Computer News Middle East March 2015

issue 278 | march 2015 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

Perfect plan ADMA-OPCO’s Alaeddin Al-Badawna on the importance of thinking ahead

GROUP Chairman and founder Dominic De Sousa

EDITORIAL

GROUP CEO Nadeem Hood

Getting ready for 5G Talk to us:

I’ve just come back from the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, which attracted the movers and shakers of the mobile industry. This year, one of the topics that dominated the show was 5G as the industry gears up for a wide range of mobile applications with differing needs.

I remember attending the show in 2005 when 4G was discussed for the first time. Ten years down the line, 4G has already gone mainstream and the next-generation standard is expected to go commercial in 2025, with pilots appearing as early as 2018. Though the industry seems to have reached a consensus on the definition of 5G, there are hardly any use cases today that can justify the need for it.

Isn’t 4G or 4.5G good enough for all the applications in the current and medium-term? Besides, operators who have invested in 3G haven’t been able to completely monetise 3G yet, let alone 4G. Though the The mobile industry hasn’t done a good industry seems to job of explaining what it envisions to do with have reached a the next-generation of mobile technology. consensus on the While the standards will be hashed out only definition of 5G, next year, the European Commission group there are hardly any has already come out with a vision statement use cases today about what it expects from 5G – it should be that can justify the 100 times faster than LTE, and connect 1,000 need for it. times as many devices. With the advent of 5G, I think one of the good things we are going to see is more spectrum, mixed networks (combining both Wi-Fi and cellular technologies) and a whole new breed of connected devices. The promise here is universal connectivity, which will add a completely different dimension to the Internet of Things.

E-mail: jeevan.thankappan@ cpimediagroup.com

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Perfect Plan Alaeddin Al-Badawna, Manager - IT, ADMA-OPCO, on the importance of thinking ahead

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Our events

EDITORIAL

Now, listen here.

Talk to us:

I’m not sure if people around the world are getting smarter, but at least the devices we use are evolving. At first, we spoke to our machines. We punched in lines of code and asked our devices to calculate answers to our most complex questions.

Then, we reached out across the world, and our offices, to share information in real time. Now, we have taken the next step – M2M communication is the new topic of conversation - and the conversation is happening between our devices.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, but the machines are listening. Recently, an electronics company dispatched a warning to its customers to avoid sharing sensitive information in front of their smart televisions. When a voice activation feature is enabled, the television effectively 'listens' to any sounds in the area, including your private conversations. If this isn’t enough, customers were warned that the television may then send the information it collects to “third parties.”

I don't want It is not actually as creepy as it sounds – the to sound like third party is most likely providing a benign a crackpot service such as text-to-speak. However, this conspiracy listening is not limited to televisions – PC theorist, but the manufacturers are taking hits left and right for machines are selling laptops that record keystrokes and send listening. that information out, and who knows how much Siri knows about our habits.

I think it brings up something a bit more complex – the need for personal responsibility. It is absolutely true that companies need to be more transparent and forthcoming about the data they collect, and what is done with that information, but on the other side of the coin, consumers can’t simply sit back and cry victim each time.

When a purchase is made, it is ultimately up to the consumer to decide if the service provided by, for example, a smart TV, is worth the potential privacy trade-offs.

I find that many of these services are worth it – for the convenience and other provided benefits – but another potential consumer may not. It is up to us to determine what we are willing to give up, and who we are willing to trust, to buy in to the smart world.

E-mail: annie.bricker@ cpimediagroup.com

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Contents

Our Strategic Partners Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic Technology Partner

Strategic Innovation Partner

ISSUE 278 | march 2015

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Al Noor hospitals

Perfect Planning

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Al safeer group

16 Sound solutions

Emitac Enterprise Solutions and HP team up to provide solutions for cloud management. This month, they showed us what they have been up to.

62 Mobile backhaul Fatter pipes are a regional must for cellular networks to keep offering a satisfying experience. Fibre is emerging as best for mobile backhaul networks.

20 Cloud 360 CNME's roadshow comes back to RIyadh, Doha and Dubai to give the region's IT professionals fresh insight into the disruptive technology.

84 Backlog

Most people learn the hard way that they are their own worst enemy. Check our list to be sure that your bad behaviour isn't compromising your email.

22 Perfect prior planning

Alaeddin AL Badawna, Manager - IT, ADMA-OPCO knows that the difference between success and failure lies in the ability to create a solid plan.

37

44 Going Green

Green IT is more than just a passing fad.

Pushing resource conscious IT protocols is not only good for the environment, and may be good for your bottom line as well.

department of transport abu dhabi

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56 Mobile menace

The rise of mobility brings vast opportunities both for enterprises and a connected world, but security best practices need to be a top priority.

NEW SECTIONS 13 CIO Soundbites

Shadow IT - opportunity or threat for regional IT leaders?

71 Vintage tech

Seiko UC-2000 - CNME takes a walk down memory lane 62 CXO Corner

Surya Subramanian, CFO, Emirates NBD, discusses the importance of technology within the bank.

march 2015

7

Column

James Dartnell Online Editor, CNME

Arabian heights

L

ast month I had the pleasure of attending the surprise launch of LinkedIn’s Arabic services at its Business Central Towers office in Dubai.

An air of optimism surrounded the event, with it being billed as a key step forward for providing the regional population access to a wider range of job opportunities.

LinkedIn has not only transformed the hiring process, but has also provided a neat, succinct crossroads for strangers to connect and do business.

With around 350 million active users today, the online professional networking service has burgeoned since its inception in 2003, and Arabic has become the 24th language to be added to its arsenal.

It got me thinking. Yes, this is an important step forward for a service that has been highly disruptive in the HR industry, but shouldn’t there be more

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like it in Arabic, and shouldn’t it have already been launched?

LinkedIn has more than 14 million Middle East and North Africa users today, roughly 3.5 percent of the region’s population.

Perhaps this relatively low penetration is to be expected in an emerging market, but it struck me as odd that nothing had been already done.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation named Arabic as one of its six official languages in 1974. Today it is one of the top ten most used languages in the world with a total of 300 million native speakers.

Given this prominence, LinkedIn’s launch feels a tad belated given the opportunities and growth in the region, especially in light of the fact that the UAE recently jumped 14 places in the ICT development index to 32nd place.

True, it’s easy to argue that with English the main language of business in many parts of the Gulf, most Arabic professionals who would be looking to use the service already can without any difficulties.

Vendors these days are queuing up to ram home the importance of ‘SMAC’ technologies – social, mobility, analytics and cloud.

With the former’s status as a key disruptive technology, services like LinkedIn need to take centre stage in the Arab world in order to bridge the gap to those who are living in rural communities.

Non-English speaking Arabs have to be given the tools to achieve their potential. When they are, we’ll surely see not only the region’s economy benefit, but also the tool-providing tech industry, which will has supported their success.

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CIO Soundbites

Is shadow IT an opportunity or a threat?

Dr Jassim Haji, Director, IT, Gulf Air Shadow IT can undoubtedly be seen as a threat as these ‘stealth’ solutions don’t follow any development methodologies and don’t adhere to any IT policies or procedures.

They suffer from a lack of source code control and versioning. Support and maintenance can’t be guaranteed, and their availability and uptime is not insured or agreed upon. Shadow IT might be considered as a quick - and dirty - solution and will pose a huge risk in the long term.

If critical and sensitive services are deployed in such a manner, the organisation can suffer major setbacks when something goes wrong, which is ultimately likely.

Saji Oommen, Group Director, Information Technology, Albatha Group At this point I think it’s an opportunity. It often results from a lack of trust in IT, which means that other departments seek independent solutions. It’s a way of saying “we’ve identified something that IT couldn’t.” Quite often other teams opt for solutions out of frustration.

This allows IT to look into alternative solutions, and then to make better choices in terms of cost, quality and alignment with the requirements of other departments.

Mubarik Hussain, Head of IT, Petroserv Personally, I think 'threat' is too strong a word, but it's certainly vitally important that shadow IT can align with a business, and its IT infrastructure. If shadow IT fails to do this then a lot of work will need to be done to correct that alignment. Shadow IT tends to see everything from its own point of view, and not that of the business, which is what really matters. This can be problematic, and in the long term will lead to issues that have to be rectified.

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short takes

Month in view

Gang steals $1 billion in largest ever cyber-theft A cybercriminal gang has stolen up to $1 billion from banks in at least 25 countries over the last two years, infiltrating networks with malware and spying on employees’ computers to facilitate large wire transfers, Kaspersky Lab has revealed.

The security vendor said the gang penetrated deeply into the banks’ networks, taking time to learn about internal procedures to make their fraudulent activity less suspicious.

In some cases, the gang learned about wire transfer systems by watching administrators’ computers over video.

The gang members are suspected to be from Russia, Ukraine, other parts of Europe and China.

Kaspersky said that Interpol and Europol are involved in the investigation.

Bank computers would be infected with malware through spear-phishing attacks, and as much as $10 million was stolen in a raid at a time. Funds were transferred using online banking or e-payment systems to the gang’s own accounts or to other banks in the U.S. and China.

In other instances, the attackers had deep control within a bank’s accounting systems, inflating account balances in order to mask thefts.

WHAT’S HOT?

Dell launches converged appliance

Dell has announced the release of its second set of XC Series of web-scale converged appliances.

The solutions are designed to support customers deploying virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), private cloud and Big Data.

The appliances offer customers solutions based on Dell’s PowerEdge 13th generation server technology combined with Nutanix software and Dell global services and support.

The appliances integrate enterprise-class

IBM due $4 billion disruptive tech drive IBM will dedicate $4 billion in spending this year to cloud, analytics and mobile technologies, as it struggles with seismic shifts that are changing the computing landscape it once dominated.

IBM’s sales declined to about $93 billion last year, from just over $98 billion in 2013, thanks to falls in some of its traditional businesses and the sale of two big hardware

Oracle makes Big Data push

Oracle has announced four new products focusing on the intersection of Hadoop, NoSQL and SQL technologies.

Oracle Big Data Discovery is designed to serve as the “visual face of Hadoop”. It lets users explore data from multiple sources but then also prepare and analyse it and share the results, from a single tool.

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storage, compute and hypervisor resources into a single solution.

The XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances offers customers a range of integrated solutions for various workloads in virtualised environments.

This includes the new XC Series XC630 and XC730xd, built on Dell PowerEdge 13th generation server technology.

The new XC630 supports more virtual desktop users in half the rack space compared to Dell’s debut XC720xd.

divisions to Lenovo and GlobalFoundries.

Last year, its cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security sales grew 16 percent to $25 billion, accounting for 27 percent of revenue.

On the mobile front, IBM’s recently established partnership with Apple will be a precursor for similar alliances, Robert LeBlanc, the new senior vice president for IBM Cloud, recently said.

UAE mGovernment launches training programme The UAE mGovernment has announced the launch of its 2015 mGovernment training programme.

The programme will consist of a variety of events and courses, designed specifically to meet the needs of all parties across the UAE relevant to the mGovernment initiative.

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82 percent of UAE IT Heads vulnerable According to a new survey commissioned

by F5 Networks, 82 percent of surveyed IT decision-makers believe their organisation was more vulnerable than ever to cybersecurity threats.

82 percent ranked their organisation’s vulnerability to cybercrime, hacking and hacktivism as “very” or “extremely” vulnerable, and 79 percent agreed that it is more difficult than ever to protect their

Samsung CEO praises UAE innovation Samsung Electronics CEO Boo Keun Yoon compared the UAE’s culture of innovation with that of his home country South Korea at the third annual Government Summit in Dubai.

He observed that the UAE and Korea share the same attitude towards innovation. “Though our roots are far away in Korea, there are a number of cultural similarities between UAE and Korea,” he said. “The ties that bind us are deeper. True friendship is having one mind and one goal, but in two bodies. The UAE and Korea share one mind and one goal when it comes to innovation.”

“We always stay hungry for success. We follow the same model as the UAE – of imagining and doing. That attitude has taken us far.”

Avaya extends SDN offerings

Avaya has extended its SDN arsenal with an architecture and supporting products designed to simplify enterprise connectivity and application provisioning.

SDN Fx architecture is comprised of new and existing products intended to ease the onboarding of users and devices to the network.

The architecture is built on Avaya’s existing Shortest Path Bridging-based fabric networking technology but also includes new offerings to extend SDN from the data centre to the network edge.

A new capability in Avaya’s Fabric Connect SPB-based software is Fabric Extend. Fabric Extend allows users to extend the SPB fabric across an IP-based data centre, campus or branch network while protecting existing networking investments, Avaya says.

LinkedIn launches Arabic version LinkedIn launched the Arabic version of its services at its new regional headquarters in Dubai.

The launch of Arabic – the first bi-directional language on LinkedIn – brings the service’s number of available languages to 24.

LinkedIn’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division has seen its users grow from five million members in October 2012 when the company opened their local office, to more than 14 million today.

“The launch of an Arabic version will provide

Lenovo ‘Superfish’ sabotages laptops Lenovo pre-loaded software on some consumer laptops that exposed users to possible attack.

Superfish injects product recommendations into search results.

Superfish acts as a man-in-the-middle proxy between users and those secure websites.

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organisations from associated security threats.

Meanwhile, 8 percent are completely confident that their organisation has consistent IT security measures across its entire IT network.

“Traditional security methods such as next generation firewalls and other reactive measures are losing the fight against a new breed of attacks,” said Garth Braithwaite, Middle East Sales Director, F5 Networks.

In its 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey, professional services firm PwC identified cybercrime as the second most common form of economic crime reported in the Middle East.

The top cybersecurity challenges listed in F5 Networks’s survey include changing motivations for hacking (33 percent of respondents), the virtualisation of server desktops and networks (31 percent) and difficulty in managing a variety of security tools (29 percent).

a more relevant experience to our members and customers in the region,” said Ali Matar, Head of MENA Talent Solutions, LinkedIn. “Our aim is to create economic opportunities for every member of the global workforce. This will open up opportunities for hundreds of millions of Arabic speaking professionals to connect and engage with other professionals and employers across the world, and for companies to find and attract the best talent, connect their brand with our audience, and engage with their customers.”

‘Incredibly advanced’ hackers hit ME infrastructure

WHAT’S NOT?

A cyber-espionage group has infiltrated key institutions. Kaspersky Lab released a report that said the tools were created by the ‘Equation’ group.

Countries hit the most include Iran, Russia, Pakistan. Targets included the military, telecommunications and government.

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EVENT

Emitac

customer champions As customers move their most imporant services to virtualised environments, IT departments can be overwhelmed with service managment. Enter Emitac Enterprise Solutions and HP to help organisations see in the clouds. n February 25th, experts and customers gathered at the Conrad Hotel in Dubai for an exclusive interactive discussion. Co-hosted by HP and Emitac Enterprise Solutions (EES), the Cloud Champion’s Exclusive Customer Roundtable was a session to bring together experts in the field of cloud computing and end-users that have experienced success in moving into the cloud.

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The region has been, for many years, moving into the cloud and customers are now leveraging cloud services to transform their businesses.

Since 1976, EES has been delivering technology solutions to the region, and now acts as a systems integrator and technology provider for many regional organisations.

Miguel Angel Villalonga, CEO, EES, started off the half-day event with an

opening address that outlined how the company has used its philosophy and core IT competencies to guide their infrastructure offerings. “We are embedding a cloud flavour in all of our practices through the enablement of our technology partners,” he said.

Tony Prince, Cloud Director, HP, then took the stage to lead an interactive cloud strategy session.

Covering the overall cloud market www.cnmeonline.com

in the region, Prince addressed the challenges that IT leaders currently have when deploying new apps.

“There are some 15 steps to achieving this goal,” he says, “there are clearly efficiency issues.” He pointed out another challenge that IT departments face – the influx of enormous amounts of data. The demand, he said, is increasing and the IT department has to support that demand. “In spite of all these issues, HP and Emitac can help address them with HP Helion.”

HP Helion, he explained, is the umbrella brand under which the company delivers all of its products to create a hybrid IT environment to its customers. Prince explained how HP Helion has been helping customers transform their businesses and do less with more. “We have taken our existing technologies that were based on open stack under one stack,” Prince explained. www.cnmeonline.com

Next up, to all services can be There are some 15 demonstrate the steps to launching managed via one product on hand, using HP new apps. There are portal Mohamad Baalbaki, solutions. clearly efficiency Middle East Cloud The conversation issues. The demand then turned Solutions Sales Lead from HP took interactive, is increasing and the stage. Baalbaki with questions the IT department outlined how HP has to support that and stories Helion can move attendees. demand. In spite of from some traditionally onQuestions about all these issues, HP HP’s cloud services premises solutions to and Emitac can help and demonstrations the cloud in order to cope with expanding address them with from HP and Emitac demands and experts helped to HP Helion. We are stagnant or shrinking helping customers shed light on what budgets. “Rather HP and Emitac transform their than taking solutions can do to help businesses and do all organisations from different less with more. vendors, IT can be manage and managed in the cloud view their cloud through HP Helion services in a more cloud computing from end to end,” streamlined and, hopefully a new and he said. Baalbaki demonstrated how agile way. march 2015

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March 2015

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Seiko began producing digital watches in 1973, and was the leader in digital watch manufacturing at the height of the computer fever of the 1980s. Their first model to provide on-board storage was the D409 – a respectable looking digital watch with a simple dot matrix LCD screen that displayed seven different messages. The UC-2000, or Wrist pc, was released in 1984, and was Seiko’s true attempt to create a wearable computer. The watch itself could be mounted to a pocket-sized keyboard and pricier models even included a spool-fed printer, 4K of RAM and a 26K of ROM via a plug-in Application ROM pack. The idea that you could attach your watch to a keyboard, and even a printer, was absolutely revolutionary and it ultimately paved the way to the rise in wearables we see today. Perhaps a stepping stone between the traditional digital watch and what was to come, the Seiko UC-2000 packed quite the punch for its time.

Seiko UC-2000 Wrist PC

Vintage Tech

EVENT

cloud 360

Cloud clarified CNME’s Cloud 360 Roadshow series returned to Riyadh, Doha and Dubai last month, with a range of internationally-renowned experts giving their take on how Middle Eastern IT leaders can optimise their business with fresh technologies and processes. pecial guest Terence Sathyanarayan, Director of IT, Drake & Scull International, kicked off proceedings by delivering an enduser’s account of experience with the cloud.

“In 2011 we built our first enterprise cloud, and by 2014 we had completed our ERP implementation,” he said. “We’re in the era of ubiquitous computing, where networking

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and telecom companies provide a smooth flow where everyone can be connected to the core. We currently have all aspects of public, private and hybrid cloud, and are trying to provide Software-as-a-Service, Platformas-a-Service and Infrastructure-asa-Service. When we went into the cloud, we outsourced a lot of cloud management, and concentrated on our core business. Cloud provides convenience, but security must be

a main focus. We need to consider issues such as threshold policy, interoperability issues, hidden costs - data costs in the UAE and KSA are tremendously high compared to the US and Europe - unexpected behaviour and security issues.”

Jean Claude Bejjani, HCM Cloud LOB Manager, SAP, was next to the stage, who discussed his firm’s take on cloud strategy. “The market is shifting to one of innovation in the digital www.cnmeonline.com

world,” he said. “Today’s generation has been born with technology and expects it in the business. Our data is doubling every 18 months or less. We need to innovate – some Fortune 500 companies have disappeared because they did not innovate. 75 percent of new enterprise IT spend will be cloudbased or hybrid by 2016. The business solutions we need for an organisation are not an IT decision only, but a business decision too. The CMO, CPO, CHRO, and VP Sales are the ones who are talking about technology.”

Jedox AG’s Chief Technology Officer Matthias Kraemer flew in from Germany to discuss the possibilities of cloud-based business intelligence.

“The aim of business intelligence is to analyse, improve and optimise,” he said. “Its benefits include no upfront hardware costs, scalability and lower costs of testing and development infrastructure. Cloud BI encourages self-service.” www.cnmeonline.com

Plugging the benefits of cloudbased collaborative communications was Pradeep Angeveetil, Regional Manager MEA, Lifesize. “The importance of working from any device today cannot be underestimated,” he said. “”Cloud UC sidesteps the need for deploying and managing video conferencing infrastructure and equipment, is affordable, and provides a connected experience.”

Hüseyin Özel, Fortify Sales Manager, Greece, Turkey and MEA, HP, highlighted the importance of application security on the cloud.

“There’s currently a 10 percent yearon-year increase on the cost of each breach – and a 25 percent increase in the number of breaches,” he said. “The combination of riskier enterprises and more advanced hackers only results in more attacks. 84 percent of breaches occur at the application layer, so this is a major concern.”

Marwa El Masry, of Microsoft's Data centre & Cloud Team, chose to highlight the possibilities of exploiting the omnipresence of networks and the explosion of devices. “The world is now a giant network of ubiquitous collaboration,” she said. “There is infinite data, applications and devices, but finite time.”

Veeam’s Middle East Presales Consultant Mehmet Gonullu rounded off proceedings by framing the important components of a modern data centre. “Virtualisation, modern storage and cloud should be a given,” he said. “In the always-on world we expect 24/7 operations, and have no tolerance for downtime – the average cost of which is $300,000 per hour.”

Also speaking at the Riyadh leg of the show were Javed Abbasi, Principal Consultant, GISBA; Mohamad Rizk, Presales Consultant, Middle East, Veeam Software; and Adel Lafi, HCM Solutions Sales Manager, SAP. march 2015

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A Different Perspective in Distribution Services

CIO

Spotlight

Perfect Planning His first days as an international student in Ann Arbor, Michigan were a bit trying. However, it was his determination to move outside his comfort zone that made Alaeddin Al-Badawna, Manager - IT the detail-oriented professional he is today. n the summer of 1985, in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alaeddin Al-Badawna reached breaking point. “I cried,” the now Manager - IT of ADMA-OPCO recalls, “I’ll tell you, I really did.” At 17 years old, Al-Badawna had moved to the United States by himself to attend the University of Michigan. He had arrived

I

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CIO

Spotlight 1985 Studied English in Ann Arbor, Michigan

decided to turn his mistake into an that day, in the summer, to improve opportunity. “What I learned that his English before classes began. day is to plan ahead. I learned that I “I arrived in the US, and needed to arm myself with as much successfully took a taxi to my information and as many details as dormitory,” he remembers, “but I possibly could before moving into when I arrived, I learned that I a situation.” Al-Badawna has held had moved in four days too early.” this as one of his most important Thankfully, a university staffer took philosophies to this day. pity on him, and allowed him to His interest in technology, move into his dormitory, room 416. however, blossomed long before “I remember this clearly,” he says, that moment in Michigan. He grew “because this day was a turning point up in Abu Dhabi – his father was a in my life.” secretary to Sheikh Shakhbut. His In his excitement of being in a father was there new country, to celebrate the he went out to I remember this first oil shipment explore. Later clearly because this from Abu Dhabi, that night, as and was part the sun began to day was a turning the region's set, the nerves point in my life. What of history. One kicked in. “My day, his father friends in the I learned that day came home UAE always told is to plan ahead. I with a piece me to never be learned that I needed of technology out after dark that excited in the US, and to arm myself with Al-Badawna I didn’t know as much information like nothing where I was.”

He resolved to and as many details before. “It was a car phone,” he find a policeman as I possibly could recalls. “I was and ask to be before moving into a amazed that directed back we could drive to his building. situation. around and still “But I couldn’t make phone calls, remember the right from the phone.” name of my dormitory.”

Al-Badawna recognised then that On his own, Al-Badawna finally the region was entering an era that found his way home. Alone, in a would rely heavily on technology. “I dorm room, far from home, Alwanted to be a part of that,” he says, Badawna realised that he was at a “I wanted to be on the ground floor crossroads. “I could either give up, of the UAE’s move into the age of or I could learn from my mistake,” he technology.” says. It is clear today, with his keen To that end, he opted to study attention to detail, that Al-Badawna

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1989 Completed BS in Computer Science from University of Michigan

1990 Returned to the UAE

1991 Began at ADMA

1994 Automated reception area

2002 Promoted to Head of IT Planning and Projects

2003 Implemented ERP system

2006 Promoted to Manager of IT

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CIO

Spotlight

computer science in university. “My father encouraged me to stay close to home, and to attend university in Al Ain like my older brother had done, but I had other plans,” says Al-Badawna. In keeping with his desire to be first, he was determined to start a family trend of studying abroad. His neighbour was studying at the University of Michigan, and with a bit of advice, he decided that would be his place of study.

He was accepted on the course, and, aside from a few early planning mishaps, his university years were outstanding. So much so, in fact, that upon his graduation in 1989, he was recognised by the Outstanding College Students of America and graduated with honours.

“At that point,” he remembers, “I was offered a number of positions, including one at IBM. As happy as I was to be offered the job, I wanted to return home.” Still, he didn’t forget about Michigan. “Later, I helped my younger brothers go to the University of Michigan, and other universities in the US.” In 1990, upon his return to the UAE, he was offered a job at GASCO. “I turned it down,” he says, “at the time there was a call to join the army, and I enrolled with the military police.” Two days after joining up, however, ADMA called him and offered him a job. He opted to leave the military police and join ADMA in December of 1990.

He was hired as an Oracle developer in information system planning. In 1990, ADMA was almost completely technology-free.

“I brought PCs to the company,” he

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with new innovations to keep the says, though his early project did company moving forward.” not stop there. He also implemented In his role as CIO he has introduced some of the first automated systems a number of new initiatives, including in the Gulf. the use of internationally recognised In 1994, he automated the standards and best practices. “I was company’s reception area, a system met with some resistance when I that remains in place today. He also brought in new ideas like that,” he moved ADMA from using mainframes admits, “but part of being in this into a client server architecture. His role is understanding how to change managers noticed his innovative people’s minds.” spirit and moved him forward to Though he strives to remain on the technical services and support in cutting-edge, he still holds the moment 2000. in Ann Arbor in His upward mind. “I never climb at ADMA At that point I was take on a new continued steadily. In offered a number of project or solution without planning 2002, he was positions, including first. I don’t need promoted to one at IBM. As happy to make the same Head of IT Planning and as I was to be offered mistakes that others around Projects. There the job, I wanted me have made. If he managed the something is not implementation to return home. properly tested, of a new ERP Later I helped my or if someone system in 2003.

By 2005, he had younger brothers go has failed with it before, we been given the to the University of simply don’t move newly created Michigan, and other forward,” he position of Department IT universities in the US. explains.

His forward Manager. thinking and Finally, tendancy to plan should not be in 2006, he was promoted to his mistaken for fear or an over cautious current position of CIO. “I have tendancy - he still recognises the value seen a great deal of change in the in taking risks. “To young CIOs, or IT IT world since I began,” he says. professionals who want to become Most notably, he points out that a CIO, I remind them to always think the IT department has gone from outside the box,” he says. Planning being reactive to proactive. “We and attention to detail are essential, aren’t just coming around when but a clear plan has never stopped Alsomething breaks and needs fixing,” Badawna from taking a risk. he explains, “IT has to come up www.cnmeonline.com

HP Software CIO Speaker series Mamoun Al Homssey, CIO, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank

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CASE STUDY

Al noor hospitals

Wissam Ismail, Head of ICT, Al Noor Hospitals Group

A Healthy house Al Noor Hospitals Group has long been a leading healthcare provider in the UAE. As they look to expand beyond the borders of the Emirates, Wissam Ismail, Head of ICT is determined to keep the company's IT infrastructure robust and healthy.

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A

l Noor Hospital has a history of pushing the edge of healthcare technology.

Until now, much of their IT infrastructure has been custom built in-house. However, recently, Al Noor Group has implemented an SAP ERP system that will automate it's Patient Registration and back office operations as well as an SAP HANA system that will analyse the massive amounts of data generated by the company every day. Seeking solutions from an outside source may be new for Al Noor Hospital, Head of ICT Wissam Ismail is confident that the move will ultimately be a boon for all Al Noor patients and employees.

Since its inception in 1985, Al Noor Hospital, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, has provided continuous care for its patients. Building on its success in previous years, Al Noor Clinic opened its Khalifa Street branch in 2001. Then in 2006, an Al Ain campus was opened to meet the needs of the communities of the greater emirate. In 2008, Al Noor continued its expansion, opening its Airport Road branch in Abu Dhabi in 2008.

According to Wissam Ismail, Head of ICT, Al Noor Hospital Group, the organisation is going to continue on the path of expansion. “I think I can tell you now,” he says, “that we plan on opening a clinic in Oman.” This will be the first Al Noor facility outside of the UAE. All told, since it’s original founding

by Dr. Kassem Alom, Al Noor Hospital Group has acquired some 15 polyclinics and sees some two million individual patient visits per year. As one of the largest private clinics in the region, Al Noor’s administration is dedicated to keeping its patients www.cnmeonline.com

healthy – and to that end, Ismail knows that they need a healthy and robust IT infrastructure on which to rely.

Al Noor has always recognised the importance of technology in the healthcare sector. In an effort to meet the unique needs of their hospitals and other facilities, they have developed a suite of custom software, built all in house. “As a group, we’ve wanted to do everything ourselves pioneering healthcare IT in Abu Dhabi,” explains Ismail, “because we know what we need, and we have the technical expertise to create it perfectly to match the demands of our end users.” As of 2011, the company ran a web of about 30 bespoke hospital management and back office applications.

The result of having custom built IT solutions has been quite a success and has allowed the company stay on the cutting edge of healthcare technology. Their extensive list of awards and achievements, including the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award – Gold category – belies the effort and dedication that the administration has put in to making the patient experience as pleasant as possible.

One of the most important implementations in the history of Al Noor Hospitals was the custom built Electronic Records Management system implemented in 1999. This implementation truly set the tone for Al Noor’s future with healthcare technology. Fast forward to today, and that same desire to stay modern is still in play. “When I joined in 2010,” recalls Ismail, “I knew the challenge would be ensuring that we provide the best possible solutions in an expanding operation.”

UAE Health facts Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the UAE, constituting

28%

of total deaths; other major causes are accidents and injuries, malignancies, and congenital anomalies.

The World Bank ranked Dubai and Abu Dhabi as being the

2nd & 3rd most popular medical tourism destinations in the region

1 out of every 4 citizens of the United Arab Emirates has diabetes The UAE stands at number

27

in world health systems ranking of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Life expectancy at birth in the UAE is

78.3 years

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Al noor hospitals

Unfortunately, the long term result of a well-intentioned push to provide custom solutions for end users was a sacrifice in streamlined systems. “Several of our bespoke applications were in multiple software branches and in geographic data silos,” explains Ismail. “Based on the projected growth plans of at least doubling in size through organic growth and acquisitions, it became essential that all of our business information systems be integrated into a single technology platform using a common database and common development environment.”

Enter SAP. After an exhaustive RFP process, Ismail and his team decided that SAP’s HANA was the optimal solution to meet their growing needs. “SAP was fully integrated,” says Ismail, “and has essentially been a one-stop shop for our computing needs.”

Thus began the roll-out of SAP HANA into all Al Noor facilities. “The process wasn’t difficult,” says Ismail, “but I would say that there were some challenges.” For one, the company, and more specifically its end users, were used to their technology solutions tailored to their specific needs. While the solutions offered by an outside vendor were customised, it may have lacked some of that “homemade” feel. “It was a shift to go from in-house solutions to products from the market,” admits Ismail.

In spite of some shifting pains, the move was worth it. The most notable improvement, says Ismail, is the ability to access data instantly.

This is particularly felt in the finance department. “Now, what would have taken hours or even days takes just a few minutes,” explains Ismail. www.cnmeonline.com

CASE STUDY

Essentially, the Now, what would have a common platform is department is taken hours or even paramount for able to obtain an instant snapshot days takes just a few an organisation such as Al of where minutes. This allows Noor Hospitals. they stand. departments like “In short,” “This allows departments finance to concentrate says Ismail, like finance to on operation and core “it is a gamechanger. We are concentrate on business objectives committed to the operation and core business rather than spending future of data analytics, and we objectives,” says their time compiling want to leverage Ismail, “rather data from disparate this technology than spending to improve their time systems for their the patient compiling data reports. experience from disparate across our systems for their facilities.” reports.”

Now that this latest The benefits are not limited to the implementation is underway, Ismail finance department, of course. The is looking into the next technology platform also comes with enhanced adoption. “We are developing a Recovery Point Objective and shorter mobile app,” he reveals. Though the Recovery Time Objective. Powered app is in its nascent stages, it aims to

by Business Objects Dashboards, the provide users with the ability to book clinical operational and financial end appointments, search for physicians users of Al Noor Hospitals will be and, eventually, cut down their wait able to access the information they times. “Not only will they be able to need to strengthen and support their see their closest location, they will be operations. able to determine who has the longest As the implementation matures, waiting list. In that way, our patients the benefits can be seen beyond can decide for themselves which the back offices of the company. facility they will use.”

“Though the improvements may Though it may have been a bit seem subtle to patients, they will of a jump for Al Noor Hospitals make a big difference,” says Ismail. to move from in-house, bespoke For one, auto-ordering will allow solutions to an outside vendor, the pharmacies and facilities to remain risk has paid off. “It is important, stocked at all times. “What that means particularly in health care, to know for a patient,” explains Ismail, “is what is happening at all times,” says that any pharmaceutical or medical Ismail. With new infrastructure equipment that they need will always that provides real-time actionable be available.” information, Al Noor Hospitals can The ability to analyse data on always take their own temperature. demand, and to share that data across march 2015

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CASE STUDY

Al safeer group

Retail rapport With 67 stores across the UAE, Oman and Qatar, Al Safeer Group has thousands of customers in its premises every day. Keen to gain crucial insights that could drive “customer value� and benefit the company, Chief Information Officer Kumar Prasoon implemented a Big Data and heuristics solution to optimise business processes.

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www.cnmeonline.com

A quantitative approach to any business is of paramount importance,” Prasoon says. “I believe that if you cannot quantify what you are saying then it is worthless. The modern paradigm of technology – Big Data and the Internet of Things in particular – is all about quantity and making strong decisions from behavioural and transactional processes. Anything which can be quantified enables business decisions to be quantified.”

The complexities of market dynamics and consumer behaviour, as well disparity between the company’s supply chain and retailers were key problems that Al Safeer had faced.

With the UAE, Qatar and Oman having separate marketing warehouses, and with products being sourced from different countries, Prasoon knew Al Safeer had to get all parties on the same page. “There was a limited corporate visibility of store affairs,” Prasoon says. "If the people in control of the company are unable to see what is happening on an operational level, then their ability to make strong business decisions will be hampered."

His belief in smooth communications throughout levels of the company was a key driver for change. “Top-down discussions are absolutely crucial,” he says.

“Information flow must be uniform between senior management to operations to middle management; strategic discussions must be taken in a clear manner. Defining parameters in advance of a project is crucial for a corporate governance strategy, and so a suite of risks can be mitigated by mapping business processes.”

In April 2012 Prasoon and Al www.cnmeonline.com

Safeer’s IT team embarked on a journey to devise a “Big Data modelling, heuristics and predictive modeling with artificial intelligence” solution that would cover a number of aspects of the company. Among them were predictive replenishment, which aimed to optimise the use of shelf and store space as well as product placement via the use of Big Data.

“We wanted to realise benefits from the use of Big Data algorithms, data mining and pattern recognition capabilities inherent in sophisticated space management solutions,” Prasoon says. "The retail business data sets that we have to deal with are characterised by vast volumes, high velocities, a large variety and unknown veracity."

The solution would also identify clusters of similarly performing stores and product groups. Prasoon wanted to employ space trials, which would enable retailers to map demand data against space variants, which would allow space elasticity based on demand curves for those clusters.

Oracle Financial applications would form an integral part of Prasoon’s plan. “It allowed us to build our own heterogeneous retail framework, so we could create systems that could provide intelligent decisions for retail operations, pricing and promotions,” he says. This

would feature auto invoicing which would be fed into the back office and could generate payable invoices.

An integrated banking solution would also be key, to help retailers plan payment strategies.

As is the case with many Chief Information Officers, Prasoon faced difficulties in convincing the company’s executive management to greenlight the $200,000 project. “It’s crucial that anyone can own success or failure of a project,” he says. “From the outset you have to define a map for this; you need a clearly defined memo from top management on ways in which the project will be a success.

They have to own the solution in order to be convinced, and if they lose interest, so will everyone.”

A recurrent theme of Prasoon's methodology is his passion for scientific and mathematical methods and reasoning. Not content with merely running the company’s IT operations, he has devised a mathematical equation to convey his hypothesis. “’Customer value’ is directly proportional to the degree of tangible products moved in store,” he says. This concept is driven by the belief that by streamlining operations behind the scenes, he is able to enrich the customer’s experience.

“The quality of our operations and efficiency needs to allow the customer to become more efficient. The quality of our call centre and CRM is a prime

“A quantitative approach to any business is of paramount importance. I believe that if you cannot quantify what you are saying then it is worthless.”

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Al safeer group

67 stores across UAE, Oman and Qatar

$200,000

CASE STUDY

2012 year Prasoon’s programme began

cost of the venture

example of this.

“Top-down discussions organisation. will reveal Get it wrong, are absolutely crucial. Time what the next and you’ll Information flow must necessary steps have unhappy be uniform between in this journey customers, will be.” which makes senior management In spite of them less to operations to this progressive efficient.” middle management; attitude to the Although strategic discussions change, Prasoon the deployment does believe has officially must be taken in a that what been completed clear manner.” already has - via a blend of been achieved Microsoft, HP has been a major step forward for and Oracle technologies, Prasoon the company. “The move has been does not see the installation phase as so beneficial on a number of fronts,” finished. “This is a programme, not Prasoon says. “We’ve managed a project,” he says. “Data quality will to align our business processes, forever improve. The optimisation of have gained superior data quality business processes and enhancement management, and have successfully of customer value are not finite. In organised all of our vendors’, order to achieve a pyramidal control suppliers’ and contractors’ data. of a business, you need a scalable Communication channels throughout enterprise architecture and a smooth levels of the company have become information architecture in the

www.cnmeonline.com

streamlined and this has saved valuable man hours.”

Al Safeer now has a clearer understanding of its shelf planning, and improved visibility of product behaviour. The implementation has enabled better layouts of stores to be implemented, which benefits customers, as well as the company’s balance sheet. “We’re able to work out profit per metre squared; moving and non-moving products, how certain products do well in certain areas,” Prasoon says. "We were lacking that kind of efficiency beforehand, which was ultimately wasteful on our behalf. Now things are very different."

Prasoon has done “all the necessary prerequisites” for the move to Oracle Retail, which he is eager to make. “The foundations are there, and this will be the next step to having a full mobile cloud which will further drive our business,” he says. march 2015

35

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Department of transport

CASE STUDY

TECH TRAVELLED With the organisation’s data centre archaic and inefficient, Saeed Al Ghailani, Head of Infrastructure and Telecoms, Department of Transport Abu Dhabi, knew change was a must. When the arm moved to a new office in Bain Al Jessrain, he took the opportunity to modernise and streamline IT operations.

Saeed Al Ghailani, Head of Infrastructure and Telecoms, Department of Transport Abu Dhabi.

www.cnmeonline.com

The utilities for our old data centre were housed on a balcony in Al Bateen,” Al Ghailani says.

“The data centre itself was severely limited, power-hungry, and kept in a residential building, with poor airflow.”

Looking back, it's easy to chastise the state of Department of Transport Abu Dhabi's IT services. Al Ghailani has march 2015

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Department of transport

48

hour stint of managed downtime for transition

CASE STUDY

4.4

92

million AED saved in physical server costs

percent of servers virtualised following the move of initiatives had overseen a vast “We were keen to shift to be put on hold transformation away from a reactive as a result.” over the last few Downtime was a years, and DoT's stance on managing frequent IT infrastructure our infrastructure occurrence, and has come a long to a proactive one, heavily way. He recalls where our capacity disruptive to the extent to planning could be DoT’s which his team done in advance, with operations. was stretched to Consider ensure the data a holistic view of our the government centre's smooth IT. The design would arm's operation before have to be modular beginnings any change was and efficient.” and it becomes made. “Every easy to weekend during understand why the quality of the summer we had to do extra work their IT infrastructure was lagging. to maintain it," he says. "A whole host www.cnmeonline.com

Established in 2006, DoT has experienced rapid business growth in the last few years, which has necessitated more complex IT solutions to cope with demand. As operations expanded, the business swiftly outgrew its initially basic requirements, and scalability in its IT would become a crucial concern.

DoT looked to shift from its original site to a new facility in Bain Al Jessrain, and the IT department would not only be forced to move, but would be an essential catalyst for the whole installation process.

With DoT turning over a new leaf in terms of their data centre, the company’s operations could not be march 2015

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CASE STUDY

Department of transport

disrupted as they had been before, and for this to take place, a smooth integration was needed.

Al Ghailani was always clear on what he needed from the new facility, “We wanted to implement a highly available and scalable data centre,” he says. “It would have to be cost-effective and efficient in terms of power, cabling and OPEX. We were keen to shift away from a reactive stance on managing our infrastructure to a proactive one, where our capacity planning could be done in advance, with a holistic view of our IT. The design would have to be modular and efficient.”

He was given from the end of July 2013 until the start of December to complete the transition to the new facility. “If the IT infrastructure was not ready, we would not be able to shift the data centre,” Al Ghailani says. “As soon as operations started in the new building, everything would have to be up and running without any downtime.”

DoT’s IT team opted for a 48-hour stint of “managed downtime” when there would be no active users – the weekend before the UAE’s 42nd National Day on 2nd December.

The move required Al Ghailani and his team to be diligent in their preparation. Easing the transition, all the new data centre equipment was shifted by air to the new site.

Following a diligent and concerted effort from his team which led to a successful installation, Al Ghailani has been in no doubt as to the project’s marked impact on DoT’s IT. The transition has served as a major leap forward in terms of IT infrastructure progression, and has provided a tangible return on investment. “We’ve 40

march 2015

raised our percentage of virtualised integrated with Schneider’s network servers from 13 to 92,” he says. “This operations centre and help desk. “In this has saved us 4.4 million AED on the vein, we’re better able to diagnose, precost of physical servers.” His new data empt, and then avoid issues,” he says. “If centre is now larger, experiences less I go to sleep at night and a fault occurs, downtime, and has a lower carbon I’ll wake up and find Schneider at my footprint, which is a massive boost in door waiting to fix the problem.” a region not known for its green IT With the sharp increase in the initiatives. number of virtualised servers, The Department’s IT offerings capacity planning has now become a are now much more in-sync with the breeze for Al Ghailani. “It used to take company’s overall objectives. Having us days or even weeks to allocate data been hamstrung by physical space and and applications to each rack,” he power constraints, Al Ghailani now says. “DCIM gives us this choice and has a platform to introduce a range makes life much easier, meaning it of modern software and applications. takes little effort to move components “Beforehand, if we’d needed CRM, across racks.” Meanwhile, greater archiving or ERP, it would’ve been a redundancy has also reduced the case of us not having the server space amount of downtime his team to install them,” he says. “Now that experiences. is not an issue for us; these kinds of Looking forward, Al Ghailani is initiatives are no longer on hold. This confident that the enhancements has been a massive value-add for the have laid the foundations for future business and is a major step in the technological demands. “Hopefully we’ll right direction in terms of providing be able to orchestrate and automate our excellent IT infrastructure customer he “As soon as operations services,” service.” says. “We’ll started in the new Al Ghailani look to move to building, everything credits Schneider software-defined Electric’s would have to be up networking Data Centre and a softwareand running without Infrastructure defined data any downtime.”

Management centre, and will solution also look at more for playing a key role in DoT’s IT smart services.” He believes this smart advancements. The ability to monitor element is a game-changer for the DoT’s infrastructure via mobile devices future of IT and the UAE, “Everything has not only enhanced their capacity is going smart now,” he says. “Kids for threat prevention, but has also nowadays want more than my given Al Ghailani valuable peace of generation did. Apps, data and social mind. “Now we don’t need nearly as are all multiplying, and as a government many technicians; our staff can detect a entity we have a duty to provide smart problem in the data centre even if they services. If you go to GITEX now you are away from the office,” he says. In line see the difference Smart services are with this, the DCIM solution has been making - it's profound.” www.cnmeonline.com

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Blog

Winning the IoT Tug of War In the next few years, businesses may live or die by IoT. Handle it well and your company thrives. Mess it up and you may be faced with an exodus of customers and employees, writes Derek Manky, Global Security Strategist, Fortinet

There has been plenty of buzz around the Internet of Things (IoT) lately, with discussions around the business opportunities it offers, the conveniences it can potentially bring to the public, and of course, the implications on privacy and data security.

IoT brings about several benefits, including real-time insight/ intelligence, 24/7 availability, automation, convenience and cost effectiveness. Enterprises, government agencies and consumers can all benefit from it.

The market opportunities are enormous. IDC forecasts that the worldwide market for IoT solutions will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.

Data loss through IoT a threat to the

business IoT will transform the way we do things − be it communicating with people, collaborating or transacting.

Many innovative solutions and services will also be created around IoT. The downside, however, is that IoT will bring substantially higher security risks. First of all, IoT puts a lot more information and activities online. These bits of information and activities can be easily compromised due to two reasons − the exposure of the network is vastly increased with the introduction of IoT devices, and the software powering the IoT devices is often insecure and easily hackable.

According to a recent Fortinet global survey on IoT, for instance, 62 percent of the respondents said that www.cnmeonline.com

they would feel “completely violated and extremely angry to the point where I would take action” if they learn that an IoT device in their home was secretly collecting information about them and sharing it with others.

If a known IoT device collects data, 66 percent of the respondents insist that only they themselves or parties to whom they have given permission be allowed to access those data.

IoT devices easily hackable

IoT devices are a cinch to break into because they employ a wide variety of modules and common libraries that are usually open source. They also have a tendency to use newer protocols like Universal Plug n Play (UPnP) which have more flaws than older and more established protocols.

Secondly, most IoT manufacturers do not design or build their devices with security in mind, and do not have the necessary response mechanisms when their devices are breached.

Large software vendors like Microsoft and Adobe, for example, have been traditional attack targets and therefore have built secure development lifecycles and frequent patch release cycles. If their software gets hit with a vulnerability, they have product security incident response teams (PSIRT) to respond promptly to the issue.

In addition, these large software vendors have built many security controls into their products to make it harder for attacks to succeed.

Adobe Reader, for instance, now has a sandbox included to provide a

higher level of resistance to attack. IoT devices usually don’t have the benefit of such rigorous controls. What’s more, there will be more integration and complexity among IoT devices with passing time, further increasing the number of security flaws.

The Buck Stops at the Network

With IoT’s larger attack surface, endpoint security and management becomes much more fragmented.

Most IoT devices wouldn’t come with antivirus control but even if they did, the size and diversity of the IoT ecosystem would make the process impossibly complex to manage.

For every data request, this appliance must be able to ascertain three pieces of critical information − who is the user, where is he going, and what data does he need. This means the network will need to incorporate traditional network protection technologies like firewall, intrusion prevention, Web filtering and antimalware solutions to enforce policies, control applications and prevent data loss. More importantly, that content needs to be inspected due to the growing attack surface.

Threats can hide just about anywhere nowadays − it’s easy to find them embedded within otherwise legitimate traffic streams.

Only with such intelligent solutions, well crafted policies and vigilant IT security personnel can enterprises hope to win the tough battle against IoT security and keep their business on an even keel. march 2015

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solutions World Green IT

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www.cnmeonline.com

Launched in 1992 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ‘Energy Star’ was the initiative that kick-started green IT. Since then, minimising the negative impact of information technology use on the environment has become increasingly pertinent in the age of sustainability.

I

n the Middle East, Green IT adoption remains in its nascent stages, and companies are only just beginning to understand and develop policies that support the environment. Green IT and environmentally sound technology policies are new terms for many CIOs in the region. Simply put, green IT is about saving on resources. “Successful green IT entails the implementation of solutions and services which support efficiencies within an organisation,” explains James potential reduction in Spearman, Principle Cloud server count through virtualisation Consultant and Head of Data Centre Infrastructure, Dimension Data. The primary goal of these initiatives are to support a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach to achieving a carbon neutral footprint.

An approach to IT that leaves room for environmental responsibility has benefits beyond the future of the planet. It also means

65

percent

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march 2015

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solutions World Green IT

better resource utilisation, a reduction in energy expenses and a reduction in the total cost of ownership of the most vital pieces of infrastructure. In short, in addition to social and environmental benefits, green IT initiatives can mean a healthier bottom line as well.

“For example,” says Mohammed ALMoneer, Country manager – Saudi Arabia, Infoblox, “if I can meet the organisation’s SLAs through virtualisation and in doing so reduce the number of physical racks from 50 to two, in addition to saving on space, I will be able to shrink my organisation’s energy bill substantially.” These savings can then be turned over into the business to support core business operations.

More to the point, there are a number of green IT techniques that can have huge operational cost benefits if implemented correctly. Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director, MEMA, Brocade mentions that fabric design, storage virtualisation, file system virtualisation, data compression, data deduplication, increasing capacity utilisation and thin provisioning of storage to servers can all stand to reduce the consumption – and thus the costs – of IT operations. “A combination of some or all of these techniques can drastically reduce the amount of data being stored,” he says, “which in turn means fewer hardware

“If I can meet the organisation’s SLAs through virtualisation and in doing so reduce the number of physical racks from 50 to two, in addition to saving on space, I will be able to shrink my organisation’s energy bill substantially.”

Mohammed AL-Moneer, Country Manager – Saudi Arabia, Infoblox

“Successful green IT entails the implementation of solutions and services which support efficiencies within an organisation.”

James Spearman, Principle Cloud Consultant and Head of Data Centre Infrastructure, Dimension Data

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march 2015

resources and therefore lower energy requirements.”

Companies that resist green IT initiatives may simply be wary of change or failure during the transition. “Companies thinking about implementing a green IT project should consider that the majority of implementations are considered successful,” offers Sathya P.A., VP, Sales, Intertec Systems. “In 65 percent of all green IT projects, organisations’ initial goals for these projects are met or exceeded.”

In short, most businesses meet their environmental goals and take on unforeseen operational benefits as well.

Companies in the region have been slow to take on green IT initiatives. The failure to adopt green IT initiatives may leave regional companies in the dust. “Failing to adopt green IT can damage organisations from several sides internally and externally,” explains Walid Kamal, Senior Vice President, Information Technology, du. “Internally this will have a great impact on availability and will result in a higher cost of ownership thus higher operational expenses. Externally, this could affect the reputation of the organisation which might lead to reduction in revenues and www.cnmeonline.com

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solutions World Green IT

profits and cause a higher rate of employee turnover.”

Sakhnini takes his warning a step further.

“Failure to adopt green IT policies,” he says, “will threaten the actual existence of the organisation. Green IT is relevant, not just a from a corporate social responsibility angle, but it also offers the firm vast operation benefits and potential for tremendous cost savings – money that can be used to re-invest in the business and in innovation.”

One of the most logical places to start with green IT is in the data centre. Traditionally power-hungry data centres can create huge carbon footprints and eat up resources. The move to virtualisation, a step that many organisations are taking already, can cut Sathya P.A., VP, Sales, Intertec Systems LLC down on a data centre’s carbon footprint dramatically.

However, Spearman contends that organisations need to look beyond the data difference in a company’s environmental centre. “Whilst the data centre is a critical legacy. For example, some large enterprises aspect of a green IT strategy, a more have implemented 'no print' days, where considered holistic approach would departments need to make an effort to print start with understanding the nothing for a day. Even simply replacing dated organisation's end-users and fax machines with e-fax solutions and services how these end-users interact can do a great deal to cut down on paper with IT.” Approaching green waste.

IT in this manner, he contends, Though the region has been slow to envelopes all of the end-user adopt green IT initiatives, local governments of the world's CO2 emissions produced by data centres components as well as the have done much to encourage that practice. supporting infrastructure such In Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed as connectivity, data centres and Bin Rashid Al Maktoum recently launched a security. When the end-user is included long-term national initiative to build a green in the process - even down to the creation economy in the UAE under the theme: “A of environmentally sound policy - it is more green economy for sustainable development”. likely that he or she will abide by the new The initiative has been met with great support. protocol.

“This shows the direction in the UAE,” says Green IT initiatives need not be Sakhnini, “But we still have a lot of work complicated, nor do they need to mean ahead to bring awareness to the region to see completely ripping and replacing existing the benefits of going green.” systems. Simply implementing policies from Green IT initiatives are not just beneficial the IT department that reduce paper waste for the environment, they can go a long way by relying on electronic communications to bolster a bottom line and set the stage for and data storage can go far in making a Earth-friendly adoptions in the future.

“Companies thinking about implementing a green IT project should consider that the majority of implementations are considered successful In 65 percent of all green IT projects, organisations’ initial goals for these projects are met or exceeded.”

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IN-MEMORY

network World Data centres

The

Big Upgrade The adoption of virtualisation in the past few years has undoubtedly changed the face of the data centre. No longer housed in sprawling warehouses, data centres are fast becoming slimmed down and agile.

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Strategic Innovation Partner

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utomation is beginning to paint a future of completely virtualised data centres.

These changes are especially apparent in the Middle East.

The region is moving forward quickly in terms of virtualisation, and to compound the changing nature of the data centre, the Middle East is leapfrogging technology that remains in place in other, more developed areas of the world.

The data centre is, without a doubt, the most active and critical element in the modern IT infrastructure in terms of operation dependence and investment.

Yet, traditionally, data centres have simply scaled up by adding physical storage capacity. This has resulted in server sprawl and wasted resources and is simply, most experts agree, not a long term solution to data and processing issues.

“The data centres we have are based on 20 year old technologies,” explains Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director MEMA, Brocade, “and the simple fact is that they can no longer keep up with demand.” Some 91 percent of respondents polled, he goes on, www.cnmeonline.com

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state that their current IT infrastructures still require substantial upgrades to meet the ever-changing and unique networking requirements created by virtualisation, convergence of video, mobile services and cloud computing.

It seems that the Middle East is moving exceptionally quickly in terms of virtualisation adoption, which directly affects the future of data centres. The Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director MEMA, Brocade drivers of this push forward are many.

“Over the past decade, the Middle East has witnessed a digital transformation driven traditional server, storage and network by smartphone penetration,” explains operations.

K.S. Ganesan, Chief Technology Officer, To further the goal of efficient and agile Infrastructure Services, Cognizant, “as well operations, modern data centres turn to as businesses with high growth aspirations automation. “In the Middle East,” says Paulo and governments pushing for digitisation.”

Pereira, Senior Systems Engineer Manager, The Internet of Things, as well as SDN Cisco UAE, “most data centres are starting and NFV, have also done their part to to include a layer of orchestration in order change the face of the modern data centre. to automate some tasks, and provide a As consumers and businesses begin to fast end-to-end delivery of service.” In create untold amounts of data, and short, data centres must be fast, efficient, simultaneously demand on-the-go accessible and agile to keep up with the access and computing power, the volume of data and processes that modern infrastructure that supports this businesses and consumers create. storage and processing must PERCENT Still, as modern computing issues are adapt appropriately. addressed by modern solutions, businesses As such, modern data of data centre operating costs go still need to deal with legacy applications centres are more modular, to energy consumption when looking into new data centre designs. catering to a number of Industries like healthcare and banking processes and services, as well still rely on large mainframe applications, as more flexible and more densely which may need to stay in place. However, packed with processing power. Speeds those applications that can and should be have increased from roughly 1GB to 40GB transitioned from traditional solutions to and will inevitably reach 100GB in the modern virtualised solutions can often be a near future. That being said, the power pain point. Joe Fagan, Senior Director, Cloud consumption of most data centres has Initiatives EMEA, Seagate, lends some hope increased in step with rising demands. to the situation, “Tools to convert physical Digitisation of services and software systems over to virtualised platforms are has already transformed the modern data now widely available,” he says. “One of the centre. Virtualisation and cloud-based initial hurdles with virtualisation was the apps have led to data centres streamlining ability to make legacy applications cloudoperations to more effectively support friendly but the industry has worked quickly business operations. To achieve that goal, towards this aspiration and it will not be the modern data centre’s fabric unifies the

“The data centres we have are based on 20 year old technologies, and the simple fact is that they can no longer keep up with demand.”

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long until that hurdle is overcome.” Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox, suggests that emulation may be the best solution to address legacy applications.

“Emulators,” he says, “are entities in the virtual infrastructure that serve as a conduit and essentially replicate the legacy application in the new environment, very similar to what IBM did with the SNA/IP integration.”

The future data centre may look very different relatively soon. “Industry experts expect to see a change in the shape of the data centre field in 2015,” says Subash Chand, Solution Architect, Intertec. “There has been regional change in the evolution of the data centre,” he says. Some of these changes are already obvious, and some are coming down the pipeline.

One change that we can already see in play has to do with an unchangeable physical factor – the temperature. With increasing power demands, and unmerciful summer temperatures, one change in data centre design that is already quite apparent in the Middle East is cooling. “With the rising cost of energy,” explains Ganesh Bhat, Head of Data Centres, eHosting DataFort, data centre operators are exploring

“In the Middle East, most data centres are starting to include a layer of orchestration in order to automate some tasks, and provide a fast end-to-end delivery of service.”

Paulo Pereira, Senior Systems Engineer Manager, Cisco UAE

“One of the initial hurdles with virtualisation was the ability to make legacy application cloud friendly but the industry has worked quickly toward this aspiration and it will not be long until that hurdle is overcome.”

Joe Fagan, Senior Director, Cloud Initiatives EMEA, Seagate

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various ways to take care of cooling, as this consumes a lot of power. We will see a continuous focus on energy efficiencies, higher power densities and liquid or free cooling.”

With changes in data centre design coming so quickly, there are still innovations that are not quite fully implemented yet.

“Three foreseeable data centre trends that have not been implemented yet,” says Aaron White, General Manager, Middle East and Pakistan, Hitachi Data Systems, “are Big Data business analytics, true hybrid cloud data centres and fully SLA driven applications that are hardware agnostic.”

The data centre operation industry has moved quickly, and continues to pick up speed – so much so that it can be difficult to determine which technology will be made obsolete. “Traditional data centres can take 24 to 36 months to build,” says Dave Hughes, Technical Director, CommScope, Middle East and Africa. “Technologies, trends and techniques evolve so rapidly that the data centre you are building today could be obsolete before you ever deploy it. With the shift toward the virtualised data centre and the cloud, data centres are now built with the capacity to expand in order to provide enough bandwidth for the applications of today and the foreseeable future.” www.cnmeonline.com

Security AdvisEr Mobile security

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Safety on the go There is no question that the use of mobile devices, both personally and professionally, are now not only convinient, but necessary for productivity. As the mobile technology develops, mobile security best practices must also adapt.

A

$4000 the approximate retail cost of the first mobile phone sold in the US

www.cnmeonline.com

s mobile devices enter the workplace, there is no denying their potential for improving and streamlining work processes.

Companies are utilising enterprise apps that are unique to their businesses, and employees are taking full advantage of the benefits that accompany being a part of a mobile workforce.

With the conveniences of mobility comes the mounting concern of mobile security threats. The more employees and contractors use mobile devices to access organisational systems, applications and data, the more important it is to protect access to such data.

Most office employees are attached to their mobile device either for work or for personal use from the time they wake up. “Workers begin their day by grabbing their smartphone, checking for company emails, daily tasks and collaborating with team members via web conference,” says Shane Fernandes, ECEMEA, Business Intelligence Sales Lead, Oracle.

When creating new apps for businesses, there are a few best practices that developers need to keep in mind regarding security.

“Remote server security is essential,” says Mohamed Djenane, Security Specialist, ESET Middle East. “This is a fundamental part of the application security,” he explains, “if the march 2015

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server is compromised then it doesn’t matter how secure the app itself is.” Hisham Surakhi, General Manager, Gemalto Middle East, agrees that security should be at the forefront of every enterprise app developer’s mind, but that the primary purpose for enterprise apps should not be lost. “While enterprise mobility solutions enhance workflow,” he says, “they necessitate tighter IT security infrastructure – contemporary enterprise app developers need to keep two factors in mind when designing business apps: Shane Fernandes, ECEMEA, Business Intelligence Sales Lead, Oracle first, convenience, and second, security.”

As security attack surfaces increase and would-be criminals become more organised, of devices, it is difficult to have a “one size there are a number of things that developers fits all” solution. “With hundreds of device and those creating security protocols need to models in different form factors and with keep in mind. Particularly when using devices different operating system versions, there for business, companies need to deploy antiare hundreds of individual configuration virus applications to ensure that devices are options available to the enterprise,” explains protected, keep operating systems upgraded Simon Poulton, Application Delivery and and restrict the use of public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Mobility Business Lead – EMEA Emerging “Best practices include carefully selecting Markets, CA Technologies. “A very common remote device connections to ensure problem observed is that enterprises end up secure information transfer,” says drowning in the complexity of trying to find Mathivanan V, Director, Product reasons to enforce each of these hundreds of Management, ManageEngine, “as configuration options,” he says. well as creating strong password To address these variances, experts authentication protocols.” recommend a top-down method to develop Increasingly, employees the year of the first mobile phone security policies based on risk assessments, are demanding BYOD policies call - made by an employee at Motorola utilising smart containerisation methods and in their places of business. The leveraging automation technology to manage benefits of a BYOD policy are clear compliance at an enterprise scale. for employees – they are able to Prashant Verma, Senior Practice Manager work from any location on devices with for Infrastructure Security, Paladion which they are already comfortable. From Networks, contends that a BYOD policy is an a business perspective, a BYOD policy can opportunity for enterprises – provided best also be a boon in that companies will have to practices are followed. “There should be an invest less in hardware and devices for their AppStore owned by employers for providing employees. Though it can turn out to be a work related apps to employees,” he says “as win-win situation, businesses looking to adopt well, there needs to be enforcement of unified BYOD policies need to move forward with security policies across the organisation and caution to maintain security standards. secure file sharing.”

Businesses need to determine what kind Saeed Agha, General Manager, Middle East, of data can be accessed on a personal device Palo Alto Networks, recommends two main and how this data will be accessed. Because points to successfully manage BYOD security BYOD, by its nature, deals with a variety

“Workers begin their day by grabbing their smartphone, checking for company emails, daily tasks and collaborating with team members via web conference.”

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Security Adviser Mobile security

challenges. “It is clear that the network is the right place for IT to enforce control between applications and users,” he says.

“We also recommend the next-generation firewall which takes a fundamentally different approach toward traffic classification and policy enforcements. Using App-ID, User-ID and Content-ID as its core technologies, the next-generation firewall provides visibility and control in a manner not found in any combination of existing traditional network security product.”

Moving beyond the constraints of the office space, end-users still need to remain vigilant when it comes to mobile security. Too often consumers are delighted to purchase the latest and greatest in mobile technology, but fall short when it comes to protecting their new purchase. “At an individual level,” says Muhammed Mayet, Practice Manager, End User Computing, Dimension Data, “users should at the minimum secure their devices with a pin or passcode and utilise the built-in 'Find My Device' service for their device.” A device locating service is essential for personal mobile security. This service, explains Mayet, will enable an individual to remotely locate, lock and erase their device should it be lost or stolen.

Dan Panesar, Regional Sales Director,

“Remote server security is essential. This is a fundamental part of the application security. If the server is compromised then it doesn’t matter how secure the app itself is.”

Mohamed Djenane, Security Specialist, ESET Middle East.

“With hundreds of device models in different form factors and with different operating system versions, there are hundreds of individual configuration options available to the enterprise.”

Simon Poulton, Application Delivery and Mobility Business Lead, EMEA Emerging Markets, CA Technologies

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Europe and Global Growth Markets, UC and Network Security, Avaya, takes the basic individual security minimum of a secured PIN a step further. “A first step is to implement a passcode or PIN to gain access to the device,” he says, “and this must be stored separately from the device.” In short, having a smart device on your person, with access to the PIN code accessible nearby all but nullifies any security that it might provide.

Many individual security issues, however, can be addressed through behavioural changes. “Individuals must make sure they think before installing any application,” warns Axelle Apvrille, Senior Mobile Malware Analyst Researcher, Fortinet, “Users need to ask themselves if the application is necessary and if the developer’s name looks legitimate,” she says. User reviews can also be very helpful in determining whether or not an app is safe.

Hussain Salem, SWG Websphere Sales Manager, IBM Middle East, puts the need for individuals to be aware of potential security threats succinctly. “Whether inside or outside the workplace, the fact is that large enterprises are collecting a huge amount of personal data that is being created by individuals via apps and social media. Without a good knowledge of security and privacy, individuals are exposed to increased risk of data theft and harmful hackers.” www.cnmeonline.com

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DISTRIBUTED BY

Telecoms World Mobile backhaul

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in association with

Lighting up Cellular networks in the Middle East will need fatter pipes to the wired Internet to keep delivering a satisfying mobile experience, and fibre is emerging as the best for mobile backhaul networks.

F

www.cnmeonline.com

ive bars on your phone’s signal gauge wouldn’t mean a fast Internet connection unless there is a fat enough pipe between the cell tower and the wired Internet to carry all the traffic.

Upgrading these pipes, known as backhaul, is a high priority for mobile operators.

As consumers use more smartphones, tablets and other devices, the need for backhaul capacity is growing at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 70 percent. Powerful and efficient new wireless standards, especially LTE, allow operators to solve performance problems on radio access networks. As they invite subscribers to use cellular for more demanding applications, carriers want to make sure they don’t create a new performance problem. They also need to change the mix of technologies they use for backhaul, moving aggressively from copper lines to fibre, and in some cases, microwave.

The mobile backhaul is the aggregation network and grooming of traffic from all sites into the core and has become a serious bottleneck that needs to be re-architected to boost capacity and open the bottleneck for better performance and utilisation.

Why is mobile backhaul critical for data communications? “What we know is that the biggest single reason for customer loyalty is network performance," says Matthew Smith, Head of Next-Generation Transport and Convergence, Ericsson Middle East and North East Africa Region. "To secure high network performance, we not only need to advance the

radio network but also we need to put a lot of focus on the backhaul network, to avoid it becoming the ‘bottleneck’. This focus happens simultaneously with network convergence – mobile, fixed & enterprise services and infrastructure all successfully coinciding."

Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Huawei Middle East, offers another perspective: “The region’s eager adoption of high-speed mobile broadband services is challenging legacy mobile backhaul in three major areas," he says. "First is site acquisition and usage. To support larger capacity and richer mobile broadband services, many mobile networks require new type of air interfaces and base stations like Femto and Pico.”

He adds that the second challenge relates to overlapped investment. As GSM, UMTS and LTE have different interfaces, corresponding backhaul technologies include microwave, SDH/PDH, and so on. These network elements have become an obstacle to realise smooth evolution of mobile backhaul. Lastly, in a legacy network all operation and maintenance (O&M) commands and parameters are input manually. This can no longer meet the requirements of the all-IP network O&M. Fibre backhaul should be good news for mobile subscribers who want to keep using more data. Once a bundle of optical fibre is installed, it can carry more data almost without limit as long as the equipment on either end of the fibre is upgraded.

Gamal Hegazi, CTO, FTTH Mena Council, says fibre is the best backhaul medium for many operators for several compelling march 2015

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reasons. “It provides future-proof bandwidth evolution to match the spike in radio access capacity enabled by LTE Advanced and carrier aggregations. It also provides the needed delay and jitter tolerance as well. The opex involved in maintaining and managing fibre backhaul provides a considerable advantage giving operators an edge in controlling their costs.

Balakrishan Shanmugham, VP and Practice Leader for Communications, Cognizant, agrees, “Fibre is one of the best backhaul solutions to support the burst nature of data traffic generated due to transport of qualitysensitive services such as video calling, movie-on-demand, and interactive services.

Fiber deployment is a one-time exercise that can support multiple iterations on bandwidth expansion by deploying various logical resources. Therefore, it is more cost-effective in increasing backhaul capacity than any other mechanism such as copper, which provides limited ability to enhance bit rates while retaining traffic quality in a long-haul network.”

“The region’s eager adoption of high-speed mobile broadband services is challenging legacy mobile backhaul in three major areas. First is site acquisition and usage. To support larger capacity and richer mobile broadband services, many mobile networks require new types of air interfaces and base stations like Femto and Pico.”

Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Huawei Middle East

Fibre vs. Microwave Looking at the backhaul options, operators can choose either fibre or microwave.

Globally, an increasing percentage of new investment in backhaul is in microwave. So

“What we know is that the biggest single reason for customer loyalty is network performance. To secure high network performance, we not only need to advance the radio network but also we need to put a lot of focus on the backhaul network, to avoid it becoming the ‘bottleneck’.”

Matthew Smith, Head of Next-Generation Transport and Convergence, Ericsson Middle East and North East Africa Region

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that begs the question, isn’t wireless backhaul meeting current and medium-term capacity requirements?

“Many actually prescribe microwave for LRAN (Low Radio Access Network)," Smith says. "If an operator has frequency licenses, then microwave is extremely quick and economical to install, and provides a very fast time to market. Incidentally, microwave is, by far, the most used technology for LRAN backhaul. However the key question is: can microwave scale to deal with the rising capacity needs of radio base stations? Also the rising variety of wireless access such as picos, micros, Wi-Fi, etc.?”.

Saleem AlBlooshi, Executive VP Network Development & Operations, du, says the main challenge of wireless backhauling is the frequency limitation and this will depend on the size of traffic carried on the network and this can be evaluate on a case by case basis. “The existing wireless suppliers have developed new products with new frequency bands that can offload the current “traditional” frequency bands, so with the introduction of these technologies the network design would have some flexibility to provide

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Telecoms World Mobile backhaul

“Fibre is one of the best backhaul solutions to support the burst nature of data traffic generated due to transport of quality-sensitive services such as video calling, movie-on-demand, and interactive services.

Balakrishan Shanmugham, VP and Practice Leader for Communications, Cognizant

higher capacities in the absence of fibre. For example, the E-band can offer up to 4xGbps MW link in one direction but for sure such high capacity over radio wouldn’t be a permanent replacement of fiber but it will be an intermediate solution till you get the fiber available.”

Shanmugham says wireless backhaul is good to support immediate backhaul requirements, provided the mobile network is 2G or sub-3G variant and has moderate data growth rate (around 10 to 15 percent). It also depends on the terrain and operating conditions. “Wireless backhaul may start facing limitations if customers start using bandwidthpercent hungry applications or qualitysensitive interactive services.” is the estimatd compund Hegazi agrees that though annual growth in backhaul microwave has improved capacity dramatically in terms of capacity using better coding techniques as well as adaptive modulation feature sets, the limited spectrum capacities and line of sight issues along with civil works associated with the project are factors that have to be taken into consideration.

How does the backhaul scenario in the Middle East compare with mature telecom markets? “Since mobile backhaul is a major component of mobile OPEX, controlling its

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cost is key to turning mobile broadband revenue into profit. In the Middle East, current mobile backhaul networks face a number of challenges including complex O&M for the massive scale of cell sites, time-consuming service provisioning, and inefficient network utilisation. Large-scale backhaul networks are also needed to accommodate the region’s growing 4G LTE customer base - particularly in the Gulf,” says Ghattas.

Hegazi says in the MENA region, the trend is more towards utilising fibre as a complement or full backhaul medium for wireless and heterogeneous networks deployment. Most of the operators are utilising and combining a last mile microwave strategy coupled with fibre in subsequent concentration points and are departing from a pure microwave model.

In the Gulf region, service providers that have invested heavily in fiber to the home and metro fiber technologies are leveraging these access and metro networks to groom traffic from 4G network cell sites, which gives them future sustainability and better opex equations with affordable cost per bit.

Smith from Ericsson says some of the Middle East markets are incredibly mature and deploying the most advanced backhauling technologies. “The Middle East is one of the largest and fastest growing backhaul markets right now. Saudi Arabia is going for more fiber and countries like Qatar have an advanced NBN-driven rollout.

But overall the Middle East has a very low percentage of fibre used for backhaul as rights of way issues and security situations can be difficult, as can terrain.”

Another new variable in the backhaul equation is the introduction of small cells and Wi-Fi base stations. Carriers don’t yet know how many of these they will end up using. But what is for sure is that backhaul is an element of a mobile network where there are no shortcuts for the operators. They just have to spend the money and do it. www.cnmeonline.com

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CXO Corner

Banking on trust

Surya Subramanian always considers the bottom line where IT is concerned. Emirates NBD’s Group Chief Financial Officer talks to CNME about his relationship with technology and the company’s CIO, and how the bank's customers are benefitting from the digital transformation.

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S

urya Subramanian never lets technology connections impair his plans. “Speaking with my CFO hat on, I can never purchase tech for the sake of tech,” he says. “Return on investment has to be there, but this can come in a number of forms: improved customer experience, market leadership, renewing enhancements or risk mitigation. A project has to tick one or more boxes, and the more it ticks, the faster it will go ahead.”

Four years into the job – and into his stint in Dubai – Subramanian’s role is heavily intertwined with IT. “Broadly speaking, my job is split into two roles,” Subramanian says. “One is in finance, and the other in bank management, which encompasses technology cost and benefits, as well as strategy. Thankfully it’s not a Jekyll and Hyde balancing act.” He also says he is “joined at the hip” with company Chief Information Officer Ali Sajwani. “Ali works within the COO’s enterprise, and is in charge of the IT board,” he says. “He’s in charge of the steering committee process, which considers all projects and change requests, and involves most senior C-suite executives of the organisation.

That’s the main forum for presenting technology details and implications.

He has a small finance team that reports to me, but we work very closely together.”

This close bond has had a marked impact on the way Subramanian values technology, and a number of cutting edge initiatives that he has overseen have now come to fruition.

“As an organisation, we like to see our customers benefit from the digital transformation,” he says. The bank has installed a video teller system in Dubai Mall, and two of Emirates NBD’s other important initiatives were launched in late 2014. Its Direct Remit service allows money www.cnmeonline.com

to be transferred to certain banks in India and the Philippines in just 60 seconds at no charge, while eIPO allows companies to turn themselves public via an ATM or through online channels. eIPO has been used in “four major” Q4 IPOs, including Emaar Malls’ decision to go public in September last year.

“As the market moves, we always need to bolt on enhancements to our core banking services,” Subramanian says. “As technology evolves, we need a certain common platform to run applications. We believe in technology benefitting our customers.” The company has also “sliced and diced” its IT chain by using disclosure management software to now publish Q4 results by 18th January, when they were previously released around 13th February.

Subramanian names the company’s most used technologies as its corporate board application, email, messaging software, and telecom applications. He says a balance must also be struck between what can be outsourced and what should be built internally. “We take care of elements that give us a competitive edge,” he says. “Things like mobile banking we do ourselves, whereas it doesn’t make financial sense to build an in-house application for core banking. Although our IT architecture is complex, it is no different from a standard bank, but everything does have to be constantly refreshed, replaced and redesigned as we are one of the largest banks in the Middle East.”

The 2007 merger of Emirates Bank International and National Bank of Dubai into Emirates NBD continues to have an impact on the company’s IT. “The history of the merger has meant we are still aligning banking systems,” Subramanian says. “That is just one aspect in which we are engaged in continuous enhancement.”

Perhaps at the top of the list for any modern banking IT arm is the issue of security. Get it wrong, and vast sums of cash, as well as the organisation’s invaluable reputation will be in jeopardy. “We are in a business of trust, and we cannot afford to lose that,” Subramanian says. The IT and finance teams work in tandem to ensure things don’t go awry. “A dedicated team decides the budget for security. We do vast amounts of internal and external penetration testing, and have a multilayered security apparatus, including self-imposed security. In-house leaks can be dangerous, but we also use other agencies that work with us for external perimeter checks.”

Subramanian is bullish about the bank’s IT security as a whole. “The reality is that we haven’t been hit so far – but you can never be sure; you can’t know what you don’t know,” he says.

Subramanian is far from flattered by impostors who involve him in remittance scams. “At the moment there are around half a dozen people impersonating me on LinkedIn,” he says. Such profiles are used to ask relatives of the bank’s customers to deposit cash in exchange for the assets of their ‘deceased’ loved ones.

“Our Head of HR has the most fake profiles of anybody I’ve ever met. The people behind these accounts are often sloppy with their imitations, but you’d be surprised how many people fall for their scams.”

Although the future of technology in banking is cloaked in mystery, Subramanian is certain of one thing, “As our volumes increase, so does the demand for more advanced technology,” he says. “Technology is not just about fancy things; the engine room of the organisation. It’s also about improving the smaller everyday processes that benefit our staff.” march 2015

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Opinion

By Stephen Balzac

Data analytics: Are we there yet?

Those tasked with analysing Big Data pools may seem lost on the road. Organisational data analytics is a journey, not a destination. Stephen Balzac, President, 7 Steps Ahead, sheds light on the path to large scale data analysis.

R

emember what travel was like before GPS? You could usually manage if you were travelling along familiar roads, but go on a long trip and it could get exciting. Which www.cnmeonline.com

exit were we looking for? Had we passed the red barn? Did the gas station attendant say to turn after three lights or four? And let’s not forget the kids in the back seat asking, “Are we there yet?” Okay,

that part hasn’t changed, although the good news is that they can usually see the GPS screen too and answer their own questions.

The great thing about GPS is that it lets us get from wherever we march 2015

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Opinion

are to wherever we want to go.

Not only that, but it also has access to data that lets it figure out exactly where we are in the first place.

Let’s face it, if we don’t know where we’re starting, it’s very hard to figure out how to get where we want to go.

This, of course, is exactly why in the corporate talent management setting any non-trivial organisational change is so difficult: even if we know where we want to go, that is, what the organisation should look like, rarely do we actually know where we’re starting.

I realise that seems a bit counterintuitive: we can see the business, we can talk to the people.

Unfortunately, in the context of our GPS analogy, that’s a little like saying that we can look out the window and see trees or a street: that’s great, but what does that tell us about where we are?

Without a larger context, the information we do have is of limited value. So what to do?

Fortunately, this is an area where Big Data can be helpful.

It’s important to remember that however you define 'Big Data' it is not about the data; it’s about the insights that data analytics provide in supporting data-driven decisionmaking. Data analytics can give us a snapshot of what is actually going on: it can tell us where we are starting.

Granted, it still takes someone with knowledge of organisational

show at that point?

OK, we're done, right? We can all see the data and now we know what to do: train people. Well, not so fast. Being able to see this information is both the blessing and the curse of data analytics.

Just because we can figure out what our data means and see what to do about it does not mean that we know what to do about it.

By way of analogy, getting an IQ test might tell you something about how smart you are, or at least give you a number, but it doesn’t tell you anything specific about your educational needs: even knowing that you need a more challenging curriculum is not a very precise formula.

It takes expertise to turn those IQ scores into specific educational plans. Similarly, knowing that this leadership vacuum will eventually exist doesn’t give us the knowledge of who to develop or how to do it.

The analytic engine gives us the facts we need, the trained human brain enables us to turn those facts into useful information and purpose.

I know, this is disappointing state of affairs: no actual GPS for organisational change or growth that enables us to mindlessly make each turn. Unlike the landscape, organisations are never static. Data analytics can give us the information we need to successfully navigate that everchanging organisational landscape, but it is not a destination - data analytics is a journey.

"The analytic engine gives us the facts that we need, the trained human brain enables us to turn those facts into useful information and purpose."

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behaviour and psychology to turn that data into a road map, but it's still a lot better than guesswork.

For example, consider a simple age distribution in a manufacturing company, produced using a data analytics engine developed

by Macromicro.

What the distribution of the data tells us is that this manufacturer has a leadership vacuum waiting to happen: in this particular distribution, there is a bulge of younger, hence newer, employees, and a second outlying distribution of considerably older employees. There is only a narrow margin it is in between.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that most of the company leadership and experience is in the older group. At some point, those older employees will be retiring.

Who is going to be running the

www.cnmeonline.com

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Analyst view

Jack Walser, Client Services Executive, AIM Consulting

Agile Options Utilising agile principles can drive radical but constructive cultural changes, but how you go about adopting the technique is critical to success.

W

hen the Agile Manifesto was introduced almost 15 years ago, it proposed a radical methodology change as an alternative to traditional project management. With Agile, project requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration in development cycles that break tasks into small increments. While this methodology helps businesses manage unpredictability, it also requires those businesses to adopt a different mindset in order to be successful.

Agile is designed to drive collaboration, transparency and quality within product and software development lifecycles, but it isn’t always the right answer for every organisation. In fact, the signers of the Manifesto will tell you that, while 74

march 2015

there is value in examining what Agile is, there is just as much value in examining what it is not.

With Agile there are tremendous benefits from the business and the development perspectives: you can generate positive results for IT, and at the same time, get to market faster and increase your competitive differentiation. But how do you decide if introducing agile gradually - known as an agile adoption - or implementing agile across your organisation - known as an agile transformation - is right for you?

A good place to start is by examining your company’s product development or project management culture. If your organisation has demonstrated success using the predictive, traditional waterfall

development methodology, there may be real value in continuing to assemble your teams, work on discovery, generate detailed requirements, design the solution, develop the code, test the code, and then deploy it to your production environment.

If your organisation is susceptible to waterfall’s limitations, however, Agile may be a more viable option.

Some business leaders become frustrated with the tremendous investment of the delivery teams’ time at the front-end of projects as they work to make analysis and development decisions about a product they may know very little about. After all, Agile argues, why spend so much time defining a product when you know the least about it? www.cnmeonline.com

Agile leverages team uncertainty and lets team members do what they do best: visualize a solution, engage the right people, and build a potentially shippable product.

In this sense agile turns the more traditional ways of developing software development model upside down by: 1) favouring collaboration between the development team and the client over costly time spent working through contract language and requirements, and 2) focusing on engaging individuals and fostering interactions over processes and tools.

Another decision indicator is your organisation’s process maturity. If your enterprise is process-driven and you’re thinking of adopting an agile software development approach, you may want to consider how it will be implemented at the ground level A third consideration lies in what may happen post-adoption or posttransformation. While the foundation of agile is quite powerful, it makes sense to understand the common pitfalls companies experience in a transition. Consider the following: Fixing both the hours and scope – This restricts the teams’ ability to be agile and gives the business what they asked for, not what they need.

In waterfall, project managers are comfortable using change requests to adjust their hours and scope of work. Agile somewhat departs from this change approach, as teams are encouraged to respond to change by constantly adding to their backlogs, rather than adding to scope and schedule. While the requirements may change in agile the schedule always remains the same.

Scheduling all of the sprints/tasks in advance – The desire to plan every requirement, task and story, in every sprint, up front, is a natural tendency www.cnmeonline.com

of first-time agile project managers.

Trying to schedule all tasks in advance prevents the teams from truly selfactualising, impedes their ability to find their true velocity and sets unrealistic expectations for delivery.

Dictating the velocity of development across all teams -- Each agile team will have its own velocity, its own challenges and its own speed. Teams get faster as they go, so managers should not try to compare velocities between teams and work efforts.

Feeling like an acceptance of agile is a loss of control – If agile is implemented correctly and scaled appropriately, leaders at the project, program, and portfolio levels will have a better understanding of the work in progress on a daily basis, know exactly what is left to complete, and know the same day if something is slipping.

Excluding your QA testers on the sprint planning/execution processes – Having QA as part of the team planning sets the direction for the test plan and defines what “done” means. This requires organisations to engage their testers much earlier in the process, which is a departure from a waterfall approach where testers come in toward the end.

Based on a review of the suggested cultural factors above, what should organisations also consider when deciding whether to adopt agile or transform completely?

We’ve established that it’s not easy to change the level of control that waterfall project managers have using the waterfall approach. Agile is, in fact, a leap of faith; however, organisations that take the leap typically have a better grasp of daily work progress post-landing.

Managers know if a project is slipping

and, in some cases, may actually have stronger project management capabilities than they had with the more predictive waterfall approach.

Another consideration is quality.

According to IT research firm Standish Group, companies using an agile development approach report an average of 63 percent improvement in quality. Companies that improve on defect rates while building the right product, instead of one that may not necessarily be what the business is looking for, will drive true, sustainable value back to the business. Finally, as quality and value improve, teams can have complete transparency into what’s being delivered and foster much better dialogue between the business and IT. Benefits aside, full transformations to agile are not necessarily required for long-term company success. In fact, organisations can choose to use agile for some initiatives, but have projects that need to stay with the waterfall approach.

So when faced with the decision to adopt agile or transform, consider your culture and your appetite for change. Measure the teams’ desire to gain improvements in quality and deliver better outcomes. Understand how much the business is willing to prioritise improving time to market and driving competitive advantage.

Finally, analyse your current state for both customer engagement and employee engagement and decide whether adoption, transformation or maintaining a waterfall approach is what’s right for your team.

Walser is a Client Services Executive with AIM Consulting and has over 17 years of experience in leading continuous improvement, software development and transformational strategy projects. march 2015

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Blog David Flower, Managing Director, EMEA

Break point

David Flower, Managing Director, EMEA, Bit9 + Carbon Black, discusses the importance of endpoint visibility in guaranteeing security.

In today’s technology-centric world where vast amounts of data are stored online, the number of serious incidents of information security breaches has been growing at an alarmingly accelerated rate.

Not too comforting is that most of the cyber attacks are getting bolder and more sophisticated, making it increasingly difficult to detect and prevent online data threats.

A company stands to lose an average of $5.4 million to digital breaches alone, while two thirds of the 1,825 organisations across 60 countries that participated in Ernst & Young’s Global Information Security Survey revealed rising threats in their information security risk environment.

The impact of data breaches is so great that it should serve as a wakeup call to companies – both small and large - to take drastic measures against data hacking. Information protection and digital security are fundamental to prevent hackers from breaching the network and siphoning off confidential and sensitive data.

According to the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report, the total amount of global threats in 2013 increased by a www.cnmeonline.com

record 14 per cent compared to 2012.

In the Middle East, security threats are high as the region moves towards smart services and inter-connectivity.

Last year, the UAE in particular witnessed 500,000 cyber threats - the highest in the region – due largely to the country’s increasing adoption of new smart systems.

To steal large quantities of data, cyber hackers usually remain stealthy, or below the so-called noise threshold that triggers the intrusion detection system alarm. This demonstrates that the file integrity monitoring, intrusion detection systems, and other traditional measures will find it difficult to detect, respond to or prevent targeted attacks at the moment of compromise.

Digital breaches are serious threats that must be addressed systematically and swiftly. Your business, regardless of size, must prepare for possible data breaches.

Advanced attacks are getting through next-generation perimeter defenses and landing on endpoints and servers.

It follows, then, that you have to invest in more advanced security approaches that do not depend solely

on simple signatures and known blacklists of IP addresses or files. Your network protection must make it impossible for attackers to hide their behaviours across multiple layers.”

A study conducted by Bit9 + Carbon Black shows that 61 per cent of enterprises are still not sufficiently equipped in terms of detecting suspicious endpoint behaviour. It is imperative that companies must employ long-lasting, reliable and flexible solutions to stop digital breaches.

Continuous real-time visibility into what’s happening on every computer and real-time threat detection without relying on signatures are essential. Similarly, instant response through visibility of the full ‘kill chain’ of any attack and a proactive and customisable prevention must also be factored in.

Many organisations from across different countries have already made huge strides in terms of protecting themselves from cyber hacking. In the UAE, major steps are continuously being undertaken to ensure optimum network security protection.

However, much still needs to be done to fight off advanced threats. march 2015

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Opinion

Compact convenience

Have we reached a point where optimised smartphones have outpaced tablets?

We look at the reasons why the pocket-sized devices currently have the edge.

A

fter nearly five years of growth, the tablet market has officially stalled.

According to research firm IDC, tablet sales fell 3.2% year over year in the 2014 holiday quarter, with even bigger drops coming from market leaders Apple and Samsung.

The tablet’s biggest problem?

The smartphone. The tablet’s older, smaller cousin has quietly started doing all of the tablet’s jobs - and in some cases, the smartphone is just flat-out better. Here are five reasons why 2015 is a great time to trade in your old tablet for a modern, bigscreen smartphone.

1. We now know the 6-inch screen is the ideal size for reading Back in the days of 10-inch tablets and 3.5-inch smartphones, the tablet was the obvious choice for books.

True, a tiny iPhone 3GS was more portable, but the diminutive screen was too small for everyday reading.

Swipe ahead five years, however, and the average smartphone screen size has risen from 3.5 to 5.2 inches.

While that’s about a 50 percent increase in diagonal size, it translates to nearly twice the screen real estate a true game-changer for smartphoneequipped bookworms.

A small increase in diagonal screen size can nearly double total display area.

And when you consider that the world’s most popular e-readers almost all sport 6-inch screens, the smartphone is right on track to take over the tablet’s reading duties. www.cnmeonline.com

2. All the best apps are on smartphones, not tablets With the first wave of tablets in 2010 and 2011, manufacturers promised a parade of made-for-tablet apps, each designed to take advantage of the device’s bigger screen size. Then the market realities set in. Tablets were hot, but not as hot as the mighty smartphone, which by 2012 had claimed over a billion users.

Today, there are a few hundred million tablet users, but nearly two billion smartphone owners, a market mismatch that means all the best games, apps and new ideas show up on the phone first, and the tablet (maybe) later. Add in the fact that the biggest phones look a lot like small tablets, and many mobile developers are simply upscaling their existing phone apps to fit the tablet’s larger screen.

3. Smartphones have better battery life While average battery life in smartphones has nearly doubled over the last five years, juice on the average tablet still lasts a stubborn 10 hours.

This makes sense from a technical perspective - it takes more to power those giant screens. But that doesn’t change the fact that a 5.5-inch Galaxy phone will last over twice as long as its 7-inch Galaxy Tab counterpart.

With a smartphone, you’re simply getting far more power per inch of screen real estate.

4. Smartphones have better cameras Smartphones are the perfect size for snapping photos, something that can’t

be said of most bulky tablets. But even once you go beyond comfort and convenience, the average smartphone still outdoes the average tablet on image quality.

From a spec perspective, consider that the average megapixel (MP) count in a tablet camera has stalled out around 8 MPs, while the average flagship smartphone now boasts over 13 MPs. Megapixels aren’t everything, and they tend to get overhyped in mobile marketing. But the megapixel march among smartphones shows just how camera-obsessed the phone industry has become, compared to the relative apathy among tablets, where the camera is often an afterthought.

5. On the Web, tablets are still caught between mobile and desktop In practice, many sites only have two versions of Web page: the classic desktop look, and a mobile look specifically for the smartphone.

This is a problem for tablets, where your favourite webpages will often have to choose between a scrunched desktop version or a blown-up smartphone interface effectively making the tablet the worst of either world.

Granted, some tech-forward sites feature responsive displays, smart enough to make use of the tablet’s unique size. But this sort of flexible page is rarer than it should be in 2015. The smartphone simply provides a more consistent web experience.. march 2015

79

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Huawei partnered with Borussia Dortmund to completely transform the game experience to fit the digital era. With Huawei’s high density, stable and reliable WLAN technology, fans enjoyed sharing their videos and photos instantly.

80,000 fans were not only cheering for the game, they were cheering for the unlimited broadband experience.

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Scan for solution details

insight

Mixed outlook for CIOs Deloitte’s second global CIO Survey reveals a disparity between the excitement over, and proposed investment in, technology – and the role the CIO is playing in this transformation.

O

ver 900 CIOs across 49 countries provided insight into the perceptions, priorities, opportunities and challenges of CIOs around the world and in the Middle East.

While more than 50 percent of CIOs consider innovation an important priority, they receive little funding for this within their IT function. Almost half have less than 10 percent of their budgets aligned to innovation-related activities.

Conferences were held in four countries across the Middle East during the first week of February to share the CIO survey results. The events held in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha featured overviews on IT budgets, IT priorities, CIO business partnering, and adoption and implementation of CIO analytics.

Rajeev Lalwani, Partner, head of Deloitte’s technology consulting practice in the Middle East, said, “This year’s survey points to a real shift in board members’ attitudes towards IT investment and the importance of digital technologies for business transformation. However, the ongoing lack of innovation budget is very surprising given positive current market conditions and a general acknowledgement that technology is essential for organisations to deliver stronger customer engagement.

Either there is still limited budget for

www.cnmeonline.com

innovation – or, and perhaps more likely, it has been given to someone else in the organisation.”

Business leaders’ attitudes to risk are an even bigger constraint than inadequate budgets in making riskier IT investments for innovation and growth, according to CIOs. While the survey results suggest CIOs are willing to take intelligent risks with IT investments (71 percent class themselves as risk tolerant, not risk averse), this appetite for investment does not seem to be reflected in their current portfolios of projects.

Despite some challenges, there have been significant improvements in business relationships as our findings reveal CIOs are becoming more effective business partners (10 percent increase on last year, with half rating themselves ‘strong and effective’).

However, there are still gaps when looking at individual leadership relationships. Four out of five CIOs (79 percent) consider their relationship with the CEO ‘very important’, yet only 42 percent believe this relationship is currently ‘very good’.

New generation business leadership roles such as chief digital and data officers are gaining prominence. “It is becoming essential for CIOs to nurture stronger and trusted relationships with emerging business leaders who champion

disruptive trends, or indeed, CIO themselves must ensure their functions encompass these roles,” says Lalwani.

“The next 12 months will be critical for CIOs as their relationship with the business, and in particular the CEO, takes centre stage. Stronger business relationships will open more opportunities and allow them more ownership and responsibility of the innovation function. Now is the time for CIOs to choose whether to remain custodians of core IT systems or become drivers of growth through technological innovation.”

77 percent of IT budgets are the same or up from 2013, while 55 percent of budgets are allocated to ‘business-as-usual’ activities, with the rest split between supporting business change (23 percent) and supporting business growth (22 percent).

When asked where CIOs would invest more money if they had it, 30 percent said analytics and Big Data. Mobile apps (17 percent) and private cloud (15 percent) were second and third.

Supporting new business needs (71 percent) and driving digital strategy (47 percent) are top of the priority list for the next 12-18 months.

While 79 percent of CIOs consider their relationship with the CEO a “very important” one, only 42 percent believe this relationship is currently “very good”. Similar disparities exist in the CFO and COO relationships. march 2015

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26 - 28 APRIL 2015

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Security Innovation for a Connected Future

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INTERVIEW Alan Matthews, Chairman, Rapid7

Keep security simple Alan Matthews, Chairman, Rapid7 believes in deleting emails. He strongly suggests not hoarding unused data, like old correspondence that can be mined by cyber-criminals and used against you.

CNME sits down with Matthews to see what other suggestions he has to keep our data safe. www.cnmeonline.com

M

atthews founded the company with partner John Devine to address the need he saw in the market for network security.

Prior to his business partnerships with Devine, he was a consultant to the investment banking group at Merrill Lynch, developed mortgagebacked securities software at First Boston, coordinated and operated computer graphics lab at HBO/ Time Warner and in the late 1970s served as a programmer march 2015

83

26 - 28 APRIL 2015

Dubai World Trade Centre GULF ENTERPRISE MOBILITY EXHIBITION & CONFERENCE

MOBILITY INNOVATION FOR A CONNECTED FUTURE

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and designer for the VM operating system at IBM. Matthews came to Dubai on February 24th to discuss his company, and the state of information security.

How did Rapid, get its start?

Rapid7 began when my CTO, Tas Giakouminakis, walked into my office and tried to quit. This was as the CTO of another company I founded. I told him, no, that he couldn’t resign and we sat down with a blank piece of paper to work out what our next best steps were.

We decided to go into information securities at that time, because it was a growing sector and we saw a great deal of potential.

How can we start to manage more services and data in the cloud, how can we address potentially higher security risks?

I actually think cloud is a very positive thing. In the industry today I think there is a perception that the cloud is somehow inherently less secure, but I don’t believe that to be true. I would contend that it actually provides you with higher security.

Particularly in the SMB market, it may be more beneficial for data to be kept in a cloud service and managed by a cloud service vendor that would be able to provide a much higher level of security. If you have your own system, you also have the danger of your own system being compromised.

In terms of end-user behaviour, what policies should businesses adopt to prevent human error from compromising security?

The best practice is not one that www.cnmeonline.com

keeping your eye on requires businesses to for the coming spend a great deal When year? of money – there I speak to When I should be regular customers, I am speak to updates to any customers, products, and hearing that one of I am it needs to be their top concerns is hearing demonstrated breach in progress. It is as that one of to users why if you have burglers in your their top credentials house, but you cannot concerns are necessary determine where they is breach and how to in progress. keep them are and what they are It is as if you secure. Many of doing - it is a panic have burglers these problems button. in your house, come into play but you cannot because businesses determine where they have password protection are and what they are doing - it is mechanisms that require the user to a panic button. We have a product change passwords too frequently – which provides breach protection which results in the users writing the and investigation management. It password down and compromising allows users to zoom in and home in security that way. There are various on the areas that are being affected ways that you can keep a security during a breech. It gives you the protocol in your business and make ability to determine where a breech sure that people understand that has occurred. data is valuable.

The last year has been a bit rocky in terms of information security, with leaks and breaches dominating the headlines. What have we learned from the last year’s events?

What we have learned – and what we at Rapid 7 learned long ago – is that everyone is vulnerable. There is no industry or company size that is shielded from an attack. The question now is not when you will be attacked, but what you will do when you are attacked, and how much you will know about the attack when it is underway.

What security trends are you

What new products and services does Rapid 7 have on offer this year that may change the threat landscape?

Security strategy and security strategy services are areas where we are finding a lot of acceptance.

Whereas information security may have been pushed down to a lower level in the past, these days it is being brought to the board room. This doesn’t mean that every board member is going to understand every detail of security.

What it does mean is that they are interested in insuring that there is a strategy to ensure that there is a risk adverse protocol in place. march 2015

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23rd March 2015

Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai

Recognising the Middle East’s Networking Champions For sponsorship enquiries, please reach:

For agenda-related enquiries, please reach:

Rajashree Rammohan Publishing Director raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9131 +971 50 173 9987

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PRODUCTS Launches and releases

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Product: Fidelio M2BT Headphones Brand: Philips What it does: The Fidelio M2BT headphones from Philips are headphones that aim to bring all the bells and whistles of the over-the-ear products that have recently flooded the market, while keeping a stylish and decidedly ‘grown-up’ feel. NFC connections, high-fidelity sound, and, of course Bluetooth connectivity make this headset simple and sleek. The Fidelio M2BT boast one tap wireless pairing and memory phone cushioning which makes travelling with the device quite simple and comfortable. High-quality fabric gives the set a modern feel.

What you should know: Philips seems to be attempting to create an over the ear headphone set that speaks to the over-30 crowd, and they are succeeding. We’ve seen brightly coloured over-the-ear headphones that are more fashion that substance. The Fidelio M2BTs simply look slick without being ostentatious. The functionality of this set complemented by its sleek design.

Product: Kirabook 13 Brand: Toshiba What it does: The Kirabook 13 looks like a high-end Ultrabook. With a metal alloy casing and measuring around 0.7 by 12.5 by 8.25 inches the Kirabook manages to look both solid and light simultaneously. The 2560-by-1440-pixel touchscreen display which has a pixel density of 221 pixels per inch is what is drawing potential buyers in. However, the amenities that some Ultrabooks skip – such as HDMI ports, three USBs and a Corning Concore glass display – are the real sell.

What you should know: This model is powered by an Intel Core i7-4500U, 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 256GB SSD. The battery lasts around six hours which can be extended if it is used in “eco” mode. The KIRAbook runs Windows 8.1 and comes pre-installed with Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 for basic photo and video editing. Though Ultrabooks are becoming known for cutting corners to attain portability, Toshiba has managed to provide all the amenities without compromise. www.cnmeonline.com

Product: OMEN 15 Brand: HP What it does: HP’s line of OMEN notebooks are designed with gamers in mind. The company aimed to create a product meets portability that active gamers demand, with the audio and video specs that are also necessary for a fulfilling experience. They’ve created, frankly, a mean looking device – which should please hardcore gamers. The OMEN 15 has a custom chrome hinge and blue-coated tips to echo the racing look of titanium exhaust pipes. It is not, however, all style and no substance. Under the hood is an Intel Core i7 processor, up to 16 GB of RAM, dual-SSD drives and an nVidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics card.

What you should know: If you buy this notebook for business, you may be disappointed. The entire keyboard, speakers, power button, and even the rear vents glow red, and the design and specs are simply unapologetic about being a gaming machine. It is really and truly a notebook that should be dedicated to gaming and recreation. The OMEN line is part of a new trend in gaming laptops in which companies are beginning to meet the brief on portability.

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Six simple security mistakes you may be making, and how to fix them.

1

Falling for phishing: One of the most common mistakes.

It can include clicking on malicious links or attachments in phishing emails, on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or even 'ads' on websites that look legitimate.

The fix: Be skeptical of everything, and to click only on links that you are certain have come from a trusted sender. Never include information of a personal nature, like credit card numbers, with an email.

2

Unauthorised application or cloud use: This includes posting private, or uncontrolled, data to the cloud.

This comes in a lot of forms.

Anything from installing ‘gotomypc’ to buying cloud virtual machines and using them for corporate purposes. It is amazing how people can do these things without realising the dangers.

The fix: Use a trusted cloud storage system, and make yourself aware of what is appropriate to store in the cloud. If the data being stored is confidential, it should probably stay on premise.

3

Weak or misused passwords: It doesn’t take an expert to know that using a default or simple password is like leaving your door unlocked. But misuse also includes using the same password for multiple sites and sharing them with friends or coworkers.

Because everything demands a password we tend to do a lot of 88

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Many recent studies of security vulnerabilities come to the same conclusion: The human factor is a greater risk to organisations than flaws in

credential duplication between our various sites. But this is a critical and sometimes tragic error. Many crucial accounts are hacked because an attacker gets access to email or some other seemingly innocuous account where users have reused their credentials with another far more sensitive account, such as banking or healthcare.

The fix: Make it easier to manage multiple, complex passwords, to reduce the incentive to re-use them.

Numerous experts have recommended creating passwords by using the first letters of a phrase or sentence that is easy to remember, with a few numbers and/or symbols thrown in.

He and others also recommend using a password manager - there are a number available.

Two-factor authentication also improves security, especially for common apps such as Google Gmail or Facebook, experts say. So don’t rely on a password alone.

4

Remote insecurity: This is the common practice of transferring files between work and personal computers when working from home, or allowing family members to use a work device at home. It can also include backing up corporate data to a third-party cloud service. This not only exposes the company to malware, but also leaves data and data residue - data left post deletion that can be retrieved with proper tools - on an unmanaged system.

The fix: Be sure not to mix business with recreation. Keep your work devices for work, and your personal devices to use at home. This will ensure that you keep your data separated, and protect both your work and your personal devices.

5

Clueless social networking: The advantage of social networking is that it allows us to be much more collaborative and productive. But, among obvious risks is that confidential information gets posted on networking sites or in the cloud, where it is beyond our control.

The fix: Stay abreast of new social media scams and tricks. These sites are changing on a regular basis, so make it a priority to sit down and learn about their changing threat landscapes on a regular basis.

6

Poor mobile security: Millions of devices are being used in coffee shops, on mass transportation and other places with public Wi-Fi. Far too many of them are not even protected by rigorous encryption or good mobile device management (MDM). Even more are not even protected by a PIN. The fix: Have a PIN for your device. Be aware of your surroundings in public places - coffee shops, airports, train stations, shopping malls and other areas where criminals can get personal information from something as low-tech as shoulder surfing. Make sure that your corporate data is encrypted, end-to-end. www.cnmeonline.com

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SIMPLE JUST WORKS.

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Find out more at sap.com/runsimple

ISSUE 277 | febraury 2015

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