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Editorial
Cover Feature - P 18
T
he region has several premium partners certified at the highest levels with many of the leaders in the Technology space. It begs the question though why none among them have raised their profiles to the next level and brought out their own products to market. There are several start-ups in the industry but most of them start out in solution selling or distribution but not in developing their own Technology products. Of course, it is conceivable that any potential innovative Tech Entrepreneur would think of the Silicon Valley as the destination right away once the ‘great’ idea is seeded. Perhaps it could help them raise the funds and visibility that much more swiftly but maybe that is a perception that is only yet to be challenged. For companies that have been in the region’s industry for a decade or more, it is not inconceivable to look at initiating some serious efforts into evolving some products of their own. There are several reasons they could hold an advantage if they were to do so. They have considerable in-house Technical expertise across domains, acquired in the course of partnering with some of the leading companies. And they have built credibility with their local client base. Logically, they could ease their products into market with their customers who trust them and then take it to a wider market. Several groups of leading companies transcend the various spaces including reselling, integration, distribution etc with separate units. It is also perhaps not far-fetched to suggest that they must look at having a focus on developing their own products. That is a leap they are positioned reasonably to undertake. And perhaps there is no better time now when there is a growing demand for cloud based applications or other vertical focused applications and perhaps they could start with adding their own fringe products as part of turnkey deployments and then evolving them more.
R. Narayan Managing Editor
Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Assistant Editor: David Ndichu Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh
The growing pace of business is dictating and fuelling the need for UC deployments.
Content
The next leap
UC, a real time Business enabler
News in Detail - P 10
Aptec invests in extended training facilities
News Feature - P 12
Focused on Business Continuity
Neverfail is looking to tap opportunities in the region’s Business Continuity market with VAD Partner Redington Gulf
Point2point
On the Rebound - P 14
Atom Options recently brought together partners and vendors to showcase latest technologies
Tech know
Regional Dynamics bode well for HID - P 16
HID’s business model in the region seems almost flawless.
On the Fast Lane - P 22
Ajay Nawani, AVP Global Presale Operations at Cyberoam explains the need for next generation security appliances
Industry Recovery Good News for F1 Infotech - P 24
F1 Infotech, a subsidiary of The Spectrum Group, is hoping to ride the wave of a recovering hospitality industry
Insight
Safenet’s new doctrine - P 26
Safenet can help organizations that need to reimagine their security practices as successful attacks proliferate
Addressing SMB storage challenges - P 28
Khalid Wani of WD looks at the challenges SMB’s face with managing their data
The changing face of Enterprise IT - P 30
Enterprise IT Will Undergo Big Transformation- Driven by Cloud, Middleware, Storage and Virtualization Technologies
Performance in virtual appliances - P 31
Philippe Elie of Riverbed discusses how organizations can eliminate complexities surrounding virtualization.
Regulars
News Bytes Eyetech Stats & trends
Published by: JNS Media International MFZE
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Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possible to get accurate information on published content in this handbook they cannot be held liable for any errors herein.
News Bytes
Mindware, Aptec win Awards from Symantec Symantec announced the 2012 EMEA Channel Excellence Award winners at the company's annual EMEA partner conference, Symantec Partner Engage EMEA 2013. The Awards recognize partners who, in 2012, demonstrated excellence in the delivery of Symantec solutions, service and support to end user customers and were been able to meet customer objectives. This year, Symantec also created the 2012 EMEA Channel Excellence Distributor Awards which recognize the overall service and support provided to Symantec Partners in the past year through account distribution services, pre and post-sales support, market development and online capabilities. “We are committed to supporting our partners and distributors by helping them grow their businesses, maximize revenue opportunities and maintain competitive edge," said Jason Ellis, VP, EMEA channel sales, Symantec.
4 | March 2013
Bridge Systems now Bit9 VAD for ME region Bridge Systems has been named Value Added Distributor for Bit9 in the Middle East. Bridge will play a key role in developing new business opportunities in the region for Bit9's trust-based security solutions that protect organizations large and small against advanced threats and malware. Enterprises across the Middle East are reeling from a series of sophisticated attacks—commonly known as advanced persistent threats (APT)—on their IT infrastructure. Traditional security solutions, such as antivirus and antimalware, are ineffective against these APTs. Bit9's trust-based solution stop these complex threats by combining real-time sensors, cloud-based software reputation services, continuous monitoring and trust-based application control and whitelisting to eliminate the risk caused by malicious, illegal and unauthorized software. Harsh Arun Raval, regional director at Bridge Systems, said: “Our relationship with Bit9 could not come at a better time for the region. We are glad that customers in the Middle East can be protected against APT attacks by implementing Bit9's industryleading security solutions, which will be backed by strong local support from Bridge and our channel partners. We are committed to increasing our efforts and investments in furthering this relationship by means of awareness workshops, training sessions and roadshows, which will be conducted soon across the region. We are very happy that Bit9 has chosen Bridge as a value added distributor.”
Sophos signs Computerlinks as Distributor As part of their regional expansion plans, Sophos has signed Computerlinks as their new Value Added Distributor (VAD) for the Middle East region. This partnership will see Computerlinks distributing Sophos’ complete range of security solutions through its solid channel network across the region. André Scheffknecht, Vice President NEEMEA, Sophos, said “There is a huge demand for security solutions in the SMB market and our focus is to make security easy and usable to address 99% of their pain points. The value Computerlinks brings to the table is their pro-active channel and our strategy to enable our partners to sell, install and maintain our products. We are confident that Computerlinks will be a great partner, who will play an important role in educating and training our channel partners.This partnership will help us deliver our technological innovations along with optimum value to our customers,” Scheffknecht added. As part of the agreement, Computerlinks will distribute Sophos’ complete range of solutions including Endpoint Security, Encryption and Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Web and Email Protection, Mobile Control and Sophos Network Security and Unified Threat Management (UTM). “Sophos offers end-to-end solutions and that’s exactly what most of the vendors are asking us to play in this market. Since we are strong in the enterprise space and have had a major push into the mid-market, we will continue to do this year as well,” said Lee Reynolds, MD, Computerlinks, MEA and APAC.
Red Hat FZ-LLC Twitter: @RedHatMea Tel: +971 44494100 Fax: +971 44494110 www.ae.redhat.com
News Bytes
Lexmark underlines benefits of MPS at IDC CIO meet Lexmark International Middle East underlined the inherent advantages and considerable cost savings potential achievable by the implementation of Managed Print Services (MPS) to over 100 CIOs and IT chiefs from across the Middle East, at the recently held IDC Middle East CIO Summit in Dubai. Platinum partners of the event, Lexmark’s presentation to the delegates included a rundown of the current scattered imaging scenario globally - where 67% of organizations have no idea of how much they print and 80% of enterprise information is unstructured. Mathias Militzer, General Manager of Lexmark International Middle East, drew attention to the cost benefits and greater efficiencies achievable by optimizing device infrastructure; improving device management; reducing print volumes and streamlining business processes. “The Middle East CIO Summit is a great platform to communicate with key influencers and decision makers in the Middle East,” said Militzer.
6 | March 2013
Polycom inks partnership with Westcon Polycom has signed a new partnership with Westcon, a leading value-add distributor of convergence, security, networking and mobility products and services. The agreement is anticipated to further extend Polycom’s reach in the region, making its audio solutions available to thousands of organisations in the following countries: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya. “Our partnership with Westcon will give us the opportunity to reach out to new customers in a variety of market sectors,” said Daniel Schmierer, Area Sales VP Middle East and Turkey, Polycom. “Together, with Polycom Voice Solutions, we will be able to provide the opportunity for new customers in the region to experience high quality voice collaboration and communication, alongside significant productivity gains.” Steve Lockie, Managing Director, Westcon ME Group said, “In today’s age of unified communication, it is imperative to have devices that deliver rich, high-definition voice experiences and operate seamlessly with other collaborative tools. Polycom enterprisegrade telephones do just that. We believe that these solutions will add great value to our existing unified communications solutions portfolio.” Polycom’s offerings include Conference phones, Soundpoint IP phones, CX phones, VVX phones and related accessories, software, support and training.
Kingston Technology offers a new server pre-sales service Kingston Technology is introducing its new server pre-sales service KingstonConsult for enterprises. This new pre-sales support complements the existing post-sales service KingstonCare by offering a series of services to support enterprises in their server configuration decision making process. Focusing on the three key areas of power, capacity and performance, Kingston server configuration experts will work with enterprises to ensure that their memory and SSD configuration will support their mid to long term business goals. Kingston Consult includes a Server Assessment service that enables organisations to make direct contact with a Kingston server configuration expert. The Kingston expert will diagnose the existing server configuration and make recommendations to align the configuration with business objectives. Product evaluations for the proof of concept testing, configuration and technical training as well as regular technical updates on the latest technologies are all services within KingstonConsult. Kingston offers support to enterprises to tackle the challenges of today´s continuously evolving and complex server configurations, and their lack of time and resources to track or understand the latest technological developments. An optimized server configuration helps enterprises to achieve business objectives and future business requirements and prevents sub-optimised server configurations which can lead to unnecessary capital expenditure or lower ROI.
Unified
Security gets ...
Web
Personal: Protects every tablet, phone, laptop or desktop, everywhere your users go. You get antivirus, mobile device management, data and web protection, patch assessment and much more. Easier: Makes security easier whether it’s enabling BYOD, day-to-day administration with streamlined management, or getting support when you need it. Sensible: Makes financial sense with protection for every device, licensing on a per-user basis, and we include all updates at no cost.
Endpoint
Mobile
Network
... with Sophos EndUser Protection Data
For more information: www.sophos.com/enduser Sophos Middle East | Office 205-EIB 5 | Alpha Building PO Box 500469 | Dubai Internet City | Dubai | UAE Email: salesmea@sophos.com | Tel: +971 4375 4332 | www.sophos.com
News Bytes
Canon unveils IP Cameras Business Canon Middle East has diversified into the security camera business in the region with the launch of a full range of IP (internet protocol) cameras. Four new models were unveiled for the first time at Intersec 2013, the region’s largest and most comprehensive exhibition and conference for security, safety and fire protection in the Middle East. “The future of IP security lies with intelligent cameras and HD quality images. We see a huge demand for security products in the region and by being so strong in the imaging business, foraying into the surveillance camera market was only a natural progression for the company. Canon’s technology will help raise the bar of the network camera sector, while offering customers the highest quality security solutions,” said Hendrik Verbrugghe, Marketing Director, Canon Middle East. The full HD IP cameras including VB-H610D, VBH41, VB-H71 IP, VB-H610 VE were showcased with a live demonstration at Intersec giving visitors a look and feel experience.
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8 | March 2013
Optimus expands Data Center Infrastructure Portfolio Optimus Technology and Telecommunications, a leading regional Value Added Distributor, signed a distribution agreement with Avayo Electronics, a leading manufacturer of communications infrastructure products, specialty structured cabling systems and raised floor systems. As per the agreement, Optimus will promote and distribute Avayo’s wide range of products through their solid channel network across Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We are happy to sign on Avayo as it is a reputed vendor, whose products complement our existing portfolio. This partnership is very important for us as Avayo helps enhance our Data centre infrastructure offerings. Avayo’s products are a value add to our Data Center offering within the MEA market and complements our existing solutions within this space thus enabling us to provide a comprehensive and complete solution to our partners and customers. We look forward to working closely with the Avayo team to help grow their business and market share in this region,” says Ms. Meera Kaul, Managing Director of Optimus Technology & Telecommunications. As Avayo’s value-added distributor, Optimus will help create and establish the vendor’s value channel network and conduct focused channel development activities such as training and consultancy to partners to enable them to sell Avayo’s solutions.
Sourcefire introduces Dedicated Advanced Malware Protection Appliance Sourcefire introduced its dedicated Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) appliance, which allows users to defend against sophisticated network malware – from the point of entry, through propagation, to post-infection remediation. Expanding Sourcefire’s AMP offering, the dedicated appliance is built on the FirePOWER platform and provides increased deployment flexibility for organizations needing immediate protection. Deployed inline, the AMP appliance delivers network protection with malware detection and blocking, continuous file analysis and retrospective security. The solution creates forensic fingerprints of files to identify known malware, tracks file movement and identifies attack targets for focused remediation. “Networks are constantly evolving and expanding and attackers are taking advantage of any gaps to permeate a network and accomplish their mission,” said Martin Roesch, Sourcefire founder and interim CEO. “Thwarting attacks isn’t just about blocking but also about using retrospective security to mitigate the impact once an attacker gets in. Sourcefire’s threat-centric approach to security gives organizations continuous visibility, analysis and control across their environment and along the full attack continuum – before, during and after an attack.”
GFI EventsManager now includes active Monitoring functionality GFI Software announced that GFI EventsManager, the company’s log management software, now includes the established active network and server monitoring capabilities found in the company’s popular NetworkServerMonitor solution. This new functionality, combined with GFI EventsManager’s existing log management capabilities, gives IT administrators a holistic view of their infrastructure’s performance. Active network and server monitoring provides realtime, active monitoring of assets, network infrastructure, applications and services. These advanced monitoring checks work in conjunction with GFI EventsManager’s log-based monitoring system to track different operational aspects of the IT environment, including the functionality and availability of network protocols, performance of network devices, and usage and performance of server and infrastructure services. “Network infrastructure requires permanent monitoring and maintenance to function appropriately,” said John Spoor, Regional Director-MEA, GFI Software. “GFI EventsManager equips IT managers with additional tools to manage and monitor the network infrastructure’s performance – and does so at price point they can afford and with a level of simplicity that allows them to reallocate resources to other pressing tasks.”
ManageEngine extends MDM to Android Devices ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, announced that the latest version of its desktop and mobile device management (MDM) software, better known as Desktop Central, can now manage Android devices. The new version of Desktop Central extends the mobile device management support to Android smartphones and tablets running Google's popular mobile OS as well as devices running Apple iOS. Android remains a dominant player in the mobile device market. IDC estimates the worldwide tablet market hit 122.3 million units in 2012, with Android capturing 42.7 percent of the market. By 2016, the tablet market is predicted to reach 282.7 million units. In turn, enterprise will continue to feel the impact of increased Android adoption as a growing number of users request access to corporate data from their personal Android devices. "The mobile usage trends will eventually drive sharp increases in demand for enterprise MDM solutions that embrace BYOD while ensuring enterprise data security," said Mathivanan Venkatachalam, director of product management at ManageEngine. "The growing Android market and increasing demand for Android support among our customer base encouraged us to add Android support to Desktop Central as quickly as possible."
Spectrum Training gets recognition from Juniper Spectrum Training has been honoured as one of the leading Juniper Networks Authorized Education Partners (JNAEP) in EMEA for 2012. Located in Dubai, UAE, SPECTRUM is a leading IT Networking and Security training, certification and consultancy services provider in the Middle East & Africa region equipped with state of art labs to provide global standard technical training to several of the enterprises based in this region. As a JNAEP partner, SPECTRUM TRAINING’s trained technicians are authorized to provide in-depth, technical training and education courses on a variety of Juniper Networks products including: the Juniper Networks SRX, SA, IC, SSG, ISG, IDP, MAG, WLA, EX, J, M, T, MX and E Series devices. “To be honored with the top Platinum Award for Partner of the Year by Juniper Networks for the third year in a row highlights the fact that we have been trusted by our customers and partners for the quality we promise. Thanks to them we did this again,” said Sanjeev Singh, MD at SPECTRUM TRAINING.
March 2013 | 9
News In-Detail
Manager (Install, Configure, Manage) and VMware vCloud: Deploy and Manage the VMware Cloud. Dr. Ali Baghdadi, Vice President and CEO of Aptec – an Ingram Micro company, officially opened the ceremony by expressing his gratitude to all attendees and shared with the guests the company’s view on importance of partner trainings and certifications, which Ingram Micro demonstrates on the global level and Aptec emphasizes in the local market as well. “We are delighted to open
into a bigger training centre supports our future growth ambitions, allows us to widen our offering and gives students a new learning experience in the heart of Dubai’s vibrant Internet City.” Nermin Zayed, Business Development Manager for Educational and Professional services in ATS, added: “Year 2012 showed huge demand from the channel for VMware training courses. We were faced with the situation that we had to run very intensive training calendar because of non-availability of training
Aptec invests in extended training facilities A
ptec, an Ingram Micro Company, opened its new training center facilities in Dubai during the official inauguration ceremony which was attended by Aptec vendors, reseller partners and other guests from IT channel network. New facilities include 2 training rooms with total capacity of 30+ students and are all outfitted with latest training equipment to provide classroom, instructor-led trainings, to reseller partners in the region. Extended training facilities will help Aptec to increase the number of courses and total number of students trained in a year starting 2013. Today Aptec runs instructor-led courses, as VATC (VMware Authorized Training Center), and on-line courses, as
10 | March 2013
authorized Cisco Entrepreneur Institute’s training partner, through ATS (Advanced Technology Services), a professional services subsidiary within Aptec. Aptec was signed as the VATC in the Middle East in October 2011 and since then was successfully providing trainings to partners in the region. Aptec started by providing VMware vSphere (Install, Configure and Manage) training course in 2011, and during 2012 added more VMware courses: VMware vSphere (Fast Track ,Design Workshop, Optimize and Scale), also VMware View (Fast Track), VMware View (Install, Configure, Manage) and very recently new courses VMware vCenter: Site Recovery
these new facilities today. Our new extended training center does not only mean few other classrooms we have added for training our partners, but it definitely demonstrates the vision and strategy of Aptec as a Value Added Distributor. We understand the importance of Value Added Services, of which partner enablement, training and certification is one of the main elements.” Mario Veljovic, General Manager of Advanced Technology Services (ATS), a professional services subsidiary of Aptec, an Ingram Micro company, commented during the opening ceremony: “ATS’ Educational Offering sees strong growth, and it forms an integral part of the Group’s Value Added Distribution Concept. The investment
rooms. Today, we are happy to receive new facilities which can accommodate interested partners who are eager to go through the courses and get certified. Resellers can find ATS’s updated training calendar at the company’s website www.atservice.biz”. In 2012 Aptec was covering UAE and other GCC countries with its training courses for VMware, and is planning to expand in 2013 to KSA and Egypt. With the extended territory of Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Aptecan Ingram Micro company, covers now more than 75 countries in the region. Aptec will be expanding its educational and trainings offerings to these countries within next 2 years.
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News Feature | Neverfail
Focused on Business Continuity B Martin Mackay CEO Neverfail
Neverfail is a leading UK based software company providing affordable data protection, high availability and disaster recovery solutions focused on keeping users connected. The vendor is looking to tap opportunities in the region
12 | March 2013
usiness Continuity is a critical aspect for Businesses everwhere and for Neverfail is keen to address the great demand for Businesss Coninutiy solutions though its partner networks.The vendor has also opened an office in Dubai and its operations are being headed by VJ Sathyaa as the Regional Director for Middle East, Africa, India & Pakistan at the company. Neverfail has signed on Redington Gulf which will act as its sole distributor in the Middle East region. As a VAD distributor, Redington will supply the regional channel with the entire array of Neverfail's business continuity lifecycle management software. Redington will help manage local Neverfail partner and customer relationships including consultancy and training programs. Martin Mackay,the CEO of Neverfail says that the channel will be a key component of its strategy to grow Business in the region “We have signed on Redington Value as our distributor who has an extremely good value model and a good reach across
the markets. The Business Continuity market worldwide is growing and also in the region. We have therefore set very ambitious plans in place for growth.” The company is keen to build strong relationships with focused partners and look for faster growth in core GCC markets – KSA, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. He said, “We have a strategy in the next few years to grow our direct sales in the countries that we have a direct presence – predominantly the UK, the US and Australia. However in the rest of markets including the Middle East, we will focus on growing the channel Business. In the Middle East, we are completely channel driven. We want to work with system integrators who can take our products and deliver them as part of larger solution deployments. If we have been able to do so and generate substantial revenue growth in the next 12 months or so, we would have done well.” The company says its failover engine aptly called ‘Heartbeat’ helps provide seamless Business Continuity.
Heartbeat primarily focused on managing availability for all components of complex, multi-tier applications with integrated support for major Microsoft applications. It also provides a single availability solution for physical and virtual platforms. Heartbeat simplifies DR management through a single solution that spans heterogeneous server environments. Heartbeat executes real-time replication of all relevant data to a hot-standby server that will go operational immediately if the primary system is compromised for any reason. The solution provides proactive measures to defuse any possibilities of downtime when a potential application or server error is detected by raising system and email alerts immediately and facilitating a seamless switchover to a hotstandby instance happens even before the primary application actually fails. These actions are performed with zero data loss. However, when some failures do occur without warning, Heartbeat will automatically perform a failover that will typically consume than a minute.
The replication can also be configured to keep either one or two hot-standby systems continuously synchronized with the primary application, so that local failures may be fixed with failover to a local hot-standby instance. On the other hand, site-level outages trigger failover to a remote disaster recovery. Once problems with the primary system have been resolved, failback is also a fully automated and non-disruptive activity. “Our product is application aware and therefore when an application or server is in trouble, it can failover to a secondary server. The Secondary server sits as a hot backup with real time replication but hidden from the network. This software operates in both physical and virtual environment. It doesn’t matter where the location of the secondary server is. We have a technology that allows data synchronization. Once again the failover is happened and the event has passed, it can failback to the primary server. There is a constant sync between the primary and secondary sever. The emphasis is on protecting the end users and allowing their experience to be seamless,” says Mackay. Neverfail is also focusing on the Business Continuity Lifecycle Management (BCLM) Process. It is developing solutions that will perform the deep analysis required to plan, predict and improve the DR recovery performance of assets within the existing data protection infrastructure. Mckay adds, “We have a roadmap over the next few
months – focused on analysis and planning side of Business Continuity – developing policy based Business Continuity programs so that you can look at from point of the infrastructure, identifying what the weaknesses are from protection point of view and address what you need to do.” It is also bringing to market Business Continuity as a service and the company intends to provide that offering through its partners. Since Business Continuity engine has a key role to play in the datacenter and in the cloud, Neverfail believes it could be a key component for the channel which is looking to wrap services around a core DR strategy. Mackay adds, “Our product fits naturally into the Managed Service model. We have launched Recovery-as-a-service for managed service providers. It has been launched in some markets and we see it as a key strategy. We will deliver our core product to our partners who can integrate our business continuity software solutions into their offerings in order to take advantage of the growing market opportunity presented by the cloud.” The company believes it has a great value proposition to offer its partners who are keen to seize the opportunity. It is eyeing the SMB segment in particular, who would want a solution that is an integrated solution rather which can help them meet demands for better service even in the face of realities like less staff, less resource and less budget than ever before.
Growing concerns over unplanned outages
A
lmost two thirds of organisations are either extremely concerned or concerned about the prospect of a cyber-attack this year, according to an international 2013 survey published by the UK’s Business Continuity Institute (BCI) in association with the British Standards Institution (BSI). The ‘Horizon Scan 2013 Survey Report’ is based on a survey of respondents from 730 organisations in 62 countries including the US, the UK, India, China, South Africa, Egypt and Brazil. Responses from organisations in sectors ranging from financial services, public administration and defence, retail and manufacturing, reveal that 65% fear they may be exposed to an attack this year. Seventy-one per cent of respondents see the use of the internet for malicious attacks as a major trend that requires a business continuity (BC) response, with 42% seeking to manage the prevalence and high adoption of internetdependent services, such as the cloud, within their preparedness activities. Other findings from the report, now in its second consecutive year, include: • The leading threat of concern in 2013 is unplanned IT and telecommunication outages, with 70% of
organisations surveyed stating they were extremely concerned or concerned about this threat in 2013. This was followed in second place by concern over a data breach at 66%. • Supply chain disruption and the underlying trend of increasing supply chain complexity figure prominently in the overall results and are lead concerns in the manufacturing and retail sectors. • Sixty per cent of respondents see the influence of social media as a major trend affecting reputation management and crisis communications, the second-highest rated trend in the survey. • Investment in BC measures is robust, despite difficult economic times, with 22% seeing increased investment in 2013 and 54% stating that investment will be maintained at appropriate levels, although 14% expected investment to be cut. The survey concludes that the level of concern across sectors and regions about a cyber-attack is a major challenge for public policy makers and boardrooms. More needs to be done to gain a better understanding of the threat and underlying trends that drive the vulnerability to ensure that a proportionate business continuity approach is in place. March 2013 | 13
Hemant Parmar, Director, Atom Options Computers
Point2point | Atom Options Computers
On the Rebound Atom Options Computers recently brought together partners and vendors for a day meant to showcase the latest technologies from vendor partners including Fujitsu and Microsoft. We spoke with Director Hemant Parmar about his vision for the company.
A
tom Options celebrates 10 years in the regional market this year and seems to have a lot going for it as it looks forward to another decade. Atom Options is an IT distribution and system integration company catering to resellers as well as corporate end users. “We are involved in selling servers and storage systems, WAN optimization, network access and control, load balancing and encryption as well as undertaking IT audits and ISO standards,” explained Hemant Parmar, Director at the company. The major markets for Atom Options are UAE and Oman for system integration projects while the market
14 | March 2013
is also growing in the other countries of the Gulf region as well as in East Africa. Atom Options operates as a tier 1/tier 2 distributor as well as sub-distributor depending on the brands. “A lot of other IT companies also buy from us because of our well-known reliability and the fact that we offer full warranties on all our products and solutions,” said Parmar. For system integration projects, the company has a team of certified engineers inhouse capable of undertaking projects, small and large, while sub-contracting for larger projects. “Up to 80% of projects can be taken care using the human resources that we have in-house,” explained Parmar, adding,
“we also have a tie-up with a partner in India with access to 40 service engineers that can help implement bigger projects when need be.” The regional market, according to Parmar, is on a slow rebound after a few years of subdued activity. “The market has been slow for the 2011/2012 financial year but things are expected to pick up as budgets for new solutions are assigned,” said Parmar. “Budgets constraints by potential customers hindered implementation of major projects the last few years. In a downturn, IT investment takes a back burner.” Much of the growth is being driven by virtualization as cloud, desktop virtualization and server consolidation
becoming more popular in the region. Contrary to industry fears, cloud services are inspiring their own boon for server and storage systems as cloud service providers require massive storage equipment at the back end. According to Parmar, 3040% of local enterprises have already taken the virtualization route. Those still out in the cold are hesitant to take the plunge as they are still not sure how virtualization can work for them. “IT managers are also reluctant to take ownership in case the system does not perform as expected.” Either way, Atom Options has all the bases covered. “Those who are using we are able to sell even more. Those who do not have any virtualization systems, we try to get them to adopt this technology through us,” said Parmar. “There are a lot of benefits to be accrued through virtualization with a reduced ROI in the long run. You are able to do more with less,” he added. Organizations in the region also seem to be realizing the threat posed by cyber-crime and are putting money into stronger security measures, explained Parmar. Like all other IT players in the market, Atom Options faces the menace of a major parallel market and counterfeit products. “We are trying to tackle grey marketing with awareness and education campaigns for resellers as well as consumers,” Parmar concluded.
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Copyright 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell SonicWALL is a trademark of Dell Inc. and all other Dell SonicWALL product and service names and slogans are trademarks of Dell Inc.
TechKnow | HID Global
Regional Dynamics Bode Well for HID Global T
Harm Radstaak Managing Director HID Global, EMEA
HID’s business model in the region seems almost flawless. The region had been and always will be a strong market solutions based on a distinctive set of social and geographical conditions.
16 | March 2013
he region’s unique demographics means that identity management solutions have always been in high demand. With a large proportion of residents in many Gulf nations being immigrants, governments in the region invest a lot of resources certifying their identity. Further, the last few years have witnessed several countries affected by civil strife as a result of the Arab Spring phenomenon. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees flowing across borders in the region. “Under these circumstances, governments in the region need some identification mechanism for these displaced peoples,” said Nat Pisupati, Regional Sales Director, for HID Global EMEA. “Middle East government traditionally also take security very seriously and so they come to companies like us so they can use our products and solutions to provide their citizens and residents a secure environment,”added Harm Radstaak, Managing Director, HID Global, EMEA. Organizations, among
them enterprises, educational and health institutions, require physical access control, identity control and strong authentication capabilities. This could be on ID cards or logical security for a building. Another major vertical is the financial sector where HID offers strong authentication for banks to secure their online transactions. “Essentially, we want to make sure you are who you say you are,” said Pisupati. HID Global security solutions are in several key areas. One is secure smart card IDs and credentials in a variety of form factors for physical and logical access control; as well as converged solutions for building and computer access, transit payment, cashless vending, biometrics and other applications. The cards are in such areas as non-technology IDs as well as single technology, multi technology, and contact chip-based smart cards. HID is also a leader in secure printers and encoders with its Fargo range. These are card issuance solutions for organizations such as casinos, financial services firms, small
businesses and retailers, as well as for temporary ID badge applications. HID’s variety of secure contactless and contact card readers are to be found in all kind of installations all over the Middle East. These include facility access control, mobile payment devices, computer network data security, medical record management, employee time and attendance, border control and more. The readers are compatible with HID cards, tokens, inlays and prelaminates. “Our integrated solutions mean that our customers can manage identities across their organizations from a single point. An identity loaded on a credential can be used for physical access, printing on demand or for strong authentication,” said Radstaak HID Global also provides a range of solutions in the government ID card space, from a single component to an entire system ranging from enablement and enrolment, through card issuance, authentication and management. RFID Technology on the other hand offers almost limitless possibilities. HID
Globaloffers a diverse line of RFID tags and transponders providing services in asset tracking to waste management in in LF, HF and UHF. In agriculture, HID Global contactless RFID transponders help manage and track livestock, pets, lab animals and products in the food supply chain. HID’s ActivID Credential Management System (CMS) enables the issuance, reissuance and revocation of Smart Chip-enabled credentials. With the ActivIDCMS, organizations can deploy the Identity Assurance solution they require to secure access to their facilities, networks, systems and cloud-based applications. “Our major advantage is that we provide an entire ecosystem offering integrated solutions through our partners, incorporating hardware and software which we develop ourselves. We offer secure printers, physical access control, strong authentication and identity assurance. In addition, we avail our software development tools and APIs to our partners to integrate their own solutions with their other products as well as third party solutions,” said Radstaak. BYOD has also brought security for mobile devices to the core within the enterprise. “The technology department needs to control all the new devices. We are able to provide strong authentication through apps for smartphones and tablets,” said Radstaak. In association with parent company AssaAbloy, HID will load an application or identity
on a phone over the air through a technology known as On Air Provisioning. IT offers the infrastructure together with AssaAbloy to use this identity for IT security, physical access control and RFID to manage mechanical locks for instance. This technology, developed a few years ago, uses NFC applicationson Android and RIM phones. In 2013, HIDhas three product areas they are looking to put focus on. This include a new industrial printer which, according to Radstaak, features enhanced security features including laser engraving used in areas such as voters ID cards, drivers licenses, and national ID cards. “In the access control segment, we should see more traction for our Seos-based solutions. This innovative technology is an ecosystem of interoperable products and services for issuing, delivering and revoking digital keys on NFC mobile devices so that they can be used to open doors to homes, hotels, offices, hospitals, universities, industries and commercial buildings,” said Radstaak. In identity assurance, HID has launched Phoenix, a technology for strong authentication application applied particularly for fraud detection services in banking. With this technology, certain behaviours would trigger an alert for online transactions that there may be case of fraud going on. The future augurs well for HID Global and the technology it offers, especially for the financial sector.
Nat Pisupati Regional Sales Director HID Global EMEA
Near Field Communication (NFC) will continue to grow, according to Pisupati. NFC enabled payments through smartphones will become even more mainstream. Mobile banking will also continue to grow. This means that financial transactions over mobile devices will need to be secured as well. “At HID, we continue to invest in solutions for even stronger security solutions for mobile financial transactions,” said Pisupati. Governments are also issuing secure documents such as IDs more frequently, according to Radstaak; from once every three of four years to every year in many cases as
governments themselves keep up with technology changes as new IDs provide even better security credentials. In financial transactions, we could see credit card giants like Mastercard and Visa opening some areas of their cards for third party applications, which will see more financial companies seeking to offer more services. Technology will also converge more driven mainly by cell phone carriers. “Cell phone companies have invested a lot of money in infrastructure and are now seeking to provide more services through their networks,” said Radstaak. March 2013 | 17
Cover Feature | Unified Communications
UC, a real time Business enabler The growing pace of business is dictating and fuelling the need for UC deployments. Staying connected and working efficiently though realtime communications and collaboration is a growing prerogative for employees in key verticals
T
hrough integration of real time communication with Business processes, Unified Communications today provide companies the means to reduce costs but at the same time improve efficiency and productivity. A holistic Unified Communications gamut of services consists of VoIP, presence, Web and audio conferencing, desktop and room-based video, call center services, unified messaging, mobile UC, UC-enabled applications and social networking. The whole intent of deploying a UC strategy today
18 | March 2013
is to achieve the multilevel benefits of flexibility and mobility for the workforce while enhancing realtime communication and collaboration to achieve the objectives of the Business. “There is a clear shift toward mobile and remote workers. As they account for a growing portion of the total workforce, businesses will need to provide them with communications and collaboration tools that help them stay connected and productive regardless of physical location. Businesses need to invest in UC and other
technologies that enable the use of personalized services, devices, and applications, ” says Shaheen Haque Middle East Territory Manager at Interactive Intelligence. The fact is today, UC can be deployed across various endpoints so that the experience of communication and collaboration in realtime is seamless. Expectations are rising from customers for a truly converged experience at work through all multiple devices they may be communicating or collaborating with other employees. Wael Abdulal, collaboration
manager, Cisco UAE says, “Customers want to consolidate all means of communication into one whether its IM, video, telephony conferencing etc. They want to have a simple easy to use solution regardless of the platform. All advances in technology are helping converge user experience across multiple devices and media types into one simple to use solution or experience. They are also are asking for more applications like video from the virtual desktop. These are the key demands from the market.” He adds, “Our portfolio
is versatile and adaptable. We are able to deliver IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable TelePresence experiences for a true anytime anywhere collaboration.” With the proliferation of smartphones and the BYOD phenomenon, mobile devices are playing a key role in raising expectations for cost effective and flexible communication solutions delivered to these devices. Dharmendra Parmar, GMmarketing at FVC, a leading VAD for vendors including Polycom says, “The biggest advancement is BYOD in the enterprise sector. Because of the increasing adoption of tablets and smart phones moving into the enterprise from the consumer sector, we think that the adoption of UC will speed up.” BYOD is raising expectations from employees for integrating mobile devices into the workplace. in such a scenario, integrated UC deployment is the key. "As the modern workforce is now pushing for the integration of mobile devices, better connectivity and more services to be delivered through the cloud, having a tightly integrated endto-end Unified Communications solution can well be the competitive edge that businesses are looking for. The obvious benefits of such solutions are
that they are secure, robust and not easy to compromise, always available, cost effective and green, providing global connectivity and group broadcasts.
Primacy of Interoperability The evolution of high speed networks has ensured that video and data traffic can all be handled simultaneously. One of the factors restraining the growth of the unified communications market include lack of interoperability between multi-vendor platforms. “We provide solutions that are compliant and follow industry standards. We are working with competitors to make it happen. We are compliant with standards in video, voice, presence and conferencing. The key beneficiaries are the customers, ”says Cisco’s Wael. Ahmed Rushdy, Sr. Technical Consultant at Cisco’s distributor Comstor ME says, “Through our experience we haven’t seen cases where interoperability caused issues, the reason being that most of Cisco Product and solutions are meeting the Global IEEE Standards. However we have on board a highly qualified Technical Team who engages with the partner and provide
Wale Abdulal Collaboration Manager, UAE Cisco
consultancy services to sort out if any issues arise during the implementation.” While UC can significantly improve communication and collaboration, the true reach of those tools is limited by interoperability challenges. There will be growing expectations from the customer end about ease of interoperability as Businesses come to rely on UC tools more and more not just within their work environments but also to interact and transact Business with their partner and customer ecosystems. “The need has never been greater for a dynamic,
“We provide solutions that are compliant with industry standards. We are working with competitors to make it happen. We are compliant with standards in video, voice, presence and conferencing. The beneficiaries are the customers"
scalable, reliable UC platform that provides seamless interoperability with existing and future collaboration investments, and yet at the same time reduces cost and complexity. That’s where Polycom comes in,” says Daniel Schmierer, Area Sales VP, Middle East, Arica and Turkey. He elaborates, “Many decision makers are still concerned about infrastructure investment and interoperability, despite Polycom’s open standard platforms. The main challenge has been educating smaller businesses about the accessibility and quick ROI and results of unified communications solutions. Despite the increasing adoption by enterprises, it is still an area that causes March 2013 | 19
Cover Feature | Unified Communication
Shaheen Haque Middle East Territory Manager Interactive Intelligence
confusion across the business world, particularly in the SMB segment. The solution is to assure customers about the solution’s ease of interoperability on a case by case consultation. This is where the channel has a key role to play. Schmierer says, “Our job at Polycom, with the help of our channel partners, is to close that gap between the early adopters and the late-comers to the market by educating businesses and providing expert consultancy and support around the benefits of utilising these solutions in the business world” Value add distributors like FVC that hold a composite portfolio of UC building blocks from several vendors bring in expertise to negotiate these
20 | March 2013
Dharmendra Parmar GM, Marketing FVC
challenges. FVC provides UC solutions from Polycom and offers other building blocks including Microsoft Lync platform, Vaddio camera tracking technologies, enhanced room audio systems for conference rooms from Revolabs, telemedicine solution from Globalmed and portable VC solutions for oil & Gas environments and emergency response from Audisoft. Parmar adds, “It is also important for the VAD and its partners to have the competency and skill set to design the right solution to fit the customers need, balancing the business goals and
objectives of the enterprise with the budget. A key aspect today is integration - UC needs to integrate with the rest of the systems in organisations. For example, Polycom provides seamless integration of its UC solutions with Microsoft Lync, email servers, MS office, MS SharePoint etc.”
Rise of UC as a service While UC has traditionally evolved primarily as a on premise deployment, the rising popularity of UC as a cloud service is gaining ground. There is an opportunity for larger service providers now to resell UC solutions hosted
"“Our job at Polycom, with the help of our channel partners, is to close that gap between the early adopters and the late-comers to the market by educating businesses and providing expert consultancy and support”
in their data center from their vendors to their customers. Smaller service providers can in turn work with the larger service providers to rebrand and resell. The move toward cloud services is ushering a new generation of business opportunities for service providers seeking to offer innovative services, while providing a new means of accessing these solutions by businesses customers of all sizes. Polycom for instance delivers a comprehensive portfolio of infrastructure and endpoint products, integrated software solutions, and global services that address a wide range of service provider technical and business needs. In the region, it works with telecom providers in the
region such as Saudi Telecom Company (STC), du (Emirates Integrated Telecom Company), and Tunisie Telecom to provide video as a service (VaaS) products based on an OPEX model. “The customer pays for the service when needed without having to invest in all the necessary infrastructure. A key advantage for cloud service providers is faster time to revenue and return on investment with low total cost of ownership, enabling service providers to offer cloud VaaS, UCaaS, and white-label hosted solutions with a secure, interoperable, non-disruptive solution that easily integrates with existing service environments, “ says Schmierer. Cisco expanded its cloud service portfolio late last year. Called the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), the vendor has the number of service providers and partners offering this service double in the past year. The HCS offering includes advancements spanning Cisco TelePresence, Customer Collaboration (contact center), Unified Communications and mobility. With these developments, HCS partners, including service providers, systems integrators, wholesalers and resellers can deliver an even more robust unified collaboration experience to their customers as an "as-a-service" cloudbased model. He says, “At Cisco, we're seeing that Collaboration as a service is gaining ground. More than half of the world's leading service providers have adopted
Cisco's HCS solution.” He adds that the channel can add specific applications on top of what is given. “This is what increases their relevance to customers. It is about providing end to end converged solutions with many applications, regardless of the deployment model for delivering exceptional end user experiences.”
Vertical focus The main end user segments employing unified communications include governments, healthcare, enterprises, education and others, with enterprises accounting for the largest share. Parmar says, “We have seen this bring significant advantages especially in the hospitality and customer service sector where the new technologies within UC segments have increased profitability with reduced cost savings long term. He adds, “In a market sector that is largely fluid and mobile, we are seeing great adoption of these technologies in the education sector, medium to large enterprise with satellite offices especially those in Finance and Energy sectors. ROI (return on investment) will be the driving factor for the enterprise networks and, for the consumer, the ability to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) into an enterprise network would make it easier. This would mean less travel, better communications and increased productivity.”
Daniel Schmierer Area Sales VP, Middle East, Africa & Turkey Polycom
In critical verticals like healthcare for instance, UC and more specifically video collaboration is a life saver. Leading vendors are focusing on telemedicine for the past several years now. The Cisco TelePresence VX Clinical Assistant enable Mobile Doctors to offer high quality care, to any location, without need for an appointment. “Cisco’s collaborative technology solutions have been making a vital contribution to healthcare globally for many years now and as a result not only helping to enhance the quality of life but also bringing quality healthcare to communities in the most remote locations,” adds Wael. According to Polycom, healthcare organizations are turning to Polycom video collaboration solutions to improve care and reduce cost. Collaborative healthcare solutions from Polycom enable
patient centered care, multidisciplinary team support, reduction of unnecessary re-hospitalizations, and collaboration across the entire healthcare team independent of physical barriers. Schmierer says, “We are working with many customers in telehealth and telemedicine applications for example. They are rolling video conferencing solutions out in mobile solutions and in premise-based solutions, as they look to connect doctors and patients when it’s not possible to have them physically face-to-face in the same place.’ In summary, as the number applications for UC continues to grow, there would be fuller deployments of UC in the workplace. And UC as a coud service model including a gamut of services gains further ground, the channel will be a key pillar in the go to market strategy. March 2013 | 21
TechKnow | Cyberoam
On the Fast Lane Ajay Nawani AVP Global Presales Operations Cyberoam
With internet speeds rising fast, many organizations are seeing their security appliances being left behind of the high speed bandwagon. Ajay Nawani, AVP Global Presales Operations at Cyberoam explains how the company can help.
22 | March 2013
What is driving the need for next generation security appliances? The NG Series enables SOHO/ SMBs networks to become future-ready as they move towards gigabit network infrastructure and high Internet speeds. However, today, their network security is not ready for these trends as few security vendors today offers them security throughputs or gigabit ports required for such networks. This is resulting in security becoming a bottleneck for the networks. The need for Next-Gen UTM like the NG Series is being driven by several factors including the rise of superfast internet. We are seeing data moving at 10 times current internet speeds. Examples include Google which launched a 1000 Mbps ‘Google Fiber’
Internet service in the US. IDNet also launched 1000 Mbps Leased Line Business Ethernet Service in the UK. The MEA region cannot be further behind. There has also been a device explosion with on average multiple internet devices per user. In the enterprise, employee-owned smart devices are expected to reach 350mn by 2014, up from 150mn today. Cloud is also driving some of this need for fast internet. A lot of critical business applications and services are moving to the Web. Cloud computing is expected to generate more than $45.4 billion in revenue by 2015. With faster network speeds, how important is it to have security appliance that can cope with the demand for
higher throughput? In many organizations, network infrastructure is moving to gigabit and anything less than gigabit is nearly obsolete. Security must also keep pace. With gigabit internet speeds to be available soon from ISPs and Telcos, the question is whether your security appliance can match these high Internet speeds and offer gigabit throughputs. With more devices per employee connecting to the IT network, the approach is changing from ‘Users’ to ‘Devices’. CIOs need to consider whether their security appliance can support any more number of Devices. The risk is that security becomes a bottleneck in the network. The most viable solution to tackle this is for organizations to move to future-ready security
appliances. Cyberoam NG series offers ‘Future-Ready’ security with the fastest UTM appliances for SOHO and SMB segments, while offering NextGeneration firewall protection for large enterprises.
group (school/ class) level control "Cyberoam NG series offers ‘Future-Ready’ security after which it with the fastest UTM appliances for SOHO and SMB will generate user-based segments, while offering Next-Generation firewall access reports. protection for large enterprises." This application will also block all inappropriate and performance. The Cyberoam OS peripheral content such as ads, appliance. Further, our devices also extracts full performance have auto detection of modem comments and links. from a multi-core platform, plug-in and plug-out making along with offering minimum it easy and simple to deploy. Please elaborate on some of As virtualization grows in latency and improved The plug-and-play attributes of the highlights of Cyberoam the region, what security processing speed with use of our Next-Gen UTMs continue NG series challenges are organizations optimized Interrupt rates and with automatic failover to The NG Series offers a facing in this area? FastPath technology. 4G/LTE WWAN connection as combination of powerful Existing UTMs cannot scan well as gateway failover over hardware with superfast Inter-VM traffic with externally Please discuss a specific VPN. We’ve also extended this processing speed, a must based security hardware security application available despite the fact that a single secure connectivity to support for gigabit internet speeds, with the new UTM BYOD in organizations, offering coupled with gigabit ports to compromised virtual machine YouTube for Schools, an Layer 8 Identity-based security enable superfast speeds. Users can infect the entire data educational service from the for mobile devices. Users can also get nano-second security center. Virtual machines face video sharing giant, offers a thus securely connect their processing with multicore a higher risk of attacks on huge repository of relevant and the hypervisor management iPhones, iPad and Android Gigahertz processors. The engaging content for students. console. Virtualized applications devices to their corporate new NG-series also features a However, in most instances, complete overhaul of appliance network through VPN. also face vulnerabilities teachers cannot access these design outside, while inside from hackers. We have the YouTube educational videos With the new UTM, you we have included faster, nextright solutions for protecting due to institutional security have also included your gen memory and high capacity virtualized servers from policies. Cyberoam’s Layer-8 own operating system, the storage. This ensures superior intrusion attacks. The controls on “YouTube for Cyberoam OS. Why is this quality for high performance Cyberoam Virtual Appliance Schools” allows access to software different? and robustness. The design resides on the virtual layer selected educational content NG Series appliances come and components support high and scans all traffic inside the while offering user (teachers/ pre-loaded with Cyberoam speed I/O throughput while virtual environment. student) and OS – the most intelligent also being able to withstand and powerful Cyberoam extreme environments. firmware till date. The new firmware tightly A lot of regional Telcos are integrates with the busy deploying 4G/LTE hardware for network networks. What does this and crypto acceleration to development portend for deliver very high UTMs? Our Next-Gen UTM products are 4G high-speed ready. We offer very easy deployment for high speed internet connection including VPN over 4G/LTE. This can be done through a simple USB modem plug-in into a Cyberoam UTM
March 2013 | 23
TechKnow | Spectrum Group
our portfolio, both vendors and resellers. These have to be very strong within their domains. The idea is to find companies that offer complimentary solutions to what we already have in our portfolio. This way these partnerscan add value to our business.
Ajay Singh Chauhan CEO Spectrum Group The hospitality industry was seriously affected by the recession. What are the prospects for F1 Infotech moving forward? The hospitality industry in the region is on the mend. There are now more hotels coming up as tourism picks up across the region. After a few difficult years brought about by the recession, there are now big projects coming up with DHS120-200Million worth of hospitality projects in the works in the region with 40 major hotels being planned.Our clients include large international chains as well as small independent establishmentsin KSA, UAE, Oman and Kuwait. We carry out these projects through our partners although we will sometimes work directly with major clients. Discuss your partnership programs in the region We are also looking out for new partners to add to
24 | March 2013
One of your stronger partners is Infor. Discuss what benefits this vendor brings to your business Our partner Inforis at the top-end of the hospitality industry. We were looking for a key partner in this area
for doors and locks and IPTV. Further, Infor solutions can be customized so that customers can upgrade whenever they want; for instance they can upgrade from cable to wireless solutions without the need to overhaul their infrastructure. Infor is also an ION certified company. ION or Intelligent Open Network allows users to easily integrate both Infor and third-party software applications, providing a simple but powerful and scalable framework. What, in your opinion, is F1 Infotech’s major selling point
hospitality solutions. The technology that we provide is simple and easy to use as a lot of people working in a hotel environment have no experience in IT. More than any other distributor, The Spectrum Group is known for its strong training and education credentials. Does this apply for F1 Infotech as well? Training is very important for us. Comguard, where we started, was a training institution before moving into distribution. We wanted to create value first. As the
Industry Recovery Excites F1 Infotech F1 Infotech, a subsidiary of The Spectrum Group, is hoping to ride the wave of a recovering hospitality industry in partnership with vendor Infor. Ajay Singh Chauhan, Spectrum Group CEO explains how they plan to do this. and that is why we selected the best; the people at Infor understand hospitality first and IT later. Infor hospitality software systems deliver multi-departmental hotel management software covering almost all aspects of hospitality management connecting hospitality-specific strategy and plans to the front- and back-office systems. This includes: hotel financial management software, food and beverage management software, hotel property management software, central reservations, gaming management, and more. Other solutionsinclude access
that differentiates it from the competition? At F1 Infotech, we seek to create the number one player in the hospitality industry. We achieve a mix of solution for each environment through design & consultation, turnkey ELV solutions and hotel management & security software. The partnership with world class vendors like Infor enables us offer complete solutions for the hospitality & infrastructure industry. Among the services we offer are hospitality software, wireless & mobility, room automation, access control, IPTV, video surveillance, among other
Spectrum Group, we operate one of the biggest training programs in the Middle East with thousands of students trained last year in 11 training centres across the region. F1 Infotech thus operates the most preferred authorized training program for world class hospitality & networking vendors, enabling the end customer to handle their operations trouble free. F1 Infotech is the authorized training centre for Infor SoftBrand Hotel Management Systems as well as Infor10 Financials Business, Corporates Performance Management (PM-10) and EAM.
TechKnow | Safenet
as its encrypted; in other words, securing the breach. Complimentary to encryption is strong authentication whereby you have a proper holistic and multi-layer approach to security. Even when you have secured the data through encryption, you still want to make sure that the right users can still access it for the right reasons. You need to make sure that those people with access to the data do it in a secure manner and have the right authentication. Effective key management is crucial to the security of a
servers, virtualized or cloud environments, you can rely on a common central key manager which makes security easier to manage. Your key resides in a secure physical environment ensuring that you don’t have the keys exposed to attacks. With data increasingly moving to virtual servers and the cloud, how do ensure that this information is as safe as the data on-site Active virtual machine security requires controlling privileged user and admin access, guarding against
of those encryption keys, so you have complete visibility and governance, even in the cloud. You can ensure security throughout the lifecycle of the information - from its creation, through each transaction and change of hands, each snapshot, and its storage in the cloud. The encryption recovers the control and ownership of data in the cloud, so only the right users can use and take copies of the data. When organizations with multiple data centres in different locations have to rely on network providers
Safenet’s new doctrine Sebastian Pavie Regional Sales Director, MEA Safenet
Safenet is calling for a rethink of traditional security protocols to what you call securing the breach. Please discuss A lot of these large and prominent organizations are getting their data breached and it’s not that they have not invested in strong security solutions, it is because they are most likely missing a layer in their security; that layer is a lack of data-centric approach to security. At Safenet, we provide a range of encryptionbased security solutions. Encryption is as data-centric as it gets because if you get breached, you make sure that the hacker will have access to data that is meaningless
26 | March 2013
Organizations need to reimagine their security practices as successful attacks, even against seemingly secure targets, proliferate. Sebastian Pavie, Regional Sales Director, MEA for Safenet, explains how the company can help. cryptosystem. Discuss your strengths in this area At Safenet we offer a unique and broad set of solutions to secure what really mattersyour sensitive data. And this could be in a lot of places; on-site, physical servers, virtualized servers, cloud, travelling over wired/wireless networks. Safenet has been in the data-centric scene for over 30 years and based on this experience, we have the portfolio to cover such a broad spectrum. This year, we launched the hardwarebased KMIP compliant key manager that can configure the whole Safenet offering so whether you secure data in stored environments, network
potential unauthorized copying, overcoming the lack of visibility, and mitigating the exposure of data. SafeNet ProtectV enables organizations to encrypt and secure the entire contents of their virtual machine, protecting sensitive assets from theft or exposure and ensuring your data is just as secure as your on-premise servers. The solution goes and encrypts virtual machines and the volumes attached to those virtual machines and any backups or snapshots at the backend. In cloud, the biggest risk in expanding existing storage into a public cloud is loss of control. SafeNet eliminates risks by encrypting the data itself, and giving you complete control
to move the data between those sites. How do you ensure the safety of this data entrusted to third parties? We offer network-level encryption on WAN. The fibre connections you have connecting all the data centres are very sensitive links because you have a lot of critical data travelling on public fibre networks. We have specialized solutions that encrypt all the traffic through these networks while having no effect on performance whatsoever. Safenet ensures performance impact of encryption is reduced to a minimum thanks to specialized hardware that can process crypto operations exceptionally fast.
Insight | WD
B
Khalid Wani Sales Director, Branded Business Middle East, Africa & India, WD
Addressing SMB storage challenges Khalid Wani, Sales Director - Branded Business Middle East, Africa and India at WD looks at the challenges SMB’s face with managing their data and how these can be overcome using the right solutions.
28 | March 2013
usinesses of today rely on data. It is the heart and soul of the modern enterprise, and the risk of losing this data is a daily threat that can have dire consequences. The increasing pace of business as well as a growing trend towards mobility means this data needs to be shared, while it is simultaneously being protected against loss. For small and medium businesses (SMBs) particularly, the challenge of ensuring that data is stored, protected and is accessible remotely on a limited budget has traditionally been problematic. However, thanks to advances in technology, there are now allinclusive storage solutions that can be had, with the needs of the SMB in mind, which make these challenges far easier and more affordable to address.
The SMB data storage challenge When it comes to the topic of data storage, SMBs typically face two challenges; how to protect important data, and how to share it amongst members of the organisation both within the office environment and remotely. Data protection is vital since any major data loss event can have extreme consequences, and can even cause a business to fail entirely. Data protection
strategy has a single key element – ensuring that multiple copies of data exist. No single device is infallible, and the potential for fire, flooding, theft and other disasters means that no single site is infallible either. Keeping multiple copies of critical data ensures that should something happen and one copy is destroyed or becomes corrupted, this information can quickly be recovered from the secondary storage. Offsite storage is considered sound business practice but this is often expensive and inconvenient for SMBs, as it involves someone physically having to move a copy of the data to another secure location. It also increases the time taken to recover data in the event of a loss event. Sharing of data can be as easy as copying data onto a CD or flash drive and sharing it but this method is slow and inefficient to say the least. Networks have made the sharing of data much easier. Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices can be used as a central repository of information that allows all users with permission to access the drive and the data it contains over a network. However, this does not address the growing issue of mobility and the need to be able to access data anywhere,
anytime. Cloud storage allows SMBs to safely store critical data offsite without the inconvenience of having to make physical copies, and can enable mobile workers to access this data using an Internet connection wherever they are. However, there are some concerns around the cloud which have limited its uptake in the SMB space. The public cloud is cost effective but raises privacy and security issues as organisations do not know where their data is being stored, and the private cloud, while it is secure, has typically been seen as expensive and requiring a lot of maintenance. So what’s the solution? The needs of the SMB when it comes to data storage are clear: affordable and cost effective storage that enables the protection, sharing and recovery of data while supporting the fast pace of business in today’s world. Storage also needs to be easy-to-use because SMBs do not have large IT budgets or necessarily the in-house skills to maintain complex solutions, and should include the ability to create hybrid cloud storage. Data protection is the top priority, and this should be a key consideration for SMBs
"The needs of the SMB when it comes to data storage are clear: affordable and cost effective storage that enables the protection, sharing and recovery of data while supporting the fast pace of business in today’s world." when looking for a storage system. Storage systems should make use of enterprise class disk drives, which offer higher reliability and higher mean time between failures than consumer grade drives. The storage solution should also offer redundancy in the form of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology, either set to run in mirrored (RAID 1) or protected by parity (RAID 5) to protect against disk failure. Support for dual power supplies is also important as it reduces the number of potential points of failure. If the power supply fails the redundant power supply will ensure power to the storage is maintained, minimising the risk of corrupted data during power failures. Recovery is the next critical consideration, since there is no point in creating redundant data if it cannot be recovered if needed. Fast recovery is the key to getting businesses back up and running, and the fastest recovery is attained using locally available storage. However, local storage is not always available for recovery, so further redundancy should
be created with a hybrid cloud approach. This is a combination of local, onpremise storage along with the ability to store data in the cloud. Recovery should include not only file and folder recovery but bare metal backup and recovery as well, to ensure businesses can get back up and running in the event of a disaster. Storage should be easy to setup, use, and maintain because most SMBs can ill afford to call out an IT consultant every time new devices need to be added. Cost is another factor, specifically the total cost of ownership. SMBs need to consider whether the initial investment includes the cost of hard drives or not, and if so how much storage space this includes and whether or not this is scalable, as well as whether or not the cost includes all necessary software and licenses. For ease of use purposes, storage systems should incorporate automatic backup and restore, both locally and to the cloud. Storage that is based on a Microsoft platform, such as Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, addresses all
of these aspects. It offers a familiar user interface that improves ease of use and minimises the potential training costs of implementing a third party backup solution. Furthermore it provides seamless integration into an existing active directory environment saving further costs.
Make sure your storage strategy has it all SMBs have limited resources and limited support, so when it comes to data storage and protection it is vital to choose an all-inclusive solution that ticks all of the boxes. Data loss can have devastating consequences, so SMBs should make sure critical information is stored on a central NAS with built-in RAID protection as well as hybrid cloud integration. This makes data available to both in-office and mobile workers, ensures that data is backed up from individual devices to central storage, and has the added security of cloud backup. This means that should the worst happen, critical data will always be available to get the business back up and running. The cost of storage is minimal compared to the cost of losing your data, so make sure it is protected in case of disaster. March 2013 | 29
Paul Cormier, President, Red Hat
Insight | Red Hat
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ast year, CIOs and IT teams in enterprises worldwide leveraged cloud computing architectures while they designed their data centers to best manage the explosive amount of structured and unstructured data. Red Hat envisions even more significant movement in the data center in 2013 in cloud, middleware, storage, and virtualization technologies. The hybrid approach will be the prevalent cloud deployment model for enterprises worldwide. Hybrid cloud enables resources to be made available to users as easily as if they were accessing a public cloud while keeping the process under centralized policybased IT management. In 2013, enterprises will take advantage of hybrid cloud architectures as a way to have a more dynamic computing architecture over time.
OpenStack will continue to demonstrate the power of community innovation. Openness is one of the most important enablers of hybrid
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The changing face of Enterprise IT Enterprise IT Will Undergo Big Transformation- Driven by Cloud, Middleware, Storage and Virtualization Technologies writes Paul Cormier, President of Products and Technologies at Red Hat
IT because it helps users avoid lock-in to vendors and specific ecosystems. OpenStack enjoys a broad community with more than 180 contributing companies, including Red Hat, and 400 contributing developers. We will see all that developer involvement lead to some commercial products in 2013, the same way the open source development model has led to innovative products in operating systems, middleware, and other areas.
Private (and hybrid) PaaS will go mainstream. As has been the case with IaaS, PaaS will be seen not as just a public cloud capability but also as private and hybrid capability.
Open source software will drive proprietary storage hardware and software stacks. The rapid pace of innovation at the software layer is likely to fast outpace the innovation of hardware. Today, monolithic proprietary storage hardware and its proprietary software layer cannot be decoupled. This will all change in 2013
with the rapid commoditization and standardization at the hardware level combined with increased intelligence at the software layer.
Enterprise storage will transform from a ‘data destination’ into a ‘data platform’ As a platform for big data and not just a destination for data storage, enterprise storage solutions will need to deliver cost-effective scale and capacity; eliminate data migration and incorporate the ability to grow without bound; bridge legacy storage silos; ensure global accessibility of data; and protect and maintain the availability of data.
More organizations will adopt an integrated DevOps approach. Increasing communication, collaboration and integration between developers and operations teams will eliminate issues stemming from incomplete hand-offs, misinformation or insufficient skills. Buying patterns and the perception of mobile
technology will change dramatically. Devices will be selected based on content and services first and technology second. These applications and services will be tied to enterprise middleware technologies such as CEP, business intelligence, and BPM, to create more cohesive and accessible executive and business dashboarding tools.
The multi-hypervisor datacenter continues to grow. Just as many enterprises have found single-vendor strategies for operating systems and hardware do not make sense for them in an agile world, a single vendor for virtualization doesn’t either. Multiple vendors for virtualization will continue to proliferate in enterprise data centers in 2013.
The OS remains the basis of IT The operating system has served as the cornerstone of traditional IT for decades. As organizations continue to move to the cloud in 2013, the operating system will continue to deliver a critical foundation.
Insight | Riverbed
ooking for a needle in a haystack is already a challenge. Imagine if that haystack was actually nonphysical and existed in an abstract world like in the movie, The Matrix, where it can be replicated, moved, and eliminated with the touch of a button? (Ok, if you were a gifted computer hacker like Neo, you may find the needle instantly). Similarly, pinpointing application
from physical to virtual environments.
VMs, a double-edged sword In the past, network managers could identify a root cause of application performance issue by inspecting the traffic passing through the network pipes that support a given application. Now, all of those elements can be run as virtual machines (VMs) on the same
to automate monitoring and accelerate troubleshooting. Automate dependency mapping: Preparing for even a minor change in infrastructure requires a deep understanding of existing inventory. And with the complex dependencies that exist in enterprise networks, and the sheer number of applications, it is critical to know how changes can impact the network. Therefore, a scalable
Philippe Elie, Riverbed
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Virtualized and Consolidated? Great: Now Ensure Performance Philippe Elie, Director of Operations, EMEA, Riverbed, discusses how organizations can eliminate complexities surrounding virtualization. and network performance challenges is already a messy affair in physical environments. Making sense of reams of packet data, reconciling application and network tools, and gaining visibility into blind spots behind load balancers are just a few of the obstacles to troubleshooting applications. With network virtualization, network managers are greeted to a whole new world of challenges in monitoring and troubleshooting their environments. Evolving architectures mean new protocols and a host of layers, or in a word, complexity. But this is the “new normal” happening every day in enterprises across the world as they consolidate their IT infrastructure, and move business applications
physical host, greatly reducing the troubleshooting capabilities of traditional network monitoring systems. Deploying VMs is fast and easy, but network configuration changes can affect the performance of the devices on the networks and obfuscates the root cause of problems. What this boils down to is that time to resolution may be significantly longer in a virtualized environment as compared to a physical one, and, more often than not, it’s the end users, unfortunately, that discover problem first. How to get an eagle’s eye view into fully virtualized, consolidated networks Recognizing this challenge, network managers are adopting new approaches to gain visibility and control into virtualized environments
method for identifying application, server, and client dependencies, and for mapping application delivery path is essential. This knowledge provides a basis for serving critical network management tasks, including reconfiguration planning, fault localization, and anomaly detection. Achieve 100% unobstructed views: Software-defined networking (SDN) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are great ways of improving ease of management of IT infrastructure but only until the first problems occur. Then the real troubles for the network manager begin, as these very same benefits in turn can also create challenges. Simply put, the end-to-end complexity involved in delivering
these solutions creates an inherent lack of visibility for troubleshooting and problem resolution. The end user may not appreciate this nuance however, and will likely assume it is a network issue, reach out to the network manager and expect a speedy resolution. To prepare for this scenario, an important question for a network manager to ask when adopting virtualized solutions is whether or not the organization’s network performance management (NPM) tool can provide visibility into UDP tunnels that encapsulate network traffic in SDN environments, and whether the NPM tool understands what applications VDI users access. These capabilities will help remove the anomaly guesswork out of troubleshooting and remedy issues faster. March 2013 | 31
eyetech
Dell DR4100 disk backup appliance
Canon imagePROGRAF MFP M40 Solution Overview:
Overview The new high performance Dell DR4100 disk backup appliance can help customers reduce the amount of necessary backup storage capacity — by up to 15 times— with Dell’s built-in data deduplication and compression technologies. Latest advancements in Dell’s backup appliance offer customers expansion shelves for improved storage capacity, increased “many-to-one” replication capabilities for improved disaster recovery, and additional backup software certifications for enhanced interoperability.
Key features: • • • • • • • •
The easy to deploy and manage Dell DR4100, based on the latest Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers, is a disk backup target appliance with built-in deduplication and compression technology designed to significantly reduce the amount of storage required. Benefiting from Dell’s acquired Ocarina data reduction algorithms, customers can eliminate redundant copies of data and decrease disk capacity requirements by up to 93 percent. The appliance performs all data reduction operations, removing this function from the customer’s application and backup servers and eliminating any impact on backup and recovery performance. Reduce or eliminate the dependence on managing tape backups while enabling customers to maintain their backup data on disk longer, enabling fast and reliable restores when needed. The Dell DR4100 can be deployed in five initial usable capacity configurations ranging from 2.7 to 27 terabytes. The Dell DR4100 allows logical capacities at up to 15 times usable capacity. All-inclusive software licensing model that can reduce storage costs over time by offering premium features, such as replication, DR Rapid Data Access and future functionalities, at no additional cost. The switch can enable multi-level QoS based on granular information such as SSID, client, radio, application, and fair share policies for wireless.
32 | March 2013
The solution includes a Canon imagePROGRAF large format printer, a new M40 scanner incorporated via an integrated stand, powerful MFP software and a large, easy-to-use touch screen interface with dynamic preview. From initial scan to final output, this complete solution is ideal for any size of workgroup that uses technical documentation - particularly in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) market. The solution is compatible with five large format printers from the Canon imagePROGRAF range – the iPF750, iPF815, iPF825 and the recently launched iPF760 and iPF765.
Key features: • Incorporating Scan-To-Copy/File/Email/Cloud Connectivity and print functions, the new MFP is designed to meet the speed and precision requirements of demanding CAD/GIS users. • The Canon imagePROGRAF MFP M40 is capable of scanning images up to 40” wide at speeds up to 13” per second (in monochrome). • It uses a new arrangement of Contact Image Sensor (CIS) to ensure images are captured with accurate, shadow-free line definition and at true 1200dpi optical resolution. Printing at 2400 x 1200 dpi with 4pl ink drop size, the MFP easily replicates fine lines and intricate detail. In addition, the ‘hot swap’ ink tank technology enables the ink to be changed without interrupting the print job. • Operated by the SmartWorks MFP software via the large 22” intuitive touch screen, the imagePROGRAF MFP M40 is capable of batch scanning for improved efficiency. • With a built-in 250GB Hard Disk Drive, support for various file types such as PDF, JPEG and TIFF and the multiple configurations available, users can customise the solution to their exact needs and specifications.
Sophos UTM 525, 625 and RED 50
Epson’s passive 3D projector system
Overview:
Overview
Sophos has strengthened its network security offerings with two enhanced high-end Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances, Sophos UTM 525 and 625, and the new Sophos RED 50 (Remote Ethernet Device), the first security solution to offer complete and centrally managed Unified Threat Management for medium-sized branch offices. With these updates and additions, Sophos extends UTM, Next Generation Firewall, and branch office security to the enterprise by improving throughput speeds and performance as well as offering additional flexible deployment options.
Epson has announced the Middle East launch of its first twin-stacked passive 3D projector system. Bringing a bright, affordable 3D experience to a range of audiences, this model is ideal for educational establishments, museums, exhibitions and the hospitality industry. The Epson EB-W16SK projector system is made up of two individual projector units, stacked together in a speciallydesigned mount. The projectors are connected via USB, in a command and control setting, with the supplied polarising plates attached to each lens. With both projections overlaid, images are then electronically aligned using the automatic projector alignment setting and projected onto a silver screen, sold separately. This dramatically reduces set up time.
Key features: •
Image quality is assured with Epson’s 3LCD technology which faithfully reproduces a wide colour gamut to create natural, vibrant images; ideal for applications such as science lessons and art exhibitions.
• Both projectors feature an equally high White and Colour Light Output of 3,000 lumens for bright 3D images in a variety of ambient light settings.
Key features: • The new appliances can see a 300 percent increase in firewall throughput speeds to 40 Gbps, as well as the option of field-replaceable LAN (local access network) modules, which allow to scale their deployments for use in any size organization. • The new and larger RED model offers increased performance, enhanced connectivity capabilities and new operational functions.
•
Supporting all HDMI compatible 3D signal formats, the Epson EB-W16SK displays side-by-side, top-and-bottom and frame packed content. This means that users have the flexibility to display the widest range of 3D content available.
•
This projector system comes with one pair of polarised 3D glasses for bright three dimensional content and, thanks to their low costs, offer an affordable 3D experience with low TCO.
• The Sophos RED 50 appliance has throughput speeds of more than 300 Mbps, ten-times faster than RED 10 devices – ideal for organizations that need to send larger files, run daily data backups or protect large branch office networks. • Sophos RED 50 also comes with a 4-port gigabit switch and two gigabit wide area network interfaces. These ports can be connected to two Internet connections at once, allowing for the bandwidth load balancing or failover capabilities many larger branch offices require.
March 2013 | 33
Stats & Trends
MEA IT infrastructure spending to reach US$ 4 Billion Middle East and Africa is expected to grow from US$ 648 million The Middle East & African IT infrastructure market, comprising in 2012 to 760 million in 2016.The storage hardware market is of servers, storage and networking equipment, is forecast to still underpenetrated overall, with many organizations not having reach US$ 3.9 billion in 2013, a 4 percent increase from 2012, the insight or education required to assess the correct storage according to Gartner, Inc. infrastructure for their application and service requirements. DeIT infrastructure growth in Middle East will be driven by data duplication, thin provisioning and flash storage are slowly gaining centre consolidation coupled with new data centre build outs. traction in this market. Servers are the largest segment of the IT infrastructure market with revenue reaching US $1.54 billion in 2013, Middle East and African IT Infrastructure Revenue and it will grow to US $1.69 billion in 2016 (see by Technology (Million US Dollars) Table 1) The data centre market in the Middle East is Market 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 fuelled by increased construction of Tier 3 and Tier Servers 1,553.70 1,543.90 1,575.80 1,638.00 1,694.70 4 data centres, especially in Saudi Arbia and UAE, Storage 648.4 668.7 694.3 724.7 760.2 primarily driven by Multi National Corporations Enterprise LAN 880.5 975.4 1,040.90 1,086.20 1,107.90 Enterprise WAN 670.2 714.2 772.6 824.6 870.5 (MNC )as well as regional collocation and hosting Total 3,752.80 3,902.20 4,083.70 4,273.50 4,433.40 service providers. Source: Gartner (February 2013) The external controller based storage in the
Spending on Hosted Private Cloud Services to surpass $24 Billion in 2016 According to a new forecast from IDC, worldwide spending on hosted private cloud (HPC) services – an operational model for deploying computing infrastructure services of many types via a cloud model – will be more than $24 billion in 2016. HPC spending will experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 50% over the 20122016 forecast period as companies and IT providers look to cloud in its various forms as a means to transform and make more efficient and scalable the "how" of what they provide to their customers. Along the way, Hosted Private Cloud services will become the backbone of a new set of infrastructure services, transforming existing provider models for IT outsourcing, hosting infrastructure services, and other key IT industries. At the highest level, there are two types of deployment models for cloud services: public and private. Public cloud services are designed for a market and are open to a largely unrestricted universe of potential users who share
34 | March 2013
the services. Private cloud services are designed for a single enterprise and have user-defined and controlled restrictions on access and level of resource dedication. Hosted private cloud is a composite view of two private cloud services deployment models, both of which offer customers and providers very different choices about resource dedication, tenancy cost, user access/control of the computing asset, and real and perceived security structures in place. The two HPC deployment models are: Dedicated Private Cloud: This model offers dedicated 1:1 physical compute and storage resources focused on the needs of one enterprise or extended enterprise. This model offers the greatest customer control over their contracted resource. Examples of dedicated private cloud service offerings include Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances, IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Savvis Symphony Dedicated, and Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition. Virtual Private Cloud: This model is
an adjunct of public cloud services with shared virtualized resources and a range of customer control and security options distinct from most public cloud services. Examples of virtual private cloud service offerings include Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), IBM SmartCloud Enterprise Plus, Savvis Symphony VPDC/Open, and Rackspace RackConnect. Virtual private cloud is expected to make steady gains in part because of its similarity to public cloud, particularly public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which many IT buyers are already using as a cost-saving alternative to replacing aging infrastructure. As more companies evaluate their Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) options, the need to centralize the management of all cloud-sourced capabilities will become apparent. Meanwhile, the majority of dedicated private cloud buyers will be those companies with existing IS outsourcing or hosted infrastructure services contracts.
Less worry… concern about your business when you’re not there...
DCS-6010L
Cloud for IP Surveillance
Wireless
Switching
DNR-322L
Storage
…more peace of mind With D-Link’s new DCS-6010L 360˚ fisheye lens Cloud camera it’s never been easier to keep an eye on your business, whether you’re working remotely, on the move, or checking your office out of hours. Fantastic image quality and coverage guaranteed, the fisheye lens provides incredible wide angle coverage. Mounted on a wall for a panoramic 180˚ view of a room, or on the ceiling for a full 360˚ view without blind spots. The camera is mydlink-enabled, so you can access, view and configure it remotely, no matter where you are through the mydlink website, or with the mydlink mobile app directly on your iOS or Android mobile device. The perfect solution for any business when used with the DNR-322L Network Video Recorder, a standalone storage device that can record video simultaneously for up to nine network cameras with footage that can be accessed remotely via a web browser from any device connected to the internet. D-Link can support your business in other ways too, with a wide range of flexible and cost-effective Wireless, Switching, Storage and Security Solutions.
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