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The landscape gets more interesting C

ompanies are bracing to consolidate their presence in key sectors and the quickest way to that is by buying out other companies. One of the recent ones has been Canon’s surprise plans to acquire Axis Communications for just over $2.8 billion. This comes less than a year since its acquisition of Milestone Systems, a leading provider of video management software. With these buyouts, Canon has swiftly become a leader in the video surveillance industry.

For certain, more buyouts are bring lined up and we will keep hearing now and then of the acquisitions that overnight alter the landscape. It would also alter scenarios for partners, in some instances working to their favor and in some not as much especially if a partner has been comfortably associated with a vendor who is a competitor to the acquired company. How those scenarios are handled will determine a company’s success with its channel Business.

The cover feature in the issue outlines how competitive the VAD landscape has become. Many of the VADs that are now prominent players in the region have emerged from the shadows of larger players who dominated the volume distribution landscape. Several of them built up Businesses associating with start- up or niche vendors which have subsequently over the years become more significant in the industry.

The VADs who have now built up sizable portfolios are in a phase of consolidation. Some are now assembling teams that will have expertise to handle emerging Technologies.

As trends like IoT become more mainstream and integrated into IT systems and projects, there could be a dearth of resources qualified in these frontier technologies. Integrators could do well to start offering some refresher courses for some of their best talents that could shape up to take up the Business development in these domains.

ontents

Editorial

Cover Story - 18

Staying valuable

VADs in the region are upbeat as they adopt emerging technologies in their portfolios

News In Detail

Microsoft Dynamics Summit highlights new trends - 12

‘Brand loyalty has a six-second shelf life’ - 14 TechKnow

Assuring protection - 16

Nader Baghdadi – Enterprise Sales Director at Fortinet discusses the company’s strong lead in its segments of focus

Flash success - 22

Graham Porter, Channel Manager Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan, NetApp speaks about the company’s value differentiation in storage and converged stacks

Unfolding transformation - 24

Hany Hussein, Enterprise Channel Vice President for Middle East elaborates on the company’s the transformational journey that is unfolding

Point2Point - 26 Pacing well

Bulwark is a leading security focused VAD in the region.

Jose Thomas, MD shares how the company is rearranging internally to bring sharper focus and support partner better

Insight

The Myths about Linux Security - 28

Chester Wisniewski, Senior Security Consultant at Sophos discusses that the threats for Linux-based operating systems is still way lower than threats for Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X but real

Big Data meets Virtualization - 30

Big data has arrived, but big insights have not yet writes By Ash Ashutosh, founder and CEO, Actifio

Regulars

R. Narayan Managing Editor

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

News Bytes Eyetech Stats & trends

Published by: JNS Media International MFZE P.O. Box: 121075, Montana Building 404, Zabeel Road, Near GPO, Karama, Dubai-UAE - Tel: 04-3705022 Fax: 04-3706639 Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possible to get accurate information on published content in this handbook they cannot be held liable for any errors herein.

News Bytes

D-Link partners with MOXA D-Link India, Middle East & Africa has announced their recently signed partnership with MOXA, a leading networking solutions provider with over 25 years of experience in industrial automation, to offer firstclass industrial networking equipment such as Switching, IP Surveillance and Wireless products to the industrial segment.

“We are extremely delighted about this partnership”, said Gary Yang, President at D-Link IMEA. “With several decades of highlevel expertise in the networking domain, both D-Link and MOXA are well-known, reliable brands striving towards highest-quality networking solutions, and this collaboration will allow us to deepen our product portfolio and enhance our reach in specialized niche markets for factory automation, smart rail, smart grid, intelligent transportation, oil & gas, marine, and mining”, Gary added.

Harrison Albert, Regional Director at D-Link MEA said, “The fact, that we are providing end-to-end networking solutions and that we are able to offer specific products from a wide active and passive product range – including a broad selection of fiber and copper products, has helped us to grow greatly in the region. With a successful track record of catering to nearly every networking need, we now feel is the right time to take MOXA on board for an even more extended product offering in the industrial segment.”

4 | May 2015

Aptec launches flagship “flyHigher” program for Cisco resellers Value-added distributor Aptec - an Ingram Micro company has successfully launched its flagship “flyHigher” program for Ciscoresellers in the Middle East. The program reiterates Aptec’s commitment to invest in the Cisco businessby assisting partners on their journey to sales acceleration.

The flyHigher website (www.ingramflyhigher.com/ me), which is a key component of the program, wa slaunched in January 2015 for the UAE and other GCC countries (excluding Saudi Arabia). It serves asa central hub for SMB channel partners to get all the information related to all things Cisco. Resellerscan use the flyHigher site to get on-boarded, attend online trainings, view value-added services andget access to inventory on-hand. To further boost the digital touch points of this program, Aptec haslaunched a dedicated flyHigher Facebook Page (http://fb.com/Aptec.Ingramflyhigher.

Cisco.Page) andTwitter handle (@flyHigherME) servicing the Cisco reseller community.

“The flyHigher program is aimed at providing channel partners new to Cisco an easy path tobeginning and growing their Cisco business. It’s focus is on simplifying and consolidating all informationrelevant for a new Cisco reseller to get up and moving quickly. When on-board, flyHigher will offerresellers many acceleration tracks to gain advanced knowledge about Cisco, its products, programs,promotions, certifications and specialization. flyHigher is designed around the steps of the sales cycleas a central landing page for Cisco resellers. The program is aimed at developing and accelerating the resellers’ business profitably," said MartinMeitza, Senior Business Unit Manager at Aptec.

FVC signs with Pivot3 FVC, a leading Value Added Distributor (VAD) in the Middle East & Africa (MEA), has partnered with Pivot3 to deliver hyper-converged appliances and solutions to its partners throughout the Middle East and Africa.

K. S. Parag, Managing Director at FVC, said, “With the growing importance of hyper-converged solutions, Pivot3 is a valuable addition to our new IT Infrastructure and Security division and in line with our commitment to bring cutting edge technology to our partners.”

Anand Chakravarthi, Regional Director -Middle East & India at Pivot3, said, “FVC will help our channel partners and customers capitalize on the strength of our solutions, services and expertise. FVC will drive demand for Pivot3 hyper-converged solutions and enable partner success to drive successful sales and deployment of Pivot3 technologies.”

Pivot3 provides global hyper-convergence solutions for Surveillance, VDI, Disaster recovery, and Backup. These solutions simplify system management and deployment while maximizing storage capacity and data protection. Through its Scalar Erasure Coding, Pivot3 provides the highest levels of fault tolerance and the highest storage efficiencies at a cost far below that of local hyper-convergence providers. Pivot3 today has over 1,600 global customers and with 13,000 units installed.

Pivot3 is dedicated to establishing and increasing momentum in the Gulf region and the Middle East. According to Chakravarthi, the company has increased its business in the region by a third every year since 2011 and has built strong customer base with a network of integration partners and developed third-party eco system suppliers to support this growth.

News Bytes

F5 Networks expert sees potential for hybrid cloud growth Hybrid cloud deployments are set to have big impact on Middle East-based organizations, according to a leading networking expert.

Garth Braithwaite, Middle East Director, F5 Networks said increasingly complex corporate ambitions are creating demand to seamlessly exploit a data center distributed across multiple environments - both on-premise and in the cloud.

According to recent figures, the global hybrid cloud market is estimated to grow from $25.28 billion in 2014 to $84.67 billion in 2019, at a CAGR of 27.3%.

“If the future is hybrid – and we very much believe it is - we need to be able to manage such environments much more seamlessly, so that it benefits performance and the bottom line in an obvious and compelling way.”

F5 Networks is investing heavily in hybrid cloud, entering the cloud services delivery space last November by launching the Silverline range of services.

The F5 Silverline services delivery platform expands the company’s F5 Synthesis architecture to enable application services within customers’ deployment model of choice: onpremises and/or as-a-service.

6 | May 2015

R&M partners with Virtual Instruments R&M, the global Swiss developer and provider of connectivity systems for high-quality, high-performance network infrastructures, has announced a new partnership with Virtual Instruments, the leader in Infrastructure Performance Management (IPM) for physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. As a monitoring platform, R&M today launched its Total Network Visibility solution, a holistic approach to network visibility that integrates passive traffic access points (TAPs) seamlessly into its automated infrastructure management system R&MinteliPhy. R&M’s HD TAP Modules contain passive fiber-optic splitters that deliver an identical copy of an optical signal passing through it. Once the optical signal is out of band and connected to a VirtualWisdom Probe, the entire infrastructure can be monitored in real-time without agents- helping to ensure availability and performance for live applications. As part of the HD System family, the HD TAP Module is fully compatible with R&M’s infrastructure hardware as a standard module, and easily and passively monitors network links without introducing latency or packet loss.

“Virtual Instruments’ Data Centre Infrastructure Management software, which monitors live traffic feed across the network and provides overviews on an easy-toread dashboard, is perfect for this task. The VirtualWisdom platform provides complete visibility and for the first time, automated infrastructure management and automated infrastructure performance management are married as a single solution,” states Dr. Thomas Wellinger, Market Manager Data Center, R&M. “This enables cost-effective, faultfree systems management and analysis.”

ESET welcomes StorageCraft to the Technology Alliance StorageCraft, a leading provider of data backup and disaster recovery solutions, has joined the ESET Technology Alliance. As a result of this relationship, existing ESET customers now have the option to add StorageCraft backup and disaster recovery to their layered security strategy through their existing ESET reseller.

A report by the Ponemon Institute found that data loss cost companies an average of $7,900 for every minute of the downtime. “This is a significant overhead with added reputational damages. Organizations need to work backup and recovery into their IT strategies. By providing the best-in-class backup and disaster recovery solution from StorageCraft, we at ESET are giving our enterprise customers the ability to seamlessly add this essential component to their layered security,” said Neo Neophytou, Managing Director, ESET Middle East.

Launched in 2013, the ESET Technology Alliance is an integration partnership that aims to better protect businesses by offering a range of complementary IT security solutions. All members of the ESET Technology Alliance are carefully vetted against a set of established criteria to extend “best-in-class” business protection across IT environments.

StorageCraft offers award-winning backup software and disaster recovery, data protection, and migration solutions for physical, virtual, and hybrid Windows and Linux IT environments.

News Bytes

GBM launch VersaStack Solution Gulf Business Machines (GBM), the leading provider of customized IT solutions in the Gulf, launched VersaStack Solution in partnership with IBM and Cisco at a series of exclusive events in the UAE this week.

VersaStackTM Solution is the world’s first integrated infrastructure based on the IBM Storwize family of virtualized storage technologies and the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).

The new technology accelerates users’ IT infrastructure, and is targeted at the ever growing demand for virtualized infrastructure, while delivering dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and simplicity.

With five times more data, with real time compression, VersaStack TM Solution has been widely anticipated by tech-consumers and businesses globally.

“We have been long-term partners of Cisco in the region and this event provides an excellent platform for us to highlight the success our collaboration has brought and the way in which we drive the industry forward in partnership,” commented Hani Nofal, vice president of Intelligent Network Solutions at GBM. Scott Manson, Data Center Middle East Lead at Cisco, said “GBM is an enabler and backer of Cisco technology in the region and it is fantastic to have such a high level of support from them for such an important event here in Dubai.

VersaStack TM Solution is just one of the joint projects that IBM and Cisco have recently worked together on.

We look forward to launching this technology solution.”

8 | May 2015

WD scales up surveillance drives portfolio WD has enhanced its surveillance drives portfolio with the introduction of WD Purple NV, a purpose-built line of 3.5-inch, high-capacity 4 TB and 6 TB hard drives for the greater demands of scalable network video recorder (NVR) surveillance systems.

Compared with standard WD Purple drives, the new member of the WD’s surveillance video recording family of drives, WD Purple NV, is designed for larger-scale network surveillance systems utilizing higher hard drive bay counts and greater numbers of attached cameras, with demand increased storage capacity and durability.

The new drives’ high capacities also enable long video retention periods for analysis and reference. WD Purple NV is also designed to withstand the demands of always-on digital NVR recording environments. It offers low power consumption and many advanced performance features.

“With the Middle East region working towards establishing smarter city and service initiatives, the region has witnessed a surge in the adoption of large scale surveillance systems to enable better safety and security for both individuals and enterprises.

WD Purple NV, is designed for higher end surveillance systems utilizing higher hard drive bay counts and greater numbers of attached cameras, with demand increased storage capacity and durability to withstand the demands of always-on digital NVR recording environments. The solution is aimed at helping enterprises enable long video retention periods for analysis and reference without adding power consumption costs or administrative complexity,” said Saifuddin Khwaja, Sales Director, South Asia, MEA, WD.

Westcon Group partners with Aruba Networks Westcon Group Middle East signed a distribution agreement with Aruba Networks. The move is said to reinforce Westcon’s security solutions portfolio, with the addition of Aruba’s range of access management, network infrastructure and mobility application solutions.

In a partnership kick off event for partners and resellers, Westcon demonstrated its solutions portfolio and discussed its roadmap, and strategy for Aruba Networks. “Westcon have built a strong security portfolio over the years. However with the changing environment of the mobile workspace, there was a gap, and that was providing that secure mobile access. By partnering with Aruba, we think we’ve significantly bridged the gap and by partnering with the ecosystem vendors as well, we have some great solutions now,” said Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director at Westcon. “There is more opportunity for the resellers to now sell to the new mobile environments with very secure and integrated offerings, right down to the mobile devices. I strongly believe Aruba is going to be a significant opportunity for our resellers in the region.”

Westcon offers a wide range of best-in-class products, services and solutions from some of the world's leading network solution vendors and has over the years built a formidable portfolio of products that are fully interoperable and complement each other. Through the new distribution agreement with Aruba Networks, Westcon has significantly grown its distribution portfolio to cater to a range of partner and customer demands.

News Bytes

Spectrami holds Tech Workshop Spectrami, a leading value added distributor in the MENA region in association with LogRhythm recently organised Tech Workshop, a training workshop for its channel partners on LogRhythm Security Intelligence solutions in Dubai, UAE. Spectrami is the value added distributor for LogRhythm in Middle East and as part of their value added services, the company offers both sales and pre-sales training to its channel partners and the event is termed as Tech Workshop. Channel partners from all over Middle East attended Tech Workshop that was held earlier this month in Gloria Hotel Dubai. The workshop ran separate tracks for sales and pre-sales and was well received by channel partners.

In 3 days, the partners’ technical teams were given hands on experience on products as well as offered deep dive technical sessions. The main focus in the sales training sessions was laid on product positioning, competitive landscape and the technical edge that LogRhythm’s solutions offers to the enterprises in the region.

Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami, said, "As a true value added distributor, we strongly believe in enabling our channel with the right set of knowledge and skill sets. Tech Workshop provides an excellent platform for knowledge transfer but also to understand the challenges partners face in front of a customer. "

10 | May 2015

New Assessment offering from Dimension Data Dimension Data has announced a new assessment offering that helps organisations assess the maturity of their security architecture, the underlying security safeguards that protect their human assets from cyber attacks, and their processes and technologies.

Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data’s Group Executive – Security, says cyber threats are still flourishing, and traditional approaches to information security are no longer adequate to protect information networks from modern threats. “Even employees are not safe from variety of threats including drive-by and watering hole attacks which often occur over a weekend. In addition, we’re seeing a low level of maturity in some large enterprises – many of which have spent millions of dollars on security technology.

“When assessing the robustness of an organisation’s security, we cannot leave out the employee. In fact, it’sessential that employees understand their role as both an asset and a potential security liability in an organisation,” explains Gyde.

Gyde says another key area that organisations need to focus on is to link their security strategy to the vision of the company, and have a robust set of policies around vulnerability and threat management, as well as incident response processes and procedures. “Organisations must be able to address root cause issues and apply the right resources and controls in the most effective way to protect key assets,” he says and points out that Dimension Data’s security assessment was designed to be a globally consistent, consulting engagement framework that’s vital for global organisations.

Network Automation reduces time to deploy cloud In a study commissioned by Infoblox,Tolly Group, a leading independent IT testing firm, has found that automation of core network services—DNS, DHCP and IP addresses (DDI)—can reduce the deployment time for virtual machines in a VMware private cloud environment by 62 percent Among the results mentioned in the report, the time to inventory, create, and destroy 500 VMs per week in Tolly’s test environment—designed to mimic a real-world large enterprise—dropped from 42 hours when using manual processes to just 16 hours with Infoblox. This is a reduction of 62 percent, and doesn’t include any time saved from not having to resolve outages due to errors from manually tracking IP addresses and DNS records.

Further discovering network information for 20 existing VMs—such as virtual datacenter location, virtual cluster location, and tenant IDs—took 17 minutes manually and just 45 seconds with Infoblox. In addition, finding available IP addresses when all the addresses in a typical subnet are taken required two minutes manually and only 30 seconds with Infoblox.

“While many organizations understand the value of network automation in private cloud deployments, it’s been a challenge to quantify the benefit,” said Arya Barirani, vice president of product marketing at Infoblox. “Tolly Group did an excellent job in conducting a set of sophisticated tests to show the time and cost impacts and how network automation is essential to private cloud and next-gen data center deployments.”

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News In Detail

T

he second Microsoft Dynamics Summit in Dubai concluded with Microsoft and customers providing insights on how Dynamics tools that will enable organizations and its people to more effectively make sense of data, and make insights actionable at greater speed and accuracy. The summit took place at Jumeirah Beach Hotel and attracted hundreds of business leaders, investors, channel partners and end users from UAE and the Middle East to learn about

inventing business tools and solutions but we go an extra mile to provide the necessary expertise geared towards delivering digital work experiences, transforming how people work and reinventing business productivity. We want all businesses to appreciate and take full advantage of Microsoft Dynamics to do more and achieve more by effectively engaging with and amazing their customers.”

Speakers at the summit included experts on Microsoft

Karim Talhouk Microsfot Business Solutions Lead, Microsoft Gulf

Microsoft Dynamics Summit highlights new trends the latest Dynamics programs, strategies, and cutting-edge technologies that can enable businesses to perform better.

The Microsoft Dynamics product line is designed to support business management and help companies make important business decisions with confidence. This includes products that encompass customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). The Microsoft Dynamics portfolio includes: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Speaking at the Dynamics Summit, Karim Talhouk, Microsoft Business Solutions Lead Microsoft. Gulf said “The Dynamics Summit is a key opportunity for us to show companies in the Middle East and Africa region how our technology enables them to turn data into insights and to achieve true transformation in this exciting new era.

Our efforts do not stop at

12 | May 2015

Dynamics who gave useful tips on effective implementation and how to select products best suited to the needs of the business.

Alya Harbi, Deputy Director Health Information Systems at the UAE Ministry of Health said, “Our strategic partnership with Microsoft in implementing Dynamics AX2012 at the UAE Ministry of Health is yielding positive results by way of enhanced coordination of services and collaboration among staff to help improve the quality of health services.

We have been able to streamline business process transformation and automation in areas of handling large data in hospitals for drug and inventory management as well as piloting for billing system and biomedical management system which all assisting us in boosting service delivery to patient through increased employee efficiency.”

Ahmed Salama, CRM lead for Middle East & Africa gave a lecture on how to deliver an

amazing customer experience by implementing Dynamics CRM online, while Karim Ramadan, Microsoft Business Solutions Lead for Middle East and Africa talked about how to run a dynamic business.

The summit also included presentations on Microsoft Dynamics for organizations from Public Sector, Real Estate, Financial Services, Manufacturing and distribution.

Also Microsoft Gold Partners showcased solutions for Real Estate, Banking, Hospitality, Business Intelligence, ERP for Small/Mid-size organizations.

Organizations such as the UAE Ministry of Health shared best practices around their use of Dynamics.

The CRM Spring ’15 release for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, expected by the end of the second quarter of 2015, will deliver significant performance enhancements, deepen interoperability with Office 365, and with new knowledge management enhancements, improve efficiency and collaboration between workers

and businesses. The release also introduces Microsoft Social Engagement, the latest update to Microsoft’s social monitoring tool designed to enable people to monitor and engage in the context of their Dynamics CRM and/or Office application. The intelligence gained from this new solution will enable businesses to be better informed about what customers are saying across all social channels.

Microsoft has also recently delivered PowerBI Connectors for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing for out of the box integration. Sales, service and marketing professionals can analyze data with interactive dashboards and reports in Power BI, resulting in faster insights and decision-making for sales personnel.

The Microsoft Dynamics Summit this year had three platinum sponsors that included Link Development – Linkdotnet LLC, Synergy Software Systems and Godrej Infotech Ltd.

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News In Detail

T

he results of a global study commissioned

by CA Technologies reveal that mobile and desktop applications have become the new battleground for brand loyalty. In today’s software-driven world, where consumers are more discerning about what they expect from applications, the reality is that businesses that fail to deliver a positive application experience risk losing as much as a quarter of their customer base.

tasks with little difficulty’ and almost 80 per cent ranked applications that have ‘easy to use features’ as top drivers of their decision to utilize or purchase an application.

3. The Assurance of Security – Out of users who had a fair or poor experience, 10 per cent said that they would leave a brand forever because of issues with security “Consumers no longer view applications as nice-to-have novelties.

‘Brand loyalty has a six-second shelf life’ The study, ‘Software: the New Battleground for Brand Loyalty’, surveyed 6,770 consumers and 809 business decision makers in 18 countries to uncover how each group thought various characteristics of applications impacted user experience, and how well different industries delivered on those characteristics. Consumers identified three that have the biggest impact on the consumer experience: 1. Quick Loading – 68 per cent of consumer respondents, who left a brand because of poor load times, said a loading time of six or less seconds was acceptable – and slightly more than half of those respondents demand a load time of less than three seconds 2. Simple Functionality – More than 70 per cent of consumers ranked ‘perform

14 | May 2015

They now have a huge impact on customer loyalty,” said DiyaaZebian, Regional Director MENA, CA Technologies Middle East and North Africa. “As businesses navigate a new, always-connected reality that produces vast amounts of ambient data, they must react by delivering a personalized, secure and engaging application experience.”

There is a disconnect, the study revealed, between how well businesses decision makers think industries are able to provide application technologies, and how well consumers believe the same industries are actually delivering. Specifically, businesses think application delivery is largely better than consumers do -- a difference of 15 per cent in financial services, and 14 per cent each in information and

technology and government administration.

The study also highlighted how applications have become a crucial meeting point between consumers and organizations. According to the survey, 49 per cent of consumers are using applications to bank and 48 per cent use applications to shop; and more than half of respondents say they would be willing to use applications to perform tasks like paying taxes, managing healthcare or even voting in elections.

“In order to tap into the growth potential of the application economy, businesses and

governments must make software more than just a part of their business – it must become their business,” said Zebian. “And to do this, they have to let their customers lead; listen to them, understand their needs, and apply the same rigor and predictive analysis to application development and deployment as they would to determine the best location for a retail store.”

Zogby Analytics conducted the CA Technologies-sponsored study of 6,770 consumers and 809 business decision makers in 18 countries.

TechKnow | Fortinet Discuss how Fortinet has traversed successfully to diversifying its focus from the early days?

We started out strongly with the UTM space. The UTM space has broadened as well. That defined our way from SMB to enterprise. Over the past several years, it has given us great brand equity. We are leaders today in the NGFW (next generation firewall) market as per analysts. Today we have solutions from the small office branch firewall all the way to the datacenter solutions.

The IPS solutions has been a strong area of growth. Analysts also positioned in the next gen IPS a couple of years ago.We are also strong in DDOS and in sandboxing environment.

We try and develop products that meet customer demand. At the high end, we listen to a lot of customer demand for features from enterprise, government departments, telcos etc. We develop technologies that incorporate functionalities that meet those expectations.

Our hardware is built with ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit) which is our strength and advantage.

FortiASIC is a family of purpose built, high-performance network and content processors that work with a generalpurpose processor to accelerate compute-intensive security services and to provide the performance required to deliver enterprise-class Unified Threat Management (UTM) services What are your wireless solutions?

We offer wifi solutions like the FortiAP Thin Wireless Access Points that are cost-effective IEEE 802.11ac and 802.11n “Thin” Aps, providing integrated

16 | May 2015

Fortinet has moved to a new and larger office and at the same time opened a unique Technical Assistance Center in Dubai, UAE. These investments reflect the company’s strong growth and commitment to the region. Nader Baghdadi – Enterprise Sales Director at Fortinet discusses the company’s strong lead in its segments of focus

Nader Baghdadi Enterprise Sales Director, Fortinet

Assuring protection

network security and WiFi client access as well as the FortiWiFi Thick Access Points that are a consolidated appliance integrating wireless AP capabilities into the FortiGate network security platform, making it ideal for small and medium business, distributed enterprise or branch office deployments. These access points can be managed by the integrated wireless controller in FortiGate network security platform. Customers get solutions that are great from a TCO perspective.

We don’t want to compete with wireless players but give leverage to our customers who don’t need to take different solutions from different vendors and instead have the solution from us which can manage different functionalities.

Which are your strong customer verticals? Do you

see slowdown in some verticals?

We see a strong push in the government base followed by banking. We have a strong foothold in healthcare and education. On a regional level, most telcos are Fortinet customers.

There is always a balance when it comes to demand and growth. Some segments may slow while some others may see growth. For instance, Banking services are getting more advanced and there is more information to be protected and there is a strong investment.

How do you see demand for virtualized NGFW appliances?

We offer the FortiGate physical or virtual appliance to fit Network Security requirements.

However, virtualisation as we see in the region is based on demand. We don’t see

frequent requirements. This is usually required in advanced infrastructure to measure certain traffic, activities or provide security in some endpoints in the network. Most deployments that happen even today from all vendors is hardware based.

Discuss the advanced threat protection solution you offer?

We have integrated our Next Generation Firewall and Sandboxing into a comprehensive and cost effective solution to offer Advanced Threat Protection.

Fortinet's ATP framework is a combination of our Prevent, Detect and Mitigate approach to advanced threats enables organizations to stop known threats before they infect the infrastructure, discover new threats and then learns to continually evolve and deliver enhanced threat prevention.

As one of the faster growing VAD's in the region, we are now strengthening our team with vastly experienced channel resources.

Cover Feature | Distribution

STAYING VALUABLE VADs in the region are upbeat as they adopt emerging technologies in their portfolios

T

he shifts have been far too many and have come thick and fast on the Technology landscape in recent years, driving value add distributors (VADs) to realign and size up. VADs are today trying to keep pace with incorporating emerging technologies into their portfolios as well as tackling the slowness of the regional market, although the UAE and the Saudi market remain exceptions with increased ICT investments.

Ajay Chauhan, CEO of Comguard says, “The plunge in oil prices has indeed taken its effect in the region with enterprises and government organizations slashing major budgets and restricting purchasing to mere necessities within their cosmos. This for sure poses challenges to us VADs since unlike our Broadline counterparts as we are hugely reliant on sizeable solution centric niche projects, many at times which are

18 | May 2015

more of a value add than an absolute necessity.”

While the regional outlook has been to a degree impacted by the fall in oil prices as well as stability in some of the neighboring markets, the fact that most companies are constantly on the lookout to upgrade their ICT infrastructure continues to offset the challenges .

Mario M. Veljovic, VP Solutions MENA, Global Distribution FZE says, “There is certainly a change in the market noticeable, as unrest has spread across the Middle East, which is impacting businesses operating in the region.

Furthermore, Oil Prices are at a low. Both have impacted Consumer and Oil&Gas Related Industry spending. However, we don’t see a real slowness, when it comes to IT Infrastructure opportunities in most of the other Industry Verticals.

Businesses continue to look at improving

and upgrading their IT Infrastructure to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.”

Economies like the UAE in the GCC who are successfully diversifying and reducing the dependency on oil for instance are more favorable for Business growth.

Renjan George, Managing Director of DVCOM Technology says, “The recent rapid decline in global oil and gas prices has started to impact many parts of the region, and there is a slowness compared to the first quarter of 2015.

However, UAE with its policy of reducing dependence on oil year after year and its economic well-being is better placed for business in this region.”

Security infrastructural spending has been on the rise and the space continues to expand.

Anand Choudha, MD at Spectrami

Focusing on emerging technologies With the constant barrage of new technologies, it has become a tough call for distributors to prioritize the solutions they want to focus on. Several of them are expanding their areas of focus.

Comguard’s Ajay says, “This year, we plan to spread our wings to embrace the newest of technologies outside of our core focus, which is Information Security. This year we have a dedicated team baptized ComGuard ET (Emerging Technologies) which caters to Big Data, Cloud, Storage, Internet of Things (IoT), amongst other evolving technologies.

We have also established a division (Recconix) that caters to the SaaS & ITSM space.”

Mario M. Veljovic, VP, Solutions MENA, Global Distribution

Ajay Chauhan, CEO, Comguard

says, “The market is dynamic today and is giving mixed feelers as far as the spending is concerned. Certain sectors like security have seen increased investments. One of the challenges faced

by VAD is the credit and liquidity in the market.

SNB Middle East is confident that it is geared to meet with the challenges and is ready to meet a surge in demand that it anticipates soon.

Munaf Chouguley, CEO, SNB IT Distribution says, “Our industry is ever evolving & the markets keeps adjusting to the paradigm shift. The world is ever changing place and adapting to new technologies is the need of the hour considering cost and time benefits and also for a greener environment, as needs keeps rising due to global population explosion. A slight slowdown is not a concern as we’re gearing for a surge in demand shortly on which we worked in the last couple of Quarters.”

StorIT Distribution is looking to have a balance between traditional and next generation solutions an approach that has perhaps helped it sustain a continued momentum.

Ranjith Kaippada – Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution says, “The year has started on a high note for StorIT with the momentum of Q4-14 continuing into the current year. With our operations spread across the Middle East it helps to keep up the pace through the year.”

"This year, we plan to spread our wings to embrace the newest of technologies outside of our core focus, which is Information Security. This year we have a dedicated team baptized ComGuard ET (Emerging Technologies) which caters to Big Data, Cloud, Storage, IoT, amongst other evolving technologies."

He sees greater demand for emerging technologies as enterprises across the region steadily adopt more cloud based services. In addition, regulatory compliance pressures are mounting for organizations.

“Jointly, these open new frontiers for technologies that are just evolving in the market. Another example would be to realize that significant number of organizations are shifting existing resources away from the operational aspects of security technologies. This new dynamic has given rise to significant growth throughout the globe for managed security services,”adds Ajay.

The VAD plans to officially launch its Emerging Technologies division (ComGuard ET) by GITEX this year. Its focus is to be up-to-speed with the technology and rapidly fill any gaps that exist within its portfolio. The distributor will also be announcing a new partner program later in the year.

For Global Distribution, 2014 was a year of adding vendors and building a stronger portfolio, as well as strengtheningin-house technical capabilities. The distributor anticipates 2015 to be a year of growth and further carry out more channel activities and programs. The VAD has been focusing on Data Centre requirements, which comprises High Performance Computing, Enterprise Storage, IT Infrastructure & Physical Security and Software (Mainly Infrastructure Monitoring).

Mario adds, “We have invested into new and proven technologies to ensure our partners are getting the “best-ofbreed” in each segment. There are a few more vendors we are in final discussion to complete missing elements. Areas we are still keen to develop in 2015 are BI/Analytics, Data/Information Security, Automatic Identification & Data Capturing (AIDC) and Digital Signage, as those are still key industry trends, which are not May 2015 | 19

seriously addressed by competitors in the Region.”

George Ezzat, CEO of EliteVAD, a VAD whose portfolio covers technology for all areas of business IT infrastructure Optimization and Information Security says that the company’s focus has been to partner with the best of breed vendors in each domain and have nextgeneration technologies to offer.

The distributor is betting strongly on emerging technologies and expects enormous opportunities to open up in the next few years.

He says, “As an example, we focus into the InfoSec space with vendors and solutions that have a technological focus that protect against threats missed by traditional and legacy security players who are ineffective against today's advanced threats, especially zero-day and targeted attacks. The patented and proven technologies from our vendors enable real-time detection and prevention of advanced threats that captures, protect and confirms zero-day and APT attacks.”

StorITcontinues to see Data Management Solutions domain as its forte based on a portfolio of technology vendors, right from the traditional Data Storage & Protection through the emerging technologies in the areas of Data Analytics and Data Centre Infrastructure. The VAD sees growing interest from enterprises to understand,

20 | May 2015

Munaf Chouguley, CEO, SNB IT Distribution

Renjan George,MD, DVCom Technology

Cover Feature | Distribution

evaluate and adopt emerging technologies that could give them distinct advantage over competition.

Ranjith says,“The disruptive nature of emerging technologies can create vast areas of opportunities to forward looking enterprises who can adopt them to earn higher degree of competency over rivals.

This could translate into new business opportunities for all those channel players who can keep up with the pace of the changing technology landscape.

Spectrami that started its journey partnering with some of the new age vendors has seen great acceptance of those new technologies. The distributor continues to sharpen its portfolio with storage and security solutions.

“Since its inception, Spectrami has focused on bringing cutting edge Technologies to the market. The technologies that Spectrami brought to the region have turned mainstream.

We continue to focus on the Security and storage technology domains. We feel that Security landscape is changing all the time and that requires constant upgrade of the technology to mitigate the new emerging threats. This leaves scope for new players to provide solutions.”

DVCOM has focused on what the company refers to as democratizing the communication space by adopting Open Source technology. With the advent of technologies like cloud computing and

mobility, the Unified Communication space is poised for a rapid change.

Collaboration is becoming an important component of the UC space.

Renjan says, “What we have done as part of consolidation is to ensure that we build our expertise in that domain and add products and solutions which integrate to provide an effective business solution. In short, we are using the power of Asterisk as a building block to provide UC solutions at highly affordable price.”

As an important component of an UC solution, the distributor is seeing great adoption of video in the GCC region.

Among the major highlights for DVCOM in the year has been the launch of Yealink full HD video conferencing system – the VC series that allow business users to enjoy multi-point video collaboration in varied web-based environments and on multiple devices.

IP access control and paging solutions is another area of focus for the distributor as it sees the market shifting from analog to IP based systems.

The distributor has diversified its focus by adding IP surveillance solutions to provide diversified security applications.

SNB has seen success in surveillance, networking and data storage across the region and sees continued demand for the foreseeable future. The distributor is constantly looking at forging new partnerships with vendors and is expected to announce a few shortly. It has recently partnered with AT &T for distribution of its Infrastructure Cabling Solutions.

Munaf says, “We are definitely venturing into new territories with introducing new technologies. We have taken bold decisions that have paid high dividends.”

The distributor has been quite successful in addressing surveillance, networking and data storage opportunities across the region and sees a continued growth in the foreseeable future.The distributor claims that major deals on Fluke Networks in KSA from Energy sector verticals has given the distributor a significant boost.

He adds, “Timely implementation of projects in conjunction with vendors has won many laurels and more

Service support for partners remains a core value deliverable for VADs. In addition, necessary in-house support for deployment is a key requisite.

Mario says, “Service is a key area of focus. For many of our vendors we are the Authorised Service Centre or are in discussion to become the same.

Furthermore, we have the ability to support our Partners with Installation and Deployment Services, through our In-House Technical Team.”

Comguard is focused on ramping up enablement and empowering partners efficiently, especially on niche technologies. In addition, the VAD is also providing local demo and POC support, backing up Lead generation initiatives, and is launching a robust CRM to improve competence and reduce time lags.

Ajay says, “We are also streamlining our Partner Program to include maximum number of complementing technology vendor lines, in order to help partners maximize value for the time and efforts spent with us. We will also shortly be rolling out a 24/7 support line and online chat support, to enhance partner experience and make them stress free when it comes to aftersales support on the vendors we represent.”

EliteVAD has followed a path of geographical expansion as well as association with new vendors. The company opened a new office in Nairobi, Kenya and also plans to open new offices in Lagos, Nigeria before end of 2015.

It has announced strategic partnerships with technology vendors that compliments and leverage its portfolio.

George says, “Strong client relationships and our commitment to providing the highest quality service are driving the firm’s growth. We always believe that this will be achieved being as much as close to our clients.

He adds, “We house extensive technology knowhow and knowledge of regional marketplace through our operations in more than 17 countries

across the region.EliteVAD supports it partners with its end to end professional and business services. These include offering pre-sales expertise, technical support, custom configuration, an industry-leading accredited training program, full demonstration and proof of concept facilities, financing and in-house support for our channel of resellers so as to increase their speed to market and enable them to scale as well as acquire remarkable market share.”

StorIT's focus has been quite straight forwards. the distributor focuses on offering bets of breed solutions form Technology leaders and and then provides consultation to its partners.

Ranjith adds, "we are at the forefront of Value Distribution with the ability to offer turnkey solutions that enable our partners in delivering world class technology solutions to their customers while earning decent returns.

Our unique business model provides year-long training and consultancy services to our partners to keep them up to date with both industry and market opportunities.

DVcom focuses on empowering its partners with more opportunities.

Renjan adds, "Most of the products we carry are a solution sell and therefore it requires channel readiness in terms of technology understanding from partners.

DVCOM has ramped up initiatives to enable the channel by housing dedicated

George Ezzat, CEO, EliteVAD

Enabling partners

Ranjith Kaippada,Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution

assured business is coming our way.

Our engineers are over enthusiastic and are available from inception to finish to ensure successful implementation with high emphasis on timely services.”

and qualified trainers to conduct specialized training courses and provide certifications through its strategic affiliations with global technology partners. “ In addition to this, partners have access to weekly training course at DVCOM’s premises and webinars.

Sizing up The VADs in the region have sized up in past few years and are consolidating in the current year. Some like Comguard are forming new divisions to look at emerging opportunities.

As Mario says, the ICT Market continues to offer infinite Opportunities for those actively looking for it. But that also would entitle them to develop a strong commitment towards embracing these new areas of focus.

According to Renjan, customers are looking at greater integration of technologies and systems together.

In addition to this, non-premise consumption models like cloud and mobile will come into larger play.

Distributors including StorIT, SNB and Spectrami see great scope to increase growth with possible addition of new vendor partnerships, expected to be announced around GITEX or so. They are backing these growth trajectories with continued focus on basics that don’t change including customer satisfaction and partner enablement.

May 2015 | 21

TechKnow | NetApp

What is the regional demand for the E-series?

E-series are good for applications that don’t want heavy operating systems like video for instance where you are not doing things like decompression and deduplication and what counts is raw performance, volume and speed. That is what e-series is used for. In this region, for instance, we have many CCTV projects including Airports, Media production, imaging in healthcare. It is also useful for high data transaction environments.

Flash is useful for sectors like telco, utility companies, Banks etc who have spikes

22 | May 2015

in month end billings of customers. It reduces the work to Minutes rather than hours.

What are the strong features for NetApp via-a-vis competition?

We are investing in areas where the market is headed.

We do significant R&D spend at around 40 % of our revenues and are a pretty much Engineering focused company. It is harder to keep up if you don’t do R&D. We are growing our products through our R&D whereas some of our competitors are doing so through acquisitions.

Unlike EMC for instance that has several software operating systems for their various storage solutions,

Graham Porter Channel Manager MENA & Pakistan, NetApp

Flash success

Vijay Babber, Senior System Engineer, Enterprise MEA

Discuss NetApp’s products focus and recent updates NetApp essentially offers two product lines. We have the FAS products that runs our storage OS Clustered Data ONTAP.Oil and gas segment customers typically use the FAS products with clustered Data ONTAP. Around GITEX, we had updated the FAS series.

We have the E-Series that runs on NetApp SANtricity with the latestSANtricity8.20 that features multicore performance and online disk firmware upgrades. We updated the E-series recently with the NetApp EF560 All-Flash Array and the NetApp E5600 Hybrid Array. The NetApp EF560 All-Flash Array is ideal for applications that control key business operations such as databases, analytics and require both absolute performance and consistent response times The E5600 Hybrid Array provides costeffective performance for more capacity-intensive applications such as email, SharePoint, HPC, OLAP, data warehouse and video.

Graham Porter, Channel Manager Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan, NetApp speaks about the company’s value differentiation in storage and converged stacks we only have two. That makes it easier for partners and customers to operate and manage. This makes us different. It is the software layer on top of the hardware that is the differentiation.

Discuss your partnership with Cisco?

Cisco is our alliance partner in bringing the converged solutions stack to market.

They have the UCS servers, networking and datacentre switches. We have the storage and in addition, we work with software vendors to put together the solutions.

Flexpod, our converged stack solutions and a combined Business with Cisco have seen 50% YoY growth and is about 4 Billion USD. We had 50 reference architectures and

certified solutions- preconfigure dand prebuilt. Customers have struggled with making multiple layers of compute power, storage and networking work together. The success of converged stacks has been in addressing these pain points.

A number of companies have seen Flexpod as an easy way to their own private cloud.

You can customize in terms of size from lower end to a million dollar box configured in a box. It is growing in terms of customers and partners.

Discuss growth outlook across your focus areas?

Clustered Data ONTAP is growing 80% YoY in revenues.

For customers, this is ideal for virtualizing storage after they have done the server virtualization. You get

more out of your storage and it brings you 99.999% availability. This can enable cloud deployments from private to hybrid and public as well.

The Flash arrays Business has doubled YoY. We have over 200 patents in Flash.

We sold more Flash storage than many other vendors put together.

How channel focused is NetApp? All of our Business goes through the channel, even in the case of 70 named accounts where we work with them. We want our partners to strike high profitability. We want them to provide services which is where a good part of profitability comes in in the region of 15-25%.

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TechKnow | Huawei What was the major agenda of the partner meet?

Transforming together was the theme of the partner meet. Huawei is keen to grow the enterprise Business across the region and our strategy is based on the belief that we can transform together with our partners and work to seize new business opportunities.

We will focus on running our new channel strategy.

We are starting a new era with our partners. We will continue to support our partners with dedicated sales and technical resources.

What new technologies will be major focus points through the enterprise

Huawei held its partner summit at the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai on April 22nd that saw a gathering of more than 270 new and existing partners from across the region where the company launched the Huawei Transforming Together channel strategy for its Middle East Enterprise Business.

Hany Hussein, Enterprise Channel Vice President for Middle East elaborates on the company’s transformational journey that is unfolding

Hany Hussein Enterprise Channel VP, ME Huawei

Unfolding Transformation channel to start with?

We have a bunch of new technologies. We will focus on ELTE which is LTE for enterprises. It provides LTE broadband trunking solution to provide voice and video dispatching.Another area of focus is Agile network solutions that will SoftwareDefined Networking technology to the enterprise for faster, safer, and more easily scalable IT infrastructure. Cloud based solutions is a key focus up ahead. Cloud is not a luxury anymore with more customers opting for cloud technologies. Fusionsphere is our cloud solutions OS and integrates the FusionCompute virtualization platform and FusionManager cloud management software.

24  |  May 2015

Is unified communications a significant focus?

Unified communications, telepresence and surveillance are important elements in our portfolio and fast moving.

We are looking to drive that through the right partners specialized in that area.

What is the partner expansion plan?

We are assessing our partner strategy. We will first expand our partner ecosystem and then look at specialization at a latter stage.We are expanding our channel team to focus on channel expansion. We will grow our number of partner through our distributors. We have several VADs but none new. GCC, Pakistan and Iraq are major markets we are

focusing on. I have myself travelled to all these markets since I came on board recently to meet partners.

Partners understand Huawei is growing at a great speed. This understanding is the starting point for us to take the Business ahead.

They are quite keen to be associated with Huawei for the great solutions that we offer. Further many partners are looking forward to working with Arabic speaking channel people from Huawei because the common language makes it easier to communicate. We will be looking at adding more local talents to grow our team.

What are the enablement investments for partners?

We are innovating executive

briefing centre in our office.

We are making sure to have the right demo units installed there. Partners will be able to use these for POC purposes with their customers. We are getting our partnesr ready with training and funding to enable POCs at customer sites.

We are launching a new solutions partner program that is already announced at our China HQ. We are assessing whether to go about introducing that in the region on a pilot basis. It is an area of focus for us.

We are trying to fix all issues if any from supply, people, credit lines etc. Our growth plans are massive and we want the right set of partners on board with us on this journey.

Point2Point | Bulwark

Jose Thomas Managing Director Bulwark

Bulwark is a leading security focused VAD in the region.

Jose Thomas, MD shares how the company is rearranging internally to bring sharper focus and support partner better

Pacing well How is the Business outlook for Bulwark and what have been among the significant announcements?

We have two entities for distribution now, a move we made six months ago.

This has been effected recently and we are in the progress of segregating.

These are Bulwark Distribution and Bulwark Technology. The former will enable partners with training and our involvement is less as partners will take it forward to customers. With Bulwark technology, we will offer backend support from day one to our customers right from the day a lead is generated. It will focus on corporate security solutions. We have a team that will support systems integrators and resellers selling these solutions.

Bulwark Distribution will handle products like Cyberoam, Eset, Kiria, Mailstore, Netsupport etc. Kerio Technologies is global provider of complete IT infrastructure solutions, allows

26 | May 2015

businesses to connect, communicate, and collaborate securely.Mailstore offers email archiving, email storage management, compliance, eDiscovery, and migration as core components. NetSupport includes innovative solutions including classroom management software.

Which have been among the faster moving solutions?

The UTM and the endpoint security solutions have been faster moving among our portfolio. On the corporate security solution front, PIM solutions have been doing well as well. We offer these solutions from CyberArk. We have also seen fair demand for Netwrix solutions that provides change and “state-in-time” auditing for critical platforms and applications, including Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange, file servers, storage appliances.

How do you help partners take niche solutions to market?

Many of the niche solutions require technical expertise. Partners may not have the necessary in-house resources that they can invest to take to market these solutions but they have an established customer base. They have access to customers who they know will have a need for such solutions. We can step in and help them to take these solutions to those customers. We provide the necessary support from the back end and even in pitching the right solutions.

Discuss demand for information security?

Security solutions is an area that cannot afford compromise. There are more uncertainties now with the escalation in the level of breaches. We need to be equipped to prevent potential disasters.

How was participation at GISEC? GISEC is a focused event. While the footfall may not be comparable to GITEX, the people who attend are quite relevant. The quality attendance is satisfying for us as an exhibitor.

Discuss your most recent tie-up We have signed up with RadarServices for their Managed security solutions. This will be part of Bulwark Technology. The solution is in the form of an appliance that is placed on customer premises but managed by experts from RadarServices.

That way, customers can rest assured, security monitoring is top notch and there is no downtime for whatever reason including non-availability of in-house security admin. Since RadarServices.

Moreover, since they have a global installed base, in case of any breaches happening, they will have information about symptoms and take precautionary actions.The security is 24 by 7 and customers get continuity of services. There has been a good response from customers.

Do you focus across the region?

We focus on the GCC while our office is in Dubai. Our managers travel frequently to meet partners in different markets. With our renewed focus, we are sure to shape our growth better.

Insight | Sophos

The Myths about Linux Security Chester Wisniewski, Senior Security Consultant at Sophos discusses that while the number of “in the wild” threats for Linux-based operating systems is still way lower than threats for Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X, the threats are however real

I

t is astonishing how people can still believe that Linuxbased operating systems are completely secure .Indeed, “Linux” and “security” are two words that you rarely see together. Just as some people believe Macs are immune to viruses, some Linux users have the same misconception – and who can blame them? After all, vendors have been telling them that for years.In 2012, after an exponential rise of OS X malware (such as MacDefender and Flashback), Apple decided to change its homepage by removing sentences like “It doesn’t get PC viruses.”

A Mac isn’t susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers. That’s thanks to built-in defenses in Mac OS X that keep you safe, without any work on your part.

Only recently, Red Hat also decided to (finally) remove the label “virus-free” from the feature overview of Fedora Linux.

Linux users are not OS X users, although when it comes to security many of them have the same misconception that the latter had a few years ago.So, let’s destroy four common urban legends about Linux security.

28 | May 2015

1 – Linux is invulnerable and virus-free.

“Linux is virus-free.”What does it even mean? Even if there were no malware for Linux – and that’s not the case (see for example Linux/Rst-B or Troj/ SrvInjRk-A) – does this mean it is safe? Unfortunately, no.

Nowadays, the number of threats goes way beyond getting a malware infection.

Just think about receiving a phishing email or ending up on a phishing website.

Does using a Linux-based operating system prevent you from giving up your personal or bank information?

Not at all. And what about Heartbleed or Shellshock,or any other vulnerability of your choice?No, no system is invulnerable.

2 – Virus writers do not target Linux because it has a low market share.

Well, if it is true that Linux distributions (distros for short) have a low market share in the desktop landscape, the same cannot be said for other markets.In the server landscape, Linux distros have almost 40% of the market share, while they hold a near-monopoly on supercomputers. Finally,

Chester Wisniewski Senior Security Consultant, Sophos

in the mobile landscape, Linux-based Android has the majority of the market share. According to Hugo Barra (Google’s Android VP of product management), in May 2013 there were 900 million Android devices.

3 – Windows malware cannot run on Linux.

Not exactly, truth be told.

Although their number is still pretty low, there are more and more cross-platform threats. This is due to the multi-platform frameworks which are available nowadays also under Linux.

Frameworks such as: Adobe Flash and Reader, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.Just to give an example, in July 2012, we wrote about amulti-platform backdoor named Troj/JavaDlNJ, which runs also on Linux.

Furthermore, Linux servers

are often used to harbor Windows malware. When you click on a malicious link, the likelihood is that it directs you to a Linux server.

4 – On Linux you install software from software repositories, which contain only trusted software.

Beside the fact that social engineering is not the only way to get a malware infection, are you completely safe just because you use software repositories?Let’s just take an example and search “How to install Java on Ubuntu.” You will immediately find tens or hundreds of step-by-step guides that suggest you add a particular PPA repository in order to install the latest version of Oracle Java and as with Java, you will see the same pattern for many other software ($ sudo add-apt-

repository ppa). openSUSE: But who is the https://activedoc.

"Does using a Linux-based operating system maintainer of opensuse.org/ prevent you from giving up your personal or bank those repositories? book/opensuseinformation? Not at all. And what about Heartbleed This clearly security-guide or Shellshock,or any other vulnerability of your depends on the Fedora: link you opened choice?No, no system is invulnerable." https:// and on the fedoraproject. repository that org/wiki/ aware Linux companies, is numbers – at SophosLabs we is suggested. But, in the SecurityBasics also keeping a (not so up-towere seeing an average of case of Java, it is not Oracle Arch: https://wiki. date) list of Linux malware: 16,000-24,000 compromised itself. Which means that you archlinux.org/index.php/ https://help.ubuntu.com/ websites a dayin 2013.The do not really know if it’s a security community/Linuxvirus numbers don’t look any legitimate or a malicious CentOS: http://wiki. better today: during the first repository. centos.org/HowTos/OS_ Improve your Linux security Protection week of March 2015,we Most Linux distros come with added detection for almost Linux threats by the Sabayon: https:// some advanced security tools wiki.sabayon.

190,000 new malicious URLs. numbers (although most of them are Of these new malicious The number of “in the wild” org/?title=En:Security often pretty hard to configure URLs, the number of unique threats for Linux-based So - do you need antivirus – in other words, prone to malicious domains was over operating systems is still on your Linux machines? misconfiguration).So, if you 70,000.This means that, on way lower than threats for In a word: yes. If you want are a tech-savvy Linux user, average, we were recording Microsoft Windows or Apple to check what up to date around 27,000 new malicious you should at least look at OS X.However, the threats solutions are capable of, just the basic security guidelines URLs per day and over are real. For example, check Sophos Antivirus for of your Linux distro.

10,000 malicious domains Linux-based web servers Linux is as part of Sophos Ubuntu: https://wiki. per day.Canonical, which is are constantly under attack.

Server Protection or our ubuntu.com/BasicSecurity one of the most securityJust to give you some Enduser Protection licenses.

May 2015 | 29

Insight | Actifio

Big Data meets VirtualizationLess data and faster information Ash Ashutosh Founder & CEO, Actifio

Big data has arrived, but big insights have not yet writes Ash Ashutosh, founder and CEO, Actifio

T

here’s a great deal of talk about how data is becoming a source of strategic advantage for many companies. What is not apparent, amongst all of the hoopla, is that most organisations don’t necessarily need the big data tools that are behind the hype. What they do need, however, is to virtualise data the same way they have virtualised servers and networks. By doing this now, organisations can be prepared for the coming petabyte-scale loads that big data promises.

Big data has become a popular, mainstream term within IT, marketing and the wider business lexicon. But like many buzzwords, big data has been interpreted and used in such a wide variety of contexts that it is in danger of being rendered virtually meaningless.

Big data has become a devalued business term and a great deal of the problem

30 | May 2015

is down to the fact it wasn’t accurately defined in the first place.

So what is big data exactly?

The key to understanding big data is to accept that it is not a class or type of data.

It has been used to describe the analysis of large volumes of various types of data. Big data is also a trend covering multiple new approaches and technologies for storing, processing and analysing dataand the technology used to do so. Such analysis can be useful for businesses looking to understand what people are buying, when, where and how.

Its popularity is such that for many, it is seen as the Holy Grail for business today.

It will enable organisations to understand what their customers want and target them to drive profitable sales and growth. The big data

trend has the potential to revolutionise the IT industry by enabling new business insight based on previously ignored and underused data.

The UN predicts that over half the world’s population will be connected to the internet by 2016. That’s some 3 billion people possibly connected to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, providing a wealth of potentially valuable data into customer interestsand buying behaviour.

This trend has stimulated intense debate about how big data can help organisations improve customer targeting and drive revenue. Amid the excitement, big data is often over-hypedanddiscussed in a context that overlooks the fact that data is meaningless without intelligent insight.

The challenge for users is to negotiate toward a successful outcome while avoiding falling

for the hype.

Insight is important. Just because organisations now have access to vast amounts of information, they still need to understand and draw conclusions from complex, unwieldy data. Many fall into the trap of believing a correlation between data sets is all that is needed. For instance, if you identified a correlation between the rise in the consumption of ice cream and an increase in the murder rate during the summer months, you might conclude that one caused the other. However it is a third variable – that of hotter temperatures during the summer – that is a more likely cause of the other two.

So it’s not just about looking at the trends between data sets.

Whatever data you analyse, you still need to understand cause and effect; otherwise you simply end up with a series of

increasing agility, false positives. and moving toward But let’s go "Above all else, big data is about storing, the cloud to make back to basics. processing and analysing data that was previously their systems more Above all else, distributed and big data is about discarded as being too expensive to store and process scalable. Often they storing, processing using traditional database technologies." are held back by and analysing data old software and that was previously hardware. discarded as gain answers – without making outdated versions*. The vast Copy data virtualisation being too expensive to store the same statistical mistake on majority of stored data are - freeing organisations’ and process using traditional a grander scale than ever. extra copies of production data from their legacy database technologies. That While many IT experts are data created by disparate data physical infrastructure just as includes existing data sources focused on how to deal with protection and management virtualisation did for servers such as web, network and the mountains of data that are tools like backup, disaster a decade ago – is likely to be server log data, as well as new produced by this intentional recovery, development and the way forward. If business data sources such as sensor and unintentional copying, far testing, and analytics. divisions work on a single and other machine generated fewer are addressing the root It is not marketing that is physical ‘golden’ copy which data and social media data. cause of copy data. In the same can spawn innumerable virtual the driver of big data. It is the For IT professionals, the way that prevention is better ability of IT to deliver quality copies then copies won’t take opportunity to lead the way than cure, reducing this weeddata quickly and at low cost; up server space.The sooner in helping organisations store like data proliferation should be companies reduce the creation for a business to analyse and and manage data is key. IDC a priority for businesses. interpret. Big data has arrived, of physical copies, the less they estimates that 60% of what Enterprise IT heads tend but big insights have not yet. will have to spend on storage is stored in data centres is to have similar key strategic The challenge now is to solve and the quicker they can get to actually copy data –multiple priorities – improving resiliency, the analysis. the underlyingproblem and copies of the same thing or

May 2015 | 31

eyetech

Brocade ICX 7250 Switch

Overview: The Brocade ICX 7250 Switch delivers the performance, flexibility, and scalability required for enterprise Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) access deployment. It raises the bar with up to 8x10 GbE ports for uplinks or stacking and marketleading stacking density with up to 12 switches (576x1 GbE) per stack. In addition, the Brocade ICX 7250 combines enterprise-class features, manageability, performance, and reliability with the flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and “pay as you grow” scalability of a stackable solution.

The Brocade ICX 7250 Switch provides enterprise-class stackable LAN switching solutions to meet the growing demands of campus networks. Designed for small to medium-size enterprises, branch offices, and distributed campuses, these intelligent, scalable edge switches deliver enterprise-class functionality at an affordable price—without

compromising performance and reliability. The Brocade ICX 7250 is available in 24- and 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps models with 1 GbE or 10 GbE dual-purpose uplink/stacking ports—with or without Power over Ethernet (PoE) and Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+)—to support enterprise edge networking, wireless mobility, and IP communications without the need for additional power outlets or power injectors.

Key features: • Offers enterprise-class stackable switching at an entry-level price, allowing organizations to buy what they need now and easily scale Brocade HyperEdge Architecture as demand grows and new technologies emerge • Future-proofs campus networks via flexible stacking, software licensing of 1 GbE to 10 GbE ports, Brocade Switch Port Extender, and future upgrades to OpenFlow support in true hybrid port mode, enabling Software-Defined Networking (SDN) for programmatic network control • Enables enterprise-class manageability with up to 8X10 GbE ports for stacking or uplinks • Delivers market-leading stacking scalability with up to 12 switches per stack, 80 Gbps of stacking bandwidth, and long-distance stacking using open standards

32 | May 2015

F110D Mini PC Overview: Giada Technology, an industry leader in Mini PC, embedded systems and servers for small & medium enterprises, has unveiled a compact fanless mini pc system - the F110D. With a powerful Intel Baytrail Celeron Processor and lower power consumption, the F110D primarily targets organizations in industry control application and will provide perfect solution in digital signage fields like electric white board, outdoor ads, cinema trailers etc., across the region.

Supporting Intel Celeron Dual-Core processor N2087 and also Quad-Core processor J1900, the F110D improves data processing performance while reducing the power consumption. The Intel HD graphics bring the digital signage users a stunning 1080p output, while the fanless design and passive cooling solution makes the F110D superior at its spectrum with silent and stable running.

In addition, the F110D applies its self-developed and patented JAHC (Jehe Active Hardware Control) unmanned technology, making it competitive in secure operation and maintenance. Giada’s unmanned hardware/software feature allows for power automation and supports 3 key functions: RTC Wake Up, Auto Power On after AC Loss and IR Remote Control before the OS is on.

Key features: • Featuring slim design in a robust metal casing and an ultra-compact size – only 190mm x 149mm x 26mm, the Giada F110D offers unprecedented performance in its category.

• Thanks to the optional VESA Mount fixing mechanism, users can enjoy flexibility in installation and comfort of use. For example, the F110D can be easily attached to the back of a monitor or TV set.

• The F110D also sports dual Gigabit LAN for high- speed LAN connections with 1Gb/s data transfer rate, ideal for seamless internet connections for audio and video streaming. Dual COM Ports are present too for more device connection possibilities.

• The Intel Core processor feature a powerful DirectX 11 GPU core, which is compatible with a wide range of today’s 3D games and supports the majority of data rendering technologies of today.

Synology DiskStation DS1515 Overview: The newSynology DiskStation DS1515 is a powerful and expandable 5-bay NAS offering a highperformance, reliable, and full-featured network attached storage solution for growing small and medium-sized businesses.

DS1515 runsDiskStation Manager (DSM), the most advanced and intuitive operating system for NAS devices. Featuring wide range of applications from backup to network management, DS1515 provides all essential business services and increasing productivity at work.Offering rich office applications, DS1515 can serve as your multi-function server. With add-on packages Mail Server and Mail Station, DS1515 can become a dedicated mail server, and let you enjoy complete webmail service. DS1515 can become a VPN server or VPN client.

Key features: • Coming witha quad-core processor and four gigabit LAN ports featuring failover and Link Aggregation, DS1515 delivers outstanding performance, exceeding 421 MB/s writing and 403 MB/s reading when using a RAID 5 configuration in a Windows environment.

• The hardware encryption engine ensures fast encrypted data transmission speeds of up to 296 MB/s reading and 150 MB/s writing.

• The DS1515 supports Synology High Availability, providing redundancy in the event of unexpected network failure and ensuring a smooth transition between clustered servers for the highest reliability and resiliency.

• The SSD read/write cache support further allows SMBs to see a considerable boost in throughput while minimizing the cost per gigabyte.

• Designed to grow with SMBs, the DS1515 can scale up to 15 drives when paired with two DX513 expansion units.

Epson portable projectors Overview: Epson Middle East has announced the launch of a new range of portable, high-quality projectors with enhanced connectivity and networking features. The projectors are ideal for use in meeting rooms and classrooms and can also be used as a highquality, affordable option in the home office.

This new range of portable projectors (EB-S27, EB-X27, EB-W29, EB-98H, EB-945H, EB-955WH & EB-965H) are small and light enough to be carried between rooms. The models come with a carry bag to make moving and storage of the projector even easier.

The whole range uses 3LCD technology and an equally high White and Colour Light Output to deliver exceptional image quality and accurate colours. A 10,000:1 contrast ratio produces clearer image detail, while a number of different native resolutions mean the models suit a range of spaces.

The range is quick and easy to set up with horizontal and vertical keystone correction, helping you achieve a perfectly shaped projected image without distortion, even when the projector is placed off-centre. You can also free up more workspace thanks to the projectors’ zoom function. A front exhaust means individuals can sit around the projector without being directly in the path of expelled hot air.

Key features: • This new range comes with multi-PC projection software, which allows content from up to four devices, including PCs, tablets and smartphones, to be displayed simultaneously.

• The moderator function allows the host, whether it is the teacher, lecturer or presenter at a meeting, to take control of displayed content from the devices.

• A new A/V mute function allows the host to pause a presentation, and it also conserves power by dimming the lamp by 70% when in use.

• Once running, further costs can be saved thanks to the projectors’ long lamp life.

• The range can connect to the latest digital devices or legacy analogue products, meaning older hardware doesn’t necessarily need to be replaced.

• Connecting smart devices couldn’t be easier with the iProjection QR code connectivity - simply scan a projected QR code using your smart device to connect and start working.

May 2015 | 33

Stats & Trends

Survey reveals gaps in security strategies

G

emalto has released the latest findings of the 2015 Data Security Confidence Index (DSCI). The report reveals a widening gap emerging between the perception and the reality of perimeter security effectiveness amongst global IT decision makers. The research shows increasing levels of investment in data protection, despite an exponential growth in the number of data breaches.

Investments in Breach Prevention Rise despite Increased Breaches of Perimeter Security The number of global data breaches continues to increase - according toGemalto’sBreach Level Index (BLI), withmore than 1,500 data breaches that led to one billion data records compromised in 2014 alone, a 49% increase in data

breaches and a 78% increase in data records stolen or lost compared to 2013. Despite this, the DSCI research shows that globally, almost nine out of ten (87%) IT decision makers feel their organization’s perimeter security systems are effective at keeping out unauthorized users. The study shows that IT decision makers are looking to further increase their investment in perimeter security with 64% looking to do so in the next 12 months.

In the Middle East, IT decision-makers are planning to spend on an average 6.74% of their security budget on perimeter security technology and 13% on firewall technology.

Interestingly, when thinking of the most recent breaches, the average amount of breached data protected by encryption was below 3%, highlighting the need for a more robust data protection

strategy.

Low Confidence in Ability to Prevent Breaches and Unauthorized User Access in the Middle East Nevertheless, 26% believe unauthorized users are still able to access their networks and a further 20% are not confident in the security of their organization’s data, should a breach occur. In fact, the DSCI survey reveals that as a result of recent high profile breaches, 52% of organizations have adjusted their security strategy, but are still focused on perimeter security. 91% of IT decision makers stated that their investment in perimeter security has increased over the past five years, though 6% admitted that in the past 12 months their company has been victim to a breach, showing the need to approach

security differently. Although high-profile data breaches have driven more than half of the organizations in the Gulf region (52%) to adjust their security strategy, 28% of the respondents are no more confident than they were this time last year in the security industry’s ability to detect and defend against emerging security threats and a striking 66% are less confident than 12 months ago Commercial Impacts of Data Breaches As a result of these attacks, all of the organizations (100%) suffered negative commercial consequences, including delays in product/ service development (29%), decreased employee productivity (43%), decreased customer confidence (43%), and loss of costumers (57%).

Managed and Datacenter Services to grow

A

n increasing number of organizations in the UAE are seeking out specialized IT services providers to manage their IT infrastructure, according to IDC. According to the recent IDC report titled ‘United Arab Emirates Cloud hosted Managed and Outsourced Services Market 2013 Analysis and 2014-2018 Forecast', the market for managed and datacenter services markets in the UAE expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8% between 2013 and 2018 to reach a total of $971.8 million by 2018.

In order to drive IT innovation and agility and simultaneously increase operational efficiency to achieve better results, end business customers in the

34 | May 2015

UAE are rapidly adopting network and desktop management services as well as managed application outsourcing services. Datacenter services are also gaining a lot of interest, especially hosting infrastructure services, which include colocation, dedicated server hosting, and shared Web hosting.

"CIOs are under constant pressure to drive IT innovation and achieve higher agility," says Saurabh Verma, research manager for IT services at IDC META. "As the availability of skills remains a major challenge and as up to 70% of IT teams spend their time on processes related to 'keeping the lights on', CIOs and IT managers are under constant pressure to create incremental capacity for strategic IT

projects. Given the flexible engagement models of managed services, smart CIOs are discretely identifying workloads that can be outsourced. Additionally, the service provider landscape from a maturity, availability, and service-level agreement (SLA) commitment point of view has also improved over the years.

These factors are playing a pivotal role in increasing adoption of managed and datacenter services in the UAE." Organizations are being pushed to simultaneously reduce their operating expenses and increase their operational efficiency; moreover, intensifying competition and increasingly demanding customers are driving organizations to put more energy and focus into their core businesses.

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