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ontents
Editorial Cover Story - 18
A continuum of paradigm shifts
2015 outlook: A mix of new trends and consolidation
The year will likely see continued consolidation of the major trends that have been holding the industry’s interest
News in Detail
AV solutions from ATEN in focus - 11 VMware Study: Four weeks to get employees Mobile-Ready - 12 Feature - 16
T
he year 2015 will play out as a continuum of trends that have been gathering speed. The fact is that the channel is now more familiar with the disruptive Technologies that have challenged their go to market strategies over the past few years. So even as more disruptors including IoT, come into play, the channel can look forward to enlarging the scope of their opportunities. As technologies change and changes as drastically as has played out over the past half a decade or so, the go to market approaches have also been changing. But the channel’s relevance is perhaps becoming more clarified, rather than being diminished. As connectivity and security become paramount objectives as well as concerns of Businesses, government entities and individuals, the solutions that come to be deployed will entail a lot of integration. Emerging areas like IoT coupled with data analytics, smart home automation, edge computing etc for instance will entail deployment services from the channel, in many cases as end to end execution. Rhetorical it does sound but the channel does need to continue to invest in certification and education, in some case recruiting whole new teams with the right skillsets to tap into the new paradigm of opportunities. For channel companies, the key is about steering adroitly into emerging areas while holding their own in already established domains. It will also require them to take bold decisions of exiting areas where the opportunities are relatively slowing down, for it would be necessary to pick enough areas of focus and perhaps leave some out, if it is challenging to do justice to all of them.
R. Narayan Managing Editor
Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sales Director: Alishan Zaidi Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh
The great shift
Next-generation security solutions from Cisco deliver protection across the entire attack continuum
TechKnow
Safe measures - 22
Fabrizio Croce, Area Director, SEMEA at Watchguard Technologies discusses the trends and the company’s focus
Ever watchful - 24
Andrey Sokurenko, Business Development Director, Infowatch discusses the company’s focus areas in DLP
Point2Point
Cautious outlook - 13
Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO of ComGuard discusses the company's plans for focusing on datacenter segment
Steel wheels - 15
Elie Dib, Head of Channels for METNA region at Riverbed Technology discusses the company’s channel focus
The large picture - 26
Abdul Rauf Chougle, Group General Manager discusses the company’s growth and focus
Insight
Long live the network! - 28
Stuart Bailey, founder and CTO, Infoblox discusses how we can no longer rely on the traditional model for answers
Top 5 data centre trends to watch - 30
What does 2015 hold in store for data centre professionals? Read on as Dimension Data experts discuss the top trends
Regulars
News Bytes Eyetech Stats & trends
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News Bytes
“Global” inks distribution tie-up with MOBOTIX Global Distribution FZE has signed a Distribution Agreement with MOBOTIX AG, a leading European provider of high-resolution digital, network-based video security systems. The new Distribution Agreement announcement marks Global’s entry into the emerging Physical Security Market. With Governments across the MENA, and specifically GCC region, enforcing to comply with established Laws that regulate the “General Requirements and Technical Specifications of Security Systems”, the market is expected to further grow this year. “The MOBOTIX decentralized concept is the first to make the recording of high resolution video streams practical and cost efficient. Embassies, airports, train stations, ports, gas stations, hotels, highways – MOBOTIX video systems are in use worldwide today,” said Phillip Antoniou, Business Development Manager, Middle East & Africa at MOBOTIX AG. “We are pleased to have Global to support us in the Region and expand our footprint, as Global has a great reputation in regional Channel Development and Enablement.”
4 | January 2015
Ingram acquires Turkey’s leading VAD Ingram Micro has acquired a majority interest in Armada, the largest value-added technology distributor in Turkey with 2013 sales of over $280 million. Ingram Micro plans to make a mandatory tender offer for the remaining shares in accordance with Turkish capital markets regulations. “The addition of Armada is well aligned with our strategic initiatives to grow Ingram Micro’svalue business in attractive markets,” said Ali Baghdadi, Ingram Micro senior vice president and president, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Technology Solutions. “Armada enhances our access and reach into Turkey’s fast growing technology industry while increasing the overall scale and breadth of value-added solutions Ingram Micro brings to our global partners.” Established in 1993, Armada offers robust enterprise solutions portfolio and channel development experience in the SMB market, credit services, training and other professional offering. Armada has experienced management team, collaborative culture, and long-lasting customer and vendor relationships.
Veeam reports a successful 2014 Veeam Software wrapped up its channel activities in 2014 with impressive third quarter results in the Middle East, including triple-digit percentage growth in the UAE. Veeam’s Q3 2014 results for the Middle East region demonstrated a year-on-year revenue rise of 158%, when compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, revenues for the UAE rose by 118% over the same period. During the quarter, the company acquired approximately 10,000 new customers, with total paid customers now surpassing 121,500. The number of new enterprise customers grew 108% year-over-year, and revenue from enterprise customers grew 140% over the same period. The latest results mark the twenty-seventh consecutive quarter in which the company saw total revenue bookings hit double-digit percentage growth. “2014 has been a great year for Veeam in the UAE channel. In fact, through the course of this year, we have forged partnerships that have really strengthened our position in the GCC as a whole – we currently have over 900 clients in the Middle East, and are confident this figure will increase over 2015,” said Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC, Veeam Software. He added, “Currently, the UAE is leading Veeam’s growth in the Middle East region, representing about 33% of its revenue.” Earlier in September last year, Veeam had announced new technical training and certification programmes for its reseller pro-partners and end-users in the Middle East, a move that opened up new revenue streams for Veeam’s channel partners.
News Bytes
Prologix signs up with Tramigo Prologix Distribution has signed the Authorized Distributorship Agreement with Tramigo, the world leader in tracking products which is headquartered in Finland and has operations worldwide. The company is a pioneer in the field of vehicle and fleet management software and hold the reputation of creating first global consumer brand in tracking products. Tramigo vehicle tracking device combines the GPS (Global Positioning System), GSM (mobile network) and geographical information (TLD Tramigo Landmark Data) into one device. Tramigo uses GPS satellites in positioning itself in very accurate standing, after which it finds the closest and well known landmark to that point from its internal memory and sends the information across to any authorized mobile phone as a text message using the GSM network. The actual location of your Tramigo tracking device is sent back to your phone as a message. Tramigo product range includes T23 Tracking Device Series, Tramigo for Service Providers , User Interface Software, Personnel Tracking software and Accessories. Tramigo is accessible anytime, anywhere – even when offline. It can be used in any specific language. It controls your cost because there is no monthly fees or licensed payments. The software is highly reliable with support services which are beneficiary after purchase. With Tramigo, the location data is easily accessible.
6 | January 2015
Bit9 + Carbon Black extends reach in UAE Bit9 + Carbon Black has continued to reinforce its presence in the UAE, with its leading advanced endpoint threat detection and response solution, Carbon Black-generating high interest from the local market. The company recently showcased Carbon Black’s modern features before industry leaders, stakeholders and prospective clients in a high-level seminar in Dubai. The solution’s real-time detection and response capabilities were also highlighted during the event through the presentation delivered by Dell SecureWorks, which uses Carbon Black in its Advanced Endpoint Threat Detection (AETD) managed service. The seminar held at the Burj Al Arab presented how Carbon Black delivers continuous monitoring and recording of all activities on endpoints and servers, customizing detection, and responding to network intrusions in seconds. Aquib Aftab, Regional Director, Bit 9 + Carbon Black in the Middle East said,“ Carbon Black reduces the cost and complexity of incident response by replacing ‘after-the-fact’ manual data acquisition with continuous monitoring and recording of all activity on endpoints and servers. Our collaboration with Dell SecureWorks helps its clients significantly reinforce their online defenses. We look forward to forming partnerships with other organizations in the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries as we continuously intensify our initiatives against cyber attacks in the region and the rest of the world.”
Fortinet announces HP AllianceOne program membership Fortinet has joined HP’s AllianceOne Partner program with the HP Networking Specialization. As enterprises and Service Providers look to effectively deploy security in their datacenters, leveraging the benefits of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), this partnership lays the foundation for Fortinet to deliver pre-integrated SDN-optimized security solutions to enhance HP’s SDN security portfolio. These solutions will extend the agility and operational benefits of SDN security solutions, delivered from physical or virtual FortiGate security appliances, enabling customers to reduce OPEX, strengthen security and derive more value from their investments in HP SDN and Fortinet Security. As enterprises and Service Providers move towards SDN architectures, not only is security a logical intrinsic Data Center element that needs to fit seamlessly in such architectures, but security services like those from FortiGate appliances can utilize the programmability of the network to deliver more capabilities than previously possible. In HP SDN environments, FortiGate appliances or virtual machines (VMs) could proactively instruct the HP VAN controller to contain infected endpoints at the closest switch in an automated programmable way. This would significantly reduce the risk of threat proliferation and data theft, without any incremental investment required for containment technologies.
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Harnessing the value of information
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News Bytes
emt launches Market Magnitude channel program emt Distribution successfully launched its channel partner training program called Market Magnitude. Market Magnitude is part of emt’s award winning partner program called ‘emt Magnitude Program’. Market Magnitude aims to train partners on products, technologies and concepts that impact their customer’s environment. The program is carefully crafted to suit the requirements of channel partners as well as impart knowledge and skill-sets to offer right solution rather than just selling a product. Product and technical presentations, discussions around the challenges that a customer faces in its network or security environment are integral part of this training program. Case studies, market and technical global trends are few of the other focus areas. Emt Distribution concluded its inaugural Market Magnitude program in Dubai, which was held recently in Dubai and was attended by several system integrators and resellers from Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and other emirates. This training program focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) the fast growing segment of the economy in UAE.
8 | January 2015
StarLink becomes a Splunk Distributor StarLink announced an agreement with Splunk Inc., provider of the leading software platform for real-time Operational Intelligence, to become a distributor of Splunk software. StarLink will distribute Splunk products through its extensive network of Channel Partners to enterprise and government customers in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. Splunk Enterprise collects, indexes, monitors, analyzes and visualizes machine data being generated by websites, applications, servers, networks, sensors, mobile devices and more. StarLink will also distribute Splunk premium apps including the Splunk App for Enterprise Security and Hunk: Splunk Analytics for Hadoop and NoSQL databases. “Splunk is excited to have StarLink as a distributor in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa,” said Andrew Morris, EMEA Director of Alliances and Channels, Splunk. “With StarLink’s regional experience in security and IT operations, this agreement opens the door for Splunk software to help more organizations leverage machine data for deeper IT and business insights.” “Signing with Splunk is a strategic milestone for StarLink as Splunk is the undisputed leader in providing machine data insight,” said Avinash Advani, VP, Business Strategy at StarLink. “With the rapid proliferation of connected devices, and the advent of the Internetof-Things, monitoring and analyzing everything becomes even more critical to feed security intelligence and enable smart decision making.”
Scope expands portfolio SCOPE Middle East, an emerging network performance and security value-added distributor (VAD), has partnered with three global vendors to expand its networking and security portfolio offerings with an eye to become one-stop shop The distributor has signed regional deals with Stormshield end-to-end security solutions, web security WhiteHat and Soti provider of Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. "The addition of three new vendors to our networking and security portfolio enables us to offer solutions that complement each other perfectly," said Yazan Jammalieh, director - Business Development for SCOPE ME Networking and Security business unit. "At SCOPE ME we position ourselves as a vendor representative company, and not just an IT distributor. Therefore, our emphasis is on adding value to the brands we represent, while enhancing our offerings to our customers." Yazan said SCOPE ME is focused on providing crucial support for resellers through marketing initiatives, channel enablement, pre- and post-sales support, logistics support, skill enhancement and training. Yazan added, “Our aim is to drive the networking and IT security business at SCOPE Middle East, in line with the company's vision to provide channel partners with best-inclass products and performance oriented solutions."
News Bytes
Ruckus deploys smarter Wi-Fi at AUS American University of Sharjah (AUS), one of the premier universities in the Middle East and MENA region, has selected Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi products and technology for a massive campus-wide wireless infrastructure deployment that brings high-speed, reliable Wi-Fi connectivity to thousands of students and staff. In partnership with Fiber Optic Supplies & Services (FOSS), one of the leading network infrastructure solution providers in the region, more than 1,400 dual band Ruckus ZoneFlex indoor and outdoor Smart Wi-Fi access points (APs) have now been deployed, spanning the massive 200 acre AUS campus, covering high traffic areas such as the student refectory, lecture halls, student dormitories and outdoor green spaces. Roger Hockaday, EMEA director of Marketing for Ruckus Wireless. “The torrid growth of smart mobile devices, online applications and digital curriculum have placed new capacity demands on Wi-Fi infrastructure that require carrier-class solutions designed to deliver pervasive performance. With Ruckus, FOSS and AUS have designed a world-class Wi-Fi solution to deal with these challenges, and one that will be viewed as a benchmark for other higher education institutions both in and out of the region.”
10 | January 2015
du performs Network Function Virtualisation testing du has started the journey towards Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) by successfully conducting internal tests. When fully deployed on the existing state-of-theart 4G LTE network, NFV will provide du’s enterprise customers with tighter integration of hardware and software leading to offering more value added services, reduced time required to provide a service and at more competitive costs. NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) offers a new approach to design, deploy and manage networking services. NFV decouples network functions from proprietary hardware appliance so they run in software. NFV utilises standard IT virtualisation technologies that run on high-volume services, switch and storage hardware to virtualize network functions. Saleem Al Blooshi, Executive Vice President - Network Development & Operations, du, said: “We are always eager to consider new technologies which not only streamline our network operations but more importantly – deliver a superior and simplified user experience to our customers. We are excited about Network Function Virtualisation and the successful tests paves the way forward for further validation and future deployment. We will continue our journey towards an enhanced experience based on the latest and best available technologies.”
McAfee rolls out new partner initiatives McAfee, part of Intel Security, hosted the 4th annual Partner Summit, providing nearly 700 channel partners from around the globe with the opportunity to engage with McAfee executives and customers. During this year’s event, McAfee unveiled several key channel initiatives to help partners build sustainable security practices. "We aim at providing our partners, globally and in the region, with increased flexibility for building profitable and sustainable security practices through a new channel partner program framework that focuses on change and thinking big, " said Maya Kreidy, Regional Channel Manager – UAE, GCC & Pakistan at McAfee. McAfee has announced a new, more flexible partner program framework that allows partners to evolve their business models and adapt to the changing customer landscape. McAfee is changing the name of its Security Alliance Program to the Intel Security Partner Program. In an effort to reduce program complexity, McAfee will consolidate from five product competencies to three solution competencies: Endpoint Security, Network Security and Security Management. McAfee is also removing the need for partners to complete Baseline Certifications and is expanding Continuing Education to give all partners the flexibility to earn credits for training that is most relevant to their business. McAfee is also introducing post-sales services training and certifications.
News In Detail
AV solutions from ATEN in focus at channel event
W
ave Tech Computers, ATEN’s exclusive distributor in the region, organized the Annual channel seminar for ATEN partners at the Royal Ascot hotel in Dubai. The event was attended by more than 100 channel partners, all of whom have been working with Wave Tech and reselling ATEN’s range of KVM solutions and Professional Audio Video Solutions. At the seminar, Suresh Iyer, Product Manager of ATEN at Wave Tech set the stage for the day’s sessions by thanking all assembled partners for their contribution in making 2014 a successful year for ATEN and Wave Tech in the region. The entire team from Wave Tech including its MD, Ahmed Faour were present. There was a strong representation from ATEN as well, including Karthik Narayanan, Sales Manager for
the company who made the technical presentations. He briefly mentioned that ATEN has four subbrands that focus on separate products lines. These include ATEN which is the soho and SMB KVM range of products, ALTUSEN, the enterprise range of KVM products, Van Cryst, the professional AV range of products as well as NRGgence, the PDU range of products for datacenters. The focus of the channel event was centered on the professional AV solutions from ATEN that offer signal management and signal control home and professional AV installations with a variety of applications in corporate, government, education, hospitality and home theater environments etc for the digital signage industry under the sub-brand Van Cryst. In the presentations, Karthik dwelt on
technical details, making them easy to understand for the audience, taking out the time to explain some basics such as the functionalities of a video splitter, a video extender, video switch and a video Matrix . The vendor is keen to accelerate the selling of these solutions in the channel on the eve of the new year as it believes it has some unique solutions to offer in what is a fast growth segment. With Wave Tech’s support, the vendor looks to ensure that as many of the current partners as well as the new ones that are added, extend their portfolios to include these digital signage products. Karthik said, “The digital signage industry has great potential to grow, many times over that of the KVM market and will do so certainly. We are ideally positioned to be a onestop vendor for all connectivity
Karthik Narayan Sales Manager, ATEN
needs of our customers with our exhaustive range of solutions including the Modular Matrix Switches that provide seamless switching between displays.” He added that the digital signage market is also more attractive because of the higher profitability potential it promises for the channel. This is attributed to the fact that these are potentially large projects based deployments. Ahmed Faour, MD, Wave Tech added, “We are always focused on introducing products that are promising in terms of relevance and profitability for our partners. Our association with ATEN helps us deliver high value proposition to the partners always and we are upbeat of making the most of this opportunity in the digital signage industry along with our partners.” January 2015 | 11
News In Detail
VMware Study: Four weeks to get employees Mobile-Ready
Sam Tayan Regional Director, MENA, WMware
V
Mware announced research revealing that it takes four weeks for the average IT department in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to equip staff and get them up and running with the mobility tools and applications they need to do their jobs. This time lag increases to eight weeks when it involves contract workers, possibly severely compromising the value employees can deliver upon entering an organisation. The research by Vanson Bourne, commissioned by VMware, explores the implications this lack of mobile readiness brings across the business, as it impacts both IT departments and employees. Just 10 per cent of
12 | January 2015
IT departments in the UAE, for example, believe they have all the mobile management capabilities to support staff's mobile needs, while 40 per cent cannot control access to company information from all employee mobile devices. Exploring this further, the research questioned both IT and employees on where responsibility should lie for mobile working policies. It found that IT departments across the UAE are undecided on the issue; only 27 per cent believe it’s their responsibility to restrict employees' access to mobile tools and applications outside of working hours, yet 40% feel under pressure to do this and 52% admit that it’s now
become necessary. “With the pace of business today, taking three weeks to equip staff with the tools they need to work isn’t a viable option for organisations looking to survive and thrive in the mobile cloud era”, comments Sam Tayan, Regional Director, MENA, VMware. “Any delay in getting employees functioning at full speed may lead to businesses handing over competitive edge to others. Organisations need to empower employees to collaborate with whoever they require, from any location, at any time, while minimizing security risks.” Employees, meanwhile, are more decided on the issue. 54 per cent do not agree that their employer should restrict access to mobile apps and tools. As it stands, the vast majority (81 per cent) state they do not yet have full access to the mobile tools needed to work as productively as they can, while almost half (43%) would circumvent the IT department to obtain the mobile tools needed to get the job done – demanding greater mobile enablement from the business, rather than further restrictions.
“The phrase ‘freedom within boundaries’ has never been more appropriate as the explosion of mobile devices and applications disrupts both end-user expectations and functional structures,” continues Tayan. “Organisations in the UAE cannot afford any ambiguity over who takes charge of mobile applications and tools in the business. Many employees now expect and require to determine how they work, so the challenge for IT is to cater to this, while also retaining adequate control over how information assets and business processes are used. This must be done centrally, in order to secure data, and not have business best practices compromised in any way. “The good news is that technology is ready to do this today: VMware enterprise mobility solutions are helping organisations like Hertz and TUI transform how they enable users to work – providing secure, immediate access to the resources they need. To translate this potential into reality, many more businesses will need to embrace such solutions.”
Discuss the company’s growth in the past year? From a revenue perspective, we have grown through the year. However, from a margin perspective, there was a slowdown noticed in some segments. In certain segments there are no margin pressures but in some, there were margin pressures and it was more competitive. So while we did grow, we could not net as much profits as we should have. Discuss growth across the different distribution companies of the group? There has been growth in Comguard as well Psilog. Since we rebranded Psilog for volume distribution, we have definitely been able to see more growth. What would be the broad agendas this year in terms of growth objectives? We are diversifying a bit this year. You will hear cloud related and storage related announcements this year. Broadly, we are looking to consolidate our growth this year. For this, we also want to focus on some new areas that are quite promising. Cloud and virtualization are areas that we would want to focus on as they are in demand. There are a lot of datacenters coming up. We assume that Government entities and others will be buying a lot of infrastructure solutions to build these datacenters. So we want to be present in the three segments, providing the hardware, storage, security that are required to build these datacenters. We would like to be able to provide partners capabilities to offer new age technologies such as on demand storage, applications etc for customers looking to build private clouds and also to integrate with public clouds. Would you look to add partnerships with more vendors in specific segments? We want to partner with vendors who are providing storage, networking and security solutions for datacenters. We will look for new people who have the right experience in the domains that we are interested such as storage and security solutions for the
Ajay Singh Chauhan, Chief executive officer of ComGuard, a part of Spectrum Group discusses the distributor’s intent to build a strong competence in solutions for the datacenter
Ajay Singh Chauhan, Chief Executive Officer, ComGuard
Point2Point | ComGuard
Cautious consolidation datacenter. We want to able to position as end to end supplier for datacenter projects in the areas of storage, networking and security solutions. Do you see that the security solutions distribution is now more competitive than ever with more distributors in the fray? There is competition with multiple distributors. We are trying to bring in Technologies that are superior and unique. We are confident that if we focus on solutions that offer differentiation and are affordable, it will benefit our partners and the industry.
Have you invested in a proof of centre facility? We have our proof of concept centre at the Spectrum training centre. Our partners coming in for training can take a look at the new products we have added. Do you intend to expand operations into Africa? As of this year, the focus is on consolidation and building our expertise in the areas I mentioned in our existing operations for this region. We will take on Business in Africa on a project basis as of now but don’t have any expansion plans for the Africa market at the moment. January 2015 | 13
Point2Point | FDC ProValue
Ram Praveen, Director, FDC ProValue
handholding them in sales engagements with customers. That is a significant area for us. Pre-sales plays a significant role in terms of end-customer and partner engagement. As part of the implementation support, we are providing auditing of networks, RFP building and we are now into the consulting mode for a couple of larger projects. We will be launching an online initiative soon that partners can make use and be part of. ‘Relevance’ will soon have a portal to support the program.
Ram Praveen, Director - FDC ProValue discusses how the distributor is scripting consolidation and growth
Staying Relevant How was 2014 for FDC ProValue? 2014 was a launch year for ProValue. We emerged into the VAD community. We had an advantage however since we had the FDC name that has been a leading name in Broadline distribution and has already established infrastructure such as office across different markets of the region. We saw strong growth for ProValue in 2014 and we saw good growth in the Broadline Business as well. We have got industry awards as recognition for our efforts. We had a challenge in getting to have the Brand known further but our growth has created interest from many of the larger vendors.
14 | January 2015
Discuss key attributes of your Business growth? We are particular about the need for everyone in the team to be aware of various vendors we partner with, products and most importantly as solutions. All these products put together, how do they together form a solution, is what primarily concerns our go to market approach. That’s how we have grown the Business as one frontier extending naturally into the other. So we now focus on Networking and convergence, server storage and cloud portfolio, Infrastructure and security. For all the Brands we partner with, we are able to fulfill the specific role of providing consultancy to partners and
Discuss your vendor associations? We have ZTE in the networking and convergence portfolio for the enterprise to mid-enterprise segment. We have TP-Link in the SMB and channel segment. Then we have Netgear for SMB typically and also for the channel segment. We started with enterprise products of Seagate. We have partnerships with Synology and QNAP. We have a tie-up with Tandberg Data which is now part of Overland storage. In the security and infrastructure portfolio, we are in the process of signing up with a few brands. We have Array networks and ESET in the security portfolio. We have BitDfender as well as work a bit with Kaspersky. We will look at adding to what we offer in the server and storage portfolio. Elaborate on your partner value add initiatives? We have launched our partner program ‘Relevance’.Self-enablement, channel enablement and support (being on time, being immediate, understanding of the solutions etc) are three features of the program. We are customizing the partner program as much as possible for every vendor depending on requirements and the vendor’s current placing in the market. Current vendors we are talking to are realizing we are good at this. We are not confined to one Technology, one geography or one vendor. We are trying to cover end to end solutions. We want to be lean, mean and stay relevant.
Point2Point | Riverbed
Do you see 2015 as a strong year of Business through the channel for Riverbed? Riverbed has expanded beyond WAN Optimization to include five major product sets which add up to being the industry’s most complete application performance platform. Our new platform opens up a much larger market opportunity for Riverbed in Application Performance Infrastructure. Our year on year growth has been significant. Since we are a channel focused company, that growth has obviously come from the channel segment. So the channel has been enjoying our growth as well. We had an exciting GITEX and it was good to experience the mutual commitment to 2015 Business growth with many of our partners from across GCC, Egypt etc. It has definitely enhanced our confidence. We are doing a lot of investments in the channel team. We are investing in enablement and promotions for generating new Business. The potential is phenomenal.
Elie Dib, Head of Channels for the Middle East, Turkey, North, West and Central Africa (METNA) region at Riverbed Technology discusses the company’s channel focus as it seeks to cement its leadership in its key focus areas of Application performance infrastructure.
Elie Dib Channel Head, METNA, Riverbed
Which are the territories that you are operationally taking care of from here? We look after the Middle East, North Africa, Central Africa, West Africa and Turkey from the operations based here.
Steel wheels
Discuss your strength in the Telco segment? We are strong in the Telco segment on the Managed services part and our Steel Central for network performance monitoring. Steel central can work with solutions from other vendors.
FVC are our distributors. They cover the entire Middle East including Saudi Arabia. Mindware has been signed up as our second value ad distributor to ensure that we are fulfilling our commitment to the growing demand from the channel across the whole region for our solutions.
Do you have PoC (proof of concept) facilities in the region for partners? As of today we do have these facilities in Europe and which have been set-up through our distributors. We will similarly have here, one in Dubai and one in Saudi.
Elaborate on your Africa focus? We have FVC who manages North, central and West Africa. We have MCS dedicated for Africa, Mitsumi for Central and North Africa and Zycko for the French speaking parts of Africa. We have a plan to have a distributor in Egypt. Africa by and large is still an untapped market for such solutions. We have a lot of enterprise customers there. Bandwidth availability is still a
Who are your value add distributors for the region? For the Middle East, Mindware and
challenge in Africa and our SteelHead solution is very relevant for those markets as it can accelerate applications. Discuss your partner program’s focus The partner program we offer is competency focused- whether it is WAN optimization,NetworkPerformance Management, Storage delivery or Application delivery. Our program will make sure that our partners can provide the services value to their customers. We are working towards enabling our partners to be fully capable of designing the solution, explaining the benefits to the customer, implementing the solution in the best possible way and providing post implementation support. January 2015 | 15
Feature | Cisco
Next-generation security solutions from Cisco deliver advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum Anthony Perridge Security Sales Director, Cisco
before, during, and after an attack
bringing the continuum approach, to cover the before, during and after the attack phases.” The company conducted a seminar in December in Dubai where this message was driven across to attendees, largely customers. The seminar titled ‘Security Beyond Traditional Defenses’ highlighted the importance of next-generation security solutions from Cisco that deliver advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum before, during, and after an attack. The focus is on preparedness for any inevitable breach in the network and subsequent remediation. The line of reasoning is quite persuasive that the attacker only needs to succeed once while the defender needs to succeed always. Therefore there is a strong possibility that the defender is likely to fail one time or the other and hence the need for remediation. The company is focusing on such solutions and this includes the AMP (Advanced Malware Protection) from the SourceFire portfolio. “From a recent Cisco research, it has been found out that 100% of organizations connect to malicious sites. The question
The great shift C
isco, the networking powerhouse has upped the ante in its growing focus on security solutions. Its Global Security Sales Organization (GSSO) is now an independent unit of Cisco. The company is now adopting the go to market strategy of focusing on addressing the entire attack continuum and claims it offers Technologies that fit into all those scenarios. “Beginning of the fiscal year 2015 at Cisco, we launched the GSSO. So we are now a Business unit focusing solely on security within Cisco,” says Anthony Perridge, Security Sales Director at Cisco.
16 | January 2015
He adds, “Before a probable attack, you need a robust resilient system while during an attack, you need to monitor and after the attack, you need remediation. We want to move away from the approach of point products as there is no silver bullet. As an industry, our learning has been that the point product approach creates issues because customers find it confusing, getting conflicting messages from the various vendors. They also find it hard to integrate these various products. If you are spending your time integrating the various products, you are possibly leaving out gaps. We are
we are asking is what would you do if you already knew that you were hacked? Since 2004, we have been tracking the time between discovery of an attack or compromise and the remediation and what we also found out is that it is sometimes days, weeks or even months. The question therefore is not how high can I build the wall so that my security cannot be breached because at some point the breach is bound to happen. Everybody is using devices that is coming into and out of networks, at work and at home. The complexity of networks, the advent of BYOD, the advent of cloud
With the likely computing etc are advent of IoT blurring the lines "As an industry, we need to be thinking (Internet of Things) of responsibility for about moving away from product type on a growing scale, security,” comments the data sensor Anthony. model of security solutions. There is a growing points will multiply Cisco offers appetite for new consumption models." manifold and in technologies that do the new scheme of remediation, which things, it would be are forensic type mandatory to secure upfront rather than at The company is working with several tools that can go back in time and find out a leisurely pace. global scale Managed services providers the entry point, who was infected, how it “For Cisco it is a huge opportunity to and believes there is a strong opportunity proliferated and the damage it has done look to have security being built into all for Managed Services providers regionally to the organization. These present great solutions rather than as an afterthought. as well because of data concerns. opportunities for incident response, as a That can be more effective and also offer “Historically, there has been a small service, believes Anthony. lower cost of ownership. There are not number of managed service providers like He says, “When an attack occurs and many organizations that are as well placed BT, Symantec, Dell Secure Works or an IBM proliferates, it is the equivalent of an as Cisco to secure networks and integrate type of organization. We work with almost emergency call to the service provider the security into the networking,” adds all of them. In terms of the region, there is to provide remediation services. It is an Anthony. significant opportunity for local Managed opportunity about helping with the cleanOn the partner front, Cisco has tried to service providers, especially because up and then the forensics about how the encourage the traditional Cisco networking customers in the region are concerned to attack occurred and how to prevent it from partners to integrate security onto the keep the data locally in the country and happening again.” infrastructure solutions. Concurrently, the then there all the regulatory requirements. He also believes that the shift towards company has been very keen to retain all There is definitely a demand.” security as a managed service rather than SourceFire partners that have been typically The fact that there is a shortage of as a product is inevitable. focusing on best of breed security solutions. nearly a million security practitioners visAnthony says, “By 2018, 65% of cyber While some of them were also working à-vis the demand is also ensuring that the security spend would be on services. with cisco, some weren’t. demand is also which is driving the tide in Historically, the security spend has been Anthony says, “We modified the cisco favor of Managed services. Anthony expects in favor of products. This is going to security channel program to make it more that more flexible consumption models shift. There is a great opportunity for the attractive for security centric partners. We such as security as a service etc will gain channel.” have made accreditation an important ground. Reasons in favor of Cisco to be a leader part of the program so that the experts The recent seminar was also an in the network security space include are rewarded. One of the ways we have occasion to unveil the Cisco ASA with the fact that Cisco sees more network been done that is we are providing deal FirePOWER Services - a threat-focused Next traffic than Google as it has more data registration so that the margins are secured Generation Firewall (NGFW) for its UAE points about what’s going on globally on for security centric partners.” customers at the event. This also includes networks. That gives the company access In the final analysis, Cisco’s focus some SourceFire technologies. to a great deal of information and therefore on security is quite strong. The Cisco Anthony says, “If you look at the recent a strong leverage in being able to offer the approach to cybersecurity is visibility driven, NSS Labs report, it is a market leading necessary threat monitoring service which threat focused, and platform based. It is product offering best in class features, best it makes available to its customers. This is encouraging the trend towards security as a in detection rates and has threat centric offered directly as well as via partners. service model. approach. Cisco ASA platform is among the Anthony adds, “We can offer a global Anthony says, “As an industry, we need most widely deployed platforms, tried and monitoring service and many of our to be thinking about moving away from tested and we are bringing into that some partners, be it global service providers of the SourceFire Technologies. It is amazing product type model of security solutions. or outsourcing companies provide it as a There is a growing appetite for new that within twelve months, how both the Managed Service. We have two pronged consumption models. Margins are likely to teams have come together and worked opportunity and if customers want to buy be eroded in the traditional model and we jointly to bring new products to market. that directly from us, they can but also would be encouraging partners to look at The event has been very well attended and certainly we don’t deviate from our channel value add expertise and services.” there is a high level of interest.” focus.”
January 2015 | 17
Cover Feature | 2015 Outlook
2015 OUTLOOK The year will likely see continued consolidation of the major trends that have been holding the industry’s interest for the past few years including Big Data analytics, cloud, SDN, IoT, and BYOD
I
t looks certain that 2015 will see continued consolidation of the major trends that have been holding the industry’s interest for the past few years. IoT (Internet of Things), SDN, Managed services, Big Data analytics, cloud, Mobility and BYOD are among trends that are in varying degrees shaping the changing face of the industry. The fact that when many of these Technologies come together as enablers, there is likely to be a snowball effect and this is precisely the kind of future we are heading towards with these trends
in tandem. Rabih Dabboussi, General Manager, Cisco UAE says, “By 2022, there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet. By some estimates, even this is a conservative outlook. Technology has advanced and has become smaller in size, is more flexible and adaptable to different applications and has also gone down in terms of costs. This is driving a tremendous interest for adoption of connectivity and intelligence in almost everything around us. Businesses will strive to leverage this connectivity and
intelligence to differentiate.” The IoT opportunity is likely to emerge into the limelight over the next couple of years in terms of deployments. From integration to securing the infrastructure that will enable IoT to work, there is potentially a lot of opportunities that the channel will be likely to unearth. Sabbahuddin Khan, Regional Manager at Allied Telesis Middle East says, “The IoT trend will dramatically increase the number of network-connected entities. Devices that contain sensors, control, or intelligence will
Mobility & software drive the future Mobile device penetration as well as mobile data traffic growth rate in the region are among the fastest in the world. MEA is set to post the world’s highest-growth rate of IPv6-capable smartphones and tablets according to a Cisco forecast. These trends will encourage even wider adoption of wireless access and Mobile Device management as well. Sabbahuddin says, “The unprecedented adoption rate of mobile devices in the enterprise landscape means that wireless access is now more important than ever, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The technological innovations that the 802.11ac standard is enabling will lead to continuing growth in demand for wireless access products, and will ensure that wireless access has a critical role in unified enterprise network infrastructure. Users will demand pervasive and reliable wireless coverage and seamless mobility. This wireless expansion drives the need for tightly integrated management platforms.”
In addition, the rising prevalence of Mobile workforces will also mean that workers would need better access remotely. That is driving the demand for hyper-converged systems that help manage virtualized infrastructures. Hyper-convergence infrastructure have a software-centric architecture that tightly integrates compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources and other technologies. Ahmad Qadri, Regional Director for Middle East at Nutanix says, “Mobility has meant that large teams of people have been freed from their offices and are able to work offsite, either beside their customers or from home to increase productivity, customer satisfaction and personnel retention. But the distributed systems needed to support these work
Rabih Dabboussi, General Manager, Cisco UAE
increasingly become network connected. IPv6 will gain wider adoption, as will management technologies that are required to manage network-connected nodes. The IoT will deliver benefits for everyone, from enterprises to municipal councils, but it is the value of information and knowledge that will see new players introduced and new business models emerge during 2015.” As IoT initiatives get off ground, in fact many of the larger projects could be spearheaded by government entities as they enable more public e-services for the public. Rabih adds, “The next few years are thus likely to be of IoT gaining ground. We got some economists to gauge the value of the IoT economy. The value at stake of the IoT between now and 2022 is $19 Trillion. The potential is immense. We took that model and applied to Dubai and the report was about the value at stake between now and 2019 for Dubai’s smart city initiative. It is about 5 Billion dollars.”
"The unprecedented adoption rate of mobile devices in the enterprise landscape means that wireless access is now more important than ever, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future."
environments are driving the uptake of hyper-converged infrastructure at such a pace that even traditional storage area network (SAN) players are reducing SAN production and redirecting IT spend into hyper-converged technology. And it will become even more prevalent in 2015 as businesses look to the IT department to support this new working environment while still keeping equipment and maintenance costs low.” Therefore he believes that hyperconverged will transition from the ‘early adopter’ phase to mainstream production environment; from test and development to Tier 1 applications. Nutanix is partnering with Dell globally and have extended that into the region. The Dell XC-series appliance integrates
Dell’s x86 server platform (PowerEdge R720xd) and Nutanix web-scale software to provide a solution with enterprise class performance, scalability, availability and data management features. Basil Ayass, Marketing Director, Dell Middle East said, “Web-scale IT is making huge inroads compared to traditional DAS, NAS and SAN architectures. The demand for software defined storage is going through the roof- over delivering on promise. Cost-wise, it is cheaper and performance wise, it is better. Customers are liking it and software defined storage has seen quick adoption unlike SDN.” What happened in the case of server virtualization is now unfolding with storage and networks. SDN is still in the initial phase of rollout with Telcos testing it. January 2015 | 19
Sabbahuddin Khan, Regional Manager, Allied Telesis ME
Cover Feature | 2015 Outlook
Basil adds, “It is only now that SDN is beginning to see traction. Telcos are taking the lead. They are testing and that gives confidence to the enterprise segment to take it up. We are therefore now seeing a lot of interest around SDN.” Legacy network architectures cannot provide the scale that SDN can potentially bring in to the infrastructure which is required especially as organizations move more workloads to the cloud and the workforce become more mobile. Sabbahuddin adds, “The flexibility in user location and device usage that is becoming the norm in Enterprise IT, as the BYOD concept has taken hold, will drive requirements for more dynamic operation of Enterprise communication systems. Organizations needing solutions to these requirements will increasingly look to SDN as the source of such solutions. The efficiencies to be gained by integration between business rules, user information, and network infrastructure will benefit network administrators and users alike.”
The cloud’s next phase According to Rabih, the next phase of
20 | January 2015
cloud computing is about optimizing data centres. That will mean moving some of the actual application processing to the edge, i.e., what is being referred to as ‘fog-computing’. The terms Fog Computing, coined by CISCO, refers to computing on the edge wherein data processing and decisions are happening closer to the event location, leaving only more critical decision making to the central cloud locations. He adds, “We believe the next phase of cloud computing especially when it comes to smart city initiatives and IoT is in fog computing – taking some of the data centre responsibilities and some of the application processes and distributing it to the edge. So instead of centralizing it in the cloud, you do it in the fog which is closer to the user.” Rabih claims that Fog computing alongside cloud computing will see more adoption in 2015 in tandem with IoT growth. Elaborating further, he says, “For example, when you are in the parking lot, the access point covering the parking lot needs to cover your location and the density of cars in the parking lot. That access point needs to tell the lights to turn on or off, brighten up or dim down based on number of people. These decisions need not go to the cloud as they can be taken at the edge. You will see processing and many applications taking place at the edge in places like the parking lot, in a street, a mall, a theatre etc. But you will also see more centralizing applications in the cloud as well.” There is also likely to be great consolidation in the cloud services market. Ahmad believes that the larger players in the cloud service market will get bigger and there will be a scramble for the rest of the market opportunities. He says, “If it isn’t already, hybrid cloud will become the ‘new normal’ infrastructure solution as more and more organizations realize the benefits of balancing hardware control and software scalability. Over the next five years, we’ll see the big cloud services providers (CSPs) hold a vast majority of the hardware market. Meanwhile, the smaller businesses fighting for the remaining market share will be forced to pick between building their own
open source-based infrastructure solutions or purchasing turnkey products.” Bigger picture Quite obviously IoT will also be a driving factor for Big Data analytics to become more prevalent in terms of deployments. There is going to be a growing demand for such solutions for instantaneously fetching results for specific queries. Therefore, the compute infrastructure in the background is going to consume a lot of processing power. Rabih says, “If you think of Mobility and IoT together, there is going to be a lot of data going to be generated. In order to link to link people, devices, process, things together, there has to be a tremendous amount of processing power that needs to be enabled behind this. The amount of time it takes to search through text is much less than it takes through for a video file or a voice conversation or facial recognition etc. The level of complexity and consumption of computing that is going to be needed in the future is on an entirely different level than in the past. Hence, the notion of Big Data, which is about taking zettabytes of data in a distributed way across multiple servers and multiple processors so that you gain your result much quicker such as in the case of a crime scenario investigation. It could be so many other different scenarios. In future, the ability to do Big Data crunching will be at our fingertips.” Cisco’s Rabih also concedes that we are already onto an era when a single company’s solutions will not do and there is likely to be a lot of collaboration that will help enable all required solutions and services. He adds, “No single company is going to have the answer to all these requirements. We have been developing Technologies both on the analytics side and also on the networking side to enable the Big Data model. We are now integrating Hadoop which is the platform for enabling distributed processing across a compute environment into our systems. We are building the services delivery platform or the orchestration platform that allows to include multiple vendors and allows to do
Security, a prime time focus With more devices connected, it would akin to a mouth-watering prospect for would be attackers as they seek network vulnerabilities to attack. Therefore, security needs to stay competent to tackle malicious attacks. Rabih says, “Security is becoming a great concern. There will more focus on that and more technologies introduced that will allows us to adopt all the trends that I mentioned. This has to be much more robust than what is there currently. As we go towards the predicted 50 billion devices, the actual attack surface area would have increased tremendously.” Security solutions will become more heavily integrated to guarantee the security of data and the privacy of users across the entire infrastructure. More organizations in the Middle East today recognize the need for efficient network security systems to secure their Businesses. Sabbahuddin says, “The increasingly flexible policies of network access and the growing number of threats will escalate the demand for newer network protection technologies. The escalating likelihood of attack and the resulting loss of productivity and damage to reputations will ensure that security is a high priority for executive management—particularly given the number of high-profile attacks during 2014. Likewise, Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) technology, integrating application control
Basil Ayass, Marketing Director, Dell ME
the analytics for you. Dell has also strengthened its portfolio in information management solutions with the acquisition of StatSoft last year. StatSoft is a provider of analytics solutions that deliver data mining, predictive analytics and data visualization capabilities. Basil says, “We now have software portfolio for predictive analytics, an area where we were lacking prior to the StatSoft acquisition. We are in a position now to provide our customers access to proven and affordable advanced analytics solution that delivers the predictive and prescriptive analysis capabilities that their businesses need in order to make faster, more accurate decisions.”
capability, will play a leading role in the security space.” Upbeat outlook The region continues to be adopt new technologies. Large initiatives are being spearheaded by Government initiatives including the smart city projects. Rabih says, “We are seeing a determined effort to invest in Technology as a way to enable the transformation of the nation, across the GCC. The vision of the leadership in the region is taking the lead in Technology adoption. IT is now at the forefront of the government’s fiscal budgets. There is an increase in budgetary allocation for IT. IT is not an afterthought. Although IT is not a solution to all issues, yet it is an element of all solutions for all problems.” Sectors including Education BFSI, Education, Hospitality, Healthcare etc are all in process of upgrading their capabilities to compete and provide best services. Technology will remain a key enabler behind those efforts. Basil says, “Oftentimes, the Middle East or any emerging markets would
follow the trends going on globally. Customers see the opportunity because they are not tied down by legacy. The large enterprises see the opportunity to leapfrog other regions in terms of infrastructures and implement modern solutions. The small and medium size enterprises find it cheaper to implement as they can start taking advantage of enterprise grade solutions that are available at affordable costs.” It has been a tricky era for the partners. They are challenged to embrace the disruptive technologies in their go to market models but most are keeping pace. Rabih says, “Partner ecosystems have been evolving alongside. We are seeing a big appetite from our partners to sharpen their expertise and tools that helps them to deliver these new Technologies.” While telcos delivering ICT services as part of their Managed services portfolio will increase, there will a lot more of opportunities emerging in the era that is on the cusp of pervasive connectivity and intelligence. The opportunities for integrators is only bound to rise. January 2015 | 21
TechKnow | Watchguard
Do you see UTM adoptions still on the rise? The UTM appliances are becoming more powerful, faster and are available at lesser costs. Earlier generations may have been unable to support advances services which is no longer the case and these can handle new kinds of threats including APT. It is not easy to be dealing with different vendors for different security solutions. The UTM takes away that hassle and brings a single point reference, a one point of control. How do you see Watchguard faring in the region? We have a growing market share. It is however a very competitive market. Our appliances deliver high performance and are easy to deploy and use. Even without expertise in networking and security, our appliances can be easily deployed. We are one of the Market leaders from the Gartner report. WatchGuard has been named a "Leader" in Gartner's 2014 Unified Threat Management (UTM) Magic Quadrant for the fifth consecutive year. WatchGuard was also named a "Champion," and has been awarded the "Value" and "Trend Setter" awards for its XTM Series in Info-Tech Research Group's 2014 NGFW (Next Generation Firewall) Vendor Landscape Report. We got the NSS Labs recommendation for the XTM 1525 as one of the top-rated Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) based on a real-world comparative analysis. According to the report, the XTM 1525 blocked 96.7 percent of attacks against server applications, 98.7 percent of attacks against client applications, and 97.8 percent overall. It proved effective against all evasion techniques tested and passed all the stability and reliability tests. How do such third party reports help? There is a lot of attention to Analyst reports here. This kind of third party validation is critical to our customers in instilling confidence they are choosing market leading solutions. We have the capability to provide both UTM and the NGFW with the same appliance. Sometimes what the analysts say is far from accurate but they give directions to the industry. What are some of the unique features of the WatchGuard Firebox M440 that you showcased at GITEX? We launched the WatchGuard Firebox M440 which delivers 25 1 Gb Ethernet ports, eight that deliver Power over Ethernet (PoE), plus two 10 Gb SFP+ (fiber) ports. The Firebox M440 with its multiple ports removes the need for complex configurations such as VLANs and simplifies the
22 | January 2015
Fabrizio Croce Area Director, SEMEA, Watchguard
Safe measures WatchGuard Technologies has been a consistent leader in the UTM space and has made significant enhancements in its Technologies and partner engagement. Fabrizio Croce, Area Director, SEMEA at Watchguard Technologies discusses the trends and the company’s focus.
operating together critical process of and managed applying traffic"The partner program has greater stress on skill from a common appropriate policies and certifications than sales targets. We are focusing centralized across multiple on very skilled partners that can constantly work on management network segments. platform. There is We also our products and support our customers." a shift in favor of announced Firebox the virtual but it M400 and M500 varies from region appliances, based been using the network security visibility to region. on the latest Intel Pentium and Intel tool to monitor and gain critical and timely WatchGuard virtualized solutions Celeron Processors. These are specifically insights about network security threats, address the challenges that are faced by engineered for mid-size and distributed bandwidth and Internet usage, as well as enterprises today, and how to tackle them enterprises, which are struggling to related traffic trends. successfully. Through our virtual appliances effectively and affordably secure networks XTMv (Extendible Threat Management) in the face of explosive growth in Discuss your current partner program? and XCSv (Extensible Content Security) we bandwidth rates, connection speeds and From the channel program perspective, offer virtual security deployment options encrypted traffic. These solutions are we offer Watchguard One as our partner for businesses of all sizes. This is important powerful to run all their engines in parallel program. It ties higher margins to higher because virtual environments cannot without any bottlenecks. customer service levels and allows resellers depend on physical infrastructure alone to get unprecedented combined discounts for protection. Whether organizations are What have been the advances in your of more than 70 percent. The program looking to virtualize traditional gateway visibility tool? How has it been received leverages a value-based model that places firewalls or integrate virtual security with by customers? additional focus on reseller certification and messaging and application servers. WatchGuard's visibility solution, Dimension, training in addition to simply volume sales. first launched in late 2013, provides It includes additional profit sharing partner Discuss how you enable all your real-time, single-pane-of-glass view of programs, such as Deal Registration and modules to offer best capabilities? the effect each policy is having on that Security Pays. In our devices, we decided to have best segment's traffic. The latest version of WatchGuardONE delivers a variety of breed modules. Our UTM and NGFW dimension includes the industry's first of membership levels including Silver, security appliances run on Fireware, a interactive, integrated policy mapping Gold and Platinum and the difference complete security platform designed to capability for Unified Threat Management is the number of employee certified on run full versions of the leading security (UTM) and Next-Generation Firewall our Technologies. Discounts and rebates engines in every category. Our best(NGFW) appliances. Policy Map provides vary depending on the partner's level of of-breed security tools include DLP, a complete view of traffic flow and policy commitment. APT, Intrusion Prevention, Reputation impact across the entire network and also The program has greater stress on Enabled Defense, spamBlocker, Gateway provide the ability to quickly filter or drill skill and certifications than sales targets. AntiVirus, WebBlocker, Application Control down for additional detail and analysis. We are focusing on very skilled partners and Packet Filtering. Where we aren’t It aggregates disparate information about the experts, we have partnerships with policies, interfaces, applications and related that can constantly work on our products and support our customers. We are not best of breed suppliers to include their traffic flows, and presents it in a simple, keen on working with partners that are solution. This is the case for AV solutions intuitive and interactive visualization only opportunity focused and active as is for IPS and Application control. For dashboard. It can be used for policy audits, AV solutions, we have Kaspersky and to find active and misconfigured policies, to occasionally. AVG. For IPS and Application control, we identify unusual/abnormal traffic patterns, How have the software versions of your have Trend Micro. We are very careful to visually check if firewall policies or solutions been accepted? about what the market is demanding. configuration changes have the intended We have software versions of our Now we are working to enhance our impact on traffic patterns and much more. appliances for the virtual deployments. wireless capabilities such as Hotspot It comes free on any WatchGuard UTM or They have exactly the same features. You services, for hospitality, airports etc. We NGFW platform. save on the hardware costs, space and continue to refresh our boxes, ensuring WatchGuard Dimension has been cooling costs. You can choose to deploy they are always offering state of the art received well by customers and has seen a mix of hardware and virtual appliances, technologies. strong market adoption. Customers have
January 2015  |  23
TechKnow | InfoWatch
Discuss solutions from InfoWatch? InfoWatch is a DLP solutions company, focusing on solutions that help prevent data loss prevention. The company was a spin-off from Kaspersky and is over 10 years old. The InfoWatch Group consists of four companies InfoWatch Ltd. (data leakage prevention software), Kribrum Ltd. (social media monitoring and analysis aimed at online reputation management), EgoSecure GmbH (endpoint security software), and Appercut (business application source code analysis). Traffic Monitor is our flagship product and our core strength has been in DLP market. In addition, we offer the InfoWatch EndPoint Protection, InfoWatch Appercut for securing company’s applications from backdoors and vulnerabilities, InfoWatch Targeted Attack Detector aimed at detection and prevention of attacks the target of which is frequently large corporations, government agencies and defense companies. Please elaborate on key features in the current version of Traffic Monitor Enterprise? InfoWatch Traffic Monitor Enterprise is a comprehensive solution for data protection, loss prevention and monitoring the transmission of sensitive information outside a company, as well as for the protection of the company from internal threats.The Traffic Monitor Enterprise 5.0 brings in a new approach to interfaces for enterprise solutions., with easy access to data for integrating business divisions. It provides an improved potential for detecting and analyzing data. Traffic Monitor Enterprise 5.0 allows security management to engage heads of business units.The application of tools for analyzing data protection and their transfer channels gives a comprehensive picture of information flows within the organization's business processes and helps identify similar paths for transferring confidential information and prevents access to it by unauthorized persons. It also reveals collusion, disloyal employees and intruders. Constructing policies in InfoWatch Traffic Monitor Enterprise 5.0 can even be done by inexperienced users, since the integrity and precision of the policy is calculated automatically by the system. You can specify how data can be copied and stored, and set various parameters for determining incidents and reactions to situations, in concise, understandable form. It allow document recognition and analysis
24 | January 2015
Andrey Sokurenko Business Development Director, Infowatch
Ever watchful With the rise in the threat scenario of confidential data leaks perpetuated in majority by insiders in organizations, there is a growing relevance for advanced DLP (Data leakage prevention) solutions. Andrey Sokurenko, Business Development Director, Infowatch discusses the company’s focus areas in DLP
information even in the case leakage in of small text "The Middle East is quite developed in comparison with fragments which terms of demand for DLP solutions and the same period can be inserted this is set to grow further. We have been driving in 2013. Out of into any document the 654 leaks or sent in informal market awareness of DLP solutions." of confidential communications information that or via IM systems. were recorded New technologies and reported in the media in the that have been added to InfoWatch an archive of all information flows in first half of 2014, it was found that Traffic Monitor Enterprise 5.0 include the organization, including incidents of employees were responsible for 71% Database Detection, Filled Form security policy breach and leakage of of cases.The results highlight that Detection, Stamp Detection, Passport confidential information; this storage corporates need to be more aware Detection and Credit card Detection. is a legally relevant evidence base for of such threats and implement the internal incident investigation and court required solutions to protect their data Discuss how the solutions are proceedings. and businesses.The statistics found deployed and managed? In the Post DLP phase, special in the report clearly show that leaks There are three phases of engagement. reports are generated on the status of through "traditional" channels - mail, We call them pre-DLP, DLP and post the customer after the implementation e-mail, paper documentation, theft and DLP. In the Pre DLP phase, we try as agreed with customer. This reports loss of equipment – still form the lion's and understand pain points, technical the health of the situation inside the share of accidental leaks. requirements etc. This stage includes company and makes recommendations Companies should not only have deep data analysis and categorization. to enhance security. DLP solutions, they should make sure This is done with the help of InfoWatch Reports generated can profile kinds to get advanced solutions. We deliver Auto-linguist engine and consultancy of of leakages, who is responsible, how the knowledge, trainings etc to help InfoWatch linguists. Since the majority to prevent etc.Forensic is an important customers choose the right solutions. of data in companies are unstructured part in this as it helps us block and In short, these are tools to increase and spread out across documents, investigate cause of leakage as well as productivity of the company. files and storages, companies aren’t point out the insider who is responsible on top of the confidentiality required for the data leak. Discuss your distribution and partner for various data; companies simply strategy? do not know which of their data are Discuss the need for DLP solutions Scope Middle East and EMT are our confidential and therefore can’t protect and how the Middle East has distributors as well Fakhro Electronicsin them effectively. Once, all data is responded? Bahrain. They have knowledge and classified into categories on the basis of The Middle East is quite developed expertise in our solutions and have levels of confidentiality, a DLP system in terms of demand for DLP solutions trained specialists. Our technical can be installed. and this is set to grow further. We experts are visiting the region regularly In the DLP phase, our engineers and have been driving market awareness to train the technical teams of our partners help customers implement, of DLP solutions. Our Analytics Centre partners, thus providing them with integrate and understand steps to generated a report which we make extensive knowledge and expertise use. Monitors are installed on all data available to customers, showing in data leakage prevention and other transfer channels, for monitoring all situations from around the world and information security areas. All our data moving inside the company and illustrating schemes that data thieves outside the company perimeter. In are making to enable data leakage from partners undergo InfoWatch certification and so get the status of InfoWatch instances of any attempt to transfer inside to the outside. Group certified partners. confidential data outside the company Each year the number of leakages They are well trained in the three perimeter, either the system will block has been growing. According to the the attempt or alert. report from InfoWatch Analytical Centre, phases of deploying DLP services, including post-DLP. For customers, it The Post-DLP stage includes more than 500 cases of data leakage is important to be assured that the investigation of data leak incidents with incidents were recorded during the systems will work out fine in the longer help of InfoWatch Forensic Storage. first half of 2014. This figure represents run after deployment. It’s a specialized storage containing a 32% increase in confidential
January 2015 | 25
Point2Point | SNB
Abdul Rauf Chougle Group General Manager, SNB ME
The large picture SNB Middle East is today an established name in value distribution in the region and has expanded its focus areas considerably in the past couple of years. Abdul Rauf Chougle, Group General Manager discusses the company’s growth and focus. Discuss the areas of focus as of today for the company? Four years ago, we started out as a distributor for data storage, primarily, disks, tapes as well as backup and recovery software. For various reasons but primarily in addressing requirements from our partners for different solutions and to help them in their turnkey project requirements, we got into new areas. So as of today, we are distributors for solutions across four key segments- data storage, surveillance, networking and security.
26 | January 2015
Elaborate on your various portfolios? SNB's Data-Storage portfolio comprises of Disk, Tape and Backup & Recovery solutions.We represent Nexsan and Infortrend on Disk, TandbergData on Tape and EVault on Backup & Recovery. All brands we represent have products to address SMB and Enterprise requirements. We began to address a lot surveillance opportunities. Surveillance partners were keen to source other related products and solutions as storage was only a small part of surveillance. That led us into IP cameras and Ethernet connectivity solutions.
So in our portfolio today, we have IP cameras from Mobotix, Video Management software from Axxon, connectivity solutions from Allied Telesis. We have strengthened the surveillance portfolio following partnerships signed with Pelco (by Schneider Electric) for its cameras and Tripp Lite for its power and connectivity solutions. With the signing up for Allied Telesis, another frontier opened up and we were adding other networking vendors. We signed up for Proxim for outdoor wireless and Enterasys for high end enterprise switches. Enterasys got bought out by Extreme Networks and so we are distributors for Extreme Networks now. For the last one year, we have been building the security focus. We signed up with Seclore, which is into information rights management. Seclore offers an innovative solution, FileSecure, which enables organizations to control usage of information wherever it goes, both within and outside of the organization’s boundaries. The ability to remotely enforce and audit who can view, edit, copy, and re-distribute files empowers organizations to embrace mobility, Cloud and external collaboration with confidence. Then we signed up with GTV Technologies which is into DLP. The DLP solution provides organizations the overall control and visibility needed to manage advanced threats, analyze data, prevent data loss, enforce compliance while protecting the brand, intellectual property and reputation of some of the world's largest enterprises. We also signed up with Cyberoam for its range of UTM solutions. Are all of these growth segments in the region? We continue to see growth across all segments we focus on. Surveillance has been for sure a growth segment in the region. That is also being driven because of the compliance requirements. In the UAE, many of the Ministry requirements are for large resolution cameras and for retaining data for a specific period of time. The surveillance needs of government
involved in endorganisations, as "SNB has always been a Value-Add distributor user interactions. well as the banking and finance, oil focused on being an end-to-end solution provider. Discuss EA and gas, hospitals SNB has a strong technical team to offer pre Business focus? and transportation and post-sales technical support We have a sectors are driving to all our partners." local partner in the demand. East Africa who Storage has is driving the been steadily Business there.Kenya office still depends are able to offer end to end solutions, growing and there is good traction for on the UAE operations for support. The whether it is surveillance (cameras, VMS, Cloud backup. IT security has been a plan is to grow it into a full-fledged storage and connectivity), data storage segment showing consistent growth and branch in 2015. (Discs, tapes, data and backup software) we are looking to add endpoint protection etc, networking (wired, wireless, short solution to what we offer in this space. What has the expansion been into distance and long distance connectivity other GCC countries? products). IT security is still relatively Have you spun off the services as a We have offices in Doha and in Saudi new but we still have a few products separate entity? Arabia. We are looking for an office in and intend to strengthen offerings in this We now have a different company for eastern region of Saudi Arabia. Further, domain. services that was spun off. That acts we have signed authorized distributorship SNB has always been a Value-Add as ASP for some vendors. We are also with Fluke Networks to promote its entire distributor focused on being an end-tolooking to include Training as a focus network testing equipment portfolio that end solution provider. SNB has a strong activity. are spread across network deployment, technical team to offer pre and post-sales network and application performance technical support to all our partners. SNB As a VAD, what do you see as your measurement and troubleshooting in the also offers sales and technical trainings specific value attributes? KSA region. to partners and also helps by getting We don’t have commodity products. We
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January 2015 | 27
Insight | Infoblox
he Internet permeates our
T
And enterprise networks are
lives, a complex global
no exception. Rather than
TCP/IP network that we take
being made up of switches
for granted whether we use it
and cables, they’re comprised
for shopping, for research, or
of the people, data, devices
for watching funny cat videos.
and infrastructure that
However, look closer and
conspire together to make
you’ll see that the Internet is
things happen. These are
responsible for less than 20 per
the networks that provide
cent of the real network that
personalised medicine to
we all use every day. Indeed,
paediatric cancer patients
when you take into account a
that make sure ships safely
world of intranets, machine-
enter and leave ports of call,
to-machine networks, RFID
and enable global business to
sensors chirping information
grow.
between pallets and shippers,
Knowing this, one of the
and even robots tweeting
prime focuses for today’s
each other, it’s clear that your
technology industries is to
network is vastly bigger than
empower and entice both the
the Internet itself.
networked business and the
Networks contain the
networked you – they watch,
data, connections and choices
participate in, and try to control
that are woven throughout
your networks. Expanding,
every aspect of your personal
informing and building
and work life. Each day your
different types of networks
network is created by the
is big business for Verizon,
interactions you make with
LinkedIn, and Google Ads to
your devices, apps, clouds and
name but a few.
social networks. It will constantly shift and
So what makes up the network itself? For decades
redefine itself depending on
now, the network has been
how you’re using it, what
perceived by the technology
you need from it, and the
industry as a subsystem, or as
new information that comes
plumbing; a perception that is
into it, teaching it to behave
now outdated and obsolete.
differently for you. This
I’d suggest that it’s now
network that you’ve created,
time to consider the network
and the way that your devices
as being so much more than
interact with each other on
the switches, routers and
your behalf, offer significant
load balancers sold by the
value and meaning to others.
likes of Cisco, Juniper and
Whether it’s your own,
Brocade; more than the Cloud
your doctor’s, or that of the
and the data centre. And I
NHS, each network is unique.
believe that existing network
28 | January 2015
Stuart Bailey Founder & CTO, Infoblox
The Network is dead. Long live the network! Stuart Bailey, founder and CTO, Infoblox discusses how we can no longer rely on the traditional model for answers and now is therefore the time to embrace the new model, rethinking our definition of the network and how we build and manage it.
providers aren’t in a position to see and empower the network as it really is – a means of containing and
"Networks will change instantly and unpredictably, all of the time, so we need a radical rethink of how we should build, manage and consider our network needs so that they can join us here, today, in the 21st century."
the network and how we build and manage it. At the Open Networking Summit earlier this year,
facilitating all of
Intel launched its
the intelligence and
Open Network
action entwined within your
using existing tools to manage
money and precious resources
Platform Switch and Server,
life and your business.
networks as they exponentially
by employing different
a technology as hugely
scale. Network engineers with
technologies and strategies.
disruptive as the Apple I was
One such strategy relies
almost 40 years ago. A low-
Networks will change instantly and unpredictably,
years of experience in the
all of the time, so we need
traditional internet are now
on automation with a control
cost programmable network
a radical rethink of how we
finding themselves so busy
plane at the heart of a
switch, Intel’s new technology
should build, manage and
trying to scale and manage this
software-defined network.
puts the power in the
consider our network needs
growth that they have no time
so that they can join us here,
or room to breathe. Human
today, in the 21st century.
hands can no longer keep
computational power now
hardware in networking, as
up with the rate of change
available to run sophisticated
has happened with servers
shift in technology and
required by the new network.
and affordable software that
over the last ten years, will
economics as the world
The ratio of networking
can scale in order to manage
redefine the entire ecosystem
demands ever more from its
professionals to the velocity of
an exponentially expanding
of networking.
networks.
change is now forever broken
network. The right software in
We’re facing a massive
A recent study
A control plane is viable due to the vast amount of
software, where it should be. A move to commodity
Low cost PCs and
and neither traditional methods
the control plane, combined
commodity servers caused the
by International Tele-
not traditional thinking can
with shrewd use of data
entire mainframe industry to
communications Union, for
repair it.
analytics will allow network
be redefined before going on
example, predicts that the
managers to do more, faster,
to change business and life
number of mobile phone
network differently, there
and without the need for an
itself. And in the same way, by
accounts will rise from 6
are other ways to scale and
endless supply of engineers.
embracing this radical change
billion today to 7.3 billion next
manage these new demands.
year. And, while this demand
First, it’s now possible
a robust, future-proof network,
rises, the price of hardware
to measure a network’s
but to hire the number of
will continue to fall, cheap
complexity. Tapestry, a piece
engineers required to manually
of networks doesn’t lie in the
and reliable bandwidth will
of open source software freely
scale and manage today’s
Internet, or in the traditional
become more widely available,
available from FlowForwarding.
networks with today’s tools
networking model.
and there’ll be increasingly
org, uses network data to
would be beyond the budget
less expensive ways to access
calculate a Network Complexity
of most companies and nearly
the new, highly scalable,
vast amounts of data. The
Index. This enables IT teams
all individuals, so there really is
adaptable, software-enabled
economics of our world are
to plan for network growth
no other option.
complex networks. The people
shifting as a result, and our
and reduce the costs that
networks are feeling immense
are typically associated
on the traditional model for
scale and thrive are those that
pressure to shift with them.
with increasing complexity.
answers, so now is the time
embrace the complexity, the
Ultimately, taking such
to embrace the new model,
beauty and the value that the
measurements can save time,
rethinking our definition of
real network has to offer.
It is hugely complicated, not to mention a little scary,
But, by looking at the
Businesses need access to
We can no longer rely
in networking, we’ll see the whole world change again. As we’ve seen, the future
Instead, it belongs to
and organisations that will
January 2015 | 29
Insight | Dimension Data
Top 5 data centre trends to watch in 2015 1 Kevin Leahy GM, Dimension Data Group
Treb Ryan Chief Strategy Officer, Dimension Data Group
30 | January 2015
Big gets bigger, small gets smaller
The data centre market is entering a period of unprecedented transition, and the pace of this change looks set to accelerate during the year ahead. Smaller, enterprise-owned data centres are shrinking in size ... and on the other end of the scale, the growth of mega facilities continues unabated. Kevin Leahy, Dimension Data’s Group General Manager for Data Centres explains: ‘A year or two ago, we were debating whether the data centre and the cloud were quite ready to come together. Clients were concerned as to whether the cloud was geared to support production workloads and compliance requirements. But today, every CIO I talk to isn’t asking if they should move to the cloud. Now it’s a question of how much of their environments they can move to the cloud and how quickly they can make the transition.’ This has dramatic implications for the data centre itself. Organisations need to re-evaluate: • the amount of data centre space they need • where their remaining data centre facilities should be located On the other end of the scale, large data centres, typically owned by industry and cloud provider heavyweights, see nothing but growth on the horizon. These giant facilities are expanding either due to the fact that they’re absorbing the capacity being transferred to them from customers looking to exploit the cloud model, or simply as a result of the nature and complexity of the businesses they serve.
2
Unlocking the value of technology is more important than the technology itself The next data centre trend to watch relates to technology, or rather, the ability to unlock its true value. Leahy explains: ‘Increasingly, CIOs aren’t asking for our assistance with technology issues, they’re seeking help in updating their operational processes so that they can extract maximum value from their technology investments.’ Frank Casey, Dimension Data’s Director for Managed Services agrees: ‘It’s all about internal maturity. Every client I speak to is at a different level of maturity and most feel they have a fair amount of work to do. The goal is to move the organisation forward, in a structured manner.’ Casey sees automation as key to extracting maximum value from technology. ‘Most IT teams are focused on making sure that infrastructure is up and running, and, due to workload and time pressures, aren’t thinking about how they can drive greater levels of automation.’ Making informed decisions regarding new technology investments is critical to ensuring you extract maximum value from them. The market’s shifting away from component-based hardware and software, and moving to bundled technologies that feature high levels of automation. However, it’s not always easy to determine how to get the most out of these technologies, and how they’ll interoperate with the legacy infrastructures and workloads that may be running in a public cloud.
What does 2015 hold in store for data centre professionals? Read on as Dimension Data experts discuss the top trends to watch and their expected impact on business.
Agility: it’s about exploring the art of the possible
‘Software-driven’ transforms into business value
Treb Ryan, Chief Strategy Officer for Dimension Data’s ITaaS Service Unit believes that IT organisations need to use technology advancements, such as cloud and Agile development methodologies, to explore the art of the possible ... boldly test new ideas and approaches ... and have fun. ‘Many IT organisations still operate their data centres the way they did 20 years ago, using waterfall processes and idle-driven systems,’ he explains. ‘They’re missing a great opportunity to take advantage of new architectures and systems which will allow them to be more responsive to their businesses and more cost-effective.’ Investing in Agile software development technology is a first step in capitalising on these opportunities. IT leaders need to instil a culture of people, processes, and software working together and responding to change, rather than following a rigid plan. The concept of consumption-based billing for IT capacity is a key enabler of this transformation. But the advantages extend well beyond cost savings alone; this model empowers IT teams to test new ideas quickly, and unleash innovation, without exposing the business to risk. Developers can try things out without having to put in place formal structures. And if something works, great; if it doesn't, then they can go back and try something else.
As they look ahead to 2015, the challenge facing many organisations is how to ensure that their efforts in implementing Agilebased methodologies result in tangible business value. Colin McNamara, Chief Cloud Architect at Dimension Data subsidiary, Nexus, shares some of his insights and experiences: ‘One of the tools that our agile software development team uses in its development operations and with clients, is value stream mapping. It’s a ‘pencil and paper’ process that allows you to visualise the impact of your activities on the business and prioritise your activities.’ McNamara also believes that open source technologies like OpenStack and OpenDaylight can also add significant value.
3
4
5
It’s time to extract the value
of information While there’s a lot of hype in the market around big data and analytics, most organisations are in the early stages of finding ways to derive more value from their data and find ways to translate it into competitive advantage. Leahy believes that it’s time for data centre professionals to move beyond managing infrastructure and trying to find ways to reduce storage costs, and begin to explore the potential new value inherent in information. Ryan cautions that decisions regarding data and storage can’t be made in isolation, especially in the era of analytics and big data. ‘The type of storage you need will depend on what you want to accomplish with your data and how you want to accomplish it. It’s not as simple as saying ‘‘I want to get into big data, so I'll just start accessing the tools."’ Hadoop and MapReduce are built on the premise that you have fast sequential read access to cheap disks. However, traditional cloud servers don't offer this capability. They’re designed for highly transactional applications. So it’s important to consider what you want to do with your data. Do you want to perform transactions? Or do you want to archive it and later extract it and aggregate it into a big data construct? You also need to think about how applications are optimised to ensure you’re able to get the data back out of the storage environment when you need it. Object storage is another area of growing interest on the part of businesses that are testing the big data waters.
January 2015 | 31
eyetech
Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD
AXIS F44 Overview: Axis Communications has added AXIS F44 Main Unit to its flexible and modular AXIS F Series. The series is based on a divided network camera concept where the camera is split into a sensor unit, made up of a lens and image sensor with a pre-mounted cable up to 12 m (39 ft.) long, and a main unit, which is the body of the camera. Since the main units and sensor units with different lens types are sold separately, customers can choose the components as required and can easily change them to fit the surveillance need. The products allow for a highly discreet installation since the small sensor units can be installed virtually out of view in tight places and the main unit can be placed up to 12 m away where there is space for it. Key features:
• Simultaneous streaming of four separate high-resolution 1080p videos at 12.5/15 frames per second (50/60 Hz) or four HDTV 720p videos at full frame rate • Quad view, a stream made up of four separate views from the connected sensor units • Two-way audio • Input/output ports for external devices to enhance alarm management • RS232 port for integration of external data to the video • Local storage of recordings using its two built-in full-sized SD card slots • Power over Ethernet, as well as the option of connecting to an 8-28 V DC power supply • Intelligent video capabilities such as video motion detection, active tampering alarm and downloadable applications through the AXIS Camera Application Platform
32 | January 2015
Overview: Seagate has extended its offerings to small and mediumsized businesses in the region seeking to optimize their computing for performance and reliability using Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems. The new Enterprise NAS HDD is a high-capacity drive available in capacities up to an industry-leading 6TB and is designed to perform at high levels even under demanding workloads and in environments that call for global availability and 24x7 accessibility. Key features: • With a 50 percent capacity advantage over other mid- range NAS offerings, the Enterprise NAS HDD 6TB drive delivers the highest capacity available on the market. •
Using RV sensor technology, the Enterprise NAS HDD can also sustain performance streaming and random read/write workloads for growing business data needs, intrinsically adjusting and compensating based on external vibrational disturbances
•
In the event of a failure—be it environmental, human error, or accident—the Enterprise NAS HDD is supported by Seagate’s own Rescue Data Recovery plans which provide end-to-end protection enabling industry-leading data recovery with more than a 90 percent success rate.
• The plans also cover NAS HDD targeting the SOHO and prosumer NAS market, and the Surveillance HDD targeting video surveillance systems. • Available in 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6TB capacities, Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD can deliver up to 96TBs in one 16- bay rackmount or tower form factor.
LANmark-OF Tight Buffer Universal Cable
Silver Peak NX-700
Overview: Nexans announced the launch of its new LANmarkOF Tight Buffer Universal Cable, which harmonizes its Tight Buffer Indoor and Universal cable portfolio with an installer-friendly and more cost effective Tight Buffer Universal cable for indoor and outdoor use. Nexans developed the new cable using a new type of glass yarn that combines rodent protection with installer friendliness and avoids skin-irritation when compared to similar products of other vendors. Key features: • The LANmark-OF Tight Buffer Universal cable is a fibre cable that can be used indoor and outdoor in a duct. • It complies with the indoor fire requirements and can be installed indoor both vertically and horizontally. • It can also be used for outdoor installation in a duct as the water tight glass yarns make the cables fully waterproof and rodent retardant. •
The latest LANmark-OF Tight Buffer Universal cables includes a new type of glass yarn that combines rodent protection with installer friendliness and avoids skin-irritation.
•
It is dielectric and fully dry and has 900 um buffered fibres. This second coating till 900 um provides additional protection of the fibres and facilitates the handling when terminating the fibres in a patch panel.
Overview: The Silver Peak NX-700 is a new low-cost, small form-factor WAN optimization platform for connecting the smallest of branch offices with data center and cloud applications. The Silver Peak NX-700 is designed to optimize 2 megabitsper-second (Mbps) of WAN capacity in a form factor the size of a paperback novel. The NX-700 is the physical equivalent to Silver Peak’s VX-500 virtual appliance, which also supports 2 Mbps of WAN bandwidth and 8,000 simultaneous connections. For smaller locations without existing virtual infrastructure, the NX-700 provides a plug-and-play physical option for extending WAN optimization to the branch. Silver Peak delivers the industry's broadest portfolio of physical and virtual WAN optimization solutions. The products are sized for the smallest of branch offices to the world's largest data centers, supporting up to 10 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) of WAN capacity and 512,000 simultaneous flows.
• The easy strip tight buffer design allows stripping the fibre over 10 cm in one action. It is a cost effective solution for short and medium distances.
Key features: • While the Silver Peak NX-700 is small and low-cost, it provides all of the same functionality of Silver Peak’s larger appliances for overcoming network bandwidth, distance and quality challenges when moving data over distance.
•
• The Silver Peak NX-700 can be used to build out a Silver Peak Unity WAN fabric, which unifies the enterprise WAN with the Internet and public cloud.
The LANmark-OF Tight Buffer Universal is most suitable for direct termination by either anaerobic or hot melt connectors as well as with splicing of pigtails.
• Unity gives IT the ability to monitor and control connectivity to the cloud while ensuring consistent performance for every enterprise and SaaS application. • With Dynamic Path Control in the appliances, customers can maximize the use of Internet connectivity in the branch to spend less on branch office bandwidth.
January 2015 | 33
Stats & Trends
Healthcare providers in MENA to spend US $3 Billion on IT in 2014
H
ealthcare providers in the Middle East and North Africa will spend US $3 billion on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 1.3 percent over 2013 revenues, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending by healthcare providers (includes hospitals and hospital systems, as well as ambulatory service and physicians' practices) on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices & telecom services. Telecom services, which include fixed and mobile telecom services, will remain the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the healthcare providers sector with an expected market size of US $1.3 billion in 2014. Software will increase 7.8 percent in 2014 to reach US $382 million. Internal services will grow 7.4 percent in 2014
to reach US $473 million. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organization. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems. IT services will grow 6.3 percent in 2014 to reach US $379 million, up from US $356 million in 2013. IT services
spending will be led by growth in business process outsourcing (BPO), software support and consulting. “The Saudi Arabian government is moving towards a growth plan for its healthcare apparatus underpinned by investments in technology. We expect spending across the hospitals, ambulatory care and the setting up of its communication backbone,”
said Anurag Gupta, research director at Gartner. “UAE will continue to evolve its focus on leveraging its past investments on transactional healthcare systems. Turkey is also closely examining its healthcare technology landscape, and we expect further developments within the public healthcare sector. Private healthcare will continue to be a major growth area across the region.”
Research shed light on APT campaigns
K
aspersky Lab has launched the interactive project ‘Targeted Cyberattacks Logbook’ that brings together all the information it holds on the most sophisticated cyber campaigns. The company’s team of experts also has compiled a list of the top emerging threats in the APT world. These include: The fragmentation of bigger APT groups. A growing number of smaller threat actors are likely to lead to more companies being hit. And larger organizations are expected to experience a greater number of attacks from a wider range of sources. APT-style attacks in the
34 | January 2015
cybercriminal world. The days when cyber-criminal gangs focused exclusively on stealing money from end users are over. Criminals now attack the banks directly because that’s where the money is. And they use APT techniques for these complex attacks. Targeting executives through hotel networks. Hotels are perfect for targeting high profile individuals around the world. The Darkhotel group is one of the APT actors known to have targeted specific visitors during their stay in hotels. Enhanced evasion techniques. More APT groups will be concerned about exposure and will take more
advanced measures to shield themselves from discovery. New methods of data exfiltration. In 2015, more groups are expected to use cloud services in order to make exfiltration (the unauthorized transfer of data from a computer) stealthier and harder to detect. The use of false flags. APT groups are expected to exploit government intention to ‘naming and shaming’ suspected attackers by carefully adjusting their operations to plant false flags (that make it appear as if the attack was carried out by another entity.)
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