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Riding the wave of new opportunities E
mbracing emerging technologies opens up a sea of opportunities for the channel. In the 3rd platform era, Mobility, Analytics, security, cloud are all seen as strong frontiers of growth. According to a recent Gartner survey, Mobility in fact remains a strong priority for CIOs in the region, driven by the needs of Businesses to beef up customer facing mobile applications as well as securing Mobile payment facilities. The adoption of the cloud for security and surveillance is expected to get more prevalent and will possibly open up a good focus area for service providers in this space. Security and surveillance systems are likely to get more integrated and aspects like predictive analytics based on video could become a regular feature that helps companies boost preventive security measures. Solutions like network visibility and monitoring will get a big boost with the urgent need to secure networks whose topologies are transforming frequently, especially in a virtualized infrastructure. As the cover story discusses, 4K HD video is helping transform the immense potentialities in the IP video surveillance market. Enhanced technologies are being brought to market that supports such high end video imaging for physical security on different fronts including high capacity storage. In the region, this is a segment that will in all likelihood continue to see high speed growth. Up ahead, vendors could play price disruption strategies to hold customer base as competition becomes fierce for every segment, even between cloud services providers and on-premises offerings. Value propositions of different solutions are becoming more complex to communicate and price could be a useful message to get across to initiate discussions.
R. Narayan Managing Editor Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sales Director: Alishan Zaidi Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh
ontents
Editorial
Cover story - 18
A buoyant outlook
IP video surveillance is on a definitive growth path and is benefitting manufacturers of devices from IP cameras, to NVRs that are building blocks of end to end surveillance solutions
News in Detail - 12
Finesse to offer Strategic Banking Compliance Solutions Point2Point
Geared up to seize emerging opportunities - 14
Mohammed Zameer, GM at Al Rostamani Communications (ARC) discusses the company’s areas of expertise and opportunities it is pursuing
A specialist to the fore - 24
George Ezzat, CEO of Elite VAD speaks about the distributor’s focus areas and solutions
Feature - 22
Driving network visibility
Network visibility is an increasing challenge in heterogeneous data centre infrastructures and companies like Gigamon are offering solutions that tackle this
Insight
The Rising need to secure with Modern Technologies - 28
Government Entities in Middle East need Modern Day Security Solutions and Practices to combat Modern Day Cyber Crime writes Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at A10 Networks
Managing Big Data - 30
Gerald Sternagl, EMEA Business Unit Manager Storage at Red Hat writes on tips to manage Big Data storage
Regulars
News Bytes Eyetech Stats & trends
Published by: JNS Media International MFZE P.O. Box: 121075, Montana Building 404, Zabeel Road, Near GPO, Karama, Dubai-UAE - Tel: 04-3705022 Fax: 04-3706639 Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possible to get accurate information on published content in this handbook they cannot be held liable for any errors herein.
News Bytes
Array Networks unveils new Virtualized Appliance Array Networks has announced the immediate availability of its new range AVX7600 virtualized appliance through its authorized distributor in the region ComGuard, a leading Value Added Distributor in the Information Security space. The AVX7600 can support both ADC and SSL VPN instances and supports up to 16 entry, eight small, four medium or two large virtual appliances per system. Support for pay-as-you-go pricing in quartercapacity increments, with the option to mix and match virtual appliance sizes, allows cloud providers and enterprises to affordably scale customers or applications on a single high-performance appliance that simultaneously improves management efficiency and reduces requirements for space, power and cooling. “Service providers and enterprises are moving towards cloud and virtualization technologies, but are facing with challenges in maintaining performance and cost-efficiency for networking functions,” said Srinivas Vege, Regional Sales Head for Array Networks. “With the AVX7600, these customers get the best of both worlds – the agility and management efficiency of virtual appliances and the performance and scalability of dedicated appliances.”
4 | April 2015
DST joins Cumulus Channel Program Data Science Technologies (DST), a subsidiary of StorIT Distribution and a pioneer in the Big Data Analytics solutions and services space has joined the Cumulus Networks channel partner program and is now offering open networking solutions for a broad range of data center networking architectures and use cases. Signed under the Cumulus Networks Select Partner Program for the Middle East, DST will promote and sell Cumulus Linux to its customers and reseller partners and provide system integration and consulting services such as planning, designing and implementing the technology within various customer environments. As part of the agreement, DST will promote Cumulus Linux, the first true Linux operating system that runs on top of industry standard networking hardware. Cumulus Linux is a software-only solution that provides the ultimate flexibility for modern data center networking designs and operations, enabling the best of breed hardware ecosystem and the best of breed solutions ecosystem with a standard operating system, Linux. “The use of Cumulus Linux for big data and other use cases safeguards businesses from vendor lock-in and we are committed to be part of this growing movement across the global community. By joining the Cumulus Networks program, DST now partners with a major player in the networking arena, enhancing our standing as an exceptional technology service provider,” said Shashi, Sales Manager – Big Data Practice & Open Infrastructure Solutions, Data Science Technologies
PROMISE Technology and Musallam to host Training PROMISE Technology Inc., a recognized global leader in the storage industry, is hosting a Video Surveillance Training Course at the Park Regis Kris Kin Hotel in Dubai from May 13 -14, 2015 with its partner Musallam Trading, a distributor of PROMISE’s high performance storage solutions for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The course includes demonstrations, hands-on training on real equipment, and an overview of the unique selling points for the PROMISE solutions in the video surveillance market. Participants who complete the Video Surveillance Training Course receive a certification and the knowledge to successfully install, configure and maintain PROMISE storage solutions in the field. Omar Musallam, Director, Musallam Trading, said, “We are excited to offer this training course with a global leader like PROMISE Technology to bring in-depth training and demonstrations to our partners throughout the region. Storage solutions are the backbone of the infrastructure of any surveillance project and the knowledge shared in this course is vital to ensuring our partners understand the best practice approach to deploying PROMISE solutions.” John van den Elzen, Managing Director, PROMISE Technology EMEA, “The video surveillance industry is growing quickly in the Middle East, so it’s very important to provide our channel partners with the necessary training and expertise. Training the channel and providing them with product and market knowledge is a key way that we are ensuring the quality and performance of PROMISE solutions throughout the region.”
News Bytes
Prologix partners with Zebra Prologix Distribution has entered into a partnership agreement with Zebra Technologies Corporation. Prologix is authorised to distribute the entire range of indoor and outdoor wireless network solutions with break-fix service maintenance and advanced services and Support. The highly scalable WLAN solutions from Zebra enable high-speed data transfer, video streaming and further multimedia rich applications in the warehouse and on the loading ramp, which require high bandwidth. The Zebra Technologies WLAN portfolio includes access points, wireless controllers, and highperformance WLAN security and management technologies such as WiNG 5 WLAN and MPact Microlocationing solutions, enabling workers to use wireless solutions more efficiently and productively. Aditya Sahaya, director, Business Development, Prologix Distribution said, "Prologix is extremely proud to be associated with Zebra Technologies. Our aim is to use Prologix’s extensive network of channels to buoy the reach of these solutions into unexplored customer territories."
6 | April 2015
TP-LINK Expands SMB Products Array in MEA TP-LINK Technologies has expanded its SMB products portfolio with the launch of the EAP220, a business class indoor Wi-Fi access point and T3700G-28TQ, a 28-Port Gigabit stackable Layer3 managed switch. Intended for SMB environments such as offices, restaurants, campuses, and hotels etc, the EAP220 stands out as one of the most versatile and cost effective wireless access point solutions on the market. In addition, the EAP220 provides support for key features such as EAP centralized controller software and Real-time Operations Monitoring. The EAP220 sports four powerful Internal Antennas for greater bandwidth with wireless concurrent dual band speeds of up to 600Mbps, and the onboard Qualcomm Atheros Chipset, known for its reliability, provides the power behind the wheel. The EAP220's compact chassis represents a well-defined ceiling and wall mount design for flexible deployment while also being aesthetically pleasing. Additionally, the onboard PoE connection ensures industry standard Power over Ethernet, and the Gigabit Ethernet port supports wired speeds of up to 1000Mbps. "One of the main considerations for access points in the workplace is placement and flexibility," said Denny Liang, Vice President MEA, TP-LINK Middle East. “The EAP series was designed to be as compact and as versatile as possible to allow for easy installation and maximum coverage," he said.
Spectrami and LogRhythm jointly conduct Tech Workshop Spectrami in association with LogRhythm had recently organised Tech Workshop, a training workshop for its channel partners on LogRhythm Security Intelligence solutions in Dubai, UAE. LogRhythm’s patented and award-winning Security Intelligence Platform unifies SIEM, log management, network forensics, host forensics and advanced security analytics. LogRhythm also provides unparalleled compliance automation and assurance as well as IT intelligence to Global 2000 organizations, government agencies and mid-sized businesses worldwide. Channel partners from all over Middle East attended Tech Workshop that was held earlier this month in Gloria Hotel Dubai. The workshop ran separate tracks for sales and pre-sales and was well received by channel partners. Partners like AlRostamani Communications, Insight Oman, Saar Information technology, 6 Sigmea ,Diyar United, Paramount Bahrain, ISYX Technologies, Aisle Five, EON IT & CDN were among the few who attended Tech Workshop. Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami, said, "As a true value added distributor, we strongly believe in enabling our channel with the right set of knowledge and skill sets. Tech Workshop provides an excellent platform for knowledge transfer but also to understand the challenges partners face in front of a customer."
News Bytes
Alpha Data wins recognition at Citrix NetApp Delivers Data Summit in Las Vegas Backup and Archive Alpha Data was named ‘Most Influencing Citrix Solution Advisor - Middle East Africa’ for to the Cloud 2014 at the 2015 Citrix Summit held recently in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The company NetApp has introduced new software and solutions for hybrid IT deployments that improve data backup and recovery times and give customers more control over how, when and where they store their data throughout its lifecycle. NetApp introduced three new models of SteelStorecloud-native backup solution as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), which provides an efficient and secure approach to back up cloud-based workloads. Customers can also choose on-premises SteelStore physical appliances for seamless, secure data protection to the cloud. ”Every customer has a unique set of IT requirements when it comes to supporting business growth. To support growth, organizations want the ability to use the cloud on their terms,” said Phil Brotherton, vice president, Cloud Solutions Group, NetApp. “NetApp is investing in a data fabric architecture and framework to make hybrid IT simpler, faster and more secure. Our newest backup and archive solutions help customers take advantage of hybrid deployments to gain flexibility and reduce cost.”
8 | April 2015
was honored for its outstanding sales and deployment of Citrix technologies. At this year’s Citrix Summi, Alpha Data, a Gold Citrix Solution Advisor for the Middle East region, was honored for its exceptional ability to implement market-leading Citrix technologies for virtualization, networking and cloud services¬ in 2014. Alpha Data has overseen several high-profile integration works using server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing solutions developed by Citrix. Deepak M.S, Product Manager of Alpha Data’s Enterprise Division Alpha Data, represented the company during the Summit.
MEA to Second-Fastest IT Growth in 2015, says SAP Organizations in the MENA region are early adopters of the technology innovations, as the wider region will post the world’s second-fastest IT growth in 2015, announced SAP MENA’s new Head of Customer Office. The MEA’s ICT spending is set to pass USD 270 billion in 2015, with the region’s IT market growing nine percent, the second-fastest of any global region, according to research firm IDC. In particular, IDC predicts strong growth in Smart Cities, telecommunication and digital services, and security investments. With global ICT growth on the rise, SAP predicts there will be 75 billion connected devices and 2.5 billion connections by 2020, unlocking an opportunity of USD 65 trillion in what SAP calls the “Networked Economy”. “Organizations in the MENA region are deploying the latest technology not simply because it exists, but rather to innovate new business models, radically simplify business processes, and deliver superlative experience to tech-savvy customers,” said Sam Alkharrat, President, SAP MENA. “Technology is becoming increasing vital as the region hosts mega-projects and mega-events like World Expo 2020 and 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar, with ICT helping organizations to gain a competitive advantage and to drive the region’s economy.” In anticipation of the increasing importance of customer innovation in the Networked Economy, SAP MENA has become the first in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) to open a dedicated Customer Office.
News Bytes
Aruba signs on WestconGroup Aruba Networks has signed a partnership agreement with WestconGroup. The relationship extends from the Middle East and includes France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and South Africa. As per the agreement, WestconGroup will distribute Aruba’s portfolio of access management, network infrastructure and mobile engagement solutions through its extensive network of resellers and system integrators across these regions, enabling regional organizations to create nextgeneration wireless networks. Osama AlHaj-Issa, Channel Director, Middle East and Turkey at Aruba Networks says, “We are currently experiencing a huge demand for our mobility solutions and exponential year on year growth. As we look to tap into the huge business potential in the region, we find it critical that we form alliances with key partners that share our vision and have the capabilities and resources to help us grow. We are delighted to sign on Westcon as our new distributor in the Middle East." WestconGroup initially plans to focus its efforts on expanding Aruba’s footprint in high-growth markets like UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan and Oman.
10 | April 2015
Bulwark partners with RadarServices Bulwark Distribution FZCO, has announced its partnership with RadarServices Middle East, expert for pro-active IT security monitoring and IT risk management with European footprints. RadarServices Middle East, headquartered in Dubai, is the Middle Eastern arm of RadarServices, Europe’s Number 1 for pro-active IT security monitoring and IT risk management as a managed service. Bulwark Technologies will strengthen the sales network for the RadarServices Risk Detection & Intelligence Service in the entire GCC. Jose Thomas, CEO of Bulwark explained, “RadarServices provides key services in the field of IT risk management as a managed service. We see a strong demand for such services.” Aji Joseph, General Manager at RadarServices Middle East adds, “Our Risk Detection & Intelligence Service allows pro-active, continuous risk identification. No data leaves the client’s premises. There is no additional investment in personnel or in hard- or software necessary. are delivered in an easy to understand Risk Cockpit, through which near-time management of potential risk becomes possible. This is how we understand IT security monitoring - strongly oriented on client needs.” Amongst the features of the service are risk management as a managed service, automated risk detection, risk analysis and assessment by experts, active guidance for risk remediation, a risk cockpit for IT managers as well as executives etc
Condo Protego grabs Websense Award Condo Protego, one of the region’s leading data storage and protection companies, has been named as Best Performing New Partner by Internet security company Websense. The company received the accolade for its “exceptional” performance within the Middle East and North Africa and Turkey markets, according to Websense. Condo Protego’s sales of Websense products grew more than 200 per cent in 2014. Condo Protego has also been awarded with Platinum Partner status by Websense, making it only one of two firms in the UAE to achieve Platinum status, the security company’s highest level of partner certification. A global leader in integrated Web security, data security and e-mail security solutions, Websense security solutions protect more than 40,000 organizations worldwide, with its solutions designed to block malicious code, prevent the loss of confidential information and enforce Internet use and security policies. “The Best Performing New Partner award is recognition of the huge increase in revenue for Websense products we have achieved in the past year as we have increased our focus on our Security portfolio. As we move forward, security is going to be an increasingly important part of our portfolio – reflecting customer demand – and awards like this demonstrate that we are a trusted security provider,” said Savitha Bhaskar, Chief Operating Officer at Condo Protego.“
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News In Detail
F
inesse has partnered with Fintellix (formerly known as create), a leading Compliance, Risk and Analytics products and solutions provider for the global financial sector to offer their compliance solutions amongst Banks in the GCC. Meanwhile, a premier Indian Private Bank has chosen Fintellix's Risk-based Supervision (RBS) solution with a strategic vision to transition smoothly to the country's new 'RBS-driven' regulatory regime. This initiative by the Bank will help it migrate efficiently towards complying with the Indian Central Bank - the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Risk-based supervision (RBS) guidelines by leveraging the effort spent on RBI’s Automated Data Flow
has a strong and pro-active Regulatory ecosystem that is considered a benchmark by central Banks of several progressive economies. Significant regulatory mandates in the Indian Banking regulation world invariably gets mandated in other geographies as well, for example XBRL and Automated submissions will soon be introduced in the GCC. Also, Regulatory Compliance is more about complex Data management and less about the actual reporting. Data management and its central role in delivering trusted Data that regulators can rely on, therefore becomes paramount. Fintellix makes substantial investments in tracking global
Anup Pai COO, Fintellix
Finesse to offer strategic Banking Compliance Solutions from Fintellix initiative, while at the same time benefiting from features like customizable workflows, seamlessly integrated action plans and superior collaboration capabilities. The RBS submission team at the Bank will now have complete control at a Data-point level, while simplifying management of the submission by supporting team-level administration, collaboration between various teams, easily configurable workflows, dashboards for continuous monitoring and a slew of powerful features. India is a complex regulatory environment and
12 | April 2015
Compliance trends to extract common themes that get incorporated in Fintellix's next generation Data management platform in advance, e.g. Fintellix’s foresight for RBI's ADF and BCBS239 well before the regulators published the papers. With its next generation, business-user oriented features and flexible platform, Fintellix has solved Compliance challenges for some of the fastest growing Banks in the fastest changing Compliance ecosystems. Moreover, clean Data is the bedrock of Compliance and each Compliance initiative
needs to leverage a common platform of clean, unified Data. Fintellix’s SEMI (Single Extract Multiple Implementation) is a critical component for preventing loss of time, effort and money of building in silos. Incidentally, Fintellix is the only product for RBS and having the maximum number of installations; currently 14 Banks - for ADF, NPA and RBS. Critical success factors such as Faster Implementation, Agile Change Management and operations and Data Re-use for newer CRA (Compliance, Risk and Analytics) requirements have made Fintellix the preferred choice of Banks. Also
3 of the top 4 Indian Private Sector Banks are now relying on Fintellix for Regulatory Compliance. Speaking on the occasion, Anup Pai, COO, Fintellix said, "Change is constant in the Compliance ecosystem and the key requirement for any regulatory Compliance solution needs to be agility to handle change. Our customer has always been amongst the first movers for implementing regulatory best practices in India and we are delighted that they have chosen Fintellix's Risk-based Supervision solution to enhance their Compliance efficiencies."
Point2Point | Al Rostamani Communications
Discuss your focus on datacenter and telecom segment solutions. Our strategy to focus on Datacenters and Telecom solutions is to build a sustainable and robust business. Our execution approach is fundamentally different from traditional technology deployment companies as we enable businesses for top/bottom line performance, enhance their customer experience and give them sharp competitive edge. We just don’t sell technology, our engagements are business led and highly consultative to create value for our customers. Through our strategic partnersnWorX Technologies, we also bring to the table business/industry domain knowledge along with deep technical expertise in deploying cloud based solutions which gives us an unparalleled position in the market. On one hand we are directly engaged with our key customers to enable them with cloud solutions while on the other we are concurrently working with telecom service providers to assist them monetize their datacenter investments through cloud based propositions and evolving into IoT solutions. Do you do significant volume of your Business with the local telecom operators? What are the typical integration opportunities in this segment you fulfil? Yes, we do significant business with the telecom operators. The business opportunities are around CPE’s and professional services in the area of Provisioning to our Telecom customers. We also provide system integration in the area of ICT specially Security, Storage and Datacenter technologies.
Mohammed Zameer General Manager, ARC
Geared up to seize emerging opportunities Al Rostamani Communications (ARC) is a leading IT & Telecommunication solutions provider and systems integrator, offering innovative, integrated technology solutions and
Do you offer end to end deployment to build a datacenter as well as do you help partners focusing on datacenter upgrades? We complement our in-house capabilities along with some of our highly experienced cloudand IoT technology
14 | April 2015
professional services to customers in UAE and other GCC countries. Mohammed Zameer, GM at ARC discusses the company’s areas of expertise and opportunities it is pursuing
Point2Point | Al Rostamani Communications
"Our execution approach is fundamentally different in the region and partners like it is a transition nWorX to plan, from traditional technology deployment companies step between build and operate as we enable businesses for top/bottom line in house IT to datacenters, cloud performance, enhance their customer experience and the cloud based nodes and digital give them sharp competitive edge." services. We market places. already have a By the way we NOC wherein also run a Tierreal-estate” or data centre requirements we are managing IT services of some III certified datacenter which gives us globally. Also, mega data centre are of our customers including a large hands on experience while proposing expected to contribute to more than 70% Managed services contract for a key enterprise grade solutions. Building a of the global digital real-estate. application for Telecom segment. data Centre from scratch is a capex and In our region overall digital intensity In the Telecom space there are time intensive exercise; therefore we is much lower though consumers in many opportunities, as the service have developed cloud service provider this region are leading in smartphone providers are outsourcing many of their enablement program whereby enterprise traditional customer facing activities. customers can have on demand managed penetration, YouTube eyeball time; so while the sands are shifting we are IaaS/SaaS cloud based offerings. still trailing to see hyper-growth stage Elaborate on vendors you are Due to significant reduction in TCO for for digital economic contribution. We associated with? cloud services customers are gradually have conducted some data centre We provide complete end to embracing cloud based IT services end services for Datacenter and deployment model, however its a journey market assessment for the region which indicates that with cloud based services Business enablement. For Datacenter and we are well geared to support the delivery model number of data centre infrastructure our partners are market across various needs. builds will decline however the physical Schneider, APC,&Pelco etc.For ICT We do help in building datacenter datacentre space will continue to grow requirements of Datacenter we physical facilities, physical security, with double digit CAGR growth. work closely with Cisco, HP, Intel surveillance, power, cooling as well as Security, Symantec, NetApp, Fujitsu, in designing ofthe Cloud infrastructure With several networking vendors Alcatel Lucent Enterprise,VMware, and build covering networking, compute, supporting software defined Citrix, Microsoft etc.For Cloud storage, security domains. We provide datacenters, have you as of yet business enablement we have strong implementation and ongoing cloud worked on any such initiatives with partnership with nWorX, Virtustream infrastructure operations management by existing datacenters? and Jamcracker. deploying cloud management platforms/ Our data Centre practice team and cloud tools. We also offer implementation and technologies practitioners from our How was 2014 from growth point of management of customer facing cloud partners are at the forefront of such new view? services marketplaces whereby end users developments. We are actively engaged Especially in the area of Cloud and can consume on-demand XaaS (anything on projects for example with Nutanix Managed services year 2014 has been as a service). who are industry leaders in software very prospective and we are working on many projects in this area and hope Do you see datacenter business seeing defined storage; using VMware suite of software defined data Centre products; close few Major by end of Q2. a significant growth in the region? deploying and managing Virtustream We view datacenter business providing cloud management software to deliver What is the outlook for the current “digital real-estate for nations as their highly secure enterprise grade public, year and where do you see the economies shift more toward digital major growth opportunities? businesses.If you look at data points from private and hybrid cloud solutions. We are also currently bidding with a leading The Major Business in 2015 is going leading digital economies, more than telecom operator with NEC SDN solutions. to be enabling technologies across 8% of their GDP is already being derived cloud, Managed Services and Telecom from this segment and more than 20% of Have you seen managed services professional services. ManyOperators the GDP growth is coming out of digital coming of age in the region? Are there in UAE are outsourcing many noneconomic contribution any initiatives in this direction as yet? core activities to established system Therefore there are very strong Yes Managed services Market is maturing integrators. fundamentals that are driving “digital 16 | April 2015
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Cover Feature | IP Video Surveillance
A buoyant outlook IP video surveillance is on a definitive growth path and is benefitting manufacturers of devices from IP cameras, to NVRs that are building blocks of end to end surveillance solutions
I
P video surveillance continues to be a fast growth area and is likely to be so, for the foreseeable future across verticals. IP Video surveillance systems are now widely installed in public locations such as Banks, hospitals, schools, malls, shopping centers, airport etc. These help potential crimes or facilitate investigations should anything unfortunate happen. The segment has seen a rising number of manufacturers and partners focusing on it. IPTV surveillance systems generally involve a number of devices from cameras to network video recorders, high capacity storage drives as well as network switches and therefore the segment’s growth has been good news for manufacturers of all these devices as well as distributors who focus on providing end to end IP security solutions to their partners. “The driving factor for IP Surveillance in businesses is the need for security.
With the addition of more and more new features, the cameras are getting more advanced and businesses can feel more secure. As for consumers, the driving factor is not just security but also convenience. The booming of smartphones makes IP Surveillance more accessible since you can view your cameras everywhere you go as long as you are connected to the Internet,� says Sakkeer Hussain, Sales & Marketing Director at D-Link Middle east. The Manufacturer offers a huge portfolio of cameras, from SOHO to
enterprise. Apart from cameras that range from dome cameras, bullet cameras, Box, cameras, cube cameras to PTZ cameras, it also offers Network Video Recorders. New technologies are enabling coverage over broader areas and of better clarity irrespective of how challenging the conditions are. Over the past year or so, one of the significant advances has been the new HD Standard 4K in cameras that enables capture of content at four times the resolution of Full HD (1080p). Almost all manufacturers are now offering 4k HD quality cameras. This answers growing
Sabbah Khan, Regional Manager, ME, Allied Telesis
Sakkeer Hussain, Sales & Marketing Director, D-Link ME
expectations of enhanced image quality and greater surveillance coverage. For instance, Sony recently added 4K imaging to its line of security technologies, with the new SNC-VM772R camera. The new model combines the enhanced resolution of 4K with several features including low-light sensitivity leveraging 1.0 type back Illuminated Exmor R CMOS image sensor, bandwidth optimization etc. With the exceptional detail provided by 4K technology, security professionals can expand their wide area surveillance and still capture, magnify and examine the smallest parts of a scene like a face or a car license plate number – all with a single camera. "4K is the new standard in video security, but 4K imaging is about more than just increased resolution," said Aydin Tolan, Business Head, Visual Security Solutions, Sony Professional Solutions MEA. "We believe 4K is the next resolution standard in the security industry and is key to expanding the application potential of security cameras. The increased resolution covers a larger area in greater detail, improving situational awareness and ensuring nothing is missed. These benefits help security professionals reduce installation and operating costs as fewer cameras are needed for specific areas." Sony has developed several unique technologies to overcome the challenges of 4K cameras in the market: improving visibility and light sensitivity while reducing the amount of bandwidth needed to handle large 4K files. For Allied Telesis, a networking manufacturer, surveillance is a significant focus globally and in the region. “Allied Telesis network solutions are widely positioned in the Digital Video Surveillance sector across the globe. We are seeing a rapid growth in the Middle East territory and our partner base is playing a key role in our success. We are ensuring our partners are leaders in this domain, and have full capabilities to carry out complex scenarios and projects,” says Sabbah Khan, Regional Manager, Middle East.
"We believe 4K is the next resolution standard in the security industry and is key to expanding the application potential of security cameras. The increased resolution covers a larger area in greater detail, improving situational awareness and ensuring nothing is missed." Allied Telesis offers a diverse portfolio of products, and a suite of features, that can enhance the ability to securely and reliably transport security video footage across an IP network. These include a variety of reference designs for Allied Telesis-based network solutions that support IP video surveillance. The smaller installations are based on Layer 2 switching technology, while the larger scenarios include options for a Layer 3 routed environment. Sabbah adds, “The pure Layer 2 approach is preferable in small to medium installations and does not require a complex multicast architecture involving multicast routing protocols unlike larger systems. Allied Telesis offers their Partners all the support and information needed to be able to manage the installation of
digital video surveillance systems in the optimal way” Apart from cameras, manufacturers are looking to enhance other building blocks that go into making IP security solutions. One of the recent innovations from Axis communications, include the Zipstream technology that allows customers to benefit from reduced bandwidth and storage requirements without having to invest in new cameras or software. The technology has been developed specifically for video surveillance applications and lowers bandwidth and storage requirements by an average 50% or more. “Significant progress towards better image quality with higher HDTV resolutions and increased low-light performance has also increased the requirements on the April 2015 | 19
network and storage infrastructure. With Axis’ Zipstream technology we enable our customers to drastically reduce bandwidth and storage needs without compromising on important image details. For example, more than twice the video footage can now be stored on SD cards or NAS’s in small systems built on AXIS Camera Companion as well as other edge recording applications,” says Baraa Al Akkad, Regional Sales Manager, Middle East. The manufacturer has also enabled the new AXIS Q61-E Series of cameras with its unique Sharpdome technology that arguably provides full scene fidelity and sharp images in all directions. In addition, the technology enables cameras to offer the unique capability to identify objects as much as 20° above the camera horizon making these cameras also suitable for uneven terrain. Constant innovations are the hallmarks of the surveillance segment and Synology, the NAS manufacturer has its own innovations targeting the segment. It sees a growing demand for the network video recorders in the region and has been actively driving initiatives in the market through partner events as well as participation at leading expos to
20 | April 2015
Victor Wang, Sales Manager, ME, Synology
Sonia Sebastian,Director, Security Systems, SNB
Cover Feature | IP Video Surveillance
ensure good visibility of the Brand and its products. Victor Wang, Sales Manager, Middle East for Synology says, “The Middle East is definitely one of the most fast-growing and promising markets in our surveillance segment. We see many up-and-coming businesses and government sectors that are showing high demand for premium quality NVR equipment. With our strengths as a NAS server provider, many adding values and unique features can be integrated into our surveillance package, to make it a more complete and competitive solution. We are always considering Middle East as one of our key markets in terms of marketing investment and sales input, and will keep improving our services and product support to optimize Middle Eastern customers’ experience.” The manufacturer has been signing up with distributors who already have a focus on surveillance as a complete end to end solution. Synology wants to ensure partners can provide cameras and hard drives along with their NVRs as a one-stop shop for customers who are looking for surveillance solutions. Victor adds, “Since the surveillance market has proved a strong industry in the Middle East in recent years, it would
be advantageous if channel partners are capable of providing complete surveillance solutions. Synology has signed distribution agreement with Global Distribution, who carries the camera brand of Mobotix recently. In Saudi Arabia, our regional distributor Mushor is the official partner of ACTi. Our Kuwait distributor Cameo is also carrying Compro and TRENDnet. All of those camera brands have been integrated with our video management system Surveillance Station.” Sonia Sebastian, Director, Security Systems at SNB Middle East believes the growth in IP surveillance is likely to remain upbeat for the next few years since there is a significant level of investments in infrastructure as the region gears up to host several global events. She says, “The Middle East has multiple events lined up that will grab world focus such as 2020 world expo to be held in Dubai, 2022 FIFA world cup in Qatar etc. Considering the events upcoming in the next 5-7 years in the region most other Middle East countries will enhance their security. The growth forecasted is optimum, may exceed too. “ The distributor has a focus on end to end solutions for IP surveillance. The distributor offers cameras from Pelco and Mobotix, Video Management software and Analytics from Axxon Soft, Video storage from NexSan and Infortrend. In addition, it also provides Power (UPS) solutions from Tripp lite and Infosec as well as Allied Telesis network products for the active network requirements of CCTV market. For Wireless CCTV solutions it partners with Proxim. Sonia adds, “Surveillance has been largely growing in the Hospitality, Retail, Transportation and Government segments. Last year however, we saw an increase in the Education and Healthcare sectors too. CCTV as a Vertical could grow at a rate of 12-15% globally between 2015 and 2020. However, as the region is a developing market, growth could even exceed these expectations.”
IaaS Provider
Tenants/Applications/Customers
Array Networks Introduces New Virtualized Appliance with Support for Both Virtual ADC and Virtual SSL VPN Instances Array Networks Inc., a global leader in application delivery networking, announces the immediate availability of its new range AVX7600 virtualized appliance. The AVX7600 can support both ADC and SSL VPN instances and supports up to 16 entry, eight small, four medium or two large virtual appliances per system. Support for pay-as-you-go pricing in quarter-capacity increments, with the option to mix and match virtual appliance sizes, allows cloud providers and enterprises to affordably scale customers or applications on a single high-performance appliance that simultaneously improves management efficiency and reduces requirements for space, power and cooling.
AVX Series Benefit Bundle
Key AVX Series Differentiators • Guaranteed performance and supports for ADC & SSL
VPN on same appliance.
• High-performance 65Gbps and 115Gbps virtualized
• • • •
appliances, supporting up to 16 or 32 instances respectively. Supports entry-level, small, medium and large virtual appliances with the ability to mix and match instances. Supports pay-as-you-go licensing in one-quarter, half, three-quarters and full capacity increments. High availability spanning AVX virtualized appliances and constituent vAPV and vxAG virtual appliances. eCloud™ API for integration with cloud management, orchestration and automation.
The AVX Series are the only virtualized appliances of their kind. By allocating dedicated CPU, SSL, memory and I/O to each instance and by allocating separate dedicated resources to management functions, IaaS providers can guarantee performance for each customer and enterprises can guarantee performance for each application workload.
TALK TO OUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY ! Srinivas Vege
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Afi Hashim
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Network visibility is an increasing challenge in heterogeneous data centre infrastructures and companies like Gigamon are offering solutions that tackle this
Driving network visibility N
etwork traffic visibility is increasingly a critical need for organization, especially as they look to deploy next generation virtualized infrastructure, software defined networks and cloud based capabilities. Gigamon is a leading vendor in the network monitoring solutions space with its Unified Visibility Fabric solutions. These soluions offer pervasive traffic visibility for organizations that need to cope with an increase in the number and complexity of network security threats, the deployment of distributed applications over
22 | April 2015
virtualized infrastructure, and the potential ‘blind spots’ created by encapsulated and encrypted traffic. Vijay Babber, Senior Systems Engineer, Enterprise – MEA says, “Network visibility will become a strategic need for all organizations as they start to implement more security and control. For any organisations implementing 10, 40 or 100Gb networks, then it is essential to be able to maintain their security posture and to monitor their environment. For companies who are migrating to a virtualized environment, they would need to monitor
and secure the traffic in the virtual switch. More and more systems need to be able to see the traffic on a network to be able to operate. The visibility fabric provides that feature but with enough control to make it more efficient.” The primary solution from Gigamonis the visibility architecture that provides a platform to enable insight into network infrastructure blind spots. The GigaVUE Fabric Nodes, which are modular and extensible for a range of scale and performance requirements from 1Gb 1RU nodes to 2.4Tb chassis-based
Vijay Babber, Senior System Engineer, Enterprise MEA
Feature | Gigamon
solutions form the foundation of the distributed fabric. In larger visibility infrastructures, these nodes are typically organized into an edge-core architecture. The core layer of visibility is characterized by scale and intelligence capabilities that are essential to operators as network traffic diversity, complexity and volume continues to increase. Typically, this function is provided by the GigaVUE H Series, which when combined with the GigaSMART traffic and flow processing provides the core of any visibility architecture. The GigaVUE-OS can now be used on white
box hardware as well which extends visibility across the datacenter. Further, the company offers GigaSMAR Ttechnology which incorporates highperformance compute engines to extend the intelligence and value of the Gigamon Visibility Fabric architecture by modifying, transforming, and correlating traffic from various sources to the tools you rely upon for management, monitoring, and security. Vijay explains, “We offer a single set of software that operates on a range of platforms of different sizes and scale. However it is possible to buy Smart features for the platform which include SSL decryption, Netflow generation, de-duplication, etc.” The Visibility Fabric encompasses visibility into virtualized infrastructures as these deployments rapidly grow in enterprises. The GigaVUE-VM forms the virtual edge of the visibility infrastructure and extends visibility within virtual networks and monitors traffic between virtual machines. Vijay says, “While the initial implementation of a visibility fabric was purely physical it has become worrying for customers that so much traffic traverses the virtual network unseen. To this end we have developed a version of our fabric nodes that can work in a VMWare environment and collect traffic from the virtual switch in the same way as we do from the
"While we cannot identify individual customers this region has been one of our fastest growing areas globally which has prompted us to open a new office and hire a sales and technical team." physical network. This means that the same level of security awareness can be applied to both worlds at the same time.” Privacy of individual data could be a challenge when traffic is monitored but Gigamon takes care of it by enabling masking of vital personal data like credit card information for instance. “We have the capability to mask and restrict private data that needs to be recorded for legal purposes. For example when credit card information needs to be checked for fraud purposes details like the CVV number can be masked to preserve the integrity of the customer.” Along with the transition to virtualized infrastructures, where the network topology keeps changing quite swiftly and need good network visibility tools for monitoring, the deployment of converged infrastructures is also a scenario wherein such tools hold great relevance. Vijay elaborates, “Many monitoring and security solutions for the datacenter rely on being able to see all of the traffic on the network. This allows them to gain insight into the data in flight which then means that they can identify potential breaches and also monitor performance and individual points across
the data centre infrastructure. What Gigamon provides is the solution to the problem of making sure that each device receives the traffic it needs. It is wasteful and expensive to send non voice traffic to a voice recorder and likewise a network performance monitoring device does not need to see s stream of voice data. So what we do is identify the appropriate traffic and then send that to the appropriate device. While at the same time de-duplicating the traffic and potentially generating Netflow, time stamping and many other tasks to optimise the security and monitoring tasks.” For the last published results in Q3 2014, the company grew the revenue year on year by 52% to $39.3m. Recently, the vendor opened a new office in Dubai with a sales and marketing function consisting of 6 people as it sees rising demand in the region. He says, “While we cannot identify individual customers this region has been one of our fastest growing areas globally which has prompted us to open a new office and hire a sales and technical team. We have seen a growth in both our enterprise and service provider business which we transact exclusively through a channel partners.”
According to Gigamon, the key sectors for it in this region reflect quite closely the early adopters in other regions these are mainly service providers, government and finance. This is driven in service providers by the need to monitor network performance and customer experience. In the finance and government markets, demand is being driven mostly by the adoption of multi-tiered security. For the company, one of the priorities is driving both channel and customer awareness. That is an ongoing task as the vendor continues to engage constantly with the region’s market via its presence at some of the premier technology events. The company's focus is towards working with a small number of highly competent highly motivated partners in every region its operates in. Vijay says, “We are significantly investing in marketing activities in the region with our distributor and channel partners. We will be delivering a number of campaigns both for end users and partner recruitment. We will work with our distribution partners to deliver technical and sales training as well as value added services such support with marketing activities in order to generate leads and build awareness, opportunities to sponsor regional and industry events and assistance in closing deals.” April 2015 | 23
Point2Point | Elite VAD
ELIE VAD is a fast emerging VAD focusing on info security solutions with HQ in Egypt and multiple office spanning MEA territories. George Ezzat, CEO of Elite VAD speaks with the Integrator Magazine about the company’s focus areas and solutions
A specialist to the fore
George Ezzat CEO, Elite VAD
Discuss the company’s outlook for the year. How has the past couple of years been in terms of growth from the company’s perspective? EliteVAD is a Value Added IT Distributor presenting best breed edge Network Information Security and Network Infrastructure Management vendors within MEA. We are now part of GTS Group, a USA Holding Company. EliteVAD focuses into the InfoSec space offering Security Solutions and Security Services including training to the channel arm of its resellers as well as the endusers, also we The company is headquartered in Dubai, UAEwith additional offices in Cairo, Amman, Nairobi and Kuwait. Led by experienced entrepreneurs who understand IT market needs, EliteVAD successfully noticed a 200% growth in terms of revenue between 2013 and 2014. We were able in 2015 to improve
24 | April 2015
our Vendors’ market reach by doubling the number of vendors' and covering different layers of security in addition to penetration expansion on Geo-market across MEA. Your portfolio includes network security software as well as performance management solutions. Discuss your focus around this range? We are partnering with several leading vendors. We are distributors for FireEye malicious threat protection solutions, VSS smart Tapping solutions, Algosec Network Security Policy Management,Next Generation DPI & Bandwidth Management Solutions from Procera Intelligent and more. We provide the new patented Fraud Prevention KFP solution protecting online banking activities and online payment services from Kaspersky. We partner with iboss, a leading provider of innovative APT Defense, Web Security and Mobile Security Solutions as well as IP-Guard for
its powerful IT management software that enables organizations to mitigate internal threats by providing effective means to monitor and investigate user activities, and prevent data leaks. Among other vendors we are associated with include Expert Team (ET), a global leader in providing "LAWFUL INTERCEPTION (LI)" and "CONTENT FORENSICS", Fluke Networks that offers solutions that span network deployment, network performance management and troubleshooting, as well as security and performance monitoring as well as Arbor DDoS protection solutions. Are there plans to extend into other new solution segments? Our Vision is to become SuperVAD for innovative cybersecurity and infrastructure networking technology vendors. Thus we are looking at continuous expansion and sustainable growth both in terms of more solution segments as well as increased
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Point2Point | Elite VAD
geographical footprint to achieve optimum returns to investors and employees. Is there good awareness and interest among the CIOs of the region to invest in network performance monitoring & management solutions? There is a growing interest among the CIOs of the region to invest in network performance monitoring and management solutions. We have therefore partnered with VSS Monitoring and Fluke for network performance monitoring as well as enhancement of current KPIs as well as decrease costs of upgrades and the best use of resources. Do you see need for specific types of solutions against the changing landscape of changes and expectations? In a tough sophisticated and competitive global landscape and against the background of the rise of targeted hacking campaigns, fully integrated security solutions are the need of the hour. These need to come with specific behavior based technology, combined with proactive
forensics Services and Analysis tools for helping to build long-term strategic strengths in the ICT infrastructure for its sustenance against the changing landscape of threats. How many active channel partners do you partner with? Any plans to recruit new partners in specific markets/ verticals? Here in EliteVAD we believe our scalability and success in any market can happen only with strong partners who can take ownership in positioning, selling, and supporting EliteVAD to their customers that’s why we aim to increase our channel arm by always recruiting qualified reseller partners. EliteVAD operates currently across MEA through a channel network of more than 50 resellers comprising of system integrators and corporate partners. What is your pre-sales strength in terms of resources and what are the value propositions you offer partners along with pre-sales? Combining specialist value-adding
technical, pre-sales and sales team inside each local territory, our vendors and reseller partners rely upon EliteVAD to boost business opportunities in InfoSec and Net. Infrastructure Management and help achieve new revenues from the changing enterprise technology landscape. In addition to the facilities and support we offer to our reseller partners in the logistics and offered trainings to insure proper enablement of the partner. The ‘Proof of Value’ program is a high key value we propose to our channel beside Professional Services and After-Sale support so we integrate and complement their delivery capacity Which are your strong markets across MENA and where all do you have your offices? EliteVAD is headquartered in Dubai, UAE; with additional offices in Cairo, Egypt; Amman, Jordan; and Nairobi, Kenya; Kuwait, Kuwait. We will be soon have offices in Saudi and Nigeria.We are proud having remarkable businesses in most countries across the GCC, Middle-East and Africa.
Finesse completes 5 Years of Successful Operations.
A Big Thank You
Celeberating
To all our Clients, Partners & Friends... From the Entire Finesse Team.
2015
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2011
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info@finessedirect.com | www.finessedirect.com | facebook.com/finessedirect 26 | April 2015
Insight | A10 Networks
The Rising need to secure with Modern Technologies Government Entities in Middle East need Modern Day Security Solutions and Practices to combat Modern Day Cyber Crime writes Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at A10 Networks
T
he Middle East has some very specific threats facing government entities. These come from regimes opposed to our politics as well as those wishing to benefit from industrial espionage. Meeting these concerns is a difficult task and one which requires a multi-level approach to security, which provides strength in depth. At the perimeter securing services with DNS Firewall and ‘Volumetric Attack Prevention’ is critical; internal threats are more difficult to counter. As many attacks occur from inside an organisation, it’s necessary to ensure that all traffic is screened at both the ingress and egress points within a government. The proliferation of SSL has enabled many malicious applications to effectively hide their existence once activated, bypassing existing security methods such as internet filters etc because SSL traffic is encrypted and can’t be inspected. Governments need to enter into discussions with security vendors that have countered this threat by developing highly scalable SSL Intercept technology which allows Government entities to intercept all SSL communication destined for the internet originating from inside an organisation and strip off the encryption to allow existing security products to fully monitor the payload before re-encrypting the data and sending it to the final destination should it pass internal security checks. Existing security products that inspect payload aren’t suited for this task due
28 | April 2015
to the high volume of SSL encryption/ decryption required. Therefore a best of breed technology in this space that can scale regardless of SSL key strength is an absolute requirement if government is to avoid service impact due to performance problems. A security strategy should always be fully encompassing, dealing with both physical and logical security. Typically, governments in our region have a high level of physical security in place already. Unfortunately, modern threats tend to favour logical security breaches rather than physical penetration of a government entity meaning that new strategies are required to cope. Critical infrastructure and data are often in some ways synonymous, since they both require logical protection, albeit of a very different kind. You can’t protect data if you don’t adequately protect the perimeter, therefore a solution that offers both perimeter protection of firewalls, DNS infrastructure must be mirrored by internal protections of applications via WAF and importantly, the ability to inspect all communication destined for the internet regardless of whether it’s encrypted or not. Historically, such protection has proved very expensive to procure due to vendors licensing all features on an appliance; this has limited governments, specifically, from enjoying the same level of protection as their commercial counterparts. However some vendors do not have any licensing, allowing any customer to enjoy all the
Glen Ogden Regional Sales Director, ME, A10 Networks
acceleration and security features for a fixed ‘capital’ and ‘operational’ expenditure perspective. Unfortunately, Government spending on security, beyond Firewalls and AV, tends to be viewed in the same way as disaster recovery, i.e. only spend after a breach or a failure. In an increasingly connected world, security should be a very high priority for Government as E-Government is on the rise and both inter-government and citizens mandate their data is both secure and protected. Most CTO’s understand this requirement and we are expecting spending on security to increase especially as many government departments are wishing to adopt Cloud services. UAE, Federal Decree No3 (2012) was a clear indication that ‘cyber threats’ need to be taken seriously and NESA’s inception, clearly, shows how important a credible and properly regulated defence against cyber attacks is to any regions national security. Whilst entities, like NESA, help to raise the profile of threat defence, each Government or Ministry still needs to take action to ensure the region as a whole is fully protected top to bottom.
Insight | Red Hat
Gerald Sternagl Business Unit Manager Storage, EMEA, Red Hat
log or even a GPS signal from a mobile device, organizations are realizing that every single bit of data has the potential to offer valuable insight. Traditional storage systems with their expensive and proprietary components were not designed to handle such volumes of data and any attempt to use these systems to store big data will prove to be extremely costly, not to mention inefficient and inflexible. It is estimated that businesses generate between 40-60% more data each year, making it almost impossible for IT managers to predict the necessary amount of storage capacity - something that they would need to do upfront in the case of traditional storage systems. Finally, there is the issue of portability. Big data cannot
need to address these storage challenges. Rather than simply investing in larger traditional storage systems, enterprises need to completely reinvent their approach to data storage. Fundamental to this approach is the need for enterprises to start thinking about their storage systems as data platforms rather than static data destinations. In doing so, enterprises will be able to meet both their current and future storage needs by satisfying five key success factors for managing big data:
1) Delivering costeffective scale and storage capacity Probably the most critical requirement for big data storage platforms is the need to be agile and flexible enough to be scaled up (both in terms of capacity
Managing Big Data Gerald Sternagl, EMEA Business Unit Manager Storage at Red Hat writes on tips to manage Big Data storage
“Big Data” is no longer just another IT buzzword but rather a valuable business tool for organizations looking to gain a competitive advantage. Whether enterprises want to attract new customers or deliver innovative products, the power and benefits of big data are well documented. However, big data comes with a unique set of challenges, particularly in terms of storage. Gartner research estimates that 40% of all organizations will double the size of their onpremise storage infrastructure
30 | April 2015
by 2016[1], but even if this is the case, big data storage requirements go well beyond the capabilities of traditional SAN and NAS storage systems. Between advances in technology and changes to legal and regulatory requirements (particularly in consumer-facing industries), the sheer volume of data within enterprises is spiralling out of control. If that wasn’t bad enough, the data is no longer uniform and structured; whether it be an email, an image, a video, an application
be dealt with using traditional solutions such as aggregation and data integration, due to the sheer volume of data involved as well as the bandwidth limitations of wide-area networks (WANs). Furthermore, the emergence of cloud computing and virtualization requires IT managers to deploy data storage solutions that can be easily transported from one environment to another. If enterprises are to take advantage of big data and harness its potential, they
and performance) to match the enterprises’ storage demands, with the caveat of keeping CapEx and OpEx to a minimum. Unlike traditional NAS and SAN storage systems with fixed capacity, requiring either a data purge or a very expensive ‘scale-up’ effort to accommodate extra data, big data storage platforms take a ‘scale-out’ approach. This is achieved by combining industry standard commodity servers with virtual or cloud storage resources to create
an easily managed storage system.
physically migrate data from one environment to another.
2) Eliminating need for data migration
3) Bridging legacy storage silos
Because traditional storage systems have fixed capacity, growing businesses need to balance their future data storage requirements with current budget constraints. For this reason, enterprises need to migrate their data to newer systems periodically. Depending on the volume of data, these migrations can be very expensive, cause a drain on personnel, and can often lead to additional hidden costs such as unplanned downtime or overrun leases. With some enterprises’ data now approaching petabyte size, they need to avoid having to
In order to keep pace with the exponential growth in data, enterprises with traditional fixed capacity storage systems often end up accumulating extra storage systems. Because these systems are disconnected from each other, this so called ‘storage sprawl’ inhibits the ability of the enterprise to see the big picture and extract any valuable insight from the gathered data. Rather than adding another system into the mix, big data storage must be capable of bridging these legacy silos.
4) Ensuring global accessibility of data Given the sheer volume of big data, limitations on WAN bandwidth and the consequences of a single point of failure, a centralized approach to data management is no longer practical. Big data storage platforms must be able to manage data distributed across global enterprises as a single, unified pool.
5) Protecting & maintaining the availability of data Traditional storage systems rely on external backups and hardware redundancies to mitigate loss of data and application downtime. Such a strategy is impractical for
big data, from an efficiency and a cost standpoint, due to the volume and decentralized nature of the data. Big data storage platforms need to perform automatic replication of the data to ensure that the data is instantly available and extremely robust. If enterprises want to gain a competitive advantage by harnessing the power of big data, it is imperative that they take decisive action and address their data storage system capabilities. Migrating from traditional fixed capacity storage systems to an open, softwaredefined storage platform will allow enterprises to circumvent all the pitfalls inherent in traditional systems at a fraction of the cost and reap their rewards for years to come.
April 2015 | 31
eyetech
Dell Web-Scale Converged Appliances Overview: The new Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances are highly scalable integrated solutions that help streamline the datacenter and now offer up to more than 50 percent storage capacity and twice the rack density to support customers deploying a wide range of workloads, including virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), private cloud and big data.The new Dell XC Series Version 2.0 appliances offer customers hyper-converged solutions based for the first time on Dell PowerEdge 13th generation server technology combined with Nutanix software and Dell global services and support. The appliances integrate enterprise-class storage, compute and hypervisor resources into a single solution, and further expand Dell’s broad software-defined storage (SDS) portfolio.
The next wave of the Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances offers customers a broader range of integrated solutions for various workloads in virtualized environments. This includes the new Dell XC Series XC630 and XC730xd, built on Dell PowerEdge 13th generation server technology. The appliances offer substantial enhancements to the debut XC Series. Key Features: • The new Dell XC630 introduces a compact 1U form factor to the XC Series portfolio and supports more virtual desktop users in half the rack space compared to Dell’s debut XC720xd, making it an even more attractive option for customers with limited rack space or those deploying VDI and other virtualized workloads. • The new Dell XC730xd (2U) can support 60 percent more storage—up to 32 terabytes—compared to the previous generation, benefitting many customers, especially those deploying private cloud or big data workloads. • The Dell XC Series is designed to be easily deployed and incrementally scaled, lowering total cost of ownership and supporting the agility for customers to simply add new appliances in minutes in a “pay-as-you-grow” model.
32 | April 2015
Synology DiskStation DS1515 Overview: Synology has released thenew DiskStation DS1515, the first 5-bayNASa powerful and expandable 5-bay NAS offering a high-performance, reliable, and full-featured network attached storage solution for growing small and medium-sized businesses. Coming with a quad-core processor and four gigabit LAN ports featuring failover and Link Aggregation, DS1515 delivers outstanding performance, exceeding 421 MB/s writing and 403 MB/s reading when using a RAID 5 configuration in a Windows® environment. The DS1515 supports Synology High Availability, providing redundancy in the event of unexpected network failure and ensuring a smooth transition between clustered servers for the highest reliability and resiliency. The SSD read/write cache support further allows SMBs to see a considerable boost in throughput while minimizing the cost per gigabyte. Designed to grow with SMBs, the DS1515 can scale up to 15 drives when paired with two DX513 expansion units. Growing SMBs expect a storage solution that is versatile and scalable for their future needs, while minimizing the initial investment. The DS1515 is engineered to address such needs, and provides the performance, reliability, and scalability to manage, protect, and share data. Key Features: • Quad core CPU delivers excellent throughput at over421 MB/s writing, 403 MB/s reading • Scale up to 15 drives with the max raw capacity of 120TB • 4 x1GbE LAN ports with failover and Link Aggregation support • Synology High Availability (SHA) decreases the risk of service interruption • Support LUN Snapshot, LUN Clone and Backup & Replication to secure complete data restoration • Award winning OS – DiskStation Manager (DSM)
AXIS P56 Series Overview:
NetBackup 5300 series
Axis Communications
Overview: Symantec has designed the NetBackup 5300 series appliances
has launched AXIS P56
to address the aggressive backup and recovery objectives
Series, which consists
in the data center while protecting both virtual and physical
of outdoor-ready AXIS
environments. It is an integrated media server with storage to
P5635-E and AXIS
deliver high performance, scalable capacity, and resiliency.
P5624-E PTZ Dome
The NetBackup 5300 series appliances are ideal for
Network Cameras
business-critical data centers that demand a performance-
for wide area video
optimized media server with large capacity storage, and
surveillance in indoor
greater resiliency for data management needs.
and outdoor environments. AXIS P5624-E is an HDTV 720p camera with 18x optical zoom. It is ideal for big retail stores, logistics centers and parking lots. AXIS P5635-E is ideal for demanding indoor and
Key Features: • Scalable capacity – starting at 114 TB and expandable to 229 TB, it is designed for larger enterprises, data centers, and disaster recovery sites.
outdoor video surveillance applications such as city
• Robust performance – greater performance compared to the NetBackup 5230:
surveillance. It is an HDTV 1080p camera with 30x
• Up to 3 times faster backup
optical zoom, enabling fine details to be captured at a distance. In addition to the supported features mentioned earlier, this feature-rich camera offers Axis’ Electronic Image Stabilization for better video and bandwidth savings in vibrating conditions. It also supports two-way audio, four configurable input/ output ports for connection to external devices, as well as 24 V AC/DC.
• Up to 6.5 times faster recovery • Up to 4.9 times faster replication •
Resiliency – enhanced protection of the system, deduplication pool, and storage. Enterprise-class hardware includes redundant hot swap components, RAID and disk controllers, power supplies, fan modules, and disks.
• Greater density – delivers more terabytes per rack unit, which reduces floor space requirements and lowers power and cooling costs.
Key Features: • Continuous 360° pan, day/night functionality for superb low light performance • Axis’ Wide Dynamic Range – Forensic Capture (120 dB) that provides details in both very bright and dark areas of a scene • Shock detection that sends an alarm when the camera is hit, intelligent video such as Advanced Gatekeeper, Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) • SD card slot for local storage of recordings. • Outdoor-ready HDTV 1080p/720p models • AXIS P56 Series cameras are compatible with AXIS T91B Mounts for ease of installation
April 2015 | 33
Stats & Trends
Mobility, a key priority for GCC CIOs in 2015
M
obility remains a top initiative in 2015 for CIO’s in the GCC with a focus on moving customer-facing applications and transactions on to mobile-based platforms, according to Gartner, Inc.’s 2015 CIO Agenda survey results. The 2015 CIO Agenda survey reached 2,810 respondents in 84 countries, representing nearly $400 billion in IT budgets and a combined $12 trillion in public sector budgets and private-sector revenue. “Adoption of cloudbased solutions in the GCC has been very low due to concerns with security, latency, availability of local cloud-based solutions, credibility of local cloud providers and maturity of internal IT teams,” said BiswajeetMahapatra, research director at Gartner. “Despite increasing adoption of the latest SMART (sensors, maker machines, augmented humans, robotics and thinking machines) technologies, a lot more focus will be required to improve existing infrastructure and
processes and the instances of actual implementations.” While the top four priorities for the region are unchanged in comparison to the global priorities, there are some interesting differences in the list. In 2014, the oil and gas and financial sectors in the region experienced vibrant opportunities, therefore there is a stronger focus this year on industry-specific applications. While digitalization appears to be a lower priority in the GCC than the global average, operational technologies/ Internet of Things features in the GCC top 12, but not in the global top 12. Oil and gas and utility organizations in the region are already engaged in the digital world through the convergence of IT and operational technology (for example, digital oil field programs in this region are expanding the universe of connected things in upstream theaters of operations), and governments in the region are investing heavily in smart city initiatives (such as the Dubai
Top Technology Priorities for 2015, GCC vs. Global GCC
Global
BI/Analytics Infrastructure and Data Center
BI/Analytics Infrastructure and Data Center
Cloud
Cloud
ERP
ERP
Industry-Specific Applications
Mobile Digitalization/Digital Marketing
Mobile Enterprise Applications
Security
Networking, Voice and Data Communications
Networking, Voice and Data Communications
CRM Security
CRM Industry-Specific Applications
Digitalization/Digital Marketing
Legacy Modernization
Operational Technologies/Internet of Things
Enterprise Applications
Source: Gartner (March 2015)
Smart Government initiative). “Digitalization of both private- and public-sector enterprises is only adding complexity and uncertainty. Remaining relevant in this increasingly digital world will require that GCC CIOs rebalance their approach to demonstrating IT's contribution by flipping the focus from what is visible to what is valuable,“ said Ed Gabrys, research director at
Gartner. “Legacy modernization appears as the No. 11 priority globally, but it is not in the top 12 for the GCC. As a rapidly developing market, with many new and rapidly growing businesses, this region is at an advantage by being less hampered with substantial legacy,” said Biswajeet Mahapatra, research director at Gartner.”
Security Appliance shipments grow
A
ccording to IDC, both factory revenue and unit shipments continued to grow in 4Q14. Worldwide vendor revenue grew 8.6% year over year to $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter, the 21st consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Shipments grew nearly twice as fast as revenue at 16.7% year over year to 635,933 units, making 4Q14 the fourth consecutive quarter of shipment growth. For the full year 2014, revenue and shipments improved 8.4% and 8.3% respectively to $9.4 billion and 2.1 million units. The Europe, Middle East & Africa
34 | April 2015
region ended the fourth quarter with a 26.9% share of total worldwide revenue, a loss of 2.3 share points year over year and 1.0 point compared to the third quarter. Unit shipments were up 9.8% year over year, driven largely by demand in the emerging markets in Central & Eastern Europe and the MEA. Cisco continues to lead the overall security appliance market with a 16.6% share of worldwide revenue in 4Q14. Check Point remained the number 2 security appliance vendor with 13.2% revenue share in the quarter, gaining
1.2 share points year over year. Fortinet returned to the number 3 position with year-over-year revenue growth of 27.4% and capturing 7.7% of worldwide revenues. Fortinet remains the largest security appliance vendor in terms of shipments. Palo Alto Networks has experienced the fastest year-over-year revenue growth, consistently outpacing the overall market. Rounding out the top 5 vendors, Blue Coat and McAfee finished the quarter in a tie with each vendor holding a 4.3% share of worldwide revenues.
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