Network World Middle East | Issue 156

ISSUE 156 / AUGUST 2018

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CLEAR VIEW Juma Al Majid on course for SDN via network visibility

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EDITORIAL

Life on the edge

Talk to us: E-mail: james.dartnell@ cpimediagroup.com

James Dartnell Editor

Hello GCC networkers, and welcome back to our quarterly edition of Network World Middle East.

In this issue we home in on some of the main areas that we believe are set to transform the region’s networks in the coming months and years.

I sat down with Juma Al Majid’s Ahmad Al Shami, who has been remarkably resourceful in his bid to transform the firm’s network and IT infrastructure. Ahmad has deployed a number of tools and processes that are – to quote the old adage – helping the firm do more with less, as well as helping to accelerate the move to SDN. Find out how on page 14.

We also take a look at some of the

most exciting, emerging trends in networks. Networking at the edge, or edge computing, has the promise of producing and analysing data locally, without the use of centralised data centres. We explore its potential on page 24.

Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire shares his take on why networking success will be driven by the ability to innovate – easier said than done – and just how to do so on page 28.

Red Hat’s Oliver Horn also dives into the area that he believes will transform traditional networking – IoT gateways – both in terms of traffic and security. Turn to page 36 for more.

Juma Al Majid have been remarkably resourceful in their bid to transform their network.

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CONTENTS

ISSUE 156 August 2018

20 Life on the edge

14

Juma Al Majid s bid for network visibility, and the path to SDN.

10

Aruba’s EMEA VP says Dubai is more tech-savvy than much of Europe.

08 In the news

24 Setting up shop

Clear view

06 Beating the best We give you the rundown on some of the GCC’s recent networking headlines.

12

How will edge computing transform network operations, and what does it mean for business?

How do global tech titans decide where to build their GCC data centres?

28 Disrupt or die

5 alive

Etisalat partners with the Expo 2020 site to launch largest commercial 5G site in MEASA region.

Rub of the green Al Safeer Group CIO Kumar Prasoon shares his view for how networks can deliver fresh, local food produce.

Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire believes organisations must encourage change.

30 The Mother LODE

Dell EMC’s vice chairman of products and operations discusses why data will transform networks.

FOUNDER, CPI MEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015) Publishing Director Natasha Pendleton natasha.pendleton@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9139 ADVERTISING Group Sales Director Kausar Syed kausar.syed@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9138

Business Development Manager Youssef Hariz youssef.hariz@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9111

Published by

EDITORIAL Managing Editor Michael Jabri-Pickett mjp@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9158

PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Senior Designer Analou Balbero analou.balbero@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5680

Editor James Dartnell james.dartnell@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9153

Designer Mhar Delaben marlou.delaben@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9156

Deputy Editor Glesni Holland glesni.holland@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9134

Operations Manager Shweta Santosh shweta.santosh@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9107

Online Editor Adelle Geronimo adelle.geronimo@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9135

DIGITAL SERVICES Web Developer Jefferson de Joya Abbas Madh Photographers Charls Thomas Maksym Poriechkin webmaster@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9100 Publication licensed by Dubai Production City, DCCA PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 4 447 2409

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Printed by Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing © Copyright 2018 CPI All rights reserved While th e p ub lish ers have made ever y ef for t to en sure th e accur acy of all information in this mag azin e, th ey will n ot b e h eld re sp on sib le for any errors th erein.

INSIGHT • ARUBA

“DUBAI DIGITAL CULTURE OUTSTRIPS BERLIN, BARCELONA” Aruba’s vice president for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, Morten Illum, explains why he believes Dubai is a city that exudes technology, and is already surpassing leading European cities.

W

hat’s your overall impression of the Middle East market?

Whenever I land in Dubai, I instantly feel the technology.

You have fast internet, wireless that works. The UAE and Middle East are on a faster digital transformation than most Southern European countries are. Some businesses here will face new things faster than parts of mainland Europe. There’s a more tech-savvy environment, and a lot of money is being spent by governments in smart cities, education and new areas of technology. The whole attitude of “We want to build a virtual Dubai,” – you just don’t get that in Berlin or Barcelona.

There are also great opportunities with healthcare and education.

What customer success stories have you delivered in the Middle East?

We’ve got good grip around hospitality. Jumeirah is using Aruba, which allows them to increase their revenue per guest, and also to use it as a customer loyalty and experience tool. There’s a lot of hospitality interest. The Burj Al Arab has delivered Wi-Fi and guest services, and is on the next path of wireless opportunities.

What new products or services has Aruba been highlighting?

We recently launched our new IntroSpect user and entity behaviour analytics, which helps enterprises to cope with security threats that have resulted from the device explosion.

Today, many threats we see do not result from attacks that come from the outside and hit the firewall, they mainly creep in through IoT devices,

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What were the main things you discussed at the recent Aruba Enterprise Mobility Conference in Dubai?

It set the tone for existing and new customers and partners for how mobility can increase productivity and the worker experience – from guests to employees to company revenue streams. There’s now an explosion of data and devices, and with cloud, mobile, and IoT environments coming, companies need to think about how to address these situations, and the follow up consequences. A couple of years ago, we were talking about easy access to network, now that’s a given.

“Whenever I land in Dubai, I instantly feel the technology.” or through a PC infected in a coffee shop. The entry point is already connected to the network, the challenge is managing devices on it.

You need intelligent tools to look at device behaviour.

For example, if a connected coffee machine normally sends 4kb packages to a vendor, but then starts sending 40mb files to another IP address, you can deploy intelligent machine learning and automation, via this behavioural analytics platform.

Are you suggesting that Aruba is becoming more of a security than a networking company?

I think Aruba has always been a security-first company. Our silicon has built-in security, and we’re always building a secure platform that acts in an open ecosystem.

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NEWS

DEWA TO INTEGRATE GE’S IOT PLATFORM INTO POWER PLANTS

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA

D

ubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has adopted General Electric’s Internet of Things platform, Predix.

The platform enables the connection of machines, data, and people to support DEWA’s digital capabilities and enable it to collect and analyse data in real time, to enhance the speed and efficiency of its operations.

The move is part of DEWA’s asset management innovation programme in its electricity and water production at its Generation division, where assets will be integrated into power plants through the application of the Predix cloud-computing platform to provide analytical solutions for Big Data.

Applications include automated learning techniques and built-in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict

the asset’s lifecycle and prevent future malfunctions by using a continuous asset monitoring service to preidentify and analyse root causes.

The digital twin concept that is used on the Predix platform will enable DEWA to build digital models of power station assets and operations. These models contribute to the management of advanced analytical applications, which in turn provide a comprehensive vision to assist in the assessment and improvement of operations.

“This initiative supports making use of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things to support the 10X initiative to propel Dubai into the future,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.

ETISALAT PLEDGES COMMITMENT TO SECURE IOT Etisalat has announced its commitment to adapt and implement a common approach to IoT security guidelines that will outline best practices and recommendations for the entire IoT ecosystem.

The guidelines were set by the global organisation Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) targeting IoT service providers, device manufacturers, developers and mobile operators to provide best practices for a secure end-to-end design, development and deployment of IoT solutions across industries and services.

They address typical cybersecurity and data privacy issues associated with IoT services and outline a stepby-step process to securely launch solutions to market.

Globally AT&T, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Orange, Telenor, Telefonica, Telia and Turkcell are the operators in agreement to adopt these practices that will set out a security assessment scheme to help ensure

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IoT services are protected against IoT security risks. There will be a reach of 3.1 billion IoT connections by 2025, according to GSMA Intelligence.

“For IoT to flourish, the industry needs an aligned and consistent approach to IoT security. Our

guidelines encourage the industry to adopt a robust set of best practices that will help create a more secure IoT market with trusted, reliable services that can scale as the market grows,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA.

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DELL TO RETURN TO PUBLIC MARKETS IN $22BN TRACKING STOCK BUY OUT

Michael Dell, founder, Dell

Dell has agreed to buy out its own tracking stock for nearly $22 billion in a move that will return the

technology company back to public markets five years after founder Michael Dell took it private.

The deal sees the firm swapping the “trading stock” it created when it bought EMC in 2016. This, in turn, will simplify Dell’s current structure, seen by many as overly complicated, and make use of the stock that tracks VMware Inc. The tracking stock was created to do two things: give EMC shareholders a way to reflect the 82 percent that the company held in VMWare, and; reduce the amount of money Dell needed to borrow to acquire EMC by giving the latter company’s

shareholders something else of value.

Issuing the tracking stock meant Dell didn’t have to raise quite as much money to finance the deal.

It is understood that the transaction will give Dell more control over VMware and opens the door to a potential merger down the road.

Dell went private in 2013 as part of a buyout agreed between founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake. According to Bloomberg, Dell’s debt almost tripled with its purchase of EMC in 2016. Even after paying down billions, Dell still has $52.7 billion in debt, including its subsidiaries.

OMAN TO BUILD FIRST SMART CITY IN DUQM

Oman and the Republic of Korea have signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation between the two sides to establish smart cities.

The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the Oman-Korea Business Forum. As part of the agreement, the two countries will develop a study on the importance of investment factors, projects and fields

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in relation to smart cities in the Special Economic Zone in Duqm (SEZD).

The MoU was signed by Dr Ali bin Masoud bin Ali al Sunaidy, Oman’s minister of Commerce and Industry, whilst it was signed from the Korean side by Son Byeong Suk, Vice Minister of Land and Infrastructure.

This MoU comes within the

framework of factors needed by the economic zones such as SEZD for establishing smart cities.

There is set to be coordination between the SEZAD and Korea to prepare a draft to conduct some studies on the vision of smart cities, which became the key engine of many economies around the world.

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9

NEWS • ETISALAT

ETISALAT LAUNCHES FIRST COMMERCIAL 5G NETWORK AT EXPO 2020 SITE

T

he Expo 2020 site in Dubai has become the first largescale commercial site in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region to have access to a 5G network.

According to the telco, the 5G network will provide the “most advanced digital and telecom services to Expo 2020’s millions of visitors,” including supporting an expected 300,000 users during peak times.

At a speed of 1.3GBPS (gigabits per second) the network is already more than twice as fast as typical 4G networks, which average speeds of 600MBS (megabits per second), and Saaed Al Zarouni, SVP of Etisalat UAE’s Mobile Network division believes the 5G network will hit speeds of “more than 5GBPS in phase two of the network’s standardisation process.”

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Network World Middle East

“By the time Expo 2020 arrives, the site will be the smartest, fastest and most connected site on Earth.”

International standardisation of 5G parameters is expected to be announced later this year. 5G is anticipated to support advancements in applications such as networking vehicles, including autonomous driving, the Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial automation.

As things stand currently on the 4G network that operates in the UAE, users can expect a “10-20 millisecond” latency, which is reduced to just “1 millisecond” on Etisalat’s 5G network, Zarouni added. “By the time Expo 2020 arrives, the site will be the smartest, fastest and most connected site on Earth,” he said.

During the media demonstration of Etisalat’s new network at the Expo site, the telco showed how its 5G connection could stream realtime 360-degree video feeds from high powered drones to virtual reality headsets, in addition to streaming 4K footage.

Mohammed Alhashmi, Senior Vice President, Innovation and Future Technology at Expo 2020 Dubai, added, “At Expo 2020, we plan to optimise every visitor’s experience by digitally connecting them with their surrounding environment and enriching their interactions throughout the Expo journey.

Etisalat’s 5G network will play a significant role in supporting this overall goal and providing a seamless digital experience to all visitors.”

He added that the Expo site will deploy more than 200 kilometres of fibre, over 8,500 WiFi access points, 2,000 5G indoor antennas and 2,000 4G antennae – to ensure that “those still on 4G” can be catered for.

Zarouni added that 5G handsets can be expected in the UAE during the second half of 2019.

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FEATURE • AL SAFEER GROUP

THE GREEN LIGHT Al Safeer’s group CIO Kumar Prasoon shares his vision for how a blend of game-changing technologies can create a smart, integrated infrastructure that will transform grocery production and slash energy costs.

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K

umar Prasoon sees a key theme throughout history, and the industrial revolutions that have defined the last few centuries.

“Over time, we’ve shifted from mechanisation, water and steam usage; to mass production and electricity; then to computing and automation, and now to cyberphysical systems,” he says. “Energy has underpinned this transition.”

For Prasoon, Industry 4.0 success will be defined by the ways in which GCC retailer Al Safeer can manage its energy usage, and successfully use technology to deliver innovative, energy-driven processes that make use of the local environment.

Like any CIO, Prasoon’s technology plans are shaped by a need to increase efficiency and reduce operating costs. By the same token, Al Safeer is equally burdened with high energy costs, like any other large retailer, both in powering its IT infrastructure and physical retail space. “The misuse and overuse of energy is very costly,” he says. “Energy usage may not seem like a key consideration for the IT department, but TCO and power optimisation can be directly influenced by CIOs. It’s also an unavoidable fact that IT cannot survive for a second without energy. It’s my responsibility to automate administrative and repetitive tasks.

All data processing, application and infrastructure monitoring and energy utilisation are things which we have to consider. Malls run on air conditioning, and data centres demand huge amounts of electricity.”

Prasoon is clear as to the technological elements that will be needed in order to transform

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these business cost centres. “You need pervasive connectivity, storage and analytics that can feed into industrial IoT systems,” he says. “The formula for success in the fourth industrial revolution is operational technology, information technology, ERP systems, government regulations and a strong WAN-to-cloud strategy. The Internet of Things will be game-changing. McKinsey believes the economic impact of IoT could be between $4-11 trillion by 2025, and I believe it has the potential to reduce 20-50% of maintenance costs across the

“The aim is to convert barren land into an oasis of production via IoT.” board. It cuts across retail and other sectors; machine-to-machine WAN optimisation and cloud use cases will create new business models.”

As well as tackling the traditional tasks associated with the CIO role, Prasoon hopes to make use of local resources in order to help Al Safeer think outside the box. “A smart city is a combination of smart citizens, smart infrastructure and smart administration,” he says. “Energy is a major component of the infrastructure aspect, and it has to be optimised for the benefit of the community. Our vision is to use our existing infrastructure and energy

to the fullest potential in order to optimise TCO.” Along with his IT-driven vision for cutting Al Safeer’s energy costs, Prasoon has also explored ways that integrated systems can improve efficiencies across other areas of the business. Agricultural produce forms an integral part of Al Safeer’s sales, and Prasoon is considering alternative ways that Al Safeer can make its supply chain more efficient, while delivering fresher, lower cost fruit and vegetables that can be sold locally.

He has been particularly taken with hydroponics – a method of fertilising plants with mineral nutrient solvents such as fish waste or duck manure, instead of soil. The result is fresh, organic produce that is grown faster and with greater yield. What’s more, hydroponics is ideal for arid environments such as those experienced in the GCC. “Bad weather jeopardises agricultural production,” Prasoon says. Land that is currently unused can be transformed to produce lots of vegetables. There are so many areas where barren land is unused for years. The aim has to be converting this land into an oasis of production via IoT.” Prasoon has identified the backbone elements of this plan.

“We need to use energy and IoT together,” Prasoon says. “We can use industrial systems, IoT and automation to produce organic vegetables. The challenge is powering production systems.

With charged sensors and 100,000 plants in one area, you need to have smart monitoring and a smart telco network. Waste land and desert areas can be converted to hydroponics centres. The challenge is to convert barren land into urban land via IoT and automation.”

Network World Middle East

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FEATURE • JUMA AL MAJID

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CLEAR VIEW

Determined to maximise efficiency across all lines of business, Juma Al Majid Group has gone the extra mile to gain total visibility over its network, and has built a platform for innovation - and SDN - in the process.

“W

ithout innovation, you cannot survive.”

Being resourceful with technology is Ahmad Al Shamsi’s main remit, and speciality. The senior IT operations manager for Juma Al Majid – one of the UAE’s oldest and best-known family businesses – knows that sometimes, the best technology solutions have simplicity at their core. “Innovation is about delivering more quality services, and, ultimately, keeping customers happier with less cost,” he says. “We don’t want to keep doing things in the same way, so it’s important that we try out

“It’s not realistic to just buy an expensive system to lift you out of a mess.”

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new things to try and get different results. You need a brave heart for innovation, and you need initial failure to deliver long-term success.”

With over 10,000 employees on its books, Juma Al Majid operates across a range of industries including contracting, retail, hotels and FMCG, as well as being the exclusive distributors for Kia and Hyundai in the UAE. Established in 1950, the firm has long since cemented its place as one of the country’s top family businesses.

In line with Juma Al Majid’s success across a range of industries, IT complexity has inevitably resulted. Managing such a diverse group is no easy task, and “causes headaches” for Al Shamsi, who is tasked with meeting the specific technological demands of a diverse range of verticals. “The split of industries that the group manages means that you need to know what to centralise and decentralise, and how to reduce cost while sharing things in the appropriate way,” he says. “In our contracting business,

for example, our SLAs need specific customisations. Across each division, IT security has different demands, while there must be efficient, transparent communications across divisions.”

Against the backdrop of diverse industries in which the company operates, Juma Al Majid has also sought ways to reinvigorate its IT infrastructure, and give the company a platform to thrive in the digital age.

“In many ways, we had an obsolete infrastructure, which was very old and needed change,” Al Shamsi says.

“The reality, however, is that you can’t overspend to completely overhaul things. Our IT skills are tied to the old infrastructures, and one of the biggest challenges is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and vice versa. As a manager, if I don’t have information, I’m relying on what people know, and that isn’t always enough.”

With around “120” servers as part of its current network and needing to serve 114 physical sites across the UAE, Juma Al Majid is also in the

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15

FEATURE • JUMA AL MAJID

midst of migrating a lot of its data to the cloud, and has an IT team of 35 staff to balance the day-to-day duties of IT operations, along with meeting the firm’s innovation aspirations. “I needed to find a way to manage our resources efficiently with limited budgets,” Al Shamsi says.

“We needed effective measures of employee performance through the right KPIs, as well the right insights into our network that could help us to enhance security and maximise the use of our IT assets.”

Al Shamsi initially introduced ManageEngine’s ServiceDesk Plus suite of products to identify threats, enhance visibility and improve employee productivity, all via Juma Al Majid’s network. The vendor’s OpManager product was also soon added, and the results of the change have been clear to Al Shamsi. “The visibility of our network is now much improved,” he says. “It’s scary not knowing what is going in and out of your network, and it’s so important to be able to measure your assets, and to have visibility of network traffic

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“You need a brave heart for innovation, and you need initial failure to deliver long-term success.” and workloads so that you can be proactive. Whatever happens in our network, we know about it because of OpManager. It gives great visibility of our firewall, and of managing our different sites. If there is a major incident, it creates ticket and helps our employees deal with it.

“The monitoring has given us the capability to handle incidents, and resolve issues around monitoring and service desk management. Logs of network devices, the monitoring of our firewall and VPN access are key components of security handling.

A module in OpManager monitors changes in network devices and means you can compare devices to each other.”

The tools have also helped to deliver enhanced productivity and SLA completion across IT staff members, allowing Al Shamsi to observe the overlap between operations and project management.

He has also been able to use the information on offer to help make project cost estimations. “We now have all processes in one place and can consolidate workloads,” he says. “The right analytics over your network give you so much information. Having advanced management monitoring really allows you to utilise your team efficiently.”

Having begun its partnership with ManageEngine in 2010, Juma Al Majid has continued to be a close partner with the firm. Work is still ongoing between the two companies to enhance visibility within Juma Al Majid’s network. “It’s been like a survivor ship to us,” Al Shamsi says. “It’s not realistic to just buy an

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FEATURE • JUMA AL MAJID

“It’s scary not knowing what is going in and out of your network, and it’s so important to be able to measure your assets.” expensive system to lift you out of a mess. Whatever limitations I faced in the system could be worked around.

Ultimately, I don’t need a Ferrari to get me to work, I need an efficient vehicle, and it’s great economics to spend something and get a lot in return.”

Looking ahead, Juma Al Majid is also looking to introduce a softwaredefined wide area networking model in the near future, in order to reduce TCO and deliver high latency for connecting to the cloud. “SD-WAN will be a very big change for us,” he says. “The most expensive thing in IT is manning. We need to reduce cost and increase value. SD-WAN increases your ability to outsource, decreases overheads and allows the team to focus more and troubleshoot the network, as well as focusing on security, auditing and supervision. SDWAN allows us to minimise headaches and increase availability.” He adds that “in one year” Juma Al Majid’s network will be software-defined.

Al Shamsi has also overseen Juma Al Majid’s shift from MPLS to ADSL communications, a “transformation” that has seen the firm save over “AED 1.4 million”. “It’s one of most important areas to keep innovating,” Al Shamsi says.

Reflecting on the changes he has helped to introduce to Juma AL

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Majid, Al Shamsi believes that one of the biggest lessons he has learned throughout various projects is the value of sound change management.

“You always need culture changes and need to change old habits,” he says. “These aren’t always accepted, and people will debate how things are done. They may not share the vision or belief that you want to instil.

One of the most important things you need to deliver is quick wins in order to get people on side.”

He adds that empowering staff with knowledge is equally crucial in pushing an organisation forward.

“Training and education, as well as lots of communication are great,” he says.

“People get stuck in their comfort zone, and that’s human nature.

“Bad habits are similar to the analogy of the frog in boiled water. As the water gets hotter, the frog works harder to cool down, but eventually the water reaches boiling point, and it’s too late to initiate change.”

Al Shamsi also pays homage to Juma Al Majid’s senior management in the bid to introduce technological change and innovation at the company.

“The commitment from top level management figures truly helps,” he says. “Our CIO wanted to introduce innovation with me on board, and his support has been fantastic in giving me the chance to make these changes.”

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FEATURE • NETWORKING AT THE EDGE

Sharper edge As Internet of Things devices continue to generate large volumes of data, networking will increasingly be pushed to the edge, where data can be analysed faster. How can organisations transition to this new age of data and application usage, where both will need to be managed closer to their infrastructure?

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raditional networks are about to change. While data is now typically sent to a centralised cloud or corporate data centre, regardless of compute, storage and network connectivity, networking at the edge makes use of smaller data centres to host applications, allowing them to process data locally, with non-local data traffic sent to the central server.

In traditional networks, traffic moves from core to access (users).

However, the growth of peer-topeer applications such as audio and video conferencing solutions has gradually pushed traffic from user to user. Most of this traffic would still go to the first user, since they and other users would not always be in the same area.

Networking at the edge, or edge computing, now uses new types of traffic patterns, which have largely been driven by the rise of the internet of things.

This shift in traffic behaviour has forced enterprises to re-architect topologies so that they can define the policies, controls and levels of security required.

Another key difference around edge computing resides in the network itself. In traditional networks, elements such as DSLAMs, BNGs, Pes and core routers had very predictable traffic patterns and management tools. With edge computing, a new type of network is added in the form of compute nodes. These compute nodes are pools of servers that need to be managed appropriately.

“There was a large push several years ago to build centralised data centres and connect these with the highest speed connections possible,” Azz-Eddine Mansouri,

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Ciena Middle East’s senior sales director says. “With the advent of streaming content, analytics, IoT and 5G, user connectivity and latency have become a much larger issue, and have called for the decentralisation of applications and data storage to provide faster user access from these de-centralised data centres. While this keeps a lot of the unnecessary traffic out of the core, it also puts a larger strain on edge networks, metro networks and regional networks than ever before.”

“The potential of edge computing is gradually being

“The beauty of edge computing is that it is very transparent to end-users.” realized across different industrial sectors in the Middle East region,” David Noguer Bau, Juniper Networks’ marketing director for its service provider division says. “The oil and gas sector for example, has lots companies that have thousands of IoT devices. Most of them process data in the same location, and don’t send all the data to the cloud directly, which allows them to benefit from the use of edge computing.”

Noguer Bau goes on to add that edge computing will provide a range of advantages in terms of managing networks. “Enterprises that are implementing networking at the edge will enable the architecture and design of their network sites to accommodate servers as well as monitoring

elements such as power, space and temperature,” he says. “This deployment of new infrastructure will result in roll-out servers (truck roll) and a centralised management for Openstack, Contrail, Appformix and security. Overall, this will also lead to a better lifecycle management of enterprise applications.”

When embarking on realising the potential of edge computing, organisations need to consider a series of risks that could ensue, the vulnerability of endpoints chief among them. He also believes that the way data is handled will pose a challenge. “Data analytics and security will play bigger roles for an enterprise’s IT operations, as large amounts of regional data will need to be managed in near-real time and stored for predictive analysis,” Mansouri says. “Security at the edge will differ since it is not traversing the complete network; however, edged devices are vulnerable.

Additionally, more digital fiber assets will be used for network connectivity, which is a new consideration for IT operations.”

Noguer Bau agrees that the management of data will be key.

“End-users that are looking to realise the benefits of networking at the edge may need to overcome challenges in the distribution, consistency, and synchronization of data,” he says. “In edge computing, each of the edge nodes are not completely independent, as each may need to share information with other nodes so keeping data consistent is a challenge.

Enterprises will therefore need to address how they can coordinate a large number of edge computing systems while still allowing them to work independently.”

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He goes on to add that the way applications are managed will also need to be taken into consideration.

“To realise the advantages of having data at the edge, it is first important to understand that edge computing is more than just data, it is also about the applications,” Noguer Bau says. “Having data improves the user experience by caching data closer and reducing latency. Having applications closer to the edge means that they can process a lot of the data generated locally at the edge. This eliminates the need to send all the data to the centralised cloud to process a response.”

Once these challenges around managing data and security can be overcome, enterprises will be able to experience a range of benefits including availability and transparency. “From an industrial perspective, latency can save lives in connected cars with assisted driving,” Noguer Bau says. “It can also help save money by increasing the battery life of IoT devices, since most of these devices just turn on to send information and

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“The advent of streaming content, analytics, IoT and 5G have called for the decentralisation of applications and data storage.” then switch off for a period of time once delivery has been confirmed.

Overall, this can also help in cutting down operating expenses by reducing the number of times the batteries in these devices need to be replaced.”

“The beauty of edge computing is that it is very transparent to end-users,” he adds. “As they connect the devices, they will automatically choose the server at the most optimal location, which should enable them to experience the prior discussed benefits above. Also, should edge

computing be deployed at a later stage, the existing devices should automatically reconnect to the new site and start experiencing the benefits of networking at the edge.”

Mansouri agrees that enhanced data delivery could ensure a much smoother IT operation. “There are several advantages from having data at the edge,” he says. “One of the main advantages is faster access to applications and data analysis with reduced latency, since data does not have to move to and from the core data center compute and storage resources.

This enables better QoS for enterprise segments such financial services and manufacturing for their near real-time applications.

Another advantage is reduced cost of network connectivity and reduced congestion in the network core, since local traffic only goes to the local edge data center.

This is particularly relevant for latency sensitive traffic and also high bandwidth traffic such as HD video content or virtual reality applications.”

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17th September 2018, Habtoor Grand Resort, Dubai Speakers

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FEATURE • GCC DATA CENTRES

How do tech titans decide where to build their GCC data centres?

The race to build Middle East data centres is swiftly gathering pace. As public and private sector organisations across the region develop an increasing appetite to run their business on cloud-based platforms, the world’s blue-chip technology firms are laying their bets across GCC cities for where they should house valuable customer data.

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n the last 15 months, a selection of technology titans have lined up to announce when and where they will build data centres to serve the Middle East public cloud market. What is perhaps most noteworthy is the breadth of location choice among the global tech elite.

Microsoft is the latest to have announced regional data centres, with two sites – one each in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – due to arrive in early 2019. Arch-rivals SAP and Oracle announced plans in the first half of last year, with the latter initially naming Abu Dhabi as the location for its site – and announcing in February that it would build a site in Riyadh – while SAP opted for Riyadh, as well announcing a $200 million investment into the UAE which would include a data centre site. Global cloud leader Amazon Web Services perhaps deviated most from the well-trodden path of the GCC tech industry, choosing Bahrain as the location for its new Infrastructure Region and three Availability Zones, expected to be complete next year. There are global players who have already set up shop in the region. Alibaba Cloud already has a data centre in Dubai, which opened in December 2016 as a joint venture with Meraas Holding.

Oracle’s senior vice president of technology for the Middle East and Africa, Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, believes that developments around building data centres are ultimately a sideshow to the bigger picture, and that suggestions of intense competition between cloud providers are blown out of proportion. “The frequency of this type of conversation is interesting

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– but it ends up being more of a playground squabble over whether mine is bigger than yours,” he says.

“It isn’t a straightforward equation, and it distracts attention from what is really more important – what businesses are actually doing and to what affect. For the most progressive organisations, other than for data that by law has to reside in a particular location, those CIOs who are actively embracing cloud don’t actually care where it is housed.”

“The Middle East has historically been a bit of a dead zone on cloud computing centres, but the ground is shifting.”

With a range of high-stakes industries including banking and government legally obliged to keep sensitive data on GCC soil, it was only a matter of time before the world’s leading cloud companies responded to market demand and laid plans to build their own facilities in what represents a fastgrowing digital economy. According to ReportLinker, the MENA cloud infrastructure services market is expected to grow from $2.66 billion in 2017 to $8.79 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 27%, while cloud traffic in the Middle East and Africa region is expected to quadruple by the end of 2019.

Sam Blatteis, co-founder and CEO of UAE-based policy consulting firm The MENA

Catalysts, believes the region is now witnessing a major shift in its technological development.

“The Middle East has historically been a bit of a dead zone on cloud computing centres, but the ground is shifting,” he says. “There is, however, an emerging trend of tech titans waking up to the booming Middle Eastern digital economy.

They are voting with their feet and establishing physical data centres in the Gulf, which makes sense: there is a lot to play for in the region.

The lack of local cloud data centres has been one of the major factors inhibiting the large-scale use of public cloud platforms in the region.

But I don’t see evidence of “a race” to build data centres per se.”

Blatteis says that individual attributes of GCC countries provide unique draws for companies looking to open regional data centres, and that these factors would have played a part in the thinking of firm’s who have recently announced data centre plans. “Each Gulf country has different features,” he says. “Bahrain has made a big bet on becoming the region’s big data capital. The UAE is heading for the digital pantheon, and is 20-30 years into the future ahead of its neighbours. It is transforming the Internet of Things into a reality, is at the vanguard of AI development in the region, and aims to become its AI capital.

Saudi Arabia has the largest Arab economy, and the highest average revenue spend per user. It is where a lot of the future of demand will come from for cloud services.”

However, Gartner’s principal research analyst, Santhosh Rao, does not believe there is a strategic reason as to why the world’s biggest cloud providers have opted for separate GCC cities. “There is

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no specific reason why these cloud service providers will have their data centres in completely different cities, it is just a coincidence,” he says. However, Rao does believe that the region’s two biggest markets will be the obvious choice for international tech firms looking to gain a local foothold. “In the long term, we can expect both Saudi Arabia and the UAE to host multiple cloud providers, who will aggressively compete against each other to gain market share.”

Marita Mitschein, SAP’s SVP and managing director of the firm’s MENA Training and Development Institute, and the figure heading up SAP’s Middle East data centre strategy, says that other factors dictated the location of the firm’s impending Riyadh and UAE sites.

“Because of nationwide and regional connectivity in the Middle East, the location of a data centre is not necessarily directly related to that

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city’s technology industry,” she says.

Irrespective of the motivations behind selecting a country in which to build a data centre, the interesting development in recent months has been the shift in choices that tech companies have made. Since its launch in 1999, Dubai Internet City has reigned supreme as the Middle East and North Africa region’s hub for technology companies to base their head offices. While preferences for data centre location have been split, it must be asked whether the GCC’s other leading cities have the potential to catch up with Dubai as its technological hub, and whether moves by the likes of Amazon Web Services, Oracle and SAP could set a trend for transformation across the GCC. Data centre colocation provider Equinix, who has a centre in Dubai, sees “a clear strengthening” of Dubai as a hub, according to the

“The lack of local cloud data centres has been one of the major factors inhibiting the largescale use of public cloud platforms in the region.” firm’s managing director for the Middle East and Africa Jeroen Schlosser.

Blatteis laughs off the possibility, meanwhile. “No, that won’t be the case,” he says. “It’s the emerging rise of the rest. Dubai is moving light-years ahead. When I think about the public policy challenges here compared to other parts of the Middle East, I’d rather have Dubai’s.”

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INSIGHT • SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Digital disruption: Innovation for the customer’s sake Schneider Electric CEO and chairman Jean-Pascal Tricoire shares his take on why organisations should welcome change in their bid to develop new business models.

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y 2019, all digitally transformed organisations will generate at least 45% of their revenue from new business models. And as Accenture’s CEO Pierre Nanterme says, “Digital disruption has only just begun.” It’s on every CEO’s mind.

In the world of innovation, we must welcome disruption. It prompts technological advancements. It drives a competitive spirit that results in improved performance for all companies. And it keeps everyone thinking a few steps ahead of the curve in order to thrive long-term in a global digital economy.

In just two years, there will be ten times more connected things than connected people in the world. Now that many smart machines and other assets have become connected, the amount of generated data is astounding: 90% of data generated from connected things was created over the last two years.

There are unprecedented opportunities here, even for companies who have been reluctant to evolve legacy business models.

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By 2019, all digitally transformed organisations will generate at least 45% of their revenue from new business models.

One of the major benefits made possible by digitisation: improving the customer experience.

Enriching the customer experience Hervé Coureil, Schneider’s chief digital officer, has said, “Today, any customer experience must be enriched digitally — and be frictionless, fast, and intuitive. Most importantly, the entire customer experience must answer this question in an instant: “How are you going to solve my problem or make me more efficient?”

The key here is first identifying what those problems are and where the opportunities for transformation and evolution are in a world rapidly evolving. This is why we engage with and listen to customers regularly.

Not just to support their current needs through better customer interactions.

But also to address what they need from digital innovation: i.e., how we can best scale Schneider Electric’s own digital advancements to solve our customers’ burning challenges.

alliance partners. These include Microsoft for its secure, trusted cloud capabilities; Accenture for bringing our digital offers to market faster; and Salesforce for transforming the customer experience through connectivity.

As the face behind our innovation efforts, our customers make this competitive edge relevant.

Indeed, they sharpen it, one digital disruption at a time.

Leveraging a co-innovation ecosystem Acting fast is critical for any company trying to disrupt instead of being disrupted. Given the pace of digitisation and technology breakthroughs such as AI and machine learning, no company can innovate alone. It takes a co-innovation ecosystem to accelerate. For us, our ecosystem of more than 20,000 system integrators and developers is augmented by strategic digital

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INSIGHT • DELL EMC

Managing the mother L.O.D.E Dell EMC’s vice chairman of products and operations, Jeff Clarke, explains why software and a new age of networked systems will be needed to manage the huge volumes of data that will be created in the run up to 2030.

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dge, cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and intelligent automation have all become pillars of every conversation about today’s IT infrastructure and its evolving needs. The data centre is now at the core of a distributed infrastructure spanning the edge and cloud that has organisations of all sizes and in all markets driving towards IT transformation to realise better business outcomes made possible in today’s digital information age.

Data exists everywhere – generated by seemingly every thing.

The Internet of things has driven new

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innovation in both hardware, devices and cloud computing – creating new IT requirements for how that data is secured, managed, stored, analysed at the edge, core and the cloud. And we’re just getting started, it’s what I’ve been calling “Lots of Data Everywhere,” or L.O.D.E. – the “Mother LODE.” The pressure is on to meet new IT demands that require an endto-end strategy that ensures that organisations can transform all that data in real-time, into game-changing insights. Adding the orchestration of virtual machines and the balancing act of legacy and new emerging data workloads seems daunting, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, and see this as an amazing opportunity for IT and the global economy.

Modernising the data centre is critical for any organisation competing to win in the market. ESG recently polled more than 4,000 IT decision makers and asked them to agree or disagree with the statement: “If my IT organisation does not embrace IT transformation, we will not be a competitive company.” Eighty-one percent agreed. That is a 10 percentage point increase from last year’s ESG survey with the same question.

That competitive edge lies in being able to turn your data into business insights through AI and machine learning – which requires an infrastructure that leverages automation to process and move varying workloads at scale and speed.

Besides – you need staff to channel their skills into making sense of all that new business intelligence, and collaborating with machines in new ways that transform how they work.

This future IT world, driven by machine intelligence, requires a move to an agile and flexible software-defined infrastructure.

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“This turbocharged, intelligent IT environment will need hardware innovation.”

Dell Technologies’ Realise 2030 study, conducted in partnership with Vanson Bourne, polled 3,800 global IT executives on realising digital transformation, and 89 percent believe they will have completed their transition to a software-defined business by 2030.

I believe that organisations will need to get there a lot faster or they’ll have missed a critical window of opportunity for their business.

My bet is that we’ll see a shift to software-defined in the next 3-5 years as organisations realise that their ability to evolve and scale their increasingly diverse and distributed data centre relies on having an incredibly dynamic infrastructure.

Data moves rapidly – you need to be able to respond quickly to make sure that your data centre can scale at a moment’s notice – to off-load workloads quickly and easily access private or public clouds, reroute heavy AI and machine learning workloads to help ensure missioncritical systems are never impacted – or even more importantly – quickly deploy that security update to ensure your organisation isn’t the next victim of a data breach.

Also, when we bring machine learning into our IT architectures,

data consumption will increase as it becomes the fuel for new and extremely valuable data insights, which we’ll see at rates previously unachievable without AI. This turbocharged intelligent IT environment will need hardware innovation such as NonVolatile Memory Express (NVMe) and NVMe over Fabrics, new accelerated silicon (GPUs and FPGAs), and new media such as Storage Class Memory to deliver even faster and more intelligent storage and compute capabilities for all of your data – legacy, new and the unknown. Software-defined infrastructure will give us the ability to evolve the hardware infrastructure in real time (via software) when new innovation hits the market allowing you to future-proof your IT investment.

ESG recently found that organisations that successfully make the leap from legacy to modern IT are: • 18x more likely to be faster at data-driven decision making • 22x as likely to be ahead of the competition when bringing new products and services to market.

• 6x more likely to have IT involved in driving business strategy initiatives IDC recently concluded that organisations will realise revenue gains worth $206 million per year, representing a five-year CAGR of 3.7 percent and total revenue growth in five years of 20 percent, once IT transformation takes shape.

Software-defined IT takes AI and machine learning from buzzwords to tangible business outcomes – creating new opportunities in healthcare, education, manufacturing, banking – the possibilities are endless.

So get ready for the Mother L.O.D.E, it will be the competitive edge that transforms your business.

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INSIGHT • VMWARE

‘Data centres on wheels’ VMware’s senior vice president and general manager for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, Jean-Pierre Brulard, gives his take on why driverless cars need the same levels of control and security as physical data centres.

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he Middle East is at the forefront of the bold new world of autonomous transportation – with self-driving cars, buses, metros, and potentially even aerial taxis coming to life in the coming years. Dubai, as one of the world’s pioneering Smart Cities, is rapidly progressing on its Autonomous Transportation Strategy, which aims to have 25 percent of all trips delivered by autonomous means by 2030.

Worldwide, by 2020, there

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will be a staggering 250 million connected vehicles out on the roads. Self-driving cars are currently undergoing test pilots around the world, from Ocado’s delivery service in the UK to driverless Ubers in Pittsburgh. Elon Musk, a pioneer in the field and mastermind behind Tesla sees trial phases succeeding and progressing quickly, predicting that all new cars set to be fully autonomous in the next ten years.

There’s no denying it, we are edging towards a driverless future. But this future comes with apprehension. Just like the ATM, or

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“Consumers will be reluctant to use driverless cars if they don’t feel reassured of the safety and security levels that technology can provide.” the spinning Jenny before it, new technology that fundamentally changes our way of thinking is met with initial skepticism. In our own research of consumers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, undertaken by Opinion Matters, we found that than more than half of UK respondents (52%) don’t yet fully trust autonomous vehicles, and over three quarters of French consumers (82%) don’t believe they will use such a vehicle in the future.

Taken as isolated statistics, these numbers aren’t surprising.

Mainstream psychology research also shows that people mistrust those who make moral decisions

by calculating costs and benefits – just like computers do. Yet much like anything new, it takes time and concerted education from businesses to convince the public that these new inventions can become part of our everyday lives and contribute towards a better future.

So, what does the automotive industry need to do? Nearly half

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(46%) of those surveyed in the UK believe one of the main benefits of an autonomous vehicle is that they can sit back and not have to deal with monotonous traffic jams or laborious long journeys. There’s insight here that there are plenty of benefits that excite the public when it comes to the future of driving – and that’s something to take note of.

That’s why the psychological barrier created by a car without human control needs to be addressed.

To overcome this, there needs to be a greater general understanding and awareness of how the cars will work, as well as the software and technology that will keep them safe.

But the industry doesn’t have to look too far for where this has already been possible. Since its inception, aviation has been at the forefront of physical safety – you are nineteen times safer in a plane than in a car, yet millions of people sit in airplanes that are largely automated and where the passenger can’t physically see the pilot.

‘Data centres on wheels’ Network virtualisation, cloud computing, mobility, and security will be among the foundational technologies that will help autonomous vehicles to compute and store data, ensuring that the car and all its data remain secure and resilient, and sit within a robust IT platform. This IT platform can provide the levels of massive scalability, resiliency, and available infrastructure required – in effect

making the autonomous vehicle of the future a data centre on wheels.

As such, autonomous vehicles should be subject to the same kind of management, security, and operational systems that one would have with an enterprise data centre.

With the driverless future already in progress, it is up to businesses to demonstrate how they’re building security into the DNA of systems – from the data centre where vital data resides – all the way through to the car itself. Consumers will be reluctant to use driverless cars if they don’t feel reassured of the safety and security levels that technology can provide.

Manufacturers must implement comprehensive IT security solutions that cover the car’s entire lifecycle.

As humans become more integrated with machines and artificial intelligence, we’ll be able to benefit from the best of both worlds; increased safety and accuracy with human insight and creativity.

In doing so, we can work towards a better future, where driverless and driven cars can harmoniously coexist, providing us with greater freedom and choice to navigate our environment as we please.

Never before has the science fiction dream of autonomous transportation been closer to becoming a reality. Autonomous transportation can make a major impact across the Middle East in reducing traffic congestion and pollution, enhancing efficiency and creating new digital transport and logistics business models.

Across the Middle East, government regulators, visionary public sector organisations, private sector innovators, and academia need to accelerate their coming together to develop the technological infrastructure, rules and regulations, and digital roadmaps to make autonomous vehicles as commonplace as hailing a taxi.

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INSIGHT • PURE STORAGE

Making the case for converged infrastructure Christian Putz, Pure Storage’s director for emerging EMEA, gives his take on why packaging core IT infrastructure components together is a no-brainer for so many enterprises.

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converged infrastructure (CI) combines computing, networking and storage hardware into a single integrated architecture, with the goal of accelerating deployment time, reducing IT costs, as well as implementation risk. According to a recent report from Future Market Insights, the Middle East and Africa storage market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.6%, between 2017-2025, to $8.4 billion in 2025.

A big driver for this surge is the shift from traditional to converged infrastructure solutions.

Convergent infrastructures are considered a means to accelerate implementation and increase the availability of infrastructure.

However, while the CI movement has drastically simplified the implementation of computation, most CI solutions rely on bulky, complex and slow disk storage systems that simply cannot be maintained in a modern data centre environment.

The fact is that it requires more than just an effective architecture

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and a comprehensive validation process. The CI must also provide a simpler and lower cost of ownership that allows the IT team to focus less on buying and integrating products from individual suppliers, and more on the workloads that bring commercial benefits and a competitive advantage.

The increase in attention to the cloud and the delivery of services has resulted in the creation of the new generation of converged architecture. These are smarter, simpler, smaller and much more efficient solutions that rely on newer technologies and have direct integration with virtualisation and cloud solutions. As such, they provide four key benefits to organisations, ranging all the way from global service providers that make historical and real-time information available to businesses, to health institutions that provide excellent patient care through faster access to their records and images.

Increase business results Studies show that reduced latency in applications has a correlation with user satisfaction and commitment. If you want happy customers to buy more goods and services, increase employee productivity or gain greater insight into your data, then start by reducing latency of your business applications. A highperformance infrastructure that combines a powerful primary block for cloud-based, virtualised, and general-purpose data centres, along with 100% flash equipment, reduces latency and delivers powerful metrics around workload performance.

Scale the cloud How many of your IT initiatives for this year are destined to run on a virtual infrastructure? My

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guess is that that number is more than 50%. Having a number of “too-demanding” applications to be virtualised without the proper architecture can keep the IT team on their toes and take away from their focus on more business-critical tasks.

On the other hand, with adequate tools, including powerful servers with service profiles, together with stateless storage, you can configure how, where and when workload instances are implemented. Stateless technologies allow administrators to configure MAC, World Wide Name (WWN), unique universal identification (UUID), boot details, firmware and even basic input / output system (BIOS) settings in the software, through simple administration interfaces.

Stateless architecture allows the creation of the most agile CI in the industry. Above all, it is important to see how agility translates directly into scalability.

Simplify IT operations Storage has been the scourge of virtual infrastructures. Much of the current innovation is tactical and focuses on the implementation of silos focused on solutions. To that end, how many solutions do you have to adopt to address VDI, OLTP databases, Big

“CI architectures reduce the total number of managed devices, simplifies administration and reduces operating expenses.”

Data analysis or improve the core of the VMware cloud?

The use of a CI architecture reduces the total number of managed devices, simplifies administration and reduces operating expenses. In addition, a validated and verified solution architecture, and the results of many use cases are quite useful, which facilitates the implementation and reduces the risks when transforming the data centres.

Reinvent the IT budget The high rates of data reduction and the small footprint of flash storage, combined with efficient servers, translate into substantial savings in space and energy costs, enormous simplification, easier administration and improved data centre economy. In addition, CI solutions from market leading vendors are easily updated, so customers can add the exact storage and/or computing capacity they need, only when required. Customers can buy components that meet current needs, without having to buy equipment years in advance to support hypothetical future growth.

Let’s face it, data centres have grown in terms of space and complexity, but not necessarily in scalability or performance. Perhaps the biggest challenge for most organizations is time, since there is very little left for innovation when most IT resources are meant to keep systems running. In the current digital age, the IT infrastructure is the strategic partner that helps the business transformation. Solutions that combine 100% flash storage with online data reduction, along with powerfully scalable network and server technologies enable 100% flash workload delivery to be affordable, powerful and most importantly, successful.

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INSIGHT • RED HAT

Why IoT gateways will unite IT and OT Red Hat’s senior solutions architect Oliver Horn believes that IoT represents the beginning of a new era of networked systems, in which applications intelligently monitor and control sensors, mobile devices, and machines in production environments and elsewhere.

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he Internet of Things will make operational technology – the hardware and embedded software for monitoring and controlling physical devices, processes, and events – fit for the future. It has the potential to fundamentally transform almost every industry, whether production, energy supply and distribution, transport and haulage, or healthcare. The networked sensors, measuring devices, and actuators monitor and control the status of resources and machines.

Most IT companies still treat IT and OT as separate areas and develop, maintain, and use the two for different purposes. CIO’s are responsible for general company applications, such as ERP, CRM, and BI solutions. The operations or production manager, meanwhile, is in charge of production control and other special applications, such as manufacturing execution systems, energy management systems, and supervisory control and data acquisition systems.

IT and OT solutions solve different problems and use different system architectures and communication protocols. For example, IT systems

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were developed to connect applications and enable data sharing, and they generally use an open, standards-based architecture. Operational control systems, on the other hand, are devised as standalone systems and were not originally designed for connection to the outside world or for external access; OT systems are frequently self-contained and proprietary.

Department managers and IT architects see the IoT as a catalyst for change. They want to deploy standards-based operational control systems as an important component of IoT projects, thereby replacing

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standalone measuring devices, sensors, and actuators with intelligent, IP-based devices. By interlinking OT and IT solutions on the basis of established protocols and modules, companies can link heterogeneous systems and processes, thereby eliminating redundancies.

When attempting to link OT and IT systems, system architects are faced with a number of functional requirements.

Scalability: Intelligent systems record and analyse large quantities of data from a variety of endpoints and require high-performance computing, storage, and networking capacities to do so.

Availability: Many intelligent systems are designed to be deployed in environments where system failure might lead to reduced productivity, unsatisfied customers, or even loss of revenue. In the case of critical applications such as medical applications, monitoring solutions, and smart grid implementations, system failure may even result in severe damage to health or the environment.

Security: Intelligent systems frequently depend on the publicly accessible Internet or use cloudbased computing and memory resources. To protect against loss or theft of data or a denial of service attack, new solutions have to be optimally secured and easy to maintain. This means, among other things, that it must be possible to apply security patches quickly. OT is not traditionally configured to support this.

Ensuring high scalability and reliability Red Hat recommends using a hierarchical, intelligent system architecture consisting of a device tier, a

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gateway tier, and a data centre or cloud tier. Crucially, the gateway tier serves as an intermediary between the devices and the data centre or the cloud. It aggregates device data and can buffer it before relaying it to the data centre. In addition, it transfers controlling information to the device on the basis of open messaging standards. It also serves as a buffer for data that is required for tactical analysis or regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, gateways can facilitate a direct, local reaction, as required – without going through the data centre.

IoT gateways are the cornerstones of a convergent OT/IT architecture.

They optimise the performance of

“IoT gateways are the cornerstones of a convergent OT/ IT architecture.” a solution by collecting real-time data from operating procedures at the place of origin and performing initial processing. In this way, they disburden the applications in the data centres and the cloud, and facilitate efficient development by introducing an abstraction tier between the devices and the application. By separating the devices from the applications, they enable new endpoints to be added more quickly and easily to a configuration.

The industrial Internet of Things area provides a good example in this context: here, gateways are used due to different communication technologies and can deliver valueadded services at the intersection of IT and OT. In this use case, data often needs to be converted between fieldbus systems - for example the Modbus - and TCP. In doing so, data can also be aggregated and machine conditions, for example, are only reported when there is a change.

Another example is building services, where different communication technologies are used, such as power line communication, different radio frequencies and protocols as well as bus systems. Collected data can be transferred into a unified TCP communication and data can be enriched - for example from which building, which room, and which sensor does the data come from?

Data can also be aggregated, i.e. the gateway only sends a message when the temperature is changing.

Here, reactions might be necessary locally and self-sufficiently in order to stick to required reaction times or to ensure reactions when connectivity to the data centre is interrupted.

There are also use cases in the transportation sector. It might be necessary to amalgamate data from the tractor, the trailer and the cargo directly at the vehicle - again either to react locally, when having an unstable data connection to the data centre or because there are heterogeneous technologies for vehicle, trailer and cargo that cannot be controlled by one tool. The hierarchical architecture addresses the strict requirements regarding IoT scalability, availability, and security.

Through a convergence of OT and IT environments, companies can improve their performance and reduce the total cost of ownership.

However, detailed preliminary analysis and planning is required to reconcile various departments, disciplines, and business processes optimally with each other. In most companies, different organisational units have previously been responsible for OT and IT functions – with different targets, budgets, and strategies. The two units now have to coordinate their activities in order to benefit from a convergent OT/ IT environment with a uniform IoT architecture.

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INSIGHT • GARTNER

The 5 personas of the CTO Gartner’s research director Mike Walker explores what he believes are the personality types that define the chief technology officer role.

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he CTO is one of the least understood of all C-level positions, because the role is often tasked with pursuing abstract goals such as innovation. Success and progress in these areas can be qualified in many different ways and mean different things in different contexts.

CTOs and other innovation leaders can use personas to help them decide what kind of CTO works best for their organisation.

reports to the CIO. This type of CTO is a technology visionary who leads groups such as enterprise architects, innovation managers, and professionals and specialists with shared IT services.

Typical responsibilities include determining how mainstream and emerging technologies should be used to advance business strategy and serving as the central point for technology innovation within IT.

The chief business-led innovation technology officer This is typically a board-level position with visibility at the most senior levels of an organisation’s business and technology divisions. This type of CTO is common in industry sectors that have been, or will be, heavily driven by market disruptions — such as retail, technology, media, telecom and banking.

Typical responsibilities include partnering with executives to identify and roadmap new business models, leading business units that drive innovative and strategic thinking for the company, such as enterprise architecture, innovation management and R&D, and holding the funding and decisionmaking authority for innovation-driven technology investments.

The chief innovation guru Sometimes referred to as the chief architect, this type of CTO is often an individual contributor operating in a small-to-midsize business or within an industry focused on providing expert business or technical knowledge.

Typical responsibilities include serving as a thought leader who provides senior executives with guidance on which mainstream and emerging technologies to use to advance business strategy, and contributing lightweight governance frameworks for technology use, and advising on key technology decisions.

The chief technology innovation officer This persona typically holds an executive position within IT and

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The chief operating officer of IT This is a common role in businesses that do not look at the IT and technology departments for thought leadership or innovation. Typically, in very large organisations with significant IT head count, the CTO is

focused on the day-to-day running of IT. This frees the CIO to work at a more strategic level across the business.

Typical responsibilities include: Running and maintaining IT operations through all or some of the following: IT service management, vendor management, shared IT services, data centre, telecommunications and security, and ensuring that internal and external systems are running and performing as they should by actively monitoring and responding to incidents that might affect highly available and performant systems.

The chief operational technology officer In industries where technology is a key part of the company’s product or product delivery, such as telecoms, CTO is often used to mean the person in charge of that technology — sometimes called operational technology (OT).

Typical responsibilities include working collaboratively with the product and engineering teams on the development of new products as well as product enhancements and product redesign, and establishing and communicating requirements in acquiring technology applications, services, systems and equipment; negotiating and managing vendor contracts to cost, safety and performance standards.

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