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Contents ISSUE 236 | september 2011
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Planning for growth Bill Scannell, EMC’s executive vice president for Europe, America, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) discusses the organisation’s growth and strategy for the region.
Shades of success
Wissam Khoury, managing director at SunGard Financial Systems, Middle East, tells Pallavi Sharma the ideas behind the company’s investments for growth in the region.
What’s next for Apple?
Analysts believe that Apple’s product pipeline and management will likely make the company successful in the short term.
18
Round-up
We bring you a quick round-up of IT industry news.
CASE STUDY 22
Bridging gaps
Higher Calling The Ministry of Higher Education in Egypt establishes data centres, improves networks and uses technology to drive the education enhancement project in the country
INSIGHT
Bahman Enterprises Group achieves reliable connectivity across multiple offices with a Fortinet solution.
50 Staying ahead of complexity
FEATURE 26
32
38
Grasping governance Pallavi Sharma discovers the challenges associated with IT governance, and its slow and steady adoption in the Middle East.
Method to madness
Middle East enterprises are learning from their weatern peers and refering to global standards to work out the most effective project management strategies.
On the air
In an industry synonymous with information sharing, media and broadcasting organisations in the region are investing in technology to manage infrastructure, while enhancing the ability to cater to a more demanding audience.
INTERVIEW 44 Path perfect
In the second part of the interview, Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware explains the path ahead for the company across the entirety of any global organisation.
54 Choice Dilemma
Managing cloud infrastructure and services is similar to traditional network management-only bigger, badder and more complex.
With so many cloud vendors claiming to provide the best of services, David Taber highlights the elements that serve as a basis to evaluate different cloud provisions and what suits your organisation.
HOW TO 56
Make the most of an Oracle negotiation Forrester Research analyst Duncan Jones points out how best to cope with Oracle’s ruthlessly experienced sales reps to outline a contract that works in your best interest
58 Put your tablet to work
62
With a little foresight and judicious app installation, you can turn a tablet into a productivity powerhouse.
Last Word
A look at what major events await you, what we’re reading, and a sneak peek at the contents of the next issue of CNME.
EDITORIAL
Out of the ordinary
Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: sathya@cpidubai.com Twitter: @computernewsme Facebook: www.facebook.com/ computernewsme
Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood
August has been, well, interesting. I mean, even if you discounted everything that has been happening on the regional front there was the proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google, and the reshuffling of divisions by HP to keep you sitting on the edge of your seats. Google’s move is likely to give Android a boost to its already strong position in the smartphone market. Though it has gotten some of the other hardware vendors – like HTC and Samsung – worried, in the long run, the acquisition is likely to give Apple real competition in the smartphone and tablet market. Of course, only if it is handled well! Some would agree that the HP reshuffling has been long overdue. Focusing on its strengths and minimising on the divisions that it doesn’t want to carry around with it over the long term is a decision that every large company makes at regular intervals in its growth period. The fact that Leo Apothekar, current CEO of HP, comes from a software-focused background might have driven part of the decision to move away from the highly-consumerised PC business, where HP still continues to shine. This move could have a long-term impact on HP and the market as a whole. The question though is whether HP’s top management will last long enough to drive the vision for the company or whether this shift is likely to make the company flounder on its new goal to be the next Big Blue. And then there is everything that has been happening on the regional front. We have been working feverishly on the Cloud Congress (September 19th to 20th) and CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011 (October 9th). Cloud Congress 2011 (www.cloudcongressme.com) is set to be the biggest cloud conference of the region, bringing together in excess of 250 attendees and sporting a proud line-up of regional speakers comprising end-users and vendors. You can still register for the event. Visit the website, fill in your details and await our confirmation letter. Nominations for CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011 are now closed. We have received hundreds of nominations from across the region across all 20 categories. We are all set now for the next, albeit more difficult part, of going through the nominations and identifying the winners in each category. I have to say, the judges have an unenviable job!! Going through the submissions we have received is no easy task, and picking the right winner among so many deserving projects is a Herculean one. Personally though, I can’t wait for the results. And if you want to see who wins, why not join us during the Awards evening? The gala function will be held on the 9th of October 2011 (the first day of GITEX Technology Week). To register for the event, visit www.computernewsme.com/ictachievementawards2011. Yes, August has been interesting. But it might be no comparison to what September and October promise! Happy reading.
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Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409147
Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409104 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409108
DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by
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ANALYSIS month in view
Planning for growth Recently, Bill Scannell, EMC’s executive vice president for Europe, America, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was in Dubai to study the scope of the organisation’s mushrooming growth, analyse EMC’s current and future investments, and build the regional team.
E
MC, one of the largest IT firms with dealings in everything from storage to security, has big plans for the Middle East region. “The team is not big enough here, we are hiring aggressively. We have over 400 people in Dubai and yet there is a huge opportunity for growth. In addition to this, we have a centre of excellence in Egypt, where we undertake advanced technology development and the outsourcing of some of our services work. The team there consists of about 200 personnel and we are looking to touch 300 employees in the coming year,” said Bill Scannell, EMC’s executive VP for EMEA, who recently made his first visit to the region since taking on his responsibilities at EMC. According to him, EMC’s growth plans in the regional are far from gradual. “EMC just announced its second quarter revenues and while we now have a 35% market share in this region and a 35% market share globally, we look at our current market standing as an opportunity to attract the remaining 65% of the market
by showing customers the benefits of working with EMC. The Middle East and Africa represent high growth markets for EMC. So it is essential to understand where
Most organisations face challenges during peak workloads and IaaS offers them the ability to scale up or down to meet their unique requirement during differing workloads. Not only does this result in better use of the technology investment but it also enables organisations to lower their capital expenditures.”
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Computer News Middle East
September 2011
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this growth is coming from, and what investments can be made in the future to continue this trend - or even accelerate the rate of EMC’s growth in this region,” said Scannell. As part of its expansion strategy, the IT company is also involved in programmes to contribute to improving the skills base in the region, in order to help raise the general level of maturity across the sector. According to Scannell, EMC is actively involved in harnessing local ICT talent in the region to address the ongoing skills gap that challenge many end-users. Key among these efforts according to Scannell,
is the EMC Academic Alliance, an initiative that involves establishing strategic relationships with a number of credible local universities to train students in storage, IT service and security. This idea of knowledge sharing is enforced within EMC’s walls as well, and is used extensively in its partner training programmes as well. “An EMC partner must be trained and should adequately understand the underlying need for a technology implementation and how this implementation may vary across diverse industries. We bring partners and customers together and educate them on the need and impact of an implementation. Once partners have successfully acquired the certification they are strategically positioned to market EMC solutions and services to end users,” he explained. According to him, the three trends that seem to be paving the way for new developments in technology are big data, cloud computing and security. “Cloud computing in all its forms is probably the biggest trend we’ve seen in the last 20-30 years,” he said. Scannell believes that while the private cloud is still the most popular cloud model for most organisations, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) remains the cloud service of choice, since it gives organisations the ability to scale IT requirements based on workloads. “Most organisations face challenges during peak workloads and IaaS offers them the ability to scale up or down to meet their unique requirements during differing workloads. Not only does this result in better use of the technology investments but it also enables organisations to lower their capital expenditures,” he explained. Scannell claimed that EMC’s strategy towards providing cloud computing services is unique, in that EMC unlike its many competitors has not moved into the cloud service providers role itself, but has strategically decided to provide
Bill Scannell, EMC’s executive vice-president for the EMEA region.
technology to help service providers build the best cloud environments for their diverse customers. Touching on the issue of big data, Scannell opined that the surge in the Internet and independent device usage across the globe combined with the popularity of social media has triggered the need to invest in solutions that help analyse mountains of unstructured data. This has also simultaneously resulted in the increasing need to protect an organisation’s network from constantly evolving threats around the world. Discussing the subject of service level agreements (SLAs), Scannell said that cloud providers are not too different from traditional IT outsourcers. “A contract is signed if you outsource your workload, following which one of two things can happen. One is that the outsourcer may fail to meet the SLAs for www.computernewsme.com
which there aren’t a lot of penalties. Two is that you may end up being serviced using technology that is already obsolete due to the speed at which technology accelerates. For instance, in the case of a 10 year outsourcing contract, the technology being used at the time of signing the agreement may no longer suit the environment the company operates in a few years down the line,” he said. “This is a big challenge. The customers aren’t going to tolerate those service levels but they’re tied down by the contract they signed. In which case, the outsourcers are only liable to provide you the bare minimum levels of service provisioned in the SLA to stay profitable,” he said. Scannell pointed out that the difference in the cloud environment or a cloud SLA is that much of the work that is done in the cloud works on a month-to-month commitment basis. So if an end user is not happy with the services he is being delivered by a service provider, he can up and leave. Scannell is hugely optimistic about EMC’s future, and pointed out that despite the firm’s established name it is nowhere near complacent about its position. “The fact is information will continue to grow in both good and bad times. Our strategy is to stay focused on delivering solutions that can help customers manage this surge in data and meet their exact requirements. With the market recovering from the financial crisis, we can be more positive about growth and delivery. We will continue to invest back in the community through training and internships and develop competitive solutions, we continue to grow. The idea is to listen to the customer and execute,” he said. “This is why we organise regular EMC forums in the region that give us an opportunity to listen to the challenges our customers face and either help them address these challenges today or develop technology that will enable them to better address the situation tomorrow,” Scannell concluded. September 2011
Computer News Middle East
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ANALYSIS month in view
Shades of success At a recent interview with Wissam Khoury, managing director at SunGard Financial Systems, Middle East, Pallavi Sharma discovers the ideas behind the company’s investments for the future.
“
The recent spurt in technology adoption by companies in the Middle East is a result of increasing competition and rapidly shifting market dynamics,” said Wissam Khoury, managing director of SunGard Financial Systems in the Middle East. Khoury contested the general outlook that businesses in the Middle East are predominantly followers of proven technology trends. “The region is marked by the existence of industry sectors that are pioneering the science of technology for business growth. For instance, the mobile banking segment in Kenya and retail banking segment in Turkey are using far more advanced tools than the more developed economies of the world. What’s credible is that in the case of Turkey, most of these applications and solutions are developed by the banks internally,” he added. He also pointed out that this innovative use of technology on the part of regional organisations is in no small way a result of globalisation and the resulting increase in competition across the entire span of the market. “The growth in adoption of the latest technology at such a rapid pace in the Middle East is largely due to the fact that the market comprises of a majority of SMEs that have a greater risk appetite than their larger peers. These firms also understand the need to 8
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September 2011
invest in solutions to beat competition better because SME operations primarily focus on increased efficiency through reductions in costs, errors and redundancies,” he explained. Social media marketing and monitoring in addition to mobile and Internet banking are technology innovations that the banking and finance industry can no longer ignore, Khoury opined. www.computernewsme.com
“The idea is simple; these trends encourage information sharing across the organisation, its channel and customers. The surge in Internet and Smartphone use across the globe fuels the need to leverage social media tools as well as mobile and Internet banking. Ignoring these technologies is risking being left behind and losing out to a competitor,” explains Khoury. Often the ability to provide efficient mobile and Internet banking services is hindered by a less than robust telecom infrastructure. However, Khoury opined that in countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the telecom infrastructure is perfectly suited to establish an exemplary network of mobile and Internet services. With regards to the use of social networks by financial organisations, Khoury said, “Although, the BFSI sector hasn’t yet begun investing in social media marketing and monitoring on an operational scale, most businesses are now involved with one platform or the other. These pages or business groups on social networks are often managed manually by an employee. As more organisations begin using these tools and establish a clearer road map on how to derive benefits from using and managing these platforms; we will see more companies adopt the latest solutions
to capitalise on the opportunities provided by the platforms and mitigate the risks associated with them.” Khoury pointed at automation and operational efficiency as being two key requirements for the financial sector. “A service industry by nature, this sector requires automation to reduce errors associated with manual labour and improve speeds of service delivery to gain greater operational efficiency. The challenge associated with these elements is how best to integrate them using a technology to maintain an expected level of personalisation to customers,” he said. “In a turbulent economy, it is essential for financial institutions to offer all its stakeholders a significant degree of transparency, ensure that this transparency is accessible through flawless networks to enhance overall business efficiency, ultimately enabling proactive decision making and customer retention,” Khoury said. He opined that SunGard’s USP is the sheer depth and spectrum of the solutions and services it provides. We take the time to study the relevancy of a need or a gap that must be filled in the market and develop solutions that meet the most unique customer requirement,” he said. “Secondly, we don’t just sell you the solution, but combine these with a range of services to ensure the customer derives maximum benefits from the technology investment. These services include consultancy, support, maintenance, project management, among others,” he adds. In Khoury’s opinion, SunGard’s efforts in contributing to developing a local pool of skilled ICT talent is a symbol of its commitment to ICT growth in the region and is a key strategic initiative. “Resources are definitely a challenge; there is no doubt about it. You may have the best policy but if you don’t have the right skill sets, time and money to put these into practice they’re pointless,” he said. This is the reason behind investing in a local implementation team that constitutes a mix of both local and international expertise.
Wissam Khoury, managing director, SunGard Financial Systems, Middle East.
a whopping $20 trillion in worldwide assets being processed on SunGard’s asset management solutions. “SunGard recently announced that it had amassed $5billion in total revenue last year, 55% of this revenue is earned from SunGard Financial Systems. 90% of our revenue comes from the provision of services, this is recurring revenue which is a good indication of the stability of our business from consulting, maintenance, rentals and other professional services,” said Khoury. Over the last few years, CFOs have garnered much power in dictating the terms of IT investments given the nature of the recession and criticality of financial
It is essential for financial institutions to offer all their stakeholders a significant degree of transparency, ensure that this transparency is accessible through flawless networks to enhance overall business efficiency, ultimately enabling proactive decision making and customer retention” “This mixed pool of resources encourages knowledge transfer, where employees learn from their colleagues and customers learn from trusted partners,” he said. “We understand that it’s not only about software, but also about skills and the ability to support the implementation of software, to help service and maintain it,” added Khoury. Khoury felt that the region is also lacking in the awareness and understanding of the implications of non compliance with internationally recognised regulations. “This is why we bring community wide events such as City Day to the region, to encourage thought leadership and positive interaction across industry players. City Day is a platform that encourages thought leadership by bringing together SunGard clients and partners together with industry pioneers,” he said. SunGard Financial Systems, a global provider of mission-critical software and IT services to the BFSI sector boasts www.computernewsme.com
operations across all sectors of business. Khoury believes that as the market continues to recover, the situation will even out for the CIOs, “The way I see it although the CFO will continue to oversee IT investments, there will be more alignment across strategic business objectives and IT initiatives. This will give CIOs the upper hand as far decision making associated with calculated IT investments is concerned,” he said. Khoury concluded saying that SunGard will continue to invest in regional education and expansion. “We will continue to study the market, its scope and growth direction and bring vertical focused services to the region to cater to emerging trends in the region. We will also soon announce the opening of an office in Turkey. Naturally, we have long way to go, a lot of ground to cover and we need to add to the team to help us cater to high growth sectors such as the Middle East.” September 2011
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ANALYSIS month in view
What’s next for Apple? Apple’s product pipeline and management will likely make the company successful in the short term
A
pple for years rallied around its charismatic co-founder, Steve Jobs, so it’s only natural now to question whether the company can retain its market dominance and magic with a new leader. Jobs, who stepped down as the company’s CEO last month, has stamped his personality on Apple’s operations and products. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple not only sparked the personal computing revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, but more recently established new directions in technology with iconic products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Jobs has been replaced as CEO by heir apparent Tim Cook, formerly the company’s chief operating officer, who was Apple’s public face during Jobs’ medical leaves. Cook is considered an operations person, but has shown his ability to run Apple’s day-to-day operations during Jobs’ leaves of absence. “Cook has the drive and has also silently been at the centre of Apple’s recent successes,” said Edward Marczak, an author and executive editor of MacTech magazine. “While the market may worry, those who have stuck by Apple through it all know there’s only more excellence ahead,” he added. But there are questions about his ability to continue the spirit of innovation embodied by Jobs, whose headstrong management style inspired workers and helped the company think ahead of market trends. Cook, whos was previously responsible for Apple’s sales and operations, has been credited with 10
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September 2011
revamping the retail side of the company’s business with the establishment of Apple stores. “Although Cook is very talented, he doesn’t have Jobs’ innovative spirit -- it’s just not in the DNA,” said James Post, professor at the Boston University School of Management. Jobs will remain at Apple as chairman and will be involved in design and product decisions, so his influence could be felt on Apple’s products for years. But Cook was clearly Jobs’ first choice for Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple CEO, and in a letter he “strongly recommended” to the board that it appoint Cook to the position. of companies losing direction after their Some company observers believe founders left, returning to stability only after that Jobs has established a blueprint for a period of time passed. Apple to follow and churn out hit products, “Apple will lack Jobs’ ‘my way is the laying the groundwork for Cook to only way’ approach to business decision succeed. Nevertheless, Jobs’ absence from making,” Post said. “Cook will have to devise daily operations will leave a creative and a new way of making effective decisions that management void. Without Jobs, whose drive the company to continue developing charismatic management style inspired successful products,” he added. workers to think outside the box, there are Jobs founded Apple in the mid-1970s questions about how long Apple will be able with Steve Wozniak but was ousted in a to sustain its ability to lead market trends. boardroom struggle in 1985. He returned in “Visionaries are easy to find, but great 1996 to save the company from near ruin, visionaries who can go from concept to and returned it to astounding profitability a reality to execution to mass marketing are few years later. rare indeed,” Post said. Jobs turned Apple into a successful “Companies of all stripes can easily consumer electronics company by go astray, at least for a while, when their crystallising concepts into a series of popular founders leave,” Post said. Companies like products. Apple revolutionised the music Walt Disney, Ford and Dell are all examples industry with the iPod music player and www.computernewsme.com
iTunes store, and created new product categories with the touch-controlled iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet. In 2011, Apple for a short period became the highest valued company in the world in terms of market capitalisation, passing the likes of Exxon Mobil. “As CEO, Jobs was an inspirational leader and had a knack for reading user sentiment and future technology trends,” said Owen Linzmayer, author of “Apple Confidential 2.0,” which describes Apple’s history. Jobs had “the vision and power to force Apple’s engineers to use technology to create products that serve users’ needs, minus the frills, without bogging them down,” Linzmayer said. “Apple has the products, marketing capabilities, and managers to continue to dominate markets,” Linzmayer said. But the technology industry moves fast, and Apple will need to figure out ways to remain a step ahead of its competitors. “Longer term, who knows? Things happen so rapidly in this industry, and new competitors and technologies can appear out of the blue, that it’s hard to predict what will happen to any firm, much less a company that’s been as innovative as Apple,” Linzmayer said. Over the years, Apple has competed with the likes of Google, Microsoft, HewlettPackard, Dell, Samsung and Research In Motion in the areas of computing, smartphones, operating systems and entertainment. Today, Apple has a nearunassailable position in tablets and a strong position in smartphones. Jobs ruled Apple with an iron fist as CEO, and his obsession with secrecy drew critics. His reaction of Adobe’s Flash technology from the iPhone polarised the IT industry, and tight policing of the App Store led to criticism that Apple was too insulated. “The secrecy was part of Jobs’ paranoia, which is warranted in a business that depends on innovation and market pizzazz,” Post expalined. “The cloak of secrecy was an extension of Jobs’ personality and obsessions. After his departure, the company could ... become more open and transparent,” Post said. “Jobs also personified an anger that
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
successful. Products such as the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV are sold as stand-alone devices, but can also work together. For example, users can stream movies from the iPad or iPhone to TV sets connected to the Apple TV device. In the end, the onus will lie on Cook to sustain Apple’s growth. Cook inherits qualified staff, products that are market leaders, and a pipeline of future offerings that have Jobs’ stamp of approval. Research of new products at Apple starts well in advance -- speculation around the iPhone began in 1999 when Apple registered the iPhone.org domain name. The New York Times in 2002 wrote about a product possibly combining phone and PDA-like features being under development. The
Some company observers believe that Jobs has established a blueprint for Apple to follow and churn out hit products, laying the groundwork for Cook to succeed. Nevertheless, Jobs’ absence from daily operations will leave a creative and management void. Without Jobs, whose charismatic management style inspired workers to think outside the box, there are questions about how long Apple will be able to sustain its ability to lead market trends. hooked users to the perception of Apple being an underdog,” said Roger Kay, principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates. “Jobs gave Apple fans the feeling that Apple was being treated unfairly, and users were attracted to the notion of a company fighting its way through a jungle of hostile competitors such as Microsoft, which preyed regularly on Apple’s ideas,” Kay said. “The new management would do well to maintain the passion of the company’s fans,” Kay said. Jobs inspired loyalty, the likes of which a future CEO may not be able to match, which could take away some of the company’s edge, Kay opined. Another big challenge for Cook and Apple’s management team will be to replicate the success Jobs had with creating a series of products that coalesced under a single umbrella and offered tight interoperability, a major reason the company has been so www.computernewsme.com
iPhone was finally unveiled in 2007. Cook will be assisted by Jonathan Ive, the senior vice president of industrial design, who is one of the creative forces behind the iPhone, iPad and iPod. Ive has been discussed by Apple enthusiasts as someone who could succeed Jobs as Apple’s CEO, but he is not considered a leader. Other executives include Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, who was also considered to replace Jobs. Cook may not bring Jobs’ panache and passion to the job, but Apple’s management team and product pipeline will likely ensure that the company won’t stumble, at least in the short term. “Keynotes certainly won’t be as interesting without Jobs, but I doubt anyone is going to take over and do anything incredibly stupid or turn the company into a boring place to work,” Linzmayer said. September 2011
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ROUND-UP month in view
Shades of Blue in HP’s dramatic reshuffling
Leo Apotheker, CEO, HP
HP’s plans to get out of the PC business, acquire software maker Autonomy and retreat from its webOS device investments to, let the tech giant sharpen its focus on enterprise IT markets and capitalise on the software-centric strengths of CEO Leo Apotheker. “As an executive who has spent most of my career primarily in software, it is a world I know well,” Apotheker said. But it’s an uphill climb nonetheless, as software has been responsible for only a small fraction of HP’s revenue in years past. In 2010, HP Software generated $3.59 billion in revenue, or 3% of the company’s $126 billion total
revenue. “But it’s on the upswing: HP Software logged 20% year-to-year growth and reached $780 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2011, driven by last year’s acquisitions of Fortify and ArcSight,” noted Jillian Mirandi, an analyst at Technology Business Research (TBR). HP’s fastest growing business unit is also its most profitable, with a 19.4% operating profit. Conversely, HP’s Personal Systems Group, which sells PCs, tablets and smartphones, has the company’s lowest profit margin, although it accounted for nearly one-third of HP’s overall revenues in 2010. HP’s decision to let go of its massive and industry-leading (albeit slow growth and low margin) PC business is a sign of just how severely the explosive tablet market has damaged the PC market. The planned PC spinoff echoes IBM’s sale of its PC business to Lenovo in 2005 to focus on higher-margin enterprise software and services. However, “HP will be challenged to drive software to be the kind of generator of profit that it is at IBM,” Gottheil said. Another challenge is finding a new home for the world’s largest PC business; HP estimates it will take 12 to 18 months to sell, spin off or otherwise give the PC business the independence it needs to continue.
“We are focusing on what needs to be fixed, what needs to be shut down and what needs to be considered for separation. And equally, if not more importantly, we are focused on what we need to add to stay a leader in the IT world and represent a true value proposition for our customers and investors,” Apotheker said. Software is clearly in the wheelhouse of longtime SAP chief Apotheker, who took the helm at HP in November 2010. Adding Autonomy to HP’s software arsenal will not only provide a revenue bump but also could give HP a boost in data analytics as well as network and systems management. A leader in enterprise search and data management, Autonomy has grown through several acquisitions of its own in recent years. The software will also give HP a foothold in the emerging big data arena, where it could build systems to compete with EMC’s Greenplum and IBM’s Netezza. Yet there are challenges HP will have to address with this facet of its overhaul, too. To read more on the deal, please visit www.computernewsme.com.
Asset management firm chooses SAP Dubai-based asset management company wasl announced the successful implementation of a suite of SAP software solutions to ensure efficiency, integration, and sustained competitive advantage across its various operations and investments in the real estate and business sectors. wasl was established by Dubai Real Estate Corporation (DREC) in 2008 to manage its various operations and investments. The group currently encompasses three subsidiaries including wasl properties, wasl hospitality and Dubai Golf and was set up to strengthen Dubai’s success and to actively secure its future growth objectives. 12
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“Our focus for continued growth and to realise value for our stakeholders is to invest in innovative technology to ensure best practice and world-class service. SAP ERP has developed specific business solutions to streamline processes across the entire Group. This development provides the necessary support and integration aiming to improve customer services and products, increase revenues, reduce costs and increase efficiencies and productivity,” said H.E Hesham Abdulla Al Qassim, wasl, CEO. wasl is committed to continuously transform and develop, and invest in technology. The now completed rollout will see improved overall productivity, simplified and integrated processes and improved www.computernewsme.com
customer relationship management,” said Sam Alkharrat, MD, SAP MENA. The SAP ERP application supports the essential functions of the business processes and operations efficiently, and has been tailored specifically to fit the needs of wasl, the company said. This helps the first deal with business challenges for the real estate industry within areas such as logistics, business intelligence, HR and lifecycle management effectively and efficiently, SAP added. The successful implementation covers a portfolio of SAP solutions across financial reporting, HR, materials management, real estate, CRM, project systems, PM, and portals as part of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
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ROUND-UP month in view
Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 bn Google has entered an agreement to acquire the mobile phone and tablet maker Motorola Mobility for about US$12.5 billion. Google has offered about $40 per share in cash, a premium of 63% over the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday. “Motorola Mobility exclusively ships phones and its Xoom tablet with Google’s Android operating system. The deal will mean that Google now has a hardware manufacturer to work with closely to develop Android,” said Carolina Milanesi, research VP at Gartner. “Google will also have control of Motorola’s impressive patent portfolio,” Milanesi said. Motorola Mobility said earlier this year that it owns about 24,500 patents. CEO Larry Page confirmed that Motorola’s patent portfolio is part of what made Google open its wallet. “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anticompetitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies,” he said. “But the deal may also create tension with other mobile phone manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung, which also ship Android devices,” she said. Since creating Android,
Larry Page, CEO, Google
Google has rotated manufacturers with which to release new Android code, releasing the code to others about six months later. Google may risk alienating those other manufacturers, but Milanesi said “all these vendors have invested so much in the platform, they won’t quickly walk away from it.” Microsoft has Nokia on its side, while other smartphone vendors have focused on Android so far. However, the acquisition could help boost Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system, CCS Insight said. “During the conference call, Google did its best to alleviate those fears. Google has talked to some of its partners and they welcomed the deal,” according to Page. “The company will
continue developing its Google Nexus phones, and development process of those phones will open to vendors other than Motorola,” said Andy Rubin, senior VP of mobile at Google. “Google may also want to speed up the development of its Android operating system on tablet computers, where it has been slower to catch up than on mobile phones,” Milanesi said. The next release for Android, code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich,” will be an operating system designed for tablets and mobile devices, the company said. Google said the acquisition will “supercharge the Android ecosystem and enhance competition in mobile computing,” according to a news release. Google said the deal will not affect how Android is developed, and the operating system will remain open, Google said. The company will run Motorola Mobility, which has about 20,000 employees, as a separate business, Google said. During the second quarter, Motorola Mobility was the eighth largest phone maker in the world, according to Gartner. The transaction is expected to close at the end of this year or early next year. To read more on the deal, please visit www.computernewsme.com.
Du and Cisco sign support agreement Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC (“du”) has signed a three-year contract with Cisco for network support and optimisation services to support existing and future network infrastructure growth, the companies said. The contract has been financed through attractive finance terms arranged by Cisco Capital (Dubai) Limited and provides du with a predictable and optimised Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over three years, the companies added. Farid Faridooni, COO, du, said, ”We continue to strive to provide our customers with the best possible service, by constantly improving our network infrastructure. This agreement in collaboration with Cisco 14
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will ensure that we are able to further optimise our market offering, and deliver the uninterrupted and quality services our customers have come to expect. The strategic finance arrangements further reinforce the strength of our financial and operating position.” The three-year agreement provides du with Cisco SMARTnet for rapid issue resolution and premium service options to help the service provider maximise operational efficiency. Additionally, Cisco will provide comprehensive network and voice infrastructure optimisation services as well as on-site focused technical support services, du said. According to Cisco, a key part of Cisco’s total solution, Cisco Capital, is a key enabler www.computernewsme.com
uniquely positioned to arrange competitive and flexible financing for Cisco products and services. “This agreement is a significant milestone in Cisco’s collaboration with du, demonstrating our strong business relationship and bringing to bear financial strength with critical service capabilities; moving beyond just being an end-to end network solutions technology provider. This is becoming increasingly important for our customers where we are witnessing major developments in the information, communications and technology space that require higher levels of service and assurance coupled with innovative financial consumption models,” concluded Nadim Khoury, director, Cisco Services, UAE.
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ROUND-UP month in view
InfoComm MEA event debuts at GITEX this year Business professionals involved in information communication in the Middle East and Africa can look forward to a showcase of cutting edge systems and solutions this October 9-11. InfoComm MEA – the international trade exhibition and summit on pro Audio Visual and systems integration – will make its debut at the Dubai World Trade Centre with 70 exhibiting companies from 18 countries. InfoComm MEA 2011 is co-located with GITEX Technology Week, one of the largest and most important ICT events in the world with a 30-year track record. With AV-IT convergence increasing and necessary business reality, the co-location of InfoComm MEA and GITEX is expected to offer visitors a more complete insight into emerging business technologies that can have significant impact on their operations. For a first-time event, InfoComm MEA has enlisted an impressive gathering of brand leaders in the pro AV industry. Exhibiting companies include avid InfoComm supporters – who participate in nearly every InfoComm events all over the world – as well as manufacturers who are participating for
the very first time. Amongst them are AMX, Crestron, Cayin, Elite Screens, Extron, Hitachi, Jupiter, Mitsubishi, NEC, projectiondesign, RGB, Sharp, WolfVision, APart Audio, Emmy Mount, Oasis Enterprise and VenueTech. AV manufacturers will bring their latest and best to the event. The application of AV technologies has become as diverse as there are industries. Among the broad spectrum of AV products showcased at InfoComm
MEA 2011 will be digital signage and display systems, including large format video walls, widely used in retail and hospitality, banking, transportation transit points, healthcare sectors; projection, audio and conferencing technologies for corporate, training, education, medical and MICE applications; 3D, multimedia, lighting automation and control software and hardware for entertainment events - fixed and installed; and connectivity solutions like matrix switchers, scalers, routers and distribution devices for military, emergency and industrial or commercial network operating centres. Many visitors are slated InfoComm trade events for the learning programs that are organised alongside the trade exhibition. The Summit is a key component that allows professionals and personnel at all levels of involvement in pro AV or systems integration technology to benefit from experts’ opinions, experiences and knowledge. InfoComm MEA 2011 is open strictly to trade and business professionals only. Admission is free but registration is required. Visit www.infocomm-mea.com to register and to get further updates on the event.
Forbes Middle East selects eHDF eHosting DataFort (eHDF), a managed IT services provider and a member of TECOM Investments, is providing a secure hosting environment for the newly launched Arabic website of the business publication, Forbes Middle East, the company said. eHDF provides managed hosting services to the publishing house from its secure data centres for hosting the website. In addition, it provides other services including managed security, backup, storage, monitoring and 24/7 technical support, the company said. The business publication relies on eHDF’s IT infrastructure, as well as round-the-clock managed operations to offer latest real time updates to its vast online readership, representatives explained. Hosting of the website with eHDF has supported Forbes Middle East focus on its 16
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core business of content generation, the company said. Yasser Zeineldin, CEO of eHDF, said, “Availability of up-to-date information at your fingertips is crucial for readers, making it a key performance area for publishers in today’s competitive market scenario. Companies are making investments in new delivery platforms for content as well as enhanced IT infrastructure that supports their growth. As the use of digital media to access information gets popular regionally and globally, and online readership increasing, it is essential for eHDF to ensure round-the-clock support and operations of these online systems.” Forbes Middle East currently has 7,627 unique visitors monthly on its website. Presently, the business publication’s has with www.computernewsme.com
single page visits at 47%, it was reported. The average time spent on the website by users is six minutes, the company said readers from countries including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the US and India. Khuloud Al Omian, Editor-in-chief, Forbes Middle East, said, “The website being hosted by eHDF, in the highly secure and stable data centre environment, plays an important role in the success of the project. The service level agreement (SLA) with eHDF clearly focuses on ensuring very high availability of the website. With the new English website scheduled to launch in 2012 and the excellent support and quick response time that eHDF offers, we are looking forward to launching high bandwidth content such as video and flash on our website very soon.”
CASE STUDY Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt
Dr Tarek El Ahmady Eltobely, executive director of HEEP’s ICTP, MoHE, Egypt
Higher calling
The Ministry of Higher Education in Egypt establishes data centres, improves networks and uses technology to drive the education enhancement project in the country.
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he Ministry of Higher Education in Egypt (MoHE) has been working over the past two decades on improving higher education through developing and implementing a comprehensive strategic plan for reform. This has taken place in three phases. It first started in 1989 with the implementation of the Engineering and
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Technical Education Project (ETEP), which ran until 1998. The second then ran until 2002 with a comprehensive strategic plan to reform higher education as a whole. Since then, the plan has been implemented within the framework of an enhanced strategy over several phases. This project is called the Higher Education Enhancement Project (HEEP). HEEP aims www.computernewsme.com
to improve efficiency through the reform of governance and management, the quality and relevance of university education and mid-level technical education. “HEEP is one of the main projects in Egypt to enhance the quality of higher education in our public universities. This programme started two years back with with funds from the World Bank, after which the
initiative has been funded by the government of Egypt itself. HEEP itself includes multiple projects to enhance quality of our facilities, teaching performance of faculty in our institutesin addition to a project we call ICTP (Information and Communication Technology Project). ICTP aims to enhance IT at the level of education, as well as for administration and research,” says Dr Tarek El Ahmady Eltobely, executive director of HEEP’s ICTP. ICTP involves five main elements. The first involves the development of the information network between universities and the ministry; the second is the introduction of new management information systems at faculty and university levels; the third involves the establishment of an e-learning system, and a digital library comprises the fourth; the firth element is about longterm capacity building. Keeping these in mind, the team at ICTP found it necessary to establish new centres at the ministry level to operate projects at the faculty level. “Before ICTP we had information centres and we had a network called the Egyptian University Network (EUN). Along with this we established a management information centre, a division support centre, a national e-learning centre, a digital library unit and a central unit for training. These units are now composed into a single centre for IT knowledge and services,” says Eltobely. Eltobely adds, “These same centres are mirrored in universities – so many of them have five centres just like in the ministry. Five years ago, IT was only about providing Internet connectivity but we are now looking at offering services to our students and faculty, management and research. We work now to regularly introduce new services and new applications. Our educational institutes are growing ever more aware of the advantages we offer, and are eager to avail them.” The Ministry’s scope covers over 19 universities, including more than 300 faculty members, and 1.5 million students across these educational institutions. MoHE also has eight technical colleges and 45 technical
institutes. Around 150,000 students study at these institutes. While Eltobely hesitates to put a number to the people working across HEEP, he says that ICTP has a total of 3,500 people working on the projects across engineering, management, data entry and training. Managing bandwidth “Due to the constant need for additional bandwidth for the universities, ICTP was looking to monitor its traffic and explore the behaviour of different applications in order to determine the actual usage of available bandwidth and then optimise its utilisation.
ipoque PRX-1100 as per the tender submitted by Raya IT, FVC partner in Egypt. The PRX-1100 is an entry-level deep packet inspection (DPI) bandwidth management system suitable for link speeds up to 400 Mbit/s and 32,000 subscribers. It is a particularly suitable solution for budgetconstrained network operators who require a near-instant ROI but cannot afford to sacrifice performance nor reliability. Implementation was fast and easy. “It was completed in all 17 data centres across the universities in October 2010. The installation in each site only took about two hours,” Eltobely recalls. At each site, the PRX-1100
Before ICTP we had information centres and we had a network called the Egyptian University Network (EUN). Along with this we established a management information centre, a division support centre, a national e-learning centre, a digital library unit and a central unit for training. These units are now composed into a single centre for IT knowledge and services.” The challenge was to provide a solution that could work smoothly with other active network components. Above all, it had to be stable, easy to manage and deploy,” he said. This was new territory for ICTP, because the ability of staff to prioritise bandwidth usage and allocate higher bandwidth to critical applications required a device to analyse and evaluate network traffic usage besides pure application monitoring. “This would help universities provide better IT services and applications for staff members and employees,” explains Eltobely. “However due to the heterogeneity in the topology and structure of the data centre in each university, the project faced a severe challenge in selecting one device that could meet its business goals and operate inside each university’s data centre. After much consideration and having gone through multiple solutions MoHE chose www.computernewsme.com
was installed in front of the UTM device, allowing staff to analyse which applications are consuming Net bandwidth and prioritise allocated bandwidth according to business needs. As part of the implementation, IT staff received three days of training. The benefits are clear. “Two IT staff in each university spend just an hour per day reviewing network bandwidth usage and updating policies as required,” Eltobely explains. “Now we have better control over our network and can we also direct network usage to serve the business needs of our institutions.” University users are enjoying higher quality services. “By controlling applications such as peer to peer, DDL (dynamic downloads) and Flash, we can provide suitable priority to important traffic such as scientific computing, digital libraries and Net 2 applications,” Eltobely says. “So users of our universities’ networks can enjoy September 2011
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CASE STUDY Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt
the provision of efficient services. We now have better network performance, as well as improved stability and reliability in our service provision. To quantify the benefits, just by limiting peer to peer applications, we have saved around a third of our daily Internet bandwidth.”
Call for more The bandwidth management implementation at ICTP was itself part of a larger data centre transformation project stretching across the universities. “We realised that with all the changes that we were making, it was becoming increasingly important to secure the valuable data that we were creating and storing in the data centres. We realised that we needed to enhance the security and management information centre at the university level,” says Eltobely. MoHE started a gap analysis, called in a consultant or two and studied its needs. Following this it agreed that there is a need to make investments to improve security. “From that point we invested around 55 million Egyptian pounds, installing this equipment in each university. So we now have fire walls, intrusion prevention systems, traffic shaper, traffic analyser, bandwidth optimisers at university’s data centre. So that is 17 data centres for each of our 17 universities. These data centres are secured, managed and operated with the highest standard,” says Eltobely. MoHE also took their learning from security one step further – not only did they layer their security measures, but they have made each layer out of a different vendor in order to make these measures as strong as possible. “If you have the same vendor across multiple layers then technically you are leaving the same back hole across all of them. This is why we decided to have different vendors across layers. In this way we have built an intrusion prevention system,” says Eltobely. In 2011, MoHE worked on strengthening the LAN connectivity within universities (to improve the management and performance across the networks) and also began setting 20
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wireless networks across the different campuses of the Ministry. Keeping within the regulations of the Egyptian government, the MoHE encourages face-to-face as the ideal means of education communication. “We have had some interest in e-learning from the faculty on a personal level. So we have created an e-course development Ashi Sheth, director of IT at the centre inUniversity the universities. American of Sharjah These centres develop e-courses for staff members that are interested in enhancing the teaching methology and delivery of their courses. We now have over 400 complete e-courses that are stored in central servers, and now we have more than 100,000 students enrolled,” says Eltobely.
start supporting the international publishing of scientific journals in our universities to enhance the editorial quality and publishing quality of the journal to be able to compete across the international and scientific community,” says Eltobely. MoHE is also very clear on what it will be working on in 2012. “We have invited all universities to create a strategic plan for ICT and will work to enhance, implement and realise the potential of each of these projects. We also plan to work on a DR centre for our higher education institutes, in addition to which, we plan to introduce some kind of business intelligence across the existing management information centre”. he says.
We have invited all universities to create a strategic plan for ICT and will work to enhance, implement and realise the potential of each of these projects. We also plan to work on a disaster recovery centre for our higher education institutes, in addition to which, we plan to introduce some kind of business intelligence across the existing management information centre”. In 2010, the average usage of these e-courses was only 10% but in 2011, this increased to 60%. As more students get familiar with these courses and find them to their advantage, MoHE is working on modifying the curriculum structure to allow the introduction of new rules to make e-learning a true part of the educational process. Apart from the massive investments in infrastructure, MoHE has also been investing in applications for students and staff members. Apart from requisite modules, like ones related to the finance, MoHE also has applications for the libraries and is in the process of digitising the central repository and content. “This year we will also start enhancing the quality of electronic publications across the higher education system in Egypt. We will www.computernewsme.com
Although Eltobely has submitted a request for one billion Egyptian pounds for the next five year IT strategy bracket to the Ministry of Finance; he accepts that things might change. In the face of recent political turmoil we cannot be 100% sure of what the next year will bring. However, we are sure that this revolution has only strengthened the idea of a joint community and highlighted the importance of education to build a stable and continue economy. “Thus, we can expect higher investments in education and more funds than we had earlier requested,” he adds. With those aims, and despite the changes around them, the team at ICTP continues to work to reach the higher goals of HEEP and MoHE as a whole.
CASE STUDY Bahman Enterprises Group
Bridging gaps Bahman Enterprises Group achieves reliable connectivity across multiple offices with a Fortinet solution.
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ahman Enterprises Group, an established powerhouse in the Middle East, represents various international brands for small electrical domestic appliances for its wholesale distribution division in the region, and high-end tableware and decorative items sold through its exclusive retail outlets in UAE. It has its seven King Store showrooms in different Emirates, one warehouse in Al Awir, and its headquarters in Dubai. For more than 40 years the company has been operating throughout the UAE, with the sales team expected to travel continuously and log into the group network using VPN. The Group has over 50 LAN users in its head office and an additional 20 to 30 users on the WAN. “We have around five companies that are into different market segments. Our main business is wholesale distribution with additional retail operations. We also work in the hospitality sector, have our own marketing company and service centre. We have showrooms, the warehouse and the head office spread across the various emirates. Since we are into wholesale operations, orders would be collected 22
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and entered into a central system at the headquarters. We wanted this to be immediately reflected in the systems at the warehouse. For this we required site-tosite connection,” says Fahumie Farook, IT manager at Bahman Enterprises Group. Apart from this, there were the retail stores, the service centre and the hospitality division, all of which needed reliable connectivity to a single ERP solution. The company had a VPN through the Internet and backup was through an ISDN connection. This was the situation last year. According to Farook, the company rarely had trouble with site-to-site connectivity. The issue was always client-to-site, where it was struggling to find the right solution. “We wanted web filtering. We had to know how the Internet was being utilised and there were demands to control the use of social media. With the big-brand router that we were using this was not possible. Besides,
FortiGate-110C
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client-to-site connection was always a mess. The software which they were providing was not working with many clients, including vista. We faced issues from mission to mission. And a lot of time was spent to troubleshoot and support this,” says Farook. The company also had plans to enable its sales people to work remotely. The infrastructure presented a challenge to this requirement as well. The group has decided that a change was necessary. The IT team decided to look for another network security solution, which would provide the group with a seamless VPN connection, linking the staff to all office locations from anywhere in the region. Farook also needed a robust system that would not need constant on-site monitoring. After consulting with Teksalah, Fortinet’s partner in the UAE, and considering multiple
solutions, Bahman Enterprises Group opted to deploy Fortinet’s FortiGate multi-threat network security appliances at their various offices. To begin with, the group installed one FortiGate-110C appliance in its head office, activating the firewall, VPN, traffic shaping, intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus, antispyware, antimalware, Layer 2/3 routing and Web filtering security functions available within the device. Due to its accelerated security throughput, high port density, and ease of management, the FortiGate-110C allowed Farook to quickly deploy enterprise-class security. The deployment of the appliance was done by Teksalah. Farook also opted for FortiGate-30B appliances at three of Bahman Enterprises Group remote office – a warehouse in Al Awir, the hospitality unit and its service centre. These units serviced its support staff and provided them with seamless connectivity to the head office via VPN. Thanks to the FortiGate solution deployment, Farook could benefit from complete content protection, including firewall, IPS, antivirus, antispyware, antispam, IPSec VPN, web filtering, application control, data leakage prevention, and even VoIP support. The entire implementation was completed in 2010, and according to Farook, it reduced the workload of the team tremendously. This
We wanted web filtering. We had to know how the Internet was being utilised and there were demands to control the use of social media. In the bigbrand router that we were using this was not possible. Besides, client-to-site connection was always a mess.” counted a whole lot for the two member IT team that handled the needs of over 200 people across the enterprise. “We needed a UTM machine like Fortinet’s. It provided us everything we wanted including the web filtering as well as VPN client-to-site connectivity without any hassle. It also enabled us to provide better security online. Now our web site automatically prompts people to download the right elements for SSL VPN security, in case you are missing the same on your computer. This way we remain secure, and the amount of work necessary from the IT team is dramatically reduced,” says Farook. According to him, the feedback from the end-users across the organisation was extremely positive to the implementation. The IT team found that when people travelled on vacation the ease with which they could connect to office resources increased many fold with the new solution. According to Farook, the Fortinet security deployment has provisioned a seamless and robust connection across the entire team, even those travelling and logging into the system from outside the UAE. Bahman Enterprises Group has successfully tested the system from Europe as well as from its team members in KSA and Lebanon. www.computernewsme.com
“We (the IT team) used to get a lot of complaints that the line was too slow or there were frequent disconnections, etc. but now, with the Fortinet solution, we have had no complaints from the team,” added Farook. “Every thing works fine, even speed is fantastic and I’ve had no complaints for remote login either.”
New efforts With the help of Fortinet, the sales team is now enabled with a mobile solution that allows them to work remotely, and connect to the office whenever they need to. The IT team is moving ahead keeping in mind the specific needs of the growing enterprise. “We are planning to set up a primary data centre this year. The office will be relocated and we are getting into exports as well. Having more regional offices is the direction we are moving in. We are also working on launching our own brand of household appliances, and that would mean into active manufacturing. From here we will also try supplying the international market. These are the many changes that we are expecting. IT has to keep up with these changes, enable the business to move forward and capitalise on these investments in an active manner,” says Farook. With all of the above, the IT team continues to have its hands full. September 2011
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Organisations need to make sure they do everything they can to keep their customers happy. This is not only true for commercial companies, but also for non-profit organisations such as schools, universities, government institutions, hospitals, libraries, etc. They need to work hard to maintain or improve their levels of customerfriendliness, efficiency and productivity. An important element of any organisation’s productivity and efficiency is its device fleet, i.e. the machines that are in place to handle its document management – printers, copiers, scanners, faxes and multifunctional devices. If the devices you work with don’t do their job properly, it will affect your productivity and efficiency at the workplace. If the device you work with is shared by a group of people, which is often the case with departmental MFPs for instance, it’s lack of productivity, efficiency and/ or reliability will affect the whole department. Taking this one level up, it is not difficult to imagine the effects of unreliable, slow or otherwise malfunctioning group of devices on an entire organisation.
Devices can also slow you down by being difficult to operate. Most of us have been there – standing in front of an MFP staring at its operation panel, wondering which button to press. Over the years, MFPs have become more and more sophisticated, offering a high level of functionality and a wide range of features. As a result, their operation panels can be daunting, cluttered with buttons and leaving users puzzled. Obviously, this will cause delays, keeping other users waiting and compromising workers’ efficiency and productivity. This in turn is likely to employees working doing overtime to make sure they meet their deadlines, leading to extra costs for their employer. To make things even worse, organisations can often be seen to own devices of many different brands. Especially when an organisation has grown over the years, the purchasing of printers and MFPs is likely to have been handled by different persons or even different departments, resulting in a haphazard collection of output devices. The point is that each brand tends to have its own look and feel, and its own logic. This
means that employees have to get themselves familiar with many different types of user interfaces, usage procedures and print drivers. Again, this is a time-consuming and inefficient setup, compromising employee productivity and possibly even jeopardizing their morale. Moreover, supply ordering, maintenance and administration are most likely messy and disorganized, what with so many different suppliers, consumables and service companies to deal with. Situations like these call for a change. They point towards the many advantages of equipping your office with devices that are easy to use, reliable and productive, offering a consistent user interface that avoids guesswork and mistakes. Commonality at its Best: 11 A3 MFPs with the Same User Interface and Options Kyocera Mita is proud to unveil its powerful new range of colour and monochrome TASKalfa A3 MFPs. Incorporating no fewer than 11 devices with engine speeds ranging from 30 to 80 ppm, the range is sure to include a device to fulfil the specific needs of your organisation. On the mid-range monochrome end, this range includes the TASKalfa 3500i (35 ppm), 4500i (45 ppm), and 5500i (55 ppm). On the monochrome high end, it offers the TASKalfa 6500i and 8000i (65 ppm and 80 ppm, respectively). In terms of colour devices, Kyocera Mita’s new range incorporates the TASKalfa 3050ci, 3550ci, 4550ci, 5550ci, 6550ci and 7550ci, offering output speeds from 30 to 75 ppm. In developing these devices, Kyocera Mita’s product engineers have taken the very best of Kyocera’s advanced document technology and applied it in a common design across the entire range. What this means in practice is that all of these MFPs, monochrome and colour alike, share the same engine, the same operation panel layout, the same print driver, and often even the same options. Many of the enhancements that are available for these MFPs, e.g. most of the paper feeders and the 4,000-sheet finisher, can in fact be used with all of the 11 devices in this range. If the situation so requires, e.g. when one particular department has an event coming up and needs to produce a lot of documents (presentation handouts, booklets, meeting agendas, etc.), you can actually swop these optional items from one device to the other to enable that department to accomplish their goal. A wide range of optional paper feeders are available, varying from 500-sheet drawers to a 3,000-sheet side deck, meaning that the maximal paper capacity of all these TASKalfa devices is more than 7,000 A4 sheets.2 The 4,000-sheet optional finisher can be fitted out with an optional punch unit and / or an optional booklet unit. The latter is capable not only of booklet folding and stapling, but also of so-called tri-folding. This means that an A4 sheet of paper is folded into three equal parts width-wise – ideal for creating leaflets or name stands for business meetings. The multi-purpose tray of these MFPs can handle A4 paper up to as heavy as 300 g/m2 – perfect for booklet covers! Another important element shared by the TASKalfa devices is their newly developed drum. All Kyocera’s devices use a long-life hard-
wearing drum, often made of Amorphous Silicon, a material which is second to diamond only when it comes to hardness. A crucial part of Kyocera’s unique ECOSYS technology, this long-life drum is a feature that sets Kyocera devices apart from those of other vendors, as it lasts much longer and therefore needs to be replaced much less often. What makes the Amorphous Silicon drum of these newly launched 11 devices even more special is its new coating. This particular coating is both harder and thinner than that of the drums used in other Kyocera devices. The effect of this is two-fold: on the one hand, the drum’s durability is increased even more by the extreme hardness of its coating; at the same time, photosensitivity is enhanced by the thinness of the drum surface. Higher photosensitivity results in higher image quality and more consistency in image production; producing pinsharp contrasts, smooth shading and excellent gradations. An optional Fiery controller is available to provide detailed colour matching and manipulation for even better office colour. In addition to the advanced technology that they are based on, Kyocera Mita’s new TASKalfa MFP range also shares the same user interface. Once you know how to operate one of these machines, you will be comfortable with all of them, whether they are monochrome or colour, high-end or low-end. This is especially handy for larger organisations that are likely to own more than just one device. Also, if the needs of your organisation change and you want to re-allocate devices, your workers will have no problem adjusting to their newly placed MFP, as it offers exactly the same logic and operational procedures as the one they used to work with. This way, the productivity and efficiency of your staff, if not their morale, will be maintained. So, if you want to enable your staff to be productive and efficient, make sure you give them the right tools to work with – have a look at Kyocera Mita’s new range of TASKalfa MFPs! 1 Speed in A4 monochrome 2 TASKalfa 3500i / 4500i / 5500i / 3050ci / 3550ci: 7,150 sheets A4 TASKalfa 4550ci / 5550ci: 7,650 sheets A4 TASKalfa 6550ci / 7550ci: 8,100 sheets A4
feature IT governance
Grasping governance In recent years, the concept of IT governance has garnered much interest due to the integral role of technology in both commercial and public organisations. Pallavi Sharma discovers the challenges associated with IT governance and its adoption in the Middle East
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I
n an era where globalisation and competition dictate strategic initiatives, firms are using technology to develop, manage and exchange intangible assets such as information and knowledge with their stakeholders in a bid to gain a significant advantage. Many believe that this dependency on IT opens organisations up to huge vulnerabilities associated with the abuse of intellectual property, fraud and cyber crime, which are inherently present in complex IT environments.. As organisations work to counter the risk that comes with the pervasiveness of IT, more attention is being paid to IT governance policies, which is believed to help mitigate risks while outlining best practices to enable operational efficiency and business growth. IT professionals believe that in a dynamic and competitive business environment where firms spend a significant percentage of their revenues on IT to stay competitive, good IT governance is no longer nice to have but is a must have. “Extracting greater value from IT is rarely a matter of just working harder or longer. Instead it requires development of new techniques for designing, implementing and involving different people in the IT decisions. High-level IT governance models are therefore being created and today IT governance is high on the agenda in many organisations,” says Wissam Khoury, managing director, SunGard Financial Systems, Middle East.
IT governance – what is that? IT governance implies a system in which all stakeholders, including the board, executive management, customers, and staff have clear accountability for their respective responsibilities in the decision making processes affecting IT. The system defines the current and future use of IT for strategic business growth.
He believes that in the face of an economy slowly recovering from a global debt crises, these policies become the very base of the business growth cycle. This is because organisations can no longer afford to indulge IT as a mere cost centre, but must view IT investments in the overall business context, and understand how a particular investment could contribute to revenue generation and business success. Decision makers point out that this alignment between business strategies and IT initiatives is the most crucial element of IT governance. “All enterprises have IT governance, but enterprises with effective IT governance
organisation to analyse the current state the of operations in comparison to the desired state and thereby increase operational transparency across the board.”
Overlapping boundaries IT professionals agree that one of the challenges with implementing IT governance is being able to describe it to non-IT personnel, who often confuse it with IT management. However, decision makers point out that the difference between the two is fundamental and distinguishable. “Unlike management, IT governance is not about what specific decisions are made but rather the determination of who within
Extracting greater value from IT is rarely a matter of just working harder or longer. Instead it requires development of new techniques for designing, implementing and involving different people in the IT decisions. High-level IT governance models are therefore being created and today IT governance is high on the agenda in many organisations.” have actively designed a set of mechanisms that encourage desirable behaviour. This behaviour is defined as a set that is consistent with the organisation’s strategy, mission, norms, and culture,” says Bobby Gupta, vice-president and head, Mahindra Satyam, MENA. Khoury explains that aligning IT strategies with business outlook involves three key elements. “Operational efficiency involves analysing how the existing IT set up contributes to the achievement of business objectives. Operational innovation then focuses on reviewing or reengineering the IT infrastructure to enhance business processes and enable quicker and better results. Finally, operational compliance requires that organisations implement policies conforming with international regulations and reporting standards. This is because compliance with internationally recognised standards will enable decision makers within the www.computernewsme.com
the organisation is responsible for making decisions spanning disparate business units, who has input to a decision, and how these people are held accountable for their role,” points out Vikram Suri, managing director for the Middle East and India at Sage Software. Mahesh Vaidya, CEO, ISIT Middle East says, “The domain of IT management focuses on the effective and efficient supply of IT services and the management of day-today IT operations. On the other hand, IT governance is a broader canvas that centres on the contribution of IT operations to business performance and growth, while transforming and positioning IT to meet the future needs of the business.” Dr. Angelika Plate, director of strategic security consulting, helpAG adds that IT governance provides guiding principles to the influencers and decision makers within the organisation on the, efficient and acceptable use of IT. September 2011
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feature IT governance
“Ensuring that organisations follow these principles will assist directors in balancing risks and encouraging opportunities arising from the use of IT. If applied correctly, IT governance will help directors to conform to given obligations (such as legal, regulatory or contractual requirements) and to ensure that the organisation’s IT is fit to support identified business goals,” she says. Over the past few years several frameworks aimed to define, assess and improve internal controls of organisations have been brought out. These are aimed at assisting managers in the tasks of measuring and monitoring IT performance and effectiveness. Some examples of these frameworks include Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) principles, Information Security Management Standards (ISMS), Control Objectives for Information and Technology (COBIT) among others.
Bobby Gupta, vice-president and head, Mahindra Satyam, MENA
Popular IT governance frameworks Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is an IT management framework that provides detailed descriptions of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that any IT organisation can tailor to its needs. Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) is a framework created by Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) IT management and Governance. It defines 34 generic processes to
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Dr. Angelika Plate, director of strategic security consulting, helpAG
Vaidya opines that IT governance frameworks are based on the ‘plan-do-checkact’ methodology. “IT governance begins with setting objectives and providing direction followed by implementing the planned activities. Once the execution is completed, decision makers must measure and review the implementation to compare actual vs. planned results, and finally tweak the plan to correct any errors, fill any gaps or improve the process,” he says. Industry experts point out that there isn’t much overlap across different frameworks. For instance, where COBIT details IT controls and metrics, ISMS covers IT security and ITIL emphasises processes, notably those surrounding the IT helpdesk. Consultants agree that the best approach is to research the standards, review the needs and then move forward with the manage IT. Each process is defined together with process inputs and outputs, key process activities, process objectives, performance measures and an elementary maturity model. The framework supports governance of IT by defining and aligning business goals with IT goals and IT processes. An information security management system (ISMS) is a set of policies and procedures for systematically managing an organisation’s sensitive data. The goal of the ISMS framework is to minimise risk and ensure business continuity by pro-actively limiting the impact of a security breach.
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standard that is the best initial fit, and focus on areas that are of the greatest concern to all the stakeholders. “All of the standards are huge undertakings and you are far better off to phase in various elements over time than to try and implement everything at once,” says Plate. Gupta recommends an adopt and adapt approach. “Rather than select one approach, organisations would be wise to get an overview of the different frameworks and then work out a policy that blends the best practices to suit the needs of the organisation,” he says.
Help at hand Experts largely agree on broadly defined principles that must form the very crux of an effective IT governance initiative. Plate explains, “IT governance must ensure that individual business units and stakeholders understand and accept the need for these policies and go on to assigning specific roles and responsibilities in respect of both supply and demand of IT. This is followed by clearly outlining the business strategy to incorporate the current and future capabilities of IT, and then aligning these strategies with IT initiatives that are capable of satisfying the current and ongoing need of the organisation’s business strategy.” According to Plate, in addition to the above, IT governance must also take into account the need and basis for IT acquisitions. These acquisitions must be made for valid reasons, on the basis of appropriate and ongoing analysis, with clear and transparent decision making. “It is imperative that there is appropriate balance between benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks, in both the short term and the long term,” she adds. Following this she recommends that senior management within the organisation outline the best use of these acquisitions by plugging them into spaces where they prove most beneficial. This must be supported with measurement metrics and performance indicators to ensure that IT platforms are delivering the promised levels of service and quality to meet both present as well as future requirements.
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feature IT governance
Vikram Suri, MD - Middle East & India, Sage Software
Additionally, IT governance policies must be established keeping in mind mandatory regulations and best practices to minimise cost of errors or re-implementations. Finally, IT governance policies must demonstrate respect for human behaviour including the current and evolving needs of all the people involved in the organisation. When discussing the challenges associated with implementing a robust IT governance framework, vendors often point to lack of senior management commitment as being a major obstacle. Khoury says, “Internal education is definitely a challenge and this has much to do with the organisation’s culture. Since IT governance requires more collaboration across IT and business operations, the challenge is often associated with convincing departments to share what is considered sensitive information about their internal success and performance with one another. This is an attitude that has to be corrected from the senior management down. So the success of an IT governance policy depends
on the commitment of top management to the need and execution of these frameworks.” ”Much like other aspects of IT, governance policies require constant monitority and day-to-day maintenance of standards defined by them. All of this also requires sign-off and support from top management,” states Sage’s Suri. IT professionals recommend that the best way to address this challenge is through investing in a pre-planned environmental assessment that proactively addresses issues relating to organisational culture, leadership and communication challenges. “IT governance and implementation must be integrated with the company’s corporate governance initiatives to strengthen top management involvement and commitment,” he adds. Making waves Despite this daunting challenge, industry analysts believe that organisations in the Middle East are making great strides in formulating and executing successful IT governance policies. Suri says, “Organisations in the region are fast realising the need to adopt IT governance principles conforming to international standards. The BFSI and telecommunications sectors in the region are leading this adoption fuelled by legal and audit requirements that are critical to their operations and long term success.” Vaidya believes that although IT governance policies are quickly becoming an area of focus for CIOs in the region, there is room for more growth. “IT governance has been present in one form or another but in a more or less unstructured manner. The need to comply with regulations and laws for
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conducting business internationally combined with the push from companies operating in the governance space has contributed to the growth in adoption, albeit in bits and pieces.” “Over the last few years, we have witnessed increasing numbers of organisations hiring consultants to help them emulate best practices to reduce costs and enhance efficiency,” says Gupta. He predicts that technologies like cloud computing and mobility will only further necessitate the need for organisations to invest in IT governance policies to both monitor outsourced applications as well as control business operations across employees working on site and on field. Vendors and industry stakeholders believe that the future is set to witness a spurt in IT governance policies across the globe. This will include policies centred on the monitoring and management of mobile devices across the enterprise space and the integration and use of social media tools for business and cloud technologies. Clearly, one can now say where IT governance is concerned; this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mahesh Vaidya, CEO, ISIT Middle East
Source: ISACA Global Status Report on the Governance of Enterprise IT (GEIT) 2011 across 834 IT professionals
55%
80%
37.9%
11.6%
indicated a proactive role approach towards IT
of those who indicated a proactive IT department said that the enterprise head of IT is a member of the senior executive team
indicated key driver for IT governance as being the need to align IT with current business needs
indicated the need to increase agility to support future changes in business needs as a driver
Computer News Middle East
September 2011
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feature Project management
Method to madness Proper project management is difficult to achieve in organisations. However, by learning from Western peers and referring to global standards, Middle East enterprises can learn to work within their limits to achieve an effective, working project management office (PMO).
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here are few elements within an IT team that touch as many departments within an organisation and remain a complex beast as project management. IT managers across the region and over the globe struggle to implement and enforce project management across their organisations. And the reasons for it continuing to bewilder departments are multiple. “I think the whole idea of a project being unique has not sunk in. People still confuse operations with projects. It is not entirely unusual to come across IT heads that think regular backups of their data and software is a project in itself. Most organisations do not have a framework to segregate normal operations from project
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management. The notion in the industry is that such efforts are meant only for large construction projects,” says Vikram Suri, managing director - Middle East and India at Sage Software. “The history of this is related to the fact that there is no touch-and-feel or tangible element to IT projects. And their element is noted in history as well. IT in the western world has already achieved a certain level of maturity; due to the amount of time the western world has had to invest considerablle cost and effort to build an efficient learning cycle. That same level of maturity and understanding has not yet transmitted and theefore not been absorbed in the developing world. The lack of a touchand-feel element is the biggest contributor to the fact that project management remains
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a complex function within organisations,” says Krishna Gopal, VP, MEA-sales at Tech Mahindra. Within the Middle East the lack of maturity among organisations is one of the most crucial factors for the continuing issues faced with project management. Besides this there are several challenges that continue to plague the speciality. Counting them Chief among these challenges is that of simple communication – the exchange of ideas and requirements between the business team and the IT team. “The IT manager or team member in any organisation wants
the business leader to be able to article every one of his requirements. He would be very happy if the business user was able to define his needs field-by-field, so the IT guy can just programme it and live happily ever after. That is the ideal he lives by. The business user, however, wants the IT team member to be able to tell him what works best for him. So the business user does not want to commit to anything, and the IT team member wants him to commit to everything from day one. This is where the problem starts because the reality is somewhere in between,” says Gopal. To solve such a challenge, the higher management in an organisation needs to be able the nail the business user to specific requirements. According to Gopal,
I think the whole idea of a project being unique has not sunk in. People still confuse operations with projects. It is not entirely unusual to come across IT heads that think regular backups of their data and software is a project in itself. Most organisations do not have a framework to segregate normal operations from project management.” a mature PMO (project management office) or business analysts that sit between the groups to translate have seen things work much better. The continuing confusion in project management roles – wherein operational
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staff are pulled in to do project management – creates problems, as the organisation struggles to balance the roles in an effective fashion. “Project management should not simply be an added responsibility. In more organisations, project management is yet
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feature Project management
not recognised as a distinct but function. For companies to move to the next stage; it is important for them to realise that it is an important function that requires structural thinking patterns and organised execution,” states Suri. He adds, “Many large organisations in the region generally already have a basic PMO. But setting up as a central office and ensuring that this office has some far reaching influence blessed by top management which cuts across specific dept heads whose jobs are assigned by central project team is slightly more. It shows signs of an organisation that has the basic recognition of project management as a methodology,” points out Suri. While this might be the case in the majority of organisations there are yet others which become examples for the other extreme as well. Nicolai Solling director of
There are definitely customers who are doing project management very well. But the general lack of understanding and the lack of trained staff continue to affect it adversely. Companies also have to pick the right control mechanism for the delivery of each project. If they fail to identify that then they might not get the right results at the right time or to their satisfaction.” technology services at helpAG says out that not every project needs the PMO, and there is a fine line that should not be crossed when defining PMO requirements. The general lack of resources and a knowledgeable staff affect the speciality
Krishna Gopal, VP, MEA-sales at Tech Mahindra
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of project management in must the same way it affects any other organisation in the region. “There are definitely customers who are doing project management very well. But the general lack of understanding and Source: ESI International’s Global Study on PMO Value
40%
52%
72%
20%
of respondents said their PMO was operating to a fair or poor extent
of organisations do not measure PMO effectiveness at all
agreed that the PMO is strongest in conveying methodologies and other PM ‘hard’ skills
of respondents stated that the PMO engaged in portfolio management
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September 2011
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feature Project management
Nicolai Solling, director of technology services at helpAG
trained staff continue to affect it adversely. Companies must ensure that they pick the right control mechanism for the delivery of each project. Failing to recognise the right delivery mechanism could mean that it may not get the right results at the right time or to their satisfaction,” says Solling. Exposure and practice It is true that when it comes to project management, the Middle East is far behind its counterparts in the Western world. But
the entire comparison could be wrong, industry stakeholders believe, since they have token longer achieve this maturity in processes and management. Solling opines, “The region is witnessing lots of changes as IT in increasingly considered a strategic business operation. Today, business owners focus on assigning the right budget to ensure efficient management of critical business projects.” “Project management can turn out to be personality thing, rather than a process thing. I have seen cases where when there are too many people involved in a project; everyone tends to think the elephant looks a certain way and works based on their particular understanding and outlook. Every project requires a person who looks at things from a bird’s eye view point, brings together IT and business objectives effectively and has the power to implement his will to get the project done. That might seem like a tall order and proves to be in many organisations – regional or otherwise,” states Gopal. While there might be no perfect path to achieving a good PMO or ensuring that the current PMO is consistently resultoriented and functions at the highest levels of efficiency, there are best practices and standards that can be used to guide an organisation to a large extent.
Common proect management methodologies There are three leading approaches for managing IT projects. The first is based on traditional project management. It works with any IT project regardless of the technology involved or the duration of the project work. The second approach is called Extreme Programming. It’s sometimes abbreviated as XP (not to be confused with the Windows operating system.) Extreme Programming is a projectmanagement approach designed specifically for software development. XP uses a software
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development model that involves the users, customers and programmers in four iterative phases: planning, coding, designing and testing. Scrum is the final leader in IT project management. This approach, named after a rugby term, also uses iterations of planning, coding, executing and testing software. Scrum employs its own vernacular and has some rigid rules about meetings, hitting milestones and the duration of planning activities.
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Vikram Suri, managing director - Middle East and India at Sage Software
“More IT departments need to undergo the PMI certification as this will give them a degree of exposure, working with some of the western projects. Today this part of the world is about trading and trying to eke out savings. It is about trying to get western quality at eastern prices. If those are the levels of engagement then behaviour is likely to be along those lines as well,” says Gopal. Suri agrees, “The PMI document can become your ultimate guide; it should be adopted in a structured manner and updated regularly with processes across the organisation. With that the firm can be assured of keeping abreast with the latest in methodologies and controls. Having said that, it is important to highlight that when you look at best practices you can have different implementation strategies that may be driven by different drivers. Unfortunately, everything is subjective to the organisation’s business goals.” For most organisations in the Middle East this is just the start of the journey when it comes to project management within IT. It is likely that they will make a lot of mistakes, either because they are unable to use the standards or because it is not customised enough for them. The belief though; is that they will learn from these mistakes and continue to climb up the curve to further maturity.
VERTICAL FOCUS Media and broadcasting
In an industry synonymous with information sharing, media and broadcasting organisations in the region are investing in technology to manage, the infrastructure and network, while enhancing the creation of dynamic content to cater to a wider and more demanding audience.
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he mass use of the latest information technology for everything from creating and broadcasting content has created an environment drastically different from years prior especially for the media and broadcast sector a wider audience without the need for traditional broadcasters and distribution channels. For one, today both individuals and organisation can create content and share this with. In this day and age the scheduling of media is largely driven by the consumers who expect to be able to access digital content across multiple mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This not only necessitates the need to create content but also establish platforms that aid in the ability
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to share quality content across various consumer devices. Media and broadcasting businesses, today, are clamouring to find the most advanced applications and technology solutions to reduce the costs associated with managing a complex IT infrastructure required to deliver personalised content. From creating multi language content to developing applications to capitalise on the trend of digital access, these organisations are making significant investments in IT to beat the competitor – and the Middle East is no difference. “ As the sector in the region continues to grow, we are relying more and more on IT based solutions, such as adaptive streaming technologies and convergent delivery systems to share and distribute content across multiple devices like TVs, PCs, tablets www.computernewsme.com
and smartphones,” says Mike Sneesby, VP of IPTV and operations , Intigral. According to Sneesby, Intigral not only provides digital media content but also customises, manages and delivers this content across multiple screens- Web, IPTV and Mobile. Ali Radhi, head of IT at popular TV station MBC agrees, “The business expectation from IT has evolved from simple computing and connectivity into end-to-end media and broadcasting solutions. IT as an industry has earned the trust of media and broadcast organisations to help them develop stable and flexible platforms to deliver quality content.”
Distinguished dynamics Much like any other industry, the media and broadcasting organisations have some unique
requirements and key among them is their need to stay constantly updated and need to share information across multiple platforms and diverse consumers in real time. “The speed to market can make or break a campaign or the loyalty of a client and as revenue margins continue to contract while costs associated with the maintenance and management of an IT infrastructure continue to increase, media and broadcasting companies are quickly realising the criticality of investing in advanced network and application performance solutions,” says Adam Ridgeway, managing director, Mediacubed, a professional networking site geared towards the media industry. These can be broadly divided into the older and established print players, who are stepping into the digital domain, and the relatively newer TV and radio broadcasters who are trying to harness the changing nature of consumers into existing delivery mechanism. Then there is the new media, or entirely internet based news and entertainment firms, that use the web to deliver multimedia-rich content to the world. According to Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst at Outsell, print media companies are investing in IT to help them monetise vast out-of-home-market audiences. “This audience infinity turns out to include a lot of people who aren’t really all that valuable to advertisers and who won’t pay for digital content. While Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter expose print media to many times more would-be readers than they could ever reach in print, only a small percentage of those exposed will actually become regular digital readers. Search and
The speed to market can make or break a campaign or the loyalty of a client and as revenue margins continue to contract while costs associated with the maintenance and management of an IT infrastructure continue to increase, media and broadcasting companies are quickly realising the criticality of investing in advanced network and application performance solutions.” social media offer media brands lots of fly-by traffic, but valuing those fly-by flocks highly would be like counting print readers who happened to snag a piece of a flying newspaper as it blew by on a windy day,” he points out. Most agree with Doctor’s opinion, stating that this is the reason behind print media companies investing heavily in analytics that help them understand the reading and shopping habits of its readers, applying that fast-rushing river of data to presentation, pricing and product decisions. According to Doctor, global brands such as the Financial Times are already using the data -- from regular readers and some of that fly-by traffic -- to hone a successful digital revenue stream. “In 2010, the Financial Times reported an increase in advertising revenue, circulation revenue, audience and usage while most of its peers were still struggling with negative numbers on all those fronts,” Doctor said. The amount of data created by these firms requires them to not only gain constant intelligence from it but to also store it right in order to maintain integrity and security. In
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other words, there is a continuous need for digital storage and archiving solutions. “The broadcast archive is changing, and the driver is the migration away from videotape. Now that videotape is reaching end of life as a storage technology, the archive becomes a repository for files, rather than the physical asset that a videotape represents. A file no longer has the intimate association with the recording medium as with a master videotape,” explains Radhi. The challenge associated with this technology need as Radhi points out is that it takes serious technology planning if the archive is to last as long as tape, typically 25 to 30 years or even longer. Data storage typically has a short life, less than five years for a disk drive. “By the time videotape starts to deteriorate, whoever sent it to the archive may well have retired; it will be someone else’s problem. Files must be constantly migrated to the latest storage technology, so a technology solution to preserve the archive must be put in place today, not in 25 years time,” he adds.
Source: 2011/2012 Media & Broadcast Technology Investment Strategies, Ovum
150
50%
26%
43%
senior IT and production technology executives surveyed at major public and private broadcasting organisations in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific
of respondents plan to increase their IT, production and distribution technology spend by over 6% in 2011.
of respondents said they would increase budgets by more than 6% in 2012
respondents said they would increase spending by 1-5% in 2012
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VERTICAL FOCUS Media and broadcasting
Experts point out that many of the IT developments in data archiving are designed to maintain documents for regulatory compliance, which in most cases is less than 10 years. Broadcasters regularly air series from 40 years ago, or even older, and therefore commodity IT systems are not necessarily going to meet the needs of long life. “The balance of the value as an asset versus the cost of maintaining an archive is perhaps the biggest problem in designing an archive, in proving the ROI,” says Radhi. According to industry professionals, the nature of a particular archive can vary based on the different department functions. For instance, in the case of a news department, archiving represents
Mike Sneesby, VP of IPTV and operations , Intigral
news history and will need to be maintained for decades; for a transmission department the archive is a low-cost repository for programs for the duration of the rights window and for the program commissioner, the archive stores the program as an asset well into the future, as long as it can generate revenues. Naturally, deciding what to keep and what to delete is not an exact science, and when choosing the archiving system it is essential to keep in mind that what seems effective today may not be the optimum choice next year. While many broadcasters have adopted a mix of different systems as the most costeffective system for their needs, outsourcing digital storage or cloud storage and archiving remains an option. . However, many broadcasters have concerns about security, retrieval times and catastrophic failures while others are concerned about the need for high-bandwidth connections to transfer larger media files.
Reaping benefits Undeterred by the complexities associated with choosing and then investing in the right technology to increase efficiency and contribute to future growth, IT decision makers within the industry continue to invest in a range of solutions to address different business needs. Sneesby says, “Intigral has invested in IT based solutions that enable the delivery of
Top four trends in 2011, Global Broadcast Industry Trend Index: A large scale global study of the broadcast industry called the Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) conducted by Devoncroft Partners surveyed more than 8,000 broadcast professionals in 100+ countries for the 2011 BBS. From a list of 15 industry technology trends, respondents listed the trends of most significance to their organisation in order of their importance to business operations. This list was then used to create the BBS Broadcast Industry
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Global Trend Index by applying a weighting based on the commercial importance of each trend. As per BBS, the top four technology trends in 2011 were: • Multi-platform content delivery • Transition to HDTV operations • File-based / tapeless workflows • IP networking and content delivery
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Ali Radhi, head of IT, MBC
broadcast quality content over IP networks, aid video on demand processing (ingestion, quality assurance and censorship) and for real time censorship of broadcast videos.” Discussing the benefits of these investments, he says, “Intigral last year launched the first IPTV platform in Saudi Arabia in conjunction with STC. We were also the first to bring true video-on-demand content to consumers in Saudi Arabia. Also, our investments have helped us launch a huge range of mobile content products contributing to our revenue growth significantly.” According to Radhi, MBC has invested in solutions to aid workflow automation and resource management, in addition to media asset management, virtualisation and archiving. “While some were critical to the survival and growth of the business others have helped better utilise technical as well human resources better, resulting in reduced costs, errors and redundancies,” he adds. In fact, end users are reportedly investing in technology to help them manage business applications and internal communication while ensuring that the organisation’s networks and intellectual property are secure. Other areas of investment include ERP tools, mobility, content acquisition, among others. Experts also point out that enterprises in the media and broadcasting industry have unique hosting requirements because
VERTICAL FOCUS Media and broadcasting
of their need to rapidly scale infrastructure up and down based on specific new digital content releases, advertising campaigns and production schedules. Therefore, this sector is seen to invest in Infrastructure-asa-service (IaaS) platforms to help them stay competitive by managing IT staffing and management costs. According to Mo Elzubeir, managing director, Mediastow, the biggest challenge associated with any technology deployment is change management. “I remember a very ambitious project to streamline the publishing workflow at Saudi Research and Publishing Company (SRPC) failed miserably because editors resisted attempts to tell them how to do their jobs. The process didn’t hold out and cost the entire department their jobs,” cited Elzubeir. “Taking my lesson from that experience, we make sure that staff is slowly introduced to elements of the upcoming change. It is also good to get people involved in the form and shape of the new technology they are about to be transitioned to. Taking ownership of what is to come helps overcome the human instinct to reject change,” he recommends. Radhi believes that the complex nature of media solutions combined with the high availability nature of broadcast solutions together requires creative IT customisation. “For example standard LAN switches will not be able to accommodate
Adam Ridgeway, managing director, Mediacubed
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Mo Elzubeir, managing director, Mediastow
new partnering models to help end users address the challenge of having to deal with a fragmented operator market in the region is still largely missing. Despite the challenges and complexities associated with IT deployments in this field of operations, decision makers within the media and broadcasting industry share a positive outlook about the future of IT investments and the industry at large. Radhi believes that the industry will witness more consolidation across IT and broadcast infrastructures with greater emphasis on unconventional search and indexing technologies focusing on unstructured data in addition to structured
The broadcast archive is changing, and the driver is the migration away from videotape. Now that videotape is reaching end of life as a storage technology, the archive becomes a repository for files, rather than the physical asset that a videotape represents.” the strict queuing and buffering the video applications required. Standard and even high-end digital storage can’t meet video streaming and files specific storage read/ write throughput. Customised solutions were developed in conjunction with the applications vendors. For these reasons performing a fully fledged technical Proof of Concept (POC) was absolutely crucial,” he says. Radhi says, “‘Satisfied’ is a word you don’t hear often in the IT industry. “What more can be done links to our pain points, the need for a regional presence and professional and responsive sales teams, in addition to the provision of technically competent and qualified pre-sales and support teams, bigger regional equipment stocking and better pricing schemes (like frame agreements).” According to Sneesby, while organisations are largely satisfied with the solutions and services provided by vendors in the region, he feels that engaging in www.computernewsme.com
data. “We will also see better utilisation of Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS) technologies as the Internet quality in the region continues to improve,” he adds. Sneesby predicts, “As broadband availability improves across the region, we will witness acceleration in digital content delivery across advanced consumer mobile devices. I expect that the industry will attract a greater number of players and a greater investments harnessing local ICT talents.” Elzubeir concludes, “Today, it’s all about integrating the different elements to provide an easy and accessible way to engage the audience and therefore the industry is going through the process of learning that social media is not just an IT investment but a way to communicate with the audience and we can expect this trend to generate greater momentum as more broadcasters figure out the many opportunities social networking channels provide.”
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Q&A Paul Maritz Ernesto Baca
Path perfect In the second part of the interview, Paul Maritz, CEO of VMWare explains the path ahead for the company across the entirety of any organisation.
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Q
: Is there a direct relationship between the community ecosystem & external services provider and Vblock? A: No. A lot of those guys are, but not exclusively, using Vblock. Vblock is really a lower-level construct. Vblock is just an efficient way of providing the hardware basically.
Q: You’re saying then that they’ll be using all five elements of your stack, of your infrastructure, so they could appear as a transparent extension to my enterprise infrastructure. A: That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Right now it’s “your mileage may vary,” but that set of six that I mentioned are committed to have 22 data centres started up by the end of this year around the world – a substantial investment. Q: So, Paul, once you go beyond the enterprise infrastructure play into areas like platform as a service and beyond, how do those elements play out? A: I’ll talk about that. Those five elements I talked about make up one layer. We think of it as three layers. Layer 1 is essentially our take on infrastructure transformation, which is very firmly in the context of this hybrid cloud – that most businesses are going to have both internal and external infrastructure. Both need to become more efficient in a fundamental way, and that infrastructure has to handle existing applications above all else. Customers can’t afford to rewrite or abandon their apps, so that infrastructure has to be good at handling existing applications. That’s why virtualisation is so important, because the real profound thing about virtualisation is it really encapsulates an existing app. When you virtualise, you’re taking an application and the operating system and the middleware, you’re putting it in a black box, cutting the tentacles of complexity that tie it to the details of the underlying infrastructure – which allows you to kind of jack the black box up, slide the new functionality in, and slide the black box around.
Q: All at the infrastructure level? A: Virtualisation is kind of the on-ramp for existing apps on that journey. Now, the challenge is it’s not the only thing that’ll happen going forward. Customers are now very focused on a infrastructure transformation journey; they’ve invested in this over the last two years, they’ve by and large seen good returns. They know they have more to do, but they now are starting to say the fundamental issue that we face is really our applications. Because if we’re stuck on 20- and 30-yearold application code that was written for an era of paper bills, we’re going to have a problem servicing the Facebook generation. People are going to want to see and consume and manipulate information in a far more flexible and fluid way than they’ve done in the past.
to worry about cobbling together middleware and mapping into virtual machines, etc. They want all that just handled for them.
Q: That is certainly an ongoing trend. A: And thirdly, the new data fabrics, because coming out of the consumer space, they’ve already had to confront huge amounts of data which can’t be handled through a traditional relational database model. You’ve seen the Hadoops and Cassandras and Reax, and they’re all coming out of the consumer, Internet side of things. We think that new programming frameworks wanting to consume things at a higher level and new data fabrics are really a disruptive change in that industry – and they will be the foundation of application renewal. We’ve started to invest in that space in the context of originally acquiring the
Customers can’t afford to rewrite or abandon their apps, so the infrastructure has to be good at handling existing applications. That’s why virtualisation is so important, because the real profound thing about virtualisation is it really encapsulates an existing app. We believe that over the next five to ten years, as big as infrastructure transformation is, that there’s going to be fundamental application transformation that needs to happen. Given our theme of trying to look for the important tides of history, we see that developers over the last few years have kind of revolted against complexity and have taken matters into their own hands. You see coming out of the development space all of these new modern programming frameworks, whether it be Ruby on Rails, Spring, or Django, none of which came from the established vendors. There’s this developers’ old saying: A pox on your complexity, we’re going to do this in a simpler way. That’s certainly where the new lines of code are being written, so that’s one fundamental change. The other is that developers increasingly want to consume things at a high level. They don’t want to have www.computernewsme.com
Spring programming framework, which was technically, arguably the best of breed in this area. In trying to identify the next-generation middleware, we’ve acquired the GemFire distributed data fabric. But in addition, it was our belief starting about two years ago that it would be an unnatural situation if the world ended up with a couple of highly proprietary über clouds. That would be going back to the mainframe era of the ‘60s and ‘70s, you know, where you basically could write an app for IBM’s world or Digital’s world or whatever. Moving between them was very, very difficult. Then Unix came along as a way of kind of bridging that, and it got morphed into Linux and strengthened as it became an open source movement. It is our belief that the developers and the open source world in particular would not eventually tolerate a world of highly September 2011
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Q&A Paul Maritz
proprietary clouds, that eventually out of the open source world they would find a way to basically come up with a new cloaking layer that isolated applications to a greater or lesser degree from the details underneath. The very loose analogy that you have to be careful about is, if virtualised infrastructure is becoming the new hardware, what’s going to be the new operating system? What will play the role of Linux in terms of isolating you from any details down there? So a couple years ago we hired two senior developers out of Google who had worked on Google’s internal infrastructure, and one had a Microsoft background. We said, If you were to do this again, how would you do it? And in particular how would you construct a layer that filled that vacuum? That’s what became Cloud Foundry. And we said if we’re going to come up to that layer and if it’s to fill that vacuum, we can’t keep it proprietary, we have to make it open source. That’s why we not only released it under an Apache 2 license, so it truly is an open layer in that sense. Q: Do you see it as competing with OpenStack? A: It really sits on top of OpenStack, at least as OpenStack is currently conceived. And we see Cloud Foundry, where we had to say you either play here or you don’t play, and if you play you’ve got to be willing to see this layer go everywhere. And we’re expecting it to go everywhere. Including on OpenStack, and Amazon. People are already taking it and doing that. Q: What about comparing it to Azure. Are they apples and oranges? A: Basically, yes. Azure is a complete proprietary stack. I mean, in some senses, you can say they are both platform as a service, but we actually think there’s a whole bunch of features that Azure doesn’t have. It’s conceptualised in a fundamentally different way. We have Cloud Foundry as an open source project, and we’ve started up cloudfoundry.com, which is where a developer can go and start kicking the tires 46
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and actually write an app in this environment and see how it works. But there is this dual element to it. One is that it’s actually Linux with a cloud, which is what we’re trying to do. And then we’ve said, OK, let’s stand up an instance, of which we think there will be many instances, where people can go and familiarise themselves with it. We’ve been actually kind of blown away by the response. We had over 25,000 developers signed up in the first month.
Paul Maritz, CEO, VMWare
Q: It’s a virtual circle in the sense that all the work done in the open source part comes back in and benefits... A: Well, it’s actually an interesting layer, because it has three interfaces. On the top it has a set of formalised interfaces that you plug these modern programming frameworks into. So we announced with the plug-in for Spring, the Ruby family, Rails, Sinatra, etc., and now .JS. People have already started to extend that, so we now have Erlang plugged into it and we’re expecting others to get plugged into it as well. It has a set of interfaces on the side, kind of figuratively speaking, where you plug in services. That’s where you can plug www.computernewsme.com
in different databases, queues, etc. We came with the usual suspects, MySQL, Mongo, etc. But we expect people to plug other stuff in on that side. Then it has a binding layer on the bottom that binds it to the particular infrastructure that it’s sitting on top of. Those are formalised, well-defined interfaces. Q: How do you monetise it? A: We think over time we can do hardened versions of this for the private cloud world, that will be a classic open source-like model where you’re basically selling service and support. We think that we can plug services into the side, so we do have some very valuable services there. If you look at GemFire, which is a very interesting kind of sleeper in the world of middleware, it’s one of the most strategic apps in the world – the app that the US Department of the Defence uses to track its assets, real-time assets, is built on GemFire. So all of their vehicles that have telemetry on them are reporting their status into GemFire. In theory, you can put up a map of the world and drill down into an aircraft somewhere and find out in real time how much fuel it has onboard as it’s flying. That thing gets 60,000 position updates a second, which you can’t do on a relational database. It just cannot be done. Those kinds of things we can plug into Cloud Foundry and monetise it that way – very important. Q: Platform as a service has been the slowest to take off of all the cloud categories. What makes you think that Cloud Foundry is going to take off where others so far have not? A: As I said, we’re deliberately shooting ahead, and we think there are two tales. There’s a tale around existing apps, which explains why the IaaS layer took off first, because it allows you to address existing apps. But we think over time, people are going to want to move expenditure from infrastructure towards apps.
Q: Would you say that the level of desktop virtualisation adoption has been a little disappointing?
Q&A Paul Maritz
A: Well, it all depends on the sort of bar you began with. I think it’s fair to say that in the Gartner hype cycle we’ve come down a bit from the inevitable hype. But we actually think there is something profound playing out, which is that in the immediate term, businesses are confronted by the fact that more and more of their users don’t want to have a PC in their hands. They want to have a tablet or a smartphone and businesses can’t stop that. The days when IT could say, “We specify that everybody in this company will have a black Dell laptop with this build of Windows on it,” are rapidly passing and they’re never coming back. The challenge is that the Windows desktop plays two roles inside IT. On the one hand, it was the interface to a particular OS – Windows. On the other hand, it was the conduit through which IT provisioned capability to a user. That’s where they installed apps, dropped files, turned menus on and off, etc. In a post-PC world where Windows isn’t the only player in the enterprise, that second aspect of the desktop can’t belong to any particular device. And there’s a vacuum. IT doesn’t know how to address that today, so there’s going to have to be change. Secondly, and this is more speculative, the thing that’s profound about the post-PC era is not just a form-factor change, it’s actually a change in the way people work. The GUI stuff started with work done across the road here at Xerox PARC and then through Microsoft Windows and Mac. It was all about how do we automate a desk circa 1975? You can see the terminology – the desktop, files, folders, drawers – it was an automated typewriter, which is the word processor, you know. And it was a very document-centric world. Earlier white collar workers were seen as spending time creating documents. Today it’s not that they don’t create documents, it’s just not the centre of their universe anymore. The centre of their universe now is consuming streams of information that are coming to you in much smaller chunks, and filtering, 48
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combining, commenting on, recomposing, and streaming that back out again. It’s in that sense that I think we’re moving into this post-PC world, a movement into a post-document-centric world. I think it’s the big change that’s going to play out here. It’s not desktop virtualisation, it’s really how does IT adapt to a post-PC era in terms of much greater device heterogeneity and a different way that people want to work in the context of those devices? That’s a big set of wheels that we’re going to grind, and we’re trying to think
company like us, as I said, we have to go where others haven’t. We like to see white space and say, How do we go there?
Q: Today, people say: VMware, the virtualisation company. What do you want them to say in five years from now? A: I’d like them to say: VMware, the cloud IT company. Q: What about apps? A: By and large we’re going to stay away from the app space. Although we have some
There’s this developers’ old saying: A pox on your complexity, we’re going to do this in a simpler way. That’s certainly where the new lines of code are being written, so that’s one fundamental change. The other is that developers increasingly want to consume things at a high level. They don’t want to have to worry about cobbling together middleware and mapping into virtual machines, etc. They want all that just handled for them. about how to adapt ourselves to that world. We made our first baby step when we announced the Horizon App Manager Service, which is, if you sort of squint at it in the right light and you’re willing to make a few heroic leaps of faith, the beginning of the emergence of that device-independent desktop or workspace emerging.
Q: Why do you think VMware is well positioned to serve that function for these new devices, new types of applications. A: Well, we see it as two reasons. One is we have a form of an entry in that space through our desktop virtualisation today, and that technology will be useful in this world, because it allows us to project into ... all of these areas [as] an evolutionary transition. In our view, technology can inform part of the evolutionary bridge into that world, so we are selling into that world today. We have our foot there. Beyond that, it’s white space. There’s no one who is ... overwhelmingly the natural possessor of that space. For a www.computernewsme.com
capabilities to consider apps, we intend to become part of the foundation. So basic email transport capability will become part of the foundation. That’s why we acquired Zimbra, it gives us that capability. But in general, we will stay away from apps – we want to be an enabler for apps. We would rather be working with and cultivating the app community going forward. Q: What are the key things you want CIOs and IT managers to know about VMware? A: The most important thing that we want them to know about VMware is that we are constructing an infrastructure transformation journey that is very real and very actionable. It’s not something where they have to believe they have to invest now to get a return five years from now on that infrastructure. But it will actually lead them to where they need to be so that down the road they can free up the funds to go after application transformation and end user transformation.
INSIGHT Managing Ernesto Baca the cloud
Staying ahead of complexity Managing cloud infrastructure and services is similar to traditional network management - only bigger, badder and more complex.
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here once you had to deal with maybe one or two strategic outsourcers, in the cloud world you’re more likely contending with a dozen or more cloud service providers, be they software-as-a-service (SaaS) or infrastructure. Where application workloads once moved over private links inside your data centre, now they’re flitting across the span of the Internet. Where server and storage capacity once fell to IT exclusively, now anybody can grab the resources they need, as quickly as they can pull up and fill out a Web form and enter credit card numbers. So how are enterprise IT managers
supposed to handle the supersized management challenges the cloud throws their way? Here’s some advice for managing the cloud.
Have consistent data models “Sounds simple, but don’t be fooled”, says Beth Cohen, senior architect and consultant at Cloud Technology Partners, a cloud consulting firm. Most companies have standard terminology in data records and databases to which cloud applications should adhere. This can be as basic as storing data with a standard ID number and using the same naming convention across CRM instances. This is easy enough to control when IT is
Most companies have standard terminology in data records and databases to which cloud applications should adhere. This can be as basic as storing data with a standard ID number and using the same naming convention across CRM instances. This is easy enough to control when IT is guiding the purchasing and the deployment, but what happens when the marketing department turns to Saleforce.com for its CRM needs, as does sales, but in a different project?
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guiding the purchasing and the deployment, but what happens when the marketing department turns to Saleforce.com for its CRM needs, as does sales, but in an entirely different project? “Business people bringing in applications via the SaaS model aren’t necessarily going to be thinking on that level. And IT has got to get out in front of this issue,” Cohen says. “As long as the data models match when you want to orchestrate with other applications, either elsewhere in the cloud or internal to the enterprise, the integration process will be that much easier. Integration, she adds, is a real struggle point. “It’s not unsolvable; it’s a technology problem. But IT had to be aware of it.” Plan for data integration “With integration of one sort or another all but inevitable as enterprise cloud use evolves, the smart IT department should be taking a lead on qualifying cloud providers with this tricky management issue in mind,” Cohen says. That could prove challenging. She says, “Most vendors haven’t been too proactive about the integration piece. They’re vertically focused and mostly concerned only about delivering their service and not about integrating it with the other applications a particular company might have.”
“At the American Hospital Association, in Chicago, no SaaS provider gets by IT’s scrutiny - and IT does due diligence on all potential cloud service providers - without meeting a set of integration-related checklist items,” says Karthik Chakkarapani, IT director, Technology Solutions & Operations. According to Chakkarapani, “Knowing how a potential provider will integrate current and future SaaS applications, how it will work with the organisation’s hybrid cloud-based single sign-on (SSO) environment and how it provides database access are imperative.” “The best way to interact with data is through Web services, so we ask what kinds of Web services they support, too,” Chakkarapani adds. Create a provider ecosystem “One of the biggest management headaches of having SaaS applications intertwined with each other and internal applications is coordinating updates and fixing issues with one that might affect the others,” Chakkarapani says. “This is an art, where a strong, preferably IT Infrastructure Library-based internal service desk, is essential,” he points out. “The AHA requires coordination among about 30% of its SaaS-provided applications; the rest live in silos,” Chakkarapani says. “In one recent example, Symplified tested and validated that its SSO service worked with the latest social collaboration release from SaaS provider Socialtext prior to the AHA putting the upgrade into its production network,” he says. “When one vendor has an upgrade, both have to test before we can go into production. These issues are slowly starting to crop up, and the more and more, the more important it is that we have a good vendor ecosystem,” he says. Build a DevOps team “One of the hairiest infrastructure management issues for IT operations is actually not being able to manage resources at all. That scenario occurs when developers go around IT and grab resources in the cloud rather than wait on traditional internal provisioning processes. www.computernewsme.com
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INSIGHT Managing the cloud Ernesto Baca
“Creating a DevOps team that can provide the rapid provisioning and super smart configurations required of today’s most agile, cloud-oriented developers is one of the best ways to circumvent this problem,” says Rachel Chalmers, an analyst with The 451 Group. This means IT must embrace a change in mindset - to one of a service provider - and a new toolset. On the latter, Chalmers encourages DevOps teams to use cloud infrastructure automation tools from companies such as Opscode or Puppet Labs.
Go for drag-and-drop simplicity Being able to capitalise on the use of a fully dynamic private or hybrid cloud infrastructure requires a management tool that lets you do things like reduce cycle times, provide better automation, get a handle on resource consumption for chargeback purposes, ensure adherence to security standards and, of course, quickly and easily spin up new environments and scale resources. “This means adding a cloud management layer on top of what a company already has in place for virtualisation management,” says Dhiraj Pathak, director of PWC CIO Advisory Services practice. “This is a distinct layer of capability, one that allows for the efficient management of these virtualised resources. It’s still in its early days, with some parts of the layer maturing while others are yet to fully form,” he says. Building such an overlay that would allow for more automation and smarter resource use was the objective for Roundarch, a digital design firm in Chicago, when it went looking for an enterprise cloud management tool. Says Geoff Cubitt, president and CTO, “The company wanted to be able to let users manage things on their own, thus reducing the strain on the IT team and providing much-needed flexibility across hypervisor environments.” “The ability to create, then drag and drop reusable images and templates from one environment - testing to staging servers, for example -- to another is key when dealing with the cloud,” Cubitt says. He notes that Roundarch has met all of 52
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its cloud management objectives with Abiquo enterprise cloud management software. “Drag-and-drop image build lets us do things like spin up a standard environment - maybe that’s the OS, the application server and a database hardened with our security standards and configurations that we like - and copy it to where we need it. This means I don’t have to have my best systems administrators setting up these environments. Anybody can do this; it’s so simple, but it gives us better leverage on our resources and speeds up cycle times while letting IT be more responsive,” Cubitt says. Account for multi-hypervisors Look for an enterprise cloud management tool that will support multiple hypervisors even if you’re only using one today, experts advise. Lots of companies have built their virtual data centres around VMware but will increasingly look to bring in other hypervisors to drive costs down and gain more flexible provisioning options as they migrate to the cloud. Abiquo, which supports multiple hypervisors, allows Roundarch IT administrators to port images created in the VMware/Linux environment to the Xen world. “That not only let us build out from our existing infrastructure but also leverage both internal and external clouds, being about to burst into public resources as appropriate. We wanted the flexibility to be able to manage www.computernewsme.com
across boundaries, and we got it,” Cubitt says. Getting the right management tool, PwC’s Pathak agrees, is critical for a successful cloud deployment. Look for help on cost management “Look for cloud management tools that incorporate financial engineering aspects of cloud services. That’s a major differentiator starting to emerge among tool makers, with some enabling mapping against specified service-level agreements,” recommends Phil Garland, a partner in PWC’s CIO Advisory Service practice. And if introducing cloud services internally, IT needs to develop a consistent cost model. “Transparency is a big expectation users have around the cloud, so you don’t want to be costing out every service on an ad hoc basis.”
Leave no discipline untouched All the same disciplines enterprise IT organisations have applied to their legacy environments have a place here in their cloud infrastructure. This includes the application, network and systems management realms, as well as overarching programmes like governance, policy orchestration and SLA management. So, power up on management capabilities before plowing into the cloud.
INSIGHT Cloud computing
Choice dilemma With so many cloud vendors claiming to provide the best of services, David Taber highlights the elements that serve as a basis to evaluate different cloud provisions and what suits your organisation.
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t’s axiomatic that in software of any complexity, the ecosystem of plugin products and solutions, tools, compatible APIs, and the developer community can become really important. In certain software product categories, the importance of the ecosystem can swamp any feature advantage that an upstart product may have, leading to what economists call a natural monopoly. This doesn’t apply to all product categories, though. And in very mature technologies, it is possible to unseat the established leader’s ecosystem with a “good enough” substitute. Think “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and then think Linux, Open Source, and Google docs. 54
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But if you look at cloud computing, there’s no part of it that could be called “very mature.” The argument can be made that the cloud is all based on Web services, so the ecosystem doesn’t matter as much as it did with traditional software. But that argument is naïve, at best: at the detail level, cloud vendors’ APIs are proprietary, and learning curves can be quite steep. And that isn’t going to change. So the number of tools, plug-ins, and developers can really matter when evaluating cloud vendors. Where in the clouds is the ecosystem critically important? The general characteristics of these segments include technical, www.computernewsme.com
social networking, advertising, gaming and commercial platforms in addition to toolkit services. For cloud vendors that span two or more of these characteristics, there’s a doubling of the ecosystem’s impact. The valuation of Facebook and LinkedIn doesn’t come just from the number of eyeballs. At the other end of the spectrum, there are lots of cloud services where the ecosystem isn’t critically important, such as e-mail, storage, newsfeeds, or photo sharing. Other cloud apps like invoicing, banking, or HR can get away with just a couple of connectors to popular accounting packages.
Measuring ecosystem In any vendor competition, there’s the stuff that counts and there’s noise. The same goes with the ecosystem. For example, Microsoft can probably claim the most APIs of any vendor, the largest developer community, the most plug-in products, and the most consultants. But almost none of that applies to the cloud at this point, and nobody thinks they have the strongest cloud ecosystem.
So the first part of measuring the strength of the vendor’s ecosystem is clearing away all the obvious marketing chaff. Next step is to look only at the part of the ecosystem that’s relevant to the cloud service you will actually be using. What remains still needs to be vetted, as there will plenty of obsolete or uninteresting “information” about the ecosystem. For example, you may find 100 vendors who are nominally partners, but if only 20 of them are in your country and you’ve never heard of them before, some additional scrutiny is warranted. Likewise, you may find lots of partner products and services that may not have been updated in a long
The two major axes for measuring the ecosystem are products and people. In my experience, the number of people committed to the ecosystem is more important in the long run than the product.
time. A strong ecosystem has vendors who have not only been there a while, but have released several versions of their products or services. If the ecosystem has a vendor ranking and rating system (Salesforce.com’s AppExchange is a great example of this), look for the quality and recency of customer feedback. The two major axes for measuring the ecosystem are products and people. In my experience, the number of people committed to the ecosystem is more important in the long run than the product. If there is plenty of demand and a good supply of practitioners, the plug-in and add- on products will be forthcoming. www.computernewsme.com
Handicapping early scramble It can be tricky to evaluate cloud vendors when the category is in its early days and there is no clear winner, either in features or ecosystem. If the cloud category you’re looking at is strongly impacted by ecosystem effects listed above, you need to gauge the size, growth rate and relative happiness of the developer community; size and growth of the number of plug-in products or services; number, quality and profitability of vendors participating in the ecosystem; number, scope and quality of relevant APIs; the vendor’s investment in the platform and scope of growth of the ecosystem in addition to the quantity of staff that vendor has dedicated to that growth. This might seem like you’re a Wall Street analyst trying to predict the future. And in a way, you are--so it won’t hurt for you to see if any of them has opined on the vitality of the cloud vendors in the category you’re working with.
About the author
David Taber is the author of the new Prentice Hall book, “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success” and is the CEO of SalesLogistix, a certified Salesforce.com consultancy focused on business process improvement through use of CRM systems. SalesLogistix clients are in North America, Europe, Israel, and India, and David has over 25 years experience in high tech, including 10 years at the VP level or above.
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how to Make a deal
Make the most of an Oracle negotiation Forrester Research analyst Duncan Jones points out how best to cope with Oracle’s ruthlessly experienced sales reps to outline a contract that works in your best interest.
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s most sourcing professionals would agree, Oracle is one tough vendor. From its organisational complexity, to the challenge of finding good negotiation leverage, this growing technology giant can be one of the most challenging to work with. A recent survey of 20 different Oracle customer organisations within Forrester’s Sourcing and Vendor Management (SVM) Leadership Council found that across the board, the primary point of contention was Oracle’s lack of flexibility on price model evolution, volume/scope changes, and overall business transparency (such as pricing). Council members also expressed that from their perspective; Oracle constantly tries to upsell and increase their costs. But let’s face it -- you can’t avoid Oracle. The same survey also found that while many member organisations claim they would prefer not to do business with Oracle, it’s broad portfolio and frequent acquisitions make it nearly impossible to totally remove from your sourcing strategy. In the exact
words of one council member, it’s “very difficult to get rid of them!” You’re up against some of the most able, highly trained, and well motivated sales reps on the planet, but by understanding how Oracle works, you can increase your chances of reducing costs and improving terms and conditions. Drawing on existing research, Oracle’s Annual report, current news items, and feedback from its SVM Council Members, Forrester offers the following recommendations for sourcing managers looking to achieve better results from Oracle negotiations.
Prepare for Oracle’s central approval process Oracle has highly centralised approval processes, so it is insufficient merely to convince your rep to give you the deal you want -- you also have to help him convince the decision-makers in Redwood Shores. The rep submits your case via a deal summary that describes the customer’s
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Oracle’s broad portfolio and frequent acquisitions make it nearly impossible to totally remove from your sourcing strategy. In the words of one council member, it’s ‘very difficult to get rid of them”
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context, what products you are considering buying, what concessions he wants to give you, and why. To help reps assemble the evidence to support your case, sourcing pros should focus on maximising the current deal’s size as well as identifying all potential future revenue opportunities. Oracle’s discounting policy looks mainly at the current transaction, so bring forward and push back small purchases to aggregate them into a single PO. That may mean you start paying maintenance on some products before you’re ready to implement them, so factor that into your evaluation and ensure that your discount level takes that into account. Sourcing managers should also strive to create high-level contacts between your executives, and Oracle’s sales and marketing leaders who are responsible for your industry. Offer to support their efforts by acting as a case study and reference customer, participate in their product planning process, speak at Oracle’s events -all of these add weight to the deal summary and help justify favourable treatment.
Consider unlimited agreements to gain leverage Oracle’s growth trajectory drives incentives for customers to buy licences now that they perhaps do not need for several years. For organisations that have already selected Oracle as their preferred supplier, this can provide some leverage as they enter into
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contract negotiations. Sourcing managers that expect to buy a lot from Oracle over the next two to three years should take a good look at its unlimited licence agreement (ULA), which eliminates the need to control and manage licence metrics such as users and processors. ULAs are typically a win-win deal for Oracle and the customer. In addition to simplified licence management, buyers can get attractive discount levels with a ULA. For example, Forrester has helped clients cut the price they pay for Oracle licences by over 30% by placing a single purchase order for what they would otherwise have bought over a three-year period. Oracle will use these discounts to encourage customers to sign a ULA, as it has to sell more and more ULAs each quarter to make up for the revenue it can no longer get from customers that already have them.
Negotiate maintenance with a licence purchase or consider third-party support providers Standalone maintenance renewals are rarely even negotiations because Oracle holds all the cards. You can’t even threaten to delay the PO because Oracle will bill you anyway, withhold support until you pay, and charge you reinstatement fees when you admit defeat. You can, however, try to avoid being in this position by securing amnesty from annual increases when you make the initial purchase. In return for a large contract, Oracle will often agree to hold maintenance costs for two to three years. In addition, while Oracle’s repricing policy typically prevents you from cutting support fees on products you’re not using, reps may agree to an adjustment if you scrap some licences at the same time as you buy something else. Your total support won’t go down, but it will go up less than it would have done had you not obtained the concession. For those that refuse to accept Oracle’s maintenance rates, third-party support
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providers (3SPs) are still an option, for many of Oracle’s applications. Most companies should stay with the software publisher’s maintenance programme and ensure that they are able to upgrade frequently to benefit from the stream of new functionality. However, some business units won’t be able to do that, www.computernewsme.com
either because they have over-customised the product or simply because they are very satisfied with their current release. For sites without near-term upgrade plans, some SPs offer customers immediate cost savings, improvements in service levels, and immunity from continual price increases. September 2011
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how to Make things work
Put your tablet to work With a little foresight and judicious app installation, you can turn a tablet into a productivity powerhouse
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tablet is no longer a toy. More and more, users are ditching their laptops in favour of carrying nothing more than a tablet. The decision to switch to a tablet is not one to undertake lightly; tablets have numerous weaknesses--from the lack of a physical keyboard to muddy file management--that you need to address before you traipse out the door with your iPad or Android slate in hand. Here’s what you need to think about before you make the switch. Go big or stay home As every netbook owner has learned, you need a little real estate to get work done. To that end, you’re likely to end up with better results if you plan for productivity from the start (before you ever buy a tablet at all), by considering a unit with a relatively spacious screen. Remember: Even the largest tablets on the market today are small enough to slip easily into any briefcase (and even most
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purses), so a big screen doesn’t mean you’ll be weighing yourself down.
Plan for connectivity Your tablet can liberate you from the chains of traditional computing, but not if you’re constantly running from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another. All the major tablet makers offer 3G/4G versions of their products that work over cell phone networks; if you’re serious about going all-tablet, you’ll need to bite the bullet and get one with a data plan.
Prepare for attachments The biggest challenge you’ll face in doing real work tablet is file management, specifically when you’re dealing with Microsoft Office files, the de facto standards of the business community. Clients will e-mail spreadsheets that need proofing and Word files that require editing, but you won’t be able to make changes to those files without an application that supports them. Your best bet: Dataviz Documents to Go, an app that www.computernewsme.com
not only lets you edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, but also stores them on the device for you. A sync system lets you keep track of the changes you make on your tablet versus those you make on your PC back home. Versions exist for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook, too. Keep it in the cloud You can’t just load up your tablet with every file you might possibly need--most tablets don’t have the storage capacity for that, but you can do the next best thing by dropping those files into the cloud, via a service such as Dropbox (free). Dropbox’s Webstorage system works for iPad, Android, and BlackBerry, letting you keep copies of just about anything, always at the ready. Set up a lifeline Even if you have a Dropbox account, what happens if you need to dredge up a decadeold presentation that you never thought to store in the cloud? Enter remote-control
how to Make things work
software, your connection back to the home office. LogMeIn Ignition lets you use the iPad to interact with your PC or Mac just as if you were sitting in front of it, and allows you to transfer files back and forth. If you have a custom app that doesn’t run on a tablet but that you absolutely have to access, this is the way to reach it.
Upgrade your typing speed Even the fastest touchscreen typists typically max out at 25 or 30 words per minute. That’s okay, but if you’re typing for long stretches that will put a severe cramp in your productivity and you’re likely to make a lot of errors too. The easiest way to improve your typing performance on a tablet is to add a physical keyboard to it. Products such as the Kensington KeyFolio Pro Performance Keyboard Case add a little bulk, but they double as a case and certainly make working on any sort of flat surface much more convenient and speedy. The only problem: You’ll miss having a mouse, and you’ll have to retrain yourself to touch the screen to move the pointer instead of reaching to the right. Android users can go the physicalkeyboard route, but they also have additional options, since Android (unlike iOS) doesn’t lock down the interface, letting you use alternative input methods. First consider the Android Thumb Keyboard app, which reorients keys to the sides, making it easier for thumb-typers to peck out messages. Another great option is Swype, which lets you type without lifting your finger.
The decision to switch to a tablet is not one to take lightly; tablets have numerous weaknesses--from the lack of a physical keyboard to muddy file management--that you need to address before you traipse out the door with your iPad or Android slate in hand” Numbers, and Keynote are the iPad’s simulacra of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively.
Stay on task Busy schedules require a lot of maintenance in the form of calendaring, list making, and other task-management duties, lest you forget exactly what you have to do each day. Universally beloved is Things, a full-on project manager that makes the iOS built-in calendar look like a sticky note. It’s not designed for multiple users or sharing schedules, but for keeping your own business life straight, it’s a good investment. Android users might check out ActionComplete Pro ($5), which is “inspired” by David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. Try one-stop travel management One of the big benefits of a tablet is that it can take the backache caused by lugging a bag full of gear out of travel. But it can also eliminate some of the headache, too. Checking in for flights, carrying a ream of
Use apple’s own apps Apple knew that people would want to use apps for real work, so it created a series of full-featured (yet simplified) tools to make that happen. Pages,
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paper-based itineraries, and figuring out exactly where you need to be can be an inelegant nightmare. Fortunately, plenty of apps are available to take the hassle out of managing complex travel plans.
Don’t forget to lock the doors If you’re doing serious work on your tablet, it will probably be chock-full of files whose loss would be devastating were they to fall into the wrong hands. Keeping your tablet secure is of paramount importance, and doing so isn’t all that difficult. On the iPad, that means turning on a password: The “simple” four-digit passcode is a start, but using the standard passcode setting-which lets you use any password you want--is probably a better option. You can also set your tablet to wipe its contents after ten failed passcode attempts, using the ‘Erase Data’ option under Settings, General, Passcode Lock.
Keep on keepin’ on One final consideration: Since your tablet will now be your lifeline to, well, everything, you’ll need to make sure that the battery can handle a full day of always-on computing. The good news is that most tablets will give you seven hours or more of battery life, although not all tablet models are created equal. But if that isn’t good enough, you’d be wise to investigate an external power pack that can plug into your tablet to give you a boost when you’ve otherwise gone dark. Devices such as the Trent iCruiser line connect through USB, making them compatible with dozens of models of tablets and cell phones. You’ll also find tablet sleeves on the market with extra batteries secreted inside, giving you a case and extra power in one.
Last word
Next issue October 2011
Events
Technology focus:
Outsourcing
As increasing numbers of IT decision makers go pro-outsourcing, the right questions to ask concern the gap between expectations and delivery. CNME asks for clarity on the factors that need to be considered for every outsourcing project, and how enterprises can avoid failure.
Vertical focus:
Education
Sitting bang in the centre of a knowledgebased economy, the demands of the education sector in the region vary dynamically from other industries. Focused on creating the right environment to encourage learning, while looking for innovative ways to harness talent beyond books and classrooms, CNME discovers how IT investments contribute to a growing education sector.
Technology focus:
Going green
Over the past year, the world has witnessed a considerable growth in efforts to invest in sustainable technology. CNME reports on who really stands to gain from green investments, how they benefit or hamper growth, and whether regional enterprises’ interest in green IT has increased any in the recent past.
WHAT WE’RE READING Windley’s Technometria Organisations Get the IT They Deserve Phillip J. Windley Blog Windley is the co-founder and CTO of Kynetx, a web app company, and the former CIO for the state of Utah. In his blog, he muses on a variety of topics,
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Cloud Congress 2011
19th to 20th September 2011 Royal Balllroom, One & Only Royal Mirage, Dubai www.cloudcongressme.com
ICT Achievement Awards 2011
9th October 2011 Dubai (Venue to be confirmed) www. computernewsme.com/ ictachievementawards2011
Infrastructure Strategies
31st October 2011 Dubai (Venue to be confirmed) www.infrastructurestrategiesme.com
Sustainable ICT
9th November Dubai (Venue to be confirmed)
Online most related in some way to Web 2.0. Recent posts include a nuanced attempt to balance the benefits of sharing personal data across a wide range of platforms with the privacy concerns that it brings. In another post, he breaks down the potential benefits of an application that could allow context-specific contract negotiation—determining which clauses are appropriate to the situation and which can be cut. www.windley.com
www.computernewsme.com
For the latest in news, analysis, features, case studies, and blog articles on trends and issues in the ICT industry across the globe and in the Middle East, please visit www.computernewsme.com
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