Computer News Middle East June 2016

issue 293 | june 2016 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

General Civil Aviation Authority SAP CEO Bill McDermott

Natural leader Sebastian Samuel’s love of tech innovation and green spaces

Internet of Things is in our DNA Creating a new technology breakthrough in the UAE Etisalat Enterprise

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The power of ICT & global services

founder, CPIMEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015)

EDITORIAL

Publishing Director Rajashree Rammohan raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5685 Editorial

Why scale matters

Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5678

After seven consecutive quarters of growth, the global server E-mail: market hit a speed breaker in Q1 this year, as shipments dropped jeevan.thankappan@ by three percent to 2.2 million units, and revenue slumped by 3.6 cpimediagroup.com percent to $12.4 billion. IDC attributes the slowdown in the market to an end in the enterprise refresh cycle, thanks to virtualisation and cloud, and what is described as a pause in investments in hyperscale server deployment. The research firm expects the market to bounce back in the second half of this year with a pick up in expenditure on servers for existing data centres and the roll out of new ones. The global growth in the server market is expected to be primarily driven by the hyperscale data centre segment.

Does this mean the era of hyperscale computing has finally arrived in the enterprise? Hyperscale computing Vendors say has normally been associated with Web giants such as Google and Facebook, but there has been a growing the second demand for hyperscale servers from the ‘second tier’ tier hyperscale market, which include oil and gas companies, research server market and telcos. Though their computing scale is not quite is growing as massive as Internet giants, their needs are pretty three times similar – they deploy huge volumes of x86 hardware and the performance of IT is critical to their business. more than the Vendors say the second tier hyperscale server market is standard x86 growing three times more than the standard x86 market market. and players such as Dell, HP and Lenovo already have offerings targeted at this market segment. Facebook has started the Open Compute Project, which aims to create a platform for hyperscale players to collaborate and come up with new hardware designs for customers, so that they don’t have to hire hundreds of engineers to customise software and hardware to suit their applications. In this age of shrinking budgets and resources, hyperscale data centres offer the opportunity for CIOs to take a leaf out of some of those giants with high-performance computing environments, and adapt these new models of technology consumption and best practices to their enterprise data centres.

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NATURAL LEADER SEBASTIAN SAMUEL’S LOVE OF TECH INNOVATION AND GREEN SPACES

© Copyright 2016 CPI All rights reserved While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

EDITORIAL

Our events

Give and tech It’s fair to say it’s been a hectic month at CPI’s Technology and Finance Division. I have no doubt that the weeks running up to Ramadan are the same in most offices and business centres across the GCC, with deadlines imminent, and meetings and events prevalent before the start of the Holy Month.

For us, at least, it’s a very busy time packed with organising technology conferences for our partners, sending editorial content to press and closing deals before things quieten down.

For large numbers of people across this region, now comes a time for reflection; a chance to gather your thoughts and think about what you want to change in the coming 12 months.

While many would claim that the technology industry is self-serving – after all, it is populated by multi-billion dollar corporations – its charitable efforts, and attempts at furthering humanity, are often undeniable. I had the pleasure of meeting SAP’s chief executive Bill McDermott this month, and this is something he referred to when I asked about how this region’s industry Our cover star could learn from his country of birth, The this month is United States. another figure What’s encouraging to see is that efforts are with a passion for being made on this front in the Middle East. My using technology colleague Adelle Geronimo explains one such initiative in her monthly column. for good.

Our cover star this month is another figure with a passion for using technology for good.

AW Rostamani Group’s Sebastian Samuel tells us about the necessities for innovation in his role as CIO, and in protecting mother earth.

These kinds of ethos are something we can all learn from, and are fine examples for this part of the world.

I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous month.

Ramadan Kareem!

Talk to us:

E-mail: james.dartnell@ cpimediagroup.com

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Redefining business-class laptops.

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Learn more at www.dell.ae Based on Dell internal analysis, February 2016. Phasellus ligula urna, feugiat in nibh sit amet, lacinia elementum arcu. Etiam non risus non turpis hendrerit blandit sed a odio. Praesent dignissim, ligula at vulputate porta, libero tellus facilisis augue, vitae laoreet justo metus ac sem.

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Topics to be covered: • Cybersecurity • Data loss prevention • Enabling a safer cloud • Security and risk strategy • Governance, risk and compliance • Mobile security for digital business • Crisis/incident command and management • Recovery from a targeted cyberattack • Internet of Things, network and endpoint security challenges

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Contents

Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic Technology Partner

Strategic Innovation Partner

ISSUE 293 | june 2016

20 24

uae general civil aviation authority

28

Interview: SAP CEO Bill McDermott

CIO spoTlight: aw rostamani group's Sebastian Samuel

18 EMC World 2016

44 Out of station

32 Big Data's huge role

50 A blueprint for IoT

36 Going virtual

56 A cloudy forecast

40 Open season

58 The need for speed

60

interview: EMC CTO Stephen ManleY

James Dartnell reports from Las Vegas, where major announcements were made in advance of the Dell acquisition.

Red Hat's Lee Miles discusses how the opportunities brought by Big Data within and outside the enterprise are growing in variety.

We take a look at how NFV can transform telecom networks and what's hindering the technology's widespread adoption.

How trusting are Middle East organisations of open source when it comes to one of the most important parts of an IT strategy – the network?

Inflexible and complex IT infrastructures can hamper any organisation. VDI promises to address these issues as well as bring a variety of advantages

Five architectural components to better implement Internet of Things capabilities within the enterprise.

Alan Shen, Vice President of Consulting Services, Unify Square, weighs in on the benefits and pitfalls of UC in the cloud.

Adrian Pickering from Juniper Networks on how businesses can be empowered by network innovations to compete in the digital economy.

How big data will What is big data? personal data

OPEN DATA

Includes private and anonymised public healthcare info, personal lifelogs and todo lists in the cloud.

Includes budgetary, socioeconomic, environmanetal data, law enforcement, sports data.

sources

The sources of data are also expanding -- sometimes from unexpected sources:

social networks

Including both public and private data.

internet of things

other user-generated Content for UGC, such as video uploads.

commerce transactions

Or IoT, which includes physical or environmental sensors, home automation, and other devices.

Both online and in person private and anonymised public data.

In November 2013, the US White House informed colleges thet the country needs more data scientists because of the huge amount of data that the United States and the rest of the world will be collecting every day in the near future -- and the need to manage it all.

how much data are we collecting and why?

Big Data will come from everywhere and anywhere, and there’s a growing need to access and consume it from many devices. Even data that is already collected will contribute to Big Data, ast his information is saved to private cloud storage systems.

storage measurements

1GB 1TB 1PB 1EB 1ZB

1,000 Megabytes (MB)

.5 EB

1,000 Gigabytes (GB) 1,000 Terabytes (TB)

Walmart collects 2.5 petabytes of data per hour from customer transactions.

1,000 Petabytes (PB)

Every 40 months, that amount is expected to double.

1,000 Exabytes (EB)

0.5 Exabytes of data were created daily, as of 2012. That’s 2.5 Quintillion bytes Every second, more data crosses the Internet in one second than the entire Internet had 20 years ago

better our lives how will we manage all that data?

Significant new sources will include the Internet of Things and all the smart devices connected to it. Devices in the IoT will collectively produce massive quantities of data in short periods of time. For example:

Ford has over 1 million cars using its SYNC AppLink and expects another 3.4 million vehicles to do so in the coming year.

Another source of massive data are smart sensors. At about 65 million units for 2013, there are expected to be 2.8 trillion by 2019.

If 3 billion people wear smart watches or wristbands that generate 2MB of data monthly, that would be 6ZB per month that healthcare providers might utilise.

If 4.4 million vehicles generated 1MB of data per day, that’s 1.6EB of data per year

General Electric has gas turbines with 100 sensors producing 1,000 pieces of data per second.

Kaiser Permanente has saved are around $1 billion from reduced office visits and lab tests by using data to improve treatment of cardiovascular disease.

NOsql databases

Data science

To store such large quantities of data has required rethinking how databases are managed.

Managing large quantities of data requires new techniques that cover fields, including machine learning.

New database access systems, like NoSQL, have changed the way the massive sets of data are stored, accessed and uploaded.

These skils are lumped under the title ‘data science’. A data scientist overlooks an organisation’s data science strategy.

Facebook, for example, developed Cassandra and utilised a handful of new database manipulation techniques.

Data engineers convert data analysis techniques into computer code to mine the data, find patterns and meaning, and generate data visualisations.

It’s estimated that Facebook handles at least 350GB of data per minute, globally.

A $37.8M data science project was launched in late 2013 in a partnership between three universities. This money will be used to develop new tools and techniques.

SOURCE: mastersinit.org

Column

I

Tech haven

n recent years, we’ve seen millions of people displaced from their homes due to unrest in some parts of the world, causing them to seek refuge in other countries. This issue has deeply affected the Middle East and North Africa region, with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey currently hosting five million refugees.

The MENA region is simultaneously facing an economic issue – the widening ICT talents and skills gap.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – the GCC’s largest market, and one that is fairly indicative of the region – had a shortage of 30,000 ICT professionals in 2014,. What’s more, the digital economy, due to take off in the coming years, is sure to create new job demand. With this in mind, a few organisations have done their part to www.cnmeonline.com

Adelle Geronimo Online Editor, CNME

turn a crisis into an opportunity for some. CNME recently received a news release chronicling how SAP and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have launched an initiative that aims to bridge the gap between the surplus of refugees and unfilled ICT jobs in the region. The two organisations will host their ‘Refugee Code Week’ programme, which will run hundreds of free coding workshops and online training courses for youths aged 8-24 later this year.

With this initiative and, touch wood, more of its kind – the MENA region has the potential to build a pipeline of talent for regional organisations seeking skilled individuals to support their digital competitiveness.

Similar movements have also been launched by various firms in other parts of the world. In Sweden, LinkedIn

has launched a programme that will match refugees with jobs catered to their skillsets, while in Finland, a range of tech start-ups are hosting coding workshops for young refugees.

These kinds of initiatives continue to fascinate me with the technology industry and the digital economy. As IT players continue to innovate their products and solutions, the possibilities for how their work can benefit civilisation also multiply.

They say the combination of people, process and technologies are the three fundamental elements that make an organisation successful. However, these kinds of initiatives go a long way to show that ‘people’ is the most important factor in this. Without people, even the most sophisticated processes and the latest technologies won’t work. june 2016

11

short takes

Month in view

Citrix, Microsoft align to promote digital transformation

Kirill Tatarinov, CEO, Citrix

At Citrix Synergy, Citrix and Microsoft unveiled an expansion of their strategic partnership to meet the needs of the modern workforce with application and desktop virtualisation in the cloud, network delivery and enterprise mobility management.

Kirill Tatarinov, CEO, Citrix, accompanied by a special video address from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, announced that Citrix has selected Microsoft Azure as its preferred and strategic cloud for its future roadmap.

According to both companies, the partnership will empower joint customers to capitalise on the convergence of cloud, mobile and Big Data and drive digital transformation in their organisations. In addition, Citrix and Microsoft are working together on new integrations between Citrix XenMobile, NetScaler and the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), based on customer demand.

“Companies of all sizes across all industries around the world have an amazing opportunity to embrace digital transformation and empower their people to work productively from anywhere at any time,” said Tatarinov.

“Our customers are asking Citrix and Microsoft to work closer together to help them fully leverage innovations like Windows 10, Office 365 and Azure.

This enhanced partnership ensures we can be more agile in responding to our customers’ needs and help them accelerate the move to digital business.”

As part of the expanded partnership, Microsoft and Citrix will offer customers flexible options to deploy Windows 10 Enterprise within their organisations 12

june 2016

HPE announces merger with CSC Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced plans to spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to create an IT services giant with $26 billion in annual revenue.

The decision is the latest step by CEO Meg Whitman in her efforts to turn around one of Silicon Valley’s oldest companies. Just last year, HewlettPackard split itself into two vendors, with HPE selling data centre products and services, and HP Inc. selling PCs. Now, HPE will slice itself up further, doubling down on its bet that a smaller company will be able to move faster and attract new business in a world increasingly dominated by the cloud.

According to the company, the spin-off and merger is the logical next step in the turnaround of its Enterprise Services segment. It also allows a standalone HPE to further sharpen its leadership in building the end-to-end infrastructure solutions necessary

25

%

to power the enterprise cloud and mobility revolutions.

HPE said it expects to complete the “spin-merger” to happen in March 2017.

The combined company will be led by Mike Lawrie, Chairman, President and CEO, CSC. Whitman will have a seat on the board, and the remaining directors will be nominated half by HPE and half

by CSC. In a statement, Whitman said customers would benefit from a “stronger, more versatile services business, better able to innovate and adapt to an ever-changing technology landscape.”

HPE shareholders will own approximately 50 percent of the merged company, and HPE said they’ll gain about $8.5 billion in “expected after-tax value.” Merging the businesses will also yield cost savings of about $1 billion in the first year, HPE said, but there will also be costs to spinning out the division.

of retail banks are expected to use startup providers to replace legacy online and mobile banking systems by 2019 Source: Gartner

www.cnmeonline.com

EMC and VMware recently released the State of IT Transformation report, which involved 660 of its global customers.

The study revealed that 80 percent of surveyed organisations indicated that they want to improve their IT service strategy to run IT as a customerfocused business.

Google strengthens VR division with new leadership Google for Work President Amit Singh has announced Amit Singh, President, that he will Google for Work be leaving the company’s business-focused division to tackle new challenges on the virtual reality side of the organisation.

Singh will be joining the Google VR team to lead its business and operations efforts, which he announced online last month. The company hired him six years ago from Oracle to lead the Google for Work team, and he was at its head for the launch of a number of

key enterprise-focused products, including Android for Work and Chromebooks for Work.

Currently, most of Google’s VR offerings are aimed primarily at consumers, but Singh’s move to the world of virtual reality may signal something of a shift.

The news comes roughly six months after Google hired VMware co-founder Diane Greene to lead a team overseeing its business-focused efforts, including Google for Work.

The company confirmed it is actively seeking to replace Singh, and Greene will work with the Google for Work team until a replacement is hired.

eHDF enhances its Etisalat, Huawei Public Cloud portal collaborate to deliver 10Gbps broadband service Etisalat UAE together with Huawei have announced their collaboration for a new FTTH solution to provide 10Gbps broadband service in the country.

Esmaeel Alhammadi, Etisalat Senior Vice President, Network Development, said, “The new broadband technology demonstrates that our existing network is capable of supporting future, next-generation passive optical network technology. Etisalat constantly assesses new technology to expand our capabilities and to enhance our ability to support traffic growth demand from our customers.”

Consumers today demand high internet speeds for real-time 4K video streaming, low-latency cloud gaming, desk cloud systems, and large file transfers. The launch of the 10Gbps service will enable users to experience and enjoy some of the fastest broadband speeds available in the region today.

“Enabling a better connected world is a vision that both Huawei and Etisalat share for our customers. By partnering once again with Etisalat on this 10G consumer broadband case, we have set the stage for developing intelligent management capabilities that can increase access to the modern information society,” said Poundss Peng, President of Huawei Etisalat Global Key Account.

It is the first time that the optical line terminal and XG- PON ONT (another term for 10G-PON) have been tested in the MEA region. www.cnmeonline.com

eHosting DataFort (eHDF) has announced further enhancements to the Public Cloud portal, which now includes new features and customisable packages.

According to the company, the Public Cloud platform consists of a fully automated self-service online provisioning portal, and includes an online store allowing to customise and purchase Public Cloud servers based on their requirements. eHDF highlighted that the public cloud can enable small and medium businesses to buy locally-hosted cloud infrastructure services, which are ideal for hosting websites and other web-based business applications. The payment plans for the cloud packages start at AED 116 per month and users can easily scale the virtual machines with the option to increase memory, CPU and storage.

Yasser Zeineldin, CEO, eHosting DataFort, said, “Public Cloud has gained worldwide momentum and we have seen an increased uptake of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). By helping firms shift their capital expenses into operational, pay-as-you-go costs, Public Cloud offers reliable and elastic IT infrastructure and superior utilisation of hardware and software resources.” june 2016

13

CIO Speaker series

NBAD boosts service provisioning speed Server Automation enhances business efficiency National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) had traditionally relied on a series of manual processes to provision services, which involved the collaboration of its storage, database and data centre teams. Against a backdrop of rising digital banking, an increasing number of applications coming into the Bank also meant its quarterly disaster recovery testing process was arduous.

Seeking a change, the IT team at NBAD employed a series of HPE components – including Application Performance Monitoring, Server Automation and Operations Orchestration software – to speed up its processes. The changes have enabled the bank to cut technology service delivery time from weeks to days, whilst improving response times and service level agreements for the business. Performance and availability have improved, while the gap between business and IT has been bridged with the uniform use of dashboards.

“Our consolidation of tools has reduced costs by 15 percent as well greatly decreasing delivery times.”

– Ayman Al-Qudsi, Head of IT Infrastructure Services, NBAD Read more at www.cnmeonline.com/hpe

Manage, order, track and pay anytime anywhere Etisalat’s Business Online Portal gives you all the tools your business needs Etisalat Business customers can now view and pay bills, place and track orders, report and manage service requests and so much more on the new Business Online Portal.

Log in today and enjoy online support services from Etisalat securely and conveniently without having to pick up your phone or leave your seat.

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may 2016

17

EVENT

EMC World 2016

a new chapter James Dartnell reports from EMC World 2016, where company chairman Joe Tucci joined Dell CEO Michael Dell in announcing major changes to come once its $67 billion acquisition – the largest of its kind in technology history - has been completed.

“

Michael Dell is the smartest man I know," Joe Tucci proudly announced to a packed Sands Expo Centre at the Venetian Hotel. As was expected, Dell's impending acquisition of EMC - the largest such deal in the technology industry's history at $67 billion - was the overriding them of this outing.

The man Tucci praised so highly went on to announce that once the deal has closed, the combined company will be called ‘Dell Technologies’.

"Our merger with Dell is not the end of something great, but the beginning of something greater,” Tucci said. “Every two or three lifetimes, there is a huge change in society. The shift that is currently taking place will dwarf the industrial revolution. EMC has to change rapidly to rapidly to remain a leader in this transition.”

Tucci reiterated that he would be soon to relinquish his primary duties at EMC. “I say this every year, but this will most likely be my last EMC 18

june 2016

World as chairman and CEO,” he said, receiving a standing ovation in the process.

Dell Technologies will comprise Dell, EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware, RSA, Pivotal, SecureWorks and Virtustream, and will adopt the name once formalities of October’s announcement have been completed.

Michael Dell said, “Dell and EMC complement each other in terms of technology. When you combine our capabilities in PCs, cloud infrastructure, servers and storage, you have a company that is perfectly positioned to stand at the heart of technology infrastructure, and of human progress.

“Dell and EMC complement each other in terms of technology. When you combine our capabilities in PCs, cloud infrastructure, servers and storage, you have a company that is perfectly positioned to stand at the heart of technology infrastructure, and of human progress.”

Dell went on to add that combining the companies would make matters more straightforward for customers. “The number one thing Dell and EMC share in common is customer focus,” he said. “Customers never ask for more vendors, partners and suppliers that they have to deploy and manage. They want simplification, and want to focus on applications and workloads.”

EMC used the event to announce multiple new data centre products and services for data centre transformation initiatives at the event.

The firm introduced its Unity family of all-flash storage; Virtustream Storage Cloud platform; EMC MyService360 service-centric online dashboard, EMC Enterprise Copy Data Management (eCDM) and ViPR Controller 3.0.

“The IT industry is in a state of massive transformation, resulting in both disruption and great opportunity,” David Goulden, EMC www.cnmeonline.com

Information Infrastructure CEO, said. “Every business leader, across every industry, is facing the dilemma of how to support and grow traditional IT infrastructure while modernising the data centre in order to support the development of new applications and advance their digital agendas. Some are doing all of this simultaneously. The products and services announced today will help advance the customer’s journey to build a modern data centre in order to thrive as a digital business.”

Along with its message of 2016 being the “year of all-flash” EMC announced the expansion of its storage portfolio with its Unity family of storage arrays. The new all-flash array is available in all-flash, hybrid, converged and software-defined configurations and is designed to help customers make an affordable and simple transition from disk to flash. www.cnmeonline.com

“Dell and EMC MyService360 is built using complement each EMC’s internal data lake and provides analytics and other in terms of visualisation tools designed to technology. When you improve, enhance and simplify combine our capabilities in the way customers engage with EMC products.

PCs, cloud infrastructure, eCDM, meanwhile, is an servers and storage, expansion of EMC’s Copy Data you have a company Management portfolio which helps customers tackle data sprawl and that is perfectly reduce the cost of storing and managing positioned.” multiple copies of the same data.

Virtustream Storage Cloud is a cloud storage platform offering enterprise-levels of resiliency and performance combined with web scale.

Cloud-based service dashboard MyService360 is available at no additional cost to customers registered with EMC Online Support, and provides “near real-time” visibility into the health and status of a an EMC data centre environment.

ViPR Controller 3.0 bridges traditional and cloud native environments. New updates announced today help customers modernize their multivendor storage environments, with support for over 50 EMC and third-party storage platforms.

The firm also announced the latest addition to its cloud portfolio, Native Hybrid Cloud (NHC) – a turnkey platform for cloud-native application development and deployment. june 2016

19

CIO

Spotlight

Sowing the seeds For an IT decision-maker, Sebastian Samuel’s values are somewhat polarised. The AW Rostamani Group CIO is determined to be at the fore of digital and business-driving projects, but retains a soft spot for all things green…

Every day I’m outdated.”

Rather than a selfeffacing outlook on his existence, Sebastian Samuel appreciates that in technology – and life – he finds himself facing a constant challenge to stay abreast of developments. “While you’re asleep, you’re missing out. The same goes if you don’t read for 12 or 15 hours.

This creates pressure to understand and keep reading.”

The AW Rostamani Group chief information officer applies this philosophy to his professional and personal lives. He appreciates that the “digital mesh” that is now developing, demands that the CIO should constantly evolve and lead an organisation in its smart journey. “No CIO in this era should stand still,” he says. “We should always be asking ourselves ‘what next?’ and leading the translation of emerging technology opportunities into business opportunities.”

“

20

june 2016

Born and raised in a Keralan village, Samuel went on to study chemistry at Mahatma Gandhi University in the Indian state, where he graduated in 1989. He went on to complete a postgraduate diploma in computer science, creating the foundations for a career in enterprise technology.

Upon his course completion, Samuel opted to remain at the institution in a tutoring capacity. He relished the chance to manage the next set of budding technology stars.

“I had the opportunity to train around 750 computer science students,” he says. “I was a guide for around 50 or 60 different projects, and my work mainly revolved around Pascal, and system analysis and design. It was also a great excuse to further my reading around my specialisation.”

Following his two-year tutoring stint, Samuel’s entrepreneurial flair kicked in, and he founded financial

accounting and data processing software firm ‘Bands Software Garden’ in 1992. “The name ’Bands’ came from the idea of people working together, and I chose ‘garden’ because I wanted a beautiful environment where software could bloom,” Samuel recalls. His 35-person company, which featured two divisions, developed fully-encrypted software, which Samuel says was “unique for the time”.

Shortly after establishing BSG, Samuel flaunted his passion for education, simultaneously undertaking a three-year Master’s degree in computer applications from Bharathiar University. After running BSG for a number of years, Samuel received a job offer in 1999 that proved too hard to turn down.

“My in-laws were starting a business in South Africa, and wanted to hire me as IT director,” he says. “I had never wanted to leave India, but the opportunity seemed interesting so I took the chance.” He sold his Bands Software Gardens shares and began what he thought he would be an African adventure.

Samuel would never make it to South Africa, however. He took a month-long detour to the United Arab Emirates, and shortly after arriving, got a job as an IT manager at a local software development company. “I was tasked with replacing a finance application which was used by 28 customers,” he says. It didn’t take Samuel long to become attached to the UAE. “After a year-and-a-half, I was settled and decided to stay.

Things were much simpler back then, but there was already a positive vibe in the country, which was blessed with good governance. It was a ‘make it happen’ kind of place. I’d not seen www.cnmeonline.com

“

The UAE was a ‘make it happen’ kind of place when I arrived. I’d not seen anywhere in the world like it. I was in the right place at the right time when I moved.” anywhere in the world like it. I was definitely in the right place at the right time when I moved.”

Having successfully completed the replacement of the application, pastures new beckoned for Samuel, and he joined AW Rostamani Group as an analyst programmer in 2001.

The shift in roles and company size were an initial challenge. “It was definitely a step down in terms of responsibility, but I thought the role would have great growth prospects,” he says. “There are two things I always look for in my career: how I can grow and what I can learn from a particular organisation.”

Samuel was quickly vindicated in his decision, and by 2003 was overseeing the software selection process for the organisation’s Oracle ERP. “I got an opportunity to lead a finance technical team,” he says.

Around the same time, Samuel also received job offers from American and Australian companies, but opted to remain in his role. “I thought Rostamani would offer me great longterm prospects,” he says.

By 2006, Samuel had overseen the development of a “complex” ERP system. His successful delivery earned him a promotion to the position of applications manager, where he managed a team of 12 people. A year later, and the firm’s CIO began a new division within AW Rostamani – the still thriving Shift www.cnmeonline.com

june 2016

21

CIO

Spotlight

Technologies – paving the way for Samuel’s rise at the company. He was initially made acting group IT manager for the company, and was offered the position on a permanent basis after four months.

Over the next five years, Samuel established a reputation as a dynamic IT leader within the organisation. By 2012, his designation had changed to group head of IT, and two years later, he was officially given the soughtafter title of CIO. Samuel has since flourished in the role, and in a relatively short

“

The prospect of turning AW Rostamani into a digital organisation does not faze Samuel, however. “I’ve never been bothered by challenges in my career,” Samuel says. “In fact I love them. It’s a CIO’s job to find solutions to challenges, and I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of the job. I’ve never run off to my 4 comfort zone and believe OM I have thrived in difficult periods.”

Despite his passion for gamechanging technology, Thomas will always retain a love of all things rural. Having recently purchased

A digital journey must involve a bit of the CFO and the CMO, some of the CEO and a lot of the CIO. We have to highlight how emerging technology opportunities can provide a competitive advantage.” space of time has defined exactly what he believes the role should bring to an organisation. “If mine and my team’s work can’t deliver value, it’s meaningless,” he says.

“Cutting-edge technology that drives business value has purpose.”

Looking forward, he believes the CIO needs to be assertive in sharing their expertise with the business. “The CIO needs to be collaborative,” he says. “A digital journey must involve a bit of the CFO and the CMO, some of the CEO and a lot of the CIO. We have to guide the business and highlight opportunities that emerge in technology, and how they can provide a competitive advantage. All that matters in a project is how it benefits the organisation. Once you have the stakeholders’ trust, they’ll keep coming back.”

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farming land in Kerala, he harbours an ambition to return to his roots and give something back to mother earth. “I love nature, and as long as I have high-speed connectivity I would love to go back and live on a farm,” he says. “In future, we as human beings will need clean air, fresh water and fields.”

Thomas is mindful that, like the technology industry, the market for commodities may evolve drastically in the near future. “I still remember when mineral water came on the market in Kerala, which no one thought was necessary,” he says. “Now that’s the norm. Vitality Air – a Canadian company – is now selling pure oxygen cylinders in Indian and Chinese industrial cities. Who knows, maybe in 15 or 20 years we’ll be buying them in the same way that we now take mineral water for granted.”

TIMELINE 1989

Finishes chemistry degree

3

OM

Begins tutoring stint

1992

Moves to United Arab Emirates

2001

Named AW Rostamani Group CIO

1990

Founds Bands Software Garden

1999

Joins AW Rostamani Group

2014

www.cnmeonline.com

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case study

General Civil Aviation Authority

Omar Bin Ghaleb, Deputy Director General and Head of Support Services, GCAA

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june 2016

www.cnmeonline.com

Taking off

The UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority sits at the centre of one of this country’s most important strategic verticals. Responsible for the navigation, safety and international services of aviation activity, the GCAA needed a centralised reporting tool and mobile app to connect airlines, pilots and engineers.

he aviation industry stands as a crucial pillar in this country’s plan to be sustainable in the long-term. Home to two of the Gulf’s ‘big three’ carriers – Emirates and Etihad Airways – the UAE has long made clear its desire to be a hub for transit and tourism. The Government of Dubai has even gone as far as estimating that aviation will contribute 32 percent of the emirate’s GDP by 2020.

In order for these lofty ambitions to be realised, a streamlined administration and governance organisation must sit at the heart of the operation.

Enter the General Civil Aviation Authority. The GCAA is responsible for formulating and disseminating general policy for civil

T

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aviation, as well as proposing laws and regulations for the industry.

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, it is the sole authority to control and regulate civil aviation in the UAE, and is responsible for the provision of air navigation services and all aspects of flight safety in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation standards and best practices. GCAA is responsible for the UAE’s security affairs, air navigation services, strategy and international affairs.

“GCAA’s aim is to lead a safe and secure civil aviation system,” Omar Bin Ghaleb, Deputy Director General and Head of Support Services, GCAA, says. “To cater to this objective, the IT department at GCAA is dedicated to delivering advanced technology and services to internal and external stakeholders. The IT department’s aims centre around the simplification of services offered to its customers as well as for the

Authority’s internal operations.”

In a drive to understand how it could better meet stakeholder and customer requirements, the IT team conducted a study in partnership with its various business units. They identified an array of challenges that operational teams faced, including tasks like the reporting of safety and security incidents and documenting accidents with photographic evidence. In addition, large numbers of staff desired improved access to an array of information, including missioncritical procedures, regulations, directives and information bulletins.

Access to this information is required 24/7, meaning the IT department would need to provide an available and secure solution.

Furthermore, with the Authority staff who were responsible for verifying the submissions and responding to requests often busy conducting business outside of UAE june 2016

25

case study

General Civil Aviation Authority

soil, responses and approvals could often be delayed. As such, a solution that could be remotely accessed would be essential.

Bin Ghaleb and the IT team also identified that its array of mobile ecosystems was fragmented and not unified across platforms. Some apps were available on certain platforms while others were exclusive to platforms as a result of features that were unique to an operating system.

Accessing the maximum possible audience with any development would be key.

“We want to standardise, modernise and mobilise IT services of the Authority to empower GCAA staff to meet strategic objectives and commit to the highest standards of excellence,” Bin Ghaleb says.

“In order to do this, we have to ensure the maximum utilisation of resources to enhance efficiency and productivity.”

To cater to GCAA’s demands, the IT department developed its centralised reporting tool Reporting of Safety Incident (ROSI). GCAA and its customers would need to use ROSI to report safety incidents to the Authority on a timely basis. This would need to provide efficient and effective regulatory responses and answers to technical enquiries, and would need to facilitate regulatory investigations when necessary, and provide analysis of the data for safety promotion.

Bin Ghaleb and the IT staff also began the development of a smart application that could provide realtime information to a host of its key stakeholders in the UAE and around the globe. Named SAMAE – ‘my sky’ in Arabic – the GCAA IT team 26

june 2016

developed an application across iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows operating systems.

Streamlined service The implementation of ROSI has provided huge assistance to the GCAA in terms of the process of managing risk, replacing the

“Allowing end-users to access data remotely – anywhere and anytime – has been a fantastic time and cost saver.” previous mandatory occurrences/ defect report and aviation safety report processes.

“The data collected through ROSI assists in the timely identification of hazards and helps to correct or take proper measures as per the level of risks,” Bin Ghaleb says. ROSI has been integrated with multiple systems and applications, including the Authority’s internal portal, Exchange messaging and collaboration and Active Directory. Once an incident is

filed in the system, the ROSI file is automatically assigned to a user group who then route it to the concerned inspector.

The SAMAE application, meanwhile, provides “fast and smart” services to a range of stakeholders interacting with the organisation, including airlines, airports pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers. “This has greatly simplified the service procedure by providing services anywhere, anytime and allowing customers to take full advantage of mobile technology, yet maintaining the required standard of safety and security,” Bin Ghaleb says.

Following the projects, GCAA has now completed an automation level of “100 percent” of its services.

“This has been a huge value-add to us, promoting process efficiency and reducing cost,” Bin Ghaleb says. “Introducing cloud computing across the enterprise in our deployment of SAMAE will greatly increase our productivity. Allowing end-users to access data remotely – anywhere and anytime – has been a fantastic time and cost saver.”

Looking forward, the changes stand to bring greater transparency and communication to the organisation. This is sure to enhance on-the-ground operations in the UAE’s airpoirts, as well as increasing safety levels for passengers, and reducing international security risks via a faster reporting tool.

GCAA’s IT department has gone on to be recognised by the Sheikh Khalifa Government Excellence Program as the best Federal Department and a leader in e-Service implementation. www.cnmeonline.com

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interview

Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP

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hat’s your perception of the Middle East?

If you think about the UAE and the 2021 vision, the idea of digitising services, and creating digital technology and innovation-oriented jobs for young people is fantastic. You’re seeing lots of businesses diversifying into multiple industries. Obviously there’s less of a reliance on oil in the UAE compared to Saudi Arabia, but if you look at their 2030 vision, they’re clearly trying to diversify their economy.

Customers want to run S4 HANA in a public or private cloud. We’re making a commitment to the region to have cloud data services here for public and private environments.

Data, data management and data security are very important here, and a commitment from a company like SAP is reassuring in that journey.

Data curators On a recent visit to the UAE, SAP CEO Bill McDermott told James Dartnell about the company’s plans to build a data centre in Dubai, with the possibility of an additional site in Riyadh.

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So you’ll be building an SAP data centre in the region?

We’re doing it; the data centre will be in Dubai. We’re refining the locations and the final strokes on that, but the capability is clearly there for it to be here, with perhaps one or two other locations. There could be one in Riyadh as well. We’ll keep you posted as soon as the deal is inked.

We now have 40 cloud data centre locations around the world, in every major economy, and we’re going to build one right here. It’ll be here in 2017. You can have the private cloud right now, but for public cloud we’ll be offering that here, as-as-service – the servers, the cloud data centre – will be right here. So people will be able to validate that and have comfort with their own servers and information.

Since 2007, when we established a middle channel between us and our customers, we’ve been the fastest growing software company in the world, and in the Middle East.

We’re very well liked here, and I think we’re well liked everywhere.

Our brand is highly regarded and people have trust in us.

A company of our size and scale – a $25 billion company – has to ask where growth will come from. We have to do well in our core markets – the US, Europe, Latin America, Asia – but if you’re really going to get the hockey stick, then you have to capitalise on the immense growth opportunities in the Middle East, Africa, parts of South America, India and China. These are mission-critical markets for us and that’s why we’re investing heavily, and in doing it the right way.

Is digitalisation a realistic prospect for this region in the short-term?

You need to have a vision, and you have to start somewhere. I think www.cnmeonline.com

the region is counting on us to bring thought leadership and best business practices from all our other worldwide operations. We need to scale that across 25 industries – as you know, we got to market by industry – and that’s a great place to start.

It’s important that technology and research are encouraged within the region, and that public-private partnerships are leveraged to achieve this. One of the universities I visited in the UAE has 6,000 students from 90 different countries – that’s a lot of intellectual firepower. I think a digital

“The data centre will be in Dubai. We’re refining the locations and the final strokes on that, but the capability is clearly there for it to be here, with perhaps one or two other locations.” journey starts with education, which emanates into a global opportunity.

The Middle East’s digital journey is far from complete but we have the vision to lead it. If you think about Expo 2020, if you think about travel and expense with Concur, and what we’ve done with professional sports, I think we’re the perfect match for the UAE and the Middle East.

You’ve just announced partnerships with HP, Lenovo and Microsoft…

I think we’re all trying to do the right

thing for the new consumer. Satya and I were at Sapphire Now last week in Orlando talking about Office 365 and S4 HANA, and the notion that an office worker could have a seamless experience between their Microsoft office experience, and their enterprise application experience with SAP. If you happen to be in Outlook and you have a human capital management function in ERP that you’re trying to access, then it does that seamlessly.

HP has obviously abided by our reference architecture on S4 HANA, and they’re interested in private cloud environments, where SAP is pervasive.

Lenovo make outstanding hardware and have very attractive price points, HANA runs on x86 hardware so we keep the price low.

HANA consumes ten times less hardware than other databases on the market, as well as providing seven times more throughput and is 1,000 times faster. Any time we can get the customer better value on the hardware, and better performance on the software, it’s win-win.

What can Middle Eastern CIOs learn from their American and German counterparts?

I think Germany has done a great job in terms of its Industry 4.0 efforts, led

by Chancellor Merkel and her vision for the industrialised Internet. There are many large companies operating at scale, taking advantage of opportunities including the IoT. Lessons to be learned include how to take big companies, and scale and diversify them. How to look at businesses in real-time for clarity and visibility.

The United States is incredibly creative in terms of developing new june 2016

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interview

Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP

had a database’ or ‘it’d be great if SAP could be more simple’. We’ve now simplified work that used to take six or seven steps to a matter of a few clicks.

I think that makes us a very different company from Oracle. I’m not saying better or worse – that’s up to the customer. We’re the only company that does inter-enterprise collaboration of companies. I think in this century that will create more growth than pure internal enterprise computing. We stayed out of the hardware business. We can work with commodity hardware and cut costs dramatically.

markets and opportunities. When you have a bust in one industry, they’ll create a new industry and a new market. There’s this resilience around markets and market dynamics. The other thing is innovation. When you think about Silicon Valley, venture capital money and the investment in young people, there’s a lot to be learned. The other thing that’s underreported is the philanthropic aspect of what the US does. Philanthropy is done at scale and there’s a big lesson there.

Are you the antithesis of Larry Ellison?

I think we’re both very driven people who are in charge of very different companies.

I think that we have some similarities too. We both do all that we can to make the best for our companies, and we’ve both been very good at what we’ve done. You can only give credit to Larry on a personal level for that. He’s been very good 30

june 2016

at what he does for a very long time.

Hats off to him in that regard.

As for Oracle and SAP, we’re just very different companies. They’re a database company that moved into the application space, we are an applications market leader that was in a perfect position to disrupt the database industry at the very moment it mattered the most to disrupt it.

Due to the mobile explosion and IoT, the disk-based database from the 20th Century is too slow, consumes too much hardware, and doesn’t give the businesses that rely on it the complete clarity of mission, where they have visibility into their data in real-time. With HANA, we disrupted the database market as we know it.

You might even say we are going to ‘Uber’ the database market.

With regard to the applications, reinventing S4 HAHA on a pure inmemory platform has dealt with the toughest objection to SAP. Maybe you could’ve said ‘it’d be great if SAP

CIOs are under constant pressure to marry business and technology.

To what extent have you earned your CEO position through technical skill, and how much has been through aligning business and technology?

It’s always been the Holy Grail to match business objectives with IT enablement. The biggest reason that strategies fail is that companies do not enable technology in the execution phase. What I think I bring to the party, and what I think SAP brings to the party, is a rich appreciation of how to run a business, and a true empathy for how you enable that strategy for the use of technology. Some companies are determined to talk about their products, but the truth is, the best mouse trap doesn’t always make the strategy a winner. You have to combine business and IT. One of the big challenges is aligning business professionals and IT professionals in the customers we serve. The only medium that I think serves the interest of the company is when these professionals are aligned in common goals, and how to combine them for the benefit of the business. www.cnmeonline.com

OpINION

Lee Miles, General Manager, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, Red Hat

Big Data’s huge role Focusing just on the 'Big' could diminish competitive advantage and only yield minimal benefits for Middle East organisations, Lee Miles writes.

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ver the last decade or so, the promise of Big Data has reignited new opportunities for innovation that have led to a favourable position for IT and the CIO. Some say Big Data has re-labelled the 'I' in CIO to 'Innovation'. In many organisations, the CIO is now truly considered to be part of the elite C-suite of executives, thanks in large part to the insights that IT can now deliver to the business in terms of identifying new business models, lucrative customer segments, and problematic products and processes. In other words, Big Data can make IT matter.

The use cases for Big Data technology, within and outside the enterprise, are growing in volume and variety. Within the enterprise, many use cases are focused on increasing profitability and operational efficiency, including 32

june 2016

identifying wasteful expenses and improving security. The most meaningful use cases may be found outside the enterprise in philanthropic organisations, non-profit entities, and even some government bodies. Commercially, there are many developments around wearable technologies. As people use wearable technologies like the Apple Watch, there is an opportunity for online shopping, banking, and other services to be enhanced and personalised for users.

Enterprises and marketers can gain better understanding of customer behaviour, as these devices can provide an enormous flow of data.

Data may become a big differentiator for countries in the Middle East as they embark on their digital transformation journey.

Analysing Big Data - including often-

overlooked 'dark data' (as Gartner defines it - ‘information assets that organisations collect, process and store in the course of their regular business activity, but generally fail to use for other purposes’) can yield valuable insights that enterprises can use to improve business.

Data, data everywhere.

Every time a person swipes a credit or debit card, digital information is released and this information can be analysed by online retail stores to gauge customer interests and send out ‘push notifications’ with personalised offers that might be attractive to customers.

In healthcare, Big Data is being used to cure diseases, predict epidemics, and improve quality of life. Wearable devices, such as Fitbit, Jawbone and other health monitors,

www.cnmeonline.com

can transmit real-time data, including activity levels, nutrient intake, and other health indicators that doctors can use to diagnose and treat ailments.

On a macro level, information from devices can be fed into a general public healthcare database and analysed in order to find patterns and remedies for medical conditions.

These are only some examples of the invaluable importance of Big Data and analytics and their potential benefits and impacts.

Irrespective of geography, industry or company size, in many organisations, the modern CIO’s role is closely tied to being able to extract actionable insights and quantifiable business value from enterprise data.

For companies that spent a good part of the last two decades optimising business processes, the playing field may now be levelled and transitioned to a future focus on data.

The secret to extracting value from Big Data Deriving value from analytics requires organisations to prepare data for use, but today’s explosion of data volumes, types and sources makes this challenging.

Before Big Data is used, the organisation needs the right foundation to have confidence that the data is comprehensive, reliable, and timely. A foundation that enables the enterprise to easily integrate traditional data management technologies, like data warehouses and databases, with new ones like Hadoop and Spark; adapt to changes in the competitive landscape, emerging technologies, and changes in business operations - and avoid becoming locked in to any one approach or vendor’s stack. If the foundation is weak, no amount of investment in analytics software may be able to compensate for it. www.cnmeonline.com

Choosing the right Big Data enterprise. Solutions should help solution only solves one part of the normalise the security models used problem. Another challenge can be across the data centre, giving a finding the right skills in the IT group simple yet holistic view of role-based to manage new Big Data workloads security to data and apps. and applications. Since business Cloud-ready - Big Data intelligence and data warehousing deployments can span physical, virtual, were older models and analysis was and private, public and hybrid cloud done on structured and historical environments. Your organisation data, a data analyst typically would should be able to manage data and look at data from a single source. building apps across all environments Today, Big Data analysis involves should be done seamlessly. real-time analysis of both structured Cost-effective – Investing in open and unstructured data, data-at-rest source solutions can help free up and data-in-motion. This gives rise to valuable resources to help enterprises the role of the data scientist with the focus on more valuable tasks and ability and acumen to examine data support the business by discovering from several sources, spot trends and better ways to engage customers. provide unique insights that can offer businesses a competitive In running Big advantage.

Data applications, Organisations organisations in Deriving should keep in the Middle East value from mind the five need to invest analytics requires key traits of in aggregating organisations to an effective data from Big Data social media prepare data for use, deployment: in order to but today’s explosion Open understand of data volumes, types public - Big Data and sources makes workloads and sentiment technologies are towards their this challenging. quickly evolving. company, among Architectures other use cases. should be built with In addition, regional interoperable, modular blocks governments and enterprises so Big Data products can work with should understand that Big Data other solutions in the data centre. holds tremendous potential in the Agile - A nimble infrastructure development of Smart Cities and lets enterprise IT respond to revolutionising industries such competitive threats, changes in as healthcare, retail, oil and gas, industry trends, and consumer banking, and telecommunications. behaviour. Solutions should be Making prudent technology chosen with easy scalability and decisions and building on open and deployment flexibility to help build agile, and technologies that can help apps and integrate data sources with organisations scale efficiently as extreme flexibility. their needs evolve. 'Open' and 'open Secure – Securing Big Data source' are two terms that are more workloads that support the IT relevant and critical than ever before, governance standards of the especially as they relate to Big Data. june 2016

33

OpINION

Chris Chelliah, Group Vice President and Chief Architect, Core Technology and Cloud, Oracle Asia Pacific

Bridging the gap Blurring the lines between public and private cloud capabilities

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he public cloud is often seen as something that sits outside the enterprise.

But its capabilities can be brought in-house.

The benefits of cloud are now widely known: a faster time to market, streamlined processes and flexible infrastructure costs. The public cloud model also provides rapid access to business applications or shared physical infrastructure owned and operated by a third-party.

It is quick to provision, and the utility billing model employed in a public cloud means companies only pay for the services they use. And, with costs spread across a number of users, costs are kept under control.

Private cloud, on the other hand, offers a bespoke infrastructure dedicated to an individual business, either run on-premise or hosted within a data centre run by the cloud provider. This provides most of the benefits of the cloud - an agile, scalable and efficient cloud infrastructure – but with greater levels of control and security for the business than is offered by the public cloud.

A private cloud is often perceived to offer the best option for mission critical applications, or those that demand a higher level of customisation – something that can be more difficult to achieve in a public cloud environment. It can also reduce latency issues, as services 34

june 2016

are accessed over internal networks rather than the internet.

Bearing these factors in mind, a private cloud tends to work well for large and complex applications or organisations and those with stricter obligations around data and regulation.

Historically, customers have been faced with the dilemma of which model to use – public or private.

They’ve had to make a decision, one application at a time. This is mainly because public and private have had very different setups. There has not been an ability to seamlessly pick up workloads and move them back and forth between the private and public cloud. Each ‘burst’ or ‘crossover’ from on-premise to on-cloud (or vice versa) requires different provisioning code, security profiles, network configurations, testing and automation tools. It’s just too difficult!

Fortunately, when considering the move to cloud, it doesn’t have to be an either/or decision anymore.

Hybrid cloud enables companies to utilise a mixture of both, and is giving organisations new strategic options.

It is about providing the exact same infrastructure, security policies and toolsets, and, at the very last stage, choosing a deployment option – either on-premise or on-cloud.

One of the key benefits of operating a hybrid cloud is that it enables users to move applications and workloads

between environments depending on demand, business needs and other variables. This mixed approach means businesses can rapidly respond to operational developments. It also means more (if not all) of a company’s applications are now ready to take advantage of the benefits of being deployed on a cloud – even if it’s the private cloud to start with.

This is now possible thanks to an evolution in the cloud computing space — the Public Cloud Machine — which uses the same software and hardware as the public cloud to bring the capabilities on-premise, meaning businesses can exploit the power of public cloud infrastructure while having the extra control that in-house data centres provide.

Essentially, it means organisations can address specific business or regulatory requirements, as well as those around data control and data location, while being able to tap into the perceived benefits of the public cloud: agility and pay-as-you go billing.

The hybrid cloud is set to become a business-as-usual expectation from companies.

By being able to blur the lines between where one cloud begins and another ends, companies can gain the ultimate flexibility of cloud, become more agile than their competitors and be in a better position to rapidly respond to changing needs and an increasingly competitive environment. www.cnmeonline.com

Telecoms World NFV

Going virtual Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) promises to significantly change the way telecom networks are built and operated. However, there remain several challenges to widespread adoption.

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JUNE 2016

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FV has been a hot subject for a few years now, as a technology that promises to transform telecom networks by migrating network functions from dedicated hardware to software running on virtual machines. The proponents of the technology say NFV will reduce OPEX and enable service providers to introduce new services via improved network flexibility and agility.

Besides, NFV is being championed by the industry as a standards-based approach to virtualising a host of telecom applications on industry standard servers, which will allow operators to simplify operations and introduce new services quicker.

“A potential growth area for telecom service providers is to expand into other industry segments.

NFV is an important step in order to explore these opportunities. This is the opportunity for our industry to leverage existing connectivity and infrastructure to provide platforms and systems, as well as to integrate seamlessly with the IT environment to address a broader spectrum of new business opportunities,” says Murat Sahinoglu, Head of Core and Cloud, Ericsson Middle East.

Huawei also believes that NFV offers carriers exposure to new capabilities that, in turn, will open new market opportunities and revenue sources.

“We understand that the true business value - based on an agile, virtualised network - is found in the NFV-based revenue, over and above the reduced OPEX,” says Sun Xiaofeng, Executive VP and Head of Marketing and Solution Sales, Huawei Middle East.

"With that being said, NFV is seen by Huawei and

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“NFV is seen by us and the rest of the industry as an enabler for actual digital transformation.”

Sun Xiaofeng, Executive VP and Head of Marketing and Solution Sales, Huawei Middle East

“This is the opportunity for our industry to leverage existing connectivity and infrastructure to provide platforms and systems, as well as to integrate seamlessly with the IT environment to address a broader spectrum of new business opportunities.”

Murat Sahinoglu, Head of Core and Cloud, Ericsson Middle East

www.cnmeonline.com

the rest of the industry as an enabler for actual digital transformation.”

Another big promise of NFV is the dramatic reduction in time-to-market for the telco industry, as it struggles to fend off competition from OTT players.

It also helps them to move beyond the traditional approach to infrastructure, which is to adopt new capabilities in the form of new hardware platforms and layer on top of one another, leading to complexity and increased costs.

Deepak Narain, Senior Manager, Systems Engineering at VMware, says NFV also opens the door to the quicker provisioning and installation of services that were typically considered only available from specialised vendors and delivered on specialised hardware. It means that services can be delivered, scaled, billed and torn down programmatically – bringing massive economies of scale to even the smallest service provider.

“It also means a massive improvement in the ability to innovate – NFV means the traditional silos that defined the telco enterprise can be broken down, services that were typically distinct can now be chained and orchestrated together in new and innovative ways,” he adds.

Though NFV holds the power to transform telecom networks, adopting it will require significant technological maturity and organisation change. “The full scale deployment of NFV will fundamentally change the telecom infrastructure," says Christian Bartosch, Associate Director at Boston Consulting Group Middle East. "The transformation challenges are taken to a completely new level when the virtualisation platforms are no longer dedicated but shared as a NFV cloud or network function virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI). To map a network function to NFVI requires a sophisticated JUNE 2016

37

Telecoms World NFV management and orchestration solution which ensures the required operational performance and resilience. Ensuring 99.999 percent application availability on NFVI, across several physical data centres with application data - such as state information - in the cloud, is still very challenging."

Hicham Alj, Global head of End-to-End Telco Cloud Sales, Nokia, agrees that the adoption of NFV will be a transformation journey for telecom operators from technical, operational and organisational perspectives. “This will require the enhancement of service lifecycle managements and procurement to realise time-to-market benefits, and the creation of new networking management and orchestration processes for virtualised networking," he says. "Telcos will also need to transform their OSS to deal with both virtualised and physical functions.”

On the technology front, ensuring the security of the network is not compromised by the introduction of NFV technologies is another daunting task.

“In the networking industry, new technologies are often met with skepticism in terms of associated possible risk and threats," says Adrian Pickering, VP-MEA, Juniper Networks. "With NFV, this can be attributed to the fact that the added components, interfaces and capabilities can provide further opportunities for cyber-attack by those with malicious intent.”

Operators can tackle such challenges by having the right combination of preventative and proactive measures in place. One of the most effective ways to do so is by streamlining operations. Using security zones allows virtual network functions (VNFs) to be deployed on hosts that satisfy pre-defined criteria that is pertinent to security, such as location and level of hardening, Pickering says.

“NFV and SDN are widely considered to be the two complementary forces that will shape the future of telecommunications networks.”

Hicham Alj, Global head of End-to-End Telco Cloud Sales, Nokia

www.cnmeonline.com

Ericsson's Sahinoglu adds that the security challenges related to NFV requires vendors, operators, enterprises, developers, governments and users to work together. “Through collaboration, openness and transparency, we will be able to ensure that the optimal level of security is achieved. Global standards and best practices are fundamental to the efficient handling of threats as well as to building economies of scale, avoiding fragmentation and ensuring interoperability,” he adds.

At its core, the underlying concept of NFV is the same as SDN, and industry experts say these two technologies complement each other, and don’t represent an either-or proposition.

Both SDN and NFV capitalise and depend heavily upon virtualisation to enable their respective capabilities — and to deliver upon their promises to separate connections and packet handling from overall network control (SDN) while combining and consolidating specialised functions and capabilities on standard hardware elements (NFV).

“The pairing of SDN with NFV allows for better service-oriented traffic steering and service chaining.

As a complementary approach to SDN, in which fixed-function routing has been placed under software control, NFV has been adopted recently by a number of operators," Xiaofeng says. "NFV enables virtualisation of network functions based on commodity servers, switches, and storage devices with functionality adjustable through software, including carrier-grade network address translation (CGN), wide area network acceleration, and enterprise access routing."

Nokia's Alj echoes a similar opinion. “NFV and SDN are widely considered to be the two complementary forces that will shape the future of telecommunications networks. NFV alone can’t provide all the needed attributes to achieve the above benefits and promises. SDN is providing the flexible connectivity both at data centre level and on a geographic scale among the NVF components.”

Besides, it appears the kinds of functions that NFV seeks to deliver work well within the framework defined for SDN, and that services defined for NFV will help provide the necessary abstraction and separation of the network control and data/packet planes. It might be serendipity at work, but this combination appears to offer potent potential for the next revolution in telecom networking.

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network World Open source networking

with open ARMS

The benefits of open source are well known – software that is largely free of charge, constantly updated and prevents vendor lock-in. How trusting are Middle East organisations to open source when it comes to one of the most important parts of an IT strategy – the network?

O

n the face of it, Open Source software (OSS) in the network seems an open and shut case in the Middle East. At least for now. While the benefits of Open Source are widely known, and have been recognised by many businesses in the Middle East, some aspects of the data centre may be perceived as asking too much at this stage.

On the face of it, the economic outlook in the Middle East will be a driver for the uptake of open source as a whole. CIOs who are under pressure to achieve more with less are sure to find Open Source’s lower costs – and in many 40

june 2016

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cases, no up-front costs at all – attractive.

Huge technology organisations around the world, including Facebook, Amazon and Google are all advocates of OSS, so it’s benefits are well endorsed.

Networks, however, are slightly a different ball game. The main reason behind this is that using OSS for the network as a whole is a relatively new venture. While it may make sense to employ OSS for non-core enterprise applications, using OSS on the network could well be perceived as asking for trouble by business senior management figures.

Faisal Malik, CTO, Huawei, Enterprise, Middle East believes that software-defined networking – a prime suspect for OSS use – is on the cusp of widespread adoption in the region, largely due to its range of business benefits. “SDN is rapidly gaining interest among customers in the GCC region because of its ability in addressing business and technical challenges,” he says.

“Customers today have a better understanding of SDN-driven benefits, such as low cost of infrastructure, optimum utilisation of resources, scalability and flexibility.”

He goes on to add, however, that shortcomings in the quality of IT infrastructure could hinder uptake.

“Traditional networks in the region lack adaptability to SDN technology,” he says. “This issue remains unsolved because of challenges such as limited programmability, nonprogrammable ASIC data plane on mainstream switches. Furthermore low packet forwarding performance of server CPUs, with only 1/10 of ASIC’s forwarding performance is an issue, while the coexistence of SDN with current networks needs to be carefully managed.”

“I think the use of Open Source for networks is currently too big a risk for a lot of IT decisionmakers in this region.”

Dr Jassim Haji, Director of IT, Gulf Air

“The use of OSS SDN provides freedom as organisations are not beholden to any vendor’s roadmap, vision and timeline.”

Anoop Sharda, Director, Technology and Managed Services, Buzinessware

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Anoop Sharda, Director, Technology and Managed Services, Buzinessware, agrees that SDN is the ideal option of OSS on the network.

“One of the fastest growing segments within open software is SDN, which simplifies IT network configuration and management by decoupling control from the physical network infrastructure,” he says. “The use of OSS SDN provides freedom as organisations are not beholden to any vendor’s roadmap, vision and timeline. OSS SDN also provides the option to choose from millions of OSS projects depending upon your requirement, and also provides source code which a company can modify to suite their own requirement. OSS SDN also provides transparency in terms of security due to the scrutiny it receives from all its users.”

The reality in the GCC, however, is that organisations who have ventured into software-defined networking – the most transformative type of OSS available in terms of networks – are in the minority.

Dr Jassim Haji, Gulf Air’s director of IT, who has recently undertaken a large-scale OSS project encompassing a trio of the company’s applications, believes using OSS for a network is currently a step too far for GCC CIOS. “I think the use of Open Source for networks is currently too big a risk for a lot of IT decisionmakers in this region,” he says. “I’ve considered OSS for a few areas of our core business, but the network is not something I’d consider fit for it just yet. A lot of CIOs are reluctant to experiment and take unknown risk.”

Security is one of the biggest risks in this regard. While the Open Source community frequently issues security patches for its users, the technology deployed remains only june 2016

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network World Open source networking

one aspect of its use. Having the right staff on board to mitigate risk is necessary. What’s more, the huge cost savings offered by OSS will inevitably create suspicion that greater security risks are inherent. Justifying the decision to opt for OSS may land a number of CIOs in hot water with other senior management figures when it comes to fingerpointing in the event of a data breach.

Dr Haji goes on to add, however, that he wholeheartedly recommends Open Source software and that it has provided fantastic benefits to Gulf Air. “My experience with OSS has been fantastic,” he says. “The investment has substantially reduced certain costs.” He goes on to add, however, that it took a while to get to grips with analytics software used to derive value from Arabic content, and for the company’s learning management system.

“The customisation and integration took months, as did the process of understanding the applications.”

Sharda agrees that the majority of enterprises across the region are not as inclined towards using OSS compared to their international counterparts. “The GCC market has been more of vendor-defined market,” he says. “This means there is a preference to opt for known brands to implement networking and other critical infrastructure, compared to depending upon open source technologies.”

There are inevitably a number of soft factors that also play their part in this inclination. With an increasing number of OSS networking startups emanating from the US, who are yet to make any sort of impact in this

“Customers today have a better understanding of SDN-driven benefits, such as low cost of infrastructure, optimum utilisation of resources, scalability and flexibility.”

Faisal Malik, CTO, Huawei, Enterprise, Middle East

www.cnmeonline.com

region, businesses in this part of the world are likely to either be unaware of their services, or, worse still, untrusting of them. While the open source community at large has a much more established reputation, there is likely a much greater deal of perceived risk towards smaller providers.

However, Sharda believes that OSS SDN has the power to be an important part of a technology strategy for organisations of all size. “It doesn’t need a fully developed infrastructure,” he says. “It can start from as small as few computers to large enterprise.

The important thing here is the desire of the team to implement and keep exploring various technologies available within OSS SDN.” This brings us on to another issue, one that is a major hurdle for the GCC to overcome in its adoption of OSS networks. While the desire may be in the process of being stoked – which is all well and good – the reality facing the region for now is that there is a lack of Open Source talent on offer. For the time being, at least, this will be a growing pain that Middle East will have to face. However, this will inevitably change as more CIOs buy into the notion of joining the international Open Source community, and seek to recruit talent from outside the region.

The selection process of OSS can be taxing, too. While traditional off-the-shelf products can shorten the process of software selection, with customisations available for separate verticals, the same cannot be said for OSS. “One of the main complexities is to define which OSS SDN project is good for your organisation,” he says. “Due to various options available in the OSS community, sometimes not all projects can meet your requirement, which makes it difficult to pick the right project. Another complexity is with the implementation of projects. Due to the nature of the SDN framework, IT engineers need to have a thorough knowledge before implementing such projects, as the implementation becomes the sole responsibility of the in-house team and not of any vendor.” june 2016

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solutions World VDI

Out of station Inflexible and complex IT infrastructures can hamper any organisation. These barriers result in slow deployment of critical applications and services, leaving them unable to keep up with growing business demands. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can tackle these issues, and bring a whole host of benefits.

mong the many tasks IT teams are charged with is supporting a variety of desktops, laptops, and other end-user devices for employees.

The management of physical desktops can be daunting, as it requires a significant amount of effort, time, cost and resources.

Moreover, physical desktops are not only expensive and maintenance-heavy, they also no longer support the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce.

Strained IT budgets and the growing popularity

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of mobility and BYOD trends each point to the need for enterprises to re-think desktop strategies.

VDI offers numerous benefits, mainly in terms of bringing a more simplified desktop management and fewer hardware purchases.

“VDI refers to the part of the IT environment dedicated to hosting desktop operating systems within virtual machines,” explains Arthur Dell, Director, Technology and Service, MEA, Citrix.

“These virtual machines can run on a hosted, centralised or remote server.”

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“Generally, VDI is thought to be expensive, complicated and unreliable. So to overcome this barrier, channel partners and VDI systems integrators need to be able to articulate the various benefits that they offer to CIOs and C-level decision-makers.”

Arthur Dell, Director, Technology and Service, MEA, Citrix

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Dell elaborates that VDI also offer other advantages for businesses such as improving productivity and efficiency at the workplace.

“It can enhance an organisation’s workforce in a variety of ways,” he says. “Firstly, VDI enables corporate desktops to be managed centrally, which frees up the valuable time of IT personnel of having to physically look after every unit.”

He explains that with a centralised management in place, desktop maintenance can be done during regular work hours without affecting the user’s productivity during the day. Through VDI, completing updates, patches and software installation is possible even without user intervention.

“Another advantage is increased desktop security,” says Dell. “With VDI, everything is protected and managed from one location, allowing IT to regain control over security at any given time. Also, since virtual machines are isolated from each other, security threats such as viruses found in one particular machine will not affect other desktops in the network.

Overall, VDI allows for a more flexible choice of hardware, providing the option of less expensive, but more secure, thin clients.”

A white paper commissioned by VMware and authored by IDC analysts Randy Perry and Brett Waldmann noted that VDI can bring enterprises two primary business values - improved operational efficiency, and improved control over data and users.

The task of maintaining physical desktops throughout their life cycles can be daunting. IT teams will need to perform a range of tasks to ensure that PCs are kept up to date and remain operational to support the productivity of employees. “The challenges this poses to IT varies significantly depending on the number of desktops in the environment and the regulatory requirements that must be met,” says the IDC study. “Since VDI simplifies the processes in performing these tasks, it can definitely improve efficiency within the business.”

The study goes on to highlight how VDI can bring ease of use for far-reaching stakeholders. “By centralising the client’s storage and execution, IT can better manage its access, thereby eliminating potential security risks and in some cases more easily complying with government regulations," it says. "Centralisation of the desktop, and in particular the deployment of thin clients, can also substantially simplify support for geographically distributed end-users and contract workers."

The use of VDI is prevalent in organisations that have a considerable workforce size, where end-users need to access certain applications simultaneously. “In the Middle East, organisations are increasingly adopting VDI as it separates the desktop from the hardware to increase employee mobility, provide easy recovery of data, and lower costs,” explains Savitha Bhaskar, COO, Condo Protego. “VDI is especially useful for large enterprises with hundreds of employees at workstations, such as banking and finance, healthcare, and customer service.”

Dell concurs, highlighting that the unprecedented growth of the ICT market is one of the main factors driving the need for virtualised desktops in the region. “Workplace and digital transformation, driven by demand for mobile working, remain critically important phenomena across all industries here in the region,” he says. “This has led to june 2016

45

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solutions World VDI

many IT decision-makers focusing on adopting new technologies to improve business operations. Another factor is accelerated globalisation and the rapid proliferation of devices and app platforms, which has made mobility in the workplace both an expectation and a necessity, driving dramatic changes in how IT organisations respond.”

As good as VDI sounds, it’s not without some pitfalls. According to the IDC study, the effort to deploy and manage VDI technology will require sufficiently powerful IT infrastructure. “Data centre capacity constraints can significantly limit the extent to which an organisation can support virtualised desktops internally," the study says. "Inadequate storage, network, and server capacities can also severely limit the effectiveness of a VDI implementation.

At the same time, the requirement for desktop operations management to rely on server administrators within the data centre can create a challenge for those looking to leverage VDI within their desktop environments.”

While boosting employee productivity is among the main benefits and reasons for deploying the technology within the company, some users may tend to be a bit reserved towards the idea of using VDI. From the user point of view, one of the barriers enterprises face when utilising VDI is the usually the loss of control, according to Dell. “Some users in various organisations will tend to have a sense of ownership over their physical desktops,” he says. “Therefore, they may not be favourable towards the idea of surrendering their control to a virtual desktop environment.”

Another significant barrier is convincing CIOs and C-level decision makers to give their backing to a VDI investment.

“Generally, VDI is thought to be expensive, complicated and unreliable,” says Dell. “So, to overcome this barrier, channel partners and VDI systems integrators need to be able to articulate the various benefits that they offer to CIOs and C-level decision-makers. At www.cnmeonline.com

“Before jumping into VDI, Middle East organisations should first consult with channel partners to understand how VDI can best meet their business needs and their digital transformation strategies.”

Savitha Bhaskar, COO, Condo Protego

the same time, choosing the right security technology can result in a successful VDI implementation that ensures the protection of systems and data.”

Bhaskar agrees, explaining that organisations will be able to take full advantage of VDI if they a have a better understanding of the parameters that deploying a VDI entails. “Before jumping into VDI, Middle East organisations should first consult with channel partners to understand how VDI can best meet their business needs and their digital transformation strategies,” she says.

Industry experts encourage organisations to carefully analyse their own organisational needs first before implementing VDI. They should then develop a holistic virtualisation strategy and then look for the VDI technologies that best fit their needs. Deepak Narain, Senior Manager, Systems Engineering MENA, VMware, said, “Because the use of VDI is still maturing, IT organisations will find that testing and proofs of concept take longer and cost more for VDI technology than for many other technologies that they deploy," he says. "To maximise ROI on these projects, organisations must have a comprehensive testing phase so that there are no significant surprises when the technology is put into production.”

During the last couple of years, a number of vendors have introduced hyper-converged infrastructures to further support VDI, to june 2016

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solutions World VDI

make it more manageable. “Compounding technological efficiency through aggregation is the most valuable aspect of hyper-converged technologies,” explains Dell. “Hyper-converged enables users to de-link the traditional VDI desktop from the application, which allows the delivery of applications to any device, on any platform, without the traditional reliance on the operating system.”

Using hyper-converged infrastructures for VDI implementation can speed up timeto-build and eliminate risks by removing unnecessary components. “Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure is key for Middle East organisations to adopt VDI,” says Bhaskar. “As the self-contained infrastructure block provides all of the solutions in one box, and can scale to meet business needs at a competitive price.”

The increasing popularity of cloud services has also evolved various

virtualisation technologies. Desktop as-aService (DaaS), is an approach that allows IT to host virtual desktops to a cloud service provider. “Organisations that are exploring virtual desktop solutions generally select between VDI and DaaS. While both are cloud-hosted desktops and serve a very familiar function, there are differences that businesses should be aware before selecting between them,” says Dell. “While VDI maintains its hardware through IT administrators located onsite, DaaS on the other hand, allows IT to source its desktops to an outside provider. Another notable difference is the cost in software licensing – VDI is a more established technology than DaaS and, therefore, software licensing is found to be more mature. DaaS is relatively new in the market, thus, major software vendors do not have cost-efficient solutions for it yet.”

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ANALYST VIEW

Jim Tully, Vice President and analyst, Gartner

A blueprint for IoT

Five architectural components to better implement Internet of Things capabilities

C

ompanies are excited by the opportunities around the Internet of Things (IoT), but CIOs are realising IoT is not a one size fits all solution.

The integration of IoT technologies varies among companies and industries significantly.

Implementing the right IoT solution requires an IoT architect who can be able to employ a ‘solution level’ thinking.

Enterprises will build and adapt their IoT implementations to include a combination of five key architectural components – things, gateways, mobile devices, the cloud and the enterprise.

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Things Things can be dumb or smart on their own and store most of their data on-board. Things can also be self-sufficient and communicate to the Internet for only centralised coordination and analysis.

Gateways Gateways may house the application logic, store data and communicate with the Internet for the things that are connected to it. Things don’t have to be as smart, because the gateway can provide these resources.

Smartphones Smartphones (or any mobile device)

may house the application logic, store data and communicate with the internet on behalf of things that are connected to it. Things don’t have to be as smart, because the smartphone provides these resources.

The cloud The cloud can act as the central connection hub, power analytics and provision data storage. Things don’t have to be as smart, because the cloud will provide these resources.

The enterprise This architectural role is focused on keeping connected machines, application logic, and analytics and

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data storage on-premise — that is, behind the enterprise firewall.

When considering the IoT, we think of machines, vehicles, buildings and consumer goods, all connected to the cloud. Yet, will this cloud approach be the predominant architecture for the IoT? Will we add sensors and actuators to monitor and control things, and then rely on the cloud to provide computing resources and storage? The answer is not always.

When a fitness wristband, for example, is tethered, much of the ‘smartness’ (the application logic) isn’t fully embedded in the wearable. There is some embedded application logic on the wearable, but most of the real application logic is in the smartphone app. At the

Implementing the right IoT solution requires an IoT architect who can be able to employ a ‘solution level’ thinking. same time, some of the applications useful to the owner are in the cloud, so that the user can share fitness metrics results with friends or a healthcare provider.

There is no single application ‘location’ for fitness wearables.

The functionality of the wearable is actually distributed – on the wearable itself, in a smartphone app and in the cloud. Similarly, some of the fitness data resides on the wearable itself, but much of it is stored on the smartphone, and some of it is stored in the cloud.

Each IoT architecture will include more than one of the five functional components. For example, an enterprise might favour a smartphone functionally to be most instrumental, but it may still rely significantly on cloud resources. The ultimate goal of modern IoT architectures will be to eliminate the technological segregation created by the cloud, gateways and things and abstract compute, storage, and networking end-to-end.

300+ Professional Team | 175+ Enterprise Clients | 20+ Nationalities | 20+ International Awards | 10+ Global Locations

FlexPod with Aptec

SUCCESS STORY

Success Story of The Chalmers Group Industry: Marine and Offshore Location: United Arab Emirates

Solution Provided: Cisco Flexpod with Cisco Refresh System Integrator: Teksalah

Company Overview The Chalmers Group is a diversified engineering organization providing turnkey solutions in the Marine and Offshore industry. From Concept to Design, Engineering, Installation, Testing & Commissioning, Class Society Approvals, Fleet Maintenance, Underwater Services along with Supply & Services of Marine Equipment, The Chalmers Group offers comprehensive services that eliminate nautical nightmares associated with Marine and Offshore services.

Chalmers has a presence throughout the Middle East, India and Far East with offices in UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, India and Korea.

Ratheesh Lal Balan Manager, Information Systems & Technology The Chalmers Group

Mr. Ratheesh Lal Balan, Information Systems & Technology Manager of The Chalmers Group gives an insight on how Cisco FlexPod & Cisco Refresh fulfilled their datacenter expansion project within a tight budget.

What was the Business Challenge?

“With the new servers we are looking to host an average of 30 virtual machines per physical server in place of the current 20 virtual machines”

“Cisco Tac a Big Differentiator”

Business is growing fast organically and inorganically. And when the growth came, it came in bursts. We in IT wanted to run before the business. We had to plan for the surprise bursts, but the same time had a shoestring budget. The solution had to be agile, modular and scaleable. A build it, scale it approach while keeping the management part simple was the need of the hour. That way we could focus more on our application stack rather than infrastructure to deliver more value to the business.

What was the Solution Proposed?

We considered different solutions including some hyper-converged solutions. After many rounds of internal brain-storming and technical evaluation, Flexpod was found to be the best fit. Flexpod is an integrated computing, networking & storage solution jointly developed by Cisco & NetApp.

Why did you decide to go with FlexPod? Since we have NetApp storage infrastructure, the upgrade path to a Flexpod Stack was seamless. This upgrade path is probably the best in the market as it allows additional compute, bandwidth and storage capability as needed.

We have a high-density virtualized environment where component failures can be disastrous. Cisco directly handling the support through Cisco TAC is big differentiator and gave us enough confidence to provision more virtual resources. Cisco UCS also gave us an option to comply with Flexpod Architecture, thus unifying support for other critical components. The possibility of introducing Cisco UCS Manager and Cisco Single Connect in future for ease of management also was considered.

How did you benefit from the Solution? How would you rate your experience with Cisco Refresh Products?

The overall solution made sure we can scale with the business demand without interrupting the services. Cisco UCS was adding more value to our existing infrastructure. Cisco Refresh enabled us to complete the project within budget ensuring a faster ROI. The fact that Refresh products are supported by Cisco Warranty and Support gave us enough bandwidth to pitch it to management. With the new servers we are looking to host an average of 30 virtual machines per physical server in place of the current 20 virtual machines.

What role did Aptec and Teksalah play in this project?

Aptec & Teksalah were instrumental in running us through the technology and helping us to complete the puzzle. They were fully aware of our budget and made sure we had the correct technology pieces to optimize ROI. Aptec and Teksalah did a joint consultation to understand The Chalmers Group’s ever growing data & application requirements. The solution was then designed carefully & tailor-made to fit their needs. Cisco Refresh ensured available, cost-effective & go-green compliant products with support & warranty.

About Aptec - an Ingram Micro Company : Aptec – an Ingram Micro Company is the Middle East, Africa, Near East and Turkey’s largest technology Value-Added distributor and a leading Technology Sales, Marketing and Logistics company. Aptec is the only distributor who can offer converged stacks solutions for your Data Center such as Flexpod Versa Stack and Smart Stack.

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For more information, please contact: Mr. Kalyan Kommuru, Business Lead : Cisco Data Centre Business Mobile : +971 50 918 2521 | Email: kalyan.kommuru@ingrammicro.com Aptec - an Ingram Micro Company

Mathias Thurman, Contributor, Security Manager’s Journal

BLOg

Let the budget games begin!

C

ome budget time, being the security manager for a financial services company is a great thing. Like any security manager, I have to prepare materials to justify spending company money. But in the financial services sector, upper management tends to be well aware that we have a lot to lose if we’re breached, and customers and auditors continually scrutinise our security practices. Since losing a major deal or failing an audit because of inadequate security is not an option, winning approval for reasonable budget requests is not as arduous as it can be in other industries.

In the past, I have received funding for a security engineer who is primarily focused on product security.

His duties include identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities and bugs, driving the implementation of security-related features and functionality, and addressing the security posture of internal tools. In addition, last year we were able to purchase a very expensive sourcecode analysis tool to aid him in his tasks. This year, he has asked for additional third-party application penetration testing tools and services, which I’m happy to accommodate.

A weakness in our security efforts — one we share with most organisations — is in the area of IT or corporate security. It has improved, now that most of our corporate applications are cloud-based or use software-as-a-service (SaaS), which means our corporate network is not

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populated with a lot of business-critical servers. But that doesn’t mean we can disregard basic security hygiene such as patch compliance, endpoint security, network segmentation and secure configuration management.

Like many other organisations, we give our users administrative access to their PCs. We try to protect the PCs by using group policies, but users still install third-party programmes.

That means that besides keeping up with operating system patches and baseline configuration, we also have to stay on top of thirdparty application patches. And with more than 80 SaaS applications in use, vendor management and application configuration are critical. All of this is why, during this budget round, I will ask for a dedicated IT security specialist to focus on corporate security.

I also want to hire someone to handle audit and compliance requirements, which continue to grow. We already meet the requirements for SSAE 16 and PCI, and we manage third-party assessments and penetration testing and conduct internal audits. We are now considering meeting HIPAA compliance so that we can sign agreements related to the protection of certain healthcare information that customers may store within our application. All of the audits and assessments have to be followed up with remediation. And so I want a security and compliance analyst.

The things I’ve described probably

can’t keep one person fully occupied (audits are typically seasonal), but I figure the new hire could also help analyse and crunch data and serve as another eye monitoring security events, besides shouldering other miscellaneous security-related duties.

A lot of the security-related tools that we use I think of as minor technologies, such as a firewallrule audit tool, a security baseline assessment tool and a few scanning services. Now, though, I’m thinking about investing in a security information and event management (SIEM) tool. It could help us make sense of all the data that comes from our firewalls, Unix syslog, Windows event logs and several other application logs. I’ll have to review the pros and cons of an on-premise solution versus a managed service provider. Although the latter option would entail directing logs so that the third party can analyse data, identify events and determine whether any of the events warrant escalation to an incident, the fact is that running a 24x7 security operations centre is expensive, so I may lean toward that choice.

Once I get my thoughts in order, I’ll put together a few slides that will describe the current problems and the risks associated with not doing anything so that the executive staff can make a decision. Budget planning is typically a give-and-take exercise, since all departments are fighting for those corporate dollars. If I don’t go in prepared, I could end up with a lot less than I’m seeking. june 2016

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insight

Gamal Emara, Country Manager - UAE, HPE Aruba

Building the next Smart City

O

ptimistic forecasts for the UAE’s construction sector for the next few years are driven by factors such as encouraging macroeconomics, affirmative demographics, and rising tourism activities, as well as a resistant infrastructure project pipeline as part of the country’s strategic Vision 2021.

With Dubai Expo 2020 also on the horizon, the government is solidly behind smart development initiatives.

As the UAE ushers in this new era of advancement, much has been predicted and promised about the integration of ICT into every aspect of completed city developments.

The computing capabilities of mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices have advanced to a level that has made them capable of aiding the planning, designing, and building phases. But turning mobility into an effective tool requires not only computing power 54

JUNE 2016

but also connectivity. At job sites, wired connections are not feasible and cellular networks are not always available, hence, a strong case can be made for developers to utilise Wi-Fi solutions.

IoT represents a huge opportunity for the construction industry, which is constantly processing data and strives for workplace safety, as well as efficiency. IoT needs a secure, scalable network to succeed and Wi-Fi offers what IT departments require for strong construction IoT networking.

Facilitating workflow With the introduction of tablet devices, mobile project management has emerged as a worthy replacement to age-old methods. Coupled with the broad ecosystem of featurerich mobile applications and the ability to draw from vast amounts of remotely stored data and cloud services, these devices are

capable of granting contractors, engineers and supervisors access to blueprints, schematics and other vital documents. Moreover, with the ability to instantly push updates to all members working on the project, mobile computing devices can aid collaboration and revolutionise the building information modelling (BIM) process in real-time.

With site-wide high speed wireless connectivity for all mobile devices, workers gain the ability to transfer high volumes of data back and forth between not only each other but also headquarters (HQ). This significantly streamlines communications while cutting costs and improving operational efficiencies. This could also bear attractive 'green' side effects as staff no longer having to make regular trips to and from HQ. High speed wireless connectivity is an enabler of the following applications:

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Wearables A truck driver can be required to wear a wearable, which may come in the form of an activity band. Other drivers and management can be notified if a driver is missing or is being unproductive.

Construction workers on-site can wear a helmet and vest with RFID, vitals monitoring, GPS sensors, motion sensors and so on.

IoT video, making both identification and collaboration easier. represents a huge opportunity Evaluating IoT and mobility solutions for the construction for the construction site An Internet of Things industry, which is implementation is constantly processing solution not impossible to manage, but it’s not easy either. In data and strives for fact, developing solutions for workplace safety, the Internet of Things requires unprecedented collaboration, as well as coordination and connectivity efficiency. for each piece in the system, and

Smart GPS Knowing GPS data related to where your equipment is located and how it is being used is important for identifying cost-savings opportunities and keeping your fleet organised.

These benefits can be uncovered by analysing the GPS data from across your fleet and comparing it over a period of time.

Asset tracking At job sites, company assets are a major investment and the progress of construction is heavily dependent on their functionality. Heavyequipment is often required to be left on-site overnight which makes them a prime target for theft. Asset tracking technologies help monitor such equipment remote locations and automatically detect and report suspicious behaviour.

Developers can also benefit from automated maintenance schedules, logs and reports. The readiness of cheap and easy-to-use RFID technology has also made the automation of inventory management possible. By knowing in advance which materials are soon to run out, construction companies can foresee www.cnmeonline.com

and avoid material deficiencies, thus, eliminating losses in productivity.

Equipment repairs are one of the largest operating costs in the construction industry.

Equipment inspection Similar to monitoring and repair, equipment inspections can be enormously enhanced by the help of smart sensors. With the advanced sensors available now, machinery can self-detect the imminent need for a repair before it becomes a larger issue. Lost/late forms, low accuracy and undue internal processing time are no longer an issue with electronic processes.

Site security Another vital area of a construction site where mobile technology can be applied is in video surveillance.

Not only does this enable better collaboration and remote supervision, it is essential to site security. Highspeed connectivity for robust and costeffective camera equipment can mean the ready availability of high definition

throughout the system as a whole. All devices must work together and be integrated with all other devices, and all devices must communicate and interact seamlessly with connected systems and infrastructures. The challenge for the developer is to find a robust enterprise-class Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) solution that is affordable in terms of the capital expense and operational overheads.

As construction integrates more deeply with IT, network uptime will become an increasingly important factor. It is therefore prudent to invest in network management tools which can prove invaluable in providing maximum network availability. Companies must look for a service provider whose solution is based on the latest 802.11ac wireless standard as this delivers gigabit Wi-Fi combined with the device density and application intelligence required by today’s Wi-Fi networks.

There is also a need to balance cyber and physical security, since smart devices are physical in nature.

For any country keen to drive smart cities, both cyber and physical security should always be considered in the upstream of the project.

JUNE 2016

55

insight

Alan Shen, Vice President of Consulting Services, Unify Square

A cloudy forecast The forecast for unified communications in the cloud seems bright with clear skies ahead. Alan Shen, Vice President of Consulting Services, Unify Square, weighs in on the benefits and pitfalls of UC in the cloud.

A

ccording to Transparency Market Research, UCaaS (Unified Communicationsas-a-Service) is expected to reach nearly $38 billion by 2022 with an impressive compound annual growth rate of over 23 percent.

While the benefits of UCaaS have been well-documented, it is important to note that simply putting UC in the cloud does not ensure a highly functional, highly available enterprise communications platform that endusers will readily adopt.

To truly realise the optimal UC end state – one where old PBXs are decommissioned and dial-in contracts are no longer necessary – enterprises must come to the realisation that 56

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cloud is just one small piece of the bigger UC puzzle.

IT departments would be advised to take into account multiple facets of their IT infrastructure that are at least equal to, if not more important than the cloud, in order to build a thriving UC environment.

Cloud – the 15 percent UC solution As Zig Serafin, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft’s Skype Business Services, stated at Enterprise Connect 2016, users expect a seamless experience when it comes to day-to-day communications. They don’t view video and voice as distinct or separate entities. Rather, “they’re thinking about one infrastructure

that people use for different modalities”, and "are expecting a mobility of experience across whatever devices they’re using.”

To facilitate this kind of freedom of communication requires a holistic, end-to-end UC solution. Whether or not the UC infrastructure itself resides in the cloud is only one part of a complex equation. UC environments are comprised of highly interdependent systems that rely on the availability and stability of multiple technologies. These include endpoint devices, corporate data networks, telephony gateways, TDM services, server infrastructure, the public Internet, and willing end users.

By viewing the UC ecosystem www.cnmeonline.com

across this full spectrum, it becomes clear that the cloud is not a cure-all.

Despite the aggressive efforts by UCaaS vendors (which now include Microsoft) to market and sell the Cloud PBX as the current, hip place to be, enterprises should pause and heed some clear-headed analysis before proceeding. Choosing to place UC in the cloud is likely only a 15 percent solution, at best. So what about the remaining 85 percent?

enterprise’s entire UC network. To effectively manage service delivery, IT must have the right tools, metrics and visibility in place for total management of the UC service, including visibility into the cloud.

Existing infrastructure: It’s easy and probably advisable for a green field company to begin their UC experience in the cloud. Unfortunately, large enterprises don’t have the luxury to throw UC in the cloud, and ignore the existing hardware and

The other 85 percent Engineering a UC infrastructure is a challenging undertaking. Not only Whether does it require technical expertise in UC architecture, but the success of or not the UC the project is contingent upon the infrastructure itself collaboration and cooperation resides in the cloud is of other IT teams whose technologies greatly impact only one part of a complex UC voice quality, service equation. UC environments availability and end-user are comprised of highly satisfaction. When the cloud enters the equation, there are interdependent systems additional factors to consider. that rely on the availability These include: and stability of multiple Networking: Successful UC solutions depend on proper technologies. network planning. Putting UC in the cloud adds complexity to this environment. Instead of a traditional corporate network environment, IT must now extend the network to the infrastructure that resides across cloud, and have the right bandwidth hundreds, if not thousands, of sites provisioning and settings in place and office locations around the world. to prioritise voice traffic. Enabling Decommissioning and re-provisioning this capability requires a significant hardware is no simple task. In this amount of work and commitment scenario, enterprises can benefit from of IT resources to account for new a tenured UC expert to help transform traffic flows, QoS configurations and sites to UC on an accelerated and service contracts. strategically planned timeline.

UC management: End-to-end End-user adoption: The promise call quality is comprised of many of UC is predicated on end-user components, of which the cloud adoption. Users in the workplace are is only one part. Ultimately, it’s set in the ways they communicate, the responsibility of IT to ensure and expect to conduct business as the stability and availability of the usual no matter what platform is www.cnmeonline.com

in place. Transitioning users from a traditional PBX system to a UC solution is easier said than done.

End-user training often ends up being one of the most underestimated elements of UC deployments, whether on-premise or cloud. When it’s overlooked, user adoption suffers which can lead to unrealised costsavings and failed deployments.

Security and regulatory compliance: Taking UC to the cloud adds levels of complexity for data security and regulatory compliance.

Some countries, like Germany, have strict rules on where cloud data centres can be physically located, complicating service delivery for cloud vendors looking to take on multi-national customers. In the case of financial institutions, banks often require additional security software to sit on top of their UC environments to provide auditing and increased levels of corporate firewalling.

Added to all of this is the heavily regulated telephony industry with its vast number of local laws and governances. Whereas traditional telephony vendors have years of experience working with these regulatory bodies in many local markets, cloud UC vendors are starting from scratch in most cases. This is a major hurdle for UCaaS providers with implications across tens of thousands of municipalities worldwide.

When it’s all said and done, UC and the cloud have a promising future together. UCaaS can reduce UC costs, accelerate UC provisioning, simplify UC usage and adoption, increase UC collaboration with other applications, and improve UC for the remote worker. However, it takes more than just the cloud to have a successful UC environment. But if you plan accordingly, blue skies await. june 2016

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Insight

Richard Leonarz, Director of Memory Marketing, Samsung Business Division

Solid benefits Richard Leonarz, Director of Memory Marketing, Samsung Business Division, shares insights on how combining SSDs and HDDs can enhance data centre performance while keeping costs under control.

S

olid state drives (SSDs) can help IT managers maximise storage efficiency in a rapidly evolving data centre environment. New technologies such as Vertical NAND (V-NAND), NonVolatile Memory Express (NVMe), and PCI Express (PCIe) help SSDs deliver high bandwidth and low latency, while hard disk drives (HDDs) still offer efficient storage of large quantities of data with lower performance demands.

The key to maximising efficiency and savings is aligning performance and

capacity to dollars spent. This can be achieved by ensuring the right mix of SSDs and HDDs; performance gains are attainable while keeping costs under control.

According to analyst firm IDC, about 90 percent of the world’s data is considered “cold data”, which means it is accessed infrequently after capture. The remaining 10 percent of the world’s data is hot, meaning it is captured and accessed frequently.

Take Twitter for example; recent Tweets are pushed into feeds and liked,

According to IDC, about 90 percent of the world’s data is considered “cold”, which means it is accessed infrequently after capture.

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retweeted, or favourited, becoming “hot”, while most Tweets older than a week “cool down” but are still searchable.

It is needlessly expensive to store all data in high-performance, lowlatency storage devices, hence, the use of tiered storage architectures, where each class of storage provides unique performance qualities that are best-suited to the data in that tier: • CPU cache and in-memory processing form the hottest tier, with small amounts of data in flight.

• A hot tier handles data spilled from memory to storage, supporting high-performance writes. PCIe NVMe SSDs offer unprecedented transactional speeds and write endurance necessary for these demands.

• A 'warm' tier with increased data capacity uses 2-bit and 3-bit MLC Serial ATA (SATA) SSDs as they still offer solid transactional www.cnmeonline.com

performance and endurance with lower cost per gigabyte. • A 'cold' tier archives the bulk of the data in HDDs at the lowest cost per gigabyte.

Data should flow naturally from the hot to warm tiers and eventually to the cold tier. Should archival data suddenly find itself in higher demand, it can be migrated back to the warm or hot tier for processing.

This approach allows each tier to be fully optimised around the right technologies, increasing overall data centre performance without driving unnecessary costs.

Better SSDs with V-NAND technology When it comes to NAND flash technology, it is important to understand the evolution of NAND and the performance, endurance, and cost differences between versions.

For years, NAND flash advances made it possible to pack more and more bits into each cell. But at some point NAND flash cells became so tightly packed they actually interfered with each other, reducing reliability.

Smaller cells also became more susceptible to wear, and NAND flash endurance began to reach a limit.

With V-NAND technology, cell towers are created by stacking multiple layers, with scaling shifted from 2D to 3D. Rather than making cells smaller as in 2D NAND, V-NAND features relaxed intercell dimensions while still achieving significantly higher capacities with stacking. The result is that V-NAND delivers improved performance and endurance over planar NAND. The V-NAND technology also enables increased performance and endurance in data centres. Depending on the application, the benefits can www.cnmeonline.com

range from more users able to access data on the same network, improved response times for data analytics, or increased drive-writes on the SSD storage space.

Improve speed and performance with PCIe and NVMe While huge strides have been made to improve NAND structure for better endurance, capturing the full performance gains requires improvements to the software interface connecting the SSD to the computer.

Non-volatile memory express (NVMe) and PCI Express (PCIe) SSD technologies are transforming the speed and performance of data centres.

With the PCIe interface and NVMe protocol, storage subsystems deliver higher bandwidth, lower latency, and avoid performance bottlenecks, all of which drive high-calibre data centre performance. The switch from SATA or SAS to a PCIe interface provides data centres substantially more bandwidth than was ever possible with the earlier generation SATA interface. PCIe SSDs can be connected directly to the CPU without host bus adapters, further reducing latency.

In addition to the electrical interface, operating systems also need an improved software interface for higher storage performance.

Prior to any standard approach, SSD vendors incorporating PCIe interfaces had to write a proprietary driver for improved performance. NVMe emerged as a new specification,

using a simplified, low latency stack between the application and SSD to reduce I/O overhead and provide higher performance and improved efficiency. Where AHCI supports one queue and 32 commands, NVMe includes a vastly improved queueing system with support for thousands of queues, each allowing for up to 65,536 outstanding commands.

The transition to NVMe and PCIe SSDs contributes to improved random and sequential performance compared to SATA interface SSDs using the AHCI protocol.

Data centres that benefit from high transactional input/output operations per second (IOPS) will experience up to four times faster performance with these new and improved technologies.

Now, data centres can maximise speed and improve performance using PCIe and NVMe SSDs, particularly in hot tiers with more frequently accessed data.

With data increasing exponentially, understanding what data is hot and what is cold becomes important to devising an architecture to handle it cost effectively. A tiered storage approach uses technology most cost-effectively. In most data centres, the cold tier with HDDs already exists, and a warm tier of mid-range SSDs may be informally in place. Adding a hot tier with high-performance, high-endurance SSDs and focusing the most intense transactions there can take data centre performance to new levels without breaking the bank.

The V-NAND technology also enables increased performance and endurance in data centres.

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interview

WHAT'S IN STORE H ow do you expect your role to change with the impending Dell merger?

There are two really big wins in this merger. I’ve spent my entire career in storage and data protection. It’s natural to look across expertise and say “how hard can that be” or “their stuff is commodotised” about other vendors. Dell will bring in lot of server expertise, and more networking expertise through their acquisitions. That will help me up my game, and make me a better designer.

Shift from working for a public to a private company will help the development of software-defined pieces.

Revenues can drop if not you don’t sell hardware. That bothers Wall Street.

Michael Dell has made it clear that what’s right for customers is still a win for us. Whether we get paid immediately, or in three years, or whether we’re selling software or software and hardware bundled together, it doesn’t matter. The deal will free us up to be more aggressive in software-defined and flexible consumption models. Customers who can pay $40k rather than $1million up front have more flexibility.

What is the next step for a customer with a large number of Vblocks?

If you’re living in a technical debt environment – where you’ve cobbled stuff together as you grew, and said you’d fix stuff later but didn’t – Vblocks 60

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Stephen Manley, CTO, Core Technologies Division, EMC

EMC’s Stephen Manley, CTO of the company’s Core Technologies Division, discussed some of the challenges of shifting away from tape storage at EMC World.

are a step we recommend. You need to start simplifying the environment and paying the tech debt.

Once you’re in a converged environment, the next step is to either push towards converged data protection, a model where a lot of companies have separate DR and operational recovery.

It’s great to have your production environment streamlined, but it still takes a week to provision a virtual machine because it takes a week to set up the backup policies.

Second – you need to think about what your play in the cloud will be. No matter how efficient your on-premise environment is, there will be a role for every company in public cloud, whether in terms of SaaS apps or pure IaaS. You want to make yourself the broker for that so it’s not just thrust upon you.

What about end-users who still use large amounts of tape?

There’s a great state end state where you have converged unified protection tied in with your production environment, but you’re not going to go from traditional tape-based backup to that level in one step.

Your customers, users and processes won’t be built to handle that env. ironment We want to walk them through a six-phase programme. Phase one is where you have traditional tape

backup. Phase two is where you start to slide in disk for your backup. Phase three is where you introduce an integrated disk backup into your environment.

That’s your traditional backup, and you’ve started to pay off your tech debt.

Now you need to move to backup-asa-service and you look to your three main pain points. Usually you have big applications, some disgruntled DBAs, a growing VM environment that you’re having trouble corralling, or a very large storage environment that’s very fileheavy. For each methodology, you need to find a new way to protect, because traditional ways don’t work.

Phase four is backup-as-a-service, five is data prorection, six is analytics and test and development. You don’t go from one to six overnight. The big hump is between three and four, where you need to train staff and business units.

How can end users overcome process challenges to get used to this culture?

Usually it’s down to two things. First is a question of having enough of the technology underpinning it so it doesn’t blow up in your face. Some of that is the IT team’s responsibility.

Secondly, you need to offer a win.

No one says they’d like to take a bigger role in backups, but if you can see the upside, say if something goes wrong, you can deal with it yourself. You can spin up a new app without waiting for me to provision it.

www.cnmeonline.com

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Insight

Greg Arnette, Founder and CTO, Sonian

The cloud workforce

With the increasing adoption of cloud in various industry segments, organisations are expected to bring in the expertise needed to optimise this technology. Public cloud information archiving company Sonian Founder and CTO Greg Arnette highlights three differentiators startups should look for to maximise their chances of securing cloud adept employees.

T

oday, it’s rare to encounter a company that doesn’t use the cloud. According to a recent RightScale report, 93 percent of organisations surveyed are running applications in the cloud and 82 percent of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy, up from 74 percent in 2015.

As cloud adoption rises, employees skilled in cloud development and management are finding themselves a hot commodity in the job market.

In fact, many organisations are vying for highly-coveted cloud computing experts to optimise cloud performance and help them better compete in their respective markets.

In the early days of cloud, startups were the only ones willing to take a chance on the technology, resulting in cloud computing experts flocking to startups. As enterprises saw the cloud model validated and began to trust it, they sought new hires to help them harness the cloud’s positive benefits, and the first place many enterprises looked for potential cloud computing recruits were those startups.

Cloud computing experts are beginning to leave the startup world for 62

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tech behemoths like MetLife, Fidelity and GE that can offer higher salaries, brand recognition, enticing benefits, elevated titles and a more stable environment. As a result, startups are struggling to retain these talents on which they once enjoyed a virtual monopoly.

The inability to retain top talent has a measurable impact on a business of any size. To land and keep cloud talent, startups must put their best foot forward and remind employees and prospects why starting out in the startup world is a good thing for their professional development, personal job satisfaction and career path.

Here are the top three differentiators startups can highlight in their next job interview to maximise their chances of securing employees with a strong cloud skill set: The unicorn experience: Hiring smart, creative and innovative people who are going to add value to the company is a key aspect to the success of a so-called unicorn business, one that has a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Having the opportunity to contribute in growing a successful business from the ground up is an extremely rewarding

experience for many people, and something that cannot be replicated at a tech giant.

Broad tech exposure: Due to the less formal structure and more opportunity to be hands-on, tech employees in startups often wear many hats and have the opportunity to work with an array of technologies.

As a result, employees gain deeper knowledge and understanding of diverse aspects of the business, and gain insight into the overarching IT strategy, rather than just one piece of it.

Less bureaucracy, more creativity: Startups are almost always less bureaucratic than large organisations. Startup employees have the opportunity to gain a sense of ownership over their work and get the freedom to bring creative ideas to the table – instead of feeling like they always need to colour within the lines.

In this cloud-first world, it’s a race to get the best cloud experts on any given team. In order to preserve talent, it’s essential that startups be vocal about the unmatched value of joining their teams. Staying silent could cost them dearly.

www.cnmeonline.com

OpINION

Adrian Pickering, Vice President, Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks

The need for speed Adrian Pickering, vice president, Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks, describes how businesses can be empowered by network innovations to compete in the fast-moving digital economy

I

n today’s technology-driven digital economy, it’s all about speed. Faced with new customer engagement models spanning multiple channels and soaring market expectations, reaction times are critical.

To succeed in the digitally-driven era, characterised by unrelenting market disruption, an organisation needs a new way of doing business where it can continually adapt to rapidly changing market conditions and demands.

While success is still driven by anticipating customer preferences and building competitive advantage, the transformation into a digital business is a journey many organisations in the Middle East have already begun, while others have yet to start. Such a journey will require some new thinking, new ideas and perhaps even a new way of looking at IT infrastructure.

Across the digital landscape, many organisations aren’t just under threat, they risk becoming irrelevant. As new technologies, innovative services and evolving business models gain momentum, radically disrupting the structure of competition, established organisations need to ensure they continually deliver market-leading, customer value.

For management, the challenges across the business and social landscape are huge and wide-reaching.

As the digital economy continues to exert pressure on every business, forcing change on almost every level, innovative ways are needed to keep 64

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pace and benefit from the economic transformations taking place. Creating business advantage typically requires improving or re-engineering processes and services but if there’s a new commercial imperative, it’s recognising that disruption will not only continue, it is likely to accelerate.

Building a customer experience model that delivers the greatest value is a start. With the ever-increasing rate of innovation sweeping businesses along, many are already reshaping and re-positioning themselves, while evaluating what it means to bring positive change, or ‘creative disruption’, to their organisation and market.

While only part of a complex picture, defining an IT infrastructure and the network platform needed to deliver genuine value will identify the most successful business. And by ensuring the focus remains firmly on the market strategy, rather than just the technology, such a platform can become central to supporting business decisions with data-driven intelligence underpinning commercial priorities in support of wider business goals.

With the increasingly dataintensive world, for a business to be able to integrate and process the sheer volume and velocity of data, IT infrastructures must be able to scale, perform tasks faster – and seamlessly – and just as importantly, anticipate and adapt to change. With many progressive businesses in the process of re-inventing themselves,

it’s important to ensure the network infrastructure provides a route towards having a technology platform that’s only as complex as absolutely necessary. By deploying changes quickly and smoothly, with fewer risks and lower costs, an intelligent network infrastructure can provide not just business agility but the rapid – almost instant - evolution of business processes, products and services.

NETWORK AGILITY Against a background of growth in mobile devices, cloud, big data and social business, Middle East organisations are increasingly looking to develop their network capabilities to keep up with the new computing requirements of the digital economy.

For those companies with longstanding roots in the region and who haven’t benefitted from ‘leap-frogging’ legacy solutions, introduced when the region was in its infancy, softwaredefined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) represent potential game changers for supporting business transformation.

SDN is a new approach to managing infrastructure and helps overcome network complexity. By leveraging software capabilities to automate key networking functions, it creates an agile network infrastructure which can rapidly adapt to reduce the time and risk of introducing or modifying new services and applications. It also lets everyone concentrate on the www.cnmeonline.com

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With the world’s first Security Delivery Platform, your existing security tools can see what kinds of data are flowing inside the most complex network.

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OpINION

Adrian Pickering, Vice President, Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks

core business of the organisation, by delivering a network infrastructure which adapts to dynamic service requirements, rather than adapting the service to the network.

NFV is another key technology and emulates network functions that are typically performed by standalone, physical devices and implements them in a software environment instead. To meet changing business needs and market conditions, the virtualisation of each hardware function enables the network to quickly build, adapt or evolve network services. It also means having greater operational agility and flexibility built-in by running a network that doesn’t solely rely on managing a range of specialised, network devices.

As a complementary technology to SDN, virtualisation has a great many benefits in its own right, yet when adding SDN’s ability to automate and manage network resource lifecycles, the benefits are multiplied.

FUTURE-PROOF IT Inevitably, overlapping generations of network technology can add layer upon layer of complexity. By helping bridge the gap between new and legacy resources, SDN not only simplifies network administration but ensures the IT platform can expand with the business - vital in the region where new business centres are emerging and leading countries like the UAE continue their investment in a diverse range of sectors to support economic growth.

Moving to a hybrid infrastructure - a blend of virtual and physical devices – is one solution that provides complete freedom of choice to evolve and scale at a pace with changing needs, while protecting existing IT investment. Equally, the adoption of open standards architecture simplifies network evolution by providing a choice of best-of-breed solutions from 66

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For the digital economy, virtualisation and the software-defined infrastructure represent two emerging IT solutions that meet genuine business challenges, with both delivering sustainable, agile network platforms CO-LOCATION AND CLOUD that enable business evolution, at speed.

For most organisations, network In a world of instant resources within in-house data centres communication and sky-high will continue to expand and can often customer expectations, many business reach a physical limit. Outsourcing models continue to be turned on opens up significant advantages for their head or simply cease to exist. organisations by providing not just Today, there are significant challenges much-needed network capacity, ahead as economic and technological but built-in resilience, accelerated pressure continues to disrupt those provisioning and, increasingly, a route businesses unprepared for change. to web-driven service connectivity. As With the price of oil plummeting to a tried and trusted outsourcing model, record lows of late, the introduction co-location benefits those organisations of V.A.T. in parts of the G.C.C., looking to reduce their IT and fears growing that infrastructure and Moving Dubai is on the support services to a hybrid cusp of a second so they can property crash, instead focus on infrastructure - a the Middle East creating value blend of virtual and is preparing propositions physical devices – is one for a new for their solution that provides chapter in its customers. complete freedom of choice economy.

Together to evolve and scale at It is with the therefore crucial advantages a pace with changing that new value of a managed, needs, while protecting propositions and automated existing IT service models are network, coinvestment. implemented to drive location can provide innovation, supporting the capabilities needed local businesses in what could be for a digital business, and a a pivotal year for the region. route to cloud-based service adoption.

The first step is to create an open Whether public, private or hybrid, and flexible infrastructure, with a cloud hosting represents a costnetwork-centric approach that views effective way of achieving business the IT platform as an asset, not a cost. goals by delivering services on a For organisations in the Middle East dynamic, pay-as-you-go, infrastructure. to bring new ideas to life quickly, Without owning any network and connect people, devices, and resources, cloud migration provides ‘things’, harnessing the built-in value organisations with a cost-effective, and performance of an intelligent, secure data centre network that can automated data centre network is scale quickly, with service provisioning central to helping keep the region’s that can be rapidly spread across businesses at the forefront of the multiple, geographically distributed digitally-driven economy. sites or cloud environments. across a wide community, with the means to add new technologies or development environments as soon as they are available.

www.cnmeonline.com

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PRODUCTS

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Launches and releases

Brand: HP Product: OMEN laptops

Brand: BenQ Product: XR3501 What it does: The recently launched monitor, according to BenQ, is tailor-made for gaming enthusiasts. The XR3501 is a 35-inch curved gaming monitor with 2000R ultra high curvature and 144 Hz. The device sports a 2560×1080 display with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 178-degree extra-wide viewing angle.

The screen is housed in a matteblack cabinet with a silver frame and is supported by a V-shaped stand with chrome finish.

According to BenQ, with the curved display and high resolution, XR350I brings immersive gaming experience to “hardcore” gamers. XR3501 also has standard gaming features like Black eQualiser, Colour Vibrance and Game Mode.

What you should know: It is equipped with two HDMI inputs, a full-size DisplayPort input, a miniDisplayPort input, a headphone jack, an audio-out jack, and an audio-in jack. It has nine picture presets including Standard, Movie, sRGB, Racing, First Person Shooter (FPS)1, FPS2, Photo, and two user-defined custom settings. Mounting holes can be found at the back of the monitor, however, the optional mounting kit and a special adapter plate need to be purchased separately.

www.cnmeonline.com

What it does: The OMEN laptops, according to HP, are designed to deliver an “immersive experience to complement smooth performance.”

The 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch diagonal OMEN laptop is available in full HD and has 4K IPS display options. NVIDIA GTX 965M graphics and a 6th Generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processors is also integrated into the device.

What you should know: The laptops also feature audio tuning by Bang & Olufsen and HP Audio Boost technology for added depth on dual speakers. It sports a Dragon Red backlit keyboard with OMEN branding on the keyboard deck and on the black shadow

mesh laptop lid. With a dual fan design, the OMEN laptops can run for hours, remain cool and “maintain performance.” The 62watt battery sits flat and towards the front of the machine to allow more airflow for thermal management.

Brand: D-Link Product: DCS-960L What it does: DCS-960L is a full function day and night HD H.264 180° horizontal panoramic view wireless network camera. Designed for monitoring indoor areas, the device is part of D-Link’s surveillance product line. The camera uses a 1/2.7” progressive CMOS sensor and a 1.2mm fixed lens with an f/1.8 aperture for capturing high-quality video. Two IR LEDs provide night vision with minimum illumination. The device is also equipped with a built-in light sensor, which determines when to switch the IR LEDs on.

What you should know: Recordings are simultaneously compressed in H.264 and MJPEG formats. An integrated microphone provides sound accompaniment to videos, and it also

has automatic noise for any unusual sound is detected. Video footages can be remotely viewed and managed via the mydlink application.

JUNE 2016

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Backlog

4

tips to help switch marketing automation systems

Switching from one marketing automation platform to another is a headache most organisations would probably rather avoid. The processes involved are often costly and can sap the motivation and morale of sales and marketing teams tasked with learning new programmes. A change of providers can also delay brands' abilities to launch new campaigns, and it sometimes takes time to incorporate the appropriate data into the new systems.

Despite those challenges, changes of marketing automation tech are increasingly becoming a necessity due to intensifying market competition.

These four tips can mean the difference between a smooth switch and some bad decisions that cannot be undone.

1

Involve key stakeholders in marketing automation decisions One of the first things a company should do before deciding on a new marketing automation system is get all of the key business leaders into the same room and on the same page, according to Paige Musto, Director of Communications, Act-On Software, a marketing automation vendor.

Executives in marketing, sales, IT and data should all be at the table to help define and implement a successful project, Musto says.

"Lack of communication to your stakeholders can cripple your movement," says Monica Gallegos, Senior Director, Marketing Automation, R2integrated, a 70

June 2016

digital marketing agency. "Their involvement can ultimately play out in your new platform success.

So communicate the process and provide adequate training."

2

Properly prepare to migrate marketing data It's crucial for businesses to prepare to migrate data to the new marketing automation system if they want to experience painless transitions.

"Let's face it — no marketer likes to lose data," Gallegos says. However, it's not uncommon for businesses to have stale, inactive or incomplete data in their systems, because the information changes constantly. "Taking the time to analyse your data and understand what data is being brought into the new system will help you better segment in your new platform."

Businesses should seek providers with products that can integrate closely with their other systems.

"Your new marketing automation system should be able to import older data and integrate with your existing applications," says Musto.

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Set goals and corresponding metrics for the switch Businesses should also proactively set goals and then develop key performance indicators to monitor progress toward those objectives, according to Musto.

It also helps to remember that the transition should be viewed as a marathon and not a sprint, Gallegos says. "This is a large project so make

sure you have the time to get through each phase of the project and do it right.

'Re-platforming' is an opportunity to audit what you have in market, how it is used, where attribution is missing, and what is effective in driving qualified leads, so take the opportunity to capitalise on this."

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Work with IT on marketing automation transition Marketing leaders should try to work closely with their organisations' tech leaders, such as CIOs, because they can provide technological guidance throughout the evaluation and subsequent deployment of the system, according to Musto. "It is imperative that IT leaders are involved in the marketing automation decision process to ensure that the system will support the current IT and communications structure," she says.

CIOs can also help develop cost-benefit analyses of various marketing automation services to help their organisations achieve greater ROI, according to Musto. One straightforward way to do that is to "look for solutions that won't require extensive IT assistance to run and manage," she says.

The biggest potential pitfalls of switching marketing automation vendors involve problems with technology integrations and workflows, according to Gallegos. "Technology integrations should be closely evaluated so that downtime is mitigated and so that proper data mapping is not only established but also validated." www.cnmeonline.com

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