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SETTING STANDARDSUnder the leadership of Dr. Jassim Haji, Director Information Technology, Gulf Air has emerged as the most technologically advanced Airlines in the Middle East region. /24

GEC OPEN 2015 IS GOING GLOBALSEE DETAILSON PAGE 55

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I N F O M E D I A

Need of a Quick Resolution to

the Impasse

Every recession comes with a particular incident. During 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the large global banks, collapsed and pulled down shutters of the world’s financial system on a domino effect. It was the $8 trillion dollar housing mortgage that triggered the burst, which resulted in sharp cutbacks in consumer spending, financial market chaos and collapse in business investment. In 2008 and 2009, only in U.S. 8.4 million people lost their jobs. Similarly, in the global market sizable number of people had lost their jobs. It was complete chaotic condition all around the world and impact on the Middle East market was also substantial.

During that time, Middle East’s exports to North America, which accounted for 10.5 percent and 14.2 per cent of its total exports in the year 2005 and 2006 respectively, declined to 2.3 percent in 2007. This is one part of the story but the real impact was on the trade and commerce within the countries.

Today, when the oil price has gone down to the level which no one was expecting two years back, it brings apprehension, although everyone knows that it is controllable. But it is for sure that if the stalemate continues for a long time, it will create a lot of side effects leading to uncontrollable situation. So the global community has to be mindful of that.

The impasse will certainly have spiral effect on the countries which are independent of Oil economy or less dependent on the Oil economy even because the major investor in any form are the people who have wealth. And the real wealth comes from all sorts of mining natural resources.

Assume today Dubai is independent of Oil economy but the people who will invest in the country’s infrastructure will be the people from Oil producing counties. So if those people stop investing then all the projects that have been created so far will be of no use. Or even the projects that are in the pipe line or half-done would never come to the broad day light.

There has been huge investment from the government and private sectors in the Middle East and Africa region and people who are waiting to be associated post the projects are built up or already engaged every form will be disappointed, which will create another depression situation.

So I am of strong view that as higher price of Oil is really bad for the global market, similarly low price of Oil is also not good for the global economy either. Therefore we should keep our finger crossed and hope for the quick revival of the Oil price. ë

MEA

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A

S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

EDITORIAL

04 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

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M

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CMY

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150122-Asia-Dubai-A-Z-January-CPE510-210x300mm.pdf 2 15-1-26 下午5:54

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ADVERTISER INDEX: RITTAL 02, HID 03, TP-LINK 05, EMITAC 07, EPICOR 09, BULWARK 11, EMT 13, DELL - MINDWARE 15, QLIK 17, FINESSE 19, CEBIT 21, GISEC 29, GiSEC-INHOUSE 41, FUTURE IT & CATLYST AWARD 51, OMAN 53, GEC OPEN 55, GEMEC 59, STORIT 63, UNIFY 64

COVER STORY

INNOVATIONS /61

LENOVO THINKSERVERLenovo ThinkServer

product portfolio includes Rack

Servers suited for cloud deployments,

database, or virtualization workloads,

FEATURE STORYDesktops minus the desk /46

EDITORIAL :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04

CHANNEL STREET ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08

CIO SPEAK ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 24

ENTERPRISE SECURITY ::::::::::::::::::::::: 37

MY VIEWS ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 23, 50

CES ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 38

GUEST ARTICLE :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 42

ANALYSTS VIEW :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 44

VEEAM :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 52

INNOVATIONS :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 61

MY VIEWS /50

“Thinking Big with the TIE”

MAYA KREIDYREGIONAL CHANNEL

MANAGER, UAE, GCC & PAKISTAN, MCAFEE

ENTERPRISE SECURITY /37

To Focus More on Enterprise MarketOVANES MIKHAYLOVGENERAL MANAGER, KASPERSKY LAB ME

GUEST TALK /60

User Experience is Critical

ANISH KANARANCHANNEL DIRECTOR -

MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & INDIA, EPICOR SOFTWARE

CORPORATION

INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS

Gartner rightly calls upon to see virtualization strategically as ‘a catalyst of overall IT change and modernization’. Server virtualization is already a top priority for enterprises and the trend is here to stay. /30

INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS

CONTENTS

06 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

Hybrid Pulls Ahead as Cloud Computing Reaches MaturityThe cloud computing landscape of 2017 will increasingly be dominated by platform and data-base services supporting hybrid infrastructures, new research from Oracle reveals. Organizations are more likely to choose hybrid cloud when considering their next steps in cloud computing. Deploying more hybrid cloud services (36%) was selected ahead of private (32%) and public cloud (17%) services

Private cloud is rapidly reaching maturity, with almost two thirds (60%) of enterprises surveyed reporting intermediate or mature levels of adop-tion. This is expected to rise to 82% in 2017.

Significant concerns still surround private cloud adoption. These include data security (cited by 55% of respondents), integration with existing applications (47%), available skills (45%) and hardware costs (44%)

The most important building block of a

successful private cloud infrastructure is having effective governance controls in place (cited by 34%); followed by standardization of IT (27%), winning the support of key decision makers (25%) and ensuring strong IT change manage-ment (17%)

Within private cloud, SaaS (68%) is currently viewed as most important ahead of DaaS (61%) and PaaS(57%). However, this will change over the next two years with DaaS (29%) becoming the most important form of private cloud, ahead of PaaS (26%) and SaaS (23%)

John Abel, EMEA Senior Director at Oracle, commented: “In this environment, Oracle’s proven ‘cloud ready’ platform proves hugely beneficial to customers, delivering a secure and reliable platform that removes integration headaches and provides customers the quickest route-to-value from the hybrid cloud.”

NVIDIA AND VMWARE COLLABORATE FOR DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATIONEnterprises will be able to experience the full benefit of remote access to rich graphics applications using VMware Horizon 6 and vSphere 6 with NVIDIA GRID vGPU. Jeff Brown, VP and GM, Professional Visualiza-tion and Design at NVIDIA says, “GRID-vGPU unlocks the promise of virtualized desktops by bringing the best graphics performance to the industry’s leading virtualization platform.”

“Our collaboration with NVIDIA extends the transformation to high-end worksta-tions and applications so organizations can benefit from the mobile cloud era,” said Erik Frieberg, VP of marketing for End-User Computing at VMware. “Specialized indus-tries such as design agencies, automotive companies etc. will be able to embrace busi-ness mobility to help retain talent, control costs and compete in the 21st century.”

JOHN ABEL, EMEA SENIOR DIRECTOR AT ORACLE

DSG EPAY GENER-ATES AED 7 BILLION IN 2014

Dubai Smart Government Department’s ePay system for online payment of government fees witnessed a 25 percent increase from the previous year generating approximately AED 7 billion in 2014. This has led to substantial benefits in terms of reducing government expenses using a centralized payment system for most Dubai government entities.

According to H.E. Ahmad Bin Humaidan, Director General of DSG, these results clearly demonstrate the increasing pace of the electronic and smart transforma-tion process in Dubai. This is substantiated by customers’ growing confidence in this highly efficient and secure option. He also added that the benefits extend to environ-mental sustainability as well, a mainstay of the green economy.

08 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

CHANNEL

STREET

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ARUBA CHANNEL PROGRAM TO ACCELERATE GROWTH OF SMESAruba its EMEA Aruba PartnerEdge Programme to better address the needs of SMEs and the channel partners that serve them. Osama AlHaj-Eisa, Channel Director, Middle East & Turkey at Aruba Networks says hundreds of partners are enjoying excellent growth with the Aruba SME portfolio and the demand for cov-ering the market is increasing. Moreover, Aruba is adding a dedicated SME website, online train-ing, promotions and sales enablement support for the SME market to ensure that new partners can quickly ramp and develop solutions expertise. A devoted SME channel team, based in Aruba’s Cork, Ireland office as well as in the Middle East, will focus on the SME channel particularly in the areas of partner recruitment, enablement and demand generation.”

ManageEngine Improves ScalabilityManageEngine’s log analysis software, EventLog Analyzer version 10 is now available. This version brings with it improved scalability, log collec-tion and processing rates; enhanced reports; and pattern-based alerting. In turn, EventLog Analyzer now helps security admins gain better insight about their security frameworks without any time delays and build possible attack patterns to proactively mitigate security threats.

“For most large enterprises, the sheer volume of the log information generated makes it quite difficult to determine the attacks, security loopholes and vulnerabilities that require imme-diate action,” said Chenthil Kumaran, product

manager, ManageEngine. “With EventLog Analyzer version 10, there’s a quantum leap in the log collection and processing rate which is sure to give security administrators the edge over security threats.” Using EventLog Analyzer v10, security administrators can process log data at 20,000 logs per second, which is a 10x improve-ment from the previous mark. They can leverage the pattern-based alerting system and get notified in real time

EventLog Analyzer v10 is immediately avail-able for download. The Unlimited Edition with a single installation server for any number of hosts is available for purchase.

IBM LAUNCHES Z13 MAINFRAME

IBM has launched the z13—one of the most sophisticated computer systems ever built. “Every time a consumer makes a purchase or hits refresh on a smart phone, it can create a cascade of events on the back end of the computing environment. The z13 is designed to handle billions of transactions for the mobile economy. Only the IBM mainframe can put the power of the world’s most secure datacenters in the palm of your hand,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems. “Consum-ers expect fast, easy and secure mobile transactions. The implication for business is the creation of a secure, high performance infrastructure with sophisticated analytics.”

When combined with IBM MobileFirst solutions, the z13 delivers enhanced performance, availability, analytics and security that will drive optimal mobile user experiences. The z13 transaction engine is capable of analyzing transactions in “real time”. In addition to assistance with fraud prevention, businesses looking to enhance their customer loyalty programs will be able to use new z13 capabilities to add more personalization.

The z13 is the ideal private or hybrid cloud architecture. For compared environ-ments, it is estimated that a z Systems cloud on a z13 will have a 32 percent lower TOC over three years than an x86 cloud and a 60 percent lower total cost of ownership over three years than a public cloud. Addition-ally, the z13 is based on open standards, fully supporting Linux and OpenStack.

IBM will also unveil a preview of new z/OS software that delivers advanced analytic and data serving capabilities.

EMC’s new UAE based study reveals heightened cloud computing adoption. 95% of enterprises surveyed have already implemented or plan to implement a cloud computing model. 49% of enterprises have currently implemented a private cloud while 35% consider their environment to be a public cloud. Private Cloud adopters cited a clear focus on

security and control ;46% cited the maximized control and security as being a primary factor for selecting private cloud while 31% said they

selected the private cloud for the universal network access with seamless connectivity. 12% cited the ability to meet local data hosting regulations as a primary reason

23% of respondents plan to implement an Advanced Hybrid Cloud model. They cited a height-ened need for flexibility that a blend of the two models allows.

According to Mohammed Amin, SVP and Regional Manager, Turkey,

Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle East, EMC “With the EMC Hybrid Cloud solutions we look forward to enabling IT to rapidly deliver the services the business needs, so the business can deliver what customers want. Our solutions empower IT to be a broker of trusted cloud services with a set of fully-engineered solu-tions that enable choice, seamless integration, transparency and scalability.”

23 PERCENT OF UAE ORGANIZATIONS INCLINED TO HYBRID CLOUD

BROCADE TO ACQUIRE STEELAPP FROM RIVERBEDBrocade is all set to acquire Riverbed Technology’s SteelApp product line. Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney said: “Brocade is the #2 data center networking vendor. This acquisition strengthens Brocade’s position as the adoption of software-centric networking is accelerating.” Jerry M. Kennelly, chairman and CEO of Riverbed Technology, said: “Riverbed is focused on providing solutions that provide CIOs unparalleled visibility, optimization, and control in the hybrid enterprise, ensuring on-premises, cloud and SaaS applications perform as needed.”

CHANNEL STREET

10 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

Qlik Sense Platform APIs Ignite New Open Source CommunityQlik has extended commitment to the developer and open source communities with the launch of Qlik Branch. Designed as a collaborative workspace and open exchange, Qlik Branch provides anyone – customers, fans, developers, and partners – simplified access to the open and powerful APIs of Qlik Sense and QlikView for better and easier integration with home-grown and third-party web technologies and applications.

In Gigaom Research’s recent report by David Card, “Ranking the disruption potential of industry forces”, open source and general creative commons is listed as one of the top ranked

potential highly disruptive forces. Speros Kokenes, Solutions Architect at Qlik

Partner Axis Group comments that t he open APIs in Qlik Sense are opening up a whole new world for developers with common Web devel-opment skills that are not proprietary or require product –specific development training.

According to Anthony Deighton, Qlik CTO. “Qlik Sense has given us an opportunity to totally rethink the developer experience. With Qlik Branch, we create a game-changing platform for developers to accelerate innovation to bring the best ideas to market.”

“The GCC’s education sector is witnessing significant growth and a focus on delivering

quality education has driven institutions to adopt technology at every level,”

FREDERICO CARVALHO, META REGIONAL BUSINESS DIRECTOR AT INTEL CORPORATION

TECHNOLOGY

IN PUBLIC

INFOR AND E3 JOIN TOGETHER FOR ARAB HEALTH

Infor joined E3, its healthcare partner for the Middle East, at this year’s Arab Health conference in Dubai. “The healthcare industry is growing well in the region. According to Gartner, Health-care providers in the Middle East and North Africa will spend US $3 billion on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 1.3 percent over 2013 revenues,” said Giuseppe Catania, Healthcare Industry manager for the Middle East, Infor . “Gartner also highlight the increasing levels of adoption in emerging markets and a return to normalcy of demand in mature regions will raise the five-year compound annual growth rate to 6.6 percent through 2017. We believe Infor’s Healthcare Suite of applications and E3’s expertise in the region are perfectly suited to help healthcare organisations across the Middle East stay on the cutting edge of global digital healthcare transformation using smart healthcare technology.”

A10 NETWORKS RECEIVES MICROSOFT LYNC SERVER CERTIFICATION FOR ADCSA10 Networks’ Thunder ADC solutions have achieved certification for use as a reverse proxy with Lync Server 2013 by Microsoft’s Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program (UCOIP). This certification also shows A10 Thunder ADCs ability to replace Microsoft Forefront TMG for Lync reverse proxy scenarios. “One of our primary objectives is to provide IT administrators and network infrastructure professionals with application networking tools that enable them to quickly and efficiently deliver the best possible user experience at all times,” said Paul Nicholson, Director of Product Marketing at A10 Networks. “With the UCOIP reverse proxy certification for Lync, A10 demonstrates its continuing commitment to support complex enterprise application environments; enhancing application availability, security and responsiveness.”

SECONDS6ARROW ELECTRONICS RECOGNIZED A

LEADER

Arrow Electronics has been positioned by Gartner

in the “Leaders” quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant

for IT Asset Disposition, Worldwide. “Our

capabilities and reach are growing with the global

demand for ITAD, and we believe we have the

most robust set of capabilities and the greatest

reach available to serve our customers wherever

they need us,” said Mark Majeske, president of

Arrow’s global reverse logistics business.

ALPHA DATA LAUNCHES RECRUITMENT

COMPANY

Alpha Data Recruitment will focus on delivering

specialized Outsourcing and Recruitment services

and leverage its strengths and experience in key

industries such as IT and Oil and Gas. Zakaria

Ibbini, Business Manager, Alpha Data Recruitment

says the organization’s motto of ‘we have who

you need’ reflects its role of bringing the right

organizations and candidates together in a swift

and efficient manner.

DSG “INNOVATION AND DIGITAL BUSI-

NESS” WORKSHOP

As many as 100 representatives of Dubai

government entities participated in the workshop

activities. Mary Mesaglio, Research VP with

Gartner’s CIO research team expounded on the

myths and psychology of innovation.Ed Gabrys,

Research Director, Gartner CIO Research defined

the future of digital business.

2X AWARDED FOR DATA CENTER

EXCELLENCE

TMC has named 2X RAS as a winner of a

2014 Data Center Excellence Award. Giorgio

Bonuccelli, Marketing Director at 2X Software

believes this award strengthens their position

in the market. “We will focus on continuing to

execute our strategy to drive long-term value to

our customers.”

NEW TECH FRONTIERS AT 3RD GOV-

ERNMENT SUMMIT

Experts addressing the third Government Summit

to be held in from February 9 to 11, 2015, will share

valuable insights on how the digital world will

transform every aspect of life – from healthcare

delivery to every object around you acting as

a digital sensor to create compelling lifestyle

experiences.

CHANNEL STREET

12 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

TechAccess has entered into a partnership with Unify; this new partnership with Unify will allow TA to further cement its place in the niche technology space and offer its channel partners all infrastructure and business solutions under one roof.

Chris Cornelius, Senior Vice President Sales & Support – TechAc-cess, expressed his enthusiasm for the new venture and said, “With

Unify as part of our product offer-ing, we can now offer our partners in KSA and through them the end customers a next generation tech-nology for fast reliableand secure communications.” Marc Aghili, Senior VP of Worldwide Channels believes that the partnership is an important stepping stone for Unify’s growth strategy in the Kingdom.

TA has entered into yet another distribution channel partnership

agreement with Extreme Networks. This new relationship will enable the distribution of Extreme’s solutions through TA’s channel of resellers and SIs in KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan& North African countries. TA will further enhance the vendor’s offer-ings through its suite of value added services; conduct training & POC’s at its solution center, sales and

pre-sales support, and marketing and business development support to facilitate its growth in these target territories.

“We are excited to be working with Tech Access,” saidEddie Curran,regional director Middle East-Extreme Networks. “This will help synergize Extreme’s cutting edge technology and TA’s wide reseller network to address the needs of the customers.”

Pradeesh VS, General Manager at ESET Middle East says, “We have paid close atten-tion to partner feedback and enhanced our partner program accordingly. Most importantly, we have further increased transparency by making our categorization criteria and benefits instantly clear. ”

A major update to the program is the partner evaluation card. Partners are graded on four crite-ria- revenue, renewal rate, loyalty advantage and the presence of an ESET certified tech specialist. To score points for the renewal rate and loyalty

advantage parameters, partners should acheive a minium renewal rate of 80% and should have a business relationship of over 5 years with ESET respectively.

ESET is set to launch the latest versions of the products in its business

portfolio in Q1, 2015. To educate partners about these solutions, the security vendor will conduct classroom and online training sessions. These will be followed with new ESET certifications which will ensure that qualified partners are recognized and rewarded.

ESET Revamps Middle East Partner Program for 2015

HID GLOBAL TURNS SHIRTS INTO SEASON TICKETSHID Global’s Identification Technologies RFID solution has been selected by MODO of the Swed-ish Hockey League (SHL) based in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden for its RFID-embedded shirts that are functioning as season tickets for fans. Each shirt has an HID Global Epoxy tag sewn into one sleeve to be scanned for a speedy and effortless entry. As the first Swedish hockey team ever to replace its season tickets with shirts, MODO is setting the standard in easy access and team spirit for fans, with 3,000 of the team’s red shirts sold to date.

TECH ACCESS ON A WINNING SPREE

AVAYA RANKS #1 IN UNIFIED COMMUNI-CATIONS SOLUTIONS

Avaya has been ranked recently as the number one provider of Unified Commu-nications Solutions (UCS) in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the third quarter of 2014, by Catalyst Research.

Avaya’s IP Office is the right choice for small to medium companies that want powerful, business-impacting commu-nications, with its ability to scale to 2,500 users at a single site or across as many as 150 locations. It delivers an engaging experience for voice, video, mobility, in addition to IM, video-conferencing, and web-based collaboration and integrates with a third-party desktop application.

Avaya IP Office runs on virtual machines, actual servers, stand-alone machines, or a combination of all. It can be merged with other Avaya video, networks, security and support solutions to support businesses looking for compressive and flexible solutions.

PRADEESH VS, GENERAL MANAGER AT ESET MIDDLE EAST

TERADATA ACQUIRES RAINSTORTeradata has completed the acquisition of RainStor, a privately held company specializing in online big data archiving on Hadoop. “The addition of RainStor underscores Teradata’s commitment to support customers as they transform their organizations into data-driven enterprises,” said Scott Gnau, president, Teradata Labs. “The new archival capability will help customers cost-effectively and efficiently address their data archiving requirements using Hadoop.” “The RainStor team is excited to add our talent and enterprise technologies to Teradata’s portfolio, which will help customers address the challenges of archiving big data,” said Anthony Brooks-Williams, vice president, RainStor Americas Sales and Services, Teradata.

CHANNEL STREET

14 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

16TH MARCH 2015THE ADDRESS, DOWNTOWN, DUBAI

CATCHTHE TREND

RECOGNIZINGTHE EXCELLENT

GLOBALENTERPRISECONNECT

B R O U G H T B Y O R G A N I S E D B Y

FOLLOW US: www.gecopen.comGec Open GECOpen Enterprise Channels MEA

www.gecopen.com

FUTURE IT SUMMIT

REGISTER

CATALYSTS 2015

NOMINATE

StarLink Becomes Arbor’s DistieStarLink will sell, install and support Arbor Networks products through its extensive network of Channel Partners to enterprise and government customers in theregion.

“If you want to rapidly gain market share in the Middle East’s lucrative IT security market, you need StarLink as a distributor,” said Jeremy Nicholls, Arbor Networks’ Vice President Global Channels & Alliances. Mahmoud Nimer, General Manager at StarLink added, “DDoS attacks in the

region are becoming more fre-quent, taking down networks,

tarnishing reputations and impacting businesses. Arbor has solutions that specifically address the needs of the Middle East’s enterprises and service provider customers. We are excited to align Arbor’s best-of-breed technology with our Channel so that Partners can deliver the situational awareness, security intelligence, incident response and forensic capabilities that customers

need to detect, mitigate and analyze DDoS threats.”

MOVEMENTSNUMBER GAMEDAVID HORTON, has been

appointed as the Head of Innovation at Synechron for the Middle East.

CARLOS SARTORIUS will be the new senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Services, reporting to Citrix president and CEO, Mark Templeton

Alcatel-Lucent has ap-pointed BHASKAR GORTI as President IP Platforms .

Alcatel-Lucent has ap-pointed LUIS MARTINEZ-AMAGO as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell (ASB).

Worldwide IT spending is on pace to total $3.8 trillion in 2015, a 2.4 percent increase from 2014.

COMMVAULT PARTNERS WITH NAVISITE TO POWER IAASAccording to David Grimes, CTO, NaviSite. “Simpana software satisfies our requirements and provides the capabilities of multiple point products we were evaluating within a single solution -- providing a great degree of flexibility for our clients, while resulting in less complexity and costs.” “CommVault Simpana software provides the data protection, recoverability and pay-as-you-go licensing options NaviSite requires to deliver high availability and access to business-critical applications that meet customer service level requirements,” said Paul McClure, chief technolo-gist, cloud solutions group, CommVault.

PANASONIC RECEIVES THE 2015 ZAYED

FUTURE ENERGY PRIZE

Panasonic boasts an extensive range of products

supported by technologies that create, store, and

save energy, and save water such as ‘ECONAVI’

and the solar power generation system, ‘HIT’. It

has alsoplayed a key role in the development of

the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town, an eco-

conscious, sustainable city.

NEW PHILIPS MONITOR WITH ADOBE

RGB TECHNOLOGY

MMD has launched a new 27-inch IPS-AHVA

display with factory-calibrated color support

across the Adobe RGB color space. With the wide

gamut of Adobe RGB, the display can reproduce

over one billion colors with near-total fidelity,

giving professional users the confidence that the

colors on the display are consistent with industry

standards – for color precision throughout the

entire production workflow.

JOHNSON CONTROLS AND HITACHI TO

FORM GLOBAL HVAC JOINT VENTURE

The new Johnson Controls-Hitachi joint venture

will allow both companies to deliver the most

diverse technology portfolio in the heating, venti-

lation, air conditioning and refrigeration industry.

BT CLOUD CONNECT WITH PERSON-

ALISED VIDEO ABILITIES

BT is incorporating personalised video capabilities

into its Cloud Contact portfolio of services, using

industry leading technology from Idomoo. This will

enable businesses to send short, individually tai-

lored, high-quality videos to millions of customers.

Andrew Small, vice-president, Unified Communi-

cations and Customer Relationship Management

(CRM), BT Global Services, said that the new

service helps businesses connect with their

customers in a much more creative and engaging

way, thus improving customer service and increas-

ing sales.

4TH GULF AND ME OIL & GAS SECURITY

SUMMIT ON 18TH-19TH MAY IN DUBAI

This year’s Forum will focus on the most pressing

concerns currently, from the growing threat of

terrorism with a focus on IS and IS sympathisers,

evacuation planning, duty of care in high risk

regions, cyber security, business continuity, and

crisis management planning.

WEB CLIPS

JEREMY NICHOLLS, ARBOR NETWORKS’ VICE PRESIDENT GLOBAL CHANNELS & ALLIANCES

2.4%

CHANNEL STREET

16 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

Strategic Partner Award – QlikThank you Dubai Smart Government for your support

Qlik® (NASDAQ: QLIK) is a leader in data discovery delivering intuitive solutions for

self-service data visualization and business intelligence. Approximately 33,000 customers

rely on Qlik solutions to gain meaning out of information from varied sources, exploring

the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that spark great ideas.

Visit us at www.qlik.com.

Riverbed Enhances Control across the Hybrid EnterpriseThe Riverbed CX 70 series, the first WAN optimi-zation solution specifically designed to meet the needs of modern applications in the hybrid enterprise, offers a new hardware form factor to complement the most complete visibility, control, and optimization solution to accelerate performance of on-premises, cloud, and SaaS applications.

“Riverbed is best positioned to do for hybrid networks and SaaS applications what we’ve done for traditional WANs and applications running on-premises for over 10 years,” said Taj ElKhayat,

Regional Vice President, Middle East, Turkey, North, West, and Central Africa at Riverbed Technology. “SteelHead has always delivered unparalleled optimization to applications, and we’ve now added visibility and control across hybrid apps and hybrid networks, which are criti-cal to enabling hybrid enterprises to achieve peak performance. Our new CX70 hardware series coupled with SteelHead 9.0 and SteelCentral AppResponse 9.5, offers the most powerful solu-tion for IT to transform application performance into business performance.”

MULTI-TENANT ERP FOR MANUFACTURING FROM INFOR The enhanced version of Infor LN delivers deeper vertical and micro-vertical functionality within manufacturing, with the goal of helping better align customers with business objectives and reducing the need for costly customization. It is now multi-tenant enabled to support the industry specific needs of InforCloudSuites. Infor believes that no two clouds are alike, so the latest iteration of Infor LN utilizes a tailored approach, helping customers focus on the unique manufacturing needs of their organization. Infor LN is available to customers via a cloud-hosted or on-premise deployment to better meet individual business requirements.

According to Kimberly Knickle, Practice Director and Robert Parker, Group Vice President, IDC, Infor’s investments are essential to the transition manufacturers should make in modernizing their applications and their enterprise architecture.

HUAWEI OFFERS NEXT-GENERATION COMMUNICATIONS WITH VIDEO PHONEAimed at boosting office and employee productivity across organizations in the Middle East, Huawei has recently unveiled its latest next-generation full-HD video phone, the eSpace 8950 with plans to offer the flagship device for Middle East enterprises. Accord-ing to Huawei, full-touch screen technology is captivating busi-nesses across the world as growing

popularity of intelligent office video phones have fostered habits in using new communication methods.

“Today marks the arrival of Hua-wei’s most innovative and techno-logically advanced video phone yet, it is a symbol of our commitment to pushing the boundaries of unified communication and collaborative solutions for enterprises in the Middle East”, said Kamran Shaukat, Regional UCC Solutions Manager, Huawei, Enterprise, ME.“We are providing enterprises with greater

convenience and an improved qual-ity of video experience that requires very low bandwidth to operate.” eSpace 8950 works with UC systems to provide a wide assortment of enterprise communication services, including corporate directory, voice mailbox, and extension mobility. The rich functionality effectively enhances enterprise communication efficiency.

INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE Q4 RESULTS END 2014 ON STRONG NOTEDonald E. Brown, Interactive Intel-ligence founder and CEO says the fourth quarter that ended on Dec. 31, 2014 was a strong end to a pivotal year for the company. “While continuing to gain market share due to the robust demand for our cloud offerings, we effectively prepared to deliver our new multitenant PureCloud services in 2015. We took major steps toward our goal of becoming the leading provider of technology to optimize the customer experience, whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud, at companies of any size anywhere in the world. More major steps will be taken in the coming year, as we expect strong cloud-based revenue growth along with improved operational efficiencies”. Total orders increased 22 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013, with cloud-based orders up 42 percent to represent 55 percent of total orders. Total revenues were $92.6 million, up 2 percent from the 2013 fourth quarter. GAAP operating income was $2.0 million, compared to $6.5 million in the 2013 fourth quarter. The company generated $1.3 million from operating activities in the fourth quarter and used $4.3 million for capital expenditures, including the continued expansion of its cloud infra-structure, and capitalized $7.3 million for PureCloud development cost.

For the full year 2014, total orders increased by 11 percent from 2013 and cloud-based orders were up 29 percent year-over-year.

CANON FORTIFIES TIES WITH OMAN’S IT CHANNELWithin the strong presence of the Sultanate’s growing community of IT dealers, system integrators and resellers, over eight top-performing channel partners were awarded at the event. “The Canon Channel Partner programme seeks to continuously recognise the contribution of key players and team members of the Oman’s IT dealer channel who contribute to our success,” said Hendrik Verbrugghe, Marketing Director, Canon Middle East. He added that such events not only recognise the partners, but are also important to help everybody gain a greater understanding of the state-of-the-art technology and the latest innovations.

Following the awards, Canon introduced its latest models of laser and inkjet printers that are ideal for small businesses looking for greater efficiency and increased productivity.

CHANNEL STREET

18 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

Cloud | Mobile | Social MediaBFSI | Education | Energy | Healthcare | Hospitality

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Addressing Financial Complexities..!

Cyberoam has launched CyberoamOS 10.6.2 for its UTM and NGFW security appliances. Among many updates included in the new firmware are the increase in Firewall throughputs by up to 430%, IPS throughputs by up to 210% and UTM through-puts by up to 190%; inclusion of User Threat Quotient (UTQ) offering security intelligence to spot risky users in network; availability of Cyberoam in

Discover mode. Says Mr. Abhilash Sonwane,

SVP - Products & Technology, Cyberoam: “With CyberoamOS 10.6.2, we have touched even higher scales by further leveraging the fast path technology over Cyberoam’s multi-core platform. Our new performance breakthroughs will help Cyberoam customers boost network security performance

without changing their existing hardware”.

ACTION TO ACTION PLANS TO DELIVER CES INNOVATIONS TO META

NEW BREED OF CRYPTO-LOCKER RANSOMWARE HITS UAEESET has been observing a surge in a new type of cyber-attack. Dubbed CTB-Locker, it is a new variant of the ransomware family and is affecting organizations within the GCC and in particular the UAE with ESET having recorded multiple incidents in a short period of time. Commenting on the malware spread, Mohamed Djenane, Security Specialist, ESET Middle East said, “Organizations in the UAE are getting targeted email, mainly having a subject containing the word ‘fax’. This email contains an attachment infected with a trojan downloader.” Once downloaded by an unsuspecting victim, the trojan downloader downloads the main CTB-Locker malware. On execution, CTB-Locker will encrypt specific file formats on the infected device, lock the users screen and display a ransom message”

CyberoamOS 10.6.2 With Major Performance Improvements

HITACHI 2015 ROADMAP: BEYOND CLOUD, MOBIL-ITY, SOCIAL, AND BIG DATAHDS sees a business landscape in the ME that will take the region beyond Mobility, cloud, social, and Big Data in 2015. “These macro trends are pervasive, but forward-looking businesses will focus further down the road,” said Aaron White, GM, HDS ME and Pakistan. “We’re moving into a year where Management Automation, Global Virtualization and the Data Lake will begin to enter the vernacular and driving challenges like the move to software-defined and hybrid cloud infrastructures will become increasingly urgent.” Pentaho CTO James Dixon is credited with coining the term “data lake”. These “data lake” systems will hold massive amounts of data and be accessible through file and web interfaces.

ORGANISATIONS STILL CHALLENGED TO REALISE FULL POTENTIAL OF VIDEO

Polycom’s survey analysed how video collaboration solutions are being used in business today. The global study found more than 90 percent of those who regularly use video to collaborate are experiencing higher productivity, better teamwork, financial savings and reduced travel expenses. Over 80 percent directly link their fiscal savings to making faster business decisions and improving employee work/life balance.

Although the survey uncovered the many benefits of using video collabora-tion, barriers to broad adoption still exist. The survey found more than 50 percent of people who regularly use video rarely or never need IT to help them place a call, reinforcing the ease of use with today’s solutions. Very few organisations have broadly rolled out video to desktop and mobile users and typically have limited availability of video to the larger conference rooms.

“The value of most networking technologies tends to increase dispro-portionally the greater the numbers of individuals connected,” said Rob Bamforth, research and analysis house, Quocirca. “Video conferencing is no exception. Moreover, increasing usage also generates more familiarity

Action To Action(ATA) plans to bring the latest technological inno-vations that were unveiled at CES to the Middle East, Africa & Turkey. Following its successful participa-tion at CES, ATA aims to further support innovative-entrepreneurs in presenting their technology to a global market space. The company has already been instrumental in

bringing new technology brands to the Middle East region, including LED lighting specialists Thomson Lighting.

“The emerging markets of the Middle East, Africa and Turkey present the perfect opportunity for innovative technologies, owing to the presence of a growing number of SMEs who are looking for affordable

yet feature rich solutions. We established new business oppor-tunities during CES, which we will announce later this year”, says Cizar Abughazaleh, Managing Director, ATA. ATA’s primary mission is to identify new technological innova-tions and entrepreneurs from across the world, and help them penetrate into new markets by building and

developing an efficient channel and distribution management system. ATA is an International Affiliate Member of the Consumer Electron-ics Afflation (CEA). “As a member of the CEA, we can identify future technology trends and this allows us to align our go to market strategy,” explained Abughazaleh.

ABHILASH SONWANE, SVP - PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY, CYBEROAM

CHANNEL STREET

20 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia CeBIT Global Conferences

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Among its achievements in 2014, Pure Storage grew bookings in EMEA by more than 300% year to date and increased its customer base in the region by 2.5x.

In the past year, Pure Storage EMEA has expanded teams into 8+ countries with plans for further expansion. It has increased the number of business partners in the Pure Storage P3 partner program to

more than 150. In the Middle East, Global Distribution provides the market leading experience of Pure. Global provides services and sup-port (including technical support) for the Pure Storage FlashArray.

“The channel ecosystem is vital to our success and this year we have focused on building strong relation-ships with the best integrators and Value Added Resellers across

the region,” said David Hatfield, President of Pure Storage. “We’re incredibly excited by the response we’ve received from the channel. In our view it is a seal of approval for the transformational business ben-efits of enterprise flash; it also adds scope, reach and trusting relation-ships that are key to our success and the success of our customers.”

Pure Storage increased the

number of its strategic customer relationships in EMEA in 2014, with the addition of industry lead-ing companies in all major verticals to its customer portfolio. In an effort to continue building momen-tum for the business in EMEA, Pure Storage has bolstered it’s leadership team with two significant hires: EMEA VP James Petter and EMEA CTO, Alex McMullan.

PURE STORAGE EXCELS IN EMEA AND PLANS EXPANSION IN 2015

Unify Takes FVC on Board as a DistieUnify appoints FVC as its distributor. Thomas Veit, Senior VP EMEAR Channels at Unify, said, “Securing this partnership with FVC is a result of our con-tinued focus on supporting the channel in embracing complete UC portfolio. With a strong expertise in Unified Commu-nications, we believe that this relationship is a strong fit for us and something we look forward to developing further with FVC.” Unify selected FVC because of its expertise in

Unified Communications, and its strong relationships with the channel across the region. FVC will maintain stocks of Unify products that suit the market requirement and Unify’s Circuit UC Platform will also be exhib-ited and demonstrated across its Executive Briefing Centres in the region, integrating them

with existing Polycom video platforms.

FORTINET RECOGNIZES TOP 2014 PARTNERS AND DISTRIBUTORS OF 2014 Fortinet has given away its Partner and Distributor awards for the year 2014. This year, there were 19 awards that celebrate each of the core Fortinet partner competen-cies. “These prestigious award winners represent the best technology professionals our partner ecosystem has to offer,” said Patrice Perche, senior vice president sales and support for International region at Fortinet. “The 2014 Partner of the Year Awards honor our top partners’ ability to solve critical business challenges for our mutual customers, through a commitment to innovation and excel-lence. Congratulations to each winner on this incredible achievement.”

XEROX CORPORATION HOSTS PARTNER CONFER-ENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST “At Xerox we believe that our partners play a key role in helping us continue our leadership in the document technology arena. We are a partner-centric company, bringing a broad range of offerings and revenue growth opportunities to value added resellers and independent agents.,” comments Dan Smith, General Manager for Integrated Marketing for the MEA .

“One of our main objectives of 2015 is to seek partnerships that will strengthen our value proposition to our customers in the region,” adds Smith.

PATRICE PERCHE SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES AND SUPPORT FORTINET

THOMAS VEIT, SENIOR VP EMEAR CHANNELS AT UNIFY

DSG ORGANIZES WORKSHOP FOR “HAPPINESS INDEX”Dubai Smart Government Department organized a workshop attended by 90 employees representing 26 govern-mental entities in order to publicize the ‘Happiness Index Initiative’ and prepare the necessary requirements to imple-ment it as soon as possible. This project will be launched in April 2015.

The workshop discussed the provi-sion of a smart, interactive software development kit (SDK) developed by a team from Dubai Smart Government Department in coordination and cooperation with the Executive Office of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. This kit is connected to a central electronic network to measures the public’s happiness index and satisfac-tion with Dubai’s government services on a daily basis.

H.E. Ahmed Bin Humaidan, Director General, DSG, said: “We are creating this SDK to recognize the importance of concerted efforts among Dubai’s government entities to realize the leadership’s vision of meeting all the necessary requirements of our country’s citizens and residents. Additionally, we strive to maintain the UAE’s top position at the regional ‘International Happiness Index’ in 2014.The UAE also has topped the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer by obtaining the first position globally in people’s trust in government, trust in the economy and the government’s ability to stimulate innovation.”

CHANNEL STREET

22 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

PETRA HEINRICH, VP, PARTNERS & ALLIANCES EMEA AT RED HAT

Is cloud adoption a reality or just hype?We do see it becoming real. Two areas show promise- the on-premise cloud at the customer end and also the cloud service providers’ adoption is growing very fast. North America is on a lead in this area. We now see cloud adoption picking up

in various countries of Europe as well. A positive trend is catching up in the Middle East as well. Some countries are the innovative ones, while some others might be bit of technology laggards.

How do you enable your partners when it comes to successful

deployment of new technologies?Since the products are new to the market, we do need to do a lot of hand holding for the partners. We organise training programs as well. We have a broad set of enablement tools that can be provided- some of which are online, which make it easy to have access to a lot of classes and content on flexible timings whenever one wishes to. Additionally, we definitely focus on bringing experts and organize contact classes for discussion. The training curriculum is very much enhanced. And we make sure that the partners are taking the technology forward.

What kind of partner strategy do you follow?When it comes to technology like open stack for example, globally we have partners like Dell and Cisco who have openly adopted Red Hat Open Stack as their go-to-market strategy. Since we are dealing with new products, we selectively chose who we work with. Partners who associate with us get to leverage the strength of Dell and Cisco.We are looking for mid-sized system integrators, solution provider type of companies as well.

Public, private or hybrid cloud- what does Red Hat go with? Well, definitely a mix model is the best. But then it depends on the target group you are dealing with. For every large account, we definitely recommend an open hybrid cloud environment because there are certain workloads that might not be suited to go on public cloud.

Do you think there’s some vertical bias when it comes to the reception of cloud based technologies?It is seen all over the place. Everyone seems to be using the cloud offerings in various ways. In the Middle East, the service providers seem to be taking the lead. More than the vertical, it’s about the workloads an organization has to deal with that decides the question of cloud adoption.

Why should partners choose Red Hat?Red Hat comes with a strong value proposition to end customers. Our ever-growing customer base and success over the past few years as we’ve grown across the portfolio are a testament to that fact. Red Hat is a stable and reliable vendor that lives by the values it advocates, with the programmes and enablement in place to reward and secure the investments that partners make as they reach the top tiers of our partner programs and reap the benefits of stronger, more profitable customer relationships. ë

CHANNELS HAVE BEEN SCEPTICAL ABOUT THE CLOUDY FORECASTS

THROUGHOUT THE JOURNEY OF CLOUD COMPUTING FROM THE HYPE

PHASE TO DISILLUSIONMENT AND THEREAFTER AS WELL, WHEN

DEPLOYMENT COMES UP AS A NIGHTMARE. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA

TEAM SPOKE TO PETRA HEINRICH, VP, PARTNERS & ALLIANCES EMEA AT

RED HAT TO CLEAR THE AIR WHEN IT COMES TO ADOPTION OF CLOUD

TECHNOLOGIES AS WELL AS DISCUSS PARTNER STRATEGIES.

Future of Cloud- not that “cloudy”

23 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

MY VIEWS

DR. JASSIM HAJIA WINNER ALL-THE-WAYl Graduation in telecommunications from

the famed Cable and Wireless College, Cornwall, UK

l Master’s degree in Management of Information Technology from the University of Sunderland, UK

l Doctorate in Business Administration (PhD) from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK in 2010

l Started his career with Sprint Telecommunications in London

l Joined Gulf Air in 1985 as a network engineer

l Moved to Sabre – an airline IT Solutions Company – to whom Gulf Air outsourced its IT services.

l Moved to EDS, another American IT solutions company with a global presence, when Gulf Air moved its outsourcing services where he grew within the ranks to become the Executive Director of EDS.

l When Gulf Air brought back its IT services, Dr. Haji also moved back to Gulf Air and became the Head of Information Technology Infrastructure in 2008.

l Functioning as Gulf Air Director of Information Technology since August 2011

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MEA

an age where nobody wants to wait and informa-tion is flowing everywhere out there in the most overwhelming fashion. So, the CIOs need to be updated about the changing dynamics of the society, technology and people’s choosing and buying strategy.

Technology at times can exert adverse effects as well. As Dr Haji points it out; unless there is a proper harmonization in the way customers are approached via different technology media, there is a higher risk of losing customers instead of gaining more. For example, frequent irrelevant texts or mails from a company can drive one nuts and he/she may just never wish to go for the services of that particular company. So, the tech-nology drivers like CIOs need to exert extreme caution before deciding on their course of action; there is a need to understand the culture of the customers, their appetite for technology and the way they like to be served and assisted. There also needs to be proper ways of customization; not all customers can be approached in the similar way.

These are the things which one needs to look into as well; the duty of a CIO is also to oversee that all the systems are functioning properly so that service delivery isn’t affected in whatsoever manner.

The biggest challenge of a CIO as Dr Haji points out is the need to know not only the trends of technology, but also the trends of the business, the attitudes of the customers and the culture of the people who are on the receiving side of all the technological enablement. One needs to know about the competitors as well and their strategies.

So, the question that is quick to raise its head is- “Business first or technology?”

BUSINESS FIRST OR TECHNOLOGY? Well, Dr Haji puts it across; it is decided depending on the task in hand. For example, while looking into the data storage or archiving, technology is the sole point of interest; but when one is dealing with solutions that are directly going to the customers, it needs to be made sure that it’s in accordance with what the people expect and appreciate in that part of the world rather than just blindly going with technologi-cal trends. That’s when one needs to evaluate different technologies before implementing the one which not only can be readily deployed in place but also which, when in action, can result in maximum customer satisfaction without creating any kind of unease for them.

But is the need for CIOs to understand the business applicable to all industries or only to specific ones like aviation and may be some others? Dr Haji believes that technology is an enabler in every vertical but how well a CIO

GULF AIR

SettingHigh StandardsGulf Air has emerged as one of the most technologically advanced Airlines in the Middle East region - our exclusive interview with Dr. Jassim Haji, Director Information Technology, Gulf Air.

n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Founded in 1950, Gulf Air is the proud national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain. As a pioneer-ing airline in the Middle East region with over sixty years of experience

and expertise in flying people across continents, Gulf Air is today one of the most powerful brands and a name to reckon with in the global aviation industry. The airline’s current network stretches from Europe to Asia, connecting 43 cities in 24 countries, with a fleet of 28 aircraft.

Dr. Jassim Haji has been functioning as Gulf Air Director of Information Technology since August 2011. Dr. Haji has been instrumental in implementing some key innovations at Gulf Air’s IT systems and processes, most notably, the intro-duction of advanced technology for the Gulf Air World Wide Contact Centre and Cloud Comput-ing that have helped further improve customer interface services as well as cost efficiency to the company.

SYNERGY OF TECHNOL-OGY AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION “It was one among the first to adopt technology back in the early 70s” says Dr Jassim Haji. He adds, “With the evolution and fast growth of airline industry, competition has been obvious. Mostly all have the latest aircrafts and fly the same destinations. In such a scenario, the main differentiator which arises apart from the price

differences is the customer satisfaction”. Gulf Air takes this very seriously. As Dr Haji tells us, customer satisfaction is measured month over month based on complaints and surveys. More-over, they resort to sentiment analysis procedures to address the grievances if any and ensure their customers are happy.

Year 2011 was the year, when, as Dr Haji puts it across, Gulf Air decided to be not only the one to react to a technological evolution, rather be a partner in the same. Business Intelligence was implemented to provide access to actionable knowledge in order to enhance profitability.

CHANGING ROLE OF IT MANAGERS AND CIOSDr Haji feels that the present day CIOs need to understand how the customers think. No more can they just manage being someone sitting in the back and being told what to do; in order to satisfy the customers, they need to be closer to the business as well as the customers.

Dr Haji makes an interesting point- accord-ing to the changing needs and attitudes of the customers, and with the new generation of tech savvy public; it’s very much essential to deliver services according to their comfort so that opportunities are not missed before the customer changes his mind to opt for an alternative service owing to the latter’s ready availability. There arises instantly the need for mobility and agility in the efficient delivery of solutions to the customers in

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needs to understand the business trends apart from the technological dynamics might differ from one industry to the other depending on the way they operate. It boils down to the fact that the CIO’s role is to leverage technology as a competitive advantage to the organization. With technology, things can be done cheaper, quicker and better than the competitors; and even one can beat them in the market through that.

When all said and done, there’s no doubt in the fact that the role of the CIOs is becoming more and more important across organizations.

When a customer compares airlines, the technology behind the scenes is not exactly evident to him. One considers prices, timings, connectivity, airport and in-flight services, ease of booking, check in and cancellations, and of late mobility during the flight. So, what makes Gulf Air superior considering all these aspects; Dr Haji tells us.

GULF AIR VS OTHER AIR-LINES OF THE REGIONAccording to him, technology is affecting

customers either directly or indirectly. “Indirectly, we enable our team, our employees-front end and back end, by providing them the latest technolo-gies in the fastest manner to enable them to do their job better”. At Gulf Air, it is ensured that all employees are technologically empowered so that the customers get the best service. Moreover, our customers get an extensive range of options to choose from; combination of holidays and tickets etc. Feedbacks are taken seriously at Gulf Air and acted upon.

“In late 2011, we formulated an IT strategy spanning five years; so by end of 2016, the results will start coming in”, adds Dr Haji on an optimistic note; as it seems, the success stories of Gulf Air are here to go on for several years. He believes that the several technological upgrada-tions in Gulf Air, on different fronts like big data, cloud, mobilization, and business intelligence will be integrated perfectly by then for maximal profitability.

So, with all that technology, does it mean Gulf Air is the best? Dr Haji answers this in the witty manner; “I don’t wish to claim that we are the best

because that might sound biased. But then we have been recognized at levels of highest repute, be it GITEX, GISEC, IDC and many more. We were the first private cloud providers in the whole Middle East and Africa. We are the first in the whole world to implement Big Data with Arabic sentiment. We are also the pioneers in the airline industry to introduce Electronic Flight Bags”.

SERVICE PROVID-ERS VS IN-HOUSE DEVELOPMENTWith so many technology providers coming up with innovative solutions, it surely must be making it easier for verticals to upgrade their technology. Well, not always.

As Dr Haji brings out an interesting inference from his experience, “a lot of vendors come up with variety of solutions; but the problem that even if we deploy these technologies, these would still require maintenance by skilled personnel and timely evaluation and updates. But most vendors might be technologically exceptional however lack knowledge of our business. We can’t let them

2012l Best Airline Award at Arabian Computer News

Arab Technology Awards (Dubai, 2012)l CIO 50 Awards and Forum (Dubai, 2012)

2013l GITEX Cloud Award for best Big Data Solution

(Dubai)l Implementation of the Year Award for Hospitality &

Tourism by Arabian Computer News (Dubai)l Achievement of the Year Award by Computer News

Middle East Magazine – CNME (Dubai)l MEET ICT Excellence award for the Best Online

Application for Business and Commerce (Bahrain)l Network World Middle East Awards under

virtualization category (Dubai)l CIO 50 Awards and Forum (Dubai)

2014l MEET ICT Excellence award for the Best Mobile

Application (Bahrain) for Electronic Flight Bag (EFB)l Best Big Data Solution by GITEX (Dubai)l Harnessing Innovation Award by Arabian Computer

News (Dubai) for business intelligence and big datal Best Green IT Initiative by Global Enterprise Connect

(Dubai)l Best Data Loss Prevention by GISEC (Dubai)l ICT Achievers Award by iTECH Gulf (Bahrain)l IDC Best Innovation Award (Dubai)l CIO 50 Awards and Forum (Dubai)

2015l CIO 100 Awards and Forum (Dubai)

AWARDS WON BY GULF AIR UNDER THE DIRECTION OF DR. JASSIM HAJI

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26 FEBRUARY 2015

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operate in our set up as that might imply leakage of our privacy and time as well. So, that’s why we focus on in house development”.

TRANSLATING TECHNOL-OGIES INTO ACTIONBig data, for example, is in hype since its outset. However, vendors of big data have done it mostly in English language. Gulf Air pioneered establish-ment of big data with Arabic sentiment analysis. “Majority of our customers are Arabic speaking. In order to grasp the information exchanged by them amongst themselves on various social sites, we resorted to Arabic sentiment analysis. Social media is too strong and yet free; so impossible to ignore and if well-tapped into, we get instant data without any costs. Feedbacks from our customers help us to improve”. This has been one of the biggest projects as well as innovations of Gulf Air. Feedbacks from GITEX have clearly indicated that Gulf Air is the first company in the Middle East to actually show a real business application of big data; everyone is talking about it but all that has been mostly in theory.

GULF AIR AND ARABIC SENTIMENT ANALYSISSentiment analysis/opinion mining refers to the process of determining feelings (attitudes, opinions and emotions) from text. With social media, sentiment analysis has gained importance.

“Never in history had we this amount of opinionated data; word of mouth can make or break your business. Social media is very crucial to monitor your customer feedback and public perception,” said Dr. Haji.

More than 80% of posts in social media about Gulf Air are in Arabic. However, very few providers offer Arabic Sentiment Analysis, with limitations and inaccuracies; available solutions don’t satisfy Gulf Air’s needs.

Hence, in an attempt to work through this problem, Gulf Air adopted Lexicon-based approach. Lexicon and rules between words were defined to determine meaning and sentiment. Gulf Air has rebuilt the Arabic language in the sentiment analysis logic. Just like a child learning a language, this logic has to learn and mature to increase accuracy of results.

Test and learn approach is being used by continuously adding new words and improv-ing/changing the rules as required. Results are regularly reviewed to find opportunities for improvements. Accuracy achieved as of now is 84%.

The benefits of the sentiment analysis program have already started pouring in. These include timely reporting of hot topics and areas of controversy about Gulf Air. Instead of manually analyzing hundreds of tweets a day (long hours), it is done in less than a minute. Public/customers’ sentiment reporting as well as trend analysis of sentiments and topics not only helps in quick corrective action on negative situations but also suggests further measures to enhance customer satisfaction.

CLOUD COMPUTING IN GULF AIRFor a legacy organization like Gulf Air, cloud computing was yet another challenge, given the several facets the technology entails. Dr Haji comments, “We started with virtualization quite early, back in 2010. We gradually adopted various technologies associated with it. We became the first private cloud implementer in the region. Skilled team was put in place and the whole thing was completed in 2012”. This brought in approxi-mately 40-60% savings in costs. When asked about hybrid cloud, Dr Haji says, they do plan to integrate with other clouds; however there won’t be any third party in their own private cloud as such. “We don’t believe that service providers can provide cloud to big organizations adequately because it’s very complex and has to be very secure. Security is an important point that many

“Never in history had we this amount of opinionated data; word of mouth can make or break your business. Social media is very crucial to monitor your customer feedback and public perception.”

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organizations arise late to; first they build cloud and save money and then spend a lot of money in securing the data on the cloud; so the savings don’t really yield fruits”. Gulf Air knows security is not something to be taken lightly; as Dr Haji tells us, “We have been recognized at GISEC for our security solutions. Auditing is done by global experts so that no loopholes go unnoticed”.

Building the Private Cloud in Gulf Air has paved the way towards mobility. Cloud provides ubiquitous services reachable anywhere, ideal for mobile devices. It is enabling Gulf Air Staff to conduct business on mobiles/tablets through cloud services. Electronic Flight Bags have been implemented on the cloud by using tablets.

GULF AIR CLOUD MOBILITY STRATEGYPassengers have been empowered to use their mobiles to conduct different services like mobile reservation and booking, managing/changing flights, flight check-in by mobile, mobile board-ing passes, flight Status Inquiries and accessing Gulf Air lounge through mobiles.

Cloud mobility in Gulf Air is not only for flight crew and passengers, but for every single staff. Mobile policies have been enforced in Gulf Air for corporate-owned devices to govern such usage and protect the data. Beside security mea-sures enforcement of devices, security awareness is instilled in every employee.

SECURITY MEASURES IMPLEMENTED BY GULF AIR ON CLOUD MOBILITYThreats and vulnerabilities are addressed by controlling firmware updates, bug fixes and releases over the cloud. DLP solution has been implemented alongwith right Management Services solution to secure digital contents on mobiles. Care is taken to enforce Gulf Air por-table devices policies to ensure physical device security. Additionally, Gulf Air password policies are enforced on passengers as well.

ELECTRONIC FLIGHT BAGS OVER CLOUDGulf Air was able to implement Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) by relying on its cloud mobility setup. EFB eliminates paper-based manuals and materials by centralizing all content through cloud services. EFB is offered via Private Cloud and tablets. Estimated cost saving is 1.5 million dollars.

ROI FROM CLOUDCloud has helped in reducing physical servers count by 35% (24% cost saving in capital expendi-

ture budget). This has also led to manpower repositioning by 30% and agility in IT teams. 17% cost saving has been possible in terms of infra-structure software licenses avoidance. Average age of server infrastructure has reduced by 70% (retirement of older platforms through virtualiza-tion) . Overall, it helped Gulf Air achieve 41% cost saving in its capital expenditure budget in the 1st year of implementation.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES COMING UP FOR GULF AIRVirtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is on the agenda; pilot projects are already in place. The communication between the ground staff and the flight staff is all going to be electronic. Dr Haji adds, “We are also going to provide our engineers on the ground with tablets to automate the technical logs. Our EFBs already have been pioneers of green and sustainable technologies. Not only are we mobilizing our customers to access information from anywhere, we are also equally concerned for technological enablement of our staff as well. Are we trying to ensure the best standards in safety, security, availability, accuracy, mobility and sustainability”. BYOD is already in place; mobility is being enhanced for all employees to enhance profitability and ease of working. Security measures are being strictly followed too. Apart from that, there are Gulf Air teams working on Internet of Things, in Memory Computing, etc. Open source technologies have been tapped in to for e-learning on mobile platforms. Predictive modeling is also on the cards.

CREATING BENCHMARKS“For the third year, we are getting certified ISO27001; for the second year, we’re getting certified ISO20000 and ISO9001 in quality

management”, declares Dr Haji. He further adds that in 4-5 months from now, they are hoping to be certified ISO22301 which is for business continuity. He shares with an air of confidence, “We are the first airlines to have three certifica-tions from ISO”.

FLYING HIGHAccording to Dr Haji, “Technology not only grows with market demand; but also it grows when there are innovations required to fasten market growth”.

Climbing the mountains is tough; but tougher still is to maintain oneself on the peak. With that analogy, Dr Haji says that though Gulf Air is technologically leading already, they shall constantly strive to ensure that the high quality of their services is maintained, and security breaches are prevented. Technologies don’t always come with long life-spans; what might have been the talk of the town yesterday might not be relevant tomorrow; so constant evaluation and upgrade is required. Dr Haji adds complacency can weaken the strongest armies; so he believes it is important to ensure the appetite for growth and excellence is never lost.

FINALLY…Gulf Air definitely has been an early adopter of technology in the region in the aviation industry. They prefer creating excellence on their own rather than depending on off-the-shelf products and solutions. They have definitely hit the jackpot and are giving their best show to make sure their market position continues to be unrivalled. “Balance between technology and business is very crucial; the challenge is to leverage technology for enhanced productivity without hampering security and privacy. CIOs have a complex role to play; resistance is sure to be there; but once you give up, the war is lost”, concludes Dr Haji. ë

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Critical Security for Key Industries

Virtualizing of servers, network, and storage is a highly commod-itized segment now. Virtualiza-tion is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. Server virtualization is

moving beyond basic consolidation into a more managed virtual environment. Many enterprises have focused on server virtualization to increase the efficiency, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of their data centers. These businesses are also leveraging server virtualization as an important starting point in their journey to adopt cloud computing.

SERVER VIRTUALIZATION MARKET IN THE MEA:Global Server Virtualization market was forecast to grow at 28.10% CAGR over the period 2013-2018, whereas the Virtualization Services market was set to grow at 10.35% CAGR during the same period.

In the MEA region, many companies have started to recognise virtualisation as a must have technology in order to reduce overall costs and improve efficiency. This has led to increased adoption across verticals and particularly in the banking and oil & gas sectors. Virtualisation

experts estimate an adoption rate between 80 and 90% in these verticals while the majority of large organisations in the region remain at 20 to 30%.

VIRTUALIZATION KNOWHOW IN THE ENTERPRISES:Enterprises in the MEA are realizing the undeni-able benefits of virtualisation, which is driving uptake of large scale virtual deployments. From cost savings to business flexibility and application agility inherent in emerging private and public cloud architecture, virtualisation technologies

n B Y : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

Virtualization is definitely much more than just a cost-cutting procedure. Gartner rightly calls upon to see virtualization strategically as ‘a catalyst of overall IT change and modernization’. Server virtualization is already a top priority for enterprises and the trend is here to stay.

VIRTUALIZATION

Infrastructure at the speed of business

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equipment, which is considered a depreciating asset. As a result IaaS will see greater adoption as more companies are squeezed for budgets. It is the early adopters who will gain the most in the long run as they will achieve economies of scale and a faster ROI compared to those that don’t.

According to IDC, UAE and Saudi will lead in Infrastructure as a services (IaaS) adoption in the Middle East with the spend reaching $280 mil-lion with a year-on-year growth of 33 per cent.

ACTUAL “ECONOMIC” IMPACT OF SERVER VIRTUALISATION One very important advantage of server virtualization is the reduction of servers- if five to ten servers can be reduced to one and it can give the same service, it is an economical saving as well as it helps in reduced carbon footprint since running servers require huge amount of power and cooling.

Lesser hardware leads to a smaller footprint in terms of Cost impact, lower opex including Power and cooling requirements, lesser hardware meaning lesser break-fix issues and lesser but skilled resources. The potential economic impact on business from disruptions is higher since more eggs are in one basket and hence the headroom of failure needs to be carefully assessed.

In order to reap maximal returns from investment in virtualization, one need to ensure that focus of requirement is not lost, and right technology stack and the right technology partners are chosen.

SECURITY CONCERNS AND SOLUTIONS “Moving to the cloud does not lessen the security risks when compared to the physical network. Customers may need to be more diligent than ever since the cloud implies easier access and to maximize hardware resources, applications of different trust levels may be running on the same machines” says Matt Keil, Product Marketing Director. Data Center & Virtualization, Palo Alto Networks.

The same levels of application control and threat prevention should be used to protect both your cloud computing environment and your physical network. Cloud security solution needs to be able implement security policies based on the concept of Zero Trust as a means of control-ling traffic between workloads while preventing lateral movement of threats. Gartner advocates that organizations “favor security vendors that span physical and virtual environments with a consistent policy management and enforcement framework”. In order to ensure security keeps

have become a vital part of modern data centres in the region. According to some analysts the awareness among the large enterprises has reached about 92% and 83% among SMBs. How-ever the percentage of enterprises actually fully adopting and exploiting the complete potential of virtualization is lower.

The Middle East is a mature virtualisation market today and enterprises have deployed this technology across their non-mission critical environments. In fact, as the trend is gaining momentum and organizations are becoming more comfortable with the concept of virtualisa-tion, they are also feeling confident about deploy-ing it for their mission critical applications.

Other drivers are also now emerging: virtualisation improves business continuity and

resilience, and can assist in disaster recovery preparations. Many organisations are now look-ing at how to further automate and orchestrate their virtualisation stack in order to try and gain efficiencies from the platform.

Even SMBs are now opting for virtualised technology to support their IT needs. It is believed that this trend will continue to grow as the adoption of virtualisation becomes more feasible and cost effective.

ADOPTION RATES OF IAAS ACROSS THE MEAOrganisations are cutting down budgets on infrastructure and are looking at IaaS as it is more viable and cost effective. Also companies are being forced to consider not investing in IT

JAMES SPEARMAN, PRINCIPAL CLOUD CONSULTANT & HEAD OF DATA CENTRE INFRA-STRUCTURE, DIMENSION DATA

“The market is starting to change with a view to gain licensing efficien-cies through Enterprise Agreements and a move to automation. We’re also seeing a trend within customers to move the host environment from traditional servers into hyper converged solutions”

SWAPNENDU MAZUMDAR, HEAD OF NETWORKS, EHOST-ING DATAFORT

“It is important to know that not all applications are suitable for virtu-alisation. Before imple-menting virtualisation, enterprises need to ensure that their IT architecture, network infrastructure and workforce is compat-ible, efficient and will provide sufficient perfor-mance without affecting the workflow. ”

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MOHIT PAL, DATACENTER SPE-CIALIST | MIDDLE EAST, FUJITSU

“Server virtualiza-tion offerings from our technology partners are integrated into our Fujitsu solutions. And especially to enhance your benefits in using server virtualization, we provide virtualization-extending offerings.”

VIDYASAGAR PATRO, MAN-AGER- PRE SALES, ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE, EMITAC ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS (EES)

“As TCO/ROI is one of the key concerns – a Virtualization technology from a vendor that has a long roadmap, easy avail-able upgrades and good support can be a great plus point.”

on the cost savings. As the adoption and growth of the environment has occurred within the organisation it has introduced new inefficiencies and complexity, examples being virtual server sprawl and resource starvation. With proper planning and correct toolset choice it is possible to reign back the environment and simplify the management even across multi hypervisor platforms. Whilst the advantage of virtualisation allows organisations to reduce their physical infrastructure footprint what you don’t see can often be as difficult to manage as what you can.

Virtualised servers, which have additional layers of management and monitoring that is not required by physical servers, need individual maintenance and proper system assessment. This could be difficult to manage and hence, outsourc-ing is a relatively more viable option.

With the key vendors in this area coming out with more matured management tools like Operations Management, Infrastructure Naviga-tion etc. - this nightmare has been well addressed now. Furthermore, the IT managers are taking full care to avoid the sprawl.

SELECTING A VIRTUALIZA-TION SOLUTION:CIOs who are not very familiar with virtualiza-tion choose to go with the market leaders. Those familiar with virtualization consider applications, costs, benefits, environment and decide accord-ingly from the options in offer.

Some factors to consider while selecting the right vendor are:

1. Customer References – A reliable partner is one with experience and positive testimonials/ customer references in implement-ing similar virtualized solutions

2. Long term relationships – Virtualisa-tion providers that have maintained relationships with many clients tend to be some of the most effective ones. Clients will not stick with a provider if they are unsatisfied, so continuity can be read as a sign of competence

3. Custom solutions – There is no single computing environment suited for all companies. That is why a good virtualisation partner will consider company direction, critical success factors, and business objectives when crafting an infrastructure. A network that is designed to meet the specific needs of a client will be far more valuable than one that forces the client to alter its setup to accommodate it

4. Security: Security is critical for any business and while choosing a vendor it is essential to know the level of security that the service provider offers

Besides the above, it is always advisable to

pace with the speed of change your workflows may exhibit, one’s security solution should include features that will allow you to lessen, and in some cases, eliminate the manual processes that security policy updates often require.

“Virtual servers are every bit as vulnerable as physical servers when it comes to cyber security threats. However, to get the maximum value from virtualisation, it is absolutely critical that the organisation ensures that all the necessary security protocols are in place” says Swapnendu Mazumdar, Head of Networks, eHosting DataFort . They need to sign up with a reputed security vendor that offers reliable policy man-agement and enforcement framework, for both their physical and virtual environments. Apart from securing network controls with strong password, firewalls and other security solutions, they need to also separate critical operations from the rest whilst migrating their systems.

James Spearman of Dimension Data has a slightly different take though; according to him,

“Server virtualisation with private data centres typically do not require any additional consider-ations for security policy as they fall in the remit of an organisations’ CISO and will therefore be required to comply with the organisations secu-rity policy and procedure. At a technical level, the implementation of security solutions changes. As an example CISO should consider the deploy-ment of hypervisor aware security solutions for antivirus and server intrusion prevention. Hosted Virtualisation solutions and IaaS platforms have various security considerations that will differ based upon the service provider being utilised, geographic location, key regulatory requirements and corporate policy.”

MANAGEMENT OF VIR-TUALIZED SERVERS- A NIGHTMARE?Introduction of a virtual environment has traditionally been initiated with little thought to the platform management and a higher focus

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data, regardless of where those workloads are located – be it a public, private or hybrid cloud”. Their VM-Series of virtualized NGFWs allow customers to apply three levels of security to the applications that reside in their cloud computing environment-iidentifying and tightly control-ling which applications are allowed to traverse and talk to the different workloads; granting application and data access based on user need and associated credentials in Active Directory or any other user repository and denying access to all other users by default and stopping known and unknown cyber attacks from penetrating and then moving laterally from workload to workload with application-specific threat prevention policies.

As compute workloads change, or are added or removed, features within PAN-OS, Palo Alto’s security operating system, will see those contextual changes, proactively learning which IP addresses are changing, and those changes are used to drive security policy updates in a dynamic manner. The result is a dramatic reduction in the delay that may occur between workload changes and security policy updates.

Mohit Pal, Datacenter Specialist, Middle East for Fujitsu says, “Our experience in thousands of successfully realized server virtualization projects directly influences the development of our prod-ucts, solutions and services. Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers and Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems for example are optimized for server virtualization and cloud infrastructure scenarios. This is proven by many benchmark records”.

He goes on to add that they have specific solu-tions focusing on virtualization including hyper converged virtualization appliances. Fujitsu together with VMware has generated an entire ready-to-run hyper converged infrastructure appliance -FUJITSU Integrated System PRIME-FLEX for VMware EVO: RAIL. The flexible and scalable FUJITSU vShape solution combines all aspects of a virtual environment, based on reliable technologies and best practice solutions, with simple implementation and operation. VMWare and Hyper-V. Fujitsu Cluster-in-a-box provides a fully pre-configured and pre-installed, high-availability IT environment for small and medium-sized companies within one chassis. These solutions offer an excellent price/perfor-mance ratio that keeps expenditure and risk to an absolute minimum for the customer. Fujitsu has also invented Dynamic Infrastructures for VMware vCloud Suite- an infrastructure solution offering the most convenient way to introduce and run a modern VMware private or hybrid cloud IaaS platform that drives business growth and improves customer satisfaction at signifi-

VIRTUALIZATION SOLU-TIONS IN THE MARKET:With a view to building flexible and scalable datacentre infrastructure with to support long term client requirement Dimension Data engages at a strategic and business level utilising Next Generation Datacentre Development Model.

“Through our global vendor relationships were able to deliver vendor independent solutions tailored to the exact requirements within the datacentre. In addition to this we understand the compute, storage and virtualisation platform are reliant on underlying components (network, security, applications etc.) We therefore provide our clients with a holistic solution and strategy to encompass all elements”, says James Spearman, Principal Cloud Consultant & Head of Data Centre Infrastructure, Dimension Data.

According to Matt Keil, Product Marketing Director, Data Center & Virtualization, Palo Alto Networks, “We provide customers with a way to protect their business critical applications and

select a vendor which offers guaranteed SLAs and 24/7 Service desk support. The other important factors that should also be kept in mind are compatibility with existing application, relevant infrastructure, internal expertise, simplicity of management and flexibility of scaling out.

More enterprises are starting to look into the vendors that align to their preferred consump-tion strategy, IT strategy and how best to enable agility in the future and deliver against hybrid IT capabilities as they start to plan their journey to cloud. It is also particularly important to look at the general management of the platform and standardise where possible to reduce manage-ment overhead.

Vidyasagar Patro, Manager- Pre Sales, Enter-prise Infrastructure, Emitac Enterprise Solutions (EES) puts it in simple words- “As TCO/ROI is one of the key concerns – a Virtualization tech-nology from a vendor that has a long roadmap, easy available upgrades and good support can be a great plus point”.

MATT KEIL, PRODUCT MARKET-ING DIRECTOR. DATA CENTER & VIRTUALIZATION, PALO ALTO NETWORKS

“Customers need to be more diligent than ever since the cloud implies easier access and to maximize hardware resources, applications of different trust levels may be running on the same machines”

KARTIK SHANKAR, SENIOR SALES MANAGER, STORIT DISTRIBUTION

“From a technology perspective, virtualiza-tion will shift the role currently played by hard-ware infrastructure on to software layer further. Specifically the network infrastructure will also face major shaping”

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cantly lower cost compared with do-it-yourself approaches.

According to Arunkumar N, Product Manager, Manage Engine, “We offer end-to-end performance visibility into the entire virtual-ized data center - including virtual desktops, hypervisors, VMs, applications running on the VMs, servers and the storage hardware. It helps IT admins to proactively identify performance issues and initiate remedial actions quickly to ensure a great user experience.” They further offer support for multiple virtualization vendors including VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix.

Vidyasagar Patro, Manager- Pre Sales, Enter-prise Infrastructure, Emitac Enterprise Solutions comments, “With EMITAC’s skill sets, our focus for this year FY2015 is going to be on emerging technologies like - Open and Secure Cloud solutions, Desktop Virtualization (VDI), Big Data Analytics and Converged Infrastructure”. He adds that with their long experience as one of the key SIs in the region and covering the whole portfolio of products right from infrastructure to application level, they expect to address a huge market as a trusted technical advisor.

Mohit, Datacenter Specialist, Middle East for Fujitsu lists the leading virtualization vendors- VMWare, Microsoft,Citrix, Linux and Oracle. The list by Vidyasagar Patro, Manager- Pre Sales, Enterprise Infrastructure, EES reads HP, Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, and Symantec. SorIT works with VMware, Microsoft, Xen and KVM.

According to Swapnendu Mazumdar, Head of Networks, eHosting DataFort, one of the main challenges that application owners and businesses face before implementation of virtualization is the choice of applications to move to a virtualized environment. “It is important to know that not all applications are suitable for virtualisation. Before implementing virtualisation, enterprises need to ensure that their IT architecture including com-ponents such as Networks, Operating systems, CPUs and Storage Devices, etc. are compatible, efficient and will provide sufficient performance without affecting the workflow. Ensuring the network infrastructure is prepared for virtualiza-tion and hiring skilled professionals is another challenge we would like to highlight.”

With the shift into virtualisation there’s a much lower dependency on the physical hardware which of course addresses the physical power and cooling element of the old platform but as James Spearman, Principal Cloud Consultant & Head of Data Centre Infrastructure, Dimension Data points it out, other issues start to creep in that need to be addressed. These include management of the hypervisor platform, server sprawl, licens-ing considerations, BCS/DR of virtual workloads, shared storage for virtual workloads and staff skill uplift.

FACILITATING SERVER VIRTUALIZATION:While the benefits of virtualisation are apparent, one also needs to consider the changes to the

SAEED AGHA, GENERAL MAN-AGER - MIDDLE EAST AT PALO ALTO NETWORKS

“Cloud applications empower business and enable employees to access data wherever they are. On the flip side, this unparalleled growth gen-erates a breeding ground for cyber criminals.”

CHALLENGES IN SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

•  Determining which classes of applications get virtualized at what phase•  Determining the correct roadmap for migration •  Theoretical calculation of the virtualized workloads •  Application compatibility of the platform•  Sizing the SAN and planning a backup

•  VM sprawl wasting compute resources and congesting the Network traffic •  Troubleshooting•  Performance monitoring and tuning • Network Congestion•  Transforming the IT processes built for physical server to a virtualized environment•  Training employees to use the new systems and setting policies for effective resource utilisation•  Getting the right skills to monitor the environment•  Confusion in software licensing•  Security

THE WOESBEFOREVIRTUALIZATION

AFTERVIRTUALIZATION

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infrastructure necessitated with virtualisation as well as other hidden costs. Dimension Data advises clients to take into consideration the 10 aspects when calculating ROI for virtualisation; namely cost of centralised storage, reduced pool of servers, reduced cost of real estate, reduced cost of power and cooling, reduced network requirements, cost of implementation, cost of software licenses, cost of backup and disaster recovery, cost of security enhancements and cost of training and operations.

Dimension Data utilises a client centric approach which takes into consideration their existing investments and current state. This is contrasted against the organisations strategic and IT goals to architect the desired solution. “With these two views providing perspective, we are able to build a practical roadmap for the implementation of further virtualisation, mod-ernisation of the data centre and assist clients on their journey to private data centre infrastructure, hybrid and cloud based solutions” says James Spearman, Dimension Data.

Dimension Data’s Server Virtualisation Assessment provides greater visibility into your IT infrastructure and allows the organisation to analyse, benchmark and predict capacity utilisation. It helps identify consolidation opportunities and model various scenarios, including virtualisation. They additionally have Virtualisation Maturity Assessment: for a holistic view of the data centre virtualisation maturity, covering areas such as the network, security, stor-age, backup, facilities, applications and workloads considerations helping you to extract maximum value from your virtualisation investment.

Vidyasagar Patro, Manager- Pre Sales, Enter-prise Infrastructure, Emitac Enterprise Solutions says, “We facilitate our potential enterprise customers by evangelizing the Virtualization technology that is the best fit for their business requirement. We as their technical advisors make it easy for them to adopt the Virtualization technology with right designing, sizing and to implementation. Most importantly we emphasise a lot and give utmost importance on post-implementation support.”

2015 FORECAST FOR VIRTUALIZATION MARKET: Mazumdar of e HDF says, “We have seen the server virtualisation marketplace evolving over the past few years and have also noticed customer attitudes and stances towards virtualisation mature rapidly. In 2014, we witnessed virtu-alisation making a huge impact on IT and we definitely believe that the technology is poised to grow in 2015.”

A recent report on server virtualization from Infonetics Research states that 75% of surveyed companies are willing to adopt the technology in the interest of improved application performance. The report predicts that by 2015 more than half of data center servers will be virtualized and the number of virtual machines per server will reach 30.

James Spearman of Dimension Data says, “The market is starting to change however in the hypervisor choice with a view to gaining licensing efficiencies through Enterprise Agreements and a move to automation within virtualisation environments. We’re also seeing a trend within customers to move the host environment from traditional servers into hyper converged solutions that are built to leverage the full benefits of virtualisation”.

“Software define infrastructure and network is the major innovation shaping up the server vir-tualisation market in 2015” says Kartik Shankar, Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution. “From a technology perspective, virtualization will shift

the role currently played by hardware infrastruc-ture on to software layer further. Specifically the network infrastructure will also face major shaping”.

Enterprises are keen to take advantage of the agility, scalability and cost benefits of cloud-based virtual data centers (VDCs) by building their own private cloud, purchasing public cloud services from providers, or adopting a hybrid cloud approach. Most enterprises are ultimately aiming for the portability of both the application and security policies, regardless of where the application is deployed. However, when it comes to security, most public cloud environments are based on inconsistent network architectures common in traditional data centers and still rely on legacy security technologies –such as stateful inspection and port-based firewalls – that aren’t capable of securing public cloud or hosted VDCs against sophisticated cyber threats.

“In 2015, all this growth will be both a blessing and a curse” comments Saeed Agha, General Manager - Middle East at Palo Alto Networks. The blessing he says is that cloud applications offer quick integration, empower business, offer convenience reduce IT requirements, and enable employees to access data wherever they are. As a result, cloud apps are experiencing unparalleled acceptance in the business world. On the flip side, this unparalleled growth generates a breeding ground for cyber criminals, and provides access into companies’ networks, making network security more crucial than ever before. Many new apps are using uncommon port numbers far beyond the common ports for HTTP and SSL traffic, creating a security nightmare for IT and security professionals.

FINALLY…High availability of virtual machines is now a given. The next stage in the evolution of the VM market could be to ensure high availability of apps that run on the VMs, irrespective of the operating system and type of application. This can be achieved by automated virtual machine restart and load balancing. “Although VMware has been the market leader for years in the hypervisor market, rivals have started catching up in terms of performance and features” says Arun-kumar N, Product Manager, ManageEngine. The need for cross platform virtualization manage-ment tools will increase as more businesses look to run their virtualization projects across a combination of VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix offerings to reduce costs. Among other aspects, security should be in focus in the coming year. Hybrid cloud solutions could find more adoption in enterprises. ë

ARUNKUMAR N, PRODUCT MANAGER, MANAGEENGINE

“Although VMware has been the market leader for years in the hypervi-sor market, rivals have started catching up in terms of performance and features.”

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n W O R D S : S A N J AY < S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

To Focus More on Enterprise Market

KASPERSKY

Even though Ovanes Mikhaylov has joined Kaspersky Lab ME as its General Manager only 10-12 months back but his hands are already full in terms of executing the

plans for the year in the Middle East, West Asia and North & East Africa regions. Ovanes added, “We are trying to focus on the large market and large accounts. Therefore, we are focusing on the high demand markets including banking, Telco, public sector, etc. These sectors are the most vulnerable to the IT security attacks.” “The report shows that the number one cyber-attacks’ destination is UAE followed by Saudi, Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain and Lebanon - at the lower end. So we try to take those numbers and reflect that on our focus areas and focus on the countries.” Security is no longer a single solution. The viruses’ ferocity and sophistication has grown so big that the customers are seeing orchestrated attacks from multiple fronts. Even the viruses and attacks are being designed for specific customers. It is no longer acceptable to have vanilla solutions. Even, one cannot buy different components from different vendors and put them together to ensure that you have full security mechanism in place. Rather one needs well integrated solution landscape that covers every possible vulner-abilities for an organization. You need to protect

your emails, hand-held devices and all possible pipes that connect to your core system. Therefore, Kaspersky has released solutions that can handle vulnerabilities not only for physical environments but also for virtualized systems, end points, handheld devices, etc.Ovanes maintained, “Not only will we provide solutions to address the areas that affect your systems but also manage those solutions from a single console. Our single management console allows the customers to define policy from one single location to push to multiple distributed devices.” Sometime back Kaspersky had also aligned with VMware by bringing out solutions for virtual environment. As per Ovanes , VMware had kept the security portion open for the security vendors and therefore, Kaspersky has developed a lot of functionality based on the VMware vShield API. The vShied API is the real time virtual environ-ment development kit for the security vendors to be able to introduce their innovations and func-tionality at two levels –within the virtual machine itself and also at the hypervisor level. “If there is an infection within the virtual machines we can handle it within the virtual machines without collapsing or killing those virtual machines. If the customer takes the hypervisor approach, then we stop the attack at one point rather than in many points,” he added.

The IDC research 2014 showed that Kaspersky is the No.1 vendor in the Middle East and UAE market. He added, “In the UAE, our market share is 33% which is far greater than the closest com-petition. We have not even shown our strength in the enterprise. We are moving big time to the enterprise space. So on the contrary, the best and brightest year is yet to come. We may have been busy trying to build momentum and critical mass in the SMB and retail but that will give us an ideal platform to jump into the enterprise market.”

FINALLY…Many of the solutions that Kaspersky has launched recent time have come with two flavours – consumer and enterprise versions. It means the company is ready to address the enterprise market more aggressively where the company is growing at double digit already. And, as expected, a lot of announcements are to come soon in regard to the enterprise market too.” ë

OVANES MIKHAYLOV GENERAL MANAGER, KASPERSKY LAB ME,

“Not only will we provide solutions to address the areas that affect your systems but also manage those solutions from a single console.”

After being successful in capturing good share in the SMB and Retail market, it’s the natural turn of Enterprise market where Kaspersky Lab ME will look at serious.

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ENTERPRISE SECURITY

CES 2015

The International CES broke way too many records as innovations took centre stage and not only the top honchos but also the new age start ups who dared to think out of the box came together on an exciting platform to plan out a world for the future which hardly seems different from something straight out of a science fiction bestseller.

n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Traditional business intelligence (BI) and analytic models are being disrupted as the balance of power shifts from IT to the business, according to Gartner, Inc. The rise

of data discovery, access to multi-structured data, data preparation tools and smart capabilities will further democratize access to analytics and stress the need for governance. Gartner predicts that by 2017, most business users and analysts in organizations will have access to self-service tools to prepare data for analysis.

There are numerous tech expos that are orga-

nized worldwide and then there’s International CES –where innovation is more than just a buzz word. As Karen Chupka, Senior VP, International CES and corporate business strategy, CEA puts it, “The excitement of CES can be felt around the world, with more than 20,000 products launch-ing at CES this week from 3,600 companies and breaking news from top global brands announced from the CES keynote stage.” “With 2.2 million net square feet of exhibits, including 375 startups, the products unveiled at the 2015 CES will revolutionize the technology world and pave the way for the future of innovation.”

Tech Fiction Becomes Reality

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INTEL CEO BRIAN KRZANICH SHARING ONE OF INTEL’S NEWEST PRODUCTS DURING INTEL’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS

KAREN CHUPKA, SENIOR VP, INTERNATIONAL CES AND CORPORATE BUSINESS STRATEGY, CEA

The event witnessed several keynotes and discussions wherein technology breakthroughs were drilled by esteemed panels of experts. For example, in the Market for Smart Watches SuperSession, the panelists discussed design criteria, analyzed market potential and presented differing views on the idea of whether or not the smart watch needs a “killer app” to catch on with consumers. They also placed a strong emphasis on “glanceability” and convenience, both being key characteristics of any smart watch. The idea of, “the network effect” emerged on the panel, sug-gesting smart watch value will be derived when whole families and friends can achieve unique, personal connections with each other that only a smart watch with sophisticated sensors can accomplish. Panelists concluded that the smart watch has a very diverse market potential.

The Evolution of the Smart Home SuperSes-sion panel noted that security is the top feature driving growth in the smart home market. All agreed that retailers must build an experience allowing customers to fully grasp the range of smart home capabilities. When addressing

challenges in the smart home space, the panelists noted that manufacturers must create user-friendly and open systems to allow for ease-of-use applications across all platforms.

In the Last Gadget Standing competition, attendees voted on the hottest gadgets of the 2015 International CES. Products ranging from molecular sensors to connected pet monitors and non-wearable sleep monitors to environmentally-friendly 3D printers faced off on stage with the audience being the final judge of what would reign supreme. In the end, CES attendees chose the MeccaNoid robotics building system from Meccano as their favorite. Much like an erector set, owners can build the four-foot tall humanoid robot which features built-in voice recognition. Next to MeccaNoid on the winners’ stage was the winner of the Online Voting competition, SCiO, the world’s first molecular sensor. This no-touch optical sensor can fit in the palm of your hand and can scan and detect what an object is made of and give information on it such as how much fat is in a specific type of cheese or salad dressing.

The Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) came to

CES for its semi-final round of competition. Ten startups in the areas of digital design, facial recognition, medical devices and applications, aerial robotics, automotive safety and DNA laser printing competed for the opportunity. The three winners were Breathometer, an FDA-registered medical device which uses sensors to monitor alcohol consumption and detect halitosis, diabe-tes, asthma and various types of cancer, Wanderu, a ground travel aggregation platform and Doctor on Demand, an app which allows users to communicate with board certified physicians for non-emergency issues and therapy.

Mark Fields, president and CEO, Ford Motor launched Ford’s new Smart Mobility plan, which promises to solve today’s global transporta-tion challenges. The plan will leverage today’s connectivity, mobility and big data to perate 25 experiments around the world. “We are driving innovation in every part of our business to be both a product and mobility company – and, ulti-mately, to change the way the world moves just as our founder Henry Ford did 111 years ago.” “Our priority is not in making marketing claims or

EVENTS

MEA39FEBRUARY 2015

MECCANOID ROBOTICS

MARK FIELDS, PRESIDENT & CEO, FORD MOTOR

A VIEW OF CES, 2015

SMART WATCHES ON DISPLAY

SMART HOME EXPERIENCE

being in a race for the first autonomous car on the road,” said Fields. “Our priority is in making the first Ford autonomous vehicle accessible to the masses and truly enhancing customers’ lives.

Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich led his company’s keynote address by saying that 2015 will mark the next technology consumer wave. “We’re moving from a two-dimensional world to a three-dimensional world,” said Krzanich. “This additional dimension will change how we experience computing.” In citing three specific forces that will shape this next wave - Computing Unleashed, Intelligence Everywhere and The Wearable Evolution – Krzanich touted Intel inno-vations such as Real Sense, which can interpret depth, True Key, with recognition capability that eliminates need for passwords, and the Curie wearable, which can identify different sporting activities.

During the keynote panel, How Mobile Is Fundamentally Changing our World, tech leaders from across the industry discussed how mobile connectivity is transforming the industry and our lives. They discussed a number of issues surrounding mobile connectivity such as privacy and data collection as well as the different sectors of our industry that are being transformed by ubiquitous Internet access, including the smart home, automobiles and the health care industry.

The Future of Robotics SuperSession witnessed panelists agreeing that the powerful possibility of robotics can bring us from “reactive to predictive.” They agreed robotics not only have the opportu-nity to touch people’s lives but the potential to be life-changing as demonstrated in the session by an individual with complete paraplegia who was able to stand and walk while wearing an exosuit from Ekso Bionics.

CNET’s always popular Next Big Thing SuperSession covered key topics including augmented and virtual reality. The group noted that while gaming is currently the main vehicle bringing virtual reality to the market, it is not the end of virtual reality and the dynamic will shift as more content becomes available pushing

the technology toward telepresence and video. When asked how augmented and virtual reality can both grow in the marketplace, the panelists agreed that the technology is already in place, but more content is needed. Palmer Luckey, founder and CEO, Oculus VR stated, “The first step is making a device that can make you believe you’re in a different place.”

2015 International CES featured the largest ever showcase of products, services and technolo-gies that make up the “Internet of Things” (IoT), with more than 900 exhibitors planning to share innovations that harness the power of the net-work to connect everyday devices. “The ‘Internet of Things’ is the hottest topic in tech right now,” said Karen Chupka.

The Sensors Marketplace highlighted one of the key technologies that is enabling the IoT. In addition, the Smart Home Marketplace show-cased a smarter, more efficient home accelerated by smartphones and tablets interacting with a myriad of connected objects and devices, from basic security systems to connected lighting systems.

The three days of CES saw everything from top notch discussions to display of ground breaking innovations and futuristic technologies. How much of all the hype can really be translated into action remains to be seen; but undoubtedly the stage has been set, hopes have been raised and dreams redefined.

REGISTRATION OPENS FOR INAUGURAL INTER-NATIONAL CES ASIAThe inaugural event will run May 25-27 in Shanghai, China at the Shanghai New Interna-tional Expo Center (SNIEC) and will draw global businesses to showcase the latest products and technologies entering the Asian marketplace. CEA is co-producing the event with Intex Shanghai. “With our strong Chinese partners, our reputation for producing the world’s best innovation event, the dynamism of Shanghai and the huge importance of technology and branding,

we believe the International CES Asia is poised for success,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CEA.

From major global brands to innovative startups, the full breadth and depth of the Asian marketplace’s innovation value-chain will be on display at CES Asia, which will span 20,000 square meters (8,500 net square meters) of exhibit space in its first year. Major trends and product categories, including 3D printing, robotics, sen-sors, the Internet of Things and wearables, will be prominently featured across the show floor and in the conference program.

“The 2015 International CES Asia will showcase the latest innovations from major companies representing some of the world’s largest economies, providing unparalleled exposure to the dynamic Chinese marketplace,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president of corporate business strategy and the International CES, CEA. ë

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GARY SHAPIRO, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CEA.

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OFFICIL PRE-SHOW

PRE-SHOW

TARIQUE MUSTAFA CTO-CUM-CEO, GHANGHOR CLOUD

Could you give us a brief overview of the company?2Ghanghor Cloud/ Ghanghor Ghata ~ Monsoon cloud which brings fresh showers

The company is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, California. They provide solutions both for the enterprises as well as cloud-based service

offerings for security. Their specific focus is on information security and data leak prevention.

So, what’s the DLP all about and how does Ghanghor Cloud fit into the puzzle?Data Leak Prevention is a very important com-

ponent of information security. There have been several solutions attempting to address this issue; but without much success. Ghanghor Cloud brings to the market the fourth generation DLP solutions. Unlike the earlier generations of DLP solutions which tried to focus on specific aspects of data leak, Ghanghor’s solutions considered all the aspects to the best way.We basically have solved the problems with the previous generations of DLP solutions -l Ease of use for the end user (average

employee of the enterprise)l Ease of deployment so that it doesn’t

become a nightmare for the IT guy to deploy and maintainl Total cost of ownership l Efficacy and accuracy of the solutionsThe foundational differentiator between our

solution and the rest is that our solution doesn’t discriminate between the leaks on the basis of whether it’s intentional or non-intentional; and works against all kinds of data leak.

Our fourth generation solution is a complete paradigm shift from the third generation. It’s a proven solution now; we have won several awards and have been accepted by customers in several industries.

What’s your go-to-market strategy for this region?It’s primarily channel based. Our plan is to partner with distributors and resellers in different parts of the world. In US, we operate both via direct sales and channel partners; while outside of US, we operate specifically through the channel.

What prompted you to associate with Comguard? We chose Comguard because of its exclusive security focus. Though there are other security focussed distributors in the region, Comguard’s portfolio is much diversified in terms of security. Moreover, it has a substantial presence in this region.

What kind of value addition are you getting from Comguard?They are not just traditional distributors; they also have a strong portfolio of resellers they work with. Many POCs are already lined up for us, thanks to Comguard.

What’s your plan for 2015?We are focusing on market penetration through sales, marketing and brand visibility campaigns. The product is already very well-known in the USA, but here we need to break ground at a fast pace. ë

DLP IS STILL A BIG QUESTION MARK IN THE MARKET; WHICH COMGUARD WISHES

TO APPROACH WITH A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT APPROACH. AFTER A THOROUGH

RESEARCH, IN 2014 GITEX, THE VAD ENTERED INTO A PARTNERSHIP WITH

GHANGHOR CLOUD, A LEADING PROVIDER OF NEXT-GENERATION INFORMATION

SECURITY & COMPLIANCE SOLUTIONS, HEADQUARTERED IN SILICON VALLEY.

TARIQUE MUSTAFA, CTO-CUM-CEO OF GHANGHOR CLOUD IS A WORLD-

RENOWNED DLP EXPERT WITH MULTIPLE PATENTS TO HIS CREDIT; EC MEA TEAM

TALKED TO HIM ABOUT GHANGHOR CLOUD’S ENTRY INTO THE MENA MARKET

AND ITS ROADMAP FOR THE COMING DAYS.

“Paradigm Shift in DLP”

42 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

MY VIEWS

EZELINK TELECOM IS THE UAE’S FIRST IT R&D COMPANY AND

SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED UAE’S FIRST LARGEST SMART CITY

PROJECT NAMELY SILICON OASIS. IT ALSO OWNS AN ISP COMPANY

IN CAPE VERDE AND MANY UNITED NATIONS PROJECTS.

n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Keeping you connected everywhere

EZELINK

eZeLink is IT R&D Company dedi-cated to develop and distribute, state of the art complete hotspot solutions dedicated to the hospitality industry and all public areas enabling anyone

to access internet. The holding has several companies under its holding, one of which is

Emirates WiFi (others being Bahrain WiFi, Qatar WiFi, Kingdom WiFi, Brazil WiFi, and Asia WiFi). In the Middle East, they are affiliated with the leading telecom provider, etisalat.

eZeLink is a complete monitoring, control-ling, billing and reporting internet access solution specifically tailored to meet the needs

of clients. The several services that are offered include Broadband Internet Billing, Bandwidth Management, Monitoring of Wifi, Customized Reporting, PMS Integration (Opera, Brilliant, Fidelio and others) and compatibility with ADSL & Leased Line.

eZeLink solutions are specifically available for several verticals as well; these are eZe Gate, eZe School, eZe Mall, eZe Cafe, eZe Limo, and eZe Transport.

eZe Gate is a fully customized hotspot & band-width management solution for hospitality. The system helps to control every aspect, check real time what is going on with customer’s internet access. So far, they have connected 18000+ Hotel Rooms in GCC.

The biggest challenge for any coffee shop now a day is to attract new customers and keep them coming back. eZe Cafe is a hotspot solution that can be used to attract more customers and maintain the existing ones. So, far 100+ coffee shops have been connected in GCC.

An average person spends about 100 hours per year using transportation to work or leisure. That time can be used to improve the passenger experience. eZe transport can be applied on any platform, from Bus, Car, Limo or any vehicle of public use.

eZe mall offers the shoppers the chance to be connected. The Wi-Fi can also be used as a channel for advertisement, with quick ROI, simultaneously keeping the shoppers happy.

eZe School can be flexibly adapted to the school’s needs and existing infrastructure. It helps to control the student and faculty internet access.

eZeLimo is a smart way of greeting guests and providing them important information about the hotel and the city with easy to navigate welcome screen on their phone/table at the time they just enter into the Hotel Limo.

Within 11 years of operation, the company has several success stories to its credit. Some of its premium clients in the Middle East include Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority, RTA, The Address Dubai Marina, Burj Al Arab Jumeirah, Emaar, Grand Millennium Hotel, Grand Hyatt, Starbucks Coffee Chain, Holiday Inn and Lamcy Plaza. ë

MEA43FEBRUARY 2015

PARTNER CORNER

GARTNER

Gartner Says By 2017, Most Business Users and Analysts in Organizations Will Have Access to Self-Service Tools to Prepare Data for Analysis. Analysts Will Examine Top Technology Trends at Gartner Symposium/IT expo 2015, May 19-21, in Dubai.

Traditional business intelligence (BI) and analytic models are being disrupted as the balance of power shifts from IT to the business, according to Gartner, Inc. The rise

of data discovery, access to multi-structured data, data preparation tools and smart capabilities will further democratize access to analytics and stress the need for governance. Gartner predicts that by 2017, most business users and analysts in organizations will have access to self-service tools to prepare data for analysis.

“Data preparation is one of most difficult and time-consuming challenges facing business users of BI and data discovery tools, as well as

advanced analytics platforms,” said Rita Sallam, research VP at Gartner. “However, data prepara-tion capabilities are emerging that will provide business users and analysts the ability to extend the scope of self-service to include information management, and extract, transform and load (ETL) functions, enabling them to access, profile, prepare, integrate, curate, model and enrich data for analysis and consumption by BI and analytics platforms.”

“Self-service data integration will do for traditional IT-centric data integration what data discovery platforms have done for traditional IT-centric BI: reduce the significant time and complexity users face in preparing their data for

User Experience is Critical to the Adoption of New Technology

analysis and shift much of the activity from IT to the business user to better support governed data discovery,” said Ms. Sallam. “However, specific skills are required. Self-service data integration requires that users master both the technical aspects and the business requirements of joining data together.”

Gartner made a number of further predictions about BI, including:

By 2017, most data discovery tools will have incorporated smart data discovery capabilities to expand the reach of interactive analysis.“Smart data discovery has the potential to expand access to sophisticated interactive analysis and insights to business consumers and nontradi-tional BI users — the approximately 70 percent of users in organizations that currently do not use BI tools or have statistical backgrounds,” said Ms. Sallam. “New approaches have the potential to transform how and which users can derive insights from data discovery tools. The potential business benefit will lead to a shift resulting in smart data discovery becoming standard features of most data discovery platforms.”

Through 2016, less than 10 percent of self-service BI initiatives will be governed sufficiently to prevent inconsistencies that adversely affect the business.

ANALYSTS VIEW

44 FEBRUARY 2015

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IT LEADERS NEED TO DEVELOP A STRONGER RELATIONSHIP WITH MARKETINGGartner predicts that by 2018, Strong Relationships of CIOs with CMOs Will See 25% Improvement in ROI

about marketing technology investments, including:

By 2018, CIOs who build strong relationships with CMOs will drive a 25 percent improvement in return on marketing technology investment.Gartner has found that many large companies, particularly business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, have more than 50 applications and technologies supporting marketing. Man-aging this portfolio and generating customer value from these technologies requires a more integrated and consolidated approach, but not at the expense of marketing's ability to innovate in digital marketing.

"To generate greater business value, IT leaders need to work more closely with marketing to determine where IT leads versus where marketing leads and how both can work more effectively together," said Ms. Collins. "An integrated marketing management (IMM approach) that leverages a Pace-Layered Application Strategy can be invaluable to helping IT leaders derive more value for their marketing leaders."

By 2018, B2B sellers that incorporate personalization into digital commerce will realize revenue increases up to 15 percent.Personalization enhances the relationship between a buyer and seller making the buyer feel recognized, appreciated, respected and effi-cient. Today's consumers expect recognition, to be valued and to have a personalized experi-ence; they have little tolerance for inefficiency. Personalization also enables sellers to remain competitive and drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy as well as increase profit-ability. Companies that incorporate personal-ization into B2B digital commerce strategies will make their business customers more

efficient, provide a better customer experience and increase the likelihood of greater purchase value as well as upselling and cross-selling — all leading to greater revenue.

"The foundation on which personalization should be incorporated for business buyers is efficiency and effectiveness because business buyers are typically working under pressure and with deadlines," said Penny Gillespie, research director at Gartner. "Personalization would then be developed based on available customer preference settings in the digital commerce platforms, creating or identifying merchandise affiliation, and incorporating behavior-based learning from other customers along with specific customer knowledge and information."

Through 2018, voice of the customer (VoC) initiatives that don't share data across the enterprise will compromise customer satisfaction and loyalty measures by 30 percent.VoC solutions collect, analyze and act upon the vast array of customer feedback sources that are potentially available, ranging from survey-ing to social media to speech analytics.

"A VoC initiative will reveal useful insights that are linked to the brand, products, campaigns, geographical markets and competi-tors, but without a pan-enterprise positioning as part of a strategic customer experience management (CEM) initiative, the true benefit of VoC can be stifled," said Jim Davies, research director at Gartner. "IT leaders supporting CRM can help different areas of the organiza-tion leverage VoC solutions. For example, if marketing deploys a solution, then IT can help to leverage the solution and the insights that it generates for customer service as well as work with customer service to integrate relevant customer insights and data into the customer service applications."

KIMBERLY COLLINS,RESEARCH VICE PRESIDENT AT GARTNER

“As a result of the limited governance of self-service BI implementations, we see few examples of those that are materially successful — other than in satisfying end-user urges for data access,” said Doug Laney, research VP at Gartner. “This, combined with increasing examples of data pri-vacy and security breaches, along with anticipated

instances of public disclosure inconsistencies, will temper businesses leaders’ enthusiasm for self-service BI. “

To counter these adverse effects, a return to more controlled enterprise BI implementations is expected, or the deployment of self-service BI technologies within a better governed, IT-led

project environment. On the technology front, vendors will to continue to play both sides, but more conscientiously — selling simple data discovery technologies broadly throughout their prospects’ businesses, while reemphasizing the advantages of controlled, centralized and more-robust enterprise BI technologies. ë

Increasing marketing technology investments are demanding more involvement from IT leaders to enable marketing to achieve full business value from its investments, according to Gartner. In 2015, IT leaders supporting mar-keting will need to build a stronger partnership with marketing and help to evaluate solutions, manage and consolidate the application portfolio, and integrate solutions.

"Marketing continues to be a hot area of IT investment and technology innovation with a rapidly growing application portfolio that demands greater integration and focused investment," said Kimberly Collins, research vice president at Gartner. "IT leaders support-ing marketing will need to develop a strong relationship with marketing leaders to help marketing derive the full potential from its IT investments."

Gartner has made a number of predictions

ANALYSTS VIEW

MEA45FEBRUARY 2015

n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

VIRTUAL DESKTOP

Desktop virtualization continues to gain mainstream traction across all industries in the Middle East as organizations realize the benefits associated with desktop virtualization in addressing factors such as the rising cost and complexity of desktop management and enabling enterprise mobility.

The technology around desktop virtualization is constantly evolving. The end-point of this technology has now become more dynamic with the introduction of devices like

smartphones, tablets, etc. Hence, it has become vital for desktop virtualization vendors to support different end-user access points – from thin clients to smart phones.

In addition, security and device management are now major concerns for customers, especially as the range of devices used in a corporate environment diversifies. Vendors are focusing on delivering secure access to desktops, data and apps on corporate-owned or personal user owned devices (in a BYOD setting). Additionally, things are evolving in the back-office as well with organizations considering if they should invest in desktop virtualization themselves or if it should

be outsourced to service providers who offer cloud infrastructure services.

Large enterprises and innovative mid-size companies with need for flexibility and central-ization have been the early adopters. This is due to various factors such as expenses to manage or support a traditional PC environment, data losses, low flexibility, etc

WHY DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION?DaaS helps solve today’s top IT and business challenges. It empowers employees who demand the freedom to work on the device of their choos-ing - embracing the BYOD trend with cloud desktops accessed on any tablet, smartphone or laptop. Dimension Data advocates the strategy namely ‘Workspaces for tomorrow’ – also known as activity-based working or smart working.

It empowers individuals with the freedom to choose different types of work settings to suit various kinds of work activities. Workspaces for tomorrow refocuses the organisation’s employees on the activities they need to do to achieve goals in a more productive, collaborative, flexible, and open manner. Chief among the benefits are improved employee productivity, cost savings, better staff retention, and a more stable work-life balance. Organisations want to improve performance, save space, and reduce costs. They also want to reduce staff attrition and build staff loyalty in order to retain key personnel, as well as minimise travel time and cost.

In a fast paced environment and where the workforce is expecting full flexibility, VDI is a good fit for IT managers to offer. The workforce, on multiple locations or working from different time zones and people who are mobile, prefer to

Desktops minus the Desk

FEATURE

46 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

use their favorite personal device — smartphone, tablet, laptop — for work because it’s familiar and it keeps them productive. “But when business data is spread across so many different devices, it can give IT a major headache! Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, offers a way to keep all business data on a super-secure, high-performance platform and minimize the risks” comments Saeed Agha, General Manager - Middle East at Palo Alto Networks .

DESKTOP VIRTUALIZA-TION SOLUTIONS IN THE MARKET“In the UAE, Du has launched a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution, in partnership with Citrix Service Provider EnCloud, bringing anytime, anywhere access to business applica-tions and information” says Arthur Dell, Director,

Technology and Service, MEA, Citrix. “With demand for cloud-based hosted workspaces continuing to grow rapidly, du’s decision to launch a DaaS solution added an agile, cloud-based desktop solution to its existing Enterprise Managed Services portfolio. du will use industry-leading Citrix technologies including Xen Desktop, Net Scaler and Cloud Platform to create a secure, complete mobile workspace – delivering hosted desktops, applications, files and services seamlessly to any user, on any device, over any network.” Arthur believes that businesses across the Middle East will benefit from increased employee productivity with high performance, anywhere access to Windows apps and desktops; business continuity - cloud-hosted desktop access through any disruption; and of course security and compliance - ensuring the right level of secure cloud desktop access for every individual

and situation. “Citrix provides the flexibility to address

any desktop virtualization use case in the right way” adds Arthur. “XenDesktop with FlexCast technology simplifies adoption by allowing IT to set its own priorities and agenda. The solution’s versatility makes it possible to meet current needs whilst also future-proofing a desktop virtualiza-tion strategy.”

Muhammed Mayet, Practice Manager - End User Computing, Dimension Data says Dimen-sion Data can assist enterprises at any stage of their virtualisation journey. “The most important consideration of any virtual desktop initiative is the end-user. To fulfil this requirement we utilise our EUCDM (End-User Computing Develop-ment Model) to assist clients in identifying business and strategic requirements as well as our Next Generation Desktop Virtualisation

FEATURE

MEA47FEBRUARY 2015

manage even large deployments more efficiently while reducing complexity and the cost of virtual storage”.

In order to successfully implement a virtual desktop solution, Muhammed Mayet, Practice Manager - End User Computing, Dimension Data recommend that one should confirm the current approach and the expectations of how this will change with desktop virtualization. “User centricity is key – understand your users roles and segment them based on their requirements”. He adds that though BYOD is great, it isn’t a scalable solution for large enterprises for which many chose to go for CYOD (Choose Your Own Device). It is always advised to build a pilot to test your use cases and confirm requirements on underlying infrastructure (e.g. network and DC); and place sufficient emphasis on end-user education and the end-user experience.

“It’s critical to ensure that the entire virtual desktop infrastructure offers security and risk management” says Saeed Agha, GM - ME at Palo Alto Networks. But securing this new, central-

Assessment which helps you create a desktop environment that combines a modern, well man-aged and easy-to-deploy operating system with virtualisation. – that’s rolled out in a business-as-usual way − to avoid traditional mass deployment risks and interruption.”

He adds that their expertise covers several technology areas like desktop deployment and management, client computing, network and data centres.

SUCCESS OF VIRTUAL DESKTOPSMany organizations turn to desktop virtualiza-tion to support initiatives for mobility and bring-your-own device (BYOD) – or just simply

to improve IT efficiency. Arthur Dell of Citrix believes that as businesses explore their options, it is important to consider key factors. For example, “Citrix XenDesktop leads the way in the virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics applications and workstations” says a confident Arthur Dell.. The solution should optimize network perfor-mance and supports rapid business growth: In addition, desktop virtualization solutions must support existing IT infrastructure. Lastly it is essential that it saves time – and money: Arthur says, “Citrix XenDesktop makes it possible for users to apply customizations that persist between desktop sessions so each time they access their virtual desktop, they can work within the same app environment. This helps customers

ARTHUR DELLDIRECTOR, TECHNOLOGY AND

SERVICE, MEA, CITRIX

“XenDesktop with FlexCast technology

simplifies adoption by allowing IT to set its own

priorities and agenda. The solution’s versatility

makes it possible to meet current needs whilst also future-proofing a desktop

virtualization strategy.”

SAEED AGHAGENERAL MANAGER - MIDDLE EAST

AT PALO ALTO NETWORKS

“When business data is spread across so

many different devices, it can give IT a major

headache! Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, offers a way

to keep all business data on a super-secure, high-

performance platform and minimize the risks.”

MANAGING END USER EXPECTATIONS ISANOTHER CRITICAL FACTOR WHEN ITCONCERNS SUCCESS OF VDI ADOPTION.

MUHAMMED MAYETPRACTICE MANAGER - END USER COMPUTING, DIMENSION DATA

“The most important consideration of any

virtual desktop initiative is the end-user. To fulfil

this requirement we utilise our EUCDM (End-User Computing Development Model) to assist clients in identifying business and strategic requirements.”

FEATURE

48 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

ized environment is difficult, especially when a single IP address can represent thousands of different users all accessing their applications and data using a variety of devices. “Although a VDI solution presents many desktop security advantages – including centralized control, reduced complexity, and efficient management of user access and privileges – the security is often the single biggest concern on its usage.”

Managing end user expectations is another critical factor when it concerns success of VDI adoption. Finding a solution that is flexible, scalable and secure thus becomes number one challenge for IT managers.

Saeed Agha suggests that looking at a complete solution is a better alternative. “Palo Alto Net-works NGFWs enable advanced, identity-based granular application control, threat prevention, and content leak protection for resources being accessed from virtual desktops. With Palo Alto Networks, you can maximize the availability, per-formance, and scalability of your virtual desktops, while experiencing the peace of mind that your entire infrastructure is secure from known and

DAAS, SAAS, IAAS- RELATIVE PROMINENCE IN THE MARKETDaaS, SaaS and IaaS, all solutions which are cloud based, still have limited adoption

in MEA. This is primarily due to a strong preference for on premise solutions, restricted

connectivity options and security concerns.

Whilst SaaS adoption is slowly increasing (primarily being championed for specific use

cases, e.g. CRM), DaaS and IaaS are typically only under consideration as private cloud

options. An exclusion to this trend is the adoption of cloud services by multinational com-

panies that follow a global strategy for IT.

unknown malware and targeted attacks.”

DESKTOP VIRTUALIAZA-TION- HOW SAFE?Since all data is stored in a central loca-tion—rather than on endpoint devices—VDI reduces physical data theft risks. However, desktop virtualization also exposes new security challenges. According to Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at A10 Networks, “Organizations often host multiple desktops with the same operating systems and the same set of applications on a single physical server. With limited system diversity, attackers might uncover a vulnerability, allowing them to quickly exploit thousands of desktops in one fell swoop.” To protect VDI environments, organizations should implement operating system or applica-tion isolation—especially if virtual desktops are hosted in the cloud. Organizations should also control how data can be transferred to and from VDI environments, install anti-malware software, and monitor for intrusions.

DESKTOP VIRTUALIZA-TION FORECAST In 2015, Workspace Management-as-a-Service (WMaaS) platforms will emerge as a powerful and elegant new way to deploy and manage end-user desktops, applications and mobile workspaces. This new cloud-based service will streamline how services providers, solution providers and enterprises deliver virtual desktops and applications for mobile workspaces. Provid-ers and enterprises will benefit from the ability to choose their preferred IT infrastructures, Operat-ing Systems, applications, and user management and entitlement systems, while streamlining the process of mobile workspace delivery.

VCC TO BREAK RECORDS According to estimates from the IDC, the

EMEA virtual client computing (VCC) market is expected to grow to $1.181 billion in 2018, driven mainly by the virtual desktop infrastruc-ture .Andreas Olah, research analyst, IDC EMEA Datacenter Infrastructure Group. “Cloud service providers are also expected to take a greater chunk of the VDI market with their hosted DaaS and WaaS solutions, which bring the benefits of client and desktop virtualization to small enterprises in the same way cloud computing has changed the way IT infrastructure resources are consumed.”

IDC recommends that organizations of all sizes evaluate the introduction of VDI in view of pressure from end users, competitors, the changing IT landscape, and increasing workforce mobility, as well as the trend toward bring-your-own-device (BYOD). However, it is crucial to avoid major pitfalls in the form of set-up and organizational costs spiraling out of control and disruption caused by the inability to deal with increasing complexities that desktop virtualiza-tion may create. VDI in itself does not necessarily enable mobility, and a constant reliable connec-tion between mobile devices and a datacenter is required to avoid latency and downtime issues.

FINALLYOrganisations in MEA have identified desktop virtualisation as a key driver to lower their operational costs, enhance end-user manage-ment capabilities and ultimately provide a more efficient, effective end-user computing service to business. Existing data centre optimisation activities are still the highest priority and include; server virtualisation and optimisation, storage upgrades, BCP and DR Planning. These will lead to increased adoption of desktop virtualisation solutions in the near to mid-term. In most cases, it is anticipated that full scale desktop virtu-alisation implementation will remain limited with most organisations adopting a hybrid approach. ë

GLEN OGDENREGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, MIDDLE

EAST AT A10 NETWORKS,

“To protect VDI environments,

organizations should implement operating system or application isolation—especially if

virtual desktops are hosted in the cloud.”

FEATURE

MEA49FEBRUARY 2015

MAYA KREIDY, REGIONAL CHANNEL MANAGER, UAE, GCC & PAKISTAN, MCAFEE

How was 2014 for McAfee from the channel perspective?Compared to previous years when we used to do less business with less number of partners, in 2014, we did more business with an increased number of partners. We are also expanding the portfolio with Next Generation Firewall.

Tell us about the Think Big Summit and its highlights.We aim at providing our partners, globally and in the region, with increased flexibility for building profitable and sustainable security practices through a new channel partner program

framework that focuses on change and thinking big. In order to anticipate our customers’ evolving security needs today and tomorrow, we need to ‘Think Big’.

What are the highlights of this new program as compared to the earlier ones? In an effort to reduce program complexity, McAfee will consolidate from five product competencies to three solution competencies: Endpoint Security, Network Security and Security Management.

Moreover, McAfee is removing the need for

partners to complete Baseline Certifications and is expanding Continuing Education to give all partners the flexibility to earn credits for training that is most relevant to their business. This change results in an approximate 30 percent reduction in overall training requirements for McAfee Elite Partners.

The Managed Services Specialization, available Jan. 1, 2015, integrates the current Managed Service Provider Program into a specialization to streamline requirements and optimize benefits. The Authorized Support Specialization, available Q2 2015, integrates the current MASP (McAfee Authorized Support Provider) Program into a specialization in an effort to scale the program by providing additional qualifying partners the opportunity to tap into this additional revenue stream.

How do you plan to enable your channel partners?The new CloudRunner Platform is a free, simple, on-demand platform that enables partners to access McAfee’s product portfolio via the cloud. The platform makes it easier and faster to deliver product demonstrations to customers, which can accelerate sales cycles and help to increase profitability by lowering the cost of sales.

To help strengthen a partner’s implementation services, we are introducing post-sales services training and certifications. Service delivery spe-cialization, available in the second half of 2015, will enable partners to more effectively deliver implementation services which are instrumental in driving partner profitability and customer satisfaction.

How does 2015 look for you?We will focus on the countries we are already active in. We are way above others when it comes to security connected portfolio but still others are trying to catch up. That’s going to be a big challenge for us.

With Intel Security, we are working on a lot of new offerings for the market. One recent innovation was the TIE- Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE), which, in collaboration with partners in the security industry, uses an open Data Exchange Layer (DXL) to rapidly share information between security sensors, control-lers, and endpoints. The goal is to significantly improve the flow of information among your organization’s security products allowing them to act as one unified system. I think that’s going to be our prime differentiator as compared to other vendors. TIE significantly optimizes threat prevention by narrowing down the gap from encounter to containment to milliseconds. ë

MCAFEE AT ITS 4TH ANNUAL PARTNER SUMMIT UNVEILED SEVERAL KEY

CHANNEL INITIATIVES TO HELP PARTNERS BUILD SUSTAINABLE SECURITY

PRACTICES. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM SPOKE TO MAYA KREIDY,

REGIONAL CHANNEL MANAGER, UAE, GCC & PAKISTAN, MCAFEE (PART OF INTEL

SECURITY) ABOUT THE NEW PARTNER PROGRAMS ON BOARD AND OTHER

PLANS OF THE SECURITY VENDOR FOR THE MIDDLE EAST REGION.

“Thinking Big with the TIE”

MEA50FEBRUARY 2015

MY VIEWS

How do I make my data center live up to its true potential?

© 2013 Dell Products. Dell, the logo, XPS and Latitude are registered or unregistered trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and other countries. Ultrabook, Celeron, Celeron Inside, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Atom, Intel Atom Inside, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Intel vPro, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, vPro Inside, Xeon, Xeon Phi, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks or trade names may be used in this document to refer to third-party products (such as operating systems and software) included with the products offered by Dell and the entities claiming the marks and names of those products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Dell Corporation Ltd, Dell House, The Boulevard, Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1LF.

Migrate to Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 with Dell.Respond instantly to the needs of your business with Dell’s end-to-end enterprise solutions, combined with the new Windows Server 2012 from Microsoft

Freedom. Virtualisation that’s easy to deploy, scale and manage

Choice. With Dell and Windows Server 2012, the latest cloud innovations are yours for the taking

Flexibility. Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers offer simplified, agent-free management of your infrastructure from virtually anywhere

Insert your message hereMINDWARE HEAD OFFICE: Cayan Business Centre, 10th Floor, Tecom Area,Al Barsha, Dubai, U.A.E. | Tel: + 971 4 4500600www.mindware.ae

MINDWARE HEAD OFFICE: Cayan Business Centre, 10th Floor, Tecom Area,Al Barsha, Dubai, U.A.E. | Tel: + 971 4 4500600www.mindware.ae

How do I make my data center live up to its true potential?

© 2013 Dell Products. Dell, the logo, XPS and Latitude are registered or unregistered trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and other countries. Ultrabook, Celeron, Celeron Inside, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Atom, Intel Atom Inside, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Intel vPro, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, vPro Inside, Xeon, Xeon Phi, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks or trade names may be used in this document to refer to third-party products (such as operating systems and software) included with the products offered by Dell and the entities claiming the marks and names of those products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Dell Corporation Ltd, Dell House, The Boulevard, Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1LF.

Migrate to Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 with Dell.Respond instantly to the needs of your business with Dell’s end-to-end enterprise solutions, combined with the new Windows Server 2012 from Microsoft

Freedom. Virtualisation that’s easy to deploy, scale and manage

Choice. With Dell and Windows Server 2012, the latest cloud innovations are yours for the taking

Flexibility. Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers offer simplified, agent-free management of your infrastructure from virtually anywhere

Insert your message here

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Growing Faster than the Competition

CLOUD

Veeam may not ask for a better beginning to a year as it hap-pens for 2015. The company gets double dose of happiness. First,Veeam claimed victory in a

patent litigation lawsuit filed against the company by Symantec in 2012, and expressed confidence that it would prevail in another active Symantec lawsuit against it.Secondly, the company has sur-passed $1 Billion in Lifetime Bookings Revenue. Plus, Veeamhas reported total bookings revenue of $389 million in 2014, a 40 percent increase over the previous fiscal year.

Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC said,“Veeam is one of the very good companies to work for. In this region (Middle East), we have an amazing customer base, which comes from the top management. Secondly, I do not know which vendor is growing year on year 50% revenue wise and 90% head count wise.”

Its staff count has also gone up to 30 people from one person.

“Earlier, we found people to be conservative for our products. But now the things are changing. People are more aware about our technology and the criticality of data centre on the rise at the same time; therefore they are keen to deploy our solutions. Veeam had pointed out some of the challenges that the customers could face, which they realise now. Therefore, Veeam is able to see its market growing in double digit year on year,”

he added.He states, “For us, the growth has been

phenomenal because more and more people are moving towards modern data centre. As people deploy more business critical applications on virtual infrastructure, it is becoming important to make sure that they choose the right solutions. The customers cannot find out any other vendor, which can provide complete protection and visibility of the virtual data centre.”

If one looks at the vertical market landscape, the biggest university, banks, huge portion in oil & gas, health care and government in UAE have embraced Veeam solutions.

Veeam is being distributed by two IT companies in the region - Redington and Ingram Micro with a very strong channel partner base. However, Veeam needs more partners with a pre-qualification of data centre, virtualisation, cloud solutions and servers’ sales.

He added, “In fact, with Veeamcloud connects anybody can sign up and become a cloud provider. Basically you can sign up with Microsoft Azure or VA from VMware and can go to the customers procure the deal and replicate all the virtual machines into the cloud and take your consultancy.”

With the new technologies, certainly the number of partners is increasing. Veeam is work-ing strongly with its global alliances including HP and NetApp.

Last year, Veeam announced Veeam End Point Backup Free edition, a free product for the IT professionals to take the backup of their laptops and desktops. Second one was Veeam Cloud Connect, which allows the customers to connect through the Veeam Cloud Provider (VCP) programme and replicate into Microsoft Azure or VMware VA. At the same time, the company launched Veeam Availability Suite V8. This is a single product to manage and protect the data centre. All these products were demonstrated at the Gitex 2014.

FINALLY…A privately held company, Veeam is certainly taking on the biggies in the market because of its rugged technology. Gregg concludes, “We have the best piece of engineering team on board. Some of the customers have called us once in three years it suggests the ruggedness of our product.” ë

GREGG PETERSEN,REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AND SAARC

“As people deploy more business critical applications on virtual infrastructure, it is becoming important to make sure that they choose the right solutions. ”

As the industries in the region increasingly embracing modern datacentres in order to accommodate modern days’ applications i.e. cloud computing, big data, mobility, etc., Veeam finds its feet more entrenched year on year.

52 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

ENTERPRISE SOLUTION

Issue 18 | Securitykaizen Magazine | 6

March 29- 30, 2015

Confirmed Speakers

Organized By

Eng Badar Al Salehi,Director General, Oman National

CERTHead of ITU

Regional Cyber Security Center

Maarten Van Horenbeeck

President at FIRST

Omar Sherin Head of CIIP-Qcert

Georgia Weidman Bulb Security LLC-Founder

Regional Cyber Security Summit 2015

Towards the Future of Cyber Attacks

Muscat,Oman ,Al Bustan Palace

n W O R D S : S A N J AY < S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Enhancing Channel Skills

SYMANTEC

As the customers are building out their businesses and starting to understand the threats and challenges, it represents huge opportunity for all vendors in

Middle East and Africa and for Symantec it is no exception. The company is excited for the fact that the investment on the information security is much higher in this region than on any other technologies.

Mark Nutt,VP, Channel Strategy, Symantec EMEA, say, “It is a very successful and a very high-growth year for us. In the high growth market there are a lot of threats and challenges. Therefore we feel very relevant and our messages resonate with our customers.”

Earlier the partners used to focus on selling and implementing products and security used to be the after-thought. But now they are looking at developing more profitable business by adopting service capability and looking at software - in particular security - to invest in. They are building capability around solutions – mostly around security and information management where they can sell services too. They can advise their clients and build solutions and support for them in a very effective way. Therefore, Symantec too is looking for more partners who can grow the market, build sales and technical capabilities, and remain commit to the vendors who have the market’s leading technology capability and real commitment to the channel.

In order to woo these partners, Symantec has also tweaked its partner programme, which encompasses important attributes that can ensure the partners to do business with profitability.

Mark adds, “We are looking for partners who can deliver value to the customers… who have real capability of selling and delivering solu-tions… who are also committed to us. We are going to disproportionatelyf ocus and invest in the partners who want to drive higher growth capability with Symantec.”

Symantec has also announced some new incentives and rewards programmes. For example opportunity registration, which enables the partners to go out to the market and look for customers whom they can sell value of Symantec. The partners are also getting opportunity to service those partners and therefore ensured of working with the customers during their entire lifecycle of technology purchase.

During Gitex 2014, Symantec had showcased their partnership with Deloitte and how it enhances their consulting capability.

The customers who want their network to be monitored and managed by the third party from the security point of view should now look at Symantec seriously.

Mark maintains, “We are looking to monitor the networks and capture the security risks. By leveraging on the consulting skills of Deloitte, we can understand the business outcome and the security risks. This clearly enables the customers

to prioritise on where they need to focus in order to avoid any business issues and get maximum values from the tools and technologies.”

Deloitte has developed their cyber intelligence centre, which is based on the foundation of Symantec technologies. As they have started offering the services through Symantec, it can be an opportunity for the partners to white level and even bundle their own services.

FINALLY…With Deloitte’s partnership with Symantec, the partners can not only offer security solutions and consulting but also look at managed security services seriously. Not to forget, cyber security market is expected to grow at 38-42 per cent in the Middle East and Afria region in the next four years and managed security services can definitely occupy a large portion in the entire mode of offerings. ë

MARK NUTT,VP, CHANNEL STRATEGY, SYMANTEC EMEA

“By leveraging on the consulting skills of Deloitte, we can understand the business outcome and the security risks.”

Symantec might be splitting into two with security business one side and information management business on the other side, but the fact remains the same that the umbrella company would look at empowering partners to focus on solutions and services.

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ENTERPRISE SECURITY

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Manifestation of a Young Genius

TEXPO

The yearning to become an innovative entrepreneur someday was a dream Sarfaraz Alam envisioned very early, which is why his aspiration led him to name his firm “TEXPO” at the

mere age of 22. It has been a journey of strife, endurance and utter determination that led to the inception of TEXPO.

“Starting in 2006, with a meager beginning in Dubai, our company went on to play an integral role in delivering mega scale IT projects in the region and later had the honor to be a part of the design and communication network installation system for a couple of Satellite Ground Service Stations,” SarfarazAlam, CEO, TEXPO LLC.states.

With more than a decade of outstanding suc-cess, TEXPO has created a niche for itself.

“I believe that synergy and coherence between IT and business are imperative. At TEXPO, we offer end-to-end robust and sustainable IT Infrastructure services, state-of-the-art Applica-tion Development and innovative and pragmatic IT Consulting services to leading private and government entities across all domains of information technology,” says Sarfaraz.

With an outstanding track record of suc-cessful IT infrastructure experience, TEXPO comprehends the benefits and requirements of cost effective and energy efficient data centers and offers robust and sustainable services such as complete turnkey data centers from design to delivery. It also provides a wide array of IT cabling and networking services.

“Data is a highly valuable asset to any profes-sional organization. Many companies may have

embraced the need for technology but fail to build their service centers without consulting professionals. It’s only over a period that they realize that they need to make required changes in order to be in sync with the way data centers are designed globally,” asserts Sarfaraz.

TEXPO’s expertise in advanced network infrastructure technology has led to its active involvement in the design and implementation of IT Networks for large scale satellite communica-tion ground stations in the region. It has been an integral part of the communication system installation at Satellite Tracking Ground Stations, by providing cable networking installations, sub-communication system testing, and electrical installation and compliance procedures in line with international quality standards. With prestigious clients and associations with entities like Astrium, Thales Alenia Space, Telecom-munication Regulatory Authority (TRA), Roads and Transportation Authority (RTA), TEXPO has been an easy choice for many.

TEXPO’s Application Development divi-sion primarily focuses on developing custom enterprise software applications and portals for multi-faceted organizations. Staying abreast of emerging eGovernment, mGovernment and Smart Government trends, TEXPO offers very specific, focused and packaged services for the public sector. TEXPO has delivered a myriad of Smart Government solutions that revolve around citizens directed government, personalized data and 360 degree citizen services. It has the in-house capability to develop mobile applica-tions on a wide variety of platforms including

Android, BlackBerry, Firefox OS, iOS, Mendix, Mono for Android, .NET Compact Framework and Windows Mobile.

Under its Business and IT consulting division, TEXPO has been providing propulsive IT solu-tions to leading private and government entities across all domains of information technology fortifying its stance in the eGovernment sector in Middle East. The company has provided consultancy services to Dubai Smart Govern-ment (previously known as Dubai eGovernment) and to The Executive Council, Dubai Municipal-ity (DM), Telecommunication and Regulatory Authority (RTA) among many others.

FINALLY… TEXPO understands the critical importance of progression and this enables them to facilitate clients in overcoming challenges triggered by the constant evolution of the global business environment. “We constantly aim at providing the best level of experience and customer satisfac-tion and serviceability,” concludes Sarfaraz. ë

SARFARAZ ALAMCEO, TEXPO LLC

“We offer end-to-end robust and sustainable IT Infrastructure services and state-of-the-art Application Development.”

We have observed young entrepreneurs in the Western world bringing innovations and making meaningful changes to the old systems. But if the same trend happens in the Eastern world - especially in the UAE it is certainly a sign to watch out for.

56 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

ENTREPRENEUR

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Awareness is Key to Garner Market Share

SILVER PEAK

If one looks at Gartner Magic Quadrant report 2014,Silver Peakwas the only company placed alongside Riverbed in the leaders’ quadrant. Although from 2012 till 2014, there has been fluctuation in the

placement of the players in those boxes but one thing sure when others are going down Silver Peak is gaining its position.

Bhaskar Peruri, Regional Sales Manager, Middle East, Silver Peak, said, “We are a 100% WAN optimization company.Rest of the com-panies except Riverbed have WAN optimization as an additional option. Their main business is something else. They do a little bit of QaS and compression. So they donot compete in the WAN Optimization space with us.”

Technology has changed from time to time. Today, the data centre has been decentralised and every branch has its own servers in small format. In a way, we have only client sitting on the branch office is accessing the data with the WAN connec-tivity. On the other side, WAN is also becoming bigger because the applications have become bigger with SAP, Microsoft Exchange, Voice and Video goring faster. So the WAN capacity is growing and the expense of the company is also growing. Therefore, if not for the servers, but for

the increased application and increased users’ flow to the network is making WAN optimisation a necessity.

One should also understand that if one keeps on buying more and more bandwidth, it does not mean that one can get best performance because WAN has its own dynamics, which could include packet loses or latency, etc. So,taking care of all the issues related to networks and bandwidth, WAN Optimization can only be the answer.

Bhaskar added,“Last year, we took the decision of coming to this (MEA) market and stated investing in the Middle East by first opening an office in JLT, Dubai. We have signed up with Gulf IT as our distributor and trying to expand to other regions with them as well. We are focussing on investing in the technical persons.”

As per Bhasker, Silver Peak is growing at 40%at least QoQ. Bhasker said, “The beauty of our solu-tions is that we are not in application layer, we are in Layer-3.If there is a replication from DC to DR or DC to DC, we are much betteroption than the competition. But in the scenario where there is connectivity between DC to branch offices, they are better. But both the companies are merging in at a point.”

He added, “The challenge for us is that the

customers are aware of Riverbed and not so aware of Silver Peak. Now we are going to the customers and doing a lot of marketing. We are doing a lot of activities with the infrastructure companies like Dell and EMC. We are doing a lot of co-marketing events with them as well. We will do events with Gulf IT to do the events in other regions also.”

FINALLY…Middle East is a key market for the Silver Peak’s MEA sales. The company has already bagged good deals. One of the clients is National Bank of Abu Dhabi. They have been using Silver Peak products for four years now and it is giving them excellent results. They are deploying Silver Peak in every location possible. Having said that Silver Peak is going slow in the market with the apprehension if suddenly everything came up they would be of no position to deliver the solutions. ë

BHASKAR PERURI,REGIONAL SALES MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, SILVER PEAK

“The challenge for us is that the customers are aware of Riverbed and not so aware of Silver Peak. Now we are going to the customers and doing a lot of marketing.”

If there are a lot of views on how the WAN Optimization Market is going down because of the centralised datacentres, there are also strong views supporting the growth of this market because of the growth in branch level applications and users. And certainly Silver Peak is one of the top players in this segment to gain from.

MEA57FEBRUARY 2015

NETWORKING

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FDC Presents a Noiseless ICT Wonder from ECS

FDC

Venturing into yet another awe-inspiring ICT wonder is Elite Computer System with their latest innovation— the PC –LIVA X. Adiscreet package with a modest

eco-footprint—LIVA X is a well-suited model for robust productivity and noiseless-atmosphere. Amidst the hubbub of immense globalization and grand accolades for great innovations, ECS brings you a silent yet profound wonder in the form of their latest mini PC – LIVA X, a fan-less design, quiet and low power consumption small-size computer.

Available in the MENA region from FDC

International, LIVA X is built to provide the end-users with utmost usage satisfaction.The configuration of LIVA X is certainly a techno-logical blessing for corporate front-offices and reception desks, making way for lot of free space and enabling a more pleasant visitor experience. Educational institutions, libraries and customer care centres are the targeted users who can ben-efit from the compactness and no-noise feature of this product. In addition to that with the power of a 64-bit Dual core 2.25 GHz machine with 4GB DDR3, 64 GB eMMC, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB 3.0 and mSATA , ECS brings to your desk a PC that is crafted to meet your technological needs and create a cable-free environment.

It is also a revolution in BYOD—transforming the concept like never before by moving onto PCs from handsets. Ringing in at only half a liter, LIVA X truly justifies the saying, ‘Big Surprises Come in Small Packages’. Shifting their focus from motherboards, ECS has lighted the torch for a new generation in silent computing. The product is expecting to garner admirationsfor the unique whole new PC experience that it would provide to the end-users. With its excellent no-noise thermal design, work like you are meditating and the native VESA mount enables to make LIVA X your constant companion. And when you have got the Windows 8.1 is installed inside, there is no going ‘outside’.

With this achievement, ECS strikes chord and hits the Bulls eye of the next generation ICT.

Alan Pourmirza, Marketing Manager, FDC International FZE proudly shares the success of this unique innovation and sheds light on its enticing features. He emphasizes on the limited carbon foot print left by the machine, thereby contributing a byte to global energy usage which is also a great step towards the green ICT revolu-tion that is gearing popularity. He adds “The LIVA X will present a whole new dimension and redefine the usage of PC in schools, universities, government and private sectors. With lots of extra space and a refined working atmosphere, LIVA X truly gets ready to take up your imagina-tions on technology to the next level”.

He further added, “This device can support applications in the remotest locations and having no access or no proper access to power con-nectivity. For example, using alternative energy including solar power, the product can run Kiosks and ATMs.

FDC will also look at focused and tailor-made marketing campaignsin the region of MENA in order to educate the partners and end-users.

With a wide range of software inbuilt and excellent features the LIVA X is gearing up to rule the roost and the market for years to come. ë

Ideal for Educational institutions, libraries and customer care centres,LIVA X is a fan-less design, quiet and low power consumption small-size computer.

ALAN POURMIRZA,MARKETING MANAGER, FDC INTERNATIONAL FZE

“The LIVA X will present a whole new dimension and redefine the usage of PC in schools, universities, government and private sectors.”

58 FEBRUARY 2015

MEA

COMPUTING

MOBILITY & SECURITY

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User Experience is Critical

EPICOR

Did you notice that your eagerly awaited new smartphone didn’t come with a manual? You simply picked it up and immediately began using its features with

delight, making it one of the most important work tools at your disposal and something you simply can’t survive without. This is the way that technology should be. It saves timeand should be an indispensible part of the user’s life. People don’t always adjust to change easily so feeling completely comfortable and in control of a devi-ceultimately makes or breaks the user experience.

Most technology trends begin outside of the workplace and then filter into the workenviron-ment. The futuristic technologies once considered out of reach have become the norm and users are comfortable with them. This has created an expectation among users when it comes to the technology in every aspect of life, including at work.Anything they interact with from their mobile phone, tablet, the information kiosk at an airport, ticket salesor mall directorymustbe easy to useor it will be cast aside. Less is more, and simplicity is the key to saving time.

Among the most prolific impacts that the consumerization of IT has had on technology in the workplace is the usability and functionality of business software. There is no manual for social networking, mobile phones, web-based email, tablets or data storage but people know how to use them. The intuitive way that they work and their design mean that the user can easily learn how to use them through experience. And the inclusion of similar technologies creates the expectation of how things should work rather

than how they do work. When a business implements new business

software it is critical that the user feels comfort-able and ready to accept it as one of their most valuable work tools. This will ensure that users are comfortable, and the business begins to reap the benefits of the investment with minimal disruptions.

In a new Chief Information Officer (CIO) survey conducted by Epicor in the Middle East, India and Africa, a staggering 90% of respondents agreed that speed, reinvention, agility and innova-tion are critical to the success of any organization serious about optimizing performance and gaining competitive advantage. Consistent and standardised functionality of business software is a corner stone in achieving these objectives. Reducing clicks, more intuitive functionality and customised dashboards are just some of the ways that usability can be improved and expected functionality included.

An offshoot of this is the concept of allowing employees to bring their own device (BYOD) to the workplace. It is cumbersome to carry around more than one device and people’s technology tastes differ. This has resulted in tech savvy companies implementing BYOD policies and the infrastructure to support it. They also bring their web-based email accounts, online data storage facilities and social networking with them.In order to ensure the security of information and the smooth running of a BYOD policy,putting the right infrastructure in place is very important.

Industrial espionage is a real concern in a competitive market but a well planned and orchestrated BYOD strategy means there is

no cause for concern. Employees are able to work outside of the office space, anytime and anywhere, which ultimately improves efficiencies for both the employee and the business. It also means less hardware is needed, and mobilising the workforce at a lower cost. It also gives the user choice in terms of what device and operating system they prefer, which directly contributes to their productivity and happiness.

Businesses that haven’t kept pace with the shifts in technology don’t measure up to user’s expectations in terms of functionality and ease of use, and are quickly seen as archaic. This creates a mine field of problems in terms of employee adoption, change management and the time it will take for staff to be up to speed. This also means that the time to value will be far too long. Developing a future-proof technology strategy with a keen focus on emerging and disruptive trends, that is- based on best practice func-tionality means that the businesses will realise improved speed, agility and streamlining of operations at a much faster pace, and with greater success. ë

ANISH KANARAN,CHANNEL DIRECTOR - MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & INDIA, EPICOR SOFTWARE CORPORATION

“Businesses that haven’t kept pace with the shifts in technology don’t measure up to user’s expectations.”

There is no manual for social networking, mobile phones, web-based email, tablets or data storage but people know how to use them.

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GUEST TALK

Lenovo ThinkServer product portfolio includes Rack Servers suited for cloud deployments, database, or virtualiza-tion workloads, as well as Tower Servers designed to manage business’ file/print and point-of-sale workloads.

The ThinkServer Rack Servers offers a balanced design and are built for today’s and future-ready businesses. ThinkServer Racks offer world-class performance, power-efficient designs, and extensive standard features at an affordable price.

For example, the ThinkServer RS140 is a compact, entry-level 1U rack server with a purposeful design for small business or distributed environments. The RS140 runs a range

of operating systems, including client OS capability for retail applications. It’s among the quietest models in the industry, and it features easy-to-use, industry-standard management tools. The RS140 also has networking scalability and a wider range of proces-sor support from Intel Core i3 to Intel Xeon. Plus, the RS140 can support 4-post and 2-post racks, giving you more flexibility with your business footprint.

In addition to the RS140, other Rack Server models launched by Lenovo include RD350, RD450, RD550 and RD650.

The ThinkServer Tower Servers are designed to provide the performance,

reliability, and easy-to-use tools to be able to handle heavy workloads at an affordable budget. A case in point is the ThinkServer TS140, an extremely affordable 4U enterprise-class server.

The ThinkServer TS140 is a true server with enterprise-class Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 series processors — providing a 15-percent performance increase over our previous-generation towers so you have the power you need to run your business effectively. The TS140 includes reliability features such as error correcting code (ECC) memory and an on-board storage controller with the capability of imple-menting up to RAID 5 to safeguard your data.

NetApp EF560 all-flash array, with improvements in storage performance to offer the absolute and consistent latency bandwidth and IOPS is critical to enterprise database and analytics applications. Based on a new Storage Performance Council SPC-1 Result, the all-flash EF560 achieved the leading SPC-1 Price-Performance for all-flash arrays with an average response time of under one millisecond, at $0.54/SPC-1 IOPS. NetApp EF560 All-Flash Array—Appli-cations that control key business operations such as databases, analytics and OLTP require both absolute performance and consistent response times in order to speed customer response times, deliver actionable results more quickly, and reach decisions faster.

The NetApp EF560 maximizes the value of flash to provide the top SPC-1 Price-Perfor-mance value for a storage array with an average response time of under one millisecond, reaching 245,011.76 SPC-1 IOPS with an average response time of 0.93 milliseconds in the SPC-1 Result.

KEY CAPABILITIESn In addition to being affordable, the TS140 is upgradeable. You can add up to 16TB of storage, up to 32GB of memory. n You can have 4 PCI/PCIe slots so you can grow the TS140 as your needs dictate. n It also offers simple tools for deployment, monitoring, and ongoing management. n The TS140 comes standard with the latest Intel Advanced Management Technology (AMT) 9.0 so, for many models, you can access and manage your server from a remote location.

Lenovo ThinkServer

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

NETAPP EF560 ALL-FLASH ARRAY

KEY CAPABILITIESn Offers 30 GB per second of throughput and reduces energy consumption by 30 percent and reduced required space by 48 percent.n Offers extreme performance, consistent low latency and reliability required to power a media-rich learning environment.

INNOVATIONS

MEA61FEBRUARY 2015

Epson Ink Tank System printersEpson’s high-capacity ink tank system printers enable users to keep their printing costs low, increase productivity and reduce downtime. The purpose-built ink tank is fully integrated into the printer so users can enjoy reliable colour printing without the mess or hassle often associated with non-genuine refills and third-party ink tank systems.

Using replacement ink bottles, the users can print up to 4,000 pages in black and 6,500 pages in colour. Epson-genuine ink bottles make it easy to refill the ink tank with their clear labelling and drip-free nozzle.

The printer comes in many verities i.e. L1300 and L1800, L850 & L810 and L120. When L1300 is a four-colour A3 ITS printer, designed to deliver ultra-low-cost and hassle-free printing to offices with a high print volume, the L1800 benefits from an ultra-low-cost, and photographers, advertising agencies and other small offices can take advantage of its six-colour printing.

Their high-capacity ink tanks enable users to keep their print-ing costs low, increase productivity and reduce downtime. Each printer’s purpose-built ink tank is fully integrated into the printer so users can enjoy reliable colour printing without the mess or hassle often associated with non-genuine refills and third-party ink tank systems.

CyberoamOS 10.6.2 with Major Per-formance ImprovementsCyberoamOS 10.6.2 for its UTM and NGFW security appliances offers a lot of updates including increasing Firewall throughputs by up to 430%, IPS throughputs by up to 210% and UTM throughputs by up to 190%; inclusion of User Threat Quotient (UTQ) offering security intelligence to spot risky users in network; availability of Cyberoam in Discover mode (popularly known as TAP mode) to help partners and customers evaluate Cyberoam security; and Application Visibility & Controls for HTTPS-based Micro-Apps.

The enhancements in CyberoamOS 10.6.2 also offer following new functionalities to customers on their security appliances which include User Threat Quotient (UTQ) and Application Visibility and Control for Micro Apps. While UTQ harnesses information derived out of web traffic and offers patterns of user behavior to determine risky users in a network, the Application Visibility and Control for Micro Apps provide deep-scanning for HTTPS based applications, allowing granular control over various micro-apps within the larger app ecosystems such as Facebook, Google and the like.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Available as a report, User Threat Quotient (UTQ) harnesses infor-mation derived out of web traffic and offers patterns of user behaviour to determine risky users in a network. n Provides deep-scanning for HTTPS based applications, allowing granular control over various micro-apps within the larger app ecosys-tems such as Facebook, Google and the like.n Includes Radius Single-Sign-On (RSSO), IPv6 Traffic Load-balancing support in HA, Secure SMTP and availability of Discover Mode (popu-larly called TAP mode) n Makes PoC evaluation of Cyberoam security appliances simpler, easier and faster.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Perhaps best of all for event photographers, the L850 and L810 don’t require a computer to print and – in the case of the L850 – scan and copy too. n The latter scans directly to a memory card, while both can print from memory cards and directly from any camera with PictBridge.n Both have a 6.9cm smart navigation touch-panel LCD screen to control all scan, copy and print functions.

INNOVATIONS

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REDEFINEFLASH

Authorised Value Added Distributor

StorIT Distribution fzco | P.O.Box 17417 Jebel Ali Freezone Dubai, United Arab EmiratesTel: +971.4.881.9690 | Fax: +971.4.887.1637 | Email: info@storit.ae | Web: www.storit.ae

Harnessing the value of information

Flash is transforming the way we think about storage. Ubiquitous in data centers at all levels, it’s enabling innovation across IT.

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