Computer News Middle East September 2017

ISSUE 308 | SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.TAHAWULTECH.COM

Why 3D printing will change healthcare

Yallacompare CEO Jon Richards AI and the customer experience

Oracle MEA SVP The value of transactional data

Why IT projects still fail

POWER TO THE PEOPLE ENEC’s Alia Al Hammadi fuels UAE energy targets through technology

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EDITORIAL

Nuclear family The UAE has set itself an ambitious target of having 25 percent of its 2020 energy needs met by Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation’s Barakah plant. That decision represents both a significant goal and shift in economic policy, and ENEC is undoubtedly set to play an important part in the country’s future. Their ICT director Alia Al Hammadi is our cover star for this month, and she tells CNME about how she is using technology to ensure ENEC is equipped for the challenging road ahead.

I had the pleasure of interviewing The editorial the very likeable Yallacompare CEO Jon Richards recently, who talked me team at through the ways that the startup is CNME has helping to make UAE consumers’ lives been hugely easier through simple but effective impressed technology. Jon also has a great story to tell as an entrepreneur, and doesn’t at how 3D mince his words either. More on page 20. printing has The editorial team at CNME has been affected really impressed with the way that 3D the region’s printing has begun to have an impact on the region’s healthcare industry. On page healthcare 24, we look at how it has already saved industry. lives in Dubai, and what needs to be done to encourage its uptake in the GCC. On page 28, we explore how artificial intelligence can benefit the end customer experience.

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Contents

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ISSUE 308 | SEPTEMBER 2017

10

ENEC ICT DIRECTOR ALIA AL HAMMADI

16

FEATURE: WHY IT PROJECTS FAIL

24 Non-universal remedy

20

Following recent cases of 3D printing proving to be either life-saving or life-changing in the Middle East, is the region's healthcare industry now poised for widespread adoption of the technology, and just what can be achieved through its use?

INTERVIEW: YALLACOMPARE CEO JON RICHARDS

digital transformation Microsoft Gulf's Ihsan Anabtawi discusses a range of use cases from across the world that show how consumers are benefiting en masse from the adoption of digital technology.

28 AI and the consumer

48 Recognise and respond

32 Changing hands

50

38

42 The proven power of

INTERVIEW: ORACLE'S ABDUL RAHMAN AL THEHAIBAN

How will artificial intelligence become a differentiator in the level of services that can be offered to customers?

Gartner’s vice president and analyst Janelle Hill explores how CIOs can lead the charge on dealing with digital disruption.

How can organisations hope to maximise the value from transactional data to enable better insights into future business-critical decisions?

Under the sea Ravi Mali, Ciena's regional director for the Middle East, analyses why submarine networks are critically important to global communications.

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TECH TRENDS 2017 SMART HOME

When will all homes be smart?

Smart TVs In Latin America sales in 2016 reached 6.48 million, up from 1.04 million five years earlier.

For Middle East and Africa sales hit 2.78 million in 2016, up from 348,552 in 2011.

are the most popular smart device for the home, with sales of 17.38 million in Europe in 2016, up from 5.61 million in 2011.

The benefits of the

smart home,

and the way it will enhance consumers’ lives, need to be clearly communicated.

Millennials are leading the take-up in the

36%

smart home. currently monitor or control devices in their home with a smartphone, tablet or computer.

What appeals to consumers about the smart home?

Boomers

Gen X-ers

Millennials

61%

52%

39%

“To keep my home safe and secure”

“Because it’s cool and trendsetting”

“To save money by reducing my utility costs”

Top three reasons older millennials monitor/control a device in their home:

39%

38%

“Because it’s cool and trendsetting”

“Because I like my home updated with the latest tech”

38% “To be more environmentally responsible by using resources efficiently”

Smart home experts say: we’re a long way from realising the vision.

In 2017, we will see global brands launching new

drive further growth in adoption.

The most successful will be those that can help deliver the simple, seamless experience that consumers crave.

We believe mainstream adoption is unlikely to happen until manufacturers, retailers and tech players come together to address the obstacles and clearly promote the benefits of the

smart home.

SOURCE: GFK

Nokia 9000 Communicator

O

ften referred to as “the first smartphone” made accessible to the general public, Wall Street analysts claim the Nokia 9000 was a device ahead of its time, and was arguably released too early to be fully appreciated by the mass market.

First announced at CeBIT 1996, the 9000 was the company’s inaugural Communicator device in the series, which ceased after the E90 release in 2007.

Equipped with 8MB of memory, a QWERTY keyboard and a 33MHz processor, the device was marketed as an ideal companion for the ‘on-the-go business user,’ who could effectively run their office from their pocket. Running on Nokia’s own GEOS operating system, the Communicator combined a suite of business programmes that could read and edit Microsoft Office files from a desktop PC. It’s black and white LCD screen, with a then-high resolution of 640 x 200 pixels, could render graphics to enable users to go beyond text web browsing, after it was crowned the first graphical web browser on a mobile device.

Users could connect to the internet via the built-in 9600 bits per second GSM modem, and could send both emails and faxes. Unfortunately, the 9000 came way before the days of 4G and speedy mobile internet connections. Instead, users had to connect to the mobile network in the old-school, dial-up fashion.

But all of these nifty features came at a cost. Retailing at a whopping $800 at the time – which equates to over $1200 today – the device’s hefty price tag (and design – weighing in at just under half a kilogram and measuring 1.5-inches thick) scared off potential buyers.

8

SEPTEMBER 2017

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FEATURE

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation

A control room inside one of Barakah's nuclear reactors

POWER TO THE PEOPLE Since joining Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation as ICT director in 2013, Alia Al Hammadi has been the driving force behind the technology involved in launching the UAE’s first nuclear energy plant – part of a project that aims to produce 25 percent of the UAE’s energy needs by 2020. With the first of four reactors expected to be operational by 2018, she believes the country is a “role model” in demonstrating how nuclear energy can be utilised for peaceful purposes.

D

eep in the desert, approximately 300 kilometres south of the city of Abu Dhabi and 70 kilometres from the town of Ruwais, sits a row of huge concrete domes.

They have been under construction since July 2012, and will ultimately become the four reactor buildings of the UAE’s first nuclear energy plant – known as ‘Barakah.’

10

SEPTEMBER 2017

While the term ‘nuclear’ may be alien to some of us – or frightening even, when you consider the latest headlines surrounding United States president Donald Trump and North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-Un’s war of words – that’s not necessarily surprising, when we live in a region that has historically been powered by its vast oil reserves.

But recent government studies have shown that energy demand in the UAE is growing at an annual rate of approximately 9 percent – three times that of the global average. The need to develop a reliable supply of power triggered the formation of The UAE Peaceful Nuclear Energy Program, and Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) in 2009 – the company that www.tahawultech.com

Alia Al Hammadi, ICT director, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation

has since taken charge of spearheading Barakah’s progress.

Constructing four APR1400 nuclear reactors, which – according to ENEC – are among “the most technologically advanced nuclear reactor designs in the world,” is no small task for the company’s 1,700 employees – a figure which is expected to grow to 2,500 by 2020 in order to operate and maintain the plant. The APR1400 is a pressurised water reactor (PWR), and each unit produces up to 1400 megawatts of electricity which will meet ENEC’s target of producing 25 percent of the UAE’s total energy needs upon the site’s completion in 2020.

However, this target is unachievable without sophisticated technology. Ensuring the smooth running of the back-end operations behind these reactors is ENEC’s ICT director, Alia Al Hammadi. She has been in the role since 2013, but has almost 15 years of experience in business and IT, having previously worked across sectors including oil and gas, logistics and trade, and research and develwww.tahawultech.com

SEPTEMBER 2017

11

FEATURE

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation

opment. “My technology career has provided me with the freedom and success to follow my passion, and has allowed me to give back to the community using my experience and skills,” she says.

Al Hammadi believes that the UAE is “leading the region, and in many ways the world,” in regards to the implementation of peaceful nuclear energy. “The UAE Peaceful Nuclear Energy Program has several differentiating features that have helped make this country a role model for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and has demonstrated how to develop a civil nuclear energy programme from scratch,” she says.

In establishing such a major site where there is a risk of radiation exposure, meanwhile, safety has understandably been a top priority. Barakah underwent vigorous approval processes surrounding safety, transparency and security from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) before construction could begin in 2012.

However, ENEC claims that nuclear energy plants actually represent one of the smallest sources of radiation exposure to the public. The company’s website states that, “If you stood at the site boundary for a whole year,

you would receive less than a quarter of the radiation you would get from a chest x-ray at the doctors.”

Aside from the technology that will be involved in operating the reactors once they are complete, Al Hammadi believes that technology influences almost every aspect of operations at ENEC, whether that be at the Masdar City headquarters, or onsite at Barakah.

“At the most basic level, technology influences the way we communicate at ENEC, and at the most advanced level it forms the backbone of the plant’s safety and security systems, ensuring our operators and inspectors have the information they need to make decisions and go about their duties with confidence,” she says.

The UAE is leading the region, and in many ways the world, in the implementation of peaceful nuclear energy.”

Al Hammadi adds that ENEC has implemented a range of sophisticated design systems and technology tools to ensure “optimal plant performance, reliability and safety.”

“Through the use of analytics and an integration between information and operational technology, energy plants can optimise their performance and improve reliability, while minimising maintenance and operational costs,” she says.

ENEC has also implemented technologies across company operations that “might not automatically be asso-

12

SEPTEMBER 2017

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FEATURE

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation

ciated” with the nuclear energy industry, such as virtual reality, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and 3D printing.

“All of these initiatives have enabled us to vastly improve our operator training programmes, engineering design review processes, future plant operations and maintenance, and crisis simulations for training and safety purposes,” says Al Hammadi.

The firm has established its own ‘Simulator Training Centre’ at the plant, which includes exact replicas of the control rooms in each reactor, and intends to prepare staff members in understanding how to respond to scenarios in the most realistic way possible. “Using the latest, stateof-the-art simulation and training programmes has provided us with insights and understanding into the plant’s operational characteristics, control and safety systems and response to simulated situations,” adds Al Hammadi. “This, in turn, helps us ensure that our operators, managers and staff are fully equipped and prepared to handle every aspect of the plant.”

Fundamentally, the UAE’s nuclear energy programme has been designed to support the country’s long-term economic growth. Investing heavily in the development of the “next generation of nuclear energy leaders” has been a primary focus within the initiative, explains Al Hammadi. ENEC has partnered with Khalifa University, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, and Abu Dhabi Polytechnic – along with other international academic institutions – to implement a scholarship programme.

“The programme will provide UAE nationals with an unparalleled opportunity to be a part of this hightech sector, which is expected to be a cornerstone of this country’s economy for decades to come,” says Al Hammadi.

14

SEPTEMBER 2017

It is considered common knowledge that IT has historically been maledominated, and I am proud to see more women joining the industry every year.

As things stand, 60 percent of ENEC’s workforce is made up of UAE nationals, while 20 percent of employees are female – a statistic that is above the global average of women in nuclear professions, and one that Al Hammadi herself, is particularly proud of.

“As women in the UAE, we are honoured and blessed by the support and opportunities we receive from the government, and I am proud to be able to serve my country by working in this unique industry,” she says.

As vice chairwoman for ENEC's Women in Nuclear (WiN) Committee in the UAE, and an ambassador of the Emirates Digital Association for Women, Al Hammadi is a major advocate of women taking employment in STEM roles. “It is considered common knowledge that the IT industry has historically been male-dominated, and I am proud to see more women joining the industry every year,” she says.

www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

Why IT projects fail

Why IT projects still fail CIO's Mary K. Pratt uses the world’s most seasoned technology market in the world – the United States – as a case of how and why even the most skilled IT professionals still fall victim to common mistakes, and how the Middle East can learn from the world’s biggest tech hub.

H

istorically, IT failures often meant high-priced flops, with large-scale software implementations going on way too long and way over budget.

Sadly, those failures can and still do happen. But IT failure today is generally different than it was in the past, as agile DevOps, continuous delivery and the fail-fast movement have changed the nature of how IT handles projects.

These iterative management methodologies and philosophies are meant to minimise the chances of projects going spectacularly awry, but the fact of the matter is that IT projects still fail, just in new and sometimes more insidious ways.

A cautionary tale Chris McMasters, CIO for the City of Corona, California, cites the case of an 18-month implementation of a 16

SEPTEMBER 2017

SaaS customer relationship management system a few years ago at a previous employer, where IT worked with the sales department leadership to understand business needs and define requirements.

“We thought we had all the necessary buy-in and knew what the outcome was supposed to be, but we got to the project’s end and the sales force didn’t want it,” he says. “There was an extreme amount of resistance. Top management was on board, but there was some distrust among the users.”

The cloud-based CRM was declared a bust and was scrapped – showing that even when projects are on time and on budget, they can still fail. “It doesn’t matter how shiny the product is or if it does a thousand things. To me, if we’re not providing the outcome the end user expects, that’s failure.” McMasters

says success would have been more likely had IT focused more on marketing the benefits of the new system rather than on project execution. “We weren’t as engaged as we could have been. We could have teamed up better with the business,” he says.

That CRM implementation hardly stands alone as a failed project. The Project Management Institute’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession report found that 28 precent of strategic initiatives overseen by survey respondents were deemed outright failures. Some 37 percent of the more than 3,000 project management professionals who responded cited a lack of clearly defined and/or achievable milestones and objectives to measure progress as the cause of failure, followed by poor communication (19 percent), lack of communication by senior management (18 percent), employee rewww.tahawultech.com

sistance (14 percent) and insufficient funding (9 percent).

The same report found that due to poor project performance, organisations waste an average of $97 million for every $1 billion invested.

Factors behind failure Despite new methodologies and management techniques designed to fend off catastrophic failures, many of the factors that traditionally put IT projects at risk are still present in the enterprise. Inadequate resources, overly aggressive timelines, underestimated costs, overlooked requirements, unanticipated complications, poor governance and human error can all lead to project failure.

PwC’s 2017 Global Digital IQ Survey polled 2,216 business and IT leaders from 53 countries and asked them what hinders digital transformation. Some 64 percent of respondents said a lack of collaboration between IT and business was to blame, 58 percent cited inflexible or slow processes, 41 percent listed lack of integration of new and existing technologies, 38 percent named outdated technologies and 37 percent put down lack of properly skilled teams.

PMI’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession report identified organisations with 80 percent or more of their projects being completed on time and on budget, while also meeting original goals and business intent; it classified this group as “champions.” The report also highlighted the fact that these champions had invested in several common areas, including the leadership skills of project professionals, benefits realisation management, project management offices, actively engaged executives, and agile project management practices.

Stephen Elliot, an analyst with research firm IDC, estimates that www.tahawultech.com

It doesn’t matter how shiny the product is or if it does a thousand things. To me, if we’re not providing the outcome the end user expects, that’s failure.

Chris McMasters, CIO, City of Corona 30-35 percent of IT projects could be classified as failures. Elliot attributes many failures to changes in business priorities or objectives. That means, he says, that the technology works fine, but doesn’t deliver the results currently desired by the business. “In this more customer-centric world, I would define ‘failure’ as being that your company’s reputation, profits or revenue has been negatively impacted,” he says. “Failure is still real, but is it more associated with business processes than with a truer technology failure because someone didn’t check a configuration on a key router?”

Others concur. “If you slap something together that’s on time and on budget, but it doesn’t do what customers want or what users need,

then it doesn’t matter,” says James Stanger, senior director of products at IT certification provider CompTIA. Some trends, notably agile and devops methodologies, help mitigate the potential for wholescale project failures in modern IT shops. The increasing use of automation in development and testing helps to mitigate the potential for failure. Elliott says, “Most failures today are still associated with the human element – bad code, a network configuration that caused an outage, bad load balancing. This stuff is really complex, and mistakes are made. But as more and more automation comes through, there should be less human errors made, especially in scripting and applications deployments and networking.”

Fast failure as a tool Meanwhile, shifting mindsets about failure in the enterprise have helped reshape organisational attitudes around risk. “Now it’s OK to fail, as long as you’re learning from it,” Elliott says. “There are some companies that really appreciate failure as long as things are getting better and people are learning from them and getting wiser about what they should or shouldn’t be doing.”

Of course, Elliott and others note that those organisations who are more accepting of failure also work hard to mitigate the risk, using sandbox environments, pilots and iterative development to limit the amount of damage that can happen if something goes amiss. “They’re mitigating the risk of something big happening at the end,” McMasters says.

Reed A. Sheard, vice president for college advancement and CIO at Westmont College, has seen how that cultural shift has had a positive result.

He says he and other CIOs underSEPTEMBER 2017

17

FEATURE

Why IT projects fail

stand that not all projects are equal; each one carries different potential when successful and varying degrees of consequences if they fail. With that in mind, he says, “we make judgements on where it’s OK to fail and where it’s not.”

He cites two initiatives to illustrate his point. The first one featured the implementation of a new platform to manage the university’s admission process, a critical undertaking where failure to meet user requirements and specific deadlines would be devastating, as admissions is one of the organisation’s core functions. Sheard says he was actively engaged in the project, evaluating progress and the resources that went into it. It went live, successfully, in July 2015.

The second initiative centred on delivering a platform that would allow alumni to network virtually. Sheard says his team tried to build a secure, userfriendly platform, but in the end couldn’t accomplish those objectives. Staffers struggled with securing the system, authenticating users and populating user profiles with the right information.

He says he wasn’t exasperated with that project’s failure because they learned a lot in the process. “We became experts through some of our failures,” he says. “I was comfortable walking away from two years of work because we got smarter about balancing security and usability.”

Others see the willingness to sometimes fail as a critical component for organisations that want to innovate and remain competitive.

Risks of failure remain These new corporate cultural trends and IT methodologies certainly don’t guarantee success or fully guard against project failure. In fact, some say that there are elements in the 18

SEPTEMBER 2017

Now it’s OK to fail, as long as you’re learning from it.

Stephen Elliot, analyst, IDC modern IT shop that could even exacerbate the potential for problems that could take down a project.

One expert points to potential problems with agile and DevOps methodologies. “You solve the smaller problems, but then you build these large integrated systems where the large problems aren’t visible until you hit scale,” says Marshall Van Alstyne, a professor and chair of information systems at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

For example, he says, IT teams working with these iterative methodologies might find that their new software features and functions work at each individual step, but then discover that the application, when fully deployed, doesn’t work well as a whole. “In a sense, what you’ve done is escalate the point at which systems fail to the higher levels,” he adds, comparing the scenario to doctors ‘curing’ individual symptoms in a sick patient while failing to treat the larger condition causing all the symptoms.

Meanwhile, the breakdown of siloes between business units and IT can add to the risk of project failure as business unit executives embrace technologies and seek to capitalise on the latest and greatest, regardless

of whether they fully understand or thoroughly vet their options.

Consider that more and more technology spend flows from business unit budgets rather than IT’s coffers, says Chris Curran, a PwC principal and chief technologist for the U.S. firm’s advisory practice. He notes that PWC’s 2015 Global Digital IQ Survey found that 68 percent of spending for technology falls outside of the IT budget.

“Cloud and SaaS have both increased speed and the access to new technologies, but they have also contributed to project failure,” he says. “Business leaders go out and engage these products directly, but then realise that they need access to enterprise data or other parts of the enterprise IT infrastructure that they didn’t know they would need, so the project gets stalled or cancelled.”

While improvements in IT infrastructure, particularly in hardware, help reduce the risk of catastrophic failures, there are still legacy tools, technical debt and manual processes where mistakes small and large could lead to bigtime failures as projects come online.

“There’s still risk,” Elliott says, explaining that even if a new app functions fine, its introduction to the larger environment with its complex web of new and old technologies could cause problems.

“Apps run on networks. They’re global and they often run on other people’s equipment. There are so many different layers where failure can occur.”

In the end, it’s important to remember that whatever the reason for the failure when it comes to projects that involve technology, IT is likely to get the blame if it doesn’t work out — whether it’s fair or not.

“Usually, it’s IT that ends up holding the bag at the end of the day,” Stanger says, “which is why IT has to be very careful.” www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

yallacompare.com

The choice is yours James Dartnell sat down with Jon Richards, CEO of one of the UAE’s most promising startups, comparison site yallacompare. com, to find out why ‘common-sense’ technology, saving money and living with your mum are a sure-fire recipe for success.

J

on Richards always had a problem with authority.

Beginning full-time work aged 17, he now finds himself in the hotseat as CEO of UAE-based comparison site Yallacompare at the relatively tender age of 33. “When I started my first job, I knew within a month that I should have been running that company,” he says. “I didn’t have the tools or skills to do that at the time, but I knew that I could acquire them. I always said I’d rather run a food truck than work for other people. If you have a manager, there has to be some give and take, which I honestly don’t like.”

That uncompromising attitude has helped Richards to build out a company that now processes more than 70 percent of online insurance sold in the UAE, and he is relishing the challenge of running a dot-com disruptor. “Starting younger is sometimes useful as an entrepreneur, especially if you’re not married and don’t have 20

SEPTEMBER 2017

kids; you can probably afford to be a bit more gung-ho if you live at home with your mum,” he says. “I still put in a solid 15 hours a day, but I would probably just sleep at the office if I didn’t have a wife and daughter to go home to. Being flexible is key to running a startup and staying alive.”

Moving to Dubai in 2011, Richards was far from impressed at what some of the region’s most prominent brands could offer in terms of their digital user experience. “Banks had one-page websites, no product information, nothing really,” he says. “As a newcomer to the city, I needed to know basic information about banking services – which one had the lowest FX rates, things like that – and there was no resource for that.”

Disheartened by the lack of concise information available to consumers, Richards spied a gap in the market that he was ripe to exploit.

“My wife had worked for a comparison site in the UK, so those platforms

were second nature to me,” he says.

“I felt that a comparison site would be the most disruptive and easiest to launch quickly. Comparisons of banking products offer very little barrier to entry. All you need to do is produce a website, then meet banks to discuss your ability to market their products.”

Richards did exactly that, and swiftly on-boarded a range of deals to the all-new platform, compareit4me. com (the firm has recently rebranded to Yallacompare.com). The new site was a hit, and soon branched out into insurance comparison services.

However, tapping into a new industry inevitably dictated a shifting of the goal posts. “To be honest, we had no knowledge of the insurance market and had to build it from the ground up,” he says. “That was hard work.

Unlike in the UK, there were no white label products that we could take off the shelf and modify.”

However, the service quickly took off in the UAE, and Richards believes www.tahawultech.com

When I started my first job, I knew within a month that I should have been running that company.

Jon Richards, CEO, yallacompare.com

www.tahawultech.com

SEPTEMBER 2017

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FEATURE

yallacompare.com

that the proposition of comparison websites was and is not a hard sell.

“Whatever your mindset, very few people need convincing of the idea of saving money,” he says. “Most people would accept the ability to save time or money on anything in their life. When it comes to buying car insurance, people want it to be easy, cheap and to get the best possible deal. Our users save 400-600 dirhams on average per policy, and for a customer, that’s a lot of money. In the UK, you’d have to fight tooth and nail for 50 quid.”

Since Richards arrived in Dubai six years ago, organisations in the public and private sectors - broadly speaking - have put an increasing emphasis on enhancing digital experience for their customers, and he believes real progress is being made in the UAE’s digital industry. “A lot of businesses across the region are waking up to the fact that if people are able to buy your products online rather than going into a physical store, it’s much cheaper for the company,” he says.

He believes the rising number of skilled IT professionals is playing a major part in the enhancement of technology services. “Bringing digital talent to the region has moved things along well,” he says. “There are now a lot more skilled technology professionals coming over from the likes of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and India, and the digital industry in the UAE is largely run by those nationalities.”

Within Yallacompare’s walls, meanwhile, Richards’ is committed to driving a common-sense approach to technology that is based on necessity.

“We prioritise our investment around technology based on what will help the customer,” Richards says. “What helps them, helps our bottom line.

We have to look at what will save us money, and what will help the customer to save time and money.”

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He also believes that firms should strive to deliver a smooth customer experience. “If you look at Vox Cinemas, they offer discounts before you even buy a ticket, and that makes the whole process simple. That won’t change the world, but it makes life easier for customers. That’s what we’re always trying to do.”

While Richards is a firm believer in evolving the company through technology – Yallacompare is “currently

Banks in particular roll out some absolute technology gimmicks, which are just there to create PR.

developing a bot” – he is nonetheless dismayed at superficial projects across the GCC that ultimately serve as little more than extravagances. “Banks in particular roll out some absolute technology gimmicks, which are just there to create PR,” he says. “Sometimes the best answers around technology may seem too obvious, and that’s why people won’t pursue them. Our call centre gets upwards of 1,000 calls a day, which proves that people still want to speak to a human being.”

Yallacompare’s website is also due to receive a major refresh, with Richards acknowledging that technology consumption has forced the firm

to rethink how it delivers its service.

“The way we sort insurance products hasn’t fundamentally changed, but in a mobile-first world, a straight-up list is not really digestible for a user,” he says.

With an expected go-live of the end of 2017, the “building out” of operations in Saudi Arabia is also well underway. All local insurers are set to be connected via APIs in the Kingdom.

“This will allow them to change pricing on the fly,” Richards says. “That means that quotes and issued policies will come via the API, so it’s an end-toend technology-led process without human intervention.” However, Richards concedes that growing the company in the GCC has brought its own challenges. “Expanding regionally in the Middle East is so different to expanding nationally in the UK. You have to go country by country, instead of city by city.”

A quick glance at the UK’s insurance comparison market reveals a landscape with multiple competitors jostling for the attention of users.

However, Richards believes the threat of similar alternatives emerging in the UAE is nullified by Yallacompare’s solid start. “We were the first company in the Middle East to aggregate insurance products and sell them online,” he says. “More than 70 percent of online insurance sold in the UAE goes through us as a result. That number will only grow, because the number of policies sold online today is still relatively small. Bank websites now have all the necessary rates, information, blog posts, advice and guides. We’re not solely responsible for that but we would have given them a nudge in the right direction.

“The more that people become aware of comparison sites, the less they’ll go directly to banks for information. It still baffles me that comparison sites aren’t second nature to most people.” www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

3D printing in healthcare

Nonuniversal remedy Following recent cases of 3D printing proving to be either life-saving or life-changing in the Middle East, is the region's healthcare industry now poised for widespread adoption of the technology, and just what can be achieved through its use?

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www.tahawultech.com

I

n ancient Greece, the goddess Panacea represented universal remedy and health. Along with her four sisters, they were symbols of cleanliness, recuperation, healing and glory. Panacea, in particular, had the power to heal the sick through the mythical potion she possessed.

It seems ironic that in 2017, one of the world’s most promising technologies, although far from being a universal cure for the ills of so many industries, is serving a purpose that Panacea would have undoubtedly been proud of.

In July, doctors in Dubai succeeded in saving the life of a 60-year-old woman who suffered from a cerebral aneurysm in four veins – causing life-threatening bleeding in her brain – with the help of a custom 3D-printed model of her arteries.

Due to the rarity of the patient’s case, Rashid Hospital’s interventional radiologist Dr Ayman Al Sibaei needed a 3D model that would deliver a visualisation of exactly how his team could safely reach the arteries. The six-hour operation proved a success, and the 3D-printed model was ultimately a vital factor behind that.

It is not the first time that the Dubai Health Authority has conducted complex surgery with the aid of 3D printing. Doctors also succeeded in removing a tumour from a patient’s kidney with the help of a cutting-edge aid — a custom 3D-printed organ to help plan the surgery last December.

The Authority has also given its hospitals a mandate to print artificial limbs, denture molds, fracture casts and models of organs for patients to simulate surgery before actual procedures.

In May, Dubai resident Belinda Gatland received the region’s firstever fully 3D-printed prosthetic leg. A horse racing accident in her early 20s www.tahawultech.com

The most exciting advances in 3D printing can be found in the world of medicine, where 3D printing is starting to revolutionise how we treat patients.

Louay Dahmash, territory director, Middle East and Turkey, Autodesk had left the British expat in pain for nearly two decades; the bones below her knee had shattered “to smithereens”, and necrosis, or the premature death of tissue set in. After nine unsuccessful operations, she finally opted to have the leg amputated and replaced with a 3D-printed prosthetic limb.

A 3D-printed prosthetic leg with the same functionality as high-end conventional ones costs between AED 40,00050,000 – up to 50 percent cheaper.

Shadi Bakhour, Canon Middle East’s B2B business unit director, certainly agrees that healthcare is the prime candidate to be most transformed by 3D printing. “It is the one sector where the true substance of 3D printing will materialise,” he says. “3Dprinting human body parts to replace costly prosthetics, as well as human organs, will change lives, especially as the technology becomes more accurate.”

He goes on to add that localised 3D printing services will make parts more easily available in the Middle East, speeding up the end-to-end process of medical operations. “In the future, we could have an outsourced service

centre a few minutes away from the hospital, where doctors in the UAE could obtain a human organ model.

3D printing could also help reduce the time to perform surgery, such as organ transplants, by providing highly accurate 3D imagery, and as a consequence reducing the cases of complications arising from the procedure.”

“It can already be said that the most exciting advances in 3D printing can be found in the world of medicine, where 3D printing is starting to revolutionise how we treat patients,” Autodesk’s territory director for the Middle East and Turkey, Louay Dahmash says. “The solutions on offer are still in their experimental stages, but first tests are looking promising in a variety of areas such as 3D-printed prosthetic limbs and 3D-printed skin for burn victims. The industry has adopted 3D printed solutions due to the technology being cost-effective, and the fact that items can be assembled directly from a digital model, increasing precision and removing room for error.”

According to Canon’s 2017 3D Printing Insight Report for the SEPTEMBER 2017

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3D printing in healthcare

Middle East, spending in 3D printing is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 30 percent in the region, outperforming the worldwide growth rate of 26.9 percent. IDC, meanwhile, believes that spending on 3D printing in the Middle East and Africa is set to increase from $470 million in 2015 to $1.3 billion by 2019.

Government enthusiasm is certainly not lacking in the GCC’s technology hub. The Dubai government’s 3D-Printing Strategy was unveiled in April 2016, and aims to make the emirate a global capital of the technology. A month later, the city inaugurated the world’s first 3D-printed office in Downtown Dubai.

The city’s government has also set an ambitious target of having 25 percent of buildings in Dubai being built using 3D printing technology by 2030.

Away from the operating table, however, other industries are yet to fully immerse themselves in its undeniable potential. Concerns around cost endure, as well as the risks of delivering product accuracy.

Bakhour believes there are a range of issues around product specificity

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Healthcare is the one sector where the true substance of 3D printing will materialise.

Shadi Bakhour, B2B business unit director, Canon Middle East and price that are currently holding regional organisations back from taking the 3D plunge. “3D printing is done with a limited choice of materials; currently most 3D printers use plastic, ceramics, polymers and metals,” he says. “To an extent, 3D printers still have relatively poor parts accuracy, insufficient repeatability and consistency, and lack in-process qualification and certifications. The current price of industrial 3D-printers and printing materials can also hold back their more widespread adoption.” He does, however, believe these issues could be solved over the next “5-10” years.

Dahmash believes that the biggest hurdle is one of attitudes towards the technology. “The challenge is to get the wider pool

of professionals within the industry to expand their thinking, and open up to the ideas and opportunities that 3D printing can provide across a variety of industries, whether it is design, manufacturing or construction.”

Bakhour agrees, saying that although the means may exist to deliver 3D-printing technology, the spark of genius often needed to find innovative uses to apply it is lacking. “While there is work to improve the accuracy and materials in 3D printing for instance, there is still a gap in the actual creation of content and design,” he says.

“How are we going to transform an idea into a 3D-printed object without the actual content? That is where the gap lies to really see the full potential of 3D printing.”

It could be argued that, for the time being at least, this thinking may not change as the agents for it simply aren’t present in this part of the world.

Bakhour certainly believes that the region currently falls short in that regard.

“In the Middle East, there are some gaps such as lack of local presence from 3D printing vendors,” he says.

“This slows down market development, consumables’ availability and post-sales service and support. This always results in relatively higher hardware and consumable prices compared to North America and Europe.” www.tahawultech.com

FEATURE

AI and the customer experience

How m How will artificial intelligence technology transform the consumer experience in years to come, and will the general public embrace or reject the use of intelligent machines?

F

or large swathes of the older population, the prospect of having their everyday consumer interactions managed by intelligent machines elicits feelings of horror.

After all, how can a machine truly understand your wants and needs when it comes to spending your hard-earned cash?

However, those harbouring such concerns would be missing the broader point; we are undoubtedly 28

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y help you?

in the midst of an era where artificial intelligence will be a differentiator in the levels of services that can be offered. The market is still relatively immature, but holds huge promise – IDC predicts that the AI market will jump from a value of $8 billion this year to $47 billion by 2020. Gartner goes one step further, predicting that by 2025, one-third of jobs will be replaced by robots and smart machines.

IT leaders in the GCC will be particularly intrigued with these

forecasts. In a region that is setting itself up to be youth-centric, catering to a generation that sees value in technology, delivering smart, automated services is becoming a matter of necessity.

By 2050, 54 percent of the GCC’s population is expected to be under 36 years of age, while the World Economic Forum estimates that over half of the region’s current population is under the age of 25. Those figures, combined with www.tahawultech.com

the knowledge of this region’s propensity for swift technology transformation, suggests that AI will likely have an important part to place in the way that customer experiences will be designed over the coming years.

Microsoft Gulf’s cloud and enterprise business solutions lead, Necip Ozyucel, believes that AI is already beginning to have a tangible impact in the way that companies engage with their customers. “Today, thanks to developments in personalisation and human interaction, artificial intelligence is becoming a primary part of the customer services industry,” he says. “Through this confluence of technology, we can re-imagine the possibilities around customer experiences, so that every touch point intelligently engages the customer the way the customer wants to be engaged – and shares all that intelligence with the right stakeholders.”

One of the main concerns that many will have around intelligent machines is their ability to provide a human touch. However, Ozyucel believes that robots will have the capacity for interacting comfortably with humans, and their in-built intelligence make them a perfect partner for human beings.

“Companies are leveraging the

www.tahawultech.com

Thanks to developments in personalisation and human interaction, artificial intelligence is becoming a primary part of the customer services industry.

Necip Ozyucel, cloud and enterprise business solutions lead, Microsoft Gulf technology to automate basic text question-and-answer chats with customers and friendly robots that mimic human speech patterns, and provide a service that is quick and easy for consumers and much less expensive for companies,” he says. “People and machines bring different qualities and skills to the table. Humans have creativity, empathy, emotion. When mixed with powerful AI computation – the ability to reason large amounts of data and detect patterns that no human can discern – machines can augment and expand human capability in ways both tangible, and magical.”

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is one of many organisations in the GCC to have used AI to answer

customer enquiries in an innovative and interactive way, in both English and Arabic, through the use of a 24-hour chatbot. The ‘Rammas’ service, built on Microsoft’s Bot Framework and hosted in the Azure cloud, has been designed with the intention of transforming customer experiences with its AI capabilities.

Rammas effectively acts as a virtual employee around the clock to reply to customers’ enquiries online.

The other foremost example of resistance to AI in helping customers is the conflict it could potentially cause in backend

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AI and the customer experience

operations. While the idea of assisting customers through automated technology is undoubtedly appealing for an efficiency-minded CIO, there is still some way to go in ensuring harmony between man and machine in the IT department. “We’ve only just scratched the surface of what people and machines, working together, can accomplish,” Ozyucel says. “But we’re learning more every day. Scientists, engineers and programmers are using these AI capabilities to solve the world’s most vexing challenges, and workers and consumers of these industries will no doubt see big changes in the coming years and decades.”

Within the four walls of the enterprise, meanwhile, CIOs are increasingly broadening their outlook to classify company

When mixed with powerful AI computation, machines can augment and expand human capability in ways both tangible, and magical.

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䤀吀䤀䰀 䠀攀氀瀀搀攀猀欀

employees as consumers, of technology. Deciding to view employees in this way can be a useful strategy to ensure they too have a productive relationship with artificial intelligence.

“AI, the same technology that enables navigation apps to find the most efficient routes or allows retailers to recommend the best products to their customers based on past purchases; is also transforming workplace operations,” Ozyucel says.

“Last year saw a surge of interest in chatbots with the creation of digital co-workers; a piece of software that works alongside employees at their job and participates in the day-to-day activities of the company as an active and engaged member of the team, indicating how the fundamental nature of the way humans work is transforming.”

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REDEFINING technology transformation

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FEATURE

The value of transactional data

CHANGING HANDS While losing a customer’s personal data is a blow to a business’ reputation, transactional data is arguably one of the most precious assets within a company’s arsenal.

How can organisations hope to capture and maximise the business value from this information to enable better insights into future businesscritical decisions?

E

nterprises are now inundated with ever-growing data of all types. According to IBM, we produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data globally per day, which – although a mind-boggling figure – may not actually be so far thrown from the truth, when consumers, knowingly or not, generate ample amounts of transactional data on a daily basis.

Transactional data differs from a customer’s personal data. On one level, it merely describes what 32

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has occurred in said transaction; on another, it can define the value of exchange in a purchase, thereby defining, at least in part, the subject matter of the transaction. While losing a customer’s personal data can be a huge blow to a business’ reputation, some might argue that losing transactional data is worse.

“Losing any kind of data can be a major issue for any CIO, but the loss of transactional data poses greater business risks than many others,” says Nizar Elfarra, technical services

specialist, Commvault. “Having a comprehensive data protection solution that is able to backup and secure all facets of an organisation’s data, including but not limited to transactional data, is crucial.”

Ensuring that data is indexed with the right attributes by one comprehensive solution is key to maximising efficiency, he adds, and will not only reduce infrastructure requirements, but also continually improve backup and recovery processes. www.tahawultech.com

“If CIOs are trying to employ multiple solutions to solve shortterm challenges, in the long term this will inevitably lead to inefficiencies, added complexity, and potential complications that will keep them awake at night.”

The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises with the rise of social media and the Internet of Things will undoubtedly fuel exponential productivity growth in the foreseeable future. However, in order to capture the full potential of Big Data, several issues have to be addressed beforehand, including policies related to privacy, security and even liability.

Of course, transactional data – by its very nature - is not private. It has not been obtained through any wrongful intrusion, but has instead been voluntarily disclosed or created by interactions or conversations with another party.

This does not mean, however, that it should not be treated within the umbrella of data control arguments.

“Data protection is never to be under-estimated,” says Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, managing director – Middle East, Dimension Data. “No business is completely immune to attacks.”

Elfarra agrees, and believes that if enterprises are looking to maintain separate point solutions for each distinct backup and recovery requirement, then they are heading in the wrong direction.

“Enterprise data is anything but uniform,” he says. “This is why an organisation’s data protection, backup and recovery solution needs to cover the full range of data sources, file types, storage media and backup modes — from snapshots to streaming.”

In order to combat this, Du Plessis believes that if a business is to identify cybersecurity weaknesses, and www.tahawultech.com

Losing any kind of data can be a major issue for a CIO, but the loss of transactional data poses greater business risks than many others.

Nizar Elfarra, technical services specialist, Commvault prepare its response to a potential threat, then “considering penetration testing and incident response services from a credible, experienced partner” will assist.

“Speed of response is critical, but of equal importance is a business’ corporate governance, risk management and regulatory compliance strategy,” she adds.

“It is also vital that an organisation recognises its mobile workforce, clients and the number of devices entering the businesses each day, and ensuring that it has the technologies in place to protect all of these facets.”

Organisations in the Middle East should also take note of the electronic transaction and commerce regulations across the region, which seek to “facilitate electronic transactions and correspondence through reliable electronic records and establish unified rules, regulations and standards for authentication and safety of electronic correspondence.”

But Big Data, be it transactional, master or analytical, is rapidly becoming a key basis of competition in various industries, underpinning new waves of productivity, growth and innovation.

“Studies have shown that companies utilising data-driven insights to make strategic decisions have improved their productivity by up to 33 percent,” says Elfarra.

“Similarly, with the right indexing and policy driven rules that can trigger actions based on conditions, transactional data can be used to automate business operations to meet policies or requirements, such as the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).”

But in order for this potential to take hold, an effective data management solution is essential to helping organisations in their quest to drive value back into their business. Elfarra believes that a key aspect to enabling this is being able to find the pertinent data easily and with the right attributes.

“An infrastructure layer with a content rich index is a prerequisite to being able to extract value from data and create business benefits,” he says. “Transforming data into an efficient bank of information through the use of embedded search and analytics, seamless and universal access, as well as control and visibility from installment, growing businesses can find their data easily managed SEPTEMBER 2017

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in a process that rapidly enforces business continuity.”

“This ultimately means less time will be spent on data administration, and more time utilising stored information to form and shape business foresight, providing a critical advantage in increasingly competitive local markets,” he adds.

As customers continue to use multiple devices along the path to purchase in generating this data – with online marketing firm Criteo identifying that one third of transactions in the Middle East start on a smartphone – businesses now need to look beyond traditional analytics tools. Instead, they should shift to a user-centric view that can accurately identify a consumer and capture a complete view of their transactional experience.

Data protection is never to be underestimated.

No business is completely immune to attack.

Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, managing director, Middle East, Dimension Data

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“There are a number of analytical tools on the market that provide reporting, visualisation and predictive analysis of transactional data.

However, these tools rely on having a populated warehouse of data available,” says Elfarra. “Companies today generate a lot of data, which in order to be analysed, needs to be housed in a universal repository.”

Having efficient access to these types of insights will ultimately have a knock-on effect to the speed of which business-critical decisions can be made within an organisation.

“With this information at hand, management can quickly assess the current state of their big data and take actionable steps to retrieve valuable storage space, as well as mitigate the risk of compliancerelated issues,” adds Elfarra.

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ADVERTORIAL

Video Cloud: Protecting and serving cities Kevin Bai, general manager of Huawei Government Solutions, explains why technologically advanced video surveillance platforms have the power to cut crime rates and enhance operational efficiency across organisations.

Kevin Bai, general manager of Huawei Government Solutions

V

ideo surveillance has become a critical tool for the police to solve cases, as well as an important means for city governance. More than 50 percent of criminal cases in China are solved using video. Many cities have set up video teams to enhance the professional use of video surveillance.

The central government’s released “966” and “Bright as Snow” project documents are clear proof of the importance the country is giving to video surveillance use. At the same time, everyone realises that, in the process of using video, some traditional construction methods 36

SEPTEMBER 2017

also restrict the function of video surveillance. For example, video surveillance that cannot be fully shared, low efficiency in smart analysis, video Big Data collision and mining with surrounding information that is inefficient, the video platform not being open, and so on.

The industry is in need of a new construction model to solve these problems. This is how the Huawei Video Cloud Solution came into being.

The difficulties that police encounter are not isolated. Current video surveillance applications face problems including incomplete coverage, unavailability when incidents occur, and applications that are not smart.

As cloud computing, AI and Big Data technologies are being used more and more in public safety, how do we enable video surveillance systems to possess high intelligence and Big Data capabilities to become more valuable when incidents happen? This is an important challenge that city administrators are facing. In order to meet these requirements, Video Cloud presents a new-era video surveillance construction plan. Video Cloud features are built on full sharing, high intelligence, Big Data and openness.

Traditional video surveillance is siloed. Each area and department is constructed independently using different suppliers and technology standards. This results in siloed,

isolated islands of data. When the police are solving cases, they often need to go to the site to check the video and make a copy of the original to bring back to analyse. This is inefficient. After using Video Cloud, all cameras are connected to the cloud in a service-oriented method that allows the requesting department with the required authorisation to use it, enabling video sharing and video checking anytime, anywhere. Apart from this, since the cloud system is used, every computing resource, storage resource, and network resource is virtualised into the resource pool for unified management.

When a department or a business requires, resources can be distributed, scaling up or down flexibly as needed, achieving rapid service rollout and greatly improving the resource utilisation rate.

AI technology has finally arrived at the point of commercial use. Facial recognition technology in video surveillance has become widely used, and video analysis applications have entered a new stage. However, current mainstream applications are still only partially intelligent. They lack cross-domain analysis and linkage capabilities. Criminals are displaying more mobility when committing crimes. Cross-domain and crosscity crimes are common, requiring large-scale smart linkage. The Video Cloud solution achieves network-wide www.tahawultech.com

distributed intelligence, smart analysis algorithms are centralised, distributed, and managed from the front end, to the edge and to the cloud centre.

This allows analysis to be conducted locally and the centre can conduct results aggregation, smart association, and full city linkage. At the same time, since it is based on a cloud platform, the video can be stored and analysed locally, unlike the traditional method, which requires transferring the entire original video to another device for analysis. This greatly improves analysis efficiency and saves network resources.

BIG DATA: DEEP MINING, FINDING VALUABLE CLUES FAST Using smart video analysis for solving cases is not enough. We still need to take results of video analysis for internal association (linked mining) and external association using Big Data technology, organising large amounts of video footage data to discover valuable clues quickly.

Then, we must take the video’s Big Data and surrounding data (transportation, communications, residential, network, and others) to once again carry out data collision and mining, discovering more valuable intelligence. An example would be taking facial recognition and geographical positioning information for association in order to visualise the person’s trajectory on a map. The person’s trajectory and communications, Wi-Fi, and residential trajectory can be integrated and be used as evidence.

When searching for a cloned car, we can take the license plate and car model information for comparison.

When the license plate appears in a different area, the appearance time and physical distance are

The industry is in need of a new construction model to solve these problems.

This is how the Huawei Video Cloud Solution came into being. correlated, making it possible to find the cloned car. Once we have these capabilities and combine them with the entire network’s distributed smart capabilities, we are able to conduct city-wide distributed control, realtime alarms, and fast arrests.

Big Data can also serve city management. For example, traffic flow trends can be predicted and travel efficiency can be optimised through the statistical analysis of traffic flow at different roads and intersections. Video Big Data is an important part of Video Cloud.

OPENNESS: PLATFORM + ECOSYSTEM = BENEFITS FOR ALL Relying on one single enterprise or being bound to one kind of technology will mean losing the initiative to make choices in future development.

Video cloud is set on the idea of ‘platform + ecosystem’, using an industry mainstream open OpenStack cloud operating system, Hadoop Big Data platform, GB/T 28181, ONVIF, and other standards, while using southbound open algorithm interfaces, IoT interfaces, camera interfaces, and northbound open application interfaces.

This allows customers to easily construct an open, flexible, secure, and smart video surveillance platform to meet the innovation requirements of continuously evolving and developing services. Ecosystem partners can develop algorithms and applications quickly and efficiently, achieving the fast replication of different projects. At the same time, Huawei is actively conducting joint innovation with customers and industry mainstream partners, providing customers, applications, and onsite usage with the industry’s best practices at the fastest speed.

Video Cloud is Huawei’s customercentric development trend that combines the customer’s business requirements and new technologies with the ecosystem’s development requirements.

The cloud era is here, and Video Cloud will redefine city video surveillance. It will change the barriers of the previous video surveillance systems that looked good, but were not useful. Sharing, high intelligence, Big Data, and openness will become the typical proof of the new phase of video networking construction. It will also add diversified value to video surveillance itself, which is of great significance for improving city public safety management, innovating social governance, and serving the people.

HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei’s flagship event for the global ICT industry, will be held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, September 5-7, 2017.

The theme is Grow with the Cloud.

During this global platform for open collaboration, Huawei will help customers and partners explore new ways to grow through digitalized transformation.

For more information about HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, please visit our website: http://www.huawei.com/minisite/huaweiconnect2017/en/

www.tahawultech.com

SEPTEMBER 2017

37

INTERVIEW

Oracle Middle East & Africa

Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, vice president of technology, Oracle MEA

38

SEPTEMBER 2017

www.tahawultech.com

Speed machine Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Oracle’s senior vice president of technology for the Middle East and Africa, discusses how cloud can become a catalyst for small business growth in the region, and highlights Oracle’s involvement in supporting the technology behind the world’s fastest supersonic car.

H

ow has business been in 2017 for Oracle so far?

I feel we have successfully met industry expectations and market trends with what we can offer, particularly in the last 12 months.

We concluded Q4 with significant growth – specifically in the cloud space.

We sold $855 million of new annually recurring cloud revenue (ARR), putting us over our $2 billion ARR bookings goal for fiscal year 2017. We also expect to sell a lot more than $2 billion in new cloud ARR in fiscal year 2018. In addition, we showed growth of almost 58 percent globally in the cloud as total revenues hit $1.4 billion.

What trends have you seen develop around cloud adoption in the region?

Are you increasingly seeing businesses opt for a cloud-first approach?

One thing that we have observed with the cloud is that there is a very fast, high adoption rate in this part of the world. The moment we launched Oracle Cloud at Open World, we www.tahawultech.com

immediately received interest from customers in the region – UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular – that were considering cloud-specific product components.

In terms of spending, Gartner has predicted that the cloud market in the region will hit $2billion by 2020, and we’ve seen many organisations moving in the same reform method towards cloud. Businesses in Saudi Arabia are rapidly embracing cloud infrastructure – particularly infrastructure-as-a-service, to boost performance and innovation levels.

We conducted a study that found 66 percent of Saudi Arabian businesses are already using IaaS to some extent, with the majority (62 percent) saying that moving to IaaS has significantly cut their time to deploy new applications or services.

IT spending in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is forecast to hit $7.5 billion and $6.2 billion respectively by the end of 2017, which I believe shows that we are in the right place to keep

SMBs want costeffective solutions so that they can instead channel their spending into providing more creativity in the way they operate.

encouraging companies to innovate through the cloud.

Why should businesses, and SMBs in particular, look to opt for an Infrastructure-as-a-Service model?

There is a huge SMB space here in SEPTEMBER 2017

39

INTERVIEW

Oracle Middle East & Africa

the region; I would anticipate at least two thirds of the businesses here are SMBs. Market dynamics have been changing; digital disruption has been changing the way we do business who would have thought a company as large as Uber could own zero assets? SMBs want cost-effective solutions, such as IaaS, so that they can instead channel their spending into innovative solutions that will give them the ability to provide more creativity in the way they operate.

Do you think CIOs have been reluctant to move entire infrastructures to cloud for fear of losing control over data and processes?

While negative perceptions around security, complexity and loss of control still present barriers to adoption, our research has shown these to be outdated myths in the region, with those that have moved to IaaS proving that the reality is far more positive.

The reason why we see are seeing companies shift to the cloud at a faster rate than initially anticipated is because of the cost factor. Market dynamics have been changing on a global scale, and cost has become a vital element of many companies’ sustainability strategy. Businesses in this region have been particularly affected by the oil prices and changing political engagements, so higher adoption rates have been primarily driven by the need to lower costs. A good example is the introduction of Internet banking, which sparked a high-resistance rate when it was first introduced. Looking at it now, it is a great success, and I believe cloud will take the same path.

Oracle has announced plans to recruit 1,000 new staff members in the EMEA region. Does the perceived lack of talent in this region concern you?

We have been investing heavily in 40

SEPTEMBER 2017

knowledge management through our academic initiatives in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because we believe that if we build a good infrastructure when it comes to hiring, then this shouldn’t be a challenge for us. Globally, we have trained more than 3 million students in 110 countries through the Oracle Academy. Over 12,000 students in 27 institutions are registered and licensed in the UAE with the Oracle Academy resource programme and curriculum software. In Saudi Arabia, we are fully aligned with the Vision 2030, and we signed an MoU with

Higher cloud adoption rates have been primarily driven by the need to lower costs.

the Ministry of Communications and IT to train and certify almost 5,000 graduates. We are in many key institutions throughout this region in the hope that any IT graduate will be capable of operating Oracle solutions.

The cloud computing market is undeniably saturated. Will the on-the-ground arrival of Amazon Web Services in Dubai and Bahrain pose a significant threat to Oracle here in the region?

When you look at the innovation that we have been investing in, and

the high spending we have in R&D, I believe that gives us an edge in terms of developing the cloud ahead of our competitors. We came to this market early enough to fully understand what our customers want, and we’ve been offering our solutions to these customers for a very long time now.

I also believe that the data centre we are developing here in Abu Dhabi, which is due to be completed before the end of the year, will definitely help take this advantage further, and will assist us in creating relationships with government organisations in the region that are looking at cloud options.

Can you give us a rundown of the most exciting projects that Oracle is currently involved in?

Oracle has been involved in supporting a British project to create the Bloodhound SSC (supersonic car), which is designed to break the land-speed record by reaching speeds of 1,000 mph.

The project aims to inspire school children in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields by sharing its research and development programme with a global audience.

Over 6,000 schools currently incorporate aspects of Bloodhound into their curriculum – such as robotics, computer programming and aerodynamics - and all of the car performance data and video has also been made available to classrooms. As Bloodhound’s cloud partner, Oracle will be collecting and analysing data from over 500 sensors on the car, which will be broadcast to students worldwide to demonstrate how data and technology are helping the project’s engineers to smash the record. We expect the first test-run of the car to happen before the end of 2017. www.tahawultech.com

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INSIGHT

Ihsan Anabtawi, chief operating and marketing officer, Microsoft Gulf

The proof is in the pudding Microsoft Gulf's chief operating and marketing officer Ihsan Anabtawi takes a look at a range of use cases from across the world that show how consumers are benefiting en masse from the adoption of digital technology.

I

n an age of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge – an age of AI-powered virtual agents and intelligent bots – it’s hard to recall a time, when, not long ago, finding the simplest piece of information demanded hours of poring over encyclopaedias.

What about a time before cloud, when adapting to the changing needs

of customers could take years – months to discover, months to decide on action, and months to implement?

Fast forward to the current age of digital transformation, and change can now be seen and adapted

to in real time. Breakthroughs in technology have allowed innovators to create without the drawnout processes that beleaguered them before, and to do so at unprecedented scale and speed, often made possible by the boundless intelligence of the cloud.

Digital transformation allows them to deliver meaningful, measurable change, built on four pillars: the engagement of customers, the empowerment of employees, the optimisation of operations and the transformation of products.

Businesses around the world are using them to move ahead of the pack – to lead and inspire.

AUTONOMOUS DRIVING China’s leading Internet search provider Baidu has established an open platform called Apollo that is nothing less than a full hardware-software solution for autonomous vehicles.

The solution exploits the fact that today’s vehicles are voracious retainers of data. With the application of cloud AI, machinelearning, and deep neural-network capabilities, Apollo has taken a huge step forward in making autonomous vehicles safer. Projects such as

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SEPTEMBER 2017

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INSIGHT

Ihsan Anabtawi, chief operating and marketing officer, Microsoft Gulf

Baidu’s are causing market-watchers to predict impressive adoption figures for autonomous vehicles.

McKinsey projects that up to 15 percent of new cars sold in 2030 will be fully autonomous.

SALES SUPPORT It’s easy to see how millennial-run Internet firms are among the first to digitally transform, but what about companies that are older than any living human beings? Market intelligence firm Dun & Bradstreet has been around for 176 years, but is living proof that being venerable does not necessarily equate to being set in your ways. Companies all over the world use Dun & Bradstreet data and analytics services for businessto-business sales and marketing, risk management, supply-chain management, sales-lead scoring, and credit-history management.

The company realised it could use the cloud to offer Data-as-aService. The company decided to leverage the cloud to make its creditworthiness data available to its customers through CRM applications, allowing sales teams to qualify leads in real time.

A SPORTING CHANCE Sports teams, managers and club owners not only compete on the field, pitch, court or track – they are constantly occupied with fan engagement. Digital transformation is playing a starring role in that story and has reached MVP status among sports-facility innovators. The cloud has brought spectators the connected stadium and the livestream app, as well as real-time information about teams and players.

La Liga, Spain’s premier association football league, is home to the world’s best clubs and players – Real Madrid and their star man 44

SEPTEMBER 2017

Cristiano Ronaldo, and Barcelona, led by Argentinian talisman Lionel Messi. The league’s organising body has used technology to engage fans by giving them round-the-clock access to their favourite players. AI solutions and cloud services allow fans to personalise their interactions, specifying the kind of content in which they are most interested, and then receiving, for example, videos that reflect their preferences, or stats on their favourite teams or players.

Fiction writer William Gibson said: ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.’

FoxTales, meanwhile, is a California-based company that provides a cloud-connected hardware platform at stadiums and events, for the creation of branded portraits, animated GIFs, burst GIFs, 360 videos and more. Fans then share the created material on social media pages, depicting concocted images of themselves on a baseball card or them dashing onto a field during live play.

GREENFIELD TECH Gil Cowie, CEO and founder of SmartCart Technology, has hit a hole in one in the global golfing community, with SmartCartSVX, an all-weather,

ultra-bright, interactive touchscreen system for television sports broadcasters. CBS coverage of the PGA Tour showed Cowie’s device in action, where the technology allowed analysts to dissect video replays and pick out stats, giving spectators a true, inside look.

SmartCartSVX was also used at Wimbledon 2017, and other versions have been used in the European Tour, Ryder Cup, UEFA Champions League, English Premier League, NFL International Series and Formula 1.

For Cowie, the technology represents the power to step inside the game – to transform broadcasts so that those watching an event at home can get closer to the action and feel like they are there, watching it up close.

Sometimes, however, digital transformation becomes all about the internals – transforming the product and optimising operations. In NASCAR racing, the ability to shave fractions of a second off lap times and pit stops is the difference between the victor and the also-rans. At the same time, race-day officials want to get drivers back to full speed as soon as possible, following caution flags. A cloud-connected app allows all of that to happen. Historical data, timing, scoring, pit-road officiating, video replay and car positioning have been merged into a single platform supported by a hardware tool the size of a hockey puck. The entire solution maps every aspect of the race, enhancing safety, competitiveness and accuracy.

THE FUTURE IS HERE “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed,” fiction writer William Gibson famously said. Digital transformation is not a theoretical, utopian prediction. It is going on right now, all over the world, as you read this. www.tahawultech.com

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CIO PRIORITIES

Total number of respondents:

MANAGING CHANGE

64%

l

4,498

say the political, business and economic environment is becoming more unpredictable.

Increasingly, uncertain times seem to be correlated with shifting IT leadership priorities: INCREASINGLY important compared with last year:

DECREASINGLY important compared with last year:

Delivering consistent and stable Better engagement with IT performance UP 21% customers/prospects – DOWN 18% Developing innovative new Improving the success rate of products and services – UP 21% projects – DOWN 11% Saving costs – UP 8% Increasing operational UP 7% TOP RESPONSES TO POLITICAL/BUSINESS/ECONOMIC CHANGE: 1

2

Creating a more nimble technology platform 52%

Working with restricted budgets 49%

3

Investing in cybersecurity 45%

PEOPLE, SKILLS AND TALENT

Six in ten

No progress on women in IT leadership

consistently report a technology skills shortage 2017 (62%), 2016 (65%), 2015 (59%), 2014 (60%)

SKILLS THAT ARE MOST SCARCE:

Big Data/Analytics (42%) – most in demand by large employers Business Analysis (34%) – most in demand by smaller employers Enterprise Architecture (34%) – fastest growing – up 26% compared with last year

SOURCE: HARVEY NASH

2017

9% of senior IT leadership are women, same as last year

Yet 35% of organisations have a formal diversity initiative in place This varies greatly by organisational size: (28%) smaller (51%) mid-sized (72%) larger organisations Despite slow progress: more women had salary rises than men (42% versus 32%)

The 2017 Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey interviewed 4,498 CIOs and technology leaders across 86 countries. www.hnkpmgciosurvey.com

DEALING WITH DIGITAL Proportion of organisations with enterprise-wide digital strategy is up by 52% in three years:

TOP TACTICS TO FOSTER DIGITAL INNOVATION ARE TO: 1

2017 41%, 2016 35%, 2015 27%

Biggest impediment to digital success is resistance to change 43%.

Only 25% saw lack of budget as a major issue.

2

3

Dedicate Partner with Ring-fencing more time for innovative innovation innovation organisations budgets 54% e.g. academic 31% institutions a distant third 52%

A quarter of organisations (25%) now employ a 2017 25%, 2016 18%, 2015 17%, 2014 7%

MANAGING IT TOP WAYS IT LEADERS ARE LOOKING TO IMPROVE AGILITY AND RESPONSIVENESS: 1

2

3

Implementing agile methodologies 28%

Buying more solutions as a service’ 19%

approaches with multi-mode IT 15%

34% OF IT LEADERS ARE ALREADY INVESTING OR ARE PLANNING TO INVEST IN DIGITAL LABOUR IN 2017:

62% of respondents

from larger organisations are investing, compared with 27% of peers in smaller firms

IT BUDGETS ARE GROWING:

27% believe digital

Only one in five IT leaders (21%) have seen IT budgets cut

at improving quality, ahead of 24% who

79% have seen budgets upheld or increased this year

CIO CAREERS The majority of CIOs (58%) can expect to be in the job for five years or less:

28%

of CIOs at larger firms are more likely to move job this year vs 20% at smaller organisations CIOs most likely to move job this year are in Charity/Non-Profit 34% want to change role

CIO job satisfaction has risen by 18% since 2015 and is at a three-year high (39% rate themselves ‘very fulfilled’):

44% of CIOs who sit on their executive management team record the highest levels of job satisfaction Non-Profit CIOs see a 12% drop in fulfilment (likely linked to career restlessness)

33% of CIOs benefited from an increase in base salary last year, 62% of salaries were unchanged

INSIGHT

Janelle Hill, vice president and analyst, Gartner

Recognise and respond Gartner’s vice president and analyst Janelle Hill explores how CIOs can lead the charge on dealing with digital disruption.

A

lthough some CEOs might recognise that companies like Uber or Airbnb are disrupting the business world, many still maintain a waitand-see attitude. Traditionally, this means responding once the true threat to their own business has been identified. However, in the case of digital disruption, waiting until the threat is clear is too late. There will not be sufficient time to respond in a way that minimises the impact on your business.

Digital disruption is more difficult to adapt to than earlier technology-triggered shifts due to its virtual nature. Past disruptions were generally triggered by physical technologies such as PCs or ATMs. With the exception of robots and robotics, most digital disruptions are initiated in the virtual world, which makes them difficult to recognise until after the impact is felt. For example, the self-driving car is full of advanced AI technologies and analytics – software – that change the fundamental assumptions about driving and drivers. CIOs must lead the organisation to overcome the challenges of digital disruption, and equip peers to recognise and deal with digital disruption.

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SEPTEMBER 2017

RECOGNISE DIGITAL DISRUPTION First, learn to separate actual digital disruption from fads. A fad, such as Pokemon Go or Google Glass, will incite lots of excitement but have limited impact. A disruption will completely redefine the market’s needs and potentially cause a significant change in the industry.

For example, tablet computers such as the iPad caused changes in application development, impacted revenue of desktop and notebook computer manufacturers, and even changed how humans interact with technology. The technology also created an aftermarket accessory industry. At some point, digital disruption will completely change markets due to its rippling effects, while a fad will not. Digital disruptors are those companies that intentionally invest heavily in disruptive innovation. Consider how digital TV initially impacted analogue TV and how Netflix subsequently exploited digital content to completely disrupt the entertainment industry.

SET UP YOUR SENSING APPARATUS Enterprises looking to identify disruptors before it’s too late should set up a ‘sensing apparatus’

to monitor external indicators.

These indicators include shifting customer behaviour and consumer trends, as many disruptors originate in the consumer world.

Pay attention to where VCs are investing and to disruptions in adjacent markets for indicators.

The sensing apparatus will create a lot of information to handle, so look to data scientists to mine the data lake for insights.

BEFRIEND THE CMO OR VP OF SUPPLY CHAIN Monitoring external industries is new territory for a CIO, but other members of the executive team will be better equipped for such an effort. Depending on the setup of the business, the CIO might look to partner with the CMO, CFO, VP of Supply Chain or the head of R&D to have a better view of potential disruptors. In a businessto-business set up, disruption can happen in the supply chain or with the end customer, so it’s best to partner with both the CMO and VP of Supply Chain. For business-toconsumer companies, disruption is most likely to happen in the customer segment, so the focus should be on the CMO. www.tahawultech.com

INSIGHT

Ravi Mali, regional director, Middle East, Ciena

Under the sea Ravi Mali, Ciena’s regional director for the Middle East, explores why submarine networks are critically important to global communications.

M

ost people haven’t even heard of submarine cables, but they’re always there, silently carrying vital information between continents. In the Middle East, we sit at the intersection of several transoceanic submarine cables, putting the region at the heart of the global economy. Next-gen submarine networks connecting the Arabian Peninsula with France or Asia and the Mediterranean, make this an increasingly important geographical location. As a region of growing interest to content providers, we expect more network upgrade investments and new cable routes to further increase the available capacity, making international communications in the region more reliable, flexible, and better able to support growing demand from businesses and consumers.

For hundreds of years, ships were the only way to share information between continents separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean.

This changed more than 150 years ago when the first reliable transoceanic submarine cable was established across the Atlantic Ocean.

This pioneering telegraph cable transmitted information at rates that we would laugh at today, but it was certainly a ‘game-changer’ and a leap forward in performance when compared to handwritten letters that 50

SEPTEMBER 2017

were transported by ships, and could take weeks or even months to deliver.

with ongoing price erosion – often contradicting goals.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT SUBMARINE CABLES? We’re now very dependent on this critical infrastructure, which carries $10 trillion of transactions every day, over 95 percent of all inter-continental traffic, and is experiencing over 40 percent CAGR growth worldwide.

While you may not know it, the seabed is changing dramatically as submarine cables undergo a transformation to keep pace with this demand. Most modern submarine cables are based on coherent optical transmission technology, which enables enormous capacity improvements over the early telegraph cables, and can reliably carry multiple terabits of data each second.

What many may not realise is that there is no viable alternative to the world’s critical submarine cable infrastructure. Satellites cannot compete as they do not have the required capacity, performance, availability, security, or cost points of existing high-speed optical networks, overland or undersea.

No alternative means that we must continually innovate to increase the information-carrying capacity of these jugular veins of intercontinental connectivity, better protect them from inevitable faults to ensure continual availability, and improve the total cost of ownership to maintain pace

WHAT’S NEXT? New technologies originally developed for terrestrial networks, such as coherent detection optical transmission and ROADMs, have already been adopted and adapted for submarine networks. This allows operators to create seamless end-toend networks resulting in significant reductions in complexity, latency, and cost with noteworthy reductions in power and space requirements. Other terrestrial innovations, such as packet switching and software application development, are also being adopted and adapted for submarine networks driven by the industry-wide “openness” movement.

The ever-changing, never-ending requirements placed upon networks mean that additional enhancements must be made on an ongoing basis to maintain constant industry challenges and opportunities. New and open submarine network solutions allow submarine cable operators to mixand-match whatever components they require, thus enabling greater choice and the ability to create networks that are custom-made for the markets they serve for highly competitive transoceanic network services.

With massively growing demand, this level of network innovation must continue to ensure that we never need a ‘Plan B’. www.tahawultech.com

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Launches and releases

Brand: Samsung Product: Galaxy Note8

Brand: HP Product: HP Z VR Backpack

The HP Z VR Backpack is an untethered wearable PC that can render high-fidelity graphic simulations.

According to HP, the Z VR Backpack is the first wearable VR PC in the market. It is powered by the Intel Core i7 vPro processor for developing applications, and includes the vPro chipset. The device is also equipped with the NVIDIA Quadro P5200 with a 16GB video memory. It has a docking solution, which enables quick transitions between highpowered desktop for content design and wearable VR PC to validate creations.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The Z VR Backpack is ideal for businesses that deliver simulated training in dangerous environments, including medical training scenarios or for heavy equipment operations.

Users can also choose their preferred VR HMD, or use custom integration for the HTC Vive BE or the HP Windows Mixed Reality Headset to use with the Backpack.

52

SEPTEMBER 2017

Samsung’s response to the disastrous, spontaneously combusting Note7 is here. The Galaxy Note8 has a 6.3-inch, Quad HD+ Super AMOLED screen. It has a curved screen and is available in black, blue, grey and gold.

The Note8 is equipped with a Snapdragon 835 processor, 64GB of storage (with microSD support), and 6GB of RAM. It runs Android 7.7.1 Nougat.

It is equipped with a 3300 mAh battery and has two 12-megapixel cameras. Meanwhile, the front of the phone has an 8MP selfie camera with an f1.7 aperture.

It also features Google Assistant, as well as Bixby, Samsung’s own virtual assistant. The Note’s trademark S-Pen is IP68-rated, meaning it’s resistant to dust and water.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The device is expected to receive an Android 8.0 Oreo update, but is not the in-built version of the operating system. Samsung execs have also confirmed that the Note8’s battery has gone through rigorous internal and external testing to avoid a repeat of the PR nightmare that the firm endured after having to recall millions of its failed Note7’s.

Brand: D-Link Product:

Covr Wi-Fi System

The COVR-3902 Covr Wi-Fi System is a wireless networking solution comprised of the COVR-2600R AC2600 Wi-Fi Router and COVR-1300E AC1300 Wi-Fi Range Extender.

The system uses a high-power Wi-Fi Router at its core to offer a ‘PowrZone’ of fast Wi-Fi connectivity, while the Covr Seamless Extender takes care of the outer edge. The Covr Wi-Fi System scans users’ device’s wireless signal strength to each Covr device, automatically connecting users within

areas of up to 6,000 sq. ft. Covr uses a single network name (SSID).

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The router’s Gigabit Ethernet ports are capable of providing connectivity for Network Attached Storage (NAS), media centres, and gaming consoles. It also has built-in Quality of Service (QoS) engine, which allows traffic prioritisation and ensures optimal bandwidth. www.tahawultech.com

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COLUMN

Glesni Holland, Deputy Editor, CNME

SEEING IS BELIEVING

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

F

rom smart, connected cars that are managed by a machine, to online, personalised marketing ploys delivered by e-commerce giants such as Amazon; the ways that artificial intelligence can influence our lives continues to grow from day to day.

While I believe that AI can fulfil both useful and gimmicky purposes, it’s important that we remember its huge potential in terms of saving – and significantly enhancing – human life. Microsoft has recently announced the launch of ‘Seeing AI’, a mobile app aimed at improving the everyday lives of those with visual impairments.

Using an iPhone’s camera – the app is currently only available on Apple devices – the user can capture their surroundings and then listen to audio descriptions to familiarise 54

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themselves with what is around them.

This can work in a number of scenarios. Using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, the app begins to dictate short pieces of printed text - such as a printed food menu - as soon as it is within view.

Scanning barcodes will also identify products to the user, which could be particularly useful if they are out shopping alone.

Seeing AI has also gone one step further in providing users with personalised relationships. It enables them to take a photograph of a person in front of them, and an algorithm within the app that then provides predictive analytics around that person’s suspected age and current emotion. The app can deliver a description such as ‘Man with brown hair and glasses, aged 25, happy’.

What’s more, the user can save the person’s image and name it, so that when they meet again, the app automatically identifies them using facial recognition technology. ‘Seeing AI’ even gives audio guidance to ensure that the user gets the perfect shot of the person in front of them, and this feature is applied throughout all the app’s channels.

In the UAE, government leaders aim to have treated and protected 30 million people with sight issues by 2025, following the investments into the Noor Dubai Foundation.

Applying this technology and enabling users to sense their external environment and make accurate, split-second decisions, could have a transformational impact on the lives of 285 million visually impaired people worldwide. www.tahawultech.com

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