The Integrator December 2016

ontents

Editorial

Cover Feature - 18

An enterprising market

The year that was A

nother year fades away but it leaves behind an indelible impact on the ICT industry and the future ahead. As Smart City initiatives accelerate, Public –Private sector partnerships will define the culmination of state of the art ICT services delivered via cloud, mobile and other conventional channels. These will help citizens seamlessly conduct their transactions and effortlessly access services including public transportation, healthcare etc via a single window. Around such possibilities, many opportunities will evolve for vendors and partners.

2016 has witnessed ramping up of digital transformation initiatives and more companies could step up their investments on this front in the year ahead, leaving behind the excessive cautiousness that has perhaps been a hallmark of the year’s strategies across the spectrum in Business. According to latest forecasts by IDC, the industry will see better growth rates than last year as organizations step up their investments in digital transformation initiatives. It is estimated that the META region will see a spending of nearly $243 billion in the year ahead, showing a growth of 3.6% year on year, much better than the 1.6% that the current year is expected to finish with on a year on year growth basis.

As the agency predicts, the 3rd platform technologies including IoT, social, mobility and cloud will play the role of innovative disruptors and accelerate the adoption of new technologies. IoT especially is expected to see more deployment across use case scenarios such as freight monitoring, remote health monitoring, smart grid electricity etc. More automation across, with products and services becoming more accessible will be one of the trends that will shape the year we are emerging into. Partners need to continue developing and enhancing their competence around such technologies to be able to tap into opportunities that come up around the digital transformational journey that is now accelerating.

R. Narayan Managing Editor

Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

The appetite of mid-market customers for enterprise software is growing and gaining traction

News In Detail

Alibaba Cloud opens Data Center - 11 AXILSPOT unveils MEA operations - 12 TechKnow

Enabling platforms for the future - 13

Jihad Tayara, VP Business Development and Partnerships discuss du’s role in Smart City initiatives

Facilitating collaboration - 16

Firas Zeidan, VP, MEA, Unify discusses briefly some of the focus areas for the company in the region.

Consistent consolidation - 22

Ali Hyder, Group CEO, Focus Softnet discusses the state of the enterprise software market in the region

Versatile solutions for secured access - 23

Kanty Riarh, President, RBH Access Technologies discusses the company’s focus in terms of solutions

Making inroads - 24

Sathish Arya, GM - MEA at WatchNET discusses how the year has shaped up for the vendor

Point2Point - 14

Wresting the advantage

Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution discusses its recent initiatives

Insight

The digital transformation journey - 26

Ashesh Badani, VP Cloud Product Strategy at Red Hat opines companies must adapt to the Digital Revolution

All Flash Storage & partner programs - 30

Ben Savage, EMEA Head of Channels & Alliances, Pure Storage discusses how All-Flash storage solutions helps partners

Regulars

News Bytes EyeTech Market Stats

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News Bytes

Bosch and Sony partner in video security business Bosch Security Systems and Sony Corporation signed a contract to establish a business partnership to collaborate in the development of innovative products and solutions in the field of video security applications.

Effective from the beginning of 2017, the two companies aim to combine their technological expertise to set new standards in high-resolution and low light video imaging. As part of the agreed partnership, Sony`s video security customers in all markets except Japan will be served and supported by the sales and marketing organization of Bosch Security Systems.

The partnership is subject to approval by the antitrust authorities.

Sony will bring its leading expertise in video image quality and performance, while Bosch will add an extensive set of robust video analytics at the edge to interpret data as well as innovative technologies to achieve highly efficient bitrates and minimum storage requirements.

“This partnership will revolutionize the video security industry since it combines the unique technological expertise and strengths of two leading companies in the field of video security applications. Customers can prosper from Sony’s superior image quality, like its 4K solutions, combined with Bosch’s bitrate management and video analytics,” says Toru Katsumoto, Deputy President of Imaging Products and Solutions, Sector President of Professional Products Group, Sony Corporation. “This unique partnership also supports Bosch’s vision concerning the internet of things. Video security cameras and more specifically the data they are collecting play an important role in the further development of the internet of things. The video cameras might be called ‘the eyes of the internet of things’,” says Gert van Iperen, President of Bosch Security Systems.

4 | December 2016

Epicor launches new partner program in EMEA Epicor Software Corporation has announced the launch of a brand new partner program in its EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Asia Pacific regions.

Designed to further accelerate international growth and support the company’s cloud-first strategy, the innovative new program gives partners benefits that focus on the value they bring to both businesses.

Epicor is also recruiting new partners across the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South Asia. The recruitment will focus on broadening the company’s experience in niche/specialist verticals as well as key technology areas such as the cloud.

“We recognize that the world is changing at rapid pace and we need to continue to evolve our channel strategy in order to better serve our customers and enable them to focus on growing their business,” said Hesham El Komy, senior director, international channel for Epicor Software.

He continued, “We now offer an innovative style of program that is tailored to the needs of our international partners, rather than the traditional tiered programs with stepped reward systems that have not changed in the last 30 years. The program is based on the latest channel industry best practices that will reward our partners for adding value, growing their Epicor business and thereby helping to grow ours. This will not only help us future-proof our channel but it will also give partners access to great benefits beyond just margins.”

SAP holds Start-up Focus event in Saudi Arabia Saudi tech start-ups will drive the Digital Economy over the next 15 years, and support job creation for technology talents, the Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology announced at SAP’s first Start-up Focus event in the kingdom.

As part of SAP’s mission to support promising technology start-ups, SAP has seen strong success on the Start-up Focus Program globally. Start-up Focus has helped eligible start-ups, whose product ideas are based on Big Data, predictive or real-time analytics solution, accelerate the development of their solutions, and assist in bringing their solutions to market.

Boosting regional innovation and supporting local entrepreneurs, the SAP Training and Development Institute has now launched the initiative in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with an event in Riyadh. During the two-day event, attendees gained insights from successful start-up founders and thought leaders, and interacted with the start-up ecosystem in the Kingdom.

“Saudi tech talents and Millennials are already among the best-connected in the world, and have the ambition and business acumen to become global start-up leaders.

SAP is dedicated to joining forces with the Saudi government and local partners to support Saudi Vision 2030, digital economic innovation, and talented youth in reaching their dreams,” said Ahmed Al-Faifi, Managing Director, SAP Saudi Arabia.

Selected Saudi start-ups now have the chance to develop their solutions on the SAP HANA real-time analytics platform, receive free support from technical experts.

News Bytes

Genetec inaugurates new offices in Dubai Genetec, a leading provider of open platform, unified IP security solutions, is looking towards consolidating its leading market presence in the Middle East region with the opening of its new offices in Dubai. Strategically located in Dubai Airport Free Zone, the new offices were opened with an inaugural ceremony led by FirasJadalla, Regional Director for Middle East and Africa and attended by Georges Karam, Chief Commercial Officer, Genetec; Ted Ghali, VP Strategic Accounts, Genetec and Jos Beernink, VP Sales EMEA, Genetec.

The new offices fall in line with the company’s expansion strategy— further complementing Genetec’s efforts to support market growth while also enhancing its customer support services for the GCC and Africa regions.

The company has also expressed its move to improve accessibility and service to local partners and end users and provide a more dynamic work environment for its growing workforce.

The new office showcases a state-ofthe-art training center and solutions showroom.

“The opening of our new offices proves to be both timely and strategic— right in the midst of continuing regional demand for IP video surveillance, access control and license plate recognition services,” said FirasJadalla, Regional Director – MEA, Genetec. “Our new office is expected to help strengthen our local support, but we also want this office to become a tool that our integrators and consultants can use to have their customers experience our latest innovations, without having to travel too far. ”

6 | December 2016

Cybersecurity leaders discuss trends at RSA Conference in Abu Dhabi

RSA Conference, the world’s leading information security conference and exposition, in partnership with the UAE National Electronic Security Authority (NESA) yesterday was held at Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi.

Prominent speakers from global organizations and regional government entities attended the event, which served as a platform for discussion around the cybersecurity landscape in the region, knowledge sharing and best practices for mitigating both current threats and ones expected to emerge in the future.

The opening keynote session was delivered by Deputy Director General, Information & eGov Sector of TRA, Mohammed Al Zarooni. This was followed by Amit Yoran, President of RSA, who gave a presentation titled “Changing Perspective” that placed emphasis on the need for organizations to embrace diverse viewpoints when tackling cyber security challenges. Also, industry professionals representing Qualys, DarkMatter, and Tenable Security took the auditorium stage to provide valuable insights on interesting topics.

New survey indicates IoT boosts Business revenue Governments and businesses in the Middle East and Africa will invest over $6.6 billion in Internet of Things (IoT) hardware, software, services and connectivity by the end of the year, according to figures released by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

And, according to the findings of a new study sponsored by LogMeIn and conducted by Harbor Research, The Internet of Things Journey, nearly all companies to have embarked on a connected-product journey report both financial and customer experience benefits as a result. The research, which surveyed 600 product companies in various stages of deployment, found that 87% have seen increased revenue as a direct result of connecting a product, and over 90% have seen improvements in business efficiencies and product uptime.

As per LogMeIn’s study, the biggest reported improvement was in customer insights. Only 25% of all companies surveyed expected customer and product insight improvements when they started their connected product project, yet 95% of these manufacturers reported valuable customer insights on customer behaviour, needs and preferred modes of interaction, as a result of connecting a product. Additionally, 93% reported customer support as a business improvement since connecting products, while 88% also cited improved customer relationships.

These benefits do not come without their challenges, however. According to the survey, 44% of companies in both early and active IoT deployment phases say that data management is the biggest challenge when it comes to using IoT data to make better business decisions. Of the organisations that have existing IoT deployments, 43% cited integration with existing business systems as one of their biggest challenges.

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News Bytes

Dell EMC XtremIO sees customer and revenue growth Dell EMC has announced that the XtremIO All-Flash Array (AFA) has surpassed another set of customer and revenue milestones, with EMC (now part of Dell EMC) further solidifying its position as the All-Flash market leader, amassing a 40% revenue share according to IDC , nearly 2.5x its nearest competitor.

Since its November 2013 debut, XtremIO sales have continued to outpace every competitor, accumulating more than 3,000 customers and US$3 billion in total sales in less than three years, further validating its market share leadership and place as quite possibly the fastest-growing enterprise storage product ever.

XtremIO arrays are purpose-built for accelerating and consolidating mixed block storage workloads such as databases, analytics, server virtual machines and virtual desktop infrastructures. Dell EMC also recently announced important software updates that extend XtremIO application integration and management features for both VMware and Microsoft virtualized environments.

“XtremIO’s staggering market momentum is validation from customers of the product’s classleading capabilities for accelerating and consolidating mixed block storage workloads in modern data centers,” said Dan Inbar, SVP and GM, XtremIO, Dell EMC.

8 | December 2016

Opengear signs distribution deal with Al Maria Middle East Technologies

Opengear, a leading provider of critical infrastructure management solutions through advanced console servers, remote management, monitoring, and cellular out-of-band products, announced a new distribution agreement serving channel partners across the GCC with Al Maria Middle East Technologies. Al Maria Middle East Technologies is an Abu Dhabi headquartered, fast growing and innovative Value Added Reseller and distributor across a wide range of IT Infrastructure products. Al Maria Middle East Technologies offers a range of value added services including deal registration programmes, product demonstrations, customisation, Integration, technical evaluation and extensive vendor support.

“Al Maria Middle East Technologies have a sound understanding of infrastructure management technologies and they know how to put solutions together for the key verticals,” explains Derek Watkins, Vice President of Sales EMEA & India for Opengear, “With a great set of existing relationships within their reseller customer base and experienced teams with proven success in taking a brand to the IT channel, this new partnership offers a perfect fit to distribute Opengear within the GCC..

TechAccess sharpens focus on Saudi Arabia TechAccess is sharpening its focus on Saudi Arabia and is encouraging its partner community to advance their skills by taking advantage of its fully equipped Partner HUB. TechAccess’ dedicated Partner HUB located in Riyadh, is the distributors efforts to enable its reseller base with complete insight on solutions and current market dynamics. TechAccess has invested in this state-of-the art facility by deploying only the best-of-breed technology from across its vendor portfolio.

“Saudi Arabia a vital market for TechAccess, as we tighten our focus on providing organizations with technologies that will help drive the country’s digital endeavor. Technology deployments in the country are becoming more strategic; we believe it is crucial for partners to stay up-to-date on current trends and technological developments in-order to scale high levels of efficiency in deploying these solutions, and deal with complex implementations. The Partner HUB is an indispensable component of our value addition efforts to ensure that our partners update their skills, and provide customers with live demonstrations of the solutions that they are investing in,” said Sherif M. Alashery, General Manager- KSA at TechAccess.

The Partner HUB facility consists of a Partner Academy for training, a Partner Studio for customer meetings, a Migration Centre and a Systems Room. The Partner HUB has been fully functional for more than a year and TechAccess has conducted numerous partner and customer training.

News Bytes

SaaS increasingly trusted by SMBs for security Kaspersky Lab presented its latest research that shows what threats SMBs face and how they bridge the gap between smaller IT security budgets and limited expertise. For those SMBs without the necessary internal resources or available budgets, Security as a Service (SaaS) could be the answer, with 40% of these businesses globally looking to outsource IT infrastructure and processes to third parties.

In 2016 Kaspersky Lab, in cooperation with B2B International, conducted the global annual survey of more than 4000 business representatives from 25 countries.

The resulting report, ‘The Evolving Role of SaaS and IT Outsourcing in SMB IT Security’, showed that the top cybersecurity incidents SMB organizations experienced in a year were viruses and malware were causing a loss of productivity (41% reported it); inappropriate use of IT resource by employees (39%) and physical loss of devices containing data (31%).

Vladimir Zapolyansky, Head of SMB Marketing, Kaspersky Lab says, “The report shows that SMBs currently face a number of challenges when it comes to protecting their businesses from security threats. On the one hand, they typically have a lack of resources, budgets and security expertise that can make them attractive to cybercriminals.

On the other hand, increasingly complex security environments resulting from trends, such as the volume of mobile devices they need to protect, requires action. This makes it all the more important to spend budgets wisely by choosing a solution created especially for them with their needs in mind and also look at other options for remaining vigilant by taking a SaaS approach to security.”

10 | December 2016

TP-Link Middle East unveils SMB Partner program TP-Link Technologies has unveiled a new SMB Partner Programme for the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

The launch, which was held at Burj Al Arab in Dubai, saw more than 60 systems integrators (SIs) from the UAE market attend the event, where TP-Link outlined its go-to-market strategy, competitive advantage and, the company’s research and development (R&D) commitments.

According to the vendor which manufactures a broad range of products to the consumer, SOHO and SMB markets, including Wireless solution, ADSL, Routers, Switches, IP Cameras, Powerline Adapters, Print Servers, Media Converters and Network Adapters, the launch of the SMB Partner Programme paves the way for the company to recruit and develop a select number of SI partners who will resell its SMB products and solutions in the region.

Lucas Jiang, General Manager, TP-Link Middle East and Africa (MEA), said the launch of the SMB Partner Programme will see the company work closely with its distribution partners to identify and on board the right partners for the SMB business across the region.

Jiang added that TP-Link is seeking to recruit, train and certify new partners that will be tiered in three categories namely Authorised, Silver and Gold. “We are delighted to have finally unveiled a partner programme that will support the development of our SMB business in MEA,” he said. “We are hoping to replicate the success that TP-Link has enjoyed in the SOHO space.”

Avaya streamlines channel program Avaya has announced a new streamlined channel program that gives partners the flexibility to meet their customers’ needs in today’s fast-paced digital marketplace, while providing greater rewards for those partners that deliver exceptional value. This new program—Avaya EdgeSM— will help drive mutual profitability and better equip partners with the skills needed to help customers achieve their Digital Transformation objectives.

“The strength of a channel program is the degree to which it enables the success of its partners, and recognizes and applauds their unique capabilities as they apply them to serve our customers. In response to the feedback provided by our partners and customers, we are introducing the Avaya Edge program to provide the flexibility required in the market today, within a supportive structure. This new program empowers our channel partners to take our innovative solutions into the marketplace and help our customers achieve their digital business goals," said Fadi Moubarak, Channel Leader, Europe and AMEA, Avaya.

Key elements of the program include a simplified structure. Streamlined requirements and new gem designation levels—Diamond, Sapphire and Emerald—reduce complexity and the resources needed for partners to manage the program. For example, the Avaya Edge reduces the amount of time partners previously required to complete credentials by up to 50%, and partner co-delivery performance metrics have been reduced 56%.

News In Detail

Alibaba Cloud opens Data Center in Dubai A

libaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, has announced the launch of a new data center in Dubai that will be operated

by YVOLV, a joint venture between Alibaba Cloud and Meraas Holdings. The first full-fledged public cloud in the region which is hosted at a local data center, will offer a portfolio of services to address the increasing demand for mission-critical, affordable and secure cloud computing in the Middle East.

"We are excited that our global footprint has now expanded to the Middle East which is also a major area covered by China's 'one belt, one road' initiative. With the Dubai data center, our global cloud network will be able to meet enterprises which are going global" said Simon Hu, President of Alibaba Cloud.

“As a global leader in cloud computing and big data, we recognize the shift in the region’s demand from clunky IT equipment and servers to

streamlined cloud computing solutions,” added Sicheng Yu, Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Global.

“The ease of doing business in Dubai coupled with strong transport and telecommunications infrastructure make this city the perfect choice to house Alibaba Cloud’s high-speed, high-quality and secure cloud services and in turn expand our global footprint”, added Sicheng Yu. By enabling the digital transformation of businesses, YVOLV will be complementing Alibaba Cloud’s offering to serve customers as they migrate their day to day IT operations to the cloud and developing unique and innovative solutions to help them streamline operations.

“Alibaba Cloud has established a strong reputation as a leading cloud services provider in China and at YVOLV, we are certain that this success can be replicated in the region

where innovation is thriving.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to articulating the objectives outlined in the Dubai Smart City Initiative and the UAE Vision 2021, and the opening of this data center is a step in the right direction”, said Fahad Al Hajeri, Chief Executive Officer, YVOLV. Some of the existing regional and global customers of Alibaba Cloud are OneMT, MenaMobile, VSun, Dahua and JollyChic. Intel, who has collaborated with Alibaba Group globally in the areas of Cloud, Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) has joined the event to highlight how cloud usage is driving transformative change across all industries.

“As long-term strategic partner of Alibaba Cloud, we are proud to see Alibaba Cloud’s footprint expand into the MEA region. We are excited to have the latest Intel cloud technology running in the Dubai Data Center to provide superior performance to users in the region”, said

Kit Ho Chee, Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Service Provider Sales at Intel.

The benefits of cloud computing cannot be denied.

Scalability, affordability, improved agility to deploy solutions and choice between vendors are just some of the reasons why cloud computing is being seen as the need of the hour. Not to mention the fact that it offers an onramp to new computing advances and innovations. Alibaba Cloud’s portfolio at the new data center will include IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) cloud services including elastic computing, storage and databases which caters to all types of customers from SMEs, Government, and Enterprise.

Alibaba Cloud has also recently signed the number of partnerships in the region.

The most recent deals are with Detecon, leading Saudi data center services provider and Chinese Business Hub, which is designed to facilitate the move of Chinese SMEs to the UAE. December 2016 | 11

News In Detail

AXILSPOT unveils MEA operations A

XILSPOT, a global vendor in enterprise wireless networking, announced the launch of its operations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region. As part of its regional expansion plans, the company will appoint reputed distributors and strengthen its channel network by onboarding partners across the region.

AXILSPOT offers state-ofthe-art enterprise wireless connectivity solutions including wireless access points, bridges, base station, enterprise WLAN management platforms and PoE Switches to name a few. A key differentiator of AXILSPOT from its competitors is its patented multi-beam smart selection array system called Rscan, that reduces interference, allows the highest transmission speeds, successfully manages hundreds of concurrent users and offersthe more precise location based service (LBS).

"The Middle East and Africa has some of the fastest growing mobility growth rates as well as state of the art service provider technologies. With the arrival of 4G+ technologies in the region, end users want the same lighting fast mobile experiences available from service providers inside their offices, homes and in some public places too.

Rscan, the AXILSPOT patented antenna array technology, fitted into all of our products, allows end users to experience the

12 | December 2016

fastest wireless networking transmission speeds with minimum drop outs and line of sight interference," said Bruce Zhou, CEO, AXILSPOT. In order to tap the fastgrowing mobility opportunity in the region, AXILSPOT also announced its intention to appoint key channel partners in the region across its three partner categories. These include Authorised Solution Partner, Authorised Value Added Distributor, and Master Distributor.

Based on the above levels, AXILSPOT channel partners are variably offered Price Discounts, Online Training, Onsite Training, Deal Registration, Market Development Funds, Sales and Marketing Tools, Account Manager, Purchase Demo Kits, Dedicated Sales Person, Dedicated Trained Engineer, Marketing Activities.

"We have a simplified channel structure that allows partners to engage with us in the way best suited to their business. We offer significant discount and value benefits to all the three levels of channel partners. Based on our global experience and the large number of leisure hotels, shopping malls, tourist destinations, business events and conferences, in some of the countries in the MEA region, we are very confident that our products will dramatically

Bruce Zhou CEO AXILSPOT

change the experience of mobile users and visitors in these countries,” Bruce Zhou explained.

“This will help us to get traction with the wireless and network solution integrators, as well as technology decision makers. We are very confident of high levels of our business growth in this region, along with our prospective channel partners," he added.

AXILSPOT is a recent entrant in the global enterprise wireless networking industry with its core IPR. The company is committed to providing superior products and solutions for the most critical issues in wireless networks today, including how to create affordable reliability and how to meet dramatically increasing needs for connectivity, all over the world.

Swift, sensible, secure, stable, smart, scalable, simple, AXILSPOT is dedicated to providing consistent and

the highest-speed wireless coverage and transmission solutions with the 7S WLAN experience. Catering to the entire enterprise and SME market including industry verticals and smart city projects, AXILSPOT provides smarter wireless solutions in four series: Dorado Series, Dolphin Series, Mobula Series and Seal Series.

With patented Rscan Smart Antenna Array Technology, AXILSPOT can deliver very high density of 800+ concurrent users with 5.3G capacity. The patented Rscan Smart Antenna Array Technology ensures AXILSPOT wireless solutions a consistent and high speed wireless coverage over the targeted area.

Over the next few months, AXILSPOT plans to offer high speed wireless connectivity to different industry verticals and will unveil its entire range of WLAN solutions for customers in the MEA region.

TechKnow | du

Discuss your initiatives in enabling Smart City services?

We are developing a lot of smart city products. A major milestone for us is that we have been awarded with the responsibility of being the major systems integrator for Smart Dubai. They issued a tender to which we responded and were selected. We are deploying the Smart Dubai Platform for them which may well be the biggest Smart City platform in the world and will have all government data on it. All government entities from RTA to Dubai Police, Dubai Municipality etcwill have presence on it. The platform will be ready by end of year and all tools on dashboards will be available for heads of these entities to enable them in making better decisions and enhance citizen happiness.

The Smart Dubai Platform will have multiple layers. First would be the infrastructure layer on top of which would be the hosting layer, the analytics layer and then on top, the exposure layer with the dashboards. There will be the leadership dashboards and the government entity dashboards.

There will be dashboards also for end users. The platform will be the central operating system for the city, providing access to city services and data for all individuals, including private and public sector entities. Initially, there will be data from government entities and will subsequently also bring in data from private sector. That will multiply the wealth of data on the platform and empower decision making.

Who would be the partners

with du on this project?

HPE will be the technology system integrator with us and there are others including Cisco, Microsoft etc. This will be based on best of breed approach and we will bring a suite of the best solutions from vendors and partners. We have selected the best options for each part of the job.

Discuss LiFi initiatives which you also showcased at GITEX? LiFi (Light Fidelity) is a new technology which we also showcased at GITEX. This future technology is a visible light communication system that uses light from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as a medium to deliver network, mobile and high-speed communication in a

Jihad Tayara, Vice President Business Development and Partnerships discusses du’s role in Smart City initiatives as the official strategic partner of the Smart Dubai Office and the platform provider for Smart Dubai and also other innovative launches including LiFi

Jihad Tayara VP Business Development du

Enabling platforms for the future similar manner as Wi-Fi but with clear line of site. The current and future growth of wireless data traffic will mean that the radio frequency spectrum will not provide sufficient resources by 2025. Li-Fi will complement Wi-Fi technology to ensure a broader spectrum for seamless communication in the smart city of tomorrow. Visitors were thrilled to experience Internet over Li-Fi, including video and music streaming and geolocation.

This is a technology through you can transmit information and internet content. This offers high connectivity speeds and will release the congestion on the Wi-Fi. It is more secure than

Wi-Fi as you cannot hack. It is also context aware. Every bulb can be programmed to transmit specific content. For instance if you are moving around inside a museum and are at an instant looking at a specific picture, the light bulb over you could help display specific information about that picture.

Comment on your initiatives around Blockchain?

On the Blockchain Chain front, we are enabling secured transactions in the healthcare industry. This is a decentralized technology which will make it more resistant to malware and hacking. We will enable a safer common system for

instantly sharing and verifying electronic health records (EHR) between hospitals and clinics. Patient records can be created, shared and accessed by multiple parties, without compromising data integrity or security.

Electronic health records can be pulled by doctor in a secured way to examine and diagnose and issue a prescription and the patient can go directly to pharmacy, be issued medicine and the record is accessed directly by the insurance company, helping complete the whole cycle including billing in a secure, seamless manner and prevent data breaches in the healthcare.

December 2016  |  13

Point2Point | Redington Value Distribution

Ramkumar Balakrishnan President Redington Value Distribution

Wresting the advantage Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution discusses how its recent initiatives including the Red Vault, consulting arm Uniplum and its cloud marketplace Red Cloud are significant initiatives to enable partners and enhance the distributor’s differentiation.

Discuss the Red Vault?

The Red Vault is really one of a kind initiative and encompasses multiple objectives.The Red Vault is a proper 80 ft container which has been transformed into a datacenter; it has a briefing centre and includes a showcase of every flavor of the hyperconverged platform, the journey to the cloud and how you secure the cloud environment. The front is a see through interactive LED panel. The datacenter is captured imaginatively on this panel. It is very intuitive.

We are having this positioned across the region. It has been

14 | December 2016

capturing imagination in social media etc. The intent is to offer customer a ‘wow’ factor and an easy interactive experience of everything in the datacenter and the latest in technologies which is easy to understand.

There are about 25 solutions showcase and this will continue to grow.

How does it benefit the partner and his customers?

The operational value for a partner is that he can provide a proper PoC to his customer.

It is possible to showcase a preview or simulation of how the journey to cloud could be.

We can set up and showcase

a lot many solutions as to how they will operate in his network. It is a live working simulation centre which is why we call it an innovation centre.

We are talking to ISVs to bring in their applications forte.

We are inviting students to come and get an experience; we will offer internships going forward. So there is the purpose of technology showcase, a strong focus of PoC, of innovation, of training etc that are included among the key objectives.

How can this be replicated in other location?

The facility is now being

expanded to Redington Value's branches in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Nigeria.

We use some collaborative technologies so while we have the datacenter here, in other locations, it will do to have a video wall wherein they can connect live to the datacenter and when a consultant demonstrates something here, it will be shown live and available in the other location. They can showcase something in the remote location by using collaborative technologies to access the datacenter.

Therefore, we can recreate this in multiple solutions.

What do you think is the key outcome for you as a distributor and how has the responses been?

We are bringing differentiation.

We expect the channel to take advantage of this. We want to play a critical role in training and facilitating transformation among our partners. The response so far has been wonderful.

Elaborate on the consulting practice that has been set up?

We have also set up a consulting arm called Uniplum.

Part of the Redington group,

"The operational value for a partner is that he can provide a proper PoC to his customer.

It is possible to showcase a preview or simulation of how the journey to cloud could be."

it is however a separate company. Uniplum consists of a team of technologists and problem solvers from different verticals and solutions with an ability to inform, explore and confirm decisions, solve complex problems and bring new ideas into the market.

It will focus in three areas- Big Data, IoT and cloud transformation. these are primarily areas wherein you can take solutions to market successfully if you don’t have consulting expertise around the domains. That is

because in the case of these solutions, you have to talk to LoBs and not the IT heads.

Consulting in an integral part of the solution offering in these domains without which you cannot participate in such opportunities.

The most important aspect is to enhance our partners' abilities to sell these solutions. And to do that they need to understand what the underlying business problems are, and there comes the need for greater consultation and collaboration

Discuss the success of your cloud initiative?

We had also launched RedCloud last year which is now enhanced- a self service aggregation and billing platform. Today in addition to AWS and Microsoft, we have several other service providers whom we are getting on board the platform. With the platform for aggregating cloud services and the consulting layer on top of it, I believe we have a great go to market model.

The response to the Red Cloud has been good and we expect some significant momentum over the next year.

Solutions showcased in the Red Vault The integrated touch panels of the solutions centre will connect to fully operational control and training rooms running live demos of various solutions such as Oracle's ZFS Storage, xSeries servers, DB appliance, virtualisation software, enterprise manager and Oracle Cloud; Virtual Computing Group solutions such as Dell EMC's VxRail and Vx Rack, Vmware's software-defined data centre, virtual VSAN & NSX; security applications such as Trend Micro Deep Security & Deep Discovery Platform, Malware

Bytes, Entrust, Cyberark, Check Point, Barracuda and Fortinet; Enterprise software solutions such as Red Hat covering virtualization, IaaS (Internet as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and JBoss Middleware; Disaster Recovery, Backup, Monitoring and Migration solutions from DoubleTake&Veam; Public Cloud services including Amazon Web Services and Azure; and hardware solutions such as Sonicwall, Fidelis Security, Alcatel Lucent, Fortinet and HPE Converged System and Networking.

December 2016 | 15

TechKnow | Unify

Discuss the company’s focus in the Unified communication space Unify was one of the technology investments of Siemens which eventually spun out and focuses on unified communication and collaboration.We are owned 100% by Atos, a global SI. Unify combines Atos’ knowledge and reputation in the IT services market with Unify’s expertise in unified communications and collaboration to provide customers a unique integrated proposition for unified communications and real time capabilities.

Firas Zeidan Vice President, MEA Unify

Facilitating collaboration Unify is one of the world’s leading communications software and services firms, providing integrated communications solutions for approximately 75 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Firas Zeidan, VP, MEA, Unify discusses briefly some of the focus areas for the company in the region.

Elaborate how the company is focusing on the region in terms of channel and customer segments?

The company has transformed since the days it was part of Siemens. Under Siemens, everything was sold under the Siemens umbrella as part of total communication solutions directly and then the brand name transitioned to Unify. Finally, now we are channel centric company.

That is what I am leading as part of the transformation process in the region along with my team. We are looking to work through distributors and develop the tier two model of channel, recruiting reseller partners who understand the business of software and services including the value of telephony and hand hold customers making them understand the importance of moving into unified communication and eventually towards collaboration.

Discuss the cloud focus in your Business?

70% of our business is cloud based. The cloud based

16 | December 2016

business manifests as two models. The first is a pay as you go model wherein, any of partners can host our hardware in their datacenter and they can sell subscriptions and licenses, mostly for midmarket customers. The larger part of our cloud offering is for the service provider segment wherein we make available our virtualized solutions to be run in the datacenter. We provide various services for the ISP- the first is the pay as you option, the second is a sell through focus where you can sell our boxes as PBX or contact centre solutions, the third option is contact center or unified communications as a service where they sell on an OPEX model and finally the most important one as we see it is the collaboration as a service (CaaS) called Circuit.

Discuss the OpenScape portfolio and the solution for the SME segment?

OpenScape is the name of Unify’s family of unified communications solutions. In the SME and mid-market, it is called OpenScapeBusiness, for the enterprise it OpenScape Voice and there is a cloud version as well.

As a stand-alone voice application or integrated with other unified communications applications, OpenScape Voice combines carrier-grade reliability, security, massive scalability (up to 100,000 users per node) and flexible onpremise or cloud deployment with the features your enterprise needs.We have also recently unveiled OpenScape Enterprise Express v9 for midsize companies looking for

the productivity and competitive edge of a large enterprise solution at the cost and ease of integration that is right for their business.

OpenScape Enterprise Express v9 delivers an all-in-one solution for connecting, communicating and collaborating with simplified installation, advances that reduce communications costs by 50% and innovative application packaging for increased productivity.

The OpenScapeBusiness suite of solutions is at the heart of our go to market focus for the SME segment. OpenScape Business offers small and medium businesses a single unified solution for voice, presence, conferencing, contact center, messaging, and mobility.

This gives you an easier path to move to the next level of communications, from voice to UC and from hybrid TDM to full IP. As standalone system up to 500 subscribers and in networked systems up to 2000 subscribers can be connected.

Unify also offers a solution that makes it fast and easy for SMBs to implement an All-IP solution. SmartNodeOpenScape Business Appliance (SN-OSB) is a One Box UC Solution for SMEs

"The OpenScapeBusiness suite of solutions is at the heart of our go to market focus for the SME segment. OpenScape Business offers small and medium businesses a single unified solution for voice, presence, conferencing, contact center, messaging, and mobility." that offers offer an affordable, state-of-the art UC solution for SMBs in a single device with OpenScape Business S preinstalled and ready to go. It offers built-in telephony interfaces (PRI, BRI, FXS, and FXO) that connect legacy devices with All-IP UCC services, while supporting SIP Trunks, TDM Trunks and TDM or dual-SIP survivability with assured interoperability among all systems.All the feature of CC and UC are built into the platform and it is an all in one appliance that includes collaboration, unified communication messaging, communication and conferencing.

Elaborate on the Pay as you go model for OpenScape?

The OpenScape Business Pay As You Go is meant for small to medium sized organizations (SMEs) looking to enable superior communication, collaboration and new ways of working for employees, as well as greater cost flexibility and lower initial investment when compared with traditional CAPEX pricing models. It offers SMEs everything they need

for their individual and diverse communication requirements in a single flexible and scalable solution, available under a new subscription-licensing model that delivers recurring revenue for Unify partners.

The Pay As You Go model reduces the overall cost of ownership of communications and collaboration solutions for business customers.

Is the SME in the region a key focus for Unify? What trends do you see?

The SME is 82% of the Middle East market. The definition is any customer that has 100 to 500 users with dedicated IT person. Usually, the segment could have companies such as a travel agency, insurance company etc. With their lack of dependency on oil revenues, the private sector has picked up quite well. The leading trend in the segment is the need for mobility of voice and video.

They prefer to have their capex investments with allpurpose rack that includes their switching, routing, security and DSL connectivity and their

own telephony line. They started to look at options to save money. we have started to work with them on basis of offering third party call centre solutions from an India based company that offer inexpensive solutions for in-bound and outbound calls with recording features. Which is why wefocused on offering smart home solutions with all connectivity and communication features. Right now, the segment is looking to consolidate their mobility systems for their workforce. They are using UC suites for voice and video and also including recording. They are looking to integrate their online strategy with their existing collaboration. This is a significant focus as they are looking to sharpen their online marketing tools.

Integration between the digital and offline marketplace is one of the biggest drivers in the space.

As all companies are into selling products or service, they need call to action features integrated into their online marketing tools. They need targeted online marketing.

That is forcing the integration of call to action features that are at the heart of integration of voice and video and that is where we come in.

OpenScape Business Pay As You Go benefits to partners:  Utilize Pay As You Go in their private/cloud data center to offer a customers a cloud solution  Opens up business opportunities and enables partners to complete against public cloud providers  Improve customer loyalty by keeping overall responsibility for the customer, including contract ownership  Generate a recurring revenue stream with additional business opportunities

 Based on intensive research, Unify believes its flexible subscription model and variety of deployments will win out against traditional public cloud offerings  No big upfront investments on products enables partners to handle larger projects  Due to the simplicity of the model, Pay As You Go can be sold much like any other Unify product – with no special certification process required December 2016 | 17

Cover Feature | Enterprise Software

An enterprising market The appetite of mid-market customers for enterprise software is growing and gaining traction with cloud based options

T

he Enterprise software is a growth market as digital transformation continues to be a key objective across Businesses of different sizes, from SME to larger enterprises in different sectors.

In the region’s vibrant and diverse SME sector, the appetite for enterprise scale software is growing.

Traditionally, the deployment of midmarket software may be proportionate to the requirements or the vision of the leadership teams at those Businesses which see ICT as Business enablers. More recently, deployment of software is

18 | December 2016

becoming more pervasive and with the cloud enabled software coming into the equation, the pervasiveness is increasing as more software becomes widely deployed.

“In the Middle East, SMEs comprise a majority of businesses and SAP customers – and are a major driver of the Digital Economy, innovation, and youth employment. SMEs are the majority of SAP’s customers, and are a major focus for SAP MENA’s PartnerEdge channel program. SMEs across the Middle East are eager to adopt enterprise application

software, which has dropped in price and advanced in capabilities to the point where SMEs can have the same business capabilities as large enterprises,” says Patrick Hayati, Vice President - Global Channel and General Business, SAP MENA. There are specific trends that emerge from the segment. For system integrators in the region, there is indeed a vibrant opportunity. With almost 86 percent of workforce in the SME segment in UAE, 300,000 plus companies with overall revenue share of 60 % to UAE GDP, 73% in wholesale/trading and 11% in

Manufacturing segment the SME market is the key driver for technology solution providers and integrators like them to target.

N. Ramkumar, Managing Partner and Director ITWARE LLC says, “For us the Midmarket SME segment especially UAE and Oman is an integral part of our business and we see a substantial portion of revenue coming in from this segment in next three years. For us the SMB market for ERP solutions would be in the 5-30 user range with an annual turnover of around 10-20 M USD and Employee size of around 250-300. The size of the deal would depend on the actual requirement in terms of modules and whether it’s on premise or cloud deployment. In respect of other trading and service segments the market size is much smaller where we focus on providing mobile solutions especially in Retail, Factory automation and Field Service with an integrated accounting and inventory system.”

Organizations in the SME segment will need support of integrators who can help with migration from legacy applications to cloud based deployments.

Ramkumar adds, “Most of today’s SME customers either use excel or have in-house legacy or small inventory/ account applications with lot of data and customizations as well as multiple nonintegrated applications within the company separately for sales, inventory, shop floor etc. These customers have a very lean IT team in most cases one IT resource both for solutions and Hardware and as and when they decide to move to cloud and mobile based applications they would have lot of challenges in terms of still maintaining some of their mission critical on premise old applications as well as migrating data to the new cloud application. For such activities, they need the expertise of an integrator like us who have worked with both legacy, on premise and cloud applications and understand the vital role of seamless integration between these applications.”

He elaborates that even if web store cloud applications are available off the shelf, they still need customized reports and specific webs service based integrations to suit their business as well as ongoing support with onsite visits

as and when needed which locally based integration companies like theirs are equipped to provide.

Sunil Paul, COO at Finesse, a leading enterprise applications integrator in the region says, “As digital transformation is picking up, we see a growth in the spending on enterprise application software. Most spending is dedicated toward replacing, modernizing, or functionally expanding current office and business applications. Organizations are increasingly looking at Analytics and Business Intelligence and cloud provisioning. The approval of bigger budgets for IT projects in companies is a positive sign for the overall enterprise software market.”

He adds, “We provide BI (Qlik), CRM (Salesforce) and Cloud (IBM Bluemix) solutions to various SMEs apart from

N. Ramkumar Managing Partner & Director ITWare

"The SME segment needs the expertise of an integrator like us who have worked with both legacy, on premise and cloud applications and understand the vital role of seamless integration between these applications.”

enterprises. We have a focused SME strategy that help organizations increase efficiency, enhance business performance, increase agility while reducing costs.”

According to Ramkumar, there is traction in manufacturing related industries in terms of demand and consumption of software as automation is expected to rise.

He says, “It’s estimated that out of the 30,000 plus SME companies in UAE which are focused on manufacturing and related domains almost 50% of them are still in excel or legacy based in house developed

solutions. With the rising cost of staffing and infrastructure, need for automation is becoming an absolute necessity to reach a wider base of customers along with benefits of increased productivity based on which we expect substantial growth in next 2-3 years.”

Increased deployment options of enterprise applications via cloud from leading vendors has definitely democratized the industry, so to say, as mid-market customers now can choose best of options.

Ramkumar adds ,” As an Infor partner, December 2016 | 19

Cover Feature | Enterprise Software

are initially focusing to optimize the operations and build the service capability to respond to current demand. For organisations that have already achieved those milestones, they may look at investing in a CRM solution to enhance their sales and marketing.

He says, “ERP-enabled SMEs which are more tech savvy have realized that for them to win new customers and new territories only way to reach out is with a CRM solution especially cloud offering bundled with digital marketing given the escalating cost of staffing and other traditional marketing techniques and are looking for CRM as next logical step.”

Sunil Paul COO Finesse

Big Data readiness with Infor Cloud suite Industrial for manufacturing and Cloud suite business for service and trading industries bundled with amazing Infor XI technology stack, we have one of the leading cloud based industry verticals in the Region and we are very confident that these 2 solutions growing in GCC. Both these solutions are hosted on Amazon Web Services and with Amazon recently announcing that Dubai would be a hub for their cloud services business we are hopeful of more net new deals in 2017.”

Clearly, cloud enabled deployments is gaining ground with the tangible cost benefits it offers and the hassles it eliminates with capital intensive on-site deployments.

Sunil says, “Software on cloud and use of multiple devices to access data allows organizations to think about alternative options to traditional on-site solutions.

Also because of trends moving toward cloud technologies, firms no longer have to create a fixed, physical IT infrastructure and network. Thus enterprise software penetration rates in these regions will go up only with the adoption of cloud or sometimes hybrid models of cloud as well as on-premise products.”

He adds, “Enterprise Solution Providers are now helping companies extend their business processes into the Cloud, where they can use the solutions and network

20 | December 2016

to work more efficiently and effectively.

That means driving more value whenever they do business, connect and collaborate through a single platform in the cloud to lower costs or risks, boost revenue, or manage cash and working capital.”

According to Mufeez Vakeel – Director, Projects and Head Operations at ITWARE, while Cloud is getting traction for smaller applications such as HR, Expense Management, Real estate, Retail and CRM, for larger software deployments, they still seem to be preferring the on-site option.

He elaborates, “SMEs evaluating to go with specific applications such as ERP, BI and supply chain are still preferring on premise applications to cloud though adoption rates are getting better for cloud compared to couple of years back. There are not much of initial hurdles or presales queries in terms of data security, customization etc. when we meet an SMB prospect looking at ERP.” Patrick believes CRM is a driving force for Middle East digital transformation, and especially for SMEs that are looking to move their data and functions in to the cloud.

He adds, “Cloud-based CRM solutions can make it easier for Middle East SMEs to search customer databases, update records, enhance workplace collaboration, and access business intelligence.”

According to Ramkumar,SMEs

The need for the SME sector to deploy Big Data solutions will depend on the volume of data sets they generate. In many instances, they may need to look at exploiting insights from their deployed software including CRM seems to be the opinion of Sunil from Finesse.

He says, “Not many SMEs generate so much data, lack big data expertise along with lack of investment. They need to keep a sharp eye on cost and execution and take stock of their needs before establishing a data strategy. Smaller data sets from CRM platforms, social media or email marketing programmes can still provide much-needed insight to help businesses understand customer behaviour patterns and showcase trends.

Yet, today SMEs who aspire to become the big enterprises in the future need to look at big data as an asset. Some are starting to realise that they can identify trends, patterns and gain competitive advantage by harnessing the power of growing data volume.”

Mufeez says although the SME companies may be using in-built BI functionalities of some of the software they may have deployed already, yet it will be a while before they get to deploying Big Data solutions.

He says, “Currently, SMEs are using the built-in BI capabilities, it will take some more time for Big Data to be of

Patrick Hayati VP, Global Channel & General Business SAP MENA

Mufeez Vakeel Director, Projects & Head Operations ITWare

“In the near future, innovation accelerators such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and blockchain have the potential to make a major positive impact on the bottom lines of SMEs. These kinds of advanced capabilities can automate rote processes"

utility value to SME’s. Cloud enabled Big data applications can fuel the adoption faster but as of now given their pricing SMB’s might not be able to afford that kind of investment. Big Data will be useful if SMEs are capturing different types of data such as Video, Voice and Social media (Tweets, WhatsApp media etc.”

On the other hand, Patrick believes that with their more streamlined IT infrastructure, SMEs are ideally-placed to adopt cloud solutions such as Big Data analytics.

He comments, “While both public and private cloud services have their place in the Middle East, hybrid cloud solutions have among the highest potential. We’re seeing strong Middle East SME interest for SAP’s industry-tailored cloud services running on the in-memory SAP HANA platform and real-time business suite SAP S/4HANA.”

Future readiness It is predicted that enterprise software will have more AI enhanced capabilities

in future for better insights. The availability of more advanced software will be an enabler for better innovation.

Patrick says, “In the near future, innovation accelerators such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and blockchain have the potential to make a major positive impact on the bottom lines of SMEs. These kinds of advanced capabilities can automate rote processes and free up staff to focus on high-level strategy, planning, and execution.”

Mufeez says that AI is still evolving as a concept in ME Region and only specific large industries are trying to use this technology for automation of the routine tasks.

He adds, “AI can be used in enterprise applications to predict Customer/supplier/employee behavior pattern which can help in operations optimization and increased revenue patterns for these companies as well

as in process automation especially in factories which already have MES systems running in tandem with ERP.” With cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), the prediction is of computers to be as smart as— or smarter than—humans. Machine learning, NLP (Natural Language Processing) and speech recognition are among the technologies that will drive transformation opines Sunil.

He adds, “These will improve the core functionality of their products, generate new and valuable insights for customers, and improve business operations through automation. These benefits are obvious and software companies will not be ignoring these.”

In the region, especially in the UAE, there is a pioneering show of readiness for advanced software deployment and consumption with the government sector being a key driver.

Other segments including mid-market customers will also follow and adopt sooner than later.

December 2016 | 21

TechKnow | Focus Softnet

Discuss growth in enterprise applications in the region?

The Enterprise applications market has been rapidly evolving with the Middle East actively adopting enterprise apps across all sectors and industries. Organizations are actively striving to provide that extra mile of enhanced service, improved efficiencies, and employment satisfaction and as such have taken to the world of enterprise apps to achieve these goals.

Governments and large businesses are continuing to invest in enterprise applications for IT modernization and verticals such as healthcare and education will continue to grow significantly faster than other verticals. A significant number of enterprises are looking at lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) by availing of the shared cost model in the adoption of business applications.

The organizations in the region are proactively investing in business process documentation and reengineering and then investing in bespoke solutions to suit their specific needs. The most important part of this process is to suitably identify solutions which can be customized and further integrated into their existing or proposed core organization-wide applications thereby providing an allencompassing eco-system for their resources.

Elaborate your focus on vertical solutions?

Focus offers a plethora of solutions on the mobility platforms as well as traditional platforms through both

22 | December 2016

enterprise application and cloud mediums. Our range of ERP solutions, CRM, Point of Sale, MRP, Warehouse Management, Healthcare Management, Hospitality Management and Real Estate and Facilities Management Solutions, all fit the bill with the demands of the region.

Focus carries a variety of vertical specific solutions ranging across the services industries, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, retail, hospitality, healthcare, real estate, construction, project management, academia, and human resources. Our ability of providing vertical specific solutions with vertical-specific functional expertise is what sets us apart.

Ali Hyder, Group CEO, Focus Softnet discusses the state of the enterprise software market in the region and some of the highlights

Ali Hyder Group CEO Focus Softnet

of company’s products and market focus

Consistent consolidation Discuss growth opportunities with SaaS? Focus has always prided itself in being a market leader in technology and has consistently delivered solutions which are at the cutting edge of the era. This time is no different. Focus’ suite of solutions are cloud enabled and mobility compliant, and the majority of our solutions are SaaS enabled in order to ensure that client organizations are able to benefit from these “easier to access” technologies with prepackaged industry best practices.

With cloud computing gaining momentum, Focus Softnet has also begun to offer our customers enterprise

applications such as our ERP, healthcare applications etc as a cloud offering. The latest release of the ERP has 2 main features covered a) Accessibility on Android/ Blackberry/Iphone(iPad) interface and cloud based subscription model.

Discuss how you support customers during deployment?

Our fine-tuned process, which has carefully and painstakingly evolved over the last 25 years, has matured to a level wherein the intervention of enterprise applications within client organizations is one of the smoothest

transitions of the industry.

We follow a disciplined methodology of deployment of our systems, and maintain very deep and detailed levels of communication with client organizations thereby ensuring that all stakeholders are “on the same page” and have same expectations so that there are virtually no surprises throughout the process. Moreover, our evolved organizational intelligence with documents, processes, and best practices makes for a much quicker turn-around time which in turn minimizes the “shock” most organizations experience during ICT interventions.

TechKnow | RBH Access Technologies

RBH's Access Control systems have been installed in over 100 countries and in multiple languages, making it one of the significant manufacturers in the segments of its focus. Kanty Riarh, President, RBH Access Technologies discusses the company’s focus in terms of solutions and strategies towards the region

Versatile solutions for secured access Is there a strong growing demand for secured access across locations?

Due to Rising Public & private infrastructure, increasing investment, government rules and regulations, increasing security spending there is a need for better and more complex access control and security systems all across Middle East region.

Elaborate on the entire range of physical access control solutions and the building intelligence solutions you offer?

RBH manufactures products in line with the market needs.

These products meet the low and high end market requirements equally well.

Integra32 integrates Access Control and Alarm Monitoring into an elegant building management and security system, which is designed

to effectively cover the competitive sector of small and medium sized access control systems market. This user friendly software ensures that security management needs are met easily and economically with minimal training.

Axiom V Enterprise Security Management System seamlessly integrates Access Control, Alarm Monitoring and Video Surveillance into an elegant & versatile Building Management & Security system. It’s highly customizable and flexible user interface provides powerful tools for Enterprise Security management for Large MultiSite/Multi-Tenant Systems Which are key verticals from rbh’s point of view?

RBH systems, combined with virtually any reader technology such as proximity, finger print, smart cards etc., with seamless

integration capabilities to CCTV/DVR, Guard Tour, Asset Management etc., and with competitive pricing, enable the systems to penetrate high security markets such as Military installations, Airports, Police, Prisons and also in low end markets such as shops, villas, residential buildings etc.

What is your go to market strategy here- who are your distributors?

We work through our partners across the region. RBH works with system integrators for end to end solutions based on customer requirements. We provide compressive training to our partners, help them to get the product approval from the consultants and product acceptance by end user.

You offer standalone as well as solutions that can provide control of a larger number

Kanty Riarh President RBH Access Technologies

of doors- do you work on turnkey basis with large builders in the region?

We offer from an Enterprise to Small Business solutions, we have packages specifically tailored to a customer’s needs.

Employing open interface protocols we allow for a great selection of available identification devices from proximity, to fingerprint and iris, as well as a myriad of other technologies available on the market today. RBH has provided the security management solution to Airport, Oil & Gas Sector, corporate, Gated community, banks and financial institutes in the region.

Discuss if you are looking to grow your partner base?

RBH welcomes partners looking for access control system delivering high innovation levels and feature rich products.

December 2016 | 23

TechKnow | WatchNET

Discuss how the year 2016 has turned out from the surveillance and secure access market growth point of view? Which territories have shown good growth?

The year 2016 turned out to be really great for WatchNET and we were very successful with a strong growth rate & excellent sales performance across all areas of focus, right from Surveillance, Access Control, Storage and Integrated Solutions. Our sales team had achieved their target much a head especially UAE, Oman & Bahrain territories where our sales graph patterning towards north. We have been able to retain our market position quite well and in fact improve, which has resulted in increased customer confidence and the overall progress seen in all the areas such as sales, technical support, improved service and on-time support.

What were some of the major highlights for the company in terms of new releases, major customer wins etc?

Our Enterprise Class HD-VMS software has been the major highlight launch for WatchNET in the year 2016. We bagged a couple of major projects with our integrated security solution with multi-location in 3 countries in the Telecom segment that contributed well to our sales. We are scheduled to release our leadingedge technology by end of December called ‘WatchNET Access Cloud” which is a cloud based Access Control System with the multi-location support & control. WatchNET Access cloud software is versatile,

24 | December 2016

Sathish Arya, General Manager Middle East & Africa at WatchNET International Trading LLC discusses how the year has shaped up for the vendor and the key growth areas in secure access and surveillance segment

Sathish Arya General Manager, MEA WatchNET

Making inroads flexible and feature-rich with lot of exciting features.

Is the SME segment a major area of focus for the company and its partners?

Do you see SME segment customers showing interest in these investments?

Our major area of focus for 2017 will be more on Medium & Enterprise Class Solutions especially in Integrated Security Solution software and Multi-location command control solutions. The market demand is increasing in such segments as it helps the customer to manage their security system effectively and giving more comfort to use

& deploy; we are investing our resource in those market driven segments.

Is this an area where you would like to make more inroads?

Yes, we would like to focus more on integrated system & Cloud based solutions and continuously enhancing both hardware & software as well as cloud based systems especially services based solutions which are scheduled to be launched in Q2 of 2017.

WatchNET products have gained a good reputation and customer confidence in the recent years; hence we are working towards product

enhancement and stability in both hardware & software.

Do you think retail analytics will be a major driving factor for increased deployments of surveillance hardware and software in retail?

There is a market for every segment and especially retail analytics segment is estimated at CAGR of 20.2% between 2016 and 2021 but our focus is not in retail analytics. We are focusing more on integrated solutions& multi-location monitoring where we are enjoying major market share across GCC. Discuss the challenges that confront the industry? Do

you see profitability as one of these challenges because of increased availability of more brands to choose from?

The competitive environment in this market appears to be intense as a number of global firms and several smaller regional companies have mushroomed in electronic security systems and hence the profit margins have been going down. To compete in the current market situation, we had taken lot of initiatives to support our customers in many ways.

We had deployed our in-house automation tool that contributes well to our support system and process that substantially reduces the turn-around time & on-time support.

Comment on your partner program and also some of

the significant outcomes of the company’s partner engagement in the year?

WatchNET engages with the partners in every stage of project life cycle delivering right solutions through our WAPP (WatchNET Partner Program). The WAPP program aims to improve timely support and customer retention by bestowing effective support and conducting more training programmes to our system integrators. We take this opportunity to thank our customers for their continued patronage and the confidence that they have placed in WatchNET. We take great pride in maintaining a teambased work environment. Our clients are drawn to us, not because of our commitment to delivering quality solutions as

well as our superior customer service.

Comment on some plans that the company may have decided on to pursue for the year ahead?

As indicated above, we are focusing more on Integrated Security & cloud based solutions. Currently, we are working on few advanced solutions which are scheduled to be launched during Q2 of 2017. Also, our next main objective is to increase the market share and providing more solutions as well as stable products to our customers.

Elaborate on your strategy towards project management?

WatchNET is one of the

global leaders in security management solution and our solutions were deployed in many enterprise class projects. Our project based enterprise class solutions are flexible and scalable that can fit in to any size of the project and we do custom built software & project oriented hardware. Our R&D team in Canada develops tailor made solutions for different business verticals based on the project requirement in both hardware & software. In addition to that we are working effectively on WAPP program as well as focusing more on Enterprise Class Integrated Solutions.

We are executing all the projects only through system integrators since we don’t have policy of working with end-user directly.

300+ Professional Team | 175+ Enterprise Clients | 20+ Nationalities | 20+ International Awards | 10+ Global Locations

December 2016 | 25

Insight | Red Hat

W

Ashesh Badani VP, Cloud Product Strategy Red Hat

Taking the digital transformation journey Ashesh Badani, VP Cloud Product Strategy at Red Hat discusses How companies must adapt to the Digital Revolution

26 | December 2016

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 modernisation 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 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 application platforms under an open-source license thathelp 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

Insight | Red Hat

"DevOps fundamentally promotes a 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.

much tighter relationship between various groups so that applications and services can be released quickly to drive innovation."

There is also a rise in containerisation. Just as there has been an increase in companies virtualizing their infrastructure to make them more flexible; today we are seeing a growth inthe containerisation 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 containerisation 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 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 transitiontowards 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 enduser 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 lessskilled 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.

Red Hat in Full Life Cycle API Management Magic Quadrant Gartner has positioned Red Hat in the “Leaders” quadrant of Gartner's October 2016 Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management for Red Hat 3scale API Management Platform.

According to Gartner, “Full life cycle API management is the functionality organizations need in order to provide the technology platform for digital business, run successful API programs and thrive in the API economy.”

28 | December 2016

Based on API management technology developed by 3scale, acquired by Red Hat in June 2016, the Red Hat 3scale API Management Platform complements Red Hat's existing application development technologies, including its Red Hat JBoss Middleware portfolio, OpenShift Container Platform, and Red Hat Mobile offerings, and strengthens its ability to help simplify and accelerate customers' digital transformation initiatives.

Most International Fastest Growing Most Impactful The Largest

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Insight | Pure Storage

T

he key technologies today that are enabling digital business are very much influencing the composition of the datacenter. Inside the datacenter the challenges of data management continue to grow exponentially. The task of managing the cost of storage, providing the right platform for workloads, and ensuring the path forward is simple and predictable has become a critical success factor. This challenge is alike for the end user, thechannel partners, and storage vendors.

Trends like digital transformation, mobility, analytics and cloud, require the right selection of storage platforms to match the workload. Should data be on-premise or off-premise; public cloud or hybrid cloud; can workloads be moved easily from one platform to another; can platforms be easily upgraded over time; are the costs of platforms predictable and manageable; can costs be reduced on traditional platforms? These are the challenges that end customers are facing and are looking for answers from their strategic solution partners and vendors.

Solution partners are looking to make sense of the transformation that is taking place across storage solutions and data platforms. They also need to be able to understand their customer requirements at present, and into thefuture.

Partners want to engage with vendors who can offer storage roadmaps that are simple, predictable, repeatable, scalable and profitable. They need their vendor partners

30  |  December 2016

Ben Savage, EMEA Head of Channels & Alliances, Pure Storage discusses how AllFlash storage solutions helps partners engage in more predictable and profitable engagements with customers Ben Savage Channel & Alliances Head, EMEA Pure Storage

All Flash Storage transforming partner programs to be innovative at every stage of development for the long run. On top of all that, solution partners need to be able to add their layer of value, personalized for their customers. Neither the partner nor the customer can deal with additional complexity or cost unpredictability at this stage.

The increasing importance of simplicity and cost management around storage has drawn attention to the limitations of traditional storage solutions. With rapid

expansion in the requirement of data capacity, traditional storage solutions fast reach their performance limitations dictated by the initial controller and architecture technology.

While storage capacity can be added, the solution is limited by a performance lock. To get to the next level of performance is usually complicated, expensive and cumbersome.

Typically, the upgrade is a new solution and a new purchase. Data needs to be migrated and there

is downtime for the end customer due to slow transfer speeds. Some of the older data structures and libraries may get affected during migration.

The migration of data can be complex, and require external professional services.

And finally the maintenance contract renewal is often more expensive than the previous one - a good reason for solutions partners and end customers to look at other alternatives.

Enter all-flash arrays. These

are built on solidrequirements state technologies and providing and have near financial gains to "For the solution partner, the ability to manage zero latency the customer are customer requirements through a built-in upgrade times to access made possible by program allows customers to deploy storage once and and transfer data. such programs from keep expanding and improving it for 10 years or more Recent all-flash all-flash vendors, becomes the basis of a win-win relationship." storage solutions vendors also gain from select vendors by increased loyalty are also helping from solutions solution partners avoid the migration into denser capacity and the underlying partnership partners. murky waters created by solutions. Migration of data in with the vendor. Forcustomers, In line with what is complex and expensive ‘forklift an all-flash environment, unlike predictable maintenance and happening globally, there is a upgrades’ from traditional traditional storage solutions,can services costs around all-flash tsunami of disruption that is storage vendors. All-flash bemuch faster and without storage is a simplification engulfing the storage industry maintenance and service downtime.These all-flash and positive alternative – we have seen a collapse programs involve incorporating vendors have raised the bar by totraditional storage solutions. in ‘big ticket’ enterprise disk contractual costs to the initial innovating on the underlying Another benefit for storage and this will accelerate performance metric unit of the storage architectures and their customers created by all-flash in the next 12-18 months with solution -that is IOPS per GB. As storage solutions is the ability associated programs.For the the widespread adoption of the end user solution scales in solution partner, the ability to to jump the technology cycle all-flash arrays and converged storage capacity over time, the manage customer requirements infrastructure. For partners by upgrading the controllers per unit cost remains constant through a built-in upgrade of the array. Many all-flash looking to build a competitive and even reduces, ensuing program allows customers to vendors are including an advantage and break into from benefits of Moore's law deploy storage once and keep upgrade of the controllers at new accounts, this presents applied to all-flash storage. expanding and improving it for fixed intervals of time under an incredible opportunity.

This predictability of 10 years or more, all without their maintenance programs.

In today's fast changing maintenance and service costs any downtime, performance However, if the customer marketplace increased around all-flash solutions helps impact, or data migrations wishes to initiate the upgrade partner loyalty remains a partners to have confidence and this becomes the basis of earlier, innovative vendor key differentiator for allin the profitability of a win-win relationship. While trade-in programs may also flash storage vendors versus engagements with customers managing technology growth exist to facilitate the seamless traditional storage vendors.

Petabyte-Scale Flash Storage for Cloud IT

P

ure Storage recently introduced the availability of petabyte-scale storage for mission-critical cloud IT, anchored by the release of the nextgeneration of FlashArray//m the company’s flagship all-flash storage array, which now delivers best-inclass performance with the simplicity and agility of public cloud. The FlashArray//m now offers customers petabyte-scale capacity with a measured 99.9999 percent availability and always-on Quality of Service – virtually eliminating storage downtime and application performance risk.

With this release of the nextgeneration FlashArray//m, Pure Storage is equipping customers with

Smart Storage, storage that is purposebuilt to be effortless, efficient and evergreen – and capable of delivering the simplicity, automation, resiliency, and customer friendly business model which are all essential for cloud IT. The newly updated FlashArray//m, the fifth generation of Pure Storage’s flagship FlashArray product, now scales up to 512 terabytes of raw flash, which translates to approximately 1.5 petabytes of effective capacity – all in just 7U of rack space. This scale

and density enables customers to consolidate racks of legacy disk storage down to 7U or less.

Leveraging Pure’s EvergreenTMarchitecture, the existing FlashArray customers of every generation can seamlessly upgrade to the new FlashArray//m, allowing customers to take advantage of rapid technology advances in both compute and flash. The new FlashArray//m offers four different controller options to meet a variety of performance and capacity needs.

December 2016 | 31

EyeTech

Aruba 2540 Series Switches

AXIS Q3504-V

Overview: Designed for the digital workplace, the Aruba 2540 SwitchSeries is optimized for mobile users. With advanced securityand network management tools—Aruba ClearPass PolicyManager and Aruba AirWave—this layer-2 access switchis easy to deploy and manage. With support from ArubaCentral, you can quickly set up remote branch sites with littleor no IT support. A powerful Aruba ProVision ASIC deliversperformance, robust feature support, and value with flexibleprogrammability for future applications.

The Aruba 2540 Switch Series provides a convenient andcost-effective wired access solution that can be quickly setup with Zero Touch Provisioning. PoE+ models deliver poweracross all access ports for wireless APs, security cameras, andIoT devices.

Key features: • Enhanced access security, ACLs, traffic prioritization, sFlow, and IPv6 host support. The Aruba layer 3 switches (29xx/3810/5400) are also capable of user- based and port-based wired traffic tunneling to an Aruba Mobility Controller so that policies can be applied, advanced services can be extended, and traffic can be encrypted to secure the LAN, further reducing risk to networks.

• Speed remote deployment with Aruba Central.

• Consistent wired and wireless experience with

Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager and AirWave Network Management.

• To meet the demand for the rapid growth in IoT and

connected devices in distributed enterprises, the cost- effective Aruba 2540 Series support Zero Touch Provisioning and optional cloud-based management to allow enterprises to simplify and slash network deployment and management costs.

Overview: AXIS Q3504-V provides images that are optimized for forensic purposes regardless of lighting conditions. It has enhanced Lightfinder technology for high-quality images even when they’re recorded in darkness. WDR – Forensic Capture ensures excellent detail when there are both bright and darker areas in a scene. And Axis’ Zipstream technology significantly reduces bandwidth and storage requirements, while preserving high-quality images.

With up to 100/120 fps in HDTV 720p with WDR disabled and up to 30 fps in HDTV 1080p with WDR enabled, AXIS Q3504-V captures sharp images of fastmoving objects and people. So you’ll be able to identify people, objects and vehicles under difficult lighting conditions. The Electronic image stabilization greatly improves video quality in situations where the camera is subject to vibrations, providing smooth and comfortable live viewing.

The compact fixed-dome design of AXIS Q3504-V makes installation easy and cost-effective. And there are useful aids like level assistant, digital leveling and auto rotation available. AXIS Q3504-V also features versatile cable management with space for a service loop and optional connection to any kind of conduit. There’s a bracket included for mounting on junction boxes or directly on walls or ceilings, and there are optional accessories for recessed mounting or mounting on pendants.

Key features: • Enhanced Lightfinder and WDR - Forensic Capture • 100/120 fps in HDTV 720p • Electronic image stabilization • IK10 vandal resistance, IP52 water and dust protection

32 | December 2016

SS2014 PoE IP Keypad

QNAP TVS-873

Overview: The Safesuite Series of Controllers from RBH Access Technologies ushers in a new area in Security design and deployment. Combining Access Control, Burglar Alarm, Keypad Arming Stations and Monitoring functionality into an unprecedented Controller and complete security solution…. The SS2014 PoE Keypad!

The SS2014 is designed to fit into any Security application that requires Access Control and Burglar Alarm functionality such as Home, Small Business, Corporate, Industrial and Condominiums.

The unique design is optimized to leverage building infrastructure for a fast and economical deployment in the LAN/WAN environment. This negates the requirement to install a separate dedicated RS485 communication infrastructure saving time and money!

The Safesuite SS2014 is expandable and flexible with up to 256 alarm zones available to each keypad and an unlimited number of keypads there is never any need to install multiple Burglary controllers in a facility even if the buildings are not on the same property.

Overview: QNAP TVS-873 is powered by an AMD embedded Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) that incorporates exceptional CPU and AMD Radeon R7 Graphics performance, delivering a highperformance and energy-efficient NAS solution. Built with a state-of-the-art metal design and topped off with a stylish gold finish, the TVS-873 features a powerful quad-core CPU, AES-NI hardware encryption engine, up to 64GB RAM, USB 3.1 (10Gbps) and 10GbE expandability with exceptional performance. Coupled with the unique USB QuickAccess, HDMI 4K output, and 4K H.264 video decoding and encoding

Key features:

acceleration, the TVS-873 running on the new 64-bit QTS 4.3

• Packed with features such as built in Access Control ,PoE Plus, Email notification , SMS notification, the SS2014 now defines the new standard in the Security industry.

operating system provides an optimum audiovisual experience

•

• • •

•

•

•

•

•

For retrofitting existing buildings that already have proprietary wiring in place, the New SS2014 PoE Keypad includes a backwards compatibility channel to utilize the old wiring when LAN/ WAN might not exist.

• Complete with remote access via web or App this New Keypad/Access Control/Alarm Panel truly does have it all.

and well-rounded private cloud system.

Key features: NAS and iSCSI-SAN (IP-SAN) unified storage solution Integrated Radeon R7 GPU for 4K video storage and playback 10GbE-expandable, highly-efficient storage solution for virtualization and HD video editing & sharing USB QuickAccess port for accessing files without needing a network connection M.2 SSD cache and Qtier technology jointly realize optimized storage efficiency Supports virtualization, centralized storage, backup, sharing, and disaster recovery QmailAgent for centralized email management; Qsirch full-text searching tool; Qcontactz for centrally storing and managing contacts Use the NAS as a PC with exclusive QvPC Technology and 4K display

December 2016 | 33

Stats & Trends

SMB purchases of IT Products and Services forecast to reach $668 Billion in 2020

T

he first Worldwide Semiannual Small and Medium Business Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts small and medium businesses (SMBs – businesses with less than 1,000 employees) will spend $564 billion on IT hardware, software, and services, including business services, in 2016. This amount is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.2%, reaching $668 billion in 2020. The new spending guide expands on IDC's previous small and medium business forecasts by offering greater detail on spending by technology, company size, and geography.

"The Third Platform has disrupted traditional IT markets and how large organizations deliver IT services. For SMBs, the result has been largely positive: a stronger ability to compete with larger firms, more easily enter new markets, more quickly develop new products, and drive higher levels of employee productivity. Over the next three years, we expect IT solutions to drive business outcomes, and in turn further close the competitive gap between SMBs and enterprises," said Chris Chute, vice president, Customer Insights and Analysis.

SMBs will invest similar amounts in hardware, software and IT services throughout the 2015-2020 forecast with these three categories representing more than 85% of the worldwide total. While hardware purchases currently represent the largest share of this spending, it will also experience the slowest growth.

Software, which is expected to grow faster than the overall market, will overtake both hardware and services to become the largest spending category by 2020.

Business services will see the fastest growth of the four categories.

More than half of all SMB software purchases in 2016 will go to applications, led by enterprise resource management (ERM), customer relationship management (CRM), and content applications, with the remainder evenly divided between application development &

34  |  December 2016

deployment and system infrastructure software. Hardware spending will be led by purchases of telecommunications equipment, personal computers, and peripherals, which will make up nearly three quarters of all hardware purchases in 2016. More than 40% of SMB services spending will go to outsourcing, which includes applications management, hosted applications and infrastructure management, and IS outsourcing as well as business process outsourcing.

The remainder will be used to purchase project-oriented services and support & training services.

Medium-sized businesses (100-499 employees) will be the largest market throughout the 2015-2020 forecast with 38% of worldwide SMB IT products and services revenues coming from this group of companies. The remaining revenues will be generated about equally by large businesses (500-999 employees) and small businesses/small offices (1-99 employees).

On a geographic basis, the United States represents the largest market with SMB IT spending expected to total $168.7 billion in 2016. The U.S. will maintain a total share of roughly 30% throughout the forecast period. Western Europe and

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) are the second and third largest regions for SMB IT spending, with Asia/Pacific growing faster than the overall market. The regions with the fastest grow over the five-year forecast are Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and the United States.

"Western European SMBs show strong interest in adopting new disruptive technologies. Third Platform technologies are now imperative, as they are the building base for the adoption of Innovation Accelerators. In Western Europe, over 99% of companies are SMBs and they spent $154.3 billion in 2016, so they represent a relatively big market that is now transitioning to digital," said Angela Vacca, research manager, Customer Insights and Analysis, IDC. "European SMBs have been so far deeply rooted in their local market while today they have the opportunity to become more visible across borders as the Internet of Things and robotics combined with cognitive systems and 3D printing are reshaping the IT landscape. The adoption of all these technologies is creating new opportunities and, as a result, demand for highly skilled workers is also increasing across all vertical markets in the SMBs segment."

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