Computer News Middle East January 2016

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issue 288 | january 2016 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

oE’s Kempinski M rience drive digital expe

________

Eugene Kaspersky

Smart learning Mazen Chilet, CIO, Abu Dhabi University on his journey home to the Middle East

A tribute to Dominic De Sousa, Founder and Chairman, CPI Media Group

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GROUP Chairman and founder Dominic De Sousa GROUP CEO Nadeem Hood

EDITORIAL

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

Looking to the future Following the venerable tradition, it’s time for me to dust off the crystal ball and gaze into the year to come, and predict the technologies and trends that will shape enterprise IT in 2016. I think digital transformation will be on top of the agenda for every CIO in this age of customer, which in turn, will fuel the growth of hybrid cloud deployments in the region. The powerful combination of private and public cloud is expected to give CIOs the tools necessary to accelerate the journey towards true digital transformation and business innovation. Second on my list is Internet of Things and M2M communications. We might see some real-world deployments and compelling applications especially in healthcare, retail and manufacturing, making this year a tipping point for IoT. However, CIOs will have to brace themselves to handle the sheer quantity of data generated by connected devices and security vulnerabilities that come in its wake.

We might see You can also expect Big Data analytics to become some real-world really big in 2016, with Hadoop becoming more commonplace in enterprises. Having said that, building deployments the right technology stack will be key for IT organisations and compelling to leverage ever-increasing data volumes for in-theapplications, moment insights to deliver real business value. On the making this year mobility front, we have already seen many enterprise a tipping point applications being mobilised in the past year and I for IoT. expect that trend to accelerate, with mobility becoming the primary computing platform. If you think 2015 was a dismal year for cybersecurity with some significant breaches making headlines, 2016 might get worse as the gap between solutions and breaches continue to widen. CIOs and business leaders will have to take security seriously and experts believe ransomware will become the biggest security challenge this year. Often, enterprises deploy cutting-edge technologies to address the new threats, neglecting the human factor. Make sure that every individual in your organisation understands cyber hygiene best practices if you want to improve the overall security posture.

Talk to us:

E-mail: jeevan.thankappan@ cpimediagroup.com

Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5678 Editor Annie Bricker annie.bricker@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1643 Deputy Editor James Dartnell james.dartnell@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5684 Online Editor Adelle Geronimo adelle.geronimo@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5683 ADVERTISING Commercial Director Chris Stevenson chris.stevenson@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5674 Group Sales Director Kausar Syed kausar.syed@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1647 Sales Manager Merle Carrasco merle.carrasco@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5676 Circulation Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh.nair@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5682 Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james.tharian@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5673 Designers Analou Balbero analou.balbero@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5680 Neha Kalvani neha.kalvani@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 3751644 DIGITAL SERVICES Web Developer Jefferson de Joya Abbas Madh Photographer Charls Thomas Maksym Poriechkin webmaster@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by

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s Kempinski Moe’ ience drive digital exper

________

eugene Kaspersky

If you’d like to receive your own copy of CNME every month, log on and request a subscription: www.cnmeonline.com

Regional partner of

smart learning Mazen Chilet, CIO, Abu Dhabi University on his journey home to the Middle East

A tribute to Dominic De Sousa, Founder and Chairman, CPI Media Group

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

Our events

EDITORIAL

In the end CNME’s offices had a rocky ending to 2015. As many of you may know, our owner, founder and chairman, Dominic De Sousa passed away in the final weeks of December. Just days after Dom’s passing, the CPI family lost another member, John Magno, a talented graphic designer and musician. It has been a major loss for the company, and for CPI’s employees it’s been a personal one as well.

Dom was such an integral personality in the company.

He set the mood and culture of CPI, largely due to the fact many of us were personally hired by him. He had a knack for recognising potential. Speaking with employees that have been at the company for ten or more years, many stories emerge of how upon meeting them, Dom immediately recognised their potential.

We all took a great deal away from our experiences with Dom, but one thing that will stick with me was this innate ability to recognise raw talent, and to take a chance on unseasoned employees.

I think this lesson translates well to the IT Dom took a chance industry - or indeed most 21st Century on so many young businesses - where the landscape is constantly professionals, and changing, and skillsets are increasingly developed through experience rather than those risks have formal education. Business owners and paid off over time to stakeholders can certainly look at Dom’s create the team we example in this respect. Good talent in this have today. industry may not come with all the necessary letters behind a title; opting for someone who purely ticks the boxes of desired qualifications may mean missing out on the opportunity to mentor a raw but sharp mind.

Dom took a chance on so many young professionals, John included, and those risks have paid off over time to help create the team that we have at CNME today. The lessons that I took away from my brief time with him do not even scratch the surface in comparison to those who knew and worked with him for years – even decades.

However, the one that has stuck with me the most is that taking a chance on someone is often wholly worthwhile.

It is the risks we take on people that end up paying off the most.

Talk to us:

E-mail: annie.bricker@ cpimediagroup.com

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Our Strategic Partners

Contents

Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic Technology Partner

Strategic Innovation Partner

ISSUE 288 | january 2016

26

CXO corner saxo bank group cfo steen blaafalk

22

18 Cloud on the horizon

44 Soft centre

28 The age of simplification

48 Future focused

36 The wireless frontier

56 The last leg

40 Scalable prospects

58 Evolution of the CIO

32

kempinski hotel mall of the emirates

52

interview: eugene kaspersky

www.cnmeonline.com

abu dhabi university's mazen chillet

SAP laid out its strategy for growth during its annual customer conference held in Barcelona.

Cognizant's Venugopal Lambu discusses how Middle East companies can drive simplification within their IT infrastructures.

In the world of mobile broadband, LTE Advanced-Pro is on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Can 4.5G deliver what most are expecting?

While a software-defined data centre holds huge promise, CIOs must first overcome a range of hurdles to gain backing for such an ambitious project.

In an exclusive interview, Riverbed Technology CEO Jerry Kennelly talks about how going private has impacted the company.

With the continued push to data-driven environments, Web-scale IT can help businesses achieve the agility and scalability they need.

Storage solutions enteprises can consider to achieve 100 percent virtualisation of their storage platform architecture, data protection and management.

As the industry continues to evolve, what roles will chief information officers be undertaking in the next few years?

january 2016

7

Dominic De Sousa 1959-2015

On 16th December 2015, Dominic De Sousa, Founder and Chairman of CPI Media Group, publishers of CNME, passed away from cardiac arrest. Dom was many things to many people. An extraordinary publisher who defied traditional norms of the industry. A singer who delighted audiences with his soothing voice. A selfless wildlife lover who made it his life’s mission to rescue and rehabilitate sick and injured animals.

Known for being full of life and infectious charisma, he died doing what he loved most – singing on stage at our sister publication BBC Good Food Middle East’s annual awards ceremony at Jumeirah Zabeel Saray’s MusicHall.

Born to Goan parents in Kenya, Dom was raised in South London. After studying biochemistry at the University of London, De Sousa joined Reed Business Publishing as an advertising salesman on Middle East Computing, laying the foundations for his future career. After a short stint with Alain Charles Publishing, he moved to Dubai in 1994 and launched CNME. Starting from a small back office in bustling Deira, CPI Media Group is now one of the leading B2B publishers in the region, thanks to Dom’s never-say-die character and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as his unflinching belief in company employees.

Today, CPI boasts more than 25 magazines, Web portals and numerous vertical industry awards programmes.

In stark contrast to other publishers, Dom encouraged his staff to become his partners rather than employees. Constantly discovering new interests and giving credence to new ideas, he egged on everyone at CPI to think differently and act with clarity of thought. At CNME, this approach and outlook helped us weather many storms and emerge as the number one enterprise technology magazine in the region.

For those of us who remain at CPI, he is quite simply irreplaceable. The number of lives he touched across multiple industries in the Middle East is humbling and we, his colleagues, have been overwhelmed by the messages and tributes from those who knew, respected and loved him. He will be missed more than we can express in words, but his legacy lives on in the magazines he helped create and nurture, and the employees whose professional lives have been so greatly enhanced through his faith and support.

Rest in peace Dom, you were a true leader.

The future The current state of the ind

?

What is Big Data? Big Data is a structured or unstructured data that's too large to manage and manipulate with traditional software or tools. In recent years, much IT investment has been going into solutions to manage and analyse Big Data.

current

70%

1 exabyte = 1.073 billion gigabytes

40%

of managers find it very challenging to integrate and manage all of their data

of the digital world and its data is generated by everyday users, equal to 900 Exabytes

75% of business cite growth as the key source of value from Big Data and analytics

top 5 big data applications Financial Services / Insurance Retail / Distribution

#1

Government / Public Sector Communications / Telecom Media / Entertainment

In 2012, Big Data was the #1 most ambiguous and searched for term among IT companies, according to Gartner

of big data ustry and where it’s headed

future

Big Data is expected to create 4.4 million IT jobs globally

$220B

Projected Big Data and analytics market size

By 2020, the digital universe is expected to reach the size of...

9.4 trillion dvds ... which is roughly equevalent to 40 Zettabytes

SOURCE: www.tiecon.org

advertorial

PrEVENtINg DNS-BaSED Data ExfIltratIoN DNS aS a Pathway for INfIltratIoN aND ExfIltratIoN Several high-profile data breaches have been in the news recently. We read that millions of customer records are stolen, emails hacked, and sensitive information leaked. Most enterprises have multiple defense mechanisms and security technologies in place, such as next-generation firewalls, IDSs, and intrusion-prevention systems (IPSs). Yet somehow malicious actors find a way to appropriate data. What types of data are they after and why?

Hackers try to steal personally identifiable information (PII) such as social security numbers and regulated data related to compliance and intellectual property that could give some other entity a competitive advantage. They can then post this data publicly to cause damage to reputation or they can turn around and sell it in the underground market for a nice profit.

Hackers can use multiple pathways to steal data, but the one that is often unknowingly left open is the DNS, or Domain Name System. DNS is increasingly being used for data exfiltration either by malware-infected devices or by rogue employees. According to a recent DNS security survey of businesses based in North America and Europe, 46 percent of respondents experienced DNS exfiltration and 45 percent experienced DNS tunneling.

DNS is not only used for data leakage, but also to move malicious code into a network. This infiltration is easier than you think. Hackers can prepare a binary, encode it, and transport it past firewalls and content filters via DNS into an organization’s network. Hackers send and receive data via DNS— effectively converting it into a covert transport protocol.

DNS tunneling is the method of tunneling other protocols such as SSH or HTTP within DNS. DNS tunneling has been around for a long time and popular toolkits include Iodine, OzymanDNS, SplitBrain, and TCP-over-DNS. Using a DNS tunnel, malicious actors can also fully and remotely control a compromised internal host or exfiltrate data.

Preventing DNS-Based Data Exfiltration with Infoblox DNS threat analytics Infoblox DNS Threat Analytics is a new patented technology that detects and automatically blocks attempts to steal intellectual property via DNS without the need for endpoint agents or additional network infrastructure.

It uses real-time streaming analytics of live DNS queries and machine learning to accurately detect presence of data in DNS queries. Available with Infoblox DNS Firewall or Infoblox Internal DNS Security, DNS Threat Analytics provides protection against both sophisticated data-exfiltration techniques and off-the-shelf tunneling toolkits. Infoblox is the only vendor to offer a DNS infrastructure with built-in analytics to detect and block DNS tunneling and data exfiltration. active Blocking of Data Exfiltration DNS Threat Analytics not only detects but automatically blocks communications to destinations associated with dataexfiltration attempts.

The engine adds destinations associated with data exfiltration automatically to the blacklist in Infoblox DNS Firewall or Infoblox Internal DNS Security.

In addition, Infoblox Grid-wide updates are sent to all Infoblox members with DNS firewalling/RPZ capability, to scale enforcement to all parts of the network.

No additional Infrastructure or Endpoint agents Needed Unlike other approaches that analyze log data in batches and after the compromise, DNS Threat Analytics is built directly into the DNS infrastructure, which is in the path of exfiltration, and provides real-time detection, without the need for additional network infrastructure.

Visibility Infoblox provides visibility into the infected devices or potential rogue employees by providing detailed information such as device type, IP address, MAC address, and most importantly, the user associated with the device trying to exfiltrate data. This reduces time to repair and accelerates the remediation process.

Unique Patented technology Infoblox DNS Threat Analytics is a patented technology that uses machine learning to perform real-time streaming analytics on live DNS queries to detect data exfiltration. The analytics engine examines host.subdomain and TXT records in DNS queries and uses entropy, lexical analysis, time series, and other factors to determine presence of data in queries. This maximizes chances of detecting new methods of exfiltration, even those that don’t have standard signatures, based on query behavior and patterns. automating Security response through Integrations In order to accelerate response and remediation to data exfiltration threats, Infoblox integrates with leading endpoint solutions such as Bit 9 + Carbon Black to provide indicators of compromise when an endpoint is trying to exfiltrate data. Using this intelligence, Carbon Black automatically bans the malicious processes from future execution and connection, thereby effectively quarantining the infected endpoint and preventing data from being exfiltrated, even if the device is outside the enterprise. Infoblox also exchanges security event information with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and provides robust restful APIs, which can be used to enrich your security information and event management (SIEM) with additional contextual data.

DoN’t BEcomE thE NExt Data BrEach VIctIm DNS is the perfect enforcement point to improve your organization’s security posture. It is close to endpoints, ubiquitous, and in the path of DNS-based exfiltration. While DLP technology solutions protect against data leakage via email, web, ftp, and other vectors, most don’t have visibility into DNS-based exfiltration. To maximize your chances of fighting back against these data theft attempts, complement traditional data loss prevention (DLP) solutions with a DNS- based solution. Infoblox DNS Threat Analytics complements traditional data-loss prevention (DLP) solutions by closing the gap and preventing DNS from being used a back door for data theft.

to learn about Infoblox Secure DNS, visit www.infoblox.com/securedns.

Corporate Headquarters:

+1.408.986.4000

1.866.463.6256 (toll-free, U.S. and Canada)

info@infoblox.com

www.infoblox.com

James Dartnell Deputy Editor, CNME

L

Red alert

ast month I had the pleasure of meeting IT industry stalwart Eugene Kaspersky, and took the opportunity to discuss his thoughts on what 2016 holds in store for cybersecurity.

The CEO and founder of his namesake company, Kaspersky Lab, offered a range of fresh and insightful takes on a number of issues that can be understated in terms of IT security.

His greatest concern for the coming year was entirely valid – the increasing number of threats to physical and critical infrastructure caused by cybercrime.

There’s always a great deal of hype surrounding the possibilities of what cybercrime can mean for the enterprise. For any large business, financial loss remains a persistent threat, but one that has so far proven negligible in most high-profile cases.

Research released in 2015 by Hewlett Packard and the U.S-based www.cnmeonline.com

Column

Ponemon Institute of Cyber Crime revealed that hacking attacks cost the average firm $7.7 million per year.

While this is undeniably damaging, the broader threat of reputation loss that can result from data breaches or damage to physical infrastructure looms larger.

The soft power that cybercriminals wield in this respect is immense.

Financial damage can always be offset by insurance claims, or, in an unprecedented case, would see a bank bailed out by a government.

However, the ability to cause physical hazards, or destroying an organisation’s reputation are where the real threats lie. We’ve merely hit the tip of the iceberg in this respect. A variety of incidents that hit the headlines have had wider implications – including the 2013 Target breach – but more are sure to follow.

The usual suspects emerge in terms of the Middle East’s top

targets for this type of attack.

Whether it’s the drilling and refining equipment of oil and gas firms, the infrastructure powering banking and financial services, or security layers protecting confidential patient information in the healthcare industry, organisations have every reason to be on their guard.

The 2012 Shamoon virus that hit Saudi Arabia’s Aramco caused outages to over 30,000 of the company’s endpoints – and took the company a week to recover from – stands out as the biggest example of a physical infrastructure attack in the region.

Cybercrime only gets more sophisticated with time, so don’t be surprised if the region is affected by a high profile incident in the coming 12 months.

Maybe only in time can we realise the full extent of the impact of a 2016 cyber-attack on the Middle East. january 2016

13

{

CIO Soundbites What are your best practices for future-proofing IT architecture?

Terence Sathyanarayan, Corporate IT Director, Drake & Scull

}

“Over the last four years, we’ve started our transformation map, which has centred around our use of Zachman Framework for enterprise architecture. It’s allowed us to map all systems, processes, people and locations, and build our business transformation on that foundation, allowing us to rapidly scale up or down. Our private cloud is built on this platform. We’ve created our roadmap in terms of various solutions that we need to provide over the next five years, then created a budget for delivery, and finally plan to consolidate all systems and put them under a standardised architecture.”

Ajay Rathi, Head of IT, Meraas Holding “Only three years ago, cloud was still in its conceptual stage, Big Data was largely hype and business analytics was still excel and charts.

With data explosions and hybrid cloud, future-proofing enterprise IT architecture is a challenge for all CIOs. A robust enterprise service bus with well-built Web services for multiple applications, Java message Service and representational state transfer (REST) protocols can handle all kinds of communication between multiple applications either hosted on cloud or in hybrid mode. Enterprise architecture needs to be more flexible to accommodate ever-changing portfolios of applications.”

Kanan Bitar, CIO, PwC “’Agile’ is becoming an important buzzword these days, but technology is evolving at such a pace that delivering agility is tough. The speed of innovation in hardware, software and solutions makes future-proofing a huge challenge. In the last few years, most architectures and applications have become cloud-based, so, looking to the future, cloud has to be the go-to means for new projects and applications.”

14

january 2016

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short takes

Month in view

NetApp to acquire SolidFire

George Kurian, CEO, NetApp

NetApp has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SolidFire for $870 million.

“This acquisition will benefit current and future customers looking to gain the benefits of Web-scale cloud providers for their own data centres,” said George Kurian, CEO, NetApp. “SolidFire combines the performance and economics of all-flash storage with a Web-scale architecture that radically simplifies data centre operations and enables rapid deployments of new applications.

We look forward to extending NetApp’s flash leadership with the SolidFire team, products and partner ecosystem, and to accelerating flash adoption through NetApp’s large partner and customer base.”

With SolidFire, NetApp will now have all-flash offerings that address each of the three largest all-flash array market segments. For the traditional enterprise infrastructure buyer, the NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) product line delivers features across flash, disk and cloud resources.

Over time, SolidFire products will be incorporated into NetApp’s data fabric strategy, delivering data management across flash, disk and cloud resources. Following the close of the transaction, which is anticipated to occur in NetApp’s fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2016, subject to customary closing conditions, SolidFire CEO Dave Wright will lead the SolidFire product line within NetApp’s product operations.

16

january 2016

Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO, Netflix

Netflix now available in the GCC Netflix has launched its service globally, simultaneously bringing its Internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world. The company made the announcement – and the service went live – during a keynote by co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings at the recently held CES 2016.

“Previously we were only available in 60 countries,” said Hastings. “Whenever I travel outside these 60 countries, the number one question I get is, ‘When is Netflix going to be available here?’ Because of the global reach of the Internet, people have heard about our shows.

“I’m delighted to announce that while we have been on stage here at CES, we have switched Netflix on in Azerbaijan, in Vietnam, in India, in Nigeria, in Poland, in Russia, in Saudi Arabia, in Singapore, in South Korea, in Turkey, in Indonesia and in more than 130 new countries.”

While largely available in English in most new countries, Netflix today added Arabic, Korean, simplified and traditional Chinese to the 17 languages it already supports.

Netflix will not yet be available in China, though the company is continuing to explore options for providing the service.

It also won’t be available in Crimea, North Korea and Syria due to US government restrictions on American companies.

Netflix is available on virtually any device that has an Internet connection, including personal computers, tablets, smartphones, Smart TVs and game consoles, and automatically provides the best possible streaming quality based on available bandwidth.

$ 880 million – projected value of the public cloud services market in the MENA region in 2016 Source: Gartner

www.cnmeonline.com

IDC has predicted that by 2017, over 50 percent of organisations’ IT spending will be for third platform technologies, solutions, and services, rising to over 60 percent by 2020.

Facebook founder to focus on AI in 2016 In a recent Facebook post, the social by the social media site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to work on an artificial intelligence system to help him manage work and home.

Zuckerberg mentioned that he aims to build a connected-home system akin to the fictional character Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S. system, from the Iron Man comic and movie series.

Zuckerberg emphasised that his design will start out with the basics that most pre-fab systems offer today like lighting controls, programmable thermostat, and streaming music on demand. In the future, Zuckerberg expects his AI

Alpha Data launches new public cloud platform

Alpha Data, the UAE-based systems integrator and managed service provider, has launched ‘Alpha Cloud.’

According to the company, Alpha Cloud is a new public cloud service that features cloud functionality tailored to meet the country’s local cloud computing requirements. It mentioned that they have invested in a secure, scalable and multi-tenant technology architecture and framework and has incorporated this model into the Alpha Cloud service.

“Alpha Data has made a strong commitment to ‘Bring the Cloud to Life’ by making cloud services simple and easier to comprehend even for non-IT users,” said Murugesan Vaithilingam, Services Director at Alpha Data. “Our Alpha Cloud service packages are tailored to serve UAE customers and www.cnmeonline.com

involve a very simple on-boarding process. Users will be able to purchase our premier cloud services either prepaid or postpaid plans. Basic Cloud services such as compute, storage, and backup can be subscribed to through various plans along with value-added services. Alpha Cloud offers several business services such as private cloud, virtual private cloud and disaster recovery provisioning to implement the cloud services delivery model, with the option of including traditional managed services along with core services.”

Farid Abo El Fotouh, Services Director, Alpha Data, said, “Alpha Cloud was developed because of our desire to meet the needs of our clients who face rapid technological evolution and the shift to cloud-supported operations and services. This latest addition to our portfolio is a result of our close and active engagement with our customers who provided us with valuable insights on the importance of the cloud to their business and how the cloud fits in and supports their core activities.”

to help him in his work, visualising data in virtual reality. “At Facebook I spend a lot of time working with engineers to build new things.

Some of the most rewarding work involves getting deep into the details of technical projects,” Zuckerberg wrote. “But it’s a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that.”

The challenge isn’t the first Zuckerberg has taken on in a new year, although it is by far the most ambitious. Whether this challenge is merely a personal goal, or a potential future path for Facebook’s growth as a company remains to be seen.

Fujitsu to spin off PC and phone businesses Representatives from Fujitsu announced plans on to spin off its PC and phone businesses in February this year.

Beginning 1st February, Fujitsu’s PC business will become one company – known, for now, as Company Split A – and its phone business will become another, known as Company Split B. “With the ongoing commoditisation of ubiquitous products, mainly of PCs and smartphones, it has become increasingly difficult to achieve differentiation, and competition with emerging global vendors has intensified,” the company said in a statement.

Fujitsu said it had instituted each of the “company splits” to “clarify management accountability, to enable swift management decisions, and to pursue comprehensive efficiency by creating independent companies for the PC business and the mobile phones business, respectively.” It also wants to establish an integrated system covering all aspects of research, development, design, manufacturing, sales, planning, and after-sales services, it said. january 2016

17

EVENT

SAP

cloud on the horizon At its annual customer event SAP Select in Barcelona, the company laid out its strategy for growth, with HANA at the forefront.

AP is fighting off the perception of being a back-office application company as it pushes towards cloud and Internet of Things.

“We are not just an application company but a cloud and platform company with many assets. Before HANA came in, we didn’t have much going on in the cloud. We went on a shopping spree and spent $35 billion in innovation in the cloud,” said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. He added that in the global economy, where social networks have become business networks, and highly fragmented supply chains, companies have to rethink their business models. “How can you be more relevant to your customer than anyone else in your space? Markets are going up and down and the key to advancing is making digital the heart of everything you do.”

SAP says reimagining businesses the digital economy requires the

S

18

january 2016

right technology and eliminating complexity. “We are offering SAP digital framework, powered by Ken Hu, Deputy Chairman HANA, to simplify business processes. and Rotating CEO, Huawei.

Opportunities in the digital economy are coming at you from every angle and you require a digital framework to harness these opportunities,” said Rob Enslin, President of Global Customer Operations.

SAP’s digital business framework is based on five key pillars – workforce engagement, business network collaboration, Big Data, IoT and customer experience across all touchpoints. SAP says each of these pillars provides a step towards a digital future, but the magic happens when they all interconnect to achieve truly transformational business outcomes.

While laying out the building blocks the digital era, SAP’s key executives emphasised that the company’s S/4 Hana will be the nucleus of the digital core and core

underpinning of every product it makes, including cloud applications.

In a bid to fully flesh its HANA cloud platform, SAP is offering developer licences for free so that customers can build new apps and extend their core.

With the continued success of HANA, SAP is now transitioning from a traditional on-premise software company to a cloud-based software vendor and says it is focused on acquiring new customers for its cloud business. “We have seen triple digit growth across cloud properties. In fact, in Q3 our cloud revenue grew by 67 percent with double-digit growth in new cloud bookings. There is a misconception that on-premise business is growing in emerging markets and cloud in more mature markets. We have more cloud revenues in the Middle East than in France,” said Enslin.

SAP is also building a consulting ecosystem by hiring system integrators to help customers adapt to the cloud world. “The number one priority for customers when they do a cloud implementation is simplification of processes, not cost.

We are convincing our partners to adapt to new models and we are measuring the time it takes to implement,” said Franck Cohen, President of SAP EMEA. The event also heard from company CIO Helen Arnold who said business models are being completely disrupted in the wake of cloud and CIOs have a tremendous challenge and responsibility to drive an endto-end transformation. “This is the best time ever to be a CIO. For a long time, the role of CIO was to keep the lights on. Now, they have to embrace the change, and new technologies to build different business processes.

It’s not about technology per se, but doing things differently. You have to stay much closer to business than before, and play a key role in enabling company strategies." www.cnmeonline.com

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MS-DOS

Launched as the main operating system for IBM PCs in 1981, Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) set the ball rolling for the foundations on which computer programmes could run.

Beginning its journey as Seattle Computer Products' 86-DOS, Microsoft hired the OS's developer Tim Paterson and purchased its 1.10 version of the OS for $75,000.

Having been approached by Big Blue for an OS that could support its PCs, Microsoft renamed the product MSDOS, and in August 1981, IBM offered it as PC DOS 1.0, as one of three operating systems for its 5150 PC. MS-DOS was initially targeted at Intel 8086 processors running on computer hardware using floppy disks to store and access application software and user data as well as the operating system.

The release of Windows 95 hailed the decline of MS-DOS. An integrated version of MS-DOS was used for bootstrapping, troubleshooting, and backwards-compatibility with old DOS software, but no longer released as a standalone product.

It would ultimately provide the first in step in Microsoft’s bid to become a world-leader in software, as well as programming languages.

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www.cnmeonline.com

CIO

Spotlight

Man of the people From improving his US house to revamping the IT department at Abu Dhabi University, Mazen Chilet is always looking to upgrade. azen Chilet, CIO, Abu Dhabi University, has a smile for nearly everyone he meets. From the barista at Starbucks, to the students and employees he sees in the hallways, Chilet stops to chat with each one. “I learned during my career that I enjoy being out in the field – working with people. You can have all of the skills that it takes to succeed, but if you don’t know how to work with people, it counts for nothing,” he says.

Chilet was born in Kuwait, to Palestinian parents. His father, a welder, would bring home niche radio gadgets. Chilet spent his formative years learning to disassemble electronics and solder parts together.

“I was fascinated by these things,” he says. “I remember a two-way radio that he brought home once. I couldn’t believe that the components would allow audio signals to be sent from one area to another. It was amazing.”

His upbringing instilled in him a strong work ethic early on. “I started working during the summers when I was 15,” he recalls. “I worked at a factory that made television antennae.”

The work was not easy, and he learned a great deal. At the end of his first summer at the factory, he had amassed a small savings pot. “I bought my mother a gold ring. I wanted to do something special for her,” he says.

“Decades later my mother still brags about that ring. When I got married,

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she even told my wife about it!”

Each summer, Chilet would work at the factory, gaining more experience and preparing for his future. When he turned 18, he decided he wanted to move to America. “My father was an American citizen, so he was able to help me with the logistics,” he recalls.

Chilet was accepted into California State University and moved to Los Angeles that summer. “I had a few cousins and some family living in the US, but for the most part I moved there by myself,” he says.

In LA, he was confronted by a completely new culture. “It was definitely a huge change, but I decided to embrace it,” he says. He opted to only speak English while in America, and formed friendships with students from around the world. After entering university undecided on his course, he eventually settled on electrical engineering. “It was pretty painful at the time,” he recalls. “We were using Fortran punch cards to programme.

One mistake could cost you a whole day of work.”

In spite of these challenges, in 1983 he graduated and began his career. He stayed in California, taking a job with NCR, the National Cash Register Company, just two years after the first NCR Tower Supermicrocomputer system was launched. From 1984 to 1997 he worked at NCR at various levels, completing his tenure as their Senior

Systems Engineer. “There were a great number of changes during those 14 years,” says Chilet. In 1988, cash registers were introduced to the market, changing the nature of the banking industry along with the work that NCR took on.

As he climbed the ladder at NCR, his role evolved as well. “I learned that I enjoyed working in the field, and actually getting to know the customer,” he says. One of his managers at the time also had a great influence on how Chilet would treat people in the future. “His name was Chester Webb. He showed me that you always need to give people the benefit of the doubt,” says Chilet.

In 1994, while still working for NCR, Chilet decided it was time to upgrade his education. “I went for a second Bachelor’s degree – this time in computer sciences.” With a full-time job at NCR and a growing family at home, Chilet took on night classes at National University. He owes his success, he says, to his wife, whom he married in 1990.

“She took care of everything,” he recalls. “I was working all day and going to school in the evening, and when I got home I didn’t have to lift a finger. She took care of the house and kids and took care of me as well.

I couldn’t have done it without her, and I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive partner.”

By 1997, Chilet’s role at NCR had www.cnmeonline.com

changed, as had he. “I think then, I just knew it was time to move on,” he says. Because he had made solid relationships with his clients at NCR, the move was easy. “My interview wasn’t even an interview.

My customer at Delta knew my work, and wanted to hire me, and when I transitioned, I already knew people on my team,” he recalls.

That 'non-interview' was with Delta Airlines as their IT Services Provider. There, he was part of a fundamental transformation in Delta’s technology systems. Chilet took the lead on Delta Airlines Airport Renewal which would change the way the airline’s customers interacted with the company. Then on September 11th 2001, everything changed. “The atmosphere in the airports was totally different. You could hear a pin drop on the tarmac.” With the aviation industry in decline, Chilet sought a change of scene.

He was offered a position at John Wayne Airport in San Diego in 2002. “It was good to be the landlord, for once,” says Chilet. “We were able to make decisions for the airport such as requiring that the airlines move to a common-use system. My fingerprints www.cnmeonline.com

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CIO

Spotlight

student experience. “We’ve created are all over that airport,” he says, listing the My ADU portal, where students all of the processes and systems that his can have 24/7 access to all resources, team updated there. as well as designed a mobile app and After four years in San Diego, Chilet a BYOD policy,” says Chilet. made what he terms “the hardest However, more than the physical decision in my life.” His children were IT improvements, Chilet highlights nearing their teens, and he wanted the change in communication at them to experience their native culture.

ADU. “I wanted more transparency “Heritage is important,” says Chilet. “We between our department and the just decided it was time that the kids faculty. I wanted our department had an Arab experience.” With that, to stop being seen as a blockade, Chilet took a position with the Higher and truly become an enabler.” To College of Technology, Al Ain campus that end, Chilet has done away with and made the move to the UAE. antiquated policies “Al Ain was that hamstrung good for the kids,” "I wanted end-users, and has he says of the even begun an IT city. “They made transparency department blog, international between our so that faculty and friends and department and the students can more experienced living clearly understand in the Middle faculty. I wanted reasoning East. I think it has our department to the behind changes in made them more stop being seen as a their services. “I diverse, more international blockade, and truly think there needs be trust,” says people as they become an enabler." to Chilet. “We need to become adults.” trust the judgement At HCT, Chilet of our faculty and students.” revamped the IT infrastructure His children are older now, but over his seven years in Al Ain. Chilet is far from settling down. In his “We instituted a BYOD policy, and downtime, he is a bit of a handyman, provided iPads campus-wide,” he says, perhaps harkening back to his days recounting a few of his many projects. learning to solder in Kuwait with his In 2013, Chilet decided it was father. “In the US I built an addition to time for a new challenge. “I had our house. I did all the wiring myself. actually considered moving back I also enjoy working on cars – I love to the States,” he says. Instead, he seeing things come together and work.” answered the call from Abu Dhabi Whatever project Chilet takes on next, University. “I was attracted to the he will surely move forward with a challenge. There is a strong team positive attitude, giving everyone he here, and we needed to transform meets the benefit of the doubt, and a the university,” says Chilet. He and smile to go with it. his team went about changing the

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TIMELINE 1983 Graduates from Cal State, Los Angeles

1984 Begins tenure at NCR

1997 Hired at Delta Airlines

2002 IT Manager for John Wayne Airport

2006 Moved to the UAE

2013 Joined Abu Dhabi University

www.cnmeonline.com

CXO Corner

Ease of exchange

Saxo Bank’s Group CFO Steen Blaafalk discusses the opportunities for foreign exchange trading in the Middle East and the power of technology platforms in the space.

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ow big is the retail forex market in the Middle East, and what are the trends shaping its growth?

The Middle East commands approximately eight percent of the retail forex market at an average daily traded value of $23 billion. Recent figures have also suggested there are in excess of 200,000 active traders in the Middle East and North Africa – a drastic increase from 20,000 a decade ago. We believe that number will only increase. We are witnessing a strong surge in demand both from existing traders looking for a more service-oriented platform and from new entrants keen to explore the forex trading environment.

Can you discuss the future of online trading in the region?

With increased access to information facilitating informed decisions, a growing number of investors in the region have turned to online trading in the hope of managing their investments by accessing trading opportunities across multiple asset classes. As such, Saxo Bank sees huge opportunities in the region and we have made a significant investment in not just acquiring clients, but also equipping them with the primary tools they need to invest – insights and technology.

How do you plan to build out your business in the digital age?

Technology is at the core of Saxo Bank’s 26

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operations. Innovation has been one of our cornerstones since we were founded in 1992 – in fact, you could say that we were a FinTech company before the term even entered the mainstream. We have consistently invested heavily in improvements to our trading platform. The result is intuitive, clean and user-friendly technology - with increasingly streamlined platforms offering the tools and functionality to give our clients the edge in the multi-asset investment space. That said, we are certainly not resting on our laurels. We want to shape the future, not follow it.

Our technology is not only changing how our retail clients trade, but also how our partners – other banks and brokers – improve their offering to their end clients. The sheer pace of technological change has made it impossible for many institutions to maintain an edge when it comes to innovation. The result is a paradigm shift from a business-to-customer economy to a so-called collaborative economy. As testament to this strategy, we launched SaxoTraderGO in May - our new multi-asset platform.

The platform was built from the ground up with a focus on usability and performance, integrating seamlessly between desktop and mobile devices. The development of the platform reflects a key trend: 20 percent of the bank’s overall retail trading takes place through mobile devices. This adoption of technology and the increase in mobile businessto-customer interaction presents a huge growth opportunity for both Saxo Bank and its partners.

We are also improving access to trading opportunities across multiple asset classes; investors need to be able to trade in markets where there is volatility and to switch between asset www.cnmeonline.com

classes with consummate ease. In light of this, it is also worth mentioning the depth of our offering. At present, we can provide clients with access to more than 30,000 financial products including FX (spot, forward and options), stocks, CFDs, commodities, futures, contract options and single stock options.

What should CFOs know about volatile foreign exchange rates and the risks involved?

Broadly speaking, we see volatility as the degree of unpredictable change over time of a certain currency pair exchange rate. Measuring and managing exchange rate risk exposure is therefore integral to CFOs seeking to reduce their firm’s vulnerability to major exchange rate fluctuations, which could, in turn, impact profit margins.

Corporations typically protect themselves from foreign exchange rate volatility through forwards, i.e. contracts that lock in the exchange rate for the purchasing or sale of a currency at a future date. In understanding both the positive and negative aspects of forwards, CFOs can decide whether and to what extent their companies should be using them before selecting a suitable hedging strategy for their organisation. For companies with multinational operations or supplier and customer relationships in multiple markets, currency hedging is an essential part of their treasury function.

What should they keep in mind while choosing an FX provider?

Should they look beyond traditional hedging strategies?

Access to foreign exchange markets has transformed unrecognisably in recent years and the abundance of providers has resulted in a number of firms providing similar services but, sadly, there has been a lower barrier to entry meaning that not all firms adhere to the highest standards. Where CFOs should pay attention is in ascertaining whether a provider has robust risk mitigation practices and whether it can combine this with superior technology – something that we pride ourselves on. Investors increasingly demand usability, mobility, performance and service when executing trades.

We meet these demands through state-of-the-art trading tools and features.

White label partnerships have become a cornerstone of our business - we offer banks a sophisticated and cost-effective way to replace outdated technology. There are now more than 120 active white label partners using our technology, including banks with cross-border activities.

The SaxoTreasurer platform allows corporate clients to hedge their commercial currency exposure at competitive prices. We continue to see a real opportunity in leveraging our heritage in technological innovation, our robust financial position and risk management credentials to become an essential facilitator in capital markets.

There are in excess of 200,000 active traders in the Middle East and North Africa – a drastic increase from 20,000 a decade ago.

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Opinion

Venugopal Lambu, Vice President and Global Head of Markets, Infrastructure Services, Cognizant

The age of simplification

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n the Middle East, like elsewhere around the world, many companies continue to live with complex legacy IT infrastructures, even as they face a growing customer demand for more agile and userfriendly services and products with 24/7 availability. At one time, the usual response to such diverse and dynamic demands would have been to develop more systems, even if that meant adding multiple layers of complexity to the technology infrastructure. Today, however, it is imperative that the onus shifts to simplification.

By simplifying their IT infrastructure and running it more effectively, companies in the region can make their IT easy to consume, govern and change, while driving cost efficiencies.

High adoption of disruptive digital technologies, such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC), sensors and the Internet of Things, coupled with the ongoing consumerisation of IT, is changing how companies and organisations in the region think about their IT systems. Their expectations of what, and how fast, these systems can deliver have also changed. Applications are expected to be agile, quickly deployed and easy to use, often across multiple devices.

While the cloud has been in use for a while to deliver such services, cloud technology itself has now further evolved with the rise of hybrid cloud services. In other words, organisations are required to manage and integrate both public and private cloud apps.

At the same time, infrastructure services have also converged. A few years ago, IT companies often specialised in one area whether it be networking, storage, high-end servers, and so on.

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again diversified, offering everything a company could need in one box.

Converged infrastructure has the potential to allow organisations to take a simpler approach to their IT infrastructure, and the new, SMACcentric model of enterprise IT now makes simplicity a necessity. IT is no longer seen as a cost centre and its key goals have expanded beyond mere availability to encompass productivity and connectivity as well. CIOs want IT services that can be used, managed and procured both quickly and easily. Only a few years ago, building a new system would take months and often required multiple approvals. Now organisations expect new systems to go live almost on-demand.

A telling example is the Middle East’s financial sector, where growing customer expectations around digital experiences have necessitated IT transformation, integration and consolidation. Despite recent investments in mobile solutions, the financial industry has not been able to address the issue of a large number of siloed IT systems. As a result, leading companies in the Middle East are increasingly investing in initiatives aimed at enhancing competitiveness and operational efficiency. They are looking to build simplified, next-generation IT infrastructure that can accelerate their digital transformation journey.

This can, for example, be done by leveraging investments made in omnichannel and mobile capabilities to simplify infrastructure. The ultimate objective is to provide customers with a unified experience of dealing with one institution that serves them consistently and delivers value-added services.

This can be made possible through a powerful infrastructure engine that has the ability to analyse customer data

in real-time and offer better solutions and services. More than ever, simplified IT infrastructure across a banking and financial services institution is an important precondition for turning the quality of customer experience into a compelling differentiator.

Simplification is not just about making life easier for the IT department to partner with the business, but also about preparing the business to be market-relevant. It can speed up time-to-market for new products or services, help in decision-making, enable innovation and boost customer responsiveness and engagement.

Some companies have already driven simplification to the extent that they have appointed a dedicated director of simplification to oversee all efforts in this area. Companies need to drive simplification by making it easier to consume IT with service catalogues that clearly describe the nature, objectives, specifications, and price of services delivered by a service provider, and both internal IT and IT partner. It can also be accomplished by making it easy to procure IT by building a sourcing model that’s aligned to business outcomes. Such sourcing models help build a better business case and alignment within the organisation. The next step to take is making it easy to manage IT. That involves building seamless services, reducing operational costs and improving customer satisfaction by blending the applications and infrastructure teams. This requires standardised tools and processes, as well as providing cross-training of production staff across the application and infrastructure operations.

As we move forward in today’s hyper-connected and fast-moving world, organisations need to decide who leads simplification, define their mandate to run better, and build a progressive and agile IT infrastructure. www.cnmeonline.com

Insight

Joe Garber, VP Marketing, Information Management & Governance, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Backup with brains

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ata is the DNA of modern organisations. It is found in the cloud, beyond the four walls and at the network’s edge. Data is also growing at a greater speed than ever before.

The unique combination of growing data complexity, sprawl and volume is pushing IT to rethink traditional approaches to backup and recovery.

Organisations can no longer afford to approach such practices without substantial insight into both how they are approaching these operations (load, clients, resources, service levels) and the information itself. This proves that now more than ever, analytics is necessary to ensure business resiliency.

There are four primary types of analysis that can be applied to backup and recovery: environmental, retrospective, predictive, and prescriptive analysis. Each provides a window into the overall network.

When combined, they allow enterprises to be proactive in prioritising data, predicting resource utilisation, mitigating risk and optimising infrastructure in order to reduce the burden on resources and manage costs. This combination delivers on the promise of 'backup with brains.'

Environmental analytics Today’s backup and recovery responsibilities have to extend beyond the traditional four walls of the corporate headquarters to support emerging cloud, mobile and virtual platforms. As such, organisations are faced with a need to better understand the data, its location and its value.

Understanding environmental analytics allows IT functions to identify how it can manage, backup and deliver the information in a 30

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transparent manner that supports its overall business objectives.

Retrospective analytics This allows teams to gain insight into the health and success of the backup process, resource utilisation, as well as areas of optimisation. Having a deep knowledge of past backup processes and infrastructure utilisation ensures that the most critical applications gain access and priority to the resources needed to complete backups on time, and non-disruptively.

This form of analysis requires greater insight into information such as the type of data and the relative importance it has for the organisation.

With this information, organisations are able to automatically classify their data, determine its importance to the business, and set guidelines on how and when it is backed up. IT executives are increasingly leveraging this form of analytics to determine how to best optimise backup systems.

Retrospective analytics help align an organisation’s three key stakeholders of backup and recovery, including the backup administrator, the infrastructure operations team and C-level executives.

Having defensible history of operational success enables enterprises to meet compliance and governance needs in their respective industries.

Predictive analytics This approach allows organisations to predict future resource needs and potential resource conflicts based on historical data patterns. Armed with this knowledge, IT teams can proactively address issues before they occur and devise future action plans With predictive analytics, enterprises can ease the operational

demands in backup and recovery management. It can also serve as a critical component in the industry’s rapid movement toward automation.

Automation decreases the effort within the backup and recovery operation and ensures protection for all devices under management, by automatically applying protection policies and provisioning backup resources. This saves time, money, and management.

Prescriptive analytics This is the emerging need for backup and recovery that enable IT leaders to get the most out of the backup gears that are already deployed, streamline key processes and improve time to remediation.

For IT operations teams responsible for managing the overall infrastructure, this form of analytics provide visual cues and steps to remediation when a problem occurs. More importantly, it creates a common vernacular between backup and IT operations teams during the troubleshooting process. Furthermore, they provide visibility into the error conditions on backup jobs and issues with physical resources such as tape libraries, drives and disk systems, which allows them to troubleshoot precisely what has gone wrong and how it can be remedied.

In summary, as organisations adjust to the reality of a changing IT world they must also expand their information management practices to keep pace with the increasing demands.

This means that they need to move from defence to offence.

Approaching backup and recovery with the same strategies that worked in the past is not an ideal step to take when managing your data. Doing so creates numerous significant risks for your organisation. Today, enterprises need backup with brains, and analytics is the first and most critical step to meeting evolving business resiliency requirements. www.cnmeonline.com

USE CASE

case study

Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates

At your service Upholding Dubai’s five-star standards is no easy task. Prasanna Rupasinghe, Director of IT, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates, launched a seamless guest-facing application powered by contemporary IT infrastructure that could deliver first-class HDTV and hotel services.

ith over 300,000 guests from around the world visiting annually, five-star Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has a duty to provide a first-class stay for its guests. This includes everything: food, room quality and service, and, now more than ever, technology services.

Kempinski MoE’s Director of IT Prasanna Rupasinghe appreciates that being based in Dubai – a world leader in terms of hospitality and service – brings added pressure and expectation to the business.

“Most hotels around the world can’t compete with what Dubai can offer,”

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he says. “Even the best that the U.S. and Europe can offer is often not up to our standard.”

The average guest at Kempinski MoE brings four or more devices for their stay, meaning roughly a million pass through the hotel every year.

In addition, the hotel’s 500 staff members bring additional strain to the network.

In the latter stages of 2014, Rupasinghe decided that the best way to bring all the hotel’s services and facilities to guests through technology would be through an upgraded infrastructure, that could power a cutting-edge mobile application. The Interactive Customer Experience

(ICE) app would be integrated with the hotel’s digital TV platform, automated guest servicing platform and room management system.

This would enable guests to stream TV content, access high-quality wireless Internet and deliver service requests through any mobile device.

“We wanted to combine content delivery, virtual systems and gaming applications into a single platform,” he says. “It would have to be a link between the guest and the hotel.”

Rupasinghe, like many other ambitious IT decision-makers working in the hospitality industry, faces a balancing act when it comes to satisfying the needs of guests

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“We had one application for each business process, and some of our processes were still completely manual. This situation crippled our ability to grow.”

of all ages. This would need to be taken into account when designing a user-friendly application. “I’m sure the typical outsider may think our job is a question of implementing the most advanced technology products, but it’s not always that simple,” he says. “We need to cater for the older generation, who are used to light switches and communicating with a human being, as opposed to a machine. By the same token, we need to satisfy millennials, who may want to avoid staff altogether and carry out bookings through a device.”

The process of designing the infrastructure that could support www.cnmeonline.com

this application was one that had to be delivered with longevity and precision in mind. Although Kempinski MoE already had a robust IT infrastructure, the ICE app – and a vast amount of HDTV content in particular – would place all-new demands on the hotel’s network and IT resources. With this in mind, Rupasinghe drew up a comprehensive roadmap. “We built our new capacity with the potential to grow for the next four to five years,” he says. “It was important to accommodate new bandwidth needs, and remove the network’s complexity.”

One of the key initiatives was to refresh the hotel’s fixed LAN

network infrastructure that consisted of core, distribution, access and server farm layers to high-density virtualised infrastructure. This would need to have minimal complexity, and have scalable technology that could prepare Kempinski MoE for applications such as full and ultra HD video, 10GE, and fully secure and simplified operating software that could meet PCI requirements.

Opting for a range of powerful technologies as part of his new solution, Rupasinghe’s aim was to deliver ‘bandwidth on-demand’ to the hotel guests. This encompassed a high-speed Internet offering from Rivernet, Avaya’s Fabric Connect january 2016

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case study

Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates

for shortest path bridging, which “removed complexity, increased resiliency and increased availability” and an Aruba Wi-Fi controller upgrade. All this was brought together with the VSoft Iris digital platform, the means for delivering the app to the customer.

Rupasinghe successfully implemented the necessary infrastructure over the course of 2014 to meet his expectations of ICE’s delivery, but reaching that point was not entirely plain sailing. “We underwent a rigorous testing process to ensure that every scenario on ICE was catered for,” he says. “Things had to be standardised so as to ensure smoother operations at the back end.

The front end, building management and guest room management require different pools of technology, which had to be integrated to ensure the app’s successful delivery.”

Furthermore, with downtime unthinkable for Kempinski MoE, this testing had to be carefully timed. “The hotel is not a new build, and our tests had to run while the hotel was also running, so this was tough,” Rupasinghe says. “Rooms couldn’t be made ‘out of order’ so we had to be swift in deploying our configurations when we had the chance - when a room became available for a short timeframe.”

The platform has since provided a huge service enhancement by allowing guests to interact directly with staff, and make service requests regardless of whether they are in the hotel’s grounds. “This has helped in serving guests in a timely fashion, and has reduced the average time to fulfill guest requests by almost 20 percent,” Rupasinghe says. “We have also seen a substantial increase in room service orders, which is a great sign going forward. We expect the ICE app to be 34

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self-sustainable through its proven revenue generation capabilities.”

From an operations perspective, the app has also made life easier for the hotel’s employees.

“Our system knows which room should be served when, so our staff are able to deal with requests in the most efficient manner possible.”

The app has also provided Kempinski MoE’s marketing team with a fresh advantage – by tying up agreements with a range of retailers in the conjoining Mall of the Emirates, targeted ads can now be pushed through to guest’s devices. “We already have agreements with brands including Burberry and Vacheron Constantin, and are in discussions with others, including the likes of VOX Cinemas and Ski Dubai,” Rupasinghe says. “A lot of our guests are either shoppers, or people who have stayed in the hotel solely to make use of Mall of the Emirates, so this is something we have to exploit. The campaign generated over $48,000 in the first two quarters of 2015, and is expected to generate more revenue going forward.”

In spite of the benefits that ICE – and the updated IT infrastructure – has brought to Kempinski MoE,

Rupasinghe acknowledges that praise for his work has been scarce.

“In hospitality, people tell you when things aren’t right, and good feedback is rare,” he quips. “The general rule is that if people don’t complain, things are going well. It’s not reasonable to expect them to understand the workings of the back end that go into the services they experience.

Internet in hotels is now more important than having water in each room. You can go for an hour without water in a hotel room, but an hour without Internet creates problems.”

Looking forward, Rupasinghe draws huge encouragement from the progress that has already been made with ICE, but sees room for development. He is open to the use of Big Data analytics and a WhatsApptype chat feature, as well as incorporating PlayStation 4 gaming into the service. “It’s important that we get to know our guests better without impinging on their privacy,” he says. “We have 10 years’ worth of data, but no means of drawing real value from it yet. We are working on completing room controls through ICE, and should have that completed

by March 2016. The potential of ICE is huge.”

“We need to cater for the older generation, who are used to light switches and communicating with a human being, as well as millennials, who may want to avoid staff altogether.”

www.cnmeonline.com

1 – 3 March | Dubai, UAE gartner.com/me/symposium

The World’s Most Important Gathering of CIOs and Senior IT Executives Business redefined If you haven’t felt the velocity of change yet, you will.

The digital wave is sweeping through every industry, enterprise and organization. For an entire generation to come, digital will continue to define and redefine business.

At Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016, 1 – 3 March, in Dubai, UAE, CIOs and senior IT executives will discover the precise speed, agility and leadership skills needed to harness this massive wave of technology change. From personal development to process reinvention, innovation is now your business. Gartner is here to help you own it.

For a full list of analysts, including one-on-one availability, and to build YOUR customized agenda, visit Gartner Events Navigator at gartner.com/me/symposium © 2015 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates.

ITxpo is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 at a Glance: • Three days • 680+ attendees with 200 CIOs • More than 100 analyst-led sessions, round-tables and workshops • Exclusive CIO Program • Tracks aligned to your mission-critical priorities • More than 25 Gartner analysts on-site • More than 40 solution providers • Exclusive Women CIO & Senior IT Leaders Forum

Telecoms World 4.5G

The wireless Frontier Can 4.5G deliver what most are expecting?

n the world of mobile broadband, LTE Advanced-Pro is on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Expected to be available this year, the world is waiting eagerly for the next step in the path to 5G. There is currently a bit of confusion in the moniker for the next step in broadband. Saeed Al Zarouni – Senior Vice President – Mobile Network, Etisalat explains, “LTE Advanced Pro is now the formal term for 4.5G. 3GPP standards have approved this new marker for LTE Evolution System - that is the LTE Advanced Pro - during a meeting held on 22nd October 2015. This new standard represents a significant step forward in LTE Evolution.”

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To clarify, the official release 13 from 3GPP names the intermittent technology between LTE and 5G technology LTE-Advanced Pro. Although it is not officially called as '4.5G' technology, there is a tendency among telecom infrastructure vendors brand it as '4.5G' and others as 'LTE Plus' technology for marketing purposes. 4.5G is not an official standard yet, however, for the sake of marketing convenience there is a chance that LTE-A Pro will be known as 4.5G just as the LTE and LTE-A were marketed as 3.9G and 4G, respectively, in the past.

No matter the name, the hope is that new speeds will better enable the plethora of smart devices currently in the market, and improve the user experience for www.cnmeonline.com

in association with

emerging connected technologies. Most notably, LTE Advanced-Pro technology and its inevitable successors will be the cornerstone for Smart Cities and interconnected devices. Further, virtual reality technology and e-commerce are demanding more and more from mobile broadband. Expectations are high, with users demanding more immersive, streamlined experiences. Since the first LTE began in 2009, we have been following the journey that will continue to improve connectivity across the board.

LTE Advanced-Pro is on its way to markets. “We believe that 4.5G will really take off in 2016,” says Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Huawei Middle East. “Numerous trials are already underway in both mature and developing countries worldwide. Leading operators in the Middle East are already announcing plans for 4.5G networks to be commercialised as soon as the standards are released by industry regulators.”

The advent of LTE Advanced-Pro wireless networks marks a major change in mobile broadband quality. “The major differences between 4G and LTE Advanced-Pro lay in network capabilities and in the opportunity for new business creation. LTE AdvancedPro actually seeks to increase the throughput rate of today’s 4G networks by a factor of 50. This gives consumers the chance to experience things like 4K video and virtual reality in their true form,” explains Ghattas. It follows that LTE Advanced-Pro will be a key enabler for the Internet of Things by increasing the number of possible connections by one hundred times the current 4G wireless networks.

Krishna Chinta, Programme Manager, Telecoms and Media, IDC, Middle East, Turkey and Africa agrees that LTE Advanced-Pro will be a game changer for consumers. “While LTE-A supports theoretical data rates up to 1Gbps, LTE-A Pro technology can support up to 3Gbps having a latency of 2ms, which is just 20 percent of the latency limit for LTE-A,” he says.

Another distinguishing feature is carrier aggregation,

“We believe that 4.5G will really take off in 2016. Numerous trials are already underway in both mature and developing countries worldwide.”

Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Huawei Middle East

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he continues, while LTE-A is capable of aggregating up to five component carriers, LTE Advanced-Pro is capable of aggregating up to 32 component carriers, including unlicenced spectrum that significantly boosts the available bandwidth.

Potential use cases of the new technology are already on the minds of telecom operators.

“LTE Advanced-Pro technology will open up new possibilities for telecom operators by using features that include, but are not limited to, small cell dualconnectivity, carrier aggregation enhancements, interworking with Wi-Fi, licenced assisted access (LAA), 3D/FD-MIMO (Full Dimension), indoor positioning, single cell-point to multi-point communication, Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT).

"It also includes Device to Device (D2D) communication such as Vehicle to Vehicle communication (V2V), Enhanced Machine Type Communication (MTC),” says Chinta. Innovations such as these are set to support new capabilities such as 4K video streaming, low throughput and IoT communications, public safety measures and broadcasting services.

Ghattas is already looking beyond LTE Advanced-Pro into the future of 5G wireless networks. “One of the immeasurable values of the birth of 4.5G is that it gives clear direction to organisations as they grow their digital footprint. It’s one standard that builds on existing investments and paves the way for future innovations. The enhanced capacity, number of connections, and latency of 4.5G will be essential in meeting these new urban realities and paving the way for 5G services over the next decade,” he explains.

Chinta approaches the bridge with a bit more caution. “It is too early to ascertain from a systems point of view as the LTE-A Pro itself is yet to be commercially launched,” he says. “Although 3GPP is yet to initiate discussions on the possible mobile network architectures for 5G, some of the features that exist in LTE Advanced-Pro such as carrier aggregation, virtualisation of mobile networks, integration with unlicensed airwaves and Wi-Fi connectivity are sure to be found in 5G.” Though the future of mobile broadband seems bright and fast, there are a few challenges on the journey to LTE Advanced-Pro. Spectrum availability is at the top of this list for operators. “Spectrum is scarce and it is going to be a challenge for operators. Operators along with telecom regulatory january 2016

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Telecoms World 4.5G bodies need to align on spectrum availability and allocation keeping in view World Radio Congress recommendations. For future benefit of industry and consumers, band allocations need to be technology agnostic as past experience is not healthy,” says Usman Shahab, Mobile Broadband and Network Evolution Director, Ericsson Region Middle East and East Africa. He goes on to explain that operators need to think on usability of unlicensed spectrum solutions such as LAA, capacity and coverage enhancement via C-RAN, as well as SDN. The closer we get to LTE Advanced-Pro and 5G, he says, more service specific architecture will be required.

These needs can be met if operators start to think of network slicing now.

Though new technology is bound to stress the spectrum, Ghattas sees bit of a silver lining in the situation. “One of the strengths of 4.5G is that it also maintains backwards compatibility with existing LTE networks and devices operating below 6 GHz, including the existing spectrums used by today’s 4G networks,” he explains.

“LTE Advanced-Pro is now the formal term for 4.5G. 3GPP standards have approved this new marker for LTE Evolution System that is the LTE Advanced-Pro - during a meeting held on 22nd October 2015.”

Saeed Al Zarouni, Senior Vice President, Mobile Network, Etisalat

In spite of potential challenges, operators are generally positive about the progression of the wireless network. The evolution will certainly result in the improvement of services and user experience and will go far to support new, connected technology. As well as marking the progress of wireless networks to date, the introduction of this new milestone confirms the need for LTE enhancements to continue in parallel to the future proposals for the 5G era.

network World Web-scale IT

Tipping the scale

In 2014, Gartner coined the term ‘Web-scale IT’ and predicted that by 2017 it will be an architectural approach found functioning in 50 percent of enterprises globally. With the unprecedented rise of an inevitable datadriven world, this IT approach is expected to help businesses achieve the agility, scalability and business growth that meet rising industry demands.

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he rise of digital business has, to some extent, redefined success for many organisations, attributing it to a company’s ability to respond to their customers more quickly and efficiently at a massive scale.

The pervasiveness of cloud, increasing amounts of data and complex application requirements have given birth to a new architectural approach which research firm Gartner calls Web-scale IT. The firm’s Chief of Research, Infrastructure and Operations Cameron Haight explains that Web-scale IT pertains to a systematised pattern that enables the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting.

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Cloud service companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook have been using this approach in delivering their respective services.

Gartner believes that if enterprises want to keep pace, they have to emulate the architectures, methods and practices of these companies.

Web-scale IT enables businesses to seamlessly connect and utilise cloud environments. It also introduces increased scalability and agility to the data centre, and application development to further drive value creation for enterprises.

Although traditional architectural approaches are still well-suited and effective for some IT infrastructures, industry experts highlight that these may not be able to deliver the speed, agility and scalability businesses need going forward.

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Strategic Innovation Partner

“Even though traditional IT infrastructures have also changed especially with the recent industry developments it is still very silo-base,” says Chris Burnet, Cloud Services and Software Solutions Manager, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and Russia, NetApp. “IT teams within companies will need to procure a particular infrastructure, buy hardware, configure it with the data centre, get it provisioned and so on.

“Whereas with Web-scale IT or, as we call it at NetApp, hyper-scale IT, companies are able to deliver IT services on-demand without having to go through all the manual activities before actually getting everything online and moving the necessary workloads. Companies can deploy their offerings at a massive scale and their customers are able to quickly and securely access them at any time,” explains Burnet.

While both DevOps and Web-scale IT are focused on employing a quick and agile approach within the organisation, Burnet says that the two should not be confused with one another. “DevOps focuses more on the culture or practice that fosters collaboration and communication amongst an organisation’s software developers, IT operations team, quality and risk management teams and so on. It is emphasised in the way the people within these teams are utilising the third platform while harmoniously working together to achieve various goals in that space,” he says.

“Even though the region has been lagging behind when it comes to this strategy, we can see that network providers often quick to catch up on these kinds of technology disruptors.

And, in the next three to five years I think there will be massive explosion of cloud services both from the incumbent network providers and the hyper-scalers.”

Chris Burnet, Cloud Services and Software Solutions Manager, MEEEAR, NetApp

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“The Web-scale approach,” he explains, “is more about maintaining a resilient infrastructure. It involves the management of infrastructures, which marries agile applications and systematic processes at any scale. The two are fundamentally different as one focused more on the software and the other is more about the infrastructure.”

Organisations in the Middle East region are always on the look out for technological disruptions and new strategies to adopt, especially in countries like the UAE and Qatar.

Web-scale IT can present numerous benefits for businesses in this region and will help them better position their organisations in the impending digital era.

Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Middle East, Dell, points out that today more than ever, technology is critical to driving business results, finding and capturing scarce resources, optimising operations, and innovating for future growth. “At the same time, business and technology leaders must also look at making responsible technology investments whilst ensuring their businesses are future-ready.

There is a widespread increase in the adoption of IT trends that optimise costs, maximise efficiency, and simplify management of rapidly growing IT infrastructure and ecosystems.

“In our region, we see more and more customers trying to take advantage of these particular advancements and also increasingly outsourcing to the cloud,” he says.

Burnet agrees with this notion sharing that since the market is not yet big enough to support data centres for big web-based companies, there is a huge opportunity for network providers to assist companies with Web-scale approaches.

“There are several companies with whom we’ve had dialogues with previously, who have mentioned that they are eyeing to provide services similar to Amazon’s in this market.

We see the demand for Web-scale ramping up significantly,” he says. “Even though the region has been lagging behind when it comes to this strategy, we can see that network providers are often quick to catch up on these kinds of technology disruptors. And, in the next three to january 2016

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network World Web-scale IT

five years I think there will be a massive explosion of cloud services both from the incumbent network providers and the hyper-scalers.”

Furthermore, Hasan identifies that as this trend gains traction he also sees that there willl be a huge unmet demand that managed service providers (MSPs) must try to cater to. “In our region MSPs such as MEEZA and eHDF will be early adopters of Web-scale like solutions,” he says. “Web-scale technology strategies, projects, and implementations have very long-term horizons and will evolve over time in our region.

However, the adoption will also depend on vendor technology offerings embracing cloudoptimised and software-defined solutions.”

Although adopting Web-scale IT methodologies does not particularly mean the business will grow to the same extent as Facebook, Google or Amazon, the approach is not restricted to just companies of that scale.

Haight notes in the Gartner report that, “a smaller business could achieve a higher IT velocity than

“Web-scale technology strategies, projects, and implementations have very long-term horizons and will evolve over time in our region.

However, the adoption will also depend on vendor technology offerings embracing cloud optimised and software-defined solutions.”

Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Middle East, Dell

its bigger rivals through Web-scale IT, enabling first mover advantage with new opportunities.”

The industry regards the Web-scale approach as the future, as it can be instrumental for organisations of many sizes to scale faster and cheaper, and adapt more quickly in the digital era.

Finesse Global wishes you all a very

Happy New Year 2016

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solutions World Software-defined data centre

Soft centre The software-defined data centre holds huge promise for the enterprise. Being able to provision services at unprecedented speeds can bring huge cost savings and agility to any business, but CIOs must first overcome a range of hurdles to gain backing for such an ambitious project.

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t’s many a CIO’s dream. The ability to automate the underlying hardware aspects of their IT, to a point where time can be devoted to policy and business transformation initiatives, as opposed to ensuring disparate infrastructure aspects speak the same language. Having the power to provision technology services at an unprecedented pace. The software-defined data centre (SDDC) holds huge promise, and stands to bring greater simplicity to organisations who have the requisite resources.

A few years back, the notion of delivering fully virtualised infrastructure may have seemed a distant dream for the Middle East.

However, as more and more enterprises adopt SDDC models, it is becoming increasingly clear that this region is, by and large, ready to see greater adoption levels. The overarching aim of being able to dedicate precise amounts of IT resources to each workload introduces a tantalising concept – that of IT-as-a-service. Achieving this requires an advanced level of integration, says Prashant Jani, Systems Engineer, F5 Networks. “One of the end goals for SDDC is ITaaS, which can be only truly achieved when different elements of SDDC are abstracted, tuned and delivered for performance, availability, scalability and security.”

Jani feels that speed is the true name of the game for implementing an SDDC. “One of the key problems in day-to-day operations in today’s data centres is full or partial manual participation of different teams like systems, networks and security for achieving certain IT tasks, which for example, could be publishing an application. With an SDDC, this could be orchestrated with minimal manual configuration by having a central control plane for service delivery. This will certainly reduce turnaround times, be more economical and greatly reduce room for configuration errors.”

Although the services delivered by an SDDC are simplicity personified, the components driving it face a series of complicated integration challenges, both in terms of

I

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technology and process. As end-users’ demands for seamless solutions increases, vendors designing SDDC solutions need to ensure their products are in-tune with modern IT demands.

“Over the years, applications have evolved from simply presenting data to being sources of timely information for business decisionmaking,” says Oussama Bachour, Systems Engineering Manager, Juniper Networks.

“Applications have advanced from one per server, to virtualised multi-tier models on multiple servers, to highly distributed models on racks of servers, to natively virtualised, dynamic applications that can span entire data centres. SDDC network architectures must adapt to serve these new application models by becoming easier to deploy and manage.”

Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Middle East, Dell, meanwhile, believes that to ensure precise delivery of an SDDC, technology upgrades alone will not suffice, and that the people and process aspects of IT will need to be carefully considered. “The main area of development needed in our region is probably in skills and culture,” he says. “Simply replacing legacy hardware with SDDC solutions is only half the opportunity. Before such a project, the portion of the data centre, or more specifically the impacted workload and IT function, needs to be redesigned and rethought – from technology to workflow – and optimised for automation and self-service.”

One of the principle issues surrounding SDDC adoption is IT infrastructure quality.

Aside from the all-important platform that can connect all hardware components, these elements themselves need to be of sufficient quality to ensure that an SDDC initiative is worthwhile, with servers, storage and networks all pulling their weight in faster service delivery. Although there is undeniably room for improvement of overall IT infrastructure quality in the Middle East, the region has made sharp progress to make SDDCs a reality.

“There’s no doubt that our infrastructure is strong enough to support SDDC adoption,” says Rasheed Al Omari, Business Solutions Strategist, MENA, VMware. “What the early january 2016

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solutions World Software-defined data centre

adopters have shown is that the hurdle in the migration to SDDC is not the infrastructure itself, but the processes and procedures at the heart of the business that need to be upgraded to leverage the promise of the SDDC.” Al Omari adds that initial skepticism surrounding the topic has transformed into a range of organisations who are willing to put large amounts of IT resources into delivering an SDDC. “We are nearing the end of the early adoption phase and moving towards mass market adoption,” he says. “The early adopters fall into one of two brackets: those looking for a competitive edge - typically reduced OPEX and faster time to market, or those seeing growth of such scale that existing architectures can’t keep up.” The challenges facing SDDC adoption remind him of similar difficulties faced by one of its core components. “It’s the same pattern we saw when we introduced compute virtualisation a decade ago and it’s a safe bet that we are at the tipping point right now.”

When it comes to internal IT operations, few initiatives can really enhance operations to the same extent as an SDDC. With the potential to reduce both CAPEX and OPEX, the ability to provision fresh technology services either for long-term, enterprise-wide initiatives, or for one-off projects stands to bring ease to IT and business operations.

Nonetheless, the uninitiated could well perceive an SDDC project as being very time-consuming, with success hinging on a range of technological and procedural factors.

It’s crucial that chief information officers can articulate the benefits of an SDDC using simple, effective business cases.

“The main area of development needed in our region is probably in skills and culture. Simply replacing legacy hardware with SDDC solutions is only half the opportunity.”

Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Middle East, Dell

“There are a range of deliverables that CIOs must make abundantly clear if they are to successfully convey SDDC success. ” Deepak Narain, Regional Presales Manager, MENA, VMware

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Deepak Narain, Regional Presales Manager, MENA, VMware, believes there are a range of deliverables that CIOs must make abundantly clear if they are to successfully convey SDDC success. “There are four key requirements that the CIO must keep in mind,” he says. “First, an SDDC must run traditional applications, without re-architecting them, in addition to cloudnative applications. Second, it must enable IT organisations to build on their existing skills in running virtualised IT environments, while providing developers with selfservice access. Third, it must enable both on-premises data centres and cloud-based services, with seamless management across both. Fourth, it must securely protect the infrastructure while providing elastic scaling or bursting of services.”

Having gained approval from senior management figures, many of the Middle East’s CIOs could be forgiven for hastily entering SDDC projects with feverish excitement. Managing this transition with careful investment is a must, Hasan says.

“IT infrastructure and operations leaders and CIOs need to weigh their business case and use cases carefully before making investments. SDDC adoption can be done in a building block approach using flexible converged infrastructure platforms. If carefully planned out these can provide bridges from the traditional infrastructure to the next-generation infrastructure that manifests as huge cost savings and seamless operational transitions.” january 2016

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opinion

Cathal McGloin, Vice President, Mobile Platforms, Red Hat

‘MAD’ for Mobile A

ccording to a report released by independent market research company, eMarketer, the mobile phone user base in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is second only to that in Asia-Pacific, with ‘just over 606 million people in this region having at least one mobile phone, with the total expected to pass 789 million in 2019.’

This shift to mobile devices creates enormous opportunities for organisations to improve engagement with their customers, employees, and partners.

However, it also creates a problem when it comes to securely linking mobile applications to core systems of record.

Many enterprises rely upon proprietary applications that were developed decades ago, long before mobile devices became 48

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ubiquitous. These immensely valuable applications often include ERP, CRM, BPM, database applications, medical records, energy management systems, and flight management systems, none of which were originally designed to interface with today’s mobile devices. Any changes to these ‘monolithic’ applications require costly and time-consuming redevelopment, testing and redeployment of server-side code. Integrating mobile apps securely with these rich back-end data sources and applications is at the heart of successful enterprise mobility.

MAD for Mobile The requirement to quickly, securely and efficiently integrate core systems of record with an increasing number of mobile apps is

driving changes to both enterprise application architecture and modes of development. Mobile-first organisations have adopted three key approaches to meeting mobile application development challenges head on – micro-services, agile development and DevOps.

Micro-services Many attempts have been made to address the issues associated with monolithic applications using new approaches. Most recently the idea of ‘micro-services’ has come to the fore, particularly in the context of enterprise mobile development.

In a micro-services architecture, complex applications are decomposed into small, modular, decoupled, independent processes. These finegrained services each perform a single function and all communicate using language-agnostic APIs. www.cnmeonline.com

In the context of using an MBaaS to mobilise existing enterprise systems, a micro-services approach has demonstrated its value, from both an agility and a performance perspective. Node.js+Express has become a de facto technology stack for implementing these services and thrives in a polyglot environment.

Whilst micro-services communicate between themselves using RESTful APIs and lightweight messaging, they also provide modern wrappers for legacy enterprise systems.

A micro-services approach has the advantage of allowing app components to be rapidly developed, deployed, updated, and retired, to suit the needs of customers and employees.

Agile In contrast to waterfall methods, which have traditionally characterised enterprise software application development, agile approaches involve shorter, more iterative development cycles that elicit early and continuous feedback across the app development lifecycle.

This happens to go hand-in-hand with the mobile ethos of ‘build fast, build repeatedly.’ As organisations try to build an app, deploy it, test it, and iterate on it, they are transitioning from waterfall towards agile approaches. However, it’s a journey and not all companies have reached the point of true agile development – but they are getting there.

In moving towards this more agile approach, organisations recognise the need for greater collaboration between people with different skills. Combined with continuous development, deployment, monitoring and www.cnmeonline.com

application development measurement of mobile efforts. More than one in apps, this collaborative seven organisations approach has exciting that have plans potential for app "As organisations to recruit for success. Apps mobile app are constantly try to build an app, development evolving, with deploy it, test it, and roles, say they elements added iterate on it, they are are looking and retired in transitioning from for DevOps response to waterfall towards proficiency. new requests agile approaches."

As from business organisations managers and evolve towards customers. mobile maturity, they are recognising that they DevOps need to adopt new working practices Traditional monolithic enterprise and IT architectures to enable apps such as CRM, transaction them to meet the demand for rich processing, network management, mobile apps at speed, while also and BPM systems are still critically maintaining secure, operational important to businesses. These core systems in the back-end, on which systems must be kept operational, these apps depend. Companies that patched, secure, and compliant, are really succeeding in mobile while also making data available to have actually reinvented a process, mobile apps. So while agile practices to improve the mobile customer have evolved to meet the need for experience. They understand that speed to market of mobile projects, the mobile experience has to be enterprises still need to maintain different, not just an existing Web core and stable IT processes, and app made smaller. both need to work collaboratively.

The mobile ethos is to build fast This dual requirement for ‘fast IT’ and build repeatedly. Don’t try to to accommodate business changes build the mother of all solutions. and ‘core IT’ to run IT operations has Build something, get it out there, given rise to the term ‘DevOps.’ This figure out what’s working, or what’s refers to a collaborative software not, and iterate on it. development approach involving To meet demand and maintain app developers and operational control over complex back-end IT specialists. This involves new systems, development teams are working practices, where continuous being forced to move away from app development and deployment custom coding. Just as the cottage co-exists with quality assurance and industries gave way to mass the maintenance of monolithic backproduction during the industrial end systems. revolution, I see the mobile A study by TechValidate found revolution driving enterprises that 34 percent of organisations towards adoption of microservices, it polled cited team collaboration agile, and DevOps (MAD). as a key challenge in their mobile january 2016

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interview

Jerry Kenelly, CEO, Riverbed Technology

Future focused

Jerry Kenelly, CEO, Riverbed Technology, during his most recent visit to Dubai, sat down with CNME on his most recent visit to Dubai to discuss his futurist strategy and how going private has impacted the company.

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t’s been almost a year since the company went private, can you tell us how the Thoma Bravo deal has affected the business?

I have been with the technology industry for over 40 years now and have had the chance to work with tech players such as Motorola, Oracle and Hitachi Data Systems among others. After doing so, I have ventured into starting up my own business and Riverbed was the third company I pioneered.

In 2002, when we started Riverbed there were just two of us working in it. Today, we have over $1 billion of sales each year, we have 2,100 employees, 42 factories and 27,000 customers.

With the Thoma Bravo deal, we did something called a leveraged buyout. This means, that the management and some external investors took the company private. Thoma Bravo was the private equity sponsor wherein they own 51 percent of the company and the other 49 percent is owned by a set of 60 different investors.

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We believe that being a private company allows you to transition to a better future. One of the things we wanted to do is be more business focused and being private enables us to give more attention to our future strategies.

Furthermore, we want to be more focused on developing solutions for the hybrid cloud. In this industry, business models tend to vary from one sector to another when it comes to the cloud. However, as a private company, we can freely modify our business models when necessary without having to worry about what’s going on at Wall Street.

Finally, another advantage of being private is financial engineering.

This means, we can use debt as leverage, so as we increase the value of the company the return of investments is also magnified. With this approach, both our employees and external investors will be able to benefit from the business.

Private is the new black, with black being a fashionable colour. A number of other tech players are now

also transitioning to becoming private companies. I think it is because they are seeing the benefits of being private and being able to work outside the view of Wall Street.

Which markets and industries are you currently focusing on?

Are there any new markets that you are planning to explore for opportunities soon?

The products that we offer have a horizontal functionality. Our product sets are applicable to any company who does business across the network. The fundamental benefit of our core technologies is to remove the impediments of global computing.

Having said that, industries that have numerous offices spread globally and requires sending large amounts of data across their networks are those that primarily benefit from our technologies.

At a global view, these verticals include the oil and gas sector, retail, pharmaceuticals, financial services and manufacturing.

Government networks also www.cnmeonline.com

comprise about 20 percent of our global business.

In the region have a strong presence in the oil and gas, and aviation sectors. We have seen accelerated growth in the Middle East over the last three years. The key markets for Riverbed here in the region include the UAE which is our regional hub, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.

We continuously see an increase in investments, revenues and in the number of customers requiring our technologies on an annual basis in this region and those markets around it. We believe that we are and will remain to be relevant to this market due to the application-centric infrastructure that enterprises and government entities are aiming to achieve in the next few years.

Can you tell us more about Riverbed’s SteelFusion solution and how it can potentially benefit organisations?

SteelFusion is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. This is a symmetrical technology which means you need a SteelFusion box to be at both ends of the network – one at the data centre and the other at the branch office.

Typically, an organisation has one data centre for around 50 branch offices. On top of that, they need servers, backups, storage devices and of course connectivity to the network.

Purchasing and the upkeep of those different elements are usually costly.

Also, storing data outside your data centre is not without risks, hence, you also have to ensure that you invest in securing this data.

What SteelFusion does is eliminate the need for numerous servers, storage devices and backup, and lets you keep all the data in the www.cnmeonline.com

data centre. It does all your local compute with just a single box in your branch office. Everything that your branch needs can stay within your premises, all the applications will run on the SteelFusion box and all the data will remain in your data centre.

Through our acceleration technology, we are able to send the data to the branch no matter its location. The primary benefit is cost savings from all the extra infrastructure in each branch, at the same time it is safer, denser and easier to manage.

internally. At the same time, we also have a dedicated team keeping an eye on new start-ups coming along and evaluating if we should buy this particular company or not.

Lastly, what are the trends that you think will impact the Middle East market the most in terms of network optimisation and the hybrid IT environment in the next three to five years?

The world is rapidly changing.

We have been talking about cloud for a while and now the technology is increasingly What are We dedicate about gaining traction Riverbed’s 13 to 17 percent of in the market. I philosophy our revenues yearly to think the SaaS and strategy engineering development. element of cloud in keeping This is both to keep our computing is up with the current products fresh and going to dominate increasingly ahead of the competition, the industry. growing IT and to develop new The idea of using landscape in products internally.? cloud data centres the region? is still at its early Typically, in the stages and has not been tech world any one fully developed yet, but product has a certain I think it is heading towards a lifecycle, during the first few positive direction especially with the months of deployment its relevance presence of Amazon Web Services and demand goes up to its prime and Microsoft Azure. Traditional and then at some point it plateaus enterprise infrastructure vendors are until it slowly declines. The way also being impacted by the increase you solve this is to keep innovating in the adoption of cloud technologies. your current solutions and invest We also see a lot of evolution in creating new offerings. You have taking place in the router business to be a futurist and be able to see today. The market for SD WAN what the industry might demand technologies is at a very upbeat three to five years ahead. You have stage. Riverbed is looking at taking to continuously invest in internal advantage of this for continuing the development as well as spot external positive trajectory of the business. opportunities through M&As. With this in mind, we will be At Riverbed, we dedicate about 13 releasing a new SD WAN product to 17 percent of our revenues yearly this year called Project Tiger which to engineering development. This is is a testament to our philosophy on both to keep our current products continuous innovation and having a fresh and ahead of the competition, futurist mindset. and to develop new products january 2016

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interview

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and Founder, Kaspersky Lab

risky business

On a recent trip to Dubai, Kaspersky Lab’s CEO and Founder Eugene Kaspersky took time out to tell James Dartnell about his greatest cybersecurity concerns for 2016, and the prospects for better threat defence in the enterprise and consumer spaces.

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hat does 2016 hold for cybersecurity and international threats?

The reality is that the threat of cyber-sabotage – attacks on critical infrastructure - is on our doorstep.

From time to time there are incidents that are close to cyber-terrorism, but still don’t fall under the definition of terrorism. The attack on Aramco in 2012 is a prime example.

Another example is the failed attack on South Korean financial services. In 2007 there was an attack on Estonia, which resulted in an Internet blackout for the country. In Germany, an unspecificed attack on a steel mill which resulted in physical 52

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damage. Luckily, we don‘t have too many incidents like this, but I’m afraid more are coming. Attacks on physical, critical infrastructure is the worst case scenario.

Secondly, more and more professional cybercriminals are developing sophisticated technologies to attack well protected networks, and they are only getting more and more professional. They’re attacking banks, stock exchanges, high-powered targets. These criminal gangs are available as mercenaries; crime-as-a-service.

The next level of threats is the Internet of Things. What is the next device to be attacked? I think smart TVs will be vulnerable. Smart TV

payments are on the rise, which is logical if I have a remote control and a big red ‘buy now’ button. In China, one company gives smart TVs away for free, with all channels connected to one provider. That’s surely a prime target for this type of threat.

In terms of mobile malware, are the Middle East and world at large aware of the risks?

It’s a global problem for most people, but one that is faraway. Until something really damaging happens, people’s awareness levels will not increase. We do our best to spread knowledge of attacks and risks in the space but there’s still a lot of work to do. It’s the same situation that existed

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with computer security 20 years ago – MS-DOS and Microsoft viruses existed but were not given attention.

People just said “I’ll disinfect my PC.” In 1998, then in 1999, there were two global outbreaks of the ‘Chernobyl’ virus, which erased memory chips on motherboards. Desktops could be rescued, but notebooks were a problem as you could not remove the chip. The virus damaged the hardware, and it was more expensive to repair it than buy a new notebook. Over 300,000 were infected worldwide, and this was a big bang. This was a turning point. Awareness back then was relatively low. It’s the same now with mobile. I expect a mobile disaster.

Mobile phones are everywhere. Before 2011, there were hundreds of attacks on smartphones per year. By 2012, there were tens of thousands, which is no coincidence as in 2011, many banks introduced mobile payments. The same big bang effect is still yet to take place with mobility.

With that being said, is the UAE a prime target for this type of threat?

I wouldn’t say that one country is more attractive than another.

Countries with developed economies, major financial services and high mobile penetration rates are all facing problems. Criminals follow money.

The Middle East is undoubtedly an attractive target.

Can you foresee a time where IT security teams have a perceived advantage against cyber-threats, and how far away is that point?

What needs to be done to reach that stage?

It’s an arms race. We’re developing better technologies to defend, they’re developing ones for attack. It’s an endless fight. Technically it’s possible to create systems and applications that are immune to attacks. We are www.cnmeonline.com

taken up to the ship, changed and working towards that. Traditional replaced at a cost of €3m, which is cybersecurity is layered with the more expensive than the box itself.

OS, applications and security on top Many systems work like this. No of that. The concept of a secure OS nation in the world has enough is different, where security is in the resources to redesign these middle of the OS, watching architectures and the application’s “No systems. I believe behaviour, so we can nation in the redesigning old guarantee that all world has enough architectures is companies work in resources to redesign a waste of time, trusted scenarios, outdated architectures and that we so that it’s not and systems. I believe need to add new possible to infect redesigning old security layers the system. The architectures is a waste to old systems. problem is that of time. Adding new developing this OS security layers to Given these and its applications old systems is a constraints, how is expensive, and must.” can CIOs at an unfortunately, I enterprise level get the don’t see a space for this best from their budgets? technology in the consumer The best thing for security officers market. In that market, you need to to do is to learn more about the deliver products as quickly as possible. scenarios which can be used to Price matters. The product must be attack their enterprises – their fast and cheap, and a secure OS is office and industrial networks. They not about that. It’s slower to develop should virtually design scenarios, and more expensive. In an industrial and contact security companies environment, it’s the right time to and experts. We want to help introduce such secure platforms. It’s CISOs understand their worst case endless but will take time. scenarios, and help them explain to their board or upper management Are there any signs that archaic about the needs of IT security. The architectures could be rewritten in concept of cybersecurity has changed the coming years? drastically in 10 years so now CISOs One of the biggest problems need to do more, and communicate surrounding these architectures is what is needed to the board. that the engineers who designed and know how to operate them are Is cybersecurity being taken retiring! Take Orly Airport in Paris. It seriously as a board-level issue? ground to a halt last year because the Five years ago it wasn’t. A couple weather controlling system – which of years ago, I was at the World operates on Windows 3.1 – stopped Economic Forum, where oil and gas working. Two years ago, there was a CEOs were discussing it. They agreed call from a Canadian nuclear agency that it was a top priority. Now, I looking for PDP-11 – which was think everyone is talking about designed in the 1970s - engineers. it. We’re in touch with different A Norwegian oil firm has a device in companies in different industries and the seabed which they said had to countries and they’re all considering work for 30 years, without upgrades. it at this level.

Updating it means it needs to be january 2016

53

Insight

Sheldon D’Paiva, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Nimble Storage

The last leg

M

any are now realising the benefits of an agile infrastructure, which is why companies today are becoming highly virtualised.

However, enterprises often get stuck after virtualising about 80 percent of their environment. The ‘last leg’ is difficult primarily because it increasingly taxes the underlying infrastructure, and storage in particular. Let’s look at key storage considerations you should consider on your journey to 100 percent virtualisation in three key areas – storage platform architecture, data protection and management.

Virtualisation drives infrastructure towards shared or pooled resource models, and the increased use of shared storage is one of the biggest impacts virtualisation has on the data centre. Increased virtualisation drives increased consolidation of applications and data on a storage platform, making resiliency and high availability (five 9’s availability) with no single point of failure a must-have storage architecture requirement.

Getting to a fully virtualised data centre also means that the shared storage platform must be able to handle a variety of applications with different I/O and capacity characteristics. While each application is I/O optimised for the I/O stack for disk layout, the consolidation of these workloads creates what is known as the I/O blender effect for storage, which creates an amplified burden for the storage system. Desktop virtualisation greatly compounds the issue, as every desktop’s I/O is blended in with the virtual server farm’s I/O. A key consideration when deploying flash in a fully virtualised data centre is to effectively serve the random I/O from 54

january 2016

virtualised servers and the bursty I/O from virtualised desktops. That said, it is impractical to rely solely on flash because the cost of capacity compared to disk is still too high. Therefore, a storage platform that is architected to effectively deploy both flash and disk to fit the needs of an enterprise is critical. The platform should also be able to flexibly and independently scale the amount of flash and disk in the data centre.

When a range of applications are consolidated onto a storage platform with pooled resources, it’s also important that the platform is able to provide the right resources to the right applications – so that applications that need high IOPS and low latency are served with the flash performance levels that they need.

Data protection is another reason disk is still an important media in the virtualised data centre, providing a costeffective way to store rarely used data.

Virtualisation opens up new possibilities to efficiently architect data protection and disaster recovery. A consideration here is that the storage platform must offer efficient snapshot technology that can cost-effectively store snapshots, and must also integrate with the virtualisation platform to coordinate data protection workflows to ensure data is in a safe state to backup.

With the right storage platform and integration points, data does not need to move through the virtualisation hosts and the network to protect data – snapshots that only store changed data can be taken directly on the storage platform.

With the right storage architecture, snapshots can be leveraged to create clones for test and development without any extra space or performance overhead. This accelerates enterprise

agility by providing a DevOps capability tied to every application, including the most business critical ones.

Tight integration is key Getting to a fully virtualised environment means the storage system must tightly integrate with the virtualisation platform. This allows the platform to not only understand the storage system’s capability, but also enable it to storage management directly from the virtualisation console. This allows virtualisation administrators to provision and manage storage, without requiring them to become storage administrators.

Today, the use of intelligent cloud services is among the most important tools that can help administrators manage and monitor their storage systems at scale. These systems crunch through the machine data generated from storage systems across the enterprise to help manage the entire storage environment.

Cloud monitoring systems should not only provide monitoring capabilities through a web portal, but also proactively notify administrators of any issues and predict what future needs will be based on trends in the virtualised environment.

When consolidating applications on to a storage platform for example, ‘noisy neighbour’ issues arise where, unknown to an administrator, can consume an unfair share of resources. Noisy neighbour problems are a prime example of how a cloud service with intelligent analytics can help find, troubleshoot and alleviate the problem at scale with just a few mouse clicks when the right intelligence is built in.

On the journey to 100 percent virtualisation, carefully planning key storage considerations while leveraging the latest technologies can remove the thorniest ‘last leg’ obstacles and enable enterprises to realise the potential of a fully virtualised environment. www.cnmeonline.com

1 3 in

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ANALYST VIEW

Peter Sondergaard, SVP, Research, Gartner

FRESH, NEW TALENT

2

015 is the year that digital business took hold in the enterprise. For many companies, analog revenue is flattening and declining as they shift to new sources of growth from digital revenue, including the digitalisation of things. Gartner estimates indicate that 125,000 large organisations will have launched digital business initiatives by the year’s end. Yet, what is necessary in the enterprise to enable this transformation?

For CIOs, the challenge lies in how to retool their IT organisations with the knowledge, skills and experience needed to lead digital initiatives. In other words, how do you transform your team over time while still meeting the digital demands of the business today?

Play the short game, faster Digital business demands that CIOs and their IT organisations develop digital technology skills such as cloud, mobile, Big Data and social analytics (a combination Gartner calls the Nexus of Forces), as well as acquire new digital business skills such as design thinking, data sciences, digital business design and user-centric design to drive transformation and sustain long-term performance — and fast.

To meet short-term needs and drive transformation, CIOs can use IT consultants, contractors and outsourcing services to develop the digital technology skills. They also can tap into this cohort to acquire new digital business skills such as design thinking, data sciences, digital business design and user-centric design.

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However, this approach is not sustainable, productive nor differentiating beyond the immediate benefit of speed. CIOs must simultaneously focus on reskilling and upskilling to source, acquire and develop the knowledge, skills and competencies needed within their own teams in order to execute a digital business strategy. Traditional approaches such as computer-based training and certifications still have a role to play, but it’s time to work with your HR colleagues to overhaul learning and training programmes.

This is where reverse mentoring comes into play. We see this technique gaining traction among leading CIOs. First pioneered

by GE and adopted since at scale by companies such as P&G, Johnson & Johnson and GM, it focuses on pairing mature senior employees with individuals entering the workplace for mutual benefit. Millennials possessing the dexterity and knowledge required for digital business become great resources for educating more tenured staff members on new technologies.

In return, younger staff benefit from knowledge and capabilities imparted by senior staff, such as business acumen, protocol and decision-making skills that often come with time and experience.

Play the long game, better Hiring consultants or contractors in the short-term and developing your own team’s skills in the mid-term helps CIOs drive digital transformation, but the future will be won by leaders who think and act even bigger.

To accelerate the creation of a new digital technology platform, leading CIOs take a radical approach; their organisations operate as venture investors. They are not prepared to simply wait for their existing suppliers to build digital capabilities. Instead, these CIOs identify and invest directly in small technology startups, buy a stake in their future, guide their direction based on the needs of the CIO’s organisation, and then acquire and integrate those startups into the business when the time is right to reap the maximum benefit.

These 'techquisition' CIOs first appeared in FinTech companies.

We now see this trend adopted by industrial firms, which invest in automation software, and by retailers, which acquire vendors that possess unique algorithms designed to create differentiated customer experiences.

These CIOs are using techquisitions to add new skills, capabilities and competencies to their teams to stay not only relevant to their organisations, but to win from within.

Play to win, bigger Addressing the pace, scale and complexity of the skills and experience gap in your organisation won’t be solved by implementing one or the other of these initiatives. CIOs must drive multiple people-focused initiatives — including competing and/or unconventional programs — to succeed in an entirely new digital business environment. The stakes require conventional efforts and radical initiatives to win. www.cnmeonline.com

Improve Collaboration and

Drive Business Growth

Solve collaboration challenges with social ERP

Collaboration is an essential element of successful businesses. Yet according to an Aberdeen ERP Benchmark survey1, many businesses struggle to support true collaboration across their organizations.

More ERP vendors are adding social ERP to their offerings, making collaboration easier and more fun for employees.

What Impedes Collaboration in the Workplace?

Social ERP Boosts Business Results

In the report: Solving Collaboration Challenges with Social ERP 2, the top two challenges in collaboration were identified as: Data in silos

46

Companies that implement social ERP have better business metrics than those that do not use social ERP.

Lack of infrastructure and tools

37

%

%

Decrease in cycle time for key business processes

Reduced time to decision

With social ERP Without social ERP

28% 21% 11% 9% How Social ERP Fits in the Work World

Internal schedule compliance

Employees that exceed performance metrics

Improvements in profit margins

95% 90% 58% 36% 19% 9% Forums, profiles and wikis That enable the exchange of information

A single hub for communication

A record of communication

For transparency and Where employees can accountability—from tag conversations, moments ago to products, projects, months and years customers, ago equipment, etc.

Enable Collaboration and Continuous Improvement Companies using social ERP vs. those that do not:

1X

How Best-in-Class Companies Use Social ERP

Are 4X more likely to be able to tag conversations to activities, customers, processes and more

48% 48% 61% 61%

use it to enable real-time collaboration across departments and divisions

use it to annotate, share and collaborate on reports or visuals in real-time

use it to gain insight from reports and views

use it to support continuous improvement initiatives by cross-functional teams

4X

1 2

1X

2X

Saw 2X the improvement in profit margins over the past two years

ERP Benchmark survey. July 2013. Aberdeen Group, Inc. Solving Collaboration Challenges with Social ERP. August 2013.

Aberdeen Group, Inc.

About Aberdeen Group

Aberdeen Group publishes research that helps businesses improve their performance. We identify Best-in-Class organizations by conducting quantitative primary research with industry practitioners. Our research is relied on by hundreds of thousands of business professionals to drive smarter decision making and improved business strategy. Start researching today at www.Aberdeen.com.

For more information about Epicor ERP, visit

epicor.com/mena/company/collaboration Copyright Š 2015 Epicor Software Corporation. Epicor, Business Inspired and the Epicor logo are trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. The contents herein are for informational purposes only.

Opinion

Thornton May, Contributing Editor, Computerworld

the evolution of the CIO

T

he conversations swirling today about the evolving role of the CIO typically start from a flawed historical premise. Many contemporary writers and analysts simply do not understand what a CIO was meant to be when the role was first created in the early 1980s.

Prior to that time, the practice of IT in large enterprises was a hodgepodge of tactical projects primarily aimed at automating back-room processes.

The term ‘chief information officer’ was coined in 1981 by William Synnott, Vice President of Data Processing at the Bank of Boston, who argued that IT was strategic, not just a means to reduce costs, and should be examined and deployed from an enterprise perspective. Before then, there were no executives anywhere responsible for refocusing IT on strategic enterprise initiatives. The CIO role was created to fill that void.

Thus, when you hear people argue today that the CIO has evolved from a micro-focused, cost-obsessed machine-tender to industry-disrupting strategist, understand that they are flat-out wrong. CIOs were always meant to be strategists.

None of which is to say that the role of real CIOs isn’t evolving, because it is. Here are three new roles CIOs are undertaking.

Conversation architect. CIOs have always participated in enterprise strategic conversations. That’s what 58

january 2016

CIO Max Hopper was doing when the SABRE reservation system was created at American Airlines.

What’s new is that the CIO is now shaping the strategic conversation.

This now seems inevitable in a world that has gone digital, where mostly every enterprise is in the Internetconnected device business. Someone needs to create a framework for information to be shared and decisions to be made. Someone needs to establish some guardrails to ensure that civil and constructive discourse happens. That someone could and probably should be the CIO. The shaper of the strategic conversation should engineer discussions that focuses on three basic elements: priorities ‘we will focus resources on these things,’ sequencing ‘we will do this first, then that,’ and the theory of victory ‘we will succeed for the following reasons’.

Digital scorekeeper. Every organisation, whether aware of it or not, is on a digital journey. But journeys are fraught with danger when you have no map and no navigator. Once again, enter the CIO. What is unusual about the road to the digital enterprise is that it leads to the customer, and historically CIOs’ contact with customers has been tangential at best. To achieve the digital enterprise, the CIO, working with marketing, has to put in place sensors that give voice to the customer point of view.

Success has always hinged on what customers need versus what you have to sell. What has changed is that digital input can now flood in to tell you what it is that customers need.

It is only natural for the CIO to play a major role capturing, filtering and funnelling this data representing the voice of the customer.

Micro credential archivist.

One piece of the workplace transformation now under way has been little remarked upon but is critically important. It is how people communicate what they can do. This has long been done with résumés that list professional or educational credentials in the form of diplomas and certifications.

This is being supplanted by micro credentials. A micro credential, also known as a ‘badge,’ is any kind of credential that focuses on a specific skill or capability. The knowledge represented by a micro credential is much narrower than that represented by a degree or a fullblown certification.

Currently, most organisations are not set up to manage micro credentials. But in the future, the CIO, working with HR, will play a major role in conceptualising and deploying micro credentialing systems.

These are just a few of the new roles real CIOs will be playing in the next few years, and as the industry evolves we can expect that the tech leaders’ roles will do too. www.cnmeonline.com

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PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

PRODUCTS

Launches and releases

Brand: Parrot Product: Zik 3

Brand: ASUS Product: Zen AiO Pro

Z240IC

What it does: Zen AiO Pro Z240IC is a 23.8-inch is the first model in its new Zen AiO Pro Series, a range of all-in-one PCs. The device features an allaluminum design and is powered by 6th-generation Intel Core up to i7 processors. It also has the gaming-grade NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics with 2GB of video memory.

It is equipped with a 10Gbit/s USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, up to PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 SSD storage, and an Intel RealSense camera.

It also has a six-speaker ASUS SonicMaster Premium sound system that delivers 16W of rich and clear stereo sound.

What you should know: Zen AiO Pro is an all-in-one PC that uses the next-generation USB 3.1 Gen 2, which delivers data transfers of up to 10Gbit/s.

For all-device connectivity, Zen AiO Pro also has four USB 3.0 ports plus a USB 2.0 port, along with the latest ultra-fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

www.cnmeonline.com

What it does: The Zik 3 is the newest generation of Parrot’s wireless music and telephone headsets, designed by Starck.

Parrot also highlights that the Zik 3 is compatible with wireless Qi chargers with charging time at two hours for 18 hour autonomy. It is compatible with all mobile phones and smart watches available on the market and accepts a variety of music sources. It also features integrated NFC technology for easy pairing.

It also sports features such as high fidelity sound quality and smart noise cancelling. Users can also have a tactile panel accesses of the device’s basic functions just at the surface of the right earpiece.

What you should know: The Zik 3 can also detect when you remove the headset and automatically pauses music. Putting the headphones back on your head prompts the music to resume.

Brand: SanDisk Product:

Extreme 510 Portable SSD

What it does: Designed for photographers and videographers, the Extreme 510 Portable SSD is the latest offering in SanDisk’s portable SSD product line.

According to the company, the storage device builds on the compact design of the highly-rated SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD to offer ultimate portability and provide greater protection for users who want to take their storage on-the-go. With its rubber bumper and IP55-rating for water and dust resistance.

What you should know: In a pocket-sized design, the Extreme 510 Portable SSD delivers transfer speeds up to 430MB/s and is available in 480GB capacity. The new SanDisk Extreme 510 Portable SSD also features SanDisk SecureAccess software with 128-bit encryption to secure files. january 2016

61

Backlog

5

enterprise software predictions for 2016 What does the future of software look like?

Experts share their opinions on how the industry will shift in 2016.

S

oftware is the backbone of IT in the digital age, touching almost every aspect of our lives. So what does the future hold for one of the hottest industries in the world?

Here, experts from Skyport Systems, Ceridian, Tasktop and Travel Tripper share their opinions on what to expect in in 2016.

Prediction #1: Say goodbye to software-centric security Software-defined security systems represent two huge vulnerabilities: Many individual cybersecurity products and tools don’t work well together; and many are incapable of solving modern-day security problems, says Art Gilliland, CEO of start-up Skyport Systems.

“How does any micro-segmentation solution prevent the next Heartbleed from a perfectly trusted source? Or prevent a rootkit, or a corrupted SSD firmware attack vector? Increased reliance on hundreds, or even thousands, of different security applications and software products will drive organisations to realise that one-size-fits-all software-based security tools are far too risky.

Organisations will turn to solutions that secure individual applications and their hardware,” says Gilliland.

Prediction #2: Software failures will be everyone’s problem In the recent past, we’ve seen the impact major software failures can have on leadership. In 2016, software will no longer be solely 62

january 2016

the responsibility of CIOs and CTOs. Accountability will extend throughout the C-suite to include the CEO, CMO, COO and CFO, among others, says Neelan Choksi, President and Chief Operating Officer of software development and integration service platform Tasktop.

Prediction #3: Agile at scale - finally Despite numerous acronyms (SAFe, Nexus, LeSS, for example) and the fact that more than 75 percent of companies have adopted agile development methodologies, we have yet to see agile achieve significant scale at the enterprise level. Tasktop’s Choksi says 2016 will mark the first year enterprise-scale agile transformations will work.

“One of the primary drivers of scaled agile success will be the increased availability and implementation of enterprise-focused development tool integrations that make agile methods more effective, and thus more accessible for the enterprise,” Choksi says.

Prediction #4: Software developer shortage continues Every company is an IT company, but the 'shortage' of engineering and development talent is hurting some more than others, says Kevin Born, Lead Software Engineer at fullservice hotel reservation platform Travel Tripper.

“Software developers and engineers flock to mammoth tech companies like Google, Uber and

Amazon. But many ‘traditional’ industries have tech development needs that can offer challenges that are just as enticing,” Born says. In 2016, firms in hospitality, finance, insurance, retail and agriculture will struggle to find great programmers, and they will have to redouble their efforts at marketing and selling themselves as great places to work in order to attract the talent they need to compete, Born says.

Prediction #5: Software development heads to the cloud The cloud will be where it’s at for the software development world, says Warren Perlman, CIO of human capital management solutions company Ceridian. From Web-based applications to value-adds like software maintenance, patching and updates, there’s no reason not to leverage the cloud.

“You’re going to minimise your costs from CAPEX and OPEX, and you’ll be able to create and deliver a Web application that can perform at the same level or higher than any desktop or stand-alone app. You can also add services like patches and updates and better security - there’s absolutely no reason these days to do otherwise,” Perlman says.

www.cnmeonline.com

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1. Unbox

Based on internal testing January 2015 of an HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual with HP OneView for vCenter version 7.40, HP OneView InstantOn version 1.00, and VMware vCenter Server version 5.5. © 2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

2. Deploy

3. Provision in 15 minutes

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ISSUE 288 | January 2016

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