Computer News Middle East February 2018

ISSUE 313 | FEBRUARY 2018 WWW.TAHAWULTECH.COM

UAE MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION WHY A DRIVERLESS WORLD IS A DISTANT REALITY TRISTAR’S BLOCKCHAIN TRANSFORMATION

THE GCC’S TOP 5 TECH INNOVATIONS RIVERBED CEO JERRY KENNELLY AVAYA’S NEW YORK IPO WHY CIOS NEED EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

THE AI DOCTOR TECH-SAVVY CEO DR BERND VAN LINDER ON COMMERCIAL BANK OF DUBAI’S DIGITAL FUTURE

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EDITORIAL

Fab Feb CNME can give you two reasons to be joyous this February. 1) Those January blues are finally over 2) We’ve got some fiendishly satisfying technology interviews and insight for you this month.

Commercial Bank of Dubai CEO Dr Bernd van Linder is a truly unique prospect not only in banking, but in the tech industry as a whole. Boasting a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Utrecht, Dr van Linder cuts a formidable figure at CBD’s helm one year into the job. Read his take on the bank’s future on page 14.

I spoke to the UAE’s minister of higher education Dr Ahmad Belhoul Boasting a PhD Al Falasi about the country’s need in AI from the for technology skills, and whether its University of youth are truly interested in the core Utrecht, Dr van skills needed for a career in IT. More on page 20.

Linder cuts a Transport for London board member formidable Michael Liebreich was in Abu Dhabi figure at CBD’s recently for the World Future Energy Summit, and he offers a compelling case helm. for why those who say self-driving cars will be everywhere within two years are totally barmy. Turn to page 24 for more.

Tristar’s Adam Lalani has just set the standard for Blockchain in the Middle East by transforming the logistics company’s operations. Find out how on page 30.

As a warm-up to the UAE’s Innovation Month, Glesni Holland gives her take on the country’s five snazziest uses of technology to date.

Marvellous.

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Contents

Our Strategic Partners Strategic Technology Partner

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ISSUE 313 | FEBRUARY 2018

12

14

EVENT: ORACLE AI SUMMIT

COMMERCIAL BANK OF DUBAI CEO DR BERND VAN LINDER

30

TRISTAR'S IT GROUP HEAD ADAM LALANI

8

10

World Future Energy Summit The World Future Energy Summit 2018 in Abu Dhabi saw a selection of government ministers give their take on how IT can play its part in delivering the UAE’s Energy Plan 2050.

A new chapter After a tumultuous 12 months, Avaya exited Chapter 11 status and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in January, marking the second innings for the realtime communications company.

20 A Smart future

38

RIVERBED CEO JERRY KENNELLY

FOUNDER, CPI MEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015) Publishing Director Natasha Pendleton natasha.pendleton@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9139

Dr Ahmad bin Abdullah Humaid Belhoul Al Falasi, UAE cabinet member and minister of state for higher education, on the country’s need for tech skills and IT-focused university courses if it is to fulfil its potential of becoming a knowledgebased economy.

24 Why driverless cars are a distant reality

Transport for London board member Michael Liebreich on why he the promise of self-driving transport currently has a long way to go.

34 The race to innovate

Ahead of the UAE’s Innovation Month in February, CNME takes a look at five of the most innovative uses of technology across the country over the last 12 months.

40 What technology innovations can GCC hospitality expect in 2018?

James Dartnell spoke to the three finalists of Marriott Hotels’ TestBED programme for technology startups, which launched in the Middle East and Africa region for the first time in September this year.

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Sony eVilla

S

ony first unveiled the eVilla at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2001, having already pushed back the launch twice to try to line up more content partners.

Marketed as ‘the must-have networking entertainment centre,’ the company claimed it eliminated the hassles of connecting to the Internet – like having to dial up just to check on emails. Instead, the device would automatically go online during off-hours, at a time set by the owner, to download emails and news. It was also equipped with Real Networks’ RealPlayer software, while also supporting both Java and Macromedia’s Flash to provide a well-rounded application base for eager entertainment users.

A defining feature was its portrait-shaped monitor, which Sony claimed was all part of the device’s sole purpose of surfing the net quickly and easily.

However, by the time that eVilla and competitors such as Audrey actually shipped, it was becoming increasingly clear that the consumers of the era didn’t want web appliances.

Instead, they wanted Windows PCs that were cheap – something that Sony failed to bring to the table with a $500 price tag attached to the eVilla. The device went from launch to loser, and stopped shipping after just two months.

Sony even asked retailers to pull the devices from their shelves and offered customers full refunds for the device and services purchased to help support it.

Analysts put the eVilla’s demise down to the fast-paced, changing nature of the Internet, yet reviewers were quick to attribute its downfall to its inability to meet the overhyped expectations that Sony had promised.

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www.tahawultech.com

ANALYSIS

World Future Energy Summit 2018

The new power The World Future Energy Summit 2018 in Abu Dhabi saw a selection of government ministers give their take on how IT can play its part in delivering the UAE’s Energy Plan 2050.

T

he UAE has set an ambitious target of having 44% of its 2050 energy needs met by renewable sources, with 6% delivered by nuclear power. One thing the World Future Energy Summit made clear is that smart technology will play its part in meeting that remit.

The UAE’s minister of energy Suhail Al Mazroui has said that the country will rely on a blend of renewable energy initiatives and information technology to deliver its long-term sustainability targets.

Al Mazroui discussed how IT systems would need to be used in 8

FEBRUARY 2018

conjunction with a range of new energy sources to deliver the best possible outcome for the country, and has also previously highlighted the importance of investing in technology “throughout the value chain” of the UAE’s hydrocarbon industry.

“It’s not only a case of using IT to initiate this long-term change,” Al Mazroui told CNME. “There are many other elements that need to be carefully considered, such as the efficiency of turbines. It’s really important that we change the existing ones, and we need to decouple water generation and desalination.”

Suhail Al Mazroui, UAE minister of energy

Al Mazroui added that the UAE will continually reassess forecasts around what the country can achieve in terms of its energy usage. “Every five years, we will revise the numbers based on commerciality and affordability,” he said. “The goals are ambitious, but I am confident the UAE will deliver on what it says.”

He added that by 2021, it could be possible for “27%” of the UAE’s energy needs to be met by renewable sources, and that the country could look to sell power generated by renewable resources to markets including Africa and Europe. He also urged the country www.tahawultech.com

to press ahead with the transition. “The pace of change is fast, and I personally advise ministers to draw their future now, and move from talking about projects to implementing them. We’re at the beginning. You’ll see projects in thousands of megawatts help us to reach our target.”

Minister for climate change Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi preceded Al Mazroui, and said the “time is right” for the country to exploit the technological and political landscape in renewable energy adoption.

Al Zeyoudi said that the UAE is currently exploring how artificial intelligence can meet environmental and sustainability objectives.

“We’re in the middle of an unprecedented global energy transition,” he said. “Technological innovation and the rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies are helping to deliver a sustainable energy transformation.”

Al Zeyoudi went on to highlight the ways that political and technological factors have now presented an opportunity for the UAE – and the world – to initiate change in renewable energy policy.

“UN sustainable development www.tahawultech.com

Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE minister of climate change

Technological innovation and the rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies are helping to deliver a sustainable energy transformation.

goals have called for the need for access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy,” he said. “Its uptake needs to increase by 2030.

With 150 countries included in plans to meet the Paris agreement, great opportunities lie ahead. The time is right to create an enabling environment to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy.”

He also alluded to the increasing affordability of renewable energy, with the price having dropped “more than 62%” making it not only environmentally, but now also economically preferable.

“The Mohammed bin Rashid solar park will be a 5-gigawatt facility by 2030,” he said. “Majid Al Futtaim has committed to becoming energy net positive by 2030. We aim to have 27% of our energy produced by renewables by 2021. The UAE clean energy strategy 2050 can save 700 billion dirhams and protect the environment. We are all for making new markets and enabling innovation that creates jobs and new economic opportunities.”

FEBRUARY 2018

9

ANALYSIS

Avaya IPO

A new chapter After a tumultuous 12 months, Avaya exited Chapter 11 status and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in January, marking the second innings for the realtime communications company. Jeevan Thankappan reports from Wall Street.

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www.tahawultech.com

Avaya CEO Jim Chirico

“

We are a new company and we are uniquely positioned to succeed,” said Jim Chirico, Avaya’s CEO, a few minutes after ringing the opening bell at New York Stock Exchange.

After a balance sheet restructuring that helped it to whittle down debt, Avaya now claims to have access to a $600 million war chest to fuel its future growth. “We are in the midst of a massive market shift brought on by digital transformation, and now we have the financial strength to invest in newer technologies such as AI and cloud. We have launched a transformation plan ourselves, and to win in the technology market today you have to go through transformation every five years.”

Chirico said that going public is a real testimony to the power of his company’s brand, and loyalty from customers and partners.

“What I didn’t fully appreciate is how pervasive our brand is in the marketplace,” he said. “Our customers wanted us to win, and they are the real reason where we are here today. We have spent a lot of time over the last 12 months improving our operations to be best-in-class, and we are going to expand those operational efficiencies and productivity improvements across the company as well as our customer base.”

Over the last five years, Avaya has begun to undergo the painful transition from being a hardwarecentric company to a software and www.tahawultech.com

We are a new company and we are uniquely positioned to succeed.”

Jim Chirico, CEO, Avaya

services company. “We took a bit of hit on our revenues when we made this transition. Our revenues have stabilised over the last four quarters, of which 60 percent are recurring revenues with a high retention rate of 90 percent.”

Chirico says Avaya is now a profitable company, which made $3.3 billion in revenue last year with a EBITDA of 25 percent. “Our growth margins are north of 65 percent, and our competition doesn’t have the kind of cash that we have. But what is most important is what you are going to do with that cash – we are going to invest not only in R&D but also in sales, systems and processes. We will not be known as a company with a great cost cutting engine but one focused on revenue growth. We are going to invest in areas that I call sustained performance.”

Going forward, Avaya is also planning to ride on its massive installed base said Nidal Abou-Ltaif, president of Avaya International.

“We are the leaders in the UC and CC space with 300 million installed seats and 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies in our client roster.

We are going to use this as an asset and offer our customers more value by offering them different cloud consumption models.”

Avaya has recently launched a business unit dedicated to cloud products and services, but industry pundits believe the company might have come to the party a bit late, and will play catch up to the likes of Microsoft and Cisco. Mercer Rowe, the former IBM executive who has taken charge of Avaya’s cloud business as its GM, says Avaya’s cloud strategy is around a hybrid consumption model. “For us, cloud is about a transformative business model, and we will not be pigeonholed into a particular delivery model, he said. “Our customers are not rushing to the cloud, or putting all their workloads on public cloud. What they are clamouring for is a cloud model of consuming technology, and a platform for innovation on top of that.

That is exactly our value proposition.”

Avaya CTO Laurent Philoneko said the focal point of Avaya’s R&D strategy is to make products cloudnative from the get-go. “Our aim is to simplify IT – to make our solutions more easy to implement and operate, with a great degree of automation and orchestration to provide instant gratification to our customers.

Analytics and mobility are other areas we are going to invest in, and we would continue to invest in devices targeted at the network edge.”

FEBRUARY 2018

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ANALYSIS

Oracle AI Summit

Diamond in the rough Oracle recently hosted its inaugural AI Summit at the St Regis hotel in Dubai, where the firm discussed strategies for introducing disruptive technology and innovative processes into the enterprise.

A

lmost half of the UAE’s workplace activities are susceptible to automation, with similar figures for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Oracle’s EMEA senior vice president of applications Alain Blanc has highlighted.

Blanc said that artificial intelligence was the best way to extract business value from otherwise meaningless data. “These days, what makes the topic of AI so hard is the acceleration of the technologies driving it. There is much more data available, and more power to do something with it. If you don’t have the right tools, you cannot strike gold and in this day and age, data is that gold. Once you’ve extracted it, the information and conclusions that you draw from it is a jewel that you can create. Extracting data allows for quicker, cheaper decisions.”

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Blanc highlighted the eye-catching World Economic Forum prediction that in the near future, 47% of work activities in UAE will be susceptible to automation, with the numbers standing at 46% in Saudi Arabia and 41% in Kuwait.

“If you’re not in the cloud, then you’re isolated from innovation,” he added. “Accenture research has shown that AI could double annual economic growth rates by 2035 by changing the nature of work, and creating a new relationship between man and machine.”

International management author and consultant Geoffrey Moore followed Blanc, and said that AI has the potential to help organisations deliver unrivalled products and services to their customers. Moore works with tech startups and blue chip firms to advise them on challenges surrounding technology adoption, and

he discussed how organisations did not all need to innovate at the same pace in order to stay competitive.

“AI will unfold over the next decade or more, and not everybody can be first to adopt it,” he said.

“Different organisations will want different approaches to create jewels from raw gold.”

Moore went on to discuss the optimal time that organisations should look to adopt technology – when the marginal cost of new capacity “approaches zero”. “Cloud computing is an example of a technology that is virtually free,” he says. “You can deploy software anywhere across the world, while 1.5 billion people in the world have smartphones, who can be connected with 24/7. These are systems of engagement. Governments and businesses are now trying to figure out how to put these systems of engagement at the core of their www.tahawultech.com

processes, and it’s a challenge. Some companies are on this path, which many people know as digitalisation.”

Moore highlighted how machine learning and AI were yet to reach the relatively low price point that cloud had surpassed, but provided an opportunity for businesses that were looking to outstrip competitors.

“If you can leverage an unmatchable capability with an unmatchable offer, that differentiates you from competitors,” he said. “Give customers a reason to leave existing vendors and come to you.” Failing that, Moore said, a sensible approach is to attempt to catch up with formidable competitors as quickly as possible to regain a foothold, by “neutralising” the situation.

“Microsoft did not invent anything as far as I can remember, but they caught up quicker than anyone, and when they did, they ate you,” he said. www.tahawultech.com

If you can leverage an unmatchable capability with an unmatchable offer, that differentiates you from competitors.

“Nokia and Yahoo tried to leapfrog Apple and Google, and it did not work. Playing fast defence is the best strategy in this scenario.”

The Summit went on to host a panel discussion with executives from across the UAE, including du CIO Nikos Angelopoulos and Saudi retail giant Fawaz Al Hokair’s head of transformation Joseph El Baz. Oracle also recently opened the Zayed Innovation Hub, an AIdedicated facility in Dubai. Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, inaugurated the hub.

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FEATURE

Dr Bernd van Linder

Dr Bernd van Linder, CEO, Commercial Bank of Dubai

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www.tahawultech.com

The AI doctor

Commercial Bank of Dubai CEO Dr Bernd van Linder is a rare commodity in his heavily-digitised industry. Boasting a PhD in artificial intelligence, the tech-minded leader joined CBD in January 2017, and looks the perfect fit to guide the firm into the end-to-end digital age.

T

he banking industry in the GCC will not promote senior executives who fear or are ignorant of technology, says Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) CEO Dr Bernd van Linder.

Dutchman van Linder is extremely conscious of the responsibility that he must bear if CBD is to succeed in the digital age, and believes that having a tech-minded CEO is just as important as possessing a businessminded CIO. “No c-suite executive can get away with saying ‘I don’t like or understand technology,’” he says. “That’s not sustainable. In this day and age, and particularly in a data-intensive industry like www.tahawultech.com

banking, the CEO and the c-suite have to understand technology. The flipside of that is that the CIO has to have a deep enough understanding of the business to be a credible conversation partner for the c-suite.

We’re lucky at CBD that we’re covered in both respects.”

Taking the Commercial Bank of Dubai hotseat in January 2017, Dr Bernd van Linder is sure to draw envious eyes from across an industry – and region – where the pace of technological change has gathered serious momentum over the last 18 months. Banking, perhaps more so than any other industry, is under pressure to put all of its services at

customers’ fingertips.

While debate rages on as to which responsibilities for digitalising an organisation lie where, having a CEO – the figure with whom the buck always stops – with proven technology credentials is sure to offer a substantial head start.

After completing a Master’s course in computer science in his formative years, van Linder’s thirst for technological knowledge compelled him to continue his studies before venturing into the world of work. He opted to undertake a PhD in artificial intelligence at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and to this day, the FEBRUARY 2018

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FEATURE

Dr Bernd van Linder

course of study continually proves to be a shrewd move. “It has definitely helped me a lot in my subsequent career,” he says. “It’s been particularly useful in terms of problem analysis and structuring solutions to problems, as well as concise writing and reporting.”

Although van Linder acknowledges that technology has evolved “significantly” since he left university, the fundamental principles that underpinned his studies have endured. “I think it took about 20 years for AI to become fashionable again after I’d finished my thesis,” he quips. As global technology giants have laid their bets with investments in developing smarter machines, van Linder believes that AI will become a staple of business, but remains a topic that is, for many, cloaked in mystery. “AI has become the buzzword of 2018,” he says. “I’m not sure if too many people understand what it means, but’s definitely not a question of hype. Fundamentally, I don’t think attitudes towards AI have changed too much, especially in terms of the researchers I knew at university. The main principals were there when I studied.”

Van Linder believes that the substance behind this evolution is Moore’s Law, and that humanity has reached a point where a oncefuturistic fantasy now sits on our doorsteps. “When I did my thesis, there were two schools of thought,” he says. “One tried to model AI based on human intelligence. The other said that we should keep throwing more computing power at things, and if we keep doing that then we’ll get deep neural networks, which results in something that looks like intelligence. I belonged to the first school of thought, and with 16

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No c-suite executive can get away with saying ‘I don’t like or understand technology.'

Commercial Bank of Dubai’s head office

hindsight that was clearly wrong.

The one that focused on massive computer power has won, and there is massive added value coming out of that. Whether that can actually be classed as ‘intelligence’ is more of a philosophical debate, but in terms of decision support, and analysing massive amounts of unstructured data, there is clearly great added value in AI as we currently see it.”

The key challenge for van Linder, and CBD, is to opt for technology that

can deliver value, instead of vanity.

As a number of banks across the region have opted for eye-catching technology launches, van Linder is in no doubt where the biggest gains can be made. “The main area of added value is the digitisation of all end-toend processes,” he says. “Anybody can build an app, and there are all kinds of frameworks in place – apps to build apps. Digitising end-to-end processes – taking out paperwork and human intervention, making www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

Dr Bernd van Linder

sure things are straight-through, seamless, error-free – that’s where the biggest challenge is. It’s also where the biggest opportunity is.

That’s not a fad. That will reduce operating costs for banks, and substantially improve the experience for the customer.”

After just under a year in the role, van Linder has already begun to initiate a measure of technological change at CBD. Looking forward, he has grand plans for the firm, and has laid out a transformational roadmap that will be driven by technology, but will not abandon the human touch. “CBD will be a different bank in five years’ time,” he says. “It will be default-digital for retail and corporate clients, and will offer a seamless, fast, error-free experience.

It will still have a substantial number of branches because there will be human interaction required in various ways. Branches will be much more focused on the service element rather than the sales element. We may have less branches in future, but there will always be a role for them. All operational tasks will be transferred to electronic channels or will have been centralised, so it will be a fundamentally different bank.”

Van Linder and CBD’s pledge to put technology first is not all talk. In 2016, CBD became the first bank in the Middle East to launch a purely digital offering for tech-savvy millennials, and van Linder takes the move as a point of pride. “CBD Now is doing very well,” he says. He is also adamant that CBD’s future offerings will depend on the principle of a consistent technology experience across devices. "It’s clear that that every bank – all of the banks in the UAE seem to have followed our approach as well – needs to focus on having a seamless, multi-channel proposition for its clients. It’s not just a digital proposition, but an offering 18

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The main area of added value through technology is the digitisation of all end-to-end processes. across channels. You want to give clients a true multi-channel experience.

I should be able to start opening an account over the app, and finish it in the branch or through a call centre.

Today, I don’t think too many banks are at that point, but that should be the end state.”

Having previously worked as managing director for Saudi Hollandi Bank in the Kingdom, van Linder continues to keep an eagle-eyed watch over the banking industry in the Netherlands, and inevitably draws comparisons between the industry’s technology offerings in Europe and the Middle East. What he’s seen in the GCC has particularly impressed him.

“In some ways, the Middle East is way ahead of Europe,” he says.

“If you look at functionality that is provided through ATMs, that’s clear. ATMs here allow you to do all kinds of things, like pay utility bills, subscribe to IPOs and remit money.

That kind of functionality just isn't available in Europe.”

He also believes that the Middle East’s banking industry has been intune with a region that is known for its love of mobile applications and devices. “I think from a technology perspective, the apps that banks in the Middle East provide are very good,” he says. “Not just CBD Now, but other banks in the UAE and www.tahawultech.com

Saudi. I don’t think there’s much catching up to do compared to Europe. Younger banks have the advantage of having an easier job of digitising their back-end, and I believe that’s the main focus for every bank in the world today.”

One such technology that is currently at its peak of hype in terms of how it can enhance processes is Blockchain. The transparency offered by the distributed ledger-based service has led many to claim that it will transform not only technology and finance, but business at large, with some lauding it as being as influential as the Internet was in the 1990s. “There will be certain areas where it will fundamentally change the world,” van Linder

www.tahawultech.com

CBD will be a different bank in five years’ time.

says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all the exchanges as we know them today will be run as a Blockchain platform in the near future, but there will be certain areas where existing infrastructures will perform better for some time

to come. It’ll have a big impact in areas of documentation and things like settlement, compliance and know-your-customer-related requirements. The challenge will be real-time performance when you talk about massive scale payments.”

Fintech is another area where van Linder sees an opportunity for innovation, but remains reserved on what the industry’s rise actually signifies. “The challenge on the Fintech side for banks is digitising processes,” he says. “There’s not a lot that startups are offering there, and is simply hard work that the bank, its operations, IT and business departments have to do. There’s great added value in Fintech; we will keep our eyes and ears open to it."

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FEATURE

Dr Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi

A Smart future James Dartnell spoke with Dr Ahmad bin Abdullah Humaid Belhoul Al Falasi, UAE cabinet member and minister of state for higher education and advanced skills, about the country’s need for tech specialists and university courses if it is to fulfil its potential in becoming a knowledge-based economy.

"

Historically, STEM has been perceived as a maledominated field, but I can tell you from the Ministry, we are seeing more women that are interested in STEM,” Al Falasi says.

He even goes one further, admitting that archaic perceptions are wide of the mark in 2018. “We talk about the gender gap globally, but in the UAE, women perform better academically, and right now, are far more employable than men because they are more focused,” he says.

“We are seeing female participation increase in the workforce and in STEM studies." The World Bank estimates that the UAE’s female labour participation rate for 2017 was 41%, compared to the global average of 49%, and Al Falasi sees a huge opportunity in that regard.

The need to not only encourage women to join the workforce, but to pursue subjects that will be in demand, is crucial. Acording to the 2017 Global Knowledge Index, the 20

FEBRUARY 2018

UAE’s path to a knowledge-based economy is clear. The country’s higher education system is ranked as the 27th best in the world, higher education students are the 8th most competent, while the country also ranks 24th for technical vocation education and training.

The joint research project, led developed by the United Nations Development Programme and the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, draws on research from 131 countries and measures factors including education, economy, research and technology.

An integral part of the UAE’s strong results in the research is minister for higher education and advanced skills Dr Ahmad bin Abdullah Humaid Belhoul Al Falasi. He takes great pride from the UAE’s progress in its educational and technological transformations, but knows the journey towards being a knowledgedriven society is only just beginning.

Al Falasi is in no doubt that

technology skills will be essential in the future, but need to be encouraged along with a rounded approach to solving critical problems that will be a mainstay of the future workplace. As IT begins to disrupt all industries, there is an acknowledgement within the Ministry that approaches to teaching may need to transform. “From our perspective, technology, broadly speaking, will take on a bigger demand by students,” he says.

“The more we see sectors develop, the more see that technology is becoming interdisciplinary. You see it in healthcare, education and all other sectors.”

Following the October launch of the One Million Arab Coders initiative, which carries a first prize of $1 million, the UAE’s increasing urgency to nurture homegrown software developers is clear. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has called coding “the language of the modern era”, and Al Falasi agrees www.tahawultech.com

We’re slowly seeing a transition from young people in the UAE being users of multimedia, to being developers of apps, then to building technology startups.

Dr Ahmad bin Abdullah Humaid Belhoul Al Falasi, UAE cabinet member and minister of state for higher education and advanced skills

www.tahawultech.com

FEBRUARY 2018

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FEATURE

Dr Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi

that it will be a core component of future education. “The government has made AI a chief mandate, but within the Ministry, we want to focus more on skills than technology,” he says. “We believe students need to have problem solving skills, coding skills and teamwork. Coding and entrepreneurship skills will be particularly important for us going forward.”

Although the stage is set for change in the UAE’s economy, it can be hard to gauge whether the country’s youth truly buys into the idea of a digital future. Oft-cited stats cannot be ignored; Newzoo’s Global Mobile Market Report 2017 revealed that the UAE boasts the world’s highest smartphone penetration at 80.6%, while the Global Knowledge Index 2017 ranked the UAE top for the percentage of the country covered by mobile cellular networks (100). An appetite for mobile technology is only one side of the coin. The UAE’s youth population – those under the age of 25 – currently stands at 34%, with the figure expected to reach 50% across the GCC by 2025. The potential is undoubtedly there for the country to become one of the world’s leading digital hubs in the decades to come.

Nonetheless, a love of smartphones and consumer applications is one thing, but whether this will actually translate into a desire to study STEM-based subjects is another. Al Falasi believes that the enjoyment of being technology end-users is already translating to a desire to learn the nuts and bolts of IT. “Millennials are undoubtedly highly equipped with technology 22

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today, and technology is becoming far more appealing to the young generation; we know that for a fact,” he says. “We’re slowly seeing a transition from young people being pure end-users of multimedia, to being developers of apps, then to building technology startups.”

However, Al Falasi concedes that this shift won’t take place overnight.

“It’s a transition that will take time, but we need new initiatives to educate students.”

Al Falasi also believes that some of the UAE’s top higher education institutions are already beginning to yield tangible end products which serve as evidence for the younger generation’s passion for technology and engineering. “From what we’ve seen, students tend to focus their efforts more on working for tech startups or developing new apps, but we’re also seeing students in places like Masdar Institute and Khalifa University who are taking things further,” he says. “One UAEbased student is developing an artificial intelligence startup.”

By the same token, while the UAE has a mandate to upskill its own population in technology specialism, there also remains an underlying need to attract and retain foreign talent that can offer long-term contributions to the economy. This issue is never far from the mind of Al Falasi, and he acknowledges that local higher education institutions and government policy both need to be focused on fostering the best possible conditions for study.

“To attract foreign students, you obviously need quality institutions,” he says. “The UAE currently has three that are ranked in the world’s top 500 – American University

In the UAE, women perform better academically, and right now, are far more employable than men.

of Sharjah, Khalifa University and UAE University. By increasing their quality, you will naturally attract more students. There are also some policy aspects that need to be changed. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and the Ministry of Labour introduced a law last year that allows students to work part-time. On the policy side, you will see more policies that will make it more appealing for students to come into the country, as well as higher quality institutions being available.”

He also believes that the global perception around the UAE’s universities is on the rise. “There’s a marketing aspect to it as well.

Dubai’s KHDA has been active in promoting the UAE as a destination,” he says. “About a third of the UAE’s university students today are international, and we’re seeing an increasing number of international students. In the UAE it’s improving, but will be driven by policy and the quality of education on offer.” www.tahawultech.com

SYMPOSIUM ON

THE CHANGING ROLE OF IT IN AN ERA OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Kuwait 5th March 2018

Bahrain Saudi Arabia 6th March 2018

7th March 2018

Who should attend IT Decision Makers & Business Leaders

To attend, please register on www.tahawultech.com/manageengine-roadshow/2018/

FEATURE

Driverless cities - a distant dream?

Is a driverless world a distant reality?

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Future Energy Summit last month, Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder and Transport for London board member, Michael Liebreich, told CNME why he believes the promise of self-driving transport currently has a long way to go before becoming a reality.

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www.tahawultech.com

T

he concept of flying cars once seemed laughable. But now, in 2018, we find ourselves constantly engrossed in a debate around whether this era of both autonomous and aerial modes of transport may be closer than we first thought.

The RTA’s self-driving transport strategy, which aims to have 25 percent of the UAE’s public transport carried out by driverless means by 2030, made the headlines when the organisation carried out the first test flight of an aerial autonomous two-seater taxi late last year. It seems, however, www.tahawultech.com

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25

FEATURE

Driverless cities - a distant dream?

that the Authority’s ambitions to have this technology up and running

by July 2017 (yes, last summer) were extremely optimistic. In fact, it appears that we’ll be waiting at least “five to ten years” before the technology hits Dubai’s skies, according to Ahmed Bahrozyan, the driving force behind the RTA’s autonomous strategy.

Back down on earth, Michael Liebreich, Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder and Transport for London board member, believes that the world of autonomous vehicles – airborne or road-bound - is currently a distant reality, and one that must first overcome various urban challenges.

Liebreich says the concept of “feral taxis” – which he defined as those that can drive unmanned from “anywhere to anywhere,” and are capable of dealing with any scenario – is a long way off, due to factors that are outside of technology’s control.

“The technology that is needed to deal with unintended consequences doesn’t exist yet,” he says. “I’m in the camp that’s optimistic about self-driving vehicles, but I’m cautious about a

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If you go to Madison Square Garden in New York or the O2 in London, am I supposed to believe that in two years, 20,000 people will show up in self-driving cars to see Adelle in concert?

Michael Liebreich, founder, Bloomberg New Energy Finance fully driverless platform that can deal with everything.”

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month was dominated by self-driving technologies, with various big names wanting to put their stamp

on this impending autonomous era. Nissan and Toyota, to name a few, have made bold ambitions to get their driverless vehicles on the road by 2020, and plan to use the Tokyo Olympics as their desired showcase platform.

www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

Driverless cities - a distant dream?

However, Liebreich remains far from convinced. “If you go to Madison Square Garden in New York or the O2 in London, am I supposed to believe that in two years, 20,000 people will show up in self-driving cars to see Adelle in concert? There needs to be management of that traffic flow, and we must consider that not every car can have a pin drop for the location; there will be gridlock,” he says.

In the UAE, Liebreich believes that a direct route through the desert may be the nation’s best hope of embracing a change in the field – especially if it hopes to do so sooner rather than later. “I can imagine a driverless shuttle service between Dubai and Abu Dhabi being implemented before 2020,” he said. “The technology is there to do it from terminal to terminal. It may not need a driver, but it would certainly still need a captain, as the idea of 40 strangers on board and encountering an accident in the middle of the desert is just not plausible as things stand.”

His high hopes for the country are partly down to the visionary plans of the government, coupled with the nation’s wealth and huge patches of open space. “A major advantage for this country is the fact that wealth and opportunity enable experiments like Masdar City to take hold, when in London it would be so much harder,” he said.

“The country is also still being built as we speak, meaning there may not be the legacy infrastructure problem when looking to integrate self-driving technology.”

It has often been argued that the safety benefits of a driverless ecosystem are more appealing than the situation we find ourselves 28

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in today. But if that is the case, and the back-end technology behind these vehicles is already developed, then why wait for a fully driverless world? “People say driverless cars will save lives, but if we already have the technology that stops a vehicle from turning in a dangerous way, why not put it into cars now?” asks Liebreich.

In some respects, he argues, technology of this sort has already been implemented – but in a slightly overexaggerated sense. “Tesla’s Autopilot is not an autopilot, because it still requires a driver – it’s merely a glorified cruise control setting,” he says.

On the other hand, there are aspects of this “new world” that are so far removed from the reality that we currently live in, that Liebreich believes we could be waiting until “at least 2025” for significant progress in urbanised areas. “I’ve got bets with numerous people who claim that the arrival of feral taxis is closer than we think. But for me, even 2025 is pushing it for places such as London to roll out this technology on a city-wide basis,” he says.

While GM, Uber and Lyft talk the talk about their plans to explore this new era, there are “systematic changes” that first need implementing before this technology is released into the wild. “What we must remember is that some of these changes – particularly those involving a city’s infrastructure - will not move at the same speed as a programmer in California pulling an all-nighter to upload some new software,” Liebreich says. “Some aspects will be much slower to respond, especially those that are capital-

If we have to dig up our roads and build new lay-bys to accommodate more drop-off points, who’s paying for that?

Google? Uber? intensive. If we have to dig up our roads and build new lay-bys to accommodate more drop-off points, who’s paying for that?

Google? Uber?”

While the UAE’s vision of rolling out self-driving ‘flying taxis’ may not require such labour-intensive altercations to the country’s infrastructure, Liebreich believes that the time needed to establish regulatory frameworks will ultimately hold their progress back.

“In a way, these flying taxis are easier to launch because there are more degrees of freedom – you’re not constrained by pedestrians, and as long as you can track other airborne objects and fixed buildings, then there shouldn’t be a problem,” he says. “However, the promise that these flying taxis will nip around and land on rooftops, or fly up and down the canyons of Manhattan are unrealistic, as we are miles away from an air traffic environment that would allow that.” www.tahawultech.com

CASE STUDY

Tristar

Tristar’s IT group head Adam Lalani

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www.tahawultech.com

Value in the Chain

While much has been made of Blockchain's potential, few organisations have turned its promise into true end product. Enter Tristar and group IT head Adam Lalani, who are transforming the regional logistics industry through transparent, real-time transaction tracking.

“

Twenty years ago, no one could have imagined selling everything on the Internet,” Tristar’s IT group head Adam Lalani believes 2018’s equivalent is now clear. “The world just hasn’t come up with practical Blockchain ideas yet. I think people are missing the obvious.”

Lalani believes that the main hurdle Blockchain must overcome is the ability for its users to think of innovative ways it can change the world. “I remember 20 years ago when Internet access became available, people were asking what the point of it was. You could open one or two weird websites, but not much else. Today, you can literally lie in bed and run your life over the Internet. In some ways, Blockchain is the equivalent in its potential impact.” www.tahawultech.com

Headquartered in the UAE, Tristar specialises in the handling of petroleum and chemicals including hydrocarbons, lubricants and gases, and is a trusted partner to leading energy companies. Towards the end of 2016, one of Tristar’s major energy customers indicated that they wanted to see more technological advancements from the firm, and Lalani set about implementing a selection of changes that could position Tristar as a regional leader in logistics technology.

Tristar was storing and distributing products on behalf of that customer to “over 3,000 locations”, and Lalani wanted deliveries to be tracked in real-time,

and to know in advance when they would be taking place.

“If we sent products out to their customers manually, we would only know that a delivery had been completed when the driver returned to Tristar locations,” Lalani says.

“If a driver is going from Dubai to Fujairah, that’s a seven-hour roundtrip before you know the goods have been delivered successfully.”

With documents needing verification, and the possibility that orders could change, this had presented issues for Tristar.

“There was a big gap in oversight, particularly on deliveries,” Lalani says. “It was unnecessarily complex to simultaneously record what was in our own warehouse and what they had in their inventory system.”

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CASE STUDY

Tristar

Lalani and Tristar were determined to initiate technological change, and go against the grain for an industry that could often be hesitant to adopt new technology.

“Generally speaking, the logistics industry is slow to adapt to new technology,” Lalani says. “It can be difficult to embrace innovation when you still have to provide a service to customers. Many organisations get set in their ways.

We’ve gone all in on the digital transformation side, because we want to make sure we’re not left behind. There’s only a certain amount of business to go around.”

Determined to be an early adopter of Blockchain-based processes that

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could provide significant operational benefits, Lalani appreciates the support that Tristar offered in bringing the technology to the firm. “The inertia behind some organisations makes it difficult for them to make fast changes,” he says. “I’ve usually been someone who doesn’t want to be at the very beginning of new technologies.

Change often equals problems, particularly with IT. Someone can make an undocumented configuration change, and two weeks later, you have problems.”

Implementing a four-part Blockchain-based process that could track the arrival of deliveries, Tristar went live with the new

One of the issues is that there’s a lot of hype around Blockchain.

To actually do something with it is harder.

www.tahawultech.com

service earlier this month, and it is set to make the firm’s operations leaner and smarter. “In many cases, a round-trip to Saudi Arabia could take a driver as long as six days to complete,” Lalani says. “If a driver returns on day six, they would then produce an invoice. However, with Blockchain, from the moment the product is offloaded and signed for, the proof of delivery is recorded in the Blockchain. Once we are fully integrated with our partner systems, we will be able to save an additional half-day there as well, while manual labour times can be cut in half. Blockchain means that no one can change or bend the truth. It’s an irrevocable record of what took place.”

Although Lalani believes that some uses of Blockchain around the globe may not yet offer anything drastically different, he harbours a belief that it has the potential to have a transformative effect on the world. “Some inventions have no utility whatsoever, but others come up with things that solve real world problems,” he says.

“When my team started discussing Blockchain, we threw ideas around, but there were only four or five potential use case scenarios and they were not really new solutions.

That being said, I’m optimistic because it’s a question of what you can imagine, but haven’t imagined yet. Blockchain’s now being applied to logistics and the global supply chain, but it needs ideas.”

Nonetheless, Lalani concedes that finding real-world use cases for Blockchain is easier said than done.

“One of the issues is that there’s a lot of hype around Blockchain.

To actually do something with it is harder. It needs more people like us www.tahawultech.com

and Dubai government entities to apply real scenarios.”

He feels that in order to achieve this, new approaches to what Blockchain can do need to be considered. “Blockchain is used for peer-to-peer currency transactions, but is now being adapted,” Lalani says. “Screw presses that that were used to crush olives and grapes were adapted into the printing

Today, you can literally lie in bed and run your life over the Internet.

In some ways, Blockchain is the equivalent in its potential impact.

press, which changed the world.

Using existing technology to devise something new is a thread that runs throughout technology history.”

Tristar has also taken another significant measure to improve its operations – and crucially, safety – through cutting-edge technology.

The firm has been trialling facial recognition technology which tests if drivers are fatigued during a journey, using infra-red cameras,

operating in daylight or pitch black.

“In Dubai alone, we operate 500 vehicles, and safety is one of our of key tenets,” Lalani says. “Anything we can find that makes roads safer, we will look to leverage. Drivers often travel hundreds of kilometres in one go. We don’t have eyes inside the vehicle, so we don’t know what drivers are doing.”

The tests Tristar conducted instantly yielded results. “We the did the POC for three vehicles for six months,” Lalani says. “In the first phase, we monitored them in the driving cabins without alerting them.

Then, there would be an alarm and seat vibration if the driver showed signs of fatigue. Those triggers led to a 96 percent reduction of fatigue.” Tristar is now in the process of negotiating the contract for the technology, with a view to roll it out for an initial 50 vehicles.

Tristar and Lalani have also explored the possibility of introducing robotics technologies into the firm’s warehouse, but there remain a few obstacles that need to be cleared before that can become a reality.

“The study we undertook was a bit too costly and risky,” Lalani says. “We looked at automating forklift trucks, but if we’d funded that it would have taken us decades to break even compared to the cost of two forklift drivers. If the right provider were to come in, we could potentially reconsider.”

Lalani believes Tristar’s experience with robotics will apply to the world at large. “I don’t see robotics replacing human jobs in the near future,” Lalani says. “The technology is not cheap enough for mass adoption, but it will happen eventually.”

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FEATURE

Innovation in the UAE

The UAE’s top 5 tech innovators In line with the UAE’s Innovation Month, which kickstarts on February 1st in Abu Dhabi, CNME takes a look at five of the most innovative uses of technology across the country over the last 12 months.

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation The driving force behind the UAE’s first nuclear energy plant has become a regular hit in the local headlines over the last year, as the completion of its nuclear reactors nears ever closer.

We live in a region that has historically been powered by its vast oil reserves, but the UAE’s goal is now to use nuclear energy to produce at least 25 percent of the country’s electricity by 2021. Technology’s role in contributing to this vision is becoming more prominent than ever.

ENEC’s 1,700-strong workforce, set to increase to 2,500 by 2020, is currently overseeing the construction of four of “the most technologically advanced nuclear reactor designs in the world” at the Barakah site, just south of Abu Dhabi. That aside, the company has introduced technology that may not be typically associated with the energy sector, including 3D printing, virtual reality and the Internet of Things.

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Its simulator training centre leverages state-of-the-art technology to produce exact replicas of the control rooms in each reactor, preparing staff members in understanding how to respond to scenarios in the most realistic way possible.

Alia Al Hammadi, IT director, ENEC

www.tahawultech.com

Emirates NBD

Last year was a busy one for Emirates NBD. Aside from introducing a millennial-focused, digital only banking app, as well as launching its first paperless digital branch at Dubai World Trade Centre, the bank also piloted signlanguage technology at its Future Lab in Emirates Towers.

Customers with hearing or speech impairments can communicate their banking inquiries using the KinTrans software, which will then be instantly converted into text displayed on a screen for service ambassadors to read.

According to Middle East health specialists, hearing loss is one of the top five severe health issues affecting people in the region, alongside obesity, diabetes and hepatitis, demonstrating the need for this technology across the region.

The bank has now also fully aligned itself with the UAE’s vision to become one of the world’s most disability-friendly countries, after transforming nine of its branches to suiting disability needs, in addition to distributing braille currency for its customers with visual impairments.

Dubai Police

When IDC predicted that 2017 would be the year we would see robots taking over ‘mainstream jobs,’ little were any of us to know that this would include roles in the emergency services. Dubai Police’s ‘Robocop’, which engages users via the screen on its chest, is just one of many technologydriven initiatives that the force rolled out last year.

In September, the first totally automated smart police station was opened in Dubai at City Walk. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the new station offers key services such as reporting crimes and traffic incidents, as well as offering community services ranging from getting a goodconduct certificate to social support for victims of family violence. It provides UAE residents with a confidential service point where the customers can speak freely with officers via video link.

During Intersec last month, Dubai Police also announced its strategic plan for artificial intelligence, following months of research to identify the areas that needed most attention. Despite having already integrated this technology into its smart app, Dubai Police plans to harness AI techniques going forward to improve a number of police tools such as alleviating traffic congestions, leveraging facial recognition systems, implementing selfdriving police patrols as well as assistive technologies for improving surveillance methods.

www.tahawultech.com

Khalid Nasser Al Razooqi, director general, AI, Dubai Police

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FEATURE

Innovation in the UAE

DIFC Courts The legal industry might not be the first one to spring to mind when considering the adoption of innovative technologies, but DIFC Courts are on a mission to disrupt the status quo and leapfrog some age-old traditions for the greater good of the UAE’s legal system.

Its smart small claims tribunal – a video-driven digital court that can be accessed by case participants from across the globe – has become the “GCC’s first virtual court”. Having already received international acclaim, it has been visited by Tanzanian and Qatari delegations, who are now keen to follow its example, while eight members of parliament (MPs) from the United Kingdom visited in April for a first-hand look at how the Smart SCT operates, and the role it plays in attracting businesses to the UAE. The solution has been designed so that parties who are being hooked into virtual cases can do so without a need for any particular model of device. Court scheduling is set three days in advance of a hearing, allowing concerned parties to receive a URL in order to participate in the virtual case at the click of a button. The psychological effect of a “friendlier” courtroom makes the experience less intimidating for a party, as they can avoid a potentially stressful hearing in a physical courtroom.

Mark Beer OBE, CEO, DIFC Courts

Arul Jose Vigin, senior IT manager, DIFC Courts

eKar While the Dubai Metro is a cost-efficient and snappy method of commuting from A to B, it’s straight-line approach means that there are a number of areas within the city that are still currently unreachable.

Despite over 329,000 riders still utilising the service on a daily basis, this ‘last mile’ issue can often act as a deterrent to using the metro altogether. In an attempt to tackle this, the RTA partnered with ekar in the first quarter of 2017 to implement a fleet of 100 cars across the emirate under the new smart rental service initiative.

Vehicles can be booked via a mobile app or through the mobile site and then collected from easily accessible locations: either from one of the stations on the Dubai Metro, or from various popular locations throughout the city. ‘ekars’ can be rented for a maximum of six hours, and cost AED24 per hour for a round-trip back to its pick-up location, or AED30 for a one-way trip to an alternative drop-off station.

Living in an urban environment might not always require the need to own a car, so this initiative – now in its second year of operation, aims to provide the freedom of driving without the hassle that ownership often brings.

Vilhelm Hedberg, CEO, ekar

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www.tahawultech.com

INSIGHT

Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly

The new network Riverbed co-founder and CEO Jerry Kennelly was in Dubai recently to announce a key partnership with Dubai Police, and spoke to Jeevan Thankappan about how the company is gearing up to take on Cisco in the SD-WAN market.

W

hat are the main reasons behind your visit to Dubai?

I am here to formally a sign a partnership with Dubai Police.

They have been a key customer for many years, and one of the wonderful things working in the IT industry is the type of people you get to associate with; people who are forward-looking and doing some cutting-edge stuff. If you look at the productivity increase in the world economy, one of the sources of that is the correct application of IT in running operations. Governments represent around 20 percent of our worldwide business, and we sell large scale, enterprise-class IT products to the largest companies and governments around the world. Dubai itself is a forward-looking city and you have the advantage of not having to deal with IT systems from 1940s. Dubai Police have a strategic mission of providing the best services to citizens and residents, and achieving the lowest crime rate on the face of the earth, with the innovative application of IT. We are going to provide Dubai Police with enabling technologies and infrastructure pieces to achieve these great goals.

Do you think backend IT systems are ready to support digital transformation?

We are the people who make apps 38

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go faster and more cost-effective, and give the best response time at the lowest cost possible. There are two issues with network performance today – speed and bandwidth availability. Our core product Steelhead does those two things; it makes networks 10 times faster and lowers the cost of bandwidth by 90 percent, and that is what attracts large enterprises, including Dubai Police, who have to manage 80 sites. The other issue with app performance is the lack of visibility into what is going on inside your network. To a casual user, a big network just runs perfectly, but for a network manager, they are facing the daily nightmare of having to manage a complicated system that encompasses switches, routers, servers, storage units and myriad applications. When an application slows down or when the network breaks down, it is a nightmare to diagnose and fix problems. We sell diagnostic tools that will give complete network visibility, so if something goes wrong you can fix it within minutes instead of days or weeks.

This is very important for anyone running a large network. We have the leading technologies around network management and control, which go along with other products that can optimise your network, and make it cheap and faster.

Do you think WAN optimisation is going be to the foundation of nextgen IT infrastructure?

WAN optimisation will always be important. Networks are still expensive, especially in this part of the world. Overcoming the latency of speed and light limits on data transfer will always be a problem because you can never exceed the speed of light. So, I think there is a permanent market for WAN optimisation but the emphasis will shift over time to this new area within networking called SD-WAN. We have recently forayed into this market with our SteelConnect product, which is going to be the centrepiece of our product offering in the future, and our WAN optimisation, visibility and management products will just plug into this, all managed holistically through cloud orchestration, allowing you to find the best routes for network traffic, toggling between service providers to make your network a lot more efficient and cheaper.

According to Gartner, SD-WAN accounts for just 5 percent of the networking market. Do you really think companies will manage their WANs through software?

They will. SD-WAN might be a nascent technology, but that is all customers www.tahawultech.com

SD-WAN is going to be the main network product for the next 30 years.

Jerry Kennelly, CEO, Riverbed

talk about these days. It is going to be the main network product for the next 30 years and right now, we are in the first year of those 30 years. Everyone is talking about it, looking at it, and buying has not started yet. However, it is going to pick up momentum like a flywheel, and you will see a big push in the second half of this year. The real growth in the SD-WAN market will happen in 2019 and by 2021, every company will go SD-WAN. With the SD-WAN controller, you are going from niche to the mainstream networking market.

How do you plan to take on Cisco?

We are going to take on Cisco on their home turf and do to them what we have done in the WAN optimisation market. When we started out with Steelhead, no one knew about us and we were just a 200-person company, while Cisco was the biggest brand in the space.

Now, 16 years later, we have 60 percent market share compared to their 20 percent. If you follow Cisco, their emphasis has shifted away from networking to enterprise computing.

The reason we were able to defeat them in a niche market such as WAN optimisation was because we have the best product and technology. And this is exactly what we are going to do in the SD-WAN market. www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

GCC hospitality startups

What technology innovations can GCC hospitality expect in 2018?

James Dartnell spoke to the three finalists of Marriott Hotels’ TestBED programme for technology startups, which launched in the Middle East and Africa region for the first time in September this year.

O

f all the industries that have scrambled to launch digital transformation initiatives, hospitality is yet to be drastically affected. However, that’s not to say there’s no scope for change in a space where the GCC’s leading cities have carved out a world40

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class reputation. Now more than ever, hotel guests expect first-class Internet throughout their stay; according to English hotelier Roomzzz, 65% of guests were online within seven minutes of checking into a hotel, and one third requested the Wi-Fi password as soon as they arrived.

Ten-week accelerator TestBED aims to give seed and early-stage startups the opportunity to test their readyto-pilot products within an operating Marriott Hotel in a major city, with the hope that they can revolutionise the region’s hospitality experience through technology. First launched by Marriott across Europe in 2016, this year marks the launch of TestBED in the UAE. The finalists Twistar is a new Android IoT mobile device that uses AI for market intelligence by analysing guest’s actions and voice for real-time insights. It uses an augmented AI-voice core, powered

by IBM Watson, and can identify and understand user sentiment.

IoT messaging platform Unified Inbox allows guests to communicate with smart devices using text and voice messaging on the communications channels they www.tahawultech.com

use the most, without the need for an additional app. The company’s UnificationEngine platform combines AI with IoT and unified messaging, so that guests will be able to chat with the smart devices in their rooms as easily as they chat with their friends..

Beachill, meanwhile, is an “ecofriendly” solar-powered beach mattress that charges guests’ mobile devices and cools their drinks. The mattress features a built-in solarpowered 7-watt charging station with a USB 2.0 output, a 2-litre thermostorage fridge where guests can preserve both hot and cold beverages, and a heat- and water-proof pocket to keep valuables secure.

Why is your product or innovation unique?

Twistar - Twistar is a totally new type of customer feedback device that is going to help hotels engage with their guests more quickly and easily to better understand their mood and sentiment. In essence, we are able to collect more data, quicker, from more guests, in a more fun way.

Unified Inbox - What makes our product – UnificationEngine – unique for hoteliers is owning their guests’ data. UE enables hoteliers to know what www.tahawultech.com

their guests are asking for, so they can better anticipate and meet their needs.

And what makes UE unique for guests is that they can simply communicate using natural language text and voice messaging on their favorite communications channels without the need to download an additional app.

UE’s on-demand communications also powers conversational customer service, commerce, and analytics for hotels and their guests.

Beachill - Beachill is unique because it’s the only smart, eco-friendly mattress that can charge any portable devices and keep drinks chilled in its built in thermo-fridge. Beachill is also ergonomic and made with the best outdoor fabric in the world – dralon acrylic, which is waterproof, sunprroof and anti-bacterial.

What tangible value can your product offer to the hotel industry?

Twistar - With customer experience now recognised as the number one priority of more than 85% of all businesses, it’s amazing to think that real-World businesses like hotels, restaurants, bars and lounges are only able to collect about 3-4% of the total customer data which is available to them.

Unified Inbox - While our focus is on improving the in-room guest experience by allowing guests to control all of their room’s connected devices, we anticipate the hotel industry will see measurable savings from reduced energy and labour costs.

Beachill - It can offer a whole new outdoor experience for guests. They can spend more time at the pool while staying connected and feeling comfortable with their chilled beverages.

Do you believe new technology has to be used for a product to be classed as innovative?

Twistar - The short answer is ‘no’, but the long answer is ‘partially’.

While it is entirely possible to create a product that is innovative, it is a totally

different thing for that same product or service to actually become a success. With Twistar, we have taken some established technologies from the smartphone world, redesigned and adapted their structure to design an exciting new way to connect with visitors, guests and customers.

Unified Inbox: Not always. I would also classify new technology as being innovative when it changes the way people think and inspires new ideas.

Beachill - I believe that technology plays a major role in defining a product as innovative. Nevertheless, the key for an innovative product is a whole package, not just technology.

It has to be useful, new and deliver a smart solution for a certain need.

What support would you like to receive from the technology and hotel industry in growing your product?

Twistar - For too long, the hospitality and tourism sectors have been a victim of digital disruption. Online booking engines, price comparison sites, online rating engines and now websites like AirBnB have raised the bar. Programs like Marriott TestBED give opportunities for established businesses like Marriott to engage with, and support, innovative startups in a way that helps them capitalise upon these new technologies rather than being a victim of them.

Unified Inbox - Feedback! User feedback is the fuel that helps us to grow and improve our product. User feedback also helps us to scale rapidly – imagine walking into a Marriott hotel room in any city in the world and it knows it’s you, instantly customising your room to the settings which eliminate your stress and make you feel at home.

Beachill – The hotel industry already contributes to the evolution of our product in many ways, such as observing how people are using the product in order to improve it according to their use of features.

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41

OPINION

Alaa Elshimy, VP & managing director, Huawei Enterprise Middle East

Why 2017 changed human-machine interactions Alaa ElShimy, Huawei Enterprise Middle East’s vice president and managing director, gives his take on why last year marked a turning point for transformational technology.

T

rawl through the tech buzzwords of the last few years, and it’s clear 2017 will be regarded as the year that major technologies finally turned up to the party. The onset of 5G, automation, artificial intelligence and smart, safe cities has seen government and private sector investment spring to life, safe in the knowledge that these innovations are here to stay and pay dividends.

The ‘world is changing’ rhetoric can get a little old outside of the tech industry, but it doesn’t take a Wall Street veteran to sell the idea of microchips that reverse paralysis, or self-driving trucks that reduce accidents and casualties. If connecting people to things was the focus of the last decade, connecting things to things has been top of mind in the last few years.

Take the paralysis reversal example – scientists are wirelessly connecting brain-reading technology to electrical stimulators on the body, creating a neural bypass. This allows people to control their limbs through 42

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thought once again. This incredible use of connectivity between the body, mind and machine is exactly the type of outcome scientists and technologists have been reaching towards for years (IT isn’t just payroll and storage).

Beneath these outputs, there’s a layer of fundamental technologies that are making this happen. For example, big data and analytics are almost entirely responsible for the increase in personalised medical care and knowledge. Meanwhile, virtual reality now allows surgeons to hone their skills on a virtual patient, reducing risk on the physical operating table.

Add to that AI and machine learning, which allows scientists to analyse and hypothesise medical outcomes from millions of DNA samples – something which humans alone would not be able to accomplish.

For me, machine learning, driven by AI, is the true link between human and machine that we’ve been searching for. Previous rhetoric may have been focused on how automation and AI will replace manual

jobs, ramping up unemployment and creating the robotic uprising, potentially resulting in the impending doom of the human race. But of course, this is not the case. What AI is allowing us to do now is take a step back from the highly complicated calculation tasks that humans generally aren’t well suited to.

Take quantum computers as a further example. Applying the laws and rules of nature to analyse and calculate data sets that both do and do not exist in the manual universe will allow us to generate results that are literally unthinkable and unachievable for humans using regular computers.

What they can’t do is rationalise those results, or the data sets with which they’re dealing. This is where the role of humans comes in – setting the boundaries of the analysis, and rationalising the results for commercial use – such as paralysis reversal, one of the most beautiful technological outcomes I’ve read in years.

Fortunately, there’s even more obvious and understandable results to be witnessed day-to-day – for www.tahawultech.com

AI is allowing us to take a step back from highly complicated calculation tasks that humans generally aren’t well suited to.

Alaa ElShimy, vice president and managing director, Huawei Enterprise Middle East

www.tahawultech.com

those of us that aren’t medical scientists. In most GCC national agendas, we are seeing investment pour into many sectors, such as oil and gas, education, public safety, and transportation. Similarly, Huawei recognises the power of 5G to strengthen the working relationship between human and machine, which explains why our investments in the technology peaked at $600 million at the close of 2017.

The connectivity of objects to one another, and the exchange of data and information has been the trigger point for creating optimisation across industries. Think of it this way: when everyone in a business sits down and has a meeting, outlines their individual progress, what they are doing and what they’re going to do with the results, they can customise their itineraries based on each others’ progress and ideas.

This is precisely what IoT is doing for technologies – allowing them to better understand the condition of each, and therefore optimise their performance based on each functional element of a machine, operation or programme.

This creates more efficient, safer and simpler working models.

This is true for transport, energy, economics, and security, to name a few, and as we further implement AI and machine learning into these industries, that efficiency will only increase.

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Bard Papegaaij, research vice president, Gartner

Why CIOs

e e n

d

OPINION

When 90% of a CIO’s success depends on emotional intelligence, it’s time to master this skill, says Gartner research vice president Bard Papegaaij.

A

CIO at a large enterprise has the right skills and the right talent, but still struggles to get a seat at the executive table. A computer programmer in an IT firm is one of the best software developers, but is often ignored by the product development team.

This could be because of one simple thing — their lack of emotional intelligence (EI).

From computer programmers to CIOs, few have the luxury of a lone-wolf mentality in today’s work 44

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environment. EI is the ability to deal effectively with emotions — your own and those of others — and is a must-have for today’s CIO and other IT professionals.

Why EI is crucial for CIOs IT is a highly technical domain and emphasises rational thinking, problem solving and a logical, factbased approach. Although it may be risky to generalise, it is safe to say that most people in IT don’t typically think about the impact of their emotions on their work.

As a result, CIOs spend (often significantly) less time and effort on developing EI in themselves and their employees than most other professions.

This does not work to the CIO’s advantage, as people with higher EI deliver better results in areas like team leadership, influencing people, organisational awareness and self-confidence. In highly technical jobs and leadership roles, EI accounts for more than 90% of a person’s performance and success.

There are several reasons why CIOs may need EI even more than people in other professions and roles. www.tahawultech.com

To lead The arrival of the digital era has challenged CIOs to take leadership of digital transformation in their organisations. All this pressure requires strong, visionary leadership from CIOs to lead organisational change and shape their business’s digital future. Most CIOs have arrived at their role as a result of their excellent technical skills and extensive knowledge of IT, but they also have to lead teams of people. And it is here that EI plays a big role — the ability to motivate, inspire, and unite a group of intelligent and often quite strong-willed individuals into a highperforming team has more to do with the capacity to recognise and regulate emotions than with rational problem solving and cognitive skills.

To Influence One often-heard complaint from CIOs is that they do not have the same level of influence and power as their fellow C-level executives.

This is because most CIOs rely only on their technical knowledge, professional experience and analytical skills for their status and influence. But without a personal connection with important stakeholders, CIOs find it hard to be seen by their peers as business partners and are unable to use their influence to impact the decisionmaking process. CIOs with a high EI are much better equipped to influence. They have a better understanding of other people’s motives, and of the complex social patterns and political plays going on around them.

They are thus able to work on • creating stronger relationships www.tahawultech.com

In highly technical jobs and leadership roles, EI accounts for more than 90% of a person’s performance and success. with important stakeholders, • creating a stronger personal and departmental brand for themselves, • impacting decisions and directions where they feel their influence is needed and • recognising and uncovering potential partnerships among the business ecosystem.

To perform There is a direct link between productivity and EI: top performers in computer programming, for instance, were measured to have a staggering 1,272% higher productivity rate than the average programmer. The biggest contributor to this is the ability of high performers to collaborate and learn from others, and in turn, influence those around them. Working in IT usually means working under pressure, and a high level of EI is essential for working effectively in such an environment because it helps regulate habits and choose responses. The ability to successfully juggle conflicting priorities relies much more on strong social awareness, selfawareness and self-management

than it does on the ability to analyse and rationally evaluate the information available.

To manage An inspirational management approach starts with developing empathy — the ability to place yourself in the position of your employees and understand their perspective and feelings about their situation. In many IT departments, empathy is often seen as being ‘soft’ and even as a sign of weakness, which prevents CIOs from relating to their employees, understanding what drives them and managing them in the best way possible. Improving empathy levels is not necessarily complicated but, as with all personal skills, it can be hard and it does require practice.

The foundation for empathy is to simply listen — not merely to the explicit information in a conversation, but also the unstated, implied and nonverbal information also present but often overlooked.

The simple act of paying attention to what made people say something, and why, is enough to activate and develop the brain’s empathetic capabilities.

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ADVERTORIAL

Generation10 is here HPEÂ has released its Gen10 server portfolio, which the firm claims is defined by agility, security and economic control. We take a close look at some of the features to see where performance and security have been increased with this new product line.

G

en10 servers are key to infrastructure modernisation, accelerating business insights across a hybrid world of traditional IT, public and private cloud. They help companies to be agile by making it easy to adapt their IT quickly to changing requirements with Intelligent System Tuning, HPEÂ Scalable Persistent Memory, and server networking and storage advances. The new line also offers unique security features, right down to its silicon, with the HPE Secure Compute Lifecycle offering bestin-class innovations in firmware protection, malware detection, and firmware recovery.

HPE gives companies the ability to pay only for server resources that are actually used, scaling on demand without overprovisioning or incurring exponential costs. Gen10 servers optimise performance with their state-of-the-art Intelligent System Tuning, which dynamically configures server resources to match specific workloads and achieve higher levels of performance, efficiency, and control in your server environment.

It consists of Workload Matching, which uses preconfigured server profiles to maximise application 46

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performance; Jitter Smoothing, which uses the Processor Jitter Control setting to level and balance frequency fluctuation, resulting in lower latency and Core Boosting.

Default BIOS settings provide a balance between performance and power efficiency, and can be adjusted to match specific application workloads. Gen10 servers offer a UEFI configuration option to help customers tune their BIOS settings by using known workload-based tuning profiles.

HPE has introduced Processor Jitter Control in its Gen10 servers to enable customers to achieve both frequency upside and low jitter. This allows the customer to remove or reduce jitter caused by opportunistic frequency management, which results in better latency response and higher throughput performance.

Core Boosting technology uses a relaxed and optimised turbo profile that adapts the processor to specific use cases, configurations, and environments. Core Boosting

processors take advantage of extra server power and thermal headroom provided by an innovative HPE voltage regulator design and by cooling technologies. Consequently, systems that have Core Boosting processors can alleviate common setbacks and maximise processor computing power. The Processor Core Boosting feature uses the platform firmware to provide enhanced Turbo mode performance for select HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers. The firmware automatically detects the presence of supported processors and enables Core Boosting by default.

You can also configure Core Boost functionality through UEFI System Utilities or the iLO RESTful API. HPE Gen10 servers let customers preserve their data from ransomware attacks and run their business without the risk of paying hackers. HPE sets new dynamics for IT economics through its latest innovation. It allows its users to explore a new approach on how one can plan, acquire, and consume technology. www.tahawultech.com

INSIGHT

Digital workspace transformation

How digital banking workspaces will help customers Rasheed Al Omari, VMware’s principal business solutions strategist for South Europe, Middle East, and Africa, discusses why smarter platforms will improve the customer experience in banking.

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he financial services industry has always had to embrace new digital technologies and platforms in order to remain competitive. As a consumer, however, we don’t particularly care about the back-office technology.

Yes, the point of competitive difference for most financial services organisations has centred on their ability to collect and deliver insights 48

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to support decision making, and technology can certainly support this. But, consumers look for an experience that will simply give them what they need, when they need it and on the platforms they use.

The use of new technology has transformed the way in which workflow and processes happen in the industry, but it can also help win and retain customers by creating an experience better than others.

However, multiple successive

generations of technology innovation have left them with a big problem; that of managing these legacy systems, instead of delivering based on user needs.

These systems can make it difficult for applications to be moved onto new, more agile platforms, largely because of the cost and complexity involved. Even with new, shiny technology, there is often a ‘Frankenstein’-like mess of middleware – software trying to make older systems communicate with newer systems. In reality, it becomes slower to update new applications, creating a possible loss of revenue and customers if time to market is slowed down. www.tahawultech.com

The rise of mobile Mobile technology has changed the way in which people interact with their financial services provider, with consumers moving away from the traditional high-street bank, and turning to their numerous devices to access and manage their accounts.

This drop in footfall requires banks to change their delivery of customer services and look to modernise and mobilise their applications, whilst transforming the in-branch experience for high street banks.

Eight-six percent of European banks include digital as part of their strategy, with more than two thirds having appointed a chief digital officer.

Disruptive competition A new breed of challenger, digitalfirst, mobile-only banks are starting to challenge the more established brands in the field. New players, such as Monzo, are finding new ways to deliver almost every type of financial service – from peer to peer lending, to digital and contactless payments, to personal trading platforms and beyond. But it’s not easy for the startups, as many of them lack the reputation to win the trust of many traditional customers. Their strategy instead will be to target younger customers. However, while starts ups have lower support costs, targeting the younger generation comes with its own challenges as they are more than happy to move their money based upon incentives and experience.

Managing risk It’s not just the younger customers that are driving change. A large number of fixed deposits and investments have grown over time with their holders, and are maturing simultaneously. This means banks have a bigger challenge to limit the www.tahawultech.com

A new breed of challenger, digitalfirst, mobile-only banks are starting to challenge the more established brands in the field.

risk of potential liquidity challenges. A more comprehensive view of potential liabilities and account maturity dates in real time, could help alleviate any negative customer experience that may arise from this issue.

Capitalising on new technologies A wave of new innovation in this sector has uncovered a number of interesting opportunities for finance professionals with the likes of bitcoin and blockchain. Large and smaller players in this market are starting to explore the technology behind blockchain and the positive impact it could have on lowering operating costs. However, in order for it to be successful, the correct platforms with the ability to manage vast amounts of data and processing will be required.

The future of customer experience in financial services Digital challengers are looking to differentiate through personalisation.

Changes are being driven by a demand for better customer experience. The norm is being able to manage our money, wherever and however we please. It is no longer about what we want, but what we expect.

This leads us on to the concept of an omni-channel experience, whereby the

customer experience is unified across online, mobile and the branch. Omnichannel banks will give customers a more integrated journey across channels for sales and service. Retail banks in particular, need to ensure they have the correct mobile platforms to support these changes and differentiate them from their competitors.

This will have an impact on employees, as well as customers.

For example, in-store teller staff can become more mobile through the use of a ‘digital workspace’ portal accessed by tablets. This enables them to work on the branch floor, rather than being stuck behind the counter.

The geographical spread of the workforce could also be a challenge, with employees working across multiple offices. Initiatives such as identity management and application provisioning provide employees with the flexibility to work from home if needed, whilst still being able to deliver customer sensitive data to any location.

Mobile innovation provides a huge amount of opportunity in the banking and financial services sector.

One of the biggest drivers of this transformation is keeping up with the demand from consumers and ensuring the service provided meets their expectations.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A POSITIVE FORCE IN THE ENTERPRISE For security teams, AI is moving the needle:

70%

77%

81%

78%

say they have prevented more breaches following their use of AI-powered tools.

say their security team is using AI in their threat prevention strategies.

say AI was detecting threats before their security teams could.

say the technology has found threats humans couldn’t see.

Organisations are already investing in AI, and this will only increase:

60%

of the IT decision makers surveyed say they already have AI-powered solutions in place.

40%

said they are planning to invest in them in the next two years.

AI is seen as a competitive advantage:

87%

see AI-powered technology as a competitive advantage for their IT departments.

83%

are investing in AI to beat competitors.

AI brings productivity, meaningful work for employees:

80%

believe that teams using AI have become more productive.

81%

say AI is critical to the company's digital transformation.

81%

say AI will lead to more meaningful work for employees.

Artificial Intelligence is making inroads in enterprises as IT decision makers and other corporate leaders realise the benefits it brings to productivity, digital transformation, employee work satisfaction, and for security in particular, detecting and stopping threats. Companies that wait too long to adopt AI, or at least explore the possibilities with AI, run the risk of losing to faster-moving competitors. With innovation, time is of the essence, and AI is happening now.

Source: Cylance

PRODUCTS

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Launches and releases

Brand: Dell Product: XPS 15 2-in-1

Brand: Dell Product: XPS 15 2-in-1 After debuting a 13-inch model last year, Dell is introducing a 15-inch version of its XPS 2-in-1 in a bid to address a gap in the marketplace for thinner, lighter and more powerful mobile devices that both hobbyists and professional creators demand. The CPU and Radeon RX Vega M graphics horsepower enables users to run content creation apps, process large files and play AAA games using either the touch pen or maglev keyboard.

There’s also a microSD card reader and a headphone jack, and the InfinityEdge 4K Ultra HD display and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 in a slim 16mm form complete this device’s functional design.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The XPS’ keyboard looks and feels just like typical keyboard, but is built using a mechanism that relies on magnets. The keys are still physically held in place at their corners, but there are now magnets beneath them to provide feedback.

52

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After debuting a 13-inch model last year, Dell is introducing a 15-inch version of its XPS 2-in-1 in a bid to address a gap in the marketplace for thinner, lighter and more powerful mobile devices that both hobbyists and professional creators demand. The CPU and Radeon RX Vega M graphics horsepower enables users to run content creation apps, process large files and play AAA games using either the touch pen or maglev keyboard.

There’s also a microSD card reader and a headphone jack, and the InfinityEdge 4K Ultra HD display and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 in a slim

16mm form complete this device’s functional design.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The XPS’ keyboard looks and feels just like typical keyboard, but is built using a mechanism that relies on magnets. The keys are still physically held in place at their corners, but there are now magnets beneath them to provide feedback.

Brand: Sony Product: Xperia XA2 Ultra Sony Mobile added a new mid-range smartphone to its portfolio at CES 2018 last month.

The Xperia XA2 Ultra combines a 5.2-inch HD display with a 3,300mAh battery, and a 23-megapixel camera capable of 4K video capture.

Sony’s Smart Amplifier technology, backed up by ClearAudio+ and Clear Bass fine-tunes, is also integrated into the smartphone. A fingerprint scanner sits on the rear,

plus there’s a USB-C port on the bottom and headphone jack on the top.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Xperia XA2 Ultra features the same 23-megapixel main camera as Xperia XA2, but additionally comes with a “dual selfie” front camera consisting of a 16-megapixel camera with Optical Image Stabilisation, and an 8-megapixel 120-degree super wideangle selfie camera. www.tahawultech.com

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匀攀挀甀爀椀琀礀 愀猀ⴀ愀ⴀ匀攀爀瘀椀挀攀

䌀礀戀攀爀 吀栀爀攀愀琀 䴀愀渀愀最攀洀攀渀琀 伀渀攀 倀氀愀愀漀爀洀 簀 䤀渀琀攀最爀愀琀攀搀 䴀漀搀甀氀攀猀 簀 䌀氀漀甀搀ⴀ戀愀猀攀搀 簀 一漀 䤀渀猀琀愀氀氀愀愀漀渀猀

刀攀挀漀爀搀猀 椀渀搀攀砀攀搀 椀渀 䠀愀挀欀攀搀 䄀挀挀漀甀渀琀猀 䐀䈀

䌀礀戀攀爀 椀渀挀椀搀攀渀琀猀 洀愀渀愀最攀搀 吀栀爀攀愀琀 䐀攀琀攀挀挀漀渀 ☀ 刀攀猀瀀漀渀猀攀

䐀椀最椀琀愀氀 愀猀猀攀琀猀 愀甀搀椀琀攀搀 瘀椀愀 䐀椀最椀琀愀氀 刀椀猀欀 䴀愀渀愀最攀洀攀渀琀

䔀砀攀挀甀甀瘀攀猀 瀀爀漀琀攀挀琀攀搀 瘀椀愀 嘀䤀倀 䈀爀愀渀搀 倀爀漀琀攀挀挀漀渀

COLUMN

Glesni Holland, Deputy Editor, CNME

AN APPLE A DAY R

ecent studies have found that children who use smartphones for three hours a day or more are “much more likely” to be suicidal, and that frequent social media use has increased the risk of depression by 27 percent among the early teens.

While he’s not the first industry figure to criticise the use of technology products and services, Apple CEO Tim Cook most certainly won’t be the last.

But given the well-versed trend for Silicon Valley executives to place limits on the technology use of their own children, it came as no big surprise when Cook was added to the long list last month.

Speaking at an Essex school in the UK - one of 70 institutions across Europe that is adopting Apple’s ‘Everyone Can Code’ curriculum, Cook was quoted by The Guardian as saying “I don’t believe in the overuse of technology. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using 54

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it all the time. I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

This could all be coincidental, when you consider that two Apple stakeholders recently urged the company to do more to combat technology addiction among young people.

Cook doesn’t have children himself, but it seems he is still keen to impose boundaries on other younger members of his family – such as his nephew. “There are some things that I won’t allow; I don’t want them on a social network,” he said.

To that end, Apple has a clear conscience, as it doesn’t have any social media assets to speak of. In fact, the firm only created a Twitter account two years ago, which still hasn’t been tweeted from to this day.

But while Cook and his tech associates have long pushed the use of their products in the classroom, it seems he’s now having second thoughts.

“There are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand,” he said. “In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot?

Probably not.”

While I believe that children should be familiar with technology in a learning environment because of its pertinent role in our everyday lives, I do fear that it will impact some fundamental skills going forward. Core educational skills such as reading and writing could ultimately be neglected thanks to Microsoft Word and Spellchecker, and the advent of artificial intelligence could soon lead to a child’s numerical abilities being hindered.

But one thing is for sure. The skills that these children pick up during their educational tenure will mean that the CVs of the future will look very different to how they are now. Riddled with tech knowledge and equipped with a device for every task, the days of being a “people person” may no longer cut it. www.tahawultech.com

Seize the Digital Business Opportunity Join the most influential gathering of CIOs, Senior IT Executives and Business Leaders from the GCC and MENA regions.

As the GCC and MENA regions enter a new era of government and business transformation, ‘digital-first’ has become the new mantra.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018 in Dubai focuses on the leadership, organizational, cultural, business and technology challenges aligned to regional transformation programs, visions and initiatives.

5-7 March, 2018 / Dubai, UAE

Drawing on research and insights from the world’s leading technology research firm, this is your opportunity to validate, enhance and scale your strategies for digital business and growth.

Join us in March 2018 and position your organization at the pinnacle of global competitiveness!

gartner.com/me/symposium +971 4 559 2406

ISSUE 313 | FEBRUARY 2018

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WHERE TECHNOLOGY MEANS BUSINESS