The Integrator September 2017

ontents

Editorial

Cover Feature - 18

ERP keeps up the momentum

An exciting phase ahead D

igital transformation as a journey will mean different things to different companies based on the industries they are part of and in terms of legacy technologies they have already installed. Sometime, it is easier for the companies that have less infrastructure installed to leapfrog in term of adopting new generation technologies and sometime it is not because to adopt something new, perhaps you already need something in place. So all of it comes to case by case scenarios for a company’s digital transformation. Some will therefore move faster while some will lag behind trying to get a fix around the challenges that confront the transformation toward a more empowered avatar.

Digital transformation would in simple terms mean the company’s organizational and workflow processes are enabled with the latest digital technologies for achieving higher productivity, better agility, greater customer engagement and more fine-tuned access to its supply chain ecosystem. A lot more of companies are bringing in digital transformation as part of their go to market strategies for their solutions, from vendors to partners. All that is certainly building up momentum in the end customer market and most certainly, no company would like to be left behind in building up new competencies, unless they aren’t aware of their best options.

For a partner, this signals a great area to focus on and see if across the solutions portfolio they hold, if and how they can assist their existing customer base towards holistically embracing the era, where AI and IoT, social and mobile, all play a central role. The opportunity for the partners who help take the lead in driving digital transformation among the region’s enterprises and SME organizations is wide open. Those who have built this into their go to market strategy already will be poised to win the battles ahead for newer clients.

R. Narayan Managing Editor

ERP has transformed and been strengthened with adding new functionalities including analytics and making it mobile enabled as well.

News In Detail - 11

HP and Deloitteto accelerate digital reinvention of global manufacturing TechKnow

Security fortified - 12

Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet discusses the company’s recent highlights

Storage for a new era - 14

Christian Putz, Director, EEMEA, Pure Storage elaborates how the vendor is redefining the approach to storage

Expertise in quality systems - 22

Okawa Tetsuo, Senior Sales and Marketing Manager, System Solutions Department, PMMAF discusses the focus on IP surveillance solutions and document scanners

Building security in the cloud era - 24

Aji Joseph, Sales Director at Clouds Dubai discusses the distributor’s focus areas

Point2Point

Catering to a strong demand - 16

N. RamKumar, Managing Partner of ITWare discusses how the ERP market is evolving

Making inroads into the UC market - 26

Asif Khan, Distribution Manager for MEA at Unify discusses the company's channel strategy

Insight

Managing knowledge the smart way - 28

Leann Smiles, Marketing Analyst, ManageEngine discusses secrets for successful knowledge management

Security beyond the walls - 30

Ashish Gupta, EVP and CMO at Infoblox discusses why we should let our walls down when it comes to cybersecurity

Regulars

News Bytes EyeTech Market Stats

Published by: JNS Media International MFZE Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan

P.O Box 121075, Dubai UAE, Tel: +971-4-3705022 Fax: +971-4-3706639, website: www.VARonline.com Sales Inquiries: sales@var-mea.com All other Inquiries: info@var-mea.com | Editorial: editor@var-mea.com 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

Infoblox appoints Ashraf Sheet as Regional Director Infoblox, the network control company that provides Actionable Network Intelligence, announced that Ashraf Sheet has been promoted to the role of Regional Director, Middle East and Africa, responsible for leading the strategic development of the business in the region and further accelerating the high-growth rates that the company has been experiencing.

Cherif Sleiman, vice president, EMEA at Infoblox says, “Middle East and Africa is a core market for Infoblox and as we look to build our success in the region, having the right leader is critical to our growth strategy. Ashraf is an industry veteran with over 18 years of experience in the market. He has local knowledge, contacts, and the leadership skills that will allow us to build a strong team and partner community in the region.”

Ashraf has held various roles including senior security consultant, leader for Managed Security services and head of Security Business Unit for local and multinational companies.

“I’m very pleased to undertake this new challenge at such a pivotal period in the company’s growth,” says Ashraf. “I look forward to collaborating and engaging with our partners and customers to drive Infoblox’s cloud and security solutions as part of the digital transformation taking place in the market.”

4 | September 2017

Zyxel Communications appoints new GM Zyxel Communications has announced the appointment of Mamoun Abdullah as the company's General Manager and Head of Channel for the Middle East region. Under his new position with the company, Abdullah will oversee the Middle East's channel operations--placing key focus on identifying, mentoring and managing potential as well as current partners to grow in regional business of Zyxel. Abdullah is expected to lead the company's continuing efforts to establish itself as the most channel friendly company while also implementing strategies that are aimed at increase effectiveness of marketing and communication to maximize the recall factor among channel partners.

Abdullah brings to the role over 16 years of experience in Channel Sales management, business development, managed services, product strategy management and team management. Prior to Zyxel, Abdullah previously worked with Unify Middle East, FVC Distributor, Exclusive Networks and Mindware Distributor. He will be based in Zyxel’s Dubai office and will be reporting directly to David Sorensen, Regional Director for Northern Europe, Benelux and Emerging Markets.

Commenting on his new role, Abdullah said: “We will continue to build channel capacity planning, which places key emphasis on recruiting new partners, implementing an effective enablement plan, training and extending the consistent support for all routes to market to enable channel partners growing with Zyxel and increasing their profitability. With a new brand identify, we are looking forward to using partner program tools that will help build and support our partners--allowing them to put more focus on customer-centric solutions and exciting plans for partners.”

Gartner names Microsoft a Magic Quadrant leader in DMSA Global research company Gartner has identified Microsoft as a market leader in its Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics (DMSA). The company’s placement was accredited to its “ability to execute” and its “completeness of vision”.

“It is Microsoft’s mission to help every individual and organisation on the planet to achieve more through digital transformation – to engage customers, empower employees, optimise operations, and transform products and services,” said NecipOzyucel, Cloud & Enterprise Business Solutions Lead, Microsoft. “In providing customers with data management solutions for analytics, we help them realise the full potential of their data and give them the power to revolutionise their customer relationships.”

DMSA is defined by Gartner as a system for storing, accessing, processing and delivering data for analytics. In line with the evolving nature of data science, Microsoft has implemented its own data platform evolution through SQL Server 2016 and the Cortana Intelligence Suite, to make big data processing and analytics simpler and more accessible, so that organisations can transform data into intelligent action. SQL Server includes a data warehouse appliance (Analytics Platform System), along with Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure HDInsight (a Hadoop distribution based on Hortonworks) and Azure Data Lake as cloud services. All these offerings demonstrate a deep understanding of the needs of enterprise – to understand their data troves and make intelligent, practical use of them.

News Bytes

D-Link to offer solutions from Moxa D-Link Corporation has signed a strategic business partnership with Taiwan-headquartered MOXA, a networking solutions provider, aimed at supplying the channel with industrial networking equipment.

According to the vendor, opportunities are opening up for channel partners in the UC space in the region, the business alliance deal with MOXA is aimed at strengthening the industrial networking solutions offering in the region.

Sakkeer Hussain, Director Sales and Marketing, D-Link Middle East and Africa (MEA), said the collaboration with MOXA is yet another demonstration of the company’s commitment to the MEA market.

Hussain said as a vendor that has been operating in this market for over 20 years, the company remains committed to reinforcing its products with that of alliance partners that share the same ethos. “We are delighted about this partnership because it will benefit both our channel partners and their end user customers", he said.

MOXA’s industrial Ethernet solutions are tailor-made to unlock automation network convergence for demanding industrial applications. With help from MOXA solutions, multiple industrial networks can be unified into a single integrated Ethernet-centric solution that includes wired, wireless, and security connectivity.

6 | September 2017

Sophos announces Super Star Campaign for partners Sophos announced a new initiative for its authorized and silver partners from the Middle East & Africa (MEA).

The Sophos Super star campaign is designed to motivate partners with additional rewards on achieving their target. It is also aimed at driving sales for the latest security solutions.

Speaking on the initiative, Mr. Harish Chib, vice president, Middle East & Africa, Sophos said, “The rewards are a part of the company’s plan to encourage our silver and authorized partners to generate revenue opportunities and achieve their business goal. Our main aim is to drive our partners to excel and incentivize them with rewards for their great effort. The rewards are applicable on the sale of all the products logged between May – October 2017. Authorized and Silver partners are our major source of SMB business in the MEA region. With this campaign, Sophos’ objective is to reward and motivate the extensive list of partners of these categories in the MEA region” “As part of our ‘Channel First’ sales strategy, this initiative will help our partners to expand their business across the channel in the Middle East & Africa. The Middle East & Africa region is divided into leading and emerging countries and both have different targets. The Top three partners in both the regions achieving highest sales will be rewarded,” Mr. Chib explained.

Being a partner-focused IT security company, Sophos has a dedicated partner program for the Middle East & Africa region. The program is well segmented into four different on-boarding levels with different skills certifications, sales and target activities, and rewards.

Hubnetix appoints ETHOS Technologies as distributor Hubnetix, a fast growing global manufacturer of Structured Cabling Systems, Network Cabinets and Racks, Active Devices, UPS Systems and Security Surveillance products has announced partnership with Middle East distributor ETHOS Technologies. The agreement involves the distribution of Hubnetix’s highly innovative, high end product range, and will stabilise and strengthen Hubnetix's marketing/distributor channel in United Arab Emirates and later to other Middle east countries.

Hubnetix’s latest product range to be distributed by ETHOS Technologies includes LANline, CABline, NETline, POWline and VEUline. Hubnetixspecialises in delivering superior technology products and solutions to clients using the latest innovations in the industry combined with solid technical expertise.

Muhammed Shabeer, Regional Business Director, HUBNETIX Middle East DWC LLC. “ We are delighted to be partnering with ETHOS Technologies for the distribution of our product range. This strategic partnership will strengthen the distribution network of HUBNETIX products, bringing it into more markets and to more customers across the region.”

Imtiaz Ghani, General Manager at ETHOS Technologies adds "Hubnetix is a highly versatile, progressive and innovative manufacturer with a big future and so we're proud to be able to use our proven expertise and experience in the marketing/distributor channel to help bring these virtues into focus."

News Bytes

Fibrenetix appoints VAD Technologies as distributor Leading manufacturer of Video Optimized Servers and Storage, Fibrenetix, announce a new distribution partnership with VAD Technologies in the Middle East surveillance market.

Fibrenetix, offer a comprehensive range of high-performance Video Optimized Servers and Storage for surveillance installations. Offering solutions for the complete spectrum from small hotel projects with 50 cameras, right up to airport or city installations with thousands of cameras.

VAD Technologies is a Dubai based IT and Technologies value added distributor, focused on Enterprise and SME market segment.

Mario M. Veljovic, General Manager at VAD Technologies, said: “Far too many manufacturers in this industry pay lip service to the issues of product warranty and support. Fibrenetix has stepped up to the plate with an impressive 10-year spare part program, something that’s of high importance to our resellers selling into Aviation and Homeland Security.”

“We are proud to associate ourselves with Fibrenetix and are keen to introduce Fibrenetix products - that offer outstanding performance, reliability and ROI - to our Partners in the Region. Their innovative design enables field upgrades and convenient JBOD expandability, making them a solid long-term investment for surveillance customers in the Middle East”, Mario adds.

8 | September 2017

Red Hat announces OpenShift Container Platform 3.6 Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6, the latest version of Red Hat’s enterprise-grade Kubernetes container application platform. Organizations across the globe, like Copel Telecom, are turning towards cloud-native applications as a pathway to digital transformation, but critical IT needs like greater application security, compliance and service consistency must still be answered. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6 helps to address these challenges with a new PCI-DSS applicability guide and fine-grained network policy and control, as well as the introduction of new features designed to deliver consistent applications across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6 offers an enterprise-ready container platform based on Kubernetes 1.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the integrated docker container runtime. By combining these open source technologies, Red Hat, as a leading contributor to both the docker and Kubernetes projects, helps customers to more quickly roll out new services with the support of a stable, reliable and more secure enterprise container solution powered by the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform.

Ashesh Badani, VP and GM, OpenShift, Red Hat said, “Cloud-native applications are not immune from the ‘mundane’ needs of traditional applications, including greater security and compliance, and face an additional challenge in providing a consistent developer experience across cloud footprints. The latest version of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform adds new tools and resources to help meet security and compliance needs, including network controls for detailed control of networked resources, along with the emerging capability to deliver services across cloud offerings consistently.”

Genetec achieves top global market share Genetec Inc. (“Genetec”), has emerged as the only security and public safety solutions developer to hold a place in the top-10 global rankings for video management software (VMS), access control software, and automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) software, according to recently published market research reports by IHS Markit, a world leader in critical information, analytics, and solutions. The IHS Markit reports include 2017 Video Surveillance Market Share Database, 2017 Access Control Intelligence Database, and 2017 ANPR & Detection Sensors Report.

"As we continue to increase our global market share across all sectors, these reports confer renewed validation of the Genetec unified platform strategy that we introduced to the market over the past decade,” comments Andrew Elvish, Vice President at Genetec.

“Customers are trusting us in ever greater numbers to deliver on our promise of true unification, and we are honored to be able to develop the software and appliances that bring that promise to life.”

In the Americas, the world's largest market for VMS products, Genetec remains the leading software developer by a wide margin, with a 14.5% share of this $477.6M market. Additionally, this year, IHS Markit introduced a new category which measures market share for back-end video surveillance equipment including VMS, network recording appliances, and encoders. In a worldwide category dominated by end-to-end hardware manufacturers, Genetec was the sole open platform VMS software developer to achieve a top-5 ranking in this $3.27B USD market. This ranking was achieved through the combined strength of its unified VMS software, Omnicast, and its popular Streamvault (SV) line of network security appliances according to data from Genetec.

News Bytes

Avaya named as a Leader in the 2017 IDC MarketScape Avaya has been rated as a Leader in the 2017 IDC MarketScape Worldwide Unified Communications and Collaboration Vendor Assessment . Avaya was rated as a leader following an evaluation of capabilities and strategies of 11 vendors that offer unified communications and collaborations technologies globally.

In the report, IDC identified three major trends occurring with the deployment of the unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) technologies: Expansion of the market to $33.8 billion in 2017; increase in the number of businesses using UC&C to 37%; and the cloud’s role as the leading delivery model.

In the past year, Avaya has advanced its Team Engagement portfolio of unified communications and collaboration technologies as well as its Customer Engagement portfolio of contact center solutions.

“As the UC&C market continues to grow, companies are seeing both the successes and pitfalls that come with the evolution of technologies.

Avaya continues to take the long view, offering the flexibility to enable companies to leverage their existing investments while adopting new capabilities−via hybrid or pure cloud-that support a more comprehensive digital strategy,” said Savio Tovar Diaz, director of sales engineering at Avaya, Asia, MEA & Turkey

10 | September 2017

Epicor rewards partners

Epicor Software Corporation announced the international winners of its 2017 Partner Excellence Awards, at the recent Epicor Global Partner Summit in Dubai.

The global awards program was launched as part of the new international channel programme, and demonstrates the company’s ongoing commitment to investing in and growing its international channel. The awards honour partners for their continued success and achievements in supporting Epicor solutions across the globe.

All recipients, a mixture of both new and long-term partners, were selected by Epicor based on exceptional performance in market growth, customer satisfaction, total sales and overall commitment to Epicor solutions. Partners are recognised for excellence in growing their Epicor customers through innovation in business and technology. Winners have enabled their customers to compete in today’s global economy by setting them up for success. The awards took place as part of the annual Epicor Momentum Partner Conference, a three-day event.

Huawei appoints new VP to strengthen channel Huawei announced the appointment of Hazem Bazan as the Vice President of Channels and Commercial Sales, Huawei Middle East, redefining its’ Channel leadership.

Based in Dubai, Hazem will be responsible for driving the Middle East’s Channel sales operations.

Working closely with Huawei’s senior management team, Hazem will take up the responsibility of driving Huawei Middle East Channel ecosystem across all its verticals.

Additionally, Hazem will look to strengthen Huawei’s channel partner network, develop its Partner Incentive and Certificate Program and ultimately help to grow Huawei’s presence in the Middle East and Pakistan.

Alaa Elshimy, Managing Director of Huawei Enterprise Middle East said: “Hazem’s unmatched wealth of experience is a great asset for Huawei and the industry as a whole, and we are very delighted to welcome him to the team. We feel extremely hopeful for our channel strategy, and with Hazem’s guidance we look forward to reaching new heights by expanding our solution offerings in the Middle East and Pakistan.”

Hazem is an industry veteran in the region who has previously served in multiple roles in Dell Technologies, HP, and Compaq. At Dell Technologies, he served as the Regional Sales Director for the Gulf region where he redefined and executed growth plans for the region and developed sales strategies for new acquisitions for security and data management practices. His previous positions include Commercial Sales Manager at HP, Channel Sales Manager at Compaq, and IBM Regional Sales Account Manager at IBM.

News In Detail

HP, Deloitte focus on digital reinvention of manufacturing H

P Inc. and Deloitte Consulting LLP announced a first-of-its-kind alliance to help accelerate the digital transformation of the global manufacturing industry. The two companies will collaborate on the implementation of HP’s 3D printing systems in large-scale manufacturing environments, applying their leading digital operations experience to help enterprises accelerate product design and production, create more flexible manufacturing and supply chains, and enhance efficiency across the manufacturing lifecycle. This can help increase innovation, accelerate time-to-market, reduce costs and waste, and help large enterprises compete more effectively in today’s dynamic global economy.

The alliance will combine HP’s award-winning Jet Fusion 3D Printing solutions and tools, industry-leading partner ecosystem, and heritage of driving digital industrial transformations together with Deloitte’s global client

reach and deep manufacturing relationships, extensive digital operations experience, and proven success in supply chain transformation for some of the world’s largest companies.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us. No sector of the global economy is undergoing more radical transformation than the US$12 trillion manufacturing market,” said Dion Weisler, President and CEO, HP Inc. “Companies investing in digital reinvention are poised to outpace their peers. Building on our disruptive 3D printing technology, together with Deloitte, we are focused on helping customers transform and win in this new era.”

“The digitalization of global manufacturing operations and practices will impact companies and consumers around the world, and 3D printing will play an important role in fundamentally changing manufacturing as we know it,” said Punit Renjen, Global CEO at Deloitte. “This alliance comprises two exceptional

brands and brings together HP’s leading 3D printing platform with Deloitte’s digital manufacturing experience and global client reach.”

The speed, economics, quality, and reliability of HP’s 3D printing solutions are enhancing business operations with a growing list of leading global companies including BMW Group, Jabil, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and many more, as well as a wide array of manufacturing service bureaus in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

HP’s end-to-end manufacturing ecosystem includes engineering, software, enterprise, and manufacturing workflow leaders such as SAP, Siemens, Autodesk, and Materialise as well as members of its unique open 3D materials platform including Arkema, BASF, Evonik, Henkel, Lehman & Voss, and Sinopec Yanshan Petrochemical Co. Deloitte’s Supply Chain and Manufacturing Operations practice is a global leader in helping companies apply

digital business strategy to manufacturing initiatives to drive operational excellence.

Deloitte has formed an ecosystem of digital collaborators, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloudera, Dassault Systèmes, Google Cloud, SAP, and Siemens, to help clients accelerate their digital transformations. Deloitte will play an important role in helping organizations make use of 3D printing technology in their supply chain networks – a move that has the potential to fundamentally impact the way manufacturing organizations function.

This alliance, which will begin in the U.S. and expand to other geographies, is part of HP and Deloitte’s ongoing collaboration designed to accelerate digital transformation for the enterprise. Deloitte and HP will offer solutions that combine Deloitte’s extensive business transformation capabilities with HP’s managed print, device-as-a-service (DaaS), commercial mobility, and cyber-security offerings.

September 2017 | 11

TechKnow | Fortinet

Security fortified Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet discusses the company’s recent highlights and solutions focus

Elaborate on Fortinet’s Solution Portfolio Fortinet secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations around the world. We empower our customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future. Fortinet Security Fabric architecture delivers security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud or mobile environments.

What have been two biggest highlights with Fortinet over the last year?

The expansion of the Fortinet Security Fabric is a key highlight for us as it reinforces

12 | September 2017

our commitment to provide our partners and customers with end-to-end solutions.

We received recognition from Frost and Sullivan as the UAE Network Security Vendor 2017 for our revenue growth, portfolio diversity and the technology roadmap and vision for the future to provider solutions to deal with advanced network security threats. Gartner also recognised us as a Leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management (SMB Multifunction Firewalls) for the eighth consecutive time, in addition to being named as a Leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls.

What are the emerging trends in network security?

IoT will bring thousands or even more new devices to the corporate networks.

Alain Penel Regional Vice President, ME Fortinet

These devices will have been designed mainly with two main considerations; features and cost. Security usually is left out which means that enterprises need to have a clear understanding on how to handle the new devices joining the network.0-day threat prevention is the natural evolution of the threat detection. The defenses have mainly been built around detecting threats after they have penetrated the network.

Moving into prevention mode will allow organizations to stop the threats from entering the network completely.

Unfortunately, the computing resources available today are not able to provide prevention services on the network for several real time services but for example the email and endpoint vector can be easily migrated from the detection to prevention.

How can you integrate network security with other layers of security in an enterprise?

While cyber threats are becoming more powerful, networks are becoming more disjointed and complex. To enable an effective defense, the data and security elements across all of your various environments must be well-integrated, able to share intelligence, and visible. Endpoint-, networkand application security must all work together to defend the entire network.

Threat information must be shared with all the security components in the network.

A new threat discovered in an email must be blocked and the information such as signatures must be immediately shared with the other security components in the networks.

"Because of its critical and complex nature, security continues to be one of the largest opportunities for the channel. Partners that can plan, design, deploy, and optimize an integrated security offering are finding a growing demand for their skills."

How can enterprises enhance their security posture to combat evolving sophisticated threats?

Knowing is half the battle. It is essential that enterprises understand its business and has a good idea of its critical processes and data. The CIO also need to identify cyber assets to know what OS and applications are installed, map the network architecture to understand data flows and possible blind spots.

It is also important to identify threat actors to get an idea of how they will try to break in and what resources they are most interested in obtaining.

This means developing holistic architectures and selecting open solutions that allow devices to interact, share intelligence, and respond to threats in a coordinated fashion anywhere across your extended network.

Following the ‘Security 101’ is key. Regularly scheduled patching, replacing older and outdated technology, and appropriately segmenting risky application and device traffic such as IoT and P2P, will go a long way towards reducing the potential attack surface and minimizing risk.

Can you give an overview of the current market opportunity within IoT in the region?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly changing the way we work and play. The economic diversification in the Middle East is driving innovation in internet of things (IoT) in the emerging sectors, such as telecommunications, financial

services, transport and logistics.

The rapid adoption of new technologies and innovations is driving a global rethinking of traditional business processes and creating new ways to generate better business outcomes and quality-of-life improvements.

How can partners offer integrated security solutions for IoT? Because of its critical and complex nature, security continues to be one of the largest opportunities for the channel. Partners that can plan, design, deploy, and optimize an integrated security offering are finding a growing demand for their skills. By tying traditional security appliances and emerging technologies together into an integrated security fabric, partners can help their customers collect and respond to more actionable intelligence, synchronize threat responses, and centralize the creation, distribution, and orchestration of their security management and analysis.

This broad visibility and openstandards approach provided by the Fortinet Security Fabric allows solution providers to implement more automation to focus on the alerts that really matter.

What are the most key issues affecting channel partner businesses in the Middle East market?

Looking at the current market

scenario, most of the SMB and Enterprise customers are going through some serious challenges on IT resources and budget front. Channel partners will have to rethink their strategies to meet customer expectations in a very fast paced, demanding and challenging environment.

Partners need to invest on acquiring the right sales and technical skill sets and act as "Trusted Advisors " to their customers. They need to align with the vendors to build strong brand loyalty and leverage resources etc.

What are the opportunities for partners in SMB networking solutions?

Along with networking solutions, there is a huge opportunity for SMB Partners to focus on Network security solutions. A growing number of SMB and Enterprise customers will continue to invest on network security to protect their critical infrastructure from known and unknown threats. SMB customers rely on their channel partners to offer competitive solutions including managed services etc, to meet their stringent IT budget.

Hence the opportunity for partners lies in being trusted advisors and not just push products. It’s demonstrating the value that each solutions brings to the SMB customer, and what it means for them in the long term.

What are you showcasing at GITEX Technology Week 2017? What technology trends have you seen in the Middle East and Africa market?

We are focusing on the extended capabilities of the Fortinet Security Fabric and will demonstrate how it is helping ‘borderless’ enterprises across the Middle East meet the challenges of securing their IoT and the cloud infrastructure and everything in between.

New technologies like IoT, Artificial Intelligence and blockchain are blurring the borders of an enterprise’s network. They also open up the network to a variety of new threats. Cybercriminals are spending less time developing ways to break into an organization's network, and instead are focusing on leveraging automated and intent-based tools to infiltrate with more impact to business continuity. Our goal at Gitex is to inform and educate IT decision makers on the importance of maintaining the security lifecycle which requires constant attention through monitoring and analysis, responding to threats, and improving policies and protocols. The trick is to always stay one step ahead of cybercriminals who are relentlessly targeting infrastructure and resources.

We will be advocating our cloud-based threat intelligence platform, FortiGuard Threat Intelligence Services (TIS) that provides threat metrics and activity trends to enable CISOs in the region to stay ahead.

September 2017 | 13

TechKnow | Pure Storage

Storage for a new era Christian Putz, Director, EEMEA, Pure Storage elaborates how Pure Storage is redefining the approach to storage and data management How should modern enterprises re-think storage?

In the increasingly digital economy, data is key.

Differentiation lies in having the most data, analyzing it the fastest, discovering new insights, and ultimately delivering new products and experiences not possible without it. In order to drive the data advantage, enterprises need to invest in storage that is effortless, efficient and evergreen Effortless starts with reliability, with storage that is always on, always fast, and always secure. Imagine getting 6 nines or better availability – inclusive of maintenance and upgrades! Effortless is a lot better than just easy. No more tuning, storage pools, caching, tiering, performance troubleshooting, planned downtime, forklift upgrades and more. It means storage that manages itself and only involves you when absolutely needed, and that just plugs & plays with your environment.

Effortless is also fully cloudconnected, with management, analytics, support, and protection delivered as a service, where big-data driven insights from a global installed base are continuously improving your storage.

Efficiency is about

14 | September 2017

collapsing your storage tiers and consolidating all your data, whether block or file, structured or unstructured, into efficient all-flash storage that takes 10X less space, power, and cooling. Imagine a data center storage footprint so small you could costeffectively locate it in another hosted facility, perhaps even co-located with public cloud compute services to get a bestof-both worlds cloud!

And finally, Evergreen Storage is about applying a cloud-like approach to storage that lives on premise, enabling you to simply subscribe to a storage experience that keeps getting better with age. Evergreen means you can frequently harness rapid software, hardware, and flash innovation – annually or even faster – with no need to wait for your 4 to 5 year refresh to get the latest and greatest.

Just like SaaS, Evergreen is an all-inclusive subscription model purpose-built for cloud IT — just stay on active maintenance and support.

Do you think we will get to a point where we see Storageas-a-Service. What is your take on that.

Traditional scale-up arrays (including all-flash retrofits) continue to require “forklift”

Christian Putz Director, EEMEA Pure Storage

style tech refresh and re-buys, where the whole array is replaced periodically. Even next-generation scale-out all-flash arrays require “nodedecay”–style tech refreshes and re-buys, where old nodes are eventually pulled out of the cluster and repurchased as new nodes that join the cluster. As such, most enterprises in the region don’t really consider ‘storage-as-aservice’.

We have changed all that with our Evergreen Storage model - a new approach to storage acquisitions, maintenance and support (M&S), and upgrades that allows storage to behave like SaaS and the Cloud. The Evergreen Storage model is built on three key capabilities: It eliminates forklift

upgrades and allows customers to routinely upgrade the performance and scale of their array with modern controllers.

The Capacity Consolidation program helps customers expanding their storage capacity to simultaneously consolidate older, less dense flash storage and receive trade-in credit for that older storage – meaning customers can break free of the cycle of constantly re-buying storage they already own during upgrades. Finally with RightSize Guarantee, customers can bypass the risk and guesswork of buying storage with data reduction and instead purchase directly on an effective capacity basis, just as their requirements indicate One of the key benefits of ‘as-a-service’ models is the

lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and this is absolutely true for Evergreen Storage.

If we consider just storage investment and refresh over 6 years, with Pure, enterprises save approximately 33%. If we factor in additional savings from always-on storage that takes 10x less space, power, and cooling while offering 2x better data reduction and eliminating storage re-buys, the total savings over 6 years climbs to nearly 50% .

Elaborate why you say your storage is ‘effortless’?

At Pure, we design storage specifically for Cloud IT and with an effortless design center. The resulting experience is one that our

customers absolutely love. In fact, our effortless customer experience is one of the key reasons that Pure Storage has achieved a Satmetrix-certified NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 83.5, which ranks in the top 1% of B2B companies.

An effortless experience also means that our customers can actually focus on innovation rather than administration.

With Pure, the effortless experience starts with reliability. In the first year since we shipped it, FlashArray//M has delivered enterpriseproven 99.9999% availability – inclusive of upgrades and maintenance, and without requiring a second array configured with replication.

Even better, full performance

remains available through failure, upgrades, and maintenance.

The appliance-like install of FlashArray//M takes 30 minutes or less – one chassis, 6 cables to install. The webbased graphical user interface is simple and intuitive, and practically no tuning is required at any layer (storage, file system, virtual machine, or database). That means provisioning a storage volume takes seconds – not hours – and can be performed without requiring a manual or any specialized training or costly professional services The Pure FlashArray is always-secure with customers’ data encrypted at all times and without requiring key

management or configuration.

Comprehensive virtualization integration means customers can manage the FlashArray however they like, including directly from within VMware vCenter.

Pure Storage arrays are cloud-connected and phonehome rich telemetry data every 30 seconds. Pure1, our SaaS-based monitoring platform, builds on this foundation and delivers insights about the health and performance of the arrays, accessible from anywhere, via any smart device without having to purchase and install management servers or onprem software. Finally, unlike our competitors, Pure comes with an evergreen subscription to future innovation.

September 2017 | 15

TechKnow | ITWare

Catering to a strong demand N. Ram Kumar, Managing Partner of ITWare, a leading Enterprise Applications integrator dicsuses how the ERP market is evolving and there is a strong demand coming for integrated top-tier solutions

Discuss the continued relevance of ERP solutions for business organizations?

How do you think ERP will continue to be sustain into an era of AI, IOT etc?

Relevance of ERP to GCC Market, especially in the SMB and Tier 2 segment continues to be of strategic importance as legacy and excel based standalone solutions are getting replaced. New organizations coming up in the Region are starting with their ERP project implementations during the first year itself as part of approved Capex Budgets.

We see quite a few leads from smaller organizations even with limited number of employees, even as small as with a 10-20 user License base, who feel this is the right time to move on with a branded integrated solution rather than upgrading their

16  |  September 2017

In-house developed solution.

They want to upgrade from simple accounting and inventory solutions which over a period have not been able to deliver the key analytics and integrated solution architecture which these SMBs need to keep pace with their growth Unless you have a strong backbone solution like ERP operating across the organizations in various departments, adding front end solutions like AI, Mobile and IOT might not be a value proposition. A lot of Master and transactional data required for such solutions need to come from one source which is their core ERP and a lot of data from IOT and mobile is then passed back to ERP to avoid duplication of data entry, facilitate analytics at the group level and provide interactive alerts to multiple user base hierarchy as a twoway process

Is there a strong growth outlook among enterprise and SME organizations?

Most of the larger enterprise organizations have evolved over a period and have robust IT structure and ERP solutions in place with a very good inhouse IT team. These organizations generally upgrade their versions once in 2-3 years based on actual requirements and keep adding niche verticals like Asset Management, Field Service, Route sales automation, CRM and BI and hence the growth is more with respect to these solutions rather than core ERP, except some additional Licenses.

However, SMEs that are looking for an aggressive growth in line with Expo 2020 plans are our best new prospects as they would be looking for new ERP solutions along with some key analytics.

This is a potential growth

N. Ram Kumar Managing Partner ITWare

segment for service providers like us especially with the Cloud options that demand a very cost-effective budget outlay and short timelines as well as very minimum spend on Licenses and services to get them going within 3-4 months as part of Phase 1 Elaborate how the traditional solutions have been bolstered with enhanced functionalities?

We provide Infor XI Technology stack as an add solution with its user-friendly features as add on forour ERP solutions on the state-of-the-art Mongoose platform which is a key USP for us. Such a technology stack covers social collaboration tools within an organization just like Facebook and LinkedIn for users to track and be informed of what they need to follow within and outside of their departments in real

"Without Analytics, there is now no point in implementing an ERP solution as the key mid-level managers and the senior management arekeener on proactive analytic data rather than just using ERP as a data entry platform."

time as well as alerts, workflows, mobile API’s for integration, BI reporting tools, document management features and in contextual BI optimized for each ERP session.

For example, when a user opens a traditional Purchase order ERP session, the XI technology stack tool ensures that he has the budgeted data, real time inventory availability, past supplier prices etc. all in one place for that procurement item which makes life easier for fast track decisions. This is irrespective of whether he is in office or traveling on business as the whole application is on HTML 5 platform on multiple types of devices and clients Is analytics one of the key deliverables now from ERP deployments?

Without Analytics, there is now no point in implementing an ERP solution as the key midlevel managers and the senior management arekeener on proactive analytic data rather than just using ERP as a data entry platform. Earlier these BI solutions were at multiple levels with basic reporting, multi-dimensional queries, ETL tools for advanced BI solutions with multiple data base structures, KPI’s and add on like forecasting, budgets and strategic management.

The whole BI solution was a costly proposition and was taken up in phase 2 after ERP implementation.

However, in the last 2 years with embedded BI solutions providing inbuilt dashboards and ETL Tools,

BI has become much more user friendly with business users no longer needing IT’s support for developing their own dashboards and analytic reports and charts We use Business Vault from Infor which is a single version of truth data repository where real time XML data is extracted from ERP, EAM, WMS, HCM etc. for every transaction with relevant inputs which is the base for reports, analytics and dashboards most of them already pre-built and commonly used across business which increases the project acceptance rate within the organization and provides them confidence to use both ERP and BI solution from day 1 Are cloud based deployments showing rapid rise in adoption?

Cloud in ME Region was slow to start with in the last 2 years but in the current year every third prospect especially SMBs and other new customers are keen on cloud. They want to have a lean IT department which focus more on business than infrastructure management and are willing to settle for standard implementation and business process with fewer report customizations rather than an on-premise application with the traditional approach of long term implementation and budgets.

Such an approach also enables them to buy ERP Licenses for minimum time

frame, such as say from 1-3 years and add additional modules and licenses on the fly, as and when the business needs these solutions and when they get an idea of how effective are their investments in earlier phases.

We partner with Infor Cloud Suite solutions, the world’s leading vertical cloud provider on Amazon web services platform, which include all the above features as well as a rapid implementation accelerator option which provides pre-built business process and documentation drastically cutting down the implementation time frame Discuss how mobile interfaced versions are also seeing strong traction?

Some of our solutions include Van sales automation on Android mobile devices with back end integration to SAP Hana platform, Field service automation with Infor ERP LN on Android mobile and small printers for invoices, CRM application on IOS devices for salesman and Customer service management for large retail outlets for better customer experience from time they walk in till delivery with measurement of happiness index. Customers find these solutions easy to use with a visible ROI within the first year eliminating unnecessary paper work and delays in delivery, invoicing and collections We have also recently

signed up with IFS Field Service Applications with focus on mobility and cloud as these solutions work across multiple ERP applications and a great automation tool for service domain What are the challenge in the Cloud model from customer or partner view?

Traditional implementation approaches don’t work for cloud implementations and hence service providers from a partner’s perspective need to revamp their service plans and come up with offerings which are attractive say 1: 1.5 -2 scales for License -implementation costs ratio.

Since Cloud solutions still need all modules to be implemented, except possibly installation and customization, not many areas can be optimized as compared to on premise implementation and hence need lot of innovation and mindset change if they want to be successful cloud service providers.

From a customer view point, still there are lot of legacy solutions integrated to ERP which can’t be moved to Cloud in one go and there is also resistance from large IT departments as it might lead to leaner man power structure especially for those managing infrastructure on premise with whole lot of servers and clients after cloud migration.

The License pricing for Cloud from Principal tier 1 and tier 2 vendors also needs to be discounted further to make the cloud proposition ROI attractive to such customers September 2017 | 17

Cover Feature | ERP

E

ERP

keeps up the momentum ERP has transformed and been strengthened with additional functionalities including analytics and making it mobile enabled as well.

18 | September 2017

RP solutions continue to play a pivotal role in Businesses with a well-defined role as the backbone of a company’s IT systems and processes, both at the front end and the back end.The global ERP Software market is expected to generate revenues of approximately $56.8 billion in sales globally by 2025 at register a CAGR of 6.9% from 2016 to 2025.

In an era where AI, IOT etc are being embedded into different solutions to make them more pervasive and intelligent, a more powerful generation of ERP software with enhanced capabilitiesis is coming to market from most leading vendors in the marketplace.

For instance, Ali Hyder, Group CEO, Focus Softnet opines that customers today expect a lot of AI capabilities and machine intelligence integrated into the ERP. The demand for AI is poised to grow as data analytics capabilities and mobile accessibility is increasingly becoming the norm.

He says, “ERP today has come a long way where its sole purpose was to capture and remember data, transactions and financial information. Over the period of time, ERPs have been developed to remember massive volumes of data, recall them faster, sort and organize data, present data in formats as required, analyze data intelligently, take decisions based on analyzed data, and now allow users to execute their tasks through it by virtue of workflows and authorizations modules.”

but offers traditional ERP As such ERP environments benefits such as integration of of tomorrow will have to rely processes and systems across on high-speed connectivity the enterprise, a single view of between various locations corporate data, and the ability of operation, servers, and to improve process discipline.” portable data devices, There is an urgent need and couple the reach with to upgrade an ERP platform intelligent synchronization to a new-age business capabilities to ensure that the management solution, in correct version of the data is order to get ready for the always assimilated, validated, next wave of disruptive digital and then replicated across all technologies, believe Aaron. arms of the network, ensuring That is because, it gives you data accuracy in a time-critical a single view of the business, environment. the ability to manage data and Aaron White, Regional the platform on top of which Director for Sage Middle East you can deploy solutions such points out that there is a need as the Internet of Things or to differentiate between the enterprise mobility. earlier generation ERP and the Ali says that the next-gen solutions of today that have ERP is multi-dimensional and Ali Hyder many more features built ubiquitous in the computing Group CEO in and are enabled to take environment. It is now Focus Softnet advantage of the technology available via the cloud, to leaps of recent years.

He elaborates, “We use the serve multiple locations, serving data to smart mobile term ‘business management and interface and be mobileaffordable prices. Industry devices, ensuring that accurate, enabled with apps for each solution’ to differentiate the 4.0 calls for a future of agile, relevant, secure and up-tonew generation of enterprise module for different set of affordable manufacturing, the-minute data is within easy software from the inflexible, users.” fueled by technology enablers reach of the consumer. monolithic ERP solutions of According to Monzer such as the Internet of Things He adds, “Apart from the the past. These solutions are Tohme, Regional Vice (IoT), 3D printing, cloud usual modules, the next-gen designed to take advantage of President, Middle East & Africa, computing, mobile devices ERP is also strongly integrated technological advances such as Epcior, the onset of Industry and big data. This will marry cloud computing power on tap, with either a built-in CRM 4.0, the fourth Industrial the world of production and module or a CRM solution the falling prices of sensors Revolution will make ERP more networking in a connected from one of the major and connected devices, integral to the manufacturing environment. Enterprise CRM providers. The nextsmarter artificial intelligence, industry. resource planning (ERP) will gen ERP should be tightly the big data explosion and He says, “Over the next become even more central to integrated with Office 365/ the mobile workforce. The decade, Industry 4.0 will production in this environment.

Open Office, have a power business management solution emerge to meet demand The ERP system will become Business Intelligence engine is the connective tissue for tailor-made products at the backbone of the network— between product connecting smart development, machines, logistics manufacturing, systems, production "The next-gen ERP is multi-dimensional and production control, facilities, sensors ubiquitous in the computing environment. It is now logistics, finance and devices, available via the cloud, to serve multiple locations, and after-sales. as products serving data to smart mobile devices, ensuring that This class of modern and machines enterprise software communicate accurate, relevant, secure and up-to-the-minute data is built using the with each other is within easy reach of the consumer." latest technologies and exchange

September 2017 | 19

Cover Feature | ERP

architecture. This allows business processes to be easily customised without changing the software code, securing the way for future technological developments or release updates. Secondly, ERP software should allow for central master data management. And thirdly, it should offer real-time data processing, enabling all stakeholders in the business to have access to the latest, and most accurate data in realtime.”

These three criteria form a strong combination when it comes to accurate business decision-making.

Aaron White Regional Director Sage Middle East

commands while products move through the production line. “ To prepare for Industry 4.0, ERP vendors are moving away from pre-built interfaces and formulas and towards developing highly connected systems that conduct operations at the production line level, whilst giving business decision makers the real-time data they require.

Monzer believes such key capabilities should include flexible deployment options, easy integration with MES (manufacturing execution system) solutions, Central Data Management, Mobility and Social Collaboration as well as Powerful Analytics and Business Intelligence.

“Flexible deployment options will allow organisations to adapt to new business and service opportunities, new processes, workflows, data networks and decentralised locations, all in real-time, as their businesses grow in the inter-connected world.

20 | September 2017

Whether the ERP solution is hosted in the customer’s own data centre, in the cloud, as a managed service, on-premises, or a combination thereof, it should be possible to easily switch processes and adapt to new ways of working, to maintain business agility,” he says.

Aaron agrees with the view of flexible deployable options, on premise, in the cloud and being mobile enabled.

He says, “A scalable multi-tier architecture ensures virtually unlimited capacity is another dynamic feature. And the platform must be simple to manage with limited IT resources, whether deployed in the cloud or deployed on the enterprise’s own infrastructure”.

According to Monzer, modern ERP software should meet three key criteriato be ready for Industry 4.0.

“Firstly, it should offer businesses a modular platform, based on a service-oriented

Analytics and Business Intelligence Analytics tools are seen as an important piece of the new generation ERP. Managers and leaders are enabled with access to real-time data about the business’s performance on their mobile devices for strategic decision-making.

At an operational level, a combination of big data and machine learning allow companies to tailor employee experiences to the needs of different segments to optimise productivity.

According to Aaron, “Paired with the Internet of Things, advanced analytics and machine learning are bringing about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Connected devices and sensors, cloud computing, advanced robotics, intelligent software, and a range of other technologies are creating a wealth of data that can be leveraged for better decisionmaking and give any business a competitive advantage.”

Monzer says that powerful planning and management functions in modern ERP systems can ensure that the benefits of intelligent manufacturing touch all relevant areas of the company.

“Within the Industry 4.0 world, sophisticated analysis tools will help to verify the planning, execution and evaluation of new business models—testing what will work, allowing business leaders to make informed decisions, and helping them to adapt to market and customer demands.”

The personal touch The new ERP will play a key role in digital transformation as it becomes the repository of real time data and business intelligence.

According to Aaron, “The next-generation of business management solutions are architected for the digital world. Such a solution must be built for mobile-first customers and employees, massive data volumes, and intelligent, connected sensors and devices.

Ideally, enterprises should be looking at cloud-based systems that allow for a choice of cloud and on-premises deployments so that they can choose the solution best suited to different regions and areas of the business.

He adds, “The solution must deliver a better, more personal user experience with secure web and mobile technology at its core. Whether that’s at the office or on the go, users should be able to access the data they need, using an intuitive interface, personalized to their role and

preferences. It should also enable mobile and online selfservice for users. “ Monzer concurs with the view that ERP solutions should offer user friendliness for mobile users when he says, “ERP solutions that feature intuitive dashboards and comfortably suit all screen sizes will be key to businesses embracing the Industry 4.0 ethos of updating and sharing information in the mobile world. These solutions should also have the necessary mobile infrastructure in place to ensure real-time data synchronisation.”

Over the Cloud As ERP is a critical application, many customers do take their time over finalizing if they want to go with the cloud option. The decision is an easier one for those who do not have legacy infrastructure in place.

Monzer says, “For one, it depends on the level of legacy data centre infrastructure– customers who already have significant and under-utilised infrastructure will, more often than not, opt for an onpremises solution, whereas customers that have not made the data centre investment, are more likely to opt for cloudbased solutions. Secondly, the criticality of the application to business continuity is another factor that influences the cloud/on-premises decision.

Customers are more inclined to have their CRM, BI or HR applications hosted in the cloud, but when it comes to business critical applications, like an end-to-end ERP solution, they want to take

the time and evaluate both cloud and on-premises before making a decision.”

The cloud option suits midsize organizations as it offers them agility and a great speed in deployment and actual production level status.

According to Aaron, “An ERP installation for a mid-sized or large enterprise could take up to a year to complete in the past, and it could take six months or longer to install even the basic features such as financials. Today, you can get a cloud-based business management solution up-andrunning in around a month to six weeks.”

He adds, “We are seeing more and more mid-sized companies look beyond on-premise software implementations or large, complex private cloud deployments towards the benefits of leaner, more agile public and hybrid cloud solutions. With a new generation of business management software, they can choose from new alternatives that are powerful, adaptable and quick to pay for themselves.”

Adoption in the region There is a strong interest and growing adoption of the new ERP systems in the region.

Some of the critical, high profile sectors are taking the lead in adopting new ERP. According to Ali, “Governments and large businesses are continuing to invest in next-generation ERP and enterprise applications for IT modernization and verticals such as healthcare

Monzer Tohme Regional Vice President, MEA Epicor

and education will continue to grow significantly faster than other verticals.”

Customers across the region are demanding highly specialized systems which are mobility enabled, and available on both ‘on premise’ and cloud platforms. The portability of data with real-time accurate information is the key requirement of an evolved market with clear visions of digital governance.

He adds, “We have been seeing an increased uptake from both enterprises and SMEs in the Middle East across all sectors and industries.

Enterprises and SMEs are actively striving to provide that extra mile of enhanced service, improved efficiencies, and employment satisfaction and as such have taken to the world of enterprise apps and ERP to achieve these goals.”

Aaron claims that they are seeing particularly strong growth in the mid and enterprise market segments.

However, he also believes

there is much more to be done as many mid-sized Middle East businesses continue to rely on manual business processes and legacy systems to run their operations.

“For companies that still run largely on homegrown legacy systems, older ERP systems and even paperbased processes, the best way forward isn’t necessarily to replace them with an ERP suite. Instead, the optimal route will be to deploy flexible, modular business management solutions that can be implemented at a rapid speed.”

While larger organizations would most certainly have ERP deployments in place and make look to add some modules, a large number of the medium sized organizations maybe gearing up to look at their options to get an ERP system in place and avail the added functionalities of Business analytics. The new generation ERP is thus a market that will continue to flourish.

September 2017 | 21

Point2Point | Panasonic

Expertise in quality systems Okawa Tetsuo, Senior Sales and Marketing Manager, System Solutions Department, PMMAF discusses the manufacturer’s focus on IP surveillance solutions and document scanners

Discuss Panasonic’s focus on analog and IP security solutions?

Panasonic products are packed with the latest and most innovative technologies so that our customers and their businesses are able to achieve maximum benefit from our IP security solutions. With fast growing demand and the need for robust security across private and public sectors, surveillance has become a must. Keeping this in mind, all upcoming Panasonic product models will be developed with IP technology further enhancing the surveillance system, offered by Panasonic.

These products will cater to all kind of customers, from schools and colleges for creating safe academic environment, financial institutions and banking sector to ensure safe and legitimate transactions, retailers and

22 | September 2017

small businesses to avoid theft and fraud, hotels and hospitals to track people and be vigilant of any causalities.

While migration to IP security solutions has become the dominant trend, do you still have some legacy customers or even new customers opting for analog solutions?

Yes, there are legacy systems still in place across the region.

Small retailers and businesses have purchase constraints, and the demand for analog solutions are high among them. But as the region progresses and businesses grow, the demand for better and more efficient products and solutions will increase, and Panasonic is ready to meet this demand.

Highlight your new IP surveillance solutions and

Okawa Tetsuo Senior Sales & Marketing Manager PMMAF

launches? Are these suited for different use case scenarios such as small to large sized deployments?

Our latest next generation i-PRO Extreme technology is our response to the fast-growing demand for integrated video surveillance in the region, which has seen a tremendous growth for video security equipment in recent years. This platform is available on Panasonic’s new line-up of cameras, recorders and video management software (VMS) —providing a native end-to-end H.265 compression while also delivering enhancements in system reliability, IP security and embedded intelligence.

The H.265 standard provides an 80 percent enhancement in compression delivering high picture quality with half the bandwidth requirements and at reduced storage costs.

H.265 can be matched to high temperature conditions offering effective image quality and a clear sight image even in seaside salty atmospheres.

The i-PRO Extreme consists of extreme fusion of Panasonic’s unique video & sensor technology, along with high anti-environment stability and self-recognition/ analysis capabilities, thus realizing ‘incidents’ much quicker, and with higher accuracy. With i-PRO Extreme, we aim to exceed customer expectations by providing a cutting-edge technology that maximizes the effectiveness and efficiency of their video surveillance needs, while offering value on investment.

The latest system is perfect for use in harsh climate, and is immune to any cyber threats with its Secure Communication Technology.

"Panasonic continues to show its commitment to our channel partner community through various investments including competitive authorization programs, dedicated sales and support resources, and strong demand generation efforts."

Discuss Panasonic’s solutions for IP telephony and video conferencing?

Panasonic’s HD Visual Communications (HDVC) System is a communication tool with high image and sound quality that offers stable connections for conducting smooth and accurate multi-site videoconferencing. This system connects multiple sites, and has dual network capabilities, along with an advanced camera to share clear images, and comes complete with the new Smart Hybrid IPPBX for SOHO (Small office/ Home office) businesses as well as Business Communication Server, UC Pro, and Wireless Video Intercom System.

The HDVC system flexibly responds to a wide range of communication needs in various fields, such as education, manufacturing, retail, international corporations, healthcare, finance, and sales. The HDVC system can connect via intranet and internet simultaneously making videoconferencing easy within sites, inside, and outside of the organization. Furthermore, it helps in optimising cost and curtails the required time for travelling. Conducting uninterrupted and echo free educational webinars, educating the rural sector with effective visual communication and quality sound, specialized medical training with clear body movements and detailing, seeking medical

advice from experts, allowing head office management to provide local customer support and enabling lectures from prominent personalities and instructors in different locations, have become easy with HDVC system.

Panasonic’s all-inone hybrid business communication IP-PBX system KX-HTS32 for small and medium businesses provide organisations with innovative technology to enhance their competitiveness in a constantly evolving business environment, and at an affordable cost.

The Panasonic KX-NSX2000 IP-PBX, which offers next generation unified business communication for companies, comes with a host of features including UC Pro support, video communication functions, a built-in call centre function and partner application linking.

These functions make business communication more efficient and enable users to utilise limited resources effectively.

The NSX2000 PBX system is a perfect fit for both normal work telephones to mobile users on the go and callcentre operators.

The Panasonic KX-HTS32 is a Hybrid IP-PBX, and it also works as Analogue PBX. Its concept is easy handling and follow the market trend for SOHO. It comes with various built-in functionalities such as Wi-Fi, video, SIP etc. Panasonic supports constantly changing

business environments and enhance competitiveness in the small-scale PBX market.

What is the partner’s strategy for taking these solutions to market? Do you work with security focused integrators as well as enterprise segment partners directly or via distributors?

As a channel company, Panasonic is fully invested with it partner eco-system.

Our industry leading solutions are widely available via our partner community. Panasonic believes in empowering our partners so that we can maintain a sustainable growth and remain profitable.

Panasonic continues to show its commitment to our channel partner community through various investments including competitive authorization programs, dedicated sales and support resources, and strong demand generation efforts. Authorized Reseller Partners enjoy exclusive access to leading technologies and solutions backed by world-class service and support.

You have a significant focus presently in document scanning as well for the commercial segment. discuss this in more detail with an overview of your solutions for the same?

Panasonic has a wide variety of document scanners. Our

KV-S8147 / S8127 document scanners are the highlights in this segment.

Offering a stunning array of performance, efficiency and reliability, while the Panasonic's KV-S8147 high volume production scanner is optimized for deployment in organizations with heavy volumes of paperwork. With the ability to scan virtually any type of document, from business cards to 12x17" paper, the KV-S8147 is an essential solution for any organization.

Beyond standard documents, the KV-S8147 also features the ability to scan continuous documents of unlimited length such as EKG reports or well logs.

The KV-S8147's extensive hardware elements are further maximized by a range of available software options. With the ability to purchase the unit bundled with either Panasonic's powerful "Image Capture Plus" or Kofax's advanced "VRS Elite Workgroup", the scanner will handle precision document reproduction and versatile image processing with ease.

Panasonic scanners can handle large documents at a time, up to 750 A4 pages can be set in a single run, thus eliminating the need to set up scanning parameters time after time, while brings greater efficiency to scanning jobs.

Panasonic’s other popular scanners areKV-S4085CW/ S4065CW, KV-S5076H/S5046H, KV-S5055C, KV-S7097 and KVS7075C. September 2017 | 23

Point2Point | Clouds Dubai

Discuss the company’s operations in the region and the focus in security solutions distribution?

We are a value added distributor focusing on IT Security Products and Services in the Middle East region. There is growing demand for affordable and scalable cybersecurity products and solutions in the region as UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the top targeted countries in the world by cybercriminals. We work with channel partners for all our products and solutions and we have a good demand for our offerings. We also provide pre-sales and post-sales support to channel partners that include comprehensive product training and marketing support.

Aji Joseph Sales Director Clouds Dubai

Building security in the cloud era Clouds Dubai is a fast growing value added distributor in the Middle East taking care of IT Security requirements for channel partners and their clients. The company is a distributor for solutions includng Heimdal CORP, Spamina Cloud Email Firewall, miniOrange 2FA, FileAudit, Ekran Employee Monitoring, InDefend, Data Resolve & User Lock.

Aji Joseph, Sales Director at Clouds Dubai discusses the company’s focus areas

24 | September 2017

How do you see the growth outlook for advanced security solutions in the region from your company’s perspective? Which are the strongest growth verticals in deploying such advanced solutions?

We see a huge demand for Data Security products and solutions in the region as there is a shortage of good IT Security resources in the region. The majority of the organizations do not have in-house IT Security specialists and IT Security is a major challenge for them. We work with such customers through our reseller partners and help them align their IT Security strategy based on their requirement. We see huge demand for Data protection solutions like Data Leakage Prevention, Employee Behavior Monitoring and Sessions Recording. Demand for Ransomware protection and Email Security solutions are also on the rise.

What are the various security solutions that you have included in your distribution portfolio?

We distribute IT Security products for Ransomware Protection, Data Leakage Prevention, Employee Monitoring, 2 Factor Authentication, Cloud Email Firewall, Email Archiving and AD User Management solution in Middle East. We also provide IT Security services like Security Audit, VA/PT, Penetration Testing, Security Awareness

"We see a huge demand for Data Security products and solutions in the region as there is a shortage of good IT Security resources in the region. The majority of the organizations do not have in-house IT Security specialists and IT Security is a major challenge for them."

Training, Incident Response, ISO 2700X & NESA consulting to reseller partners and their clients.

Our prominent vendor partners include Heimdal Security, Spamina, Data Resolve, Ekran Systems, IS Decisions, MiniOrange & Cyan Networks.

How challenging is it to convince when there are competing products in most of the segments covered? Do you have POC facilities to simulate threat scenarios and help customers/partners evaluate the efficacy of the product?

Clients do proper evaluation before purchasing security products and solutions and we have a pre-sales team that helps potential clients with POC. We also provide installation and troubleshooting support as the products and solutions that we carry are not plug-and-play solutions. Many of our products are ideal for midmarket segment at it comes with affordable pricing and local support. We work closely with our channel partners and this help us to understand the client requirements and challenges in a better way compared to competitors.

You have a focus on managed services.

Please elaborate on the solutions you have for managed security services and the growth seen in the market?

We offer managed security services to clients with integrated Vulnerability Assessment, Intrusion Detection, and SIEM (Security Information & Event Management). It involves automated detection of IT risks using hardware (leased to the client during service period) and manual analysis and assessment of risk by Security experts. All data collected by the hardware stays within and no data leave the client premises at any time.

External & internal vulnerabilities, logs and network traffic are analyzed on a regular basis to identify possible threats that are missed by existing IT Security products like antivirus, firewall, IPS etc. The service

is offered on an Op-ex model where customers only pay for the service they use and do not need to invest in additional hardware or software. Customers can choose from 1 month, 3 month or 1 year service.

In light of recent ransomware attacks, there maybe a strong demand for solutions that can pre-empt or remediate the threats. Discuss the threat scenario and the solutions you have around this?

Ransomware attacks are on the rise in the Middle East and a lot of customers are falling victims to such attacks on a daily basis. Users get infected either by clicking on links/attachments from phishing emails or by visiting compromised websites.

In many cases the users get redirected to malicious websites without their knowledge or the websites they visit may have been compromised by hackers.

Traditional antivirus software is not able to detect Ransomware as these malware use advanced techniques like polymorphic behavior, anti-sandboxing, domain shadowing and encrypted communication.

We distribute Heimdal CORP, the most effective Ransomware protection solution available in the market. It works with any existing antivirus solution as Heimdal closes vulnerabilities and sanitizes Internet traffic to stop ransomware from infecting the endpoints. Heimdal CORP also prevents data breaches by blocking communication between malware and its C&C servers. By analyzing all HTTP, HTTPS and DNS traffic, Heimdal stops malware from harvesting confidential data from the endpoints.

Discuss how you have been adding channel partners around the region and which countries are presently covered by your partner network?

As a Value Added Distributor, we work

closely with our channel partners in the Gulf region. Our partners include System Integrators, MSSPs, IT Solution providers and ISPs. We have channel partners in more than 20 countries in the region, however majority of our partners are from GCC countries. We participate in trade shows and events to add more channel partners to our network. We also have a strong online presence that helps us to recruit more channel partners. We are participating in GITEX Technology Week this year with our vendor Heimdal Security. We will be present at Stand No: C2-12 in Hall 2.

How do you offer solutions for penetration testing, security audits etc?

Penetration testing and Security audits are provided as services and we have a team of dedicated IT Security professionals to take care of the same.

Our Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing services helps our clients to stay one step ahead of potential attackers, enabling their IT systems, IoT, ICS, IIoT nodes to grow with their business, without lowering the defenses of the organization. Penetration Testing is conducted with the help of automated tools, few custom scripts and manual attacks developed by our team.

Elaborate on your training focus? Is this done in partnership with other companies?

We deliver training across a broad spectrum of IT Security technologies. All our trainers have hands-on experience in their domains of expertise and have executed multiple projects as consultants.

We provide Instructor lead classroom training or online training. We also offer online Security Awareness Training provided in the form of Presentations, Videos, Games, Animations, Posters, Infographics, Emailers& Flyers to customers. We also work in partnership with other companies for training needs.

September 2017  |  25

Point2Point | Unify

Making inroads into the UC market Asif Khan Distribution Manager, MEA Unify

Discuss how you have evolved your distribution focus in the region?

We have Mindware and Oxygen in addition to Tech Access as distributors. The regional operations here commenced in 2015 and we started the distribution operations and then worked on the channel strategy.

The idea was to have partners covering all markets. We have a fantastic channel program which we introduced to the partners which is quite rewarding for them. We conceived and launched the program in the Middle East two years ago that has fetched us good partners and good customer references. One of the significant success was that we started capturing those markets that were not traditionally strongholds of Siemens.

Do you have a strategy focused on select partners?

Most vendors like depth in their channel strategy while breadth of coverage is also a focus. We are a niche vendor targeting a specific domain of unified communications and we have an end to end portfolio addressing this, from SMB to enterprise.

Our approach is to invest with select partners rather than opt for numerous partners, help them grow their business and grow our business with them. The objective is to ensure partners are making money and so they have the focus on our products. At the same instance, we also ensure all markets are covered and all our solutions are also focused upon.

26 | September 2017

Asif Khan, Distribution Manager for MEA at Unify discusses how it is working with select channel partners in addressing demand for UC solutions in the region

How do you evaluate suitable partners?

One of the objectives of bringing in the distribution model was to have channel width and manage administrative and operational efficiency in our business in the region. Having this in place solved all those operation issues such as stocking, availability etc. and since they had channel breadth, we could identify the right partners in different markets. We also scrutinized the product portfolios our distributors carry and whether it complements what we offer. So in the case of Mindware for instance, we saw they had a strong networking portfolio and approached many of their top networking focused resellers, discussed the business proposition with them and once having gauged their interest, we took it further to enabling them through our program with training included.

Discuss how you have further engaged with the end user market?

We realized that there was a gap in terms of end customer engagement. We set up a strategy on the end customer side and appointed high touch Account managers, who are engaging some of the large end customers. We have identified a few areas where we can bring in growth immediately with end customers.

First, there is the Greenfield opportunity, wherever Unify isn’t already present and where there is a potential, we engage them. Second, there is the Siemens

heritage in terms of installed base and we started upselling and cross-selling the Unify portfolio to those customers.

We offered either a migration path to our latest solutions or looked to sell additional features if they already had in place some of our latest solutions. Third, we started tracking the renewals opportunity better because there was a good installed base.

And finally, as part of the Atos group, we are working on aligning ourselves with the local Atos team to collaborate on some of the big projects. We have a strong focus on our cloud strategy as well with ‘Circuit’ and we have managed cloud solutions which we can offer in this region as well, for which we are talking to service providers.

Discuss the SME focus?

We have a 70% sales from the enterprise and 30% from the SME currently. The SME is a growing business worldwide and the Middle East is no exception.

Unify has a strong SME portfolio that caters to users up to 2000, which should meet requirements of some of the larger SME companies in the region. These are solutions that come with a lot of UC and contact centre applications and come with 3 years support and boasts of quality German engineering. We have seen grat traction in the SME business in the reegion which has grown from 15% of the overall business here a year ago to about contributing 30%.

@gitextechweek

gitex.com

EXCITE. ENGAGE. EXPERIENCE.

Converging technologies, disruptive business models and moonshots collide across 60 real-world case studies from 80+ disruptive global practitioners

HOW?

Eight dedicated power conferences at this year’s GITEX

MON/TUE 9-10

MON 9

NEW FOR 2017

SMART CITIES

MON 9

HEALTHCARE

RETAIL

TUES 10

WED 11

FINANCE

DIGITAL MARKETING

NEW FOR 2017

WED 11 TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

Big data, happiness, AI, Cognitive cities

Robotics, 3D Printing, AR/VR, Patient Experience, Cyber-security

Digital transformation, customisation, AR/ VR, drones, magic mirrors

Blockchain, AI, robotics, automation, machine learning

Gamification, data analytics, AI, digitalisation, automation

Autonomous vehicles, robotics, AI, smart technology

EXPERTS INCLUDE

EXPERTS INCLUDE

EXPERTS INCLUDE

EXPERTS INCLUDE

EXPERTS INCLUDE

EXPERTS INCLUDE

Siim Sikkut, Government CIO (Estonia)

Shafi Ahmed, Associate Dean, Barts & London Medical School (UK)

Scott Emmons, Head of the Innovation Lab, Neiman Marcus (USA)

Raj Chowdhury, Previous Head of Innovation, ICICI Bank (India)

Tin Hang Liu, CEO & Founder, OSVehicle (USA)

World’s first AR/VR livestream surgeon (Google Glass, Snapchat, Twitter) / curator of NHS Twitter account

Retail business model innovator through AI and big data

World’s first to execute inter-bank blockchain transfer

Patrick Grove, Co-founder and Group CEO, Catcha Group/ Co-founder & Chairman, iflix (Malaysia)

Taking on Bitcoin & Etherium with an official virtual currency for Estonia and the EU

NEW FOR 2017

+ TECH LEADERS

Financial review Richlister overtaking Netflix in Asia

Saved mobility sector millions of $$$ creating an open-source, modular autonomous vehicle platform

THURS 12 + EDUCATION

Game-changing advantage from the full GITEX experience – grow your network and source technology as you gain critical insight

Invite-only executive briefings daily

NEW FOR 2017

CO-LOCATED WITH

HOSTED BY SAP, Google, Oracle, Wipro, Dark Matter, Microstrategy, VMWare, F5 and Enterprise Ireland Over 120 hours of high-level networking across 8 unique options

Find out how you can apply - Email: Fahad.Khalife@dwtc.com

WITH TODAY’S FAST CHANGING TECHNOLOGY, IT’S EITHER EVOLVE OR BE EXTINCT. Get your passes before they run out at www.gitex.com or call +971 4 308 6805 Organised by

Finance Vertical Title Partner

Cyber Security Innovation Partner

Smart Cities Vertical Title Partner

Exclusive ICT Transformation Partner

Grow your Business with Google

Xerox Future of Work Global Tour

VIP Majlis Lounge Partner

Mobile Reseller Feature Sponsor

Business Transformation Partner

Official Publisher

Exclusive Digital Transformation Partner

Official Publication

Official Airline Partner

Autonomous & Robotics Partner

Official Courier Handler

Insight | ManageEngine

Leann Smiles Marketing Analyst ManageEngine

Managing knowledge the smart way Leann Smiles, Marketing Analyst, ManageEngine discusses Eight simple secrets for successful knowledge management

K

nowledge that doesn't serve is knowledge wasted! In order for knowledge gained from experience and research to be useful, IT teams need to organize, manage, and offer it in the best way possible. With a solid knowledge base, you can improve key IT support metrics such as ticket response and resolution times, customer satisfaction, and overall

28  |  September 2017

productivity. With that in mind, here are a few simple secrets (well, not anymore!) to help you build a successful knowledge base and provide stellar IT support.

1. Collect information to build your KB. The most important part of knowledge management is building knowledge itself.

The first step is to identify prospective areas from which knowledge can be derived and extract information. Resolutions on common issues can be used as templates if they are added to the KB as knowledge items.

Converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge is essential for a successful knowledge management system, but the conversion requires collaborative efforts with careful investigation and input from experienced technicians. Also, to achieve a comprehensive KB, encourage your IT technicians to move resolutions directly to the KB. A good IT help desk application will allow the creation of knowledge articles right from ticket resolution.

This significantly reduces the percentage of repeat incidents and keeps the KB up to date.

2. Categorize to identify, retrieve, and use knowledge.

Organizing and categorizing existing data can be challenging, especially when handling large KBs with wide scopes. However, it is important to group knowledge items and place them under relevant topics so that information is not lost in a pool of data. There are different ways in which you can organize knowledge, depending on what suits your organization best. Grouping can be based on document type, such as guidelines or bug fixes, or on the subject matter, such as hardware issues or software

updates. Creating logical hierarchies is a method that will ease user navigation. The hierarchy should begin with broad topics and move on to categories and sub-categories.

3. Implement a knowledge approval process.

Creating a well-structured piece of information that is relevant to the user is crucial.

The quality of the content should be peer reviewed by subject matter experts for accuracy and relevance.

Ultimately, information cannot be published as knowledge without a proper knowledge approval process. The content that is generated must go through peer review and be improved. Along those lines, you can configure an automated approval workflow that prevents a solution from being published without peer approval. Create a unique knowledge manager role with permissions to approve solutions. Configuring an automatic trigger for notifications to approvers on submission of a solution will make the approval process easier. Approval processes eliminate ambiguity, making knowledge items more accurate, minimizing any re-opening of closed tickets.

For instance, there may be multiple solutions to troubleshoot a printer issue (network issue, hardware issue, etc.). However, the approval committee should be able to decide on the appropriate solution.

4. Choose your audience for each solution.

Not every piece of information in the KB is relevant to all users. By choosing the right audience for a knowledge item, you can eliminate clutter in the end users' self-service portal. For technicians, create specific roles and groups based on their field of expertise and share only relevant topics. For example, finance documents are always confidential and therefore should be accessible only to related users. Along the same lines, documents on registry settings or swapping hardware parts are only relevant to IT experts in the field and can be restricted from end users. However, make sure your technicians have full access to the KB, especially when the services are integrated in the help desk application.

5. Prompt end users effectively with relevant knowledge items.

No matter how elaborate a KB is, it cannot be effective if it is out of reach. Making the KB easily accessible to end users in the self-service portal will help them arrive at solutions without assistance from a technician, lowering the number of incidents. This can be done in the following ways.  When the end user logs in to the application, the recently

"Organizing and categorizing existing data can be challenging, especially when handling large KBs with wide scopes. However, it is important to group knowledge items and place them under relevant topics so that information is not lost in a pool of data." viewed or used solutions are listed.  When an end user tries to log a ticket, relevant knowledge articles are suggested based on keywords.  In the self-service portal, end users have easy access to the KB articles that have been made visible to them.  Relevant KB articles are automatically emailed to the end user in response notifications (as auto suggestions) when the ticket is logged.

Likewise, the sooner an IT technician can get to a resolution in the KB, the easier it is to reduce the mean time to resolve incidents and improve first call resolution rates. This can be achieved by adding keywords and tags to solutions to make items easily searchable.

6. Widen the KB's horizon.

A well-built KB should not be limited to storing resolutions for incidents.

Use the KB as a repository of important checklists that keep a particular service up and running. Commonly used information, such as checklists on regular server house keeping tasks or changes that require restarting the server, will keep technicians from missing crucial steps in change implementation. The

KB should also be used to save important workflows in IT services, training material for technicians, user guides, and even FAQs. This, in turn, helps reduce incident response time and will help technicians keep up with pre-defined SLAs.

7. Establish a knowledge management team.

When it comes to creating a knowledge management (KM) system as a key resource in your organization, a knowledge management team certainly has its advantages. One of the most significant advantages is the added ownership and accountability in the KM process. You can create a user group of technicians who are well trained in the proposed KM model for your organization. This team should be assigned to supervise the approval process. They should also be able to streamline KM workflows, identify possible areas of extension, and be responsible for collecting information from resources.

The whole KM process is cyclical and the KM team should oversee it. This will help avoid chaotic roles and prevent any missed information.

8. Evaluate your KB's performance.

Constantly monitoring the efficiency of your KM system

with relevant metrics will help you evaluate its performance. The following are the metrics and methodologies generally used in KM to identify its strengths and weaknesses.  Customer surveys on the quality and accessibility of the KB content.  Identifying zero clickthroughs where KM content exists.  Evaluation of knowledge gaps (where KM content does not exist).

Reports from your help desk application on ticket response and resolution times, as well as reopen rates, show you the statistics required to improve your knowledge management system.

After you've built your knowledge base and have a good knowledge management system running, you can sit back and reap the benefits.

Remember, a good knowledge base is not only going to improve your IT team's productivity, but will move your focus from troubleshooting already resolved tickets to working on strategic areas of improvement. Make sure no effort is wasted and no mistakes are repeated. Focus on things that matter. The bottom line is, whether it's just a few tweaks to your existing knowledge base or building a brand new one, it shouldn't be long before your customers and employees start enjoying the benefits of your knowledge base.

September 2017 | 29

Insight | Infoblox

Ashish Gupta, Executive Vice Ashish Gupta Executive VP & Chief Marketing Officer Infoblox

President and Chief Marketing Officer at Infoblox discusses why we should let our walls down when it comes to cybersecurity

Security beyond the walls W

ith digital threats growing more rampant across the country and from around the world, the idea of building “walls” for cyber defense and protection can seem appealing. But even in this age of hackers relentlessly penetrating our networks, in the information technology security industry, we know that walls don’t work.

The truth is that surrounding yourself with impenetrable barricades is

30 | September 2017

akin to sticking your head in the sand. Walls by themselves fail to tackle the root cause of threats, meaning any sense of safety created is artificial.

Organizations need to have a holistic security posture that spans their internal network and devices. More importantly, they must anticipate malicious external threats.

Security requires a holistic approach For protection, traditional IT

security systems have for a long time relied on perimeter defenses, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems. But that paradigm has changed, as cybercriminals have evolved and cyberattacks have increased in volume and sophistication. Malware is continuing to explode. Singular perimeter defenses are no longer enough.

Internal infrastructure, whether digital or physical, is

meant to encourage and foster a natural ebb and flow — of both good and bad — with the world beyond the walls.

Blocking this organic two-way flow only incites turmoil and turbulence within. Modern businesses rely on constant communication both within and outside the organization.

After all, while employees are crucial, a business cannot survive without customers, partners, investors and other external stakeholders. These

are all outsiders who keep the business alive.

Therefore, building thick, impenetrable walls goes against this grain of open and constant communication that our 21st century enterprises are built on.

Keeping everything out is not an option (including insidious actors, hackers or viruses) and keeping everything in (halting the outward flow of data) is also impossible. As such, the industry must respond not with rigid, insular systems that block, but rather open, adaptive systems that can learn as threats evolve and move quickly to discover and resolve threats. This the only way to truly bolster security.

So how do we go about building these protective, intelligently porous systems?

Let’s break down what a network like this would entail.

It starts with the foundation Today’s digital organizations must strive to build secure systems and networks that are open and enable the bidirectional flow of information, support the needs of the business and, are simple to manage, all while maintaining security. These networks are not one element but a collection of widgets, or returning to the wall metaphor, bricks that need to be glued together.

These bricks are crucial to the foundation of your infrastructure. They must strengthen each other, maintain the integrity of the foundation, and provide the

"It is true that like every building, every organization constructs defenses around its physical and virtual premises. But all walls do well is isolate and create an artificial sense of security."

necessary protection, but always allow the free flow of ideas, information, commerce. and communication.

Control and security come from the core The core of the network is what enables communication and interaction with others in the broader digital ecosystem.

In stark contrast to rigid perimeter defenses and walls, the network needs to provide protection without compromising openness.

This means building digital infrastructure that is responsive and flexible.

Most importantly, in today’s dangerous cyber climate, they must protect the infrastructure’s integrity, the assets and data in the enterprise, and the users and devices — guarding against malware, hackers, data leaks, and attacks.

Defense and intelligence are synonymous Walls neglect to address the points at which the threats originate, allowing hackers to persist and grow more sophisticated in seeking new backchannels and vulnerabilities to penetrate. So in this day and age of so many threats, how can we safeguard against all this without erecting walls?

The solution to outdated perimeter defenses is to build layers of actionable intelligence

that seek to understand the causes, behaviour, history, and nature of those gaining access to the network — similar to our unsung heroes, the officers at airports and borders, who ask travellers where they’ve been, why they left, and what they’re bringing in. These are all contextual pieces of information that when analysed provide actionable intelligence.

We need to build the same kind of multilayer defense that the human physiology provides: the skin (the wall in this scenario) allows a natural ebb and flow, but is supported by our white blood cells fighting infections internally.

Meanwhile, the brain learns how to avoid external threats using contextual and actionable insights, providing holistic defense. Today’s digital organization and its network are much like a living organism that needs intelligence for survival.

Equally important is balancing visibility and flexibility. To enable a secure enterprise, you need to be able to see everything on your network and to evaluate new additions. Think of a device that is added to the network: you need to ensure that it is not introducing malware into the network while also being adaptable enough to accommodate a new piece of the network.

This could be something as simple as automating the

process by which a printer is added to the network or creating guest permissions for a contractor’s device once it’s been verified.

Crucially, networks must be scalable so that they can keep pace with a modern enterprises’ growth, as new people and devices constantly join or exit the fold, the network must be able to adapt.

Moving beyond bricks in the wall Our rich digital ecosystems can only thrive and innovate via learning from and evolving with the disparate digital communities and netizens beyond our perimeters, even if this means occasional friction and conflict. Data, ideas, digital currency, commerce, and interactions rely on this two-way flow of both good and bad.

It is true that like every building, every organization constructs defenses around its physical and virtual premises. But all walls do well is isolate and create an artificial sense of security.

Instead we must accept the reality that in today’s cyber climate, threats are bound to find their way in.

To move forward, we must build layers of defense, visibility, and intelligence that are adaptive, responsive and secure — ones that guarantee open communication, engagement, and unfettered commerce, but provide the protection and openness we need to thrive. It is about much more than just adding another brick in the wall.

September 2017 | 31

EyeTech

eVMS-PRO Overview: eVMS-PRO is scalable & resilient, Client-Server Architecture, integrating multiple surveillance systems. With eVMS-PRO, end users receive a perpetual license that includes a wide range of unmatched enterprise features. eVMS-PRO supports both Distributed & Centralized deployments. The software has built-in Intelligent video analysis to aid in event identification (Tripwire, Intrusion, Object Abandonment, Object Missing, People Counting). It has the facility to locate cameras quickly with a facility map on thick web and mobile clients. It simplifies complex network configurations and setup by identifying cameras on the network.

Key features: • Powerful & Resilient Embedded Linux based Platform • Ultimate Client-Server software architecture • High Flexibility and Scalability • Distributed Network Video Recorder Solution

Xirrus AP (Model XD2-230) Overview: This is the first Access Point released by Xirrus since its acquisition

by Riverbed in April 2017.

This 802.11ac AP that can be managed from the cloud or on premise. The AP is designed with a powerful integrated controller, providing layer 7 application visibility to help businesses keep up with the demands that applications are putting on Wi-Fi. The management and control is provided by the cloud or an on-premise based Xirrus Management System (XMS), enabling complete visibility and control for all devices and applications from a single console.

• Support unlimited accounts management, 8000 online

Key features:

users and 500 roles.

• Offers unmatched price-performance at 3.9Gbps total

• Support Mobile Surveillance functions models via apply

Wi-Fi bandwidth.

the corresponding license

• The onboard controller enables application-based

• High Compatibility

policy control, integrated location services, and

• eVMS-PRO Client Application supports Windows OS • Connect third-party devices via standard ONVIF www.watchnetinc.com

software-defined radios directly at the network edge, eliminating the cost and complexity of additional controllers and service appliances, and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by 30% or more.

• With 3 radios, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the XD2-230 model provides secure access for Wi-Fi users and Internet of Things (IoT) devices with an easy- to-use SaaS solution, while helping enterprises scale and adapt to evolving demands.

• Secure access for an unlimited number of users/ devices is delivered by the EasyPass SaaS solution.

EasyPass simplifies secure Wi-Fi connectivity with integration to the Microsoft Azure and Google application ecosystems, enabling single sign- on to both user applications and Wi-Fi. Simple and secure onboarding for BYOD and IoT devices is supported by unique per-user security credentials that lock down access at a device level.

32 | September 2017

ThinkAgile VX Series Overview: Lenovo announced the ThinkAgile VX Series, powered

by VMware vSAN, a preconfigured hyperconverged infrastructure solution engineered to provide businesses of all sizes with simplified management and greater efficiency. The VX series is the latest addition to Lenovo’s ThinkAgile portfolio of integrated appliances and systems.

Built on Lenovo ThinkSystem platforms and powered

by Intel Xeon Scalable family processors, the VX Series is a pre-integrated, pre-configured hyper-converged solution that reduces data center complexity by aggregating servers, storage and virtualization resources into a common resource pool within an industrystandard platform. The VX series was designed for easy, rapid deployment so customers can focus on building their business rather than building and maintaining infrastructure. Lenovo’s ThinkAgile VX Series platform can be used as infrastructure for remote office/ branch office (ROBO) and retail stores as well as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments and enterprise applications.

Key features: • To meet the variety of workload requirements and customer specifications, the VX Series is available in three models and offers full configure-to-order flexibility to meet any customer requirement.

• All systems are available in either all-flash or hybrid configurations.

• The VX 3000 Series are general-purpose 1U and 2U 1-node solutions optimized for compute-heavy applications, such as VDI. • The VX 5000 Series are storage-dense 2U 1-node solutions optimized for fast, high-capacity storage applications such as email, big data, and analytics.

• The VX 7000 Series are 2U 1-node solutions optimized for the highest-performance workloads, such as databases and collaboration.

A10 Thunder 3745

Overview: In the financial world, fractions of a second matter. Sluggish infrastructure and poor application performance can make the difference between material gains and losses. This puts intense pressure on financial institutions and HFT environments to process transactions at high rates of speed with low latency and jitter.

For businesses where fractions of a second matter and low latency equals cost-efficiency, A10 Networks broadened its Thunder Series portfolio of hardware appliances to include A10 Thunder 3745, a new application delivery controller designed specifically for financial institutions and low latency environments.

Thunder 3745 improves transaction speed by reducing end-to-end latency while improving scale and enhancing security and resiliency. It is ideal for mission critical applications that demand very low latency and low jitter, such as those operating on the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol or other industry protocols.

Key features: • Thunder 3745 delivers a mean latency of 2 to 3 µs (microseconds), a max latency of 4 µs, jitter of 1 µs and supports 128,000 concurrent NAT translations.

• Thunder 3745 also provides deep packet inspection (DPI) to apply custom logic in selecting the next hop for traffic.

• Security is further enhanced by adding custom headers, e.g. client-ip (tag 11447), for back-end server to cross validate sender-comp-id with the allowed client-ips and additional tracking and logging.

• Thunder 3745 also delivers dual network address translation (NAT) services to aid in mobility and hide internal network details.

• The 3 rack-unit (RU) appliance features SPE with FPGA, 4x10/1GbE and six cores; and the software features high-scale dual NAT, ACLs, DPI, L7 traffic steering and header insertion.

September 2017 | 33

Stats & Trends

Gartner identifies three Megatrends that will drive Digital Business

T

he emerging technologies on the Gartner Inc. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017 reveal three distinct megatrends that will enable businesses to survive and thrive in the digital economy over the next five to 10 years.

Artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere, transparently immersive experiences and digital platforms are the trends that will provide unrivaled intelligence, create profoundly new experiences and offer platforms that allow organizations to connect with new business ecosystems.

The Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is unique among most Gartner Hype Cycles because it garners insights from more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct set of compelling emerging technologies and trends. This Hype Cycle specifically focuses on the set of technologies that is showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years (see Figure 1).

AI Everywhere Artificial intelligence technologies will be the most disruptive class of technologies over the next 10 years due to radical computational power, near-endless amounts of data, and unprecedented advances in deep neural networks; these will enable organizations with AI technologies to harness data in order to adapt to new situations and solve problems that no one has ever encountered previously.

Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017

Enterprises that are seeking leverage in this theme should consider the following technologies: Deep Learning, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Artificial General Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles, Cognitive Computing, Commercial UAVs (Drones), Conversational User Interfaces, Enterprise Taxonomy and Ontology Management, Machine Learning, Smart Dust, Smart Robots and Smart Workspace.

becomes more adaptive, contextual and fluid within the workplace, at home, and in interacting with businesses and other people.

Critical technologies to be considered include: 4D Printing, Augmented Reality (AR), Computer-Brain Interface, Connected Home, Human Augmentation, Nanotube Electronics, Virtual Reality (VR) and Volumetric Displays.

Transparently Immersive Experiences

Emerging technologies require revolutionizing the enabling foundations that provide the volume of data needed, advanced compute power, and ubiquity-enabling ecosystems. The shift from compartmentalized technical infrastructure to ecosystemenabling platforms is laying the foundations for entirely

Technology will continue to become more humancentric to the point where it will introduce transparency between people, businesses and things. This relationship will become much more entwined as the evolution of technology

Digital Platforms

new business models that are forming the bridge between humans and technology.

Key platform-enabling technologies to track include: 5G, Digital Twin, Edge Computing, Blockchain, IoT Platform, Neuromorphic Hardware, Quantum Computing, Serverless PaaS and Software-Defined Security.

"When we view these themes together, we can see how the human-centric enabling technologies within transparently immersive experiences — such as smart workspace, connected home, augmented reality, virtual reality and the growing brain-computer interface — are becoming the edge technologies that are pulling the other trends along the Hype Cycle," said Mike J. Walker, research director at Gartner..

Note: PaaS = platform as a service; UAVs = unmanned aerial vehicles | Source: Gartner (July 2017)

34 | September 2017