks Data can build any intelligence viz, business intelligence, competitive intelligence, market intelligence, internal intelligence, human intelligence and so on. It’s the power to determine what needs to be there in the market and how faster and efficiently you wish to achieve, and that can only happen through data.

With the use of Machine Learning algorithms supported by data, catastrophic modeling, mortality modeling, risk forecasting and so on can be predicted. Climate scientists, actuaries, and meteorologists can build models and feed data to predict and prescribe.

Machine learning can automate any process with data.

Incumbents should start exploring the massive overhead processes and how they can be automated through Machine Learning. The right data strategy will unearth valuable insights and subsequently deliver tons of value.

Internet of Anything and Everything.

Connected products, connected claims, connected risks, connected negotiations, and the list can continue. Anything and everything will be smart. Reinsurers should now front-end it, use cases should be developed to calibrate with the value chain.

Collaboration with tech startups will help reinsurers take a leap forward in terms of new ways of doing business. Partnerships and funding the valued idea should be budgeted and implemented.

It should start from within the organization with the incubation culture and accelerator programs.

Potential partnerships can be on P2P insurance and transaction startups. Startups have full potential to play the data game, which will support reinsurers to predict and prescribe the ecosystem.

Reinsurers have to reinvent and reincarnate. Transformation and shift to a new version Reinsurance V2. x. will happen. Reinsurers should catch the first flight of new evolving ecosystem and land in the geography of new ways of doing business.

Anshul Srivastav CIO, Union Insurance Anshul is a global technology leader who has been instrumental in driving technology transformations for businesses in the range of multi-billion dollars as revenues. Currently in a leadership role as Group Chief Information Officer, Information Technology, leading the IT strategy, technology transformations, analytics, software delivery, architecture and cloud for Union Insurance (UAE and Oman) across all lines of Business [Life, General (P&C) and Health Insurance]

• Market volatility for improved underwriting performance

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Cyber Security

Cyber Security on Every Organization’s Agenda With cyber-attacks becoming increasingly complex and prevalent, the imminent need for every organization is to update their systems and security. This article by Matthew Gardiner elucidates on the varied reasons and steps to achieve the same.

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here's no reason to believe that 2017 will be any better for cyber security than it was in 2016. If anything 2017 will be even worse as cybercriminals continue to leverage social engineering and phishing techniques to find new vulnerabilities to exploit, develop new ways to monetize their activities and get through corporate defenses and target individuals. In 2017, cyber security battles favor criminals even more as vulnerable Internet of Things (IoT) devices will continue to expand the possible platforms of attack.

Gartner estimates that by 2020 more than 25% of attacks in enterprises will involve IoT devices.

This past year, we saw cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, threats becoming more advanced and cyber-attacks causing more damage to organizations.

So as we approach 2017, let me share a few cyber security predictions which we, at Mimecast, see becoming even larger issues as we enter the New Year.

Ransomware becomes more regular and sophisticated Ransomware will become one of the biggest threats that organizations will need to address, fuelled by an increasing

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multitude of attackers using off-the-shelf kits and leveraging a vast network of cybercrime service providers to run their ransomware campaigns. Ransomware represents an easy, cheap, and low risk attack method that produces significant profits for the attackers. In addition few organizations have effective defences against ransomware and now with Bitcoins and other anonymous payment systems enabling the perpetrators to get paid more easily, without being traced, it has never been so easy to make a good living off of ransomware.

Impersonation attacks in the spotlight The media in 2016 have been very focused on ransomware attacks. However, one of the lesser publicized problems (but by some measures is larger in terms of its negative impact to organizations) are email impersonation attacks. Sometimes called whaling or CEO fraud attacks, these attacks can cost organizations hundreds of thousands in financial losses. In fact, according to the FBI, impersonation attacks led to more than $3 billion in losses over the last three years. We expect to see these attacks, because of the associated fraud and loss that they cause, as the next “it”

Cyber Security

attack flooding the media. There is nothing cheaper, easier, and less risky for attackers to do than just send well-crafted and timely emails which creatively requests for money to be sent to them.

The attackers don’t even need to use malware for this; they just need to be clever with their social engineering.

Macro malware still in the game Once thought of as a thing of the past, macro malware which often hides in Word or Excel files has re-entered into the ring of popular attack methods. While most organizations choose to block executable email attachments at their security gateways by default, they generally still allow potential work-related files, such Microsoft Office documents, to pass freely. Attackers exploit this by weaponizing files in these common Office formats. According to Mimecast research, 50 percent of firms have seen email attacks that use attached macros increase over the last year. Why? It works well and can get through traditional AV-based defenses.

And that’s why we’ll continue to see waves of macro malware into next year and beyond.

Reigning-in data residency and

governance Increased state-sponsored attacks will lead to more stringent requirements around data residency and governance, as well as increased focus on national-level firewalls to mitigate threats but allow regional business activity to continue uninterrupted.

Advancements in managing internet traffic from different geographies may also become a focus as the global trade landscape changes. Unfortunately this comes with the risk of ‘balkanizing’ the Internet and restraining the free exchange of information.

Focus on data mining One theme that is still overlooked, but should come into greater focus in 2017, is that cybercrime is not just about wire transfers and immediate and direct monetization of stolen information. Attackers are increasingly focused on data mining and will use the data they gather in more advanced future attacks, or sell it on the Dark Web for others to do the same. While more direct attacks such as email impersonation and wire transfer fraud is, and will continue be an issue in the future, organizations need

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Cyber Security Cyber espionage to cause more political disruption Nation states and their sponsored operatives will increasingly use cyber espionage to cause political shifts, disruption of adversaries, and to gain economic advantage in particular strategic areas. This will involve, but will not be limited to, emailbased hacking and the disclosure of other forms of private communications, and the disruption of and interference with critical national infrastructures.

Employee education and taking adequate measures to protect organizations from cyber-attacks will continue to be of high importance during the course of 2017 as cybercriminal continue to target the weakest link in an organization’s security, its employees.

to also think about where else they’re susceptible and ensure they have the appropriate protective measures in place against these longer tail attacks. Organizations need to determine which data of theirs could possibly be used to attack them or other organizations at a later time, and then take increased measures to secure it.

Matthew Gardiner, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Mimecast

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Cyber Security

Challenges Facing the Security Industry

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Cyber Security

Security should be at the top of every company’s agenda. In this article, Raj Samani highlights the six major challenges by the security industry and how to overcome them.

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ttacks and defenses adapt and evolve in a continuing dance.

As a new technique is developed, its effectiveness increases rapidly until it is ready for deployment. Once deployed, broad exposure to real-world scenarios, feedback to the development team, and inclusion in other defenses further improves its effectiveness. The enhancement continues until it reaches a level of effectiveness that prompts adversaries to respond. At this stage, attackers experiment and discover ways to evade this type of defense and develop countermeasures to reduce its value. The security industry’s challenge is to improve the lifecycle of threat defense effectiveness, something that requires foundational research, new classes of products, heavy development time and effort, and a sustained focus, often by multiple industry participants working together.

Reduce Asymmetry of Information Adversaries have more information about our defenses than we have about their attacks, and this asymmetry significantly influences the threat defense effectiveness curve. Preventing attackers from testing against us is very difficult and possibly unsolvable. However, sharing information about attacks more broadly is one of the critical initial steps that we can take to address this asymmetry. When we share and combine information about attacks, we better understand what the attackers are doing to find weaknesses in our algorithms.

That allows us to more quickly adapt and improve defenses.

Make attacks more expensive or less profitable Money is the primary motivation of most cyberattacks. If we can change the economics of the attack process, reduce the success rate of attacks, and make capture more likely, then we can make targets less interesting. Analyzing law enforcement

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data, we find that investigation and prosecution of cybercrime is inversely related to the severity of the crime. With physical crimes, prosecution is oriented toward the most serious crimes. With cybercrime, high-level attacks are more difficult to investigate and prosecute because they often cross multiple jurisdictions, and often more skills and resources are required to help them evade detection and prosecution. One potential response to this is to deceive attackers and increase their time spent on a given attack, making them easier to trace, identify, capture, and prosecute.

Improve visibility Security operations within companies and security vendors are shifting their focus from IT assets to data assets and from “pseudoabsolute” defensive coverage to informed risk management. We have tools that can identify and classify data, monitor its usage, apply appropriate policies, or block movement if necessary. With these tools, organizations can more effectively quantify their risk profile, identify critical gaps, and appropriately focus resources. Good organizations compare basic statistics to the previous month, much like accounting. Better organizations work to build regional, national, and industry benchmarks for comparison, like investors. However, many common security metrics are not very actionable. There is much more to be done to be able to act, in near real time, on threatening activities seen in the protected environment.

Identify exploitation of legitimacy Telling the difference between when a legitimate tool is used for a legitimate purpose versus a suspicious activity is very difficult. The only approach we have now is behavioral analytics, which is in its cybersecurity infancy. It is a good start, but we also need to move toward a model that conducts legitimacy tests for every transaction, not just for files and credentials. We need to analyze actions and data movement and try to determine intent,

Cyber Security

whether from an external actor or an unauthorized insider. This step requires knowing a lot more about the context of the activity.

One controversial possibility is the development of user reputation and predictive analytics. The concept is to assess the probability of a given account being breached, stolen, or used for unauthorized insider activity. By collecting user behavior in context, from the tendency to reuse passwords on different systems to the job description and typical working hours, we can compare each action to a set of expected legitimate activities and flag those that are outside a given level of risk. This is a sensitive area. We will have significant privacy, ethics, and legal issues to address before this technique enters the mainstream.

Protect decentralized data Data is moving around outside of the corporate perimeter, making it much more vulnerable to unintentional leaks and targeted attacks. It is moving to clouds and personal devices, as well as to partners, suppliers, and customers. Less than 20% of an organization’s data ever moves in this extended ecosystem, yet 70% of data loss is connected to this movement. Today some try to protect this type of data movement by encrypting it and sending decryption keys in a separate email, passing on the responsibility for protection to the next person in the chain. This results in a very small sphere of trust. We need to figure out how to extend the sphere of trust while maintaining better control.

Data classification and loss prevention systems represent early efforts to manage and extend the sphere of trust for decentralized data. Security that moves with the data, enabling persistent policy enforcement, is the next step. We need to be able to protect data during its next use, similar to digital rights management mechanisms.

having an agent running on the device we are protecting.

However with the onset of technologies like IoT, the future of cybersecurity, and the solution to most of these big, hardto-solve problems must take place in an agentless security world.

The evolution to agentless security is already underway, with early solutions attacking the problem from multiple directions.

Chip designers are enhancing hardwarelevel security, memory protection, and trusted execution environments. Behavioral analytics products watch from the outside, ready to quarantine and investigate devices that are doing something suspicious or anomalous. Processing and analysis still has to happen somewhere, but we will increasingly leverage flexible computing resources instead of dedicated agents.

Distributed enforcement points are already emerging that will spread enforcement throughout a network of devices, with multiple points communicating and collaborating in real time about their detection and protection actions.

In summary, increasing our threat defense effectiveness throughout the security industry will be key to staying ahead of the adversaries. It is critical that multiple industry participants work together to solve big-picture problems that cannot be addressed by simple patches or software updates. We need to share information more broadly among industry leaders to not only give us greater volume and detail in telemetry, but also aid in deception techniques. By increasing our use of predictive analytics, improving security visibility with both organizational assets and decentralized data, and reducing our use of dedicated agents, we can better protect, detect and correct cyber-attacks and increase our effectiveness in the threat defense lifecycle.

Raj Samani, Chief Technology Officer, EMEA, Intel Security

Detect and protect without agents So much of our history and strength in security is based on

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Business Efficiency

Look to the Future with an ADC Refresh As business applications continue to grow and become more complex, the technology needed to support these systems must follow suit.

Mohammed Al-Moneer explains more about ADC refresh and the opportunities it presents for a high volume company.

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n application delivery controller (ADC) refresh is a great occasion to look to the future and optimize your network for not only the applications you have in place today, but what you will have tomorrow. Odds are the box you’re replacing is out of date and more than five years old. A lot’s happened in the networking and application delivery spaces since you last purchased an ADC, meaning a refresh is the perfect opening to add new functionality to your network to help your business transition to the future. Here, we look at four key opportunities an ADC refresh presents.

1. Choice You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t see what your network will look like or how your application ecosystem will evolve over the next two, three, four years and beyond. You want choice. You need a platform that can grow with your business and offers you choice for every possible need while ensuring you still have the agility you demand today. When examining ADC providers and

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preparing for a refresh, look not only at their existing products, but their roadmap and their history of innovation. Does that align to your business needs and goals? Will it fuel your desired business outcomes? Or will you be caught standing still and paying topdollar for boxes that no longer meet your needs?

The ADC needs to be able to provide consistent application delivery, security and analytics across your data center and clouds, whether they’re public, private or hybrid. Whether your apps are architected using micro-services and/or hyper-scale environments, you need it all to work together. The ADC needs to deliver any app to any user anywhere.

You should also have a choice of a hardware based or a virtualized appliance that runs in a virtual environment that features all of the advanced services any enterprise, service provider or web giant demands.

2. Security The threat landscape has evolved dramatically since your last

Business Efficiency

edge, acting as a first line of defense for your network infrastructure. It needs to also offer multi-vector DDoS attack protection, scalability, easy network integration, traffic baselining, a programmatic policy engine, granular traffic control, threat intelligence and cloud-based volumetric attack protection to fortify your business from attacks.

DNS and Web Application Firewall - You want to enhance your data center security. The appliance should offer an ICSA-certified web application firewall (WAF), which guards web servers against critical Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 threats web-based application servers face. It should also feature advanced protection against domain name system (DNS) infrastructure exploitation.

3. Multi-tenancy If you’re thinking of refreshing, multi-tenancy ensures you’re ready for the future. If you’re undergoing an ADC refresh, partition density is an essential component to virtualization return on investment.

4. Cloud Integration The world is moving to the cloud. If you have a credit card, you can shift IT resources to an IaaS provider, spin up cloudbased ADC instances, buy cloud storage or start using SaaS with just a few clicks. As such, most applications are also moving to the cloud — and in droves. You want your business to be ready. An ADC refresh gives you the opportunity to choose a provider that’s not only cloud-ready, but also cloud-native. Even if you haven’t quite solidified your cloud application strategy, having a solution in place that can support public and private clouds and bridge the cloud and on-premises worlds puts you ahead of the game. You’ll want to take advantage of secure application services that bridge all of your data centers and clouds.

ADC deployment, and that will continue. Think about the threats of the last five years – there have been monumental breaches, hacks of government agencies, you name it. That means your network has to be an impenetrable fortress, free from threat actors looking to steal data or take you down. When considering an ADC refresh, it’s imperative to examine the security offerings and services that have evolved from ADC technologies to perform specific tasks. Appliances need to be fortified with leading-edge security capabilities that ensure secure app delivery and dedicated SSL processing hardware options that can handle massive levels of encrypted traffic.

SSL Traffic - Threats are hiding where they never could before: in encrypted traffic. This creates a new attack vector that you and your IT team must be on the lookout for. The appliance should help you inspect, encrypt and decrypt SSL traffic.

DDoS Protection - While ADC technology incorporates DDoS defense for an application, more organizations are looking for single-point, network wide defense. The ADC should give you advanced DDoS detection and mitigation at the network

Mohammed Al-Moneer has recently been appointed as Regional Director, MENA at A10 Networks. Mohammed has held various sales leadership positions at networking and other high tech companies. Most recently at Infoblox, he served as regional manager for Saudi Arabia, where he leveraged his success in leading the services business to drive operational efficiencies and innovation and achieve exceptional growth. Prior to that he worked as territory sales manager for enterprise servers, storage and networking at Hewlett-Packard.

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Business Efficiency

Making Sense of Data

This article by Laurent Dechaux is a mini-lesson on the art of collecting, organizing and interpreting huge mounds of data and leveraging it for business growth and development.

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Business Efficiency You cannot transform what you cannot see We’ve all been there, that moment on a phone call when someone is covering the most important details of the conversation but is being drowned out by background noise.

Picking out specific, accurate details from a noisy environment is a challenge we face each day whether on a phone call, doing online research, or trying to make sense of data about our businesses.

Companies collect so much information about their customers and internal processes that they often find themselves trying to make sense of overlapping and contradictory stories.

Accurate information is crucial to smart decision-making. Few of us would make an important choice based on points we may not have even heard correctly on a noisy call, so why would businesses make crucial decisions based on a rough impression of their data?

Unfortunately, some companies don’t always have a choice. The disparate systems and processes they have built up over the years were never designed to work together, which means they must do the best they can to navigate conflicting analysis and duplicated data. Often, the most relevant information does not present itself clearly enough and is at risk of being overlooked.

In pursuit of a single truth Whether they are working on strategic investments, resourcing, or forward-planning, finance teams cannot afford to rely on an incomplete understanding of the business or its customers.

This is especially true today, when markets have never been more volatile and the future has never been harder to predict.

Finance leaders are also feeling the pressure from stakeholders who want to know their investment is in safe hands.

Virtually every major industry is being disrupted by fearless challenger brands, and established companies must transform the way they work to compete while being mindful of the fact that every decision carries greater potential risk or reward.

It is hard to transform what you cannot see. Finance teams need to consolidate their systems and streamline their data into complementary streams rather than analyzing them separately.

They need a single dynamic view of the truth, not a series of snapshots that reveal only half the picture.

Work smarter and attract better people Taking complexity out of the business by centralizing processes and ensuring decision-makers have access to better, more accurate data also reduces costs. Synced up systems are faster and more efficient than disparate ones, which mean less time

spent managing operations and more budgets freed up for growth activities. Better still, any investments the company makes will be based on enhanced data and are therefore more likely to be successful.

Modern systems are also a motivator for employees. When workers can wrestle back hours that were once lost wading through complex, conflicting data they become happier and more productive. It is ultimately the people on a finance team that collectively form the company’s strategic engine, and they will feel more motivated if the systems they use allow them to deliver on this expectation.

Global telecoms operator Orange has certainly reaped the benefits of consolidating its process, both in terms of efficiency and staff recruitment. The company serves 250 million customers in 220 countries and previously ran multiple ERP systems in many of these regions. Since consolidating its processes onto one central system with Oracle ERP Cloud, Orange has found itself working more quickly and more flexibly. Just as importantly, the operator is now attracting more skilled digital natives who are keen to work in a modern finance environment.

Leading by example At Oracle, we have seen first-hand the benefit of consolidating our finance systems and gaining a ‘single view of the truth’ within our own business.

After centralizing our own operations our operating margins jumped from 22% to 34% in just one year.

As we and many of our customers have realized, acting on learnings from the past helps you better predict the future. However, it takes an accurate view of data to make sound decisions.

This is why more companies are turning to cloud ERP and analytics to inform their future strategies, whether it’s to save money on procurement or to anticipate their hiring needs.

This is a time of unprecedented challenges and no finance leader can afford to ignore the value of a clear and transparent view of the organization. When it comes to major business decisions, there is no room for doubt.

Laurent Dechaux Laurent Dechaux has been Vice President for Oracle Applications in France from 2010 to 2013, responsible for promoting and selling CRM, ERP, EPM and BI solutions both for On Premise and for Cloud.

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Cloud Computing

Cloud Makes Small the New Big in Business Is your business on the cloud yet? If not, you’re not only losing out on saving valuable money but also falling back in the race of technological and digital capabilities. Read what Haider Salloum has to say about how small businesses can grow big with cloud.

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hen you start a business, what are the first things you think about? Cashflow? Competition? Protecting your intellectual property from industrial copycats?

In fact, unless you are planning a technology venture, IT is probably not in your top five priorities. That is a shame, because a particular technology, now firmly established, can help with cashflow, competition, intellectual-property protection, resource efficiency, industrial compliance, general innovation, and more.

That technology is the cloud.

Since the nineties, IT managers have been plagued by procurement cycles. Depending on what they were buying, the process could take up to eight months, and unless they were habitual early adopters, six months after their go-live date, their hardware and software could be obsolete, forcing them to start again.

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What if you could abolish that model, by moving your software out of your HQ to somewhere else? Here, in this automated wonderland, your IT function benefits from all sorts of invisible efficiencies that protect your data, take cumbersome admin out of your hands, and save you money. This fantasy also bends, grows and shrinks at your command – add a database server here; adopt advanced AI tools there.

That was an accurate, albeit colourful, description of cloud computing. Service providers take your infrastructure – hardware and software – and virtualise it, which means that software versions of your servers and PCs are hosted in your provider’s powerful datacentre. Everything is now a service, and can be supplied – configuration permitting – within minutes. Bye-bye, procurement headaches. You have a hardware need? Done. You have a software need? Handled.

Cloud Comuting Agility and efficiency As an entrepreneur whose core business is not IT, the appeal of the cloud is clear: you don’t have to wrestle internally with admin, backup, security or procurement. Once you have found a provider that you can trust, you tell them what you need, and they… provide. This is digital transformation at work.

ATEÏS Middle East is a regional pioneer in fire alarm research, development and manufacture. In serving the Middle East and Indian markets, the company experienced massive growth of its workforce.

“We have grown multi-fold in the past decade, from two employees to around 80 employees, in four offices spread across the region,” said Hussam Al Haddad, Managing Director, AETIS Middle East. “So we needed a solution that would allow all our team members to communicate, and that would bring them together into a single innovation platform.”

As with many companies faced with a daunting procurement undertaking, ATEÏS sought a single solution that would be flexible and scalable. It deployed Office 365, Outlook, Yammer and OneDrive, in a solution that allowed the company to improve both internal and external engagement, and to automate reliable data access and backup facilities. Team members now connect with one another at will, leading to vast improvements in data-access, knowledge-sharing and decision-making.

Security and compliance ATEÏS’ story is about delivering an internal efficiency quickly, so that a legacy millstone can be cast off. Other small businesses have more general concerns as they make the move to the cloud.

While pursuing efficiency hikes, they may hold back from migration because they have concerns about security. In fact, cloud providers have a greater vested interest in keeping their clients’ digital assets secure than the clients themselves do.

Microsoft invests more than a billions of dollars annually in building infrastructure with multi-layered, multi-faceted security.

UAE-based Mobile Doctors 24-7 is a medical call-centre staffed by internationally trained healthcare practitioners, who provide around-the-clock triage and patient services. Doctors and nurses were having to devote too much time to IT tasks, including admin, which had an impact on the quality of patient care.

The company had concerns about the cyber-security implications of the cloud, but adopted Azure and Office 365, mainly due to the security underpinnings of SSL-TLS 128bit encryption. Mobile Doctors 24-7’s cloud-based solution is also HIPAA-compliant, an essential element for working in the healthcare industry.

“Seventy per cent of non-life-threatening conditions can be

diagnosed by speaking with a doctor over the phone,” said Raouf Khalil, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mobile Doctors 24-7.

“With Office 365 and Azure we can now focus exclusively on this.”

High availability, low-redundancy and cost-management Mobile Doctors 24-7 was also able to reduce operational costs by 50%, while gaining 99.9% service availability, and compliance with ISO 127001 and HIPAA. Cost-saving stories like this can be seen again and again in cloud migration journeys. Providers have the economies of scale that come with high-volume business, and share these economies with customers. Under a cloud setup, your SME also shifts from an upfront capital payment (CAPEX) to an easier-to-manage, periodic subscription (OPEX) model for your IT expenditure.

The United Arab Emirates’ Ajman University of Science and Technology needed to ensure 24-7 delivery of Web services, while operating within a strict budget. The Azure cloud met its service-delivery requirements while delivering high resilience and operational cost savings.

“Azure Cloud gives AUST high availability and removes the burden of hardware maintenance,” said Inas Abousharkh, IT Manager, Ajman University of Science and Technology.

“It has saved us immeasurable time as an organisation and allowed us to refocus on more value-adding projects.”

“Digital transformations start with a decision to embrace the power of cloud, and end with undreamtof productivity improvements,” said Haider Salloum, SME Director, Microsoft Gulf. “And then another story begins, where cloud adopters enjoy a new-found flexibility in growth. If your business grows, your cloud grows with it.”

The cloud is a network of paths to the future. It has almost mystical potential for small businesses, allowing them to behave like firms with multi-million-dollar R&D budgets. It is time to innovate on a shoestring. It is the time of cloud.

Haider Salloum SMB Director – Microsoft Gulf Haider is tasked with helping SMEs realize their full potential, through the adoption of innovative technology and cloud transformation.

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Digital Healthcare

Benefits of Digital Records in the Health Care Industry Healthcare is one of the major sectors that are getting revolutionized by technology, and not without reason.

David Whitton gives us an overview of the benefits of electronic health records and how that improve the quality of patient care.

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tilization of electronic record keeping systems is becoming increasingly predominant within the healthcare industry due to a wide range of benefits, ultimately resulting in improved quality of care and patient safety, not to mention controlled costs and time savings for healthcare providers.

ability to reduce duplication of documents; elimination of needless delays in searching for charts; intelligence capabilities such as medical and prescription drug interaction alerts and treatment reminders; and quality measures for tailoring and showcasing data in customized formats.

Primary benefits of implementing a comprehensive Electronic Medical Records (EMR)/ Electronic Health Records (EHR) system

First steps for developing a smooth transition to Electronic Records

EMR systems are designed to keep track of a patient’s entire health and medical history in an electronic, computerized format.

Although it may appear to be a daunting task, storing the vast volume of patient records in a digital format makes information more readily accessible and can help healthcare workers and patients navigate through healthcare systems more safely and efficiently.

Ultimately, EMR systems can improve quality of care and patient safety, control costs, save substantial time for healthcare providers and, of course, provide extensive storage capabilities in today’s data-driven era. Advantages include increased efficiency, with the

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Transitioning any healthcare organization from a paper-based environment to a digital one can be a complicated proposition.

However, if the transition is thoroughly planned and executed, the task can be manageable and result in substantial benefits to your practice or organization. Either during the EMR/EHR selection process or when a system has been chosen and an implementation plan created, document and chart conversion needs to be addressed for the transition. Conversion of existing documents and information is critical, and requires evaluation and consideration of a scanning solution to integrate into your EMR system or to provide stand-alone document retention and access.

Most scanning solutions have been validated with healthcare systems, but validation needs to be verified prior to use. Staff

Digital Healthcare

training on the conversion of back files and day-forward documents procedures is critical for success. After the paper transition is planned and executed, your organization is ready to go live, with the EMR/ EHR solution providing access to information electronically.

During the transition phase, there is likely to be a slowdown, but once the system has been fully adopted, time and cost savings will be incremental. To ensure that the transition is smooth, you need to make sure everyone in your organization is on-board, establish solid security protocols, conduct routine maintenance and backups for your system and develop a disaster recovery plan.

Challenges in converting existing medical records to a digital system With today’s wide variety of hard copy patient records, including faxed prescriptions, physician orders, referrals, collections of signatures, medical charts and other accumulated patient information, it’s hard to imagine how to convert to a paperless office. To ensure successful migration of paper charts and information to your EMR system, it’s important to first determine what approach you want to use to convert your documents, files and charts.

Options include: • Set up a manual in-house process, whereby documents are scanned directly into a solution.

• Purchase a solution that provides more sophisticated information indexing and allows users to scan charts into the EMR solution.

• Outsource the project to a service provider that specializes in document conversion for physicians and healthcare systems.

When converting existing data and considering scanning options, first and foremost organizations need to ensure the integrity of data and image quality. They also need to consider ease of use: Is it a simple push-button process, or is it more complicated? And, of course, speed: How many scans/pages per minute are demanded? Also, is a backup scanner needed? This is important when considering the high volume of paperwork being transitioned. Finally, you need to consider the level of service from

the solution provider. Will the scanner provider replace or fix a unit if there are problems? How promptly will it be able to correct the issue? Will it provide guidance to help make the transition smooth?

These are questions that should be considered when selecting a solutions provider.

Integration of scanning solution into existing healthcare applications Scanning is a relatively simple method for capturing electronic images of paper documents and storing them for online reference, either through a stand-alone solution or an EMR/EHR or enterprise content management (ECM) solution. This process simply replaces paper charts with images of paper documents that are readily accessible, and most providers offer solutions that integrate with existing healthcare applications. However, what you really need to consider is how well the scanning solutions perform and whether they can be customized to work with your EMR system. The most important features to consider when selecting a scanning solution are quality of image scanned, ease of use, speed and service.

Why is selecting the right scanning solution so important for the transition to EMR/EHR? Selecting the right scanning solution is the first step to becoming a successful “paperless” environment.

Once you’ve taken the leap to digital, you need to consider the most effective way to incorporate all of your existing patient documentation and information.

A documented conversion protocol must be established and followed as part of your organizational strategy in the transition to digital.

Selecting the correct scanning solution for your transition to EMR is a critical first step that includes the conversion of paper files into electronic images that can be imported into your EMR software platform for access. To make this transition seamless, you need to ensure your solution offers the appropriate scanning volume and high-quality images. Otherwise, this step may be a slow and arduous process. Many organizations mistakenly believe they can get by with “a nice little scanner” they already have in the office, until they find that they’ve burnt it out after only a few weeks’ time. Shaving dollars off your document conversion program will result in wasted man-hours and frustration on the part of employees, ultimately diminishing the quality of care delivered to patients. Efficiently converting back files and dayforward documents is an important step in your organization’s transition to EMR, and critical to any healthcare system’s push toward

David Whitton General Manager of Kodak Alaris Eastern Cluster (Middle East, Africa, East Europe, Turkey & Russia)

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Big Data

The Importance of Big Data Analytics Rupal Agarwal explains the process behind data creation and collation, and why Big Data is not a fad but a revolution that will impact every business present and future.

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o we have a choice to not inhale CO2 while breathing? Do we have a choice of not having artificially ripened fruits? Do we have a choice to escape from digitization? Whether you like it or don’t, we have all been potential targets for Big Data and it is completely transforming the way we do business and is impacting most of our lives.

What is Big Data?

Big Data, in simple terms, involves collection of several bronobytes of digital data. The basic idea behind the phrase 'Big Data' is that every activity you perform leaves a digital trace/ data.

From the dawn of civilization until 2003, humankind generated five exabytes of data. Now we produce five exabytes every two days and the pace is accelerating.

Let us focus on the eternal question harnessing the minds of every retail organization, “Will it help to increase my sales?”

Where does Big Data generate from?

We shall first focus on Activity Data, which involves collection of data from various activities that we perform, right from watching music & videos on YouTube to shopping for a particular product from a particular mall, to searching a specific product online & comparing its prices, to reading various eBooks online and zillions of such activities that we have been performing. To illustrate further, a car dealer has a constant eye on all the users comparing features of several cars on the car information websites. Similarly, a wedding couture would be targeting people who’d be logging on to & hovering over wedding wear / wedding planner websites.

Next is the Conversation Data. As the name suggests, it is derived from the numerous digital conversations initiated & followed by the user. We converse on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Emails, Messages, Skype, Blog & so much more.

Facebook has the data of nearly 1.44 million active users, which

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they have efficiently categorized into age-specific, gender-specific, profession-specific, area-specific, interest-specific & several such groups. For a construction company, who is coming up with a flat scheme close to the IT Park, it can bank on data of users working in IT Companies close to that particular area. For a luxury brand, coming up with a new edition of laptop bags for women, it can target data of all those professional women between the age group of 25 to 40, who have liked “Luxury Brands” pages, and present at that particular place during the launch of the product.

Conversation Data can be in the form of text, images or videos.

The netizens of the world share over 1.8 billion photos each day.

The data generated through such photos & videos is massive & this ‘Big Data’ is eventually used by companies to share their happy customers’ testimonials, loyalty card benefits & several such customer-centric programs.

Another such data collection source is through Sensors.

Your smart phone contains a global positioning sensor to track exactly where you are every second of the day; it includes an accelerometer to track the speed and direction at which you are travelling. We are surrounded by innumerable devices which have in-built sensors and can monitor movements and track our preferences. We now have Smart TVs that are able to collect and process data; we have smart watches, smart fridges, and smart alarms. The Internet connects these devices so that the traffic sensors on the road can send data to your alarm clock which will wake you up earlier than planned because a blocked road means you have to leave earlier to make your 9 am meeting.

The value of ‘Big Data’ depends on the volume, velocity, variety and most importantly the veracity of the data. The accuracy determines the utility of the data.

Big Data can provide a better understanding of the customer needs. Through the churning of several data collection sources, a telecom company devised a variety of mobile plans serving the needs of consumers from various segments – a high data plan for college student vs. a low national and

Big Data

international calling plan for a business person. An FMCG company introduced the marketing campaign for a low fat snack for women during the wedding season. Considering the data analytics that men comprise of more than 40% users of face wash, a cosmetic company introduced a fairness face wash & cream especially targeting the men.

It also understands and optimizes business processes. Retailers are able to optimize their stock based on predictive models generated from the social media data, web

search trends and weather forecasts. One such excellent example is the game of Angry Bird, which has penetrated from just being a game to the lives of the users thereby promoting sales of its goodies like bags, bottles, pouches, and T-shirts. Another example of business process optimization would be supply chain or delivery route optimization using data from Global Positioning System (GPS).

Big Data helps us to connect to our customers in the way they like (Social Media/ Text/ Emails), at the right location (when they are close to our store) engaging them with personalized real time offers. For an 18 year old who enters our store, a quick pop-up saying ‘Flat 15% off on your favorite Maybelline Kajal’, will surely bring joy to her face. Real time analytics also help us in determining the customer demand, competitor activities,

inventory levels and the best price of the product.

The target of Big Data has always been moving upwards & is directly proportional to the optimum use of technology by the users. The applications of Big Data are endless! Currently we are only seeing the beginning of a transformation into a Big Data economy.

Any business that doesn’t seriously consider the implications of Big Data runs the risk of being left behind. Focus for the ‘E-Era’ must be Big Data, Better Experience and Big Buying.

Dr. Rupal Shah Agarwal Director at YOUR RETAIL COACH www.yourretailcoach.in

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App Review

A Dozen of the Best Apps - Curated & Reviewed

APPS REVIEW 48

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App Review Fingerprint Gestures Almost every handset comes with a fingerprint sensor nowadays. A fingerprint sensor is great for unlocking the phone and making secure payments, but now we can also use it to launch apps, play/pause songs and put the phone to sleep. The Fingerprint Gestures app developed by SuperThomasLab can configure tapping, double-tapping, and swiping on the device’s fingerprint reader to perform a variety of functions like toggling the notifications panel, accessing the quick settings, media controls, and even turning on the flashlight. All you need is Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and (of course) the fingerprint scanner.

Pocket Pocket is a useful, read-itlater app that allows you to save articles and videos that you’d like to read and watch later at a more convenient time. It is a short-term bookmarking app that can sync across all your devices so that you can come back to it whenever you like, even if you’re offline. It has a clean, easy-to-read layout where you can customize the article for better readability, add multiple tags for filing purposes, and archive it once viewed so that it doesn’t clutter your main page.

Perhaps the most loved-about feature of Pocket is its open API, which makes it possible for a host of other mobile and desktop applications to integrate their services and share the links directly to the app.

SoloLearn Learning should be free and fun; and SoloLearn is a testament to that line of thought. It is the fastest-growing community of code learners who’d like to learn the basics of coding or advance their skills.

With SoloLearn, you can learn programming concepts through short video tutorials followed by fun quizzes. You can update the score on your leader board, reach new levels, master new skills, and keep on practicing for better results.

The learning app also has a community of users who help you in your lessons and once confident, you can challenge yourself by competing with other learners throughout the world.

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App Review ConvertIt!

ConvertIt! is an intuitive unit converter app that converts 1400+ units from more than 90 categories. You can calculate currency rates, distance, temperature, area, time, volume or capacity and more. The currency rates conversion settings are particularly helpful for tourists and people travelling for business to other countries, especially because it is updated on an hourly basis and you get the latest information at all times.

The app has a practical Copy-Conversion feature that converts and calculates any value copied from any other app/website. Apart from the fact that you can create your own list of Favorite units, the app intuitively lists your most used conversion units on your home page thus making it easier to access and one of the most useful apps out there in the web.

Periscope

Periscope is a live streaming app that lets you broadcast and explore the world through audio and video sessions from anywhere in the globe. It is an amazing tool through which you can engage your audience and make it a lively interactive session among your broadcasting group. Once your broadcast is over, people can view them for up to 24 hours after which they’d get deleted from Periscope. You can, however, save the broadcast to your mobile phone and publish and share it online to get more views and feedback.

Periscope is not just any social app, you can use it to improve your speaking skills, pitch an idea, report an event, spread awareness and create connections sharing a common passion.

Strava

Insightly Insightly is an affordable and efficient customer relationship management (CRM) app that helps small to medium-sized businesses manage customers efficiently. You can use it to manage contacts at every stage of business, organize sales opportunities, create and monitor sales leads, create to-do lists and checklists, and more. Insightly helps you organize and access all your business info just at the tip of your finger. It helps you and your team members remain updated with the latest customer projects, minimize any gap in communication, improve customer relationship and create an effective and streamlined course of work that results in an increase in sales and productivity.

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With life becoming easier & work digitized, Strava is the perfect app for you to keep yourself healthy and athletic. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, Strava strives to bring the runners and cyclists together on a social platform, where you can record your activity like distance, pace, elevation, calories burned or gained etc., participate in monthly challenges to push yourself, take part in friendly competitions, and share notes and analysis.

Strava uses GPS for recording activities; so you need to have a good network for the GPS tracking to work on your phone. You can install it in your GPS-activated watches, fitness trackers and cycling computers for accessibility. You can also pair it with a heart rate monitor for additional performance data.

RescueTime RescueTime app is an ideal time management app that helps you find your work-life balance. It helps you understand and analyze your daily habits so that you can focus on your priorities and be productive.

Once you download RescueTime, the app runs securely in the background of your latop or computer and tracks the time spent on applications and websites so that it can analyze and tell you exactly how you spent your time. It gives you detailed reports and analysis based on your daily activity, so that you can block or set alerts for specific applications and websites if required. It even has the option to flag milestones and achievements that you might have set for yourself thus inspiring you and your teammates to do more.

App Review Trello Trello is a visual collaborative and project management app that lets you work and schedule your activities in a fun way. It utilizes visual mediums like boards, lists, and cards that enable you to prioritize and organize your work in a much more creative, and flexible way.

It is a lightweight app that doesn’t slow down your phone but includes most features available in the much more advanced ones.

Trello follows a Kanban style of management where the users need to drag cards to a board to mention the status of a project. Cards indicate specific tasks and boards indicate projects that might be completed, ongoing or even outstanding. Trello has a free subscription but you can also opt for the professional package if you enjoy using it.

Slack

CamCard CamCard is a unique business card reader app that eliminates the need to carry physical cards or any hardware to scan cards. Simple to use, it just needs your phone’s camera to capture the information on the card.

Though a mobile app, CamCard has all the major features of a traditional business card scanner.

It extracts the information from the business card, creates a contact in the program and files it in a format that is easy to search for later or send to another application. The app is synchronized across smartphones, tablets and the web, all of which are accessible in real-time. You can even exchange card details through this app and contribute to the environment by going paperless.languages. You also get access to its vast and enriching community of 45+ million users, and native speakers with whom you can practice your language skills.

Slack is a messa ging app for the workplace that brings all your online communication together in one place. It offers real-time messaging and archiving, and is an excellent communication tool with a rich collection of settings and options.

You can create channels that include a specific set of people contributing only to a particular project or task. You can send private messages to individuals or a small set of people for more onpoint conversations. You can also switch from texting to calling by audio or video-calling the individual or team for a more direct approach. You can also drop your PDFs and files in the app and share with anyone you want. Because of the efficient indexing of the file, Slack can even search your ancient files from the deep caverns of the archived folders.languages. You also get access to its vast and enriching community of 45+ million users, and native speakers with whom you can practice your language skills.

Evernote

Evernote is an organizer app where you can write down your notes, create to-do lists, save links to interesting articles and ideas that you find on the internet, and set reminders. You can take notes in a variety of formats like text, sketches, audio, video, PDFs, and even web clippings. You can easily scan articles through the phone camera and include your comments on relevant articles, business cards, and things of interest. You can also create checklists and to-do lists for events like holidays, weddings and birthday parties.

Evernote also helps you work as a team where all the members of the team can brainstorm and jot down their creative ideas and share the same documents.

It’s an ideal app for maximizing your productivity and increasing efficiency, be it education, work, or at leisure.

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Entertainment

Infographic

WHAT REALLY FOSTERS INNOVAT ON ARE YOU MISSING THE MARK? Innovation is increasingly viewed as critical to sustaining a competitive advantage in the changing global marketplace. Yet many people also indicate that their innovation efforts are lacking.

What gives? We explore the business results behind innovation, the top challenges and ingredients for innovation, and why strategy is key.

INNOVATION IS A BUSINESS PRIORITY Business leaders agree. CEOs surveyed by pricewaterhouseCoopers sy there's a high premium placed on the ability to regularly pioneer new ideas and approaches 61% OF CEOs WORLDWIDE SAY THAT INNOVATION IS A PRIORITY OR A PRIMARY FOCUS WITHIN THEIR BUSINESSES

61%

INNOVATION EFFORTS ARE SLUGISH & INEFFECTIVE Despite the high premium placed on innovation, more than half of business leaders surveyed

by Accenture don't have innovation strategies, and those that do aren't executing on them.

55%

55% DON'T EFFECTIVELY SEEK INNOVATION OPPORTUNITIES. 66% DON'T HAVE WELLDEFINED INNOVATION STRATEGIES

Top 3 Challenges to Business In

WHAT'S STOPPING THEM

1 RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS (TIME AND PEOPLE)

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?

66%

According to Forresternovation:

2

3 BUDGET CONSTRAINTS

!

LACK OF STRUCTURED INNOVATION OROCESSES OR PROCEDURES

Infographic

THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS FORINNOVATION Much of what fosters innovation involves processes and organization-wide support. A survey by pricewaterhouse Coopers askes CEOs which elements are some of the "most important ingredients to successful innovation."

2

31%

CAPACITY AND CAPABILITY FOR CREATIVITY

5 MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION:

5

44%

STRONG VISIONARY BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

1 57%

31%

THE RIGHT CULTURE TO FOSTER AND SUPPORT INNOVATION

ABILITY TO CAPTURE IDEAS THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATION

37%

3

WILLINGNESS TO CHALLENGE NORMS AND TAKE RISKS

4

A HOLISTIC APPROACH IS INNOVATION DONE RIGHT Innovation must be part of a holistic and formal system to net positive returns over time. According to an Accenture study, companies with such a system in place see significant yields.

21% SAY INNOVATION GIVES THEM A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

21%

AND

51%

51% ARE FIRST TO MARKET WITH MOST INNOVATIONS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

INNOVATION DONE RIGHT MEANS REVENUE GAINS Successful innovation delivers real business results. According to Bain, companies that perform well in innovation initiatives grow significantly faster than lesser-performing companies - growing to a 3-fold differences in 5 years.

84%

TOP INNOVATING COMPANIES* OTHER COMPANIES*

AVERAGE ANNUAL GROWTH RATE

13%

5 YEAR COMPOUNDED GROWTH RATE

28%

5%

* "Top Innovating companies" refers to companies with top quartile scores in the Bain Innovation Assessment Survey of executives at enterprises around the world

WISHING FOR INNOVATION ISN'T ENOUGH.

DATA SHOWS IT'S THE PRODUCT OF STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE, WITH COMPANY PROCESSES AND CULTURE TO SUPPORT IT.

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A Look at

blockchain technology What is it?

Someone requests a transaction.

The transaction is complete.

Benefits

The blockchain is a decentralized ledger of all transactions across a peer-to-peer network.

Using this technology, participants can confirm transactions without the need for a central certifying authority. Potential applications include fund transfers, setting trades, voting, and many other uses.

The requested transaction is broadcast to a P2P network consisting of computers, known as nodes.

Validation The network of nodes validates the transaction and the user's status using known algorithms.

Increased transparency

Complex technology

Accurate tracking

Regulatory implications

Payment ledger

Implementation

Cost reduction

Competing platform

Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange,

created & stored electronically in the blockchain, using encryption techniques to control the creation of monetary units and to verify the transfer of funds.

Bitcoin is the best known example

challenges

Has no intrincic value in that it is not redeemable for another comodity such as good

Potential applications

Automotive Cunsumers could use the blockchain to manage fractional ownership in autonomous cars.

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Once verified, the transaction is combined with other transactions to create a new block of data for the ledger.

The new block is then added to the existing blockchain, in a way that is permanent and unalterable.

Unknowns

A verified transaction can involve cryptocurrency contracts, records, or other information.

Financial services Faster, cheaper settlements

could shave billions of dollars from transaction costs while improving transparency

Votings Using blockchain code, constituents could cast votes via smartphone, tablet or computer

resulting in immediately verifiable results

Has no physical form and exists only in the network

Its supply is not determined by a central bank and the network is completely decentralized

Healthcare Patients' encrypted health information

could be shared with multiple providers without the risk of privacy breaches.

Infographic

Simplify Data Management THE INTERNET OF THINGS In ONE Internet minute‌

300 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube

347,000

Tweets will go public

9,700

user images will be pinned on Pinterest

4.2 Million posts will be Liked on Facebook

2.4 Million Google searches will be made

So how do you capture this critical data and put it to work for you?

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Infographic

EXISTING DATA CENTER LEGACY It’s tempting to tackle the demand for data by trying to scale your infrastructure. But beware, it’s…

Expensive

w

Inefficient

Fragmented

GENERIC CLOUD SOLUTIONS Remember, these services have their problems too…

Hidden Costs

A lack of compatibility and support

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Complexity

Limited capabilities and deployment choice

Infographic

ORACLE DATABASE CLOUD Introducing an affordable, enterprise-scale cloud that delivers‌

100% synergy and compatibility

Greater scalability

Quicker deployment

Precision performance

Real-time data insights

Multi-layered security

Single-vendor accountability

A comprehensive data-management portfolio

SUMMARY Try Oracle Database Cloud free of charge for 30 days, with no ongoing commitment – just visit us at cloud.oracle.com/database.

Join our communities http://simularity.com/2016/07/11/the-2-iot-trends-that-are-creating-the-worlds-next-data-explosion/

VDL25425 160909

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57

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