Powering Transformation

ISSUE 36 \ NOVEMBER 2021

POWERING TRANSFORMATION How DAMAC Properties is accelerating business transformation through Proptech

CONTENTS

44 PRODUCTS

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HOW DAMAC PROPERTIES IS ACCELERATING BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION THROUGH PROPTECH

POWERING TRANSFORMATION

12 12 RESET TO GROW 18 NAVIGATING A

MULTI-CLOUD WORLD

BEST OF 20

BOTH WORLDS

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26

THE EVOLUTION OF WAN

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NEWS

28 CELEBRATING TECHNOLOGY LEADERSI CYBERCRIME 38 FIGHTING WITH PROACTIVE SECURITY OW TO GET THE 40 HBEST FROM DNS

HOW TO NAVIGATE A MATTER OF TRUST 24 THE CHANGING BUSINESS 41 LANDSCAPE

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CYBERSECURITY 42 PREDICTIONS FOR 2022

INFOR ACQUIRES MES COMPANY LIGHTHOUSE SYSTEMS AVEVA ANNOUNCES UPGRADED DESIGN AND PROCESS SIMULATION TOOLS GARTNER: CLOUD WILL BE THE CENTERPIECE OF NEW DIGITAL EXPERIENCES NOVEMBER 2021

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EDITORIAL

GOOD TIMES AHEAD

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ales from this year’s Gitex show floor serves as a barometer of the regional IT sector’s recovery and shows reasons for optimism. Going by the record number of attendees and deals made at this year’s edition, it seems the industry has bounced back quickly from the pandemic-induced lull. Technology has been a key driver of this recovery and we see a voracious appetite for new technologies among the enterprises in the Middle East. In addition, many IT leaders that I interacted with at the show reported a healthy spike in IT budgets for the next year though the specter of global semiconductor shortage is looming large.

On the first day of Gitex, we organised our inaugural ICT Leadership Awards to celebrate some of the best transformational IT projects in the region. It is no exaggeration that this crisis has accelerated the pace of digital transformation, and there is a big wave of innovation sweeping through all verticals. Our award winners demonstrate that technology – if

applied the right way – can support business growth and help organisations become more efficient. The recent IEEE study says AI and ML, cloud, and 5G will be the most important technologies next year. IEEE says AI, in particular, will drive the majority of innovation across every industry over the next five years. And not surprisingly, the study reveals cybersecurity as the biggest challenge that CIOs and CTOs will face in 2022. As we brace for the post-pandemic future, there is a great demand for workplace and collaboration technologies. More importantly, the IT leaders now have a unique opportunity to be in the driver’s seat and create strategies to revive and revitalise the business. The role of IT organisations has never been so important before, and this is the opportunity of a lifetime for technology chiefs to transform their companies.

The game has indeed changed for CIOs. They must now focus on leading more efficiently by finding ways to address supply chain disruptions and cybersecurity risks that threaten the continuity of IT services.

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Designer Anup Sathyan

While the publisher has made all efforts to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors

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NEWS

INFOR ACQUIRES MES COMPANY LIGHTHOUSE SYSTEMS

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nfor has announced the acquisition of Lighthouse Systems, a provider of manufacturing execution system (MES) software for smart manufacturing. The company’s flagship product, Shopfloor-Online, helps manufacturing companies manage and improve manufacturing operations across production, quality, inventory, and maintenance.

Lighthouse Systems’ MES solution, which can be fully integrated into Infor CloudSuite ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, will help Infor address a critical customer requirement of 24×7 manufacturing operations. For those manufacturing companies that are looking to implement ERP and MES together, Infor anticipates that its ability to offer a fully integrated solution “out of the

Kevin Samuelson, CEO, Infor

box” will significantly shorten time to value for customers.

“MES solutions are critical for manufacturing organisations that

want to ensure data consistency and real-time visibility across all plant operations,” said Infor CEO Kevin Samuelson. “Integrating these capabilities with our industry-specific ERP systems will help us deliver even more powerful solutions to manufacturing organisations, as they look to digitize their operations and grow their businesses.”

Based in Crawley, UK, about 30 miles south of London, Lighthouse Systems has major offices in the UK, the United States and Singapore.

Its approximately 100 employees serve customers worldwide in focus industries such as automotive, building & construction, food & beverage, life science, machinery & equipment, packaging, and sustainable energy.

AVEVA ANNOUNCES UPGRADED DESIGN AND PROCESS SIMULATION TOOLS AVEVA has introduced three add-ons to AVEVA E3D Design – infusing AI capabilities into its advanced engineering design software which maximises efficiency through cloud collaboration.

The FTSE 100 company also announced a sustainability enhancement for AVEVA Process Simulation – an integrated platform spanning the process engineering lifecycle of design, simulation, training, and operations.

“Digital transformation is the key enabler for sustainability, efficiency and agility.

AVEVA E3D Design and AVEVA Process Simulation enable organisations to build digital plant designs that will empower the future. With E3D Design, teams can collaborate across disciplines to avoid rework and on-site retrofits,” said Amish Sabharwal, Executive Vice President, Engineering Business Unit at AVEVA. 6

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Amish Sabharwal, Executive Vice President, Engineering Business, AVEVA

“Meanwhile, with AVEVA Process Simulation, organisations can quantify, track, and optimise greenhouse gas emissions from the earliest stages of design to operations. The simulation platform empowers companies to design the sustainable processes of the future and bring new processes to market more quickly by accelerating the process design cycle.”

The latest enhancements of AVEVA E3D Design and AVEVA Process

Simulation empower organisations from chemicals, oil and gas, power, marine, and mining, metals and minerals to design sustainable processes and plants at the speed the market demands. The new AVEVA E3D Design add-ons improve engineering quality and efficiency through expedited, streamlined design processes, while AVEVA Process Simulation enables organisations to move beyond linear, wasteful workflows to implement circular, sustainable processes.

GARTNER: CLOUD WILL BE THE CENTERPIECE OF NEW DIGITAL EXPERIENCES

or car companies launching new personalization services for customer’s safety and infotainment.”

In 2022, global cloud revenue is estimated to total $474 billion, up from $408 billion in 2021. Over the next few years, Gartner analysts estimate cloud revenue will surpass noncloud revenue for relevant enterprise IT markets.

Gartner analysts said that more than 85% of organisations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025 and will not

be able to fully execute on their digital strategies without the use of cloudnative architectures and technologies.

“Adopting cloud-native platforms means that digital or product teams will use architectural principles and capabilities to take advantage of the inherent capabilities within the cloud environment,” said Govekar. “New workloads deployed in a cloud-native environment will be pervasive, not just popular and anything noncloud will be considered legacy.”

By 2025, Gartner estimates that over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30% in 2021.

As the operating model changes, the organisation will turn to a productorientated operating model where the entire value stream of the business and IT will have to be aligned by products. This will create new roles and responsibilities, such as site reliability engineers, product managers or communities of practices.

with its proprietary marketing data platform to deliver to the complex needs of customers. Their combined capabilities are a reflection of the close collaboration between the Group’s internal marketing team and Boxever, who have maintained a steady focus on delivering to a demanding customer agenda.

“Sitecore Middle East recognizes Emirate’s marketing team that has driven its digital customer experiences utilizing the Sitecore CDP solution to meet complex needs of their customers,” said Mohammed AlKhotani, Area Vice President, Middle East, and North Africa, Sitecore.

“Emirates Airline shows how the Middle East is leading digital innovation and converting website visits into engaged customers to make their travel planning easier.”

“Emirates is honoured to be recognized with an award in digital customer experience. The world of service marketing has advanced at top speed over the past few years, and our

ambition to deliver the best customer experience in the travel industry is very much a core objective for Emirates and our wider group of travel brands. We are delighted to be acknowledged by Sitecore, a company with a tremendous heritage in digital marketing, along with the wider fraternity of digital marketing professionals. We look forward to continue growing our capabilities to better deliver to our customer needs and preferences,” said Boutros Boutros, Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing & Brand – Emirates Group.

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he ongoing pandemic and the surge in digital services are making cloud the centerpiece of new digital experiences, said Gartner.

“There is no business strategy without a cloud strategy,” said Milind Govekar, Vice President at Gartner. “The adoption and interest in public cloud continues unabated as organizations pursue a “cloud first” policy for onboarding new workloads. Cloud has enabled new digital experiences such as mobile payment systems where banks have invested in startups, energy companies using cloud to improve their customers’ retail experiences

EMIRATES RECOGNISED FOR EXCELLENCE IN DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Emirates’ marketing team has been recognised by Sitecore for “Best Use of a Customer Data Platform (CDP)”.

The award was presented to Emirates at the recent edition of GITEX, Dubai’s technology trade exhibition, for demonstrating excellence in the delivery of its digital customer experience (CX) utilising the Boxever platform.

Emirates was selected from amongst 110 large service organisations, based on its bestin-class CX and digital capabilities.

Over the past four years, Emirates has invested in CDP solutions such as Boxever, acquired by Sitecore in March 2021, utilising it in conjunction

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NEWS

SAP DRIVES DX FOR SAUDI ARABIA’S THE RED SEA DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

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he Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), which is driving the development of the giga-project The Red Sea Project (TRSP), has announced it is advancing its digital transformation with global technology company SAP. Along Saudi Arabia’s west coast, the Red Sea Project is a regenerative tourism destination spanning 28,000 square kilometres spanning more than 90 unspoiled islands and inland sites. The

first phase of 16 hotels will open in late 2022.

TRSDC is pioneering the diversification envisioned by Vision 2030 with a unique, year-round tourism offering that supports sustainability and environmental enhancement, cultural conservation, and economic stimulation. Tourism is the Kingdom’s second most important sector.

“As part of our digital transformation roadmap with SAP, The Red Sea Development Company is optimising our operational efficiency, procurement costs, and talent development,” said Ammar Alomani, IT Applications Associate Director of TRSDC. “We are also adopting Application Managed

Services, a world-class Master Services Agreement, and education services for team training.”

“We are pleased to continue our relationship with SAP having passed through two successful phases with the company already. Having business applications available at the click of a button changes the way employees work, increases productivity and work from our offices here in Riyadh or on our destination sites”, said John Pagano, CEO of The Red Sea Development Company.

“Our commitment to regenerative tourism development is underpinned by our ambition to run our destinations in the smartest ways possible. Digital transformation gives us a solid foundation stone to work from. We’ve become virtually paperless and opened a new chapter of free-flowing information and efficiency.,” continued Pagano.

TRSDC is already running on the SAP S/4HANA real-time business suite, the SAP Ariba digital platform, the SAP SuccessFactors human experience management suite, and SAP’s customer experience suite.

TENABLE EXPANDS COLLABORATION WITH IBM SECURITY X-FORCE RED Tenable has announced an expansion of its strategic relationship with IBM Security X-Force Red to deliver comprehensive Active Directory security services that continuously detect and prevent attacks against the Active Directory and connected environment in real-time.

“Vulnerable and misconfigured Active Directories are behind nearly every major cyber-attack today. By leveraging known flaws and misconfigurations, bad actors can elevate privileges and move laterally through networks,” said Mark Thurmond, Chief Operating Officer, Tenable. “We’re excited to partner with X-Force Red to find and fix Active Directory weaknesses before they become tomorrow’s attack path.”

By combining the power of Tenable. ad with X-Force Red’s team of veteran hackers, organisations can identify and 8

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disrupt attack opportunities before bad actors can leverage them.

Active Directory is a target-rich environment that can, if left vulnerable, offer attackers a route to privilege and control of the entire domain.

Most organisations struggle with Active Directory security due to misconfigurations piling up as domains increase in complexity, leaving security teams unable to find and fix flaws before they become business-impacting issues.

Leveraging Tenable.ad, the X-Force Red team provides deployment, configuration, support and tool management to identify Active Directory misconfigurations and other weaknesses. From there, the team prioritises the highest-risk flaws based on weaponisation, and manages the complete remediation process from endto-end. The result is a hardened Active

Mark Thurmond, Chief Operating Officer, Tenable

Directory environment, disrupted attack paths, and no next steps for bad actors.

“If you don’t understand your Active Directory attack surface, the risk of a compromise increases. And it’s not just an initial compromise. Attackers can leverage Active Directory to access other sensitive areas of your environment. That’s why continuously finding and fixing Active Directory vulnerabilities must be an essential part of every security program,” said Charles Henderson, Global Managing Partner and Head of X-Force.

VODAFONE TAPS VMWARE FOR WORKLOAD AUTOMATION

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odafone has selected VMware as its strategic technology partner to deliver a single platform to automate and orchestrate all workloads running on its core networks across Europe, starting with 5G standalone (5G SA).

Vodafone previously announced its selection of VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure as its Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) platform. Last year, Vodafone completed the rollout of Telco Cloud Infrastructure across all its European business and 21 markets in total. The company saw gains in productivity as it brought network functions online around 40% more quickly, and cost savings of up to 55%.

Vodafone is now expanding its partnership with VMware to deploy the full VMware Telco Cloud Platform in all European markets. This means that in addition to utilising Telco Cloud Infrastructure for NFV, Vodafone will leverage VMware Tanzu for Telco and VMware Telco Cloud Automation to orchestrate all network functions and services, regardless of vendor, to run its core networks.

Vodafone’s continued partnership with VMware supports the company’s technology strategy, Tech 2025. As part of this five-year plan, Vodafone will focus on developing a network platform starting with the rollout of 5G SA that will be then followed by many other digital network features utilising cloud native architecture powered by VMware.

These include voice over internet and next generation of videoconferencing and virtual/augmented reality, all orchestrated into the correct network slices according to different customer requirements.

Johan Wibergh, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone, said, “We’ve made great strides in modernizing and virtualizing our core network. Now we must turn our attention to layering in automation, software engineering and cloud-native principles to simplify operations and accelerate how quickly we can deploy new applications.

VMware Telco Cloud Platform will help

Sanjay Uppal, Senior Vice President and General manager, Service Provider and Edge, VMware

us achieve these goals and reach our Tech 2025 targets faster.”

Vodafone has already begun the rollout of VMware Telco Cloud Platform in eight markets – Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and U.K. – and will expand to all 11 of its European markets over time.

“As service providers modernise their networks to transition to 5G, they require a single platform to automate and streamline delivery of multi-vendor network functions across network

core, RAN and edge. VMware Telco Cloud Platform provides this unifying platform to simplify operations, accelerate automation and increase feature velocity across all parts of the network,” said Sanjay Uppal, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Service Provider and Edge, VMware.

“Through its partnership with VMware, Vodafone is modernizing its network infrastructure with automation built in, setting them up for long-term success as they roll out 5G services to even more markets in the coming years.”

NEWS

VIRSEC ANNOUNCES KEY LEADERSHIP APPOINTMENTS

talents in the industry to Virsec. These experienced executives are very highly regarded in their areas of practice and will play a pivotal role in our success as we embark on our hyper-growth journey as a company.”

Nguy has more than 20 years of experience leading all aspects of financial governance and financial operations. Prior to joining Virsec, she served as VP of Finance, Strategy and Planning at Vectra AI, where she was instrumental in growing and scaling the company to $1B+ in valuation. Before Vectra AI, she held

various finance management positions at global companies, including Juniper Networks and Johnson & Johnson.

Oliveira is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in product management, product marketing, business development, and engineering.

Oliveira has been working as a product management executive for over a decade across Cisco, Symantec, and, most recently, Contrast Security.

Schaeffer has several decades of experience leading People Operations, helping scale six technology companies from startup through IPO and beyond. Several of these IPO technology companies included Synopsys, StrataCom/Cisco, Juniper Networks, and, most recently, NIO.

to access cloud services with speed and security across any environment.

Rather than having to migrate workloads fully to a public cloud environment, Edarat Group’s enterprise customers can access secure IBM Cloud services in any environment where their data resides – allowing them to abide by local regulation.

The adoption of IBM Cloud Satellite is designed to improve Edarat Group’s

agility and enhance its operational efficiency in an increasingly competitive and evolving data center and ICT landscape in Saudi Arabia. By expanding the partnership with IBM, Edarat will harness open hybrid cloud technologies to gain better deployment flexibility, enhanced security, and access to advanced services that can fuel innovation.

“In a phased approach, we are addressing the evolution of the market landscape in the Kingdom and across the Middle East. As Saudi Vision 2030 has laid out a roadmap for digitalization, increasing numbers of companies require services and consultancy that embraces the agility and flexibility that their data requires,” said Jihad Nehme, Transformation & Workload Migration Principal Consultant at Edarat Group. “Through IBM Cloud Satellite, we are able to comply with the comprehensive data regulations across the kingdom while providing the flexibility that hybrid cloud services allow our own workloads and in turn our own customers’ needs.”

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irsec has announced executive appointments to help lead the company through its next growth phase.

The new joiners include Emmi Nguy, Vice President of Finance & Operations; Marcelo Oliveira, Vice President of Product Management and Thomas Schaeffer, Vice President of People.

“We are on a mission to make cyber-attacks irrelevant. Our ability to map what our customers’ software is supposed to do and stop it from doing what it is not, due to ransomware attacks or other anomalies, is unrivaled,” said Dave Furneaux, Chief Executive Officer of Virsec. “Our mission combined with our innovative technology is attracting the top

SAUDI’S EDARAT GROUP SELECTS IBM CLOUD SATELLITE IBM has announced that Edarat Group, a data centre and ICT infrastructure firm in the Middle East, has selected IBM Cloud Satellite to enable its customers in Saudi Arabia to harness IBM Cloud services in hybrid cloud environments.

Using IBM Cloud Satellite, Edarat Group will enable its customers to run workloads in hybrid cloud environments while keeping their data in Saudi Arabia.

This is a key for regulated industries like financial services, telco, and healthcare, and can allow companies in these industries to run workloads in local and global data centers. This will be a catalyst for technology innovation in Saudi Arabia, a core component of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

IBM Cloud Satellite brings IBM Cloud services securely to any environment where data resides – whether at the edge, on premises, or on multiple public clouds. It is designed to enable clients 10

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KYNDRYL AND MICROSOFT COLLABORATE TO ACCELERATE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

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yndryl, the IT infrastructure services provider, and Microsoft have announced a global strategic partnership that will combine their market-leading capabilities in service of enterprise customers. The deal with Microsoft is Kyndryl’s first since recently becoming an independent public company and provides incremental multibillion dollar revenue opportunities for the two companies.

Together the companies will bring to market state-of-the-art solutions built on the Microsoft Cloud that will accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernise applications and processes, support mission-critical workloads, and further enable modern work experiences for customers.

The long-term partnership will open additional markets and new customers to Kyndryl across all industries and illustrates the speed and commitment

the company is placing on forging strong relationships with leading enterprise technology innovators.

Microsoft becomes Kyndryl’s only Premier Global Alliance Partner, increasing Microsoft’s access to the $500 billion managed services market where Kyndryl leads.

“As an independent company, we’re investing in our partner ecosystem to support the success of our customers, and we’re focused on expanding our market opportunity across cloud, data, security, and intelligent automation,” said Martin Schroeter, Chairman and CEO of Kyndryl. “In this landmark relationship with Microsoft, Kyndryl is matching our deep expertise in missioncritical IT systems with the benefits of Microsoft Cloud to be at the heart of progress for our global customers.”

“The case for digital transformation has never been more urgent, and

clearer,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “As Kyndryl’s only premiere global alliance partner, with the power of the Microsoft Cloud we will help customers across every industry manage and modernize their business for the era ahead. We are looking forward to partnering with Kyndryl to serve our shared customers, building on its expertise and understanding of mission-critical IT systems, as well as the company’s deep relationships with enterprises around the world.”

The companies will jointly bring customer solutions to market in the areas of data modernisation and governance, AI-driven innovations for industries, cyber security and resiliency, and transformation of mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Kyndryl will lead with advisory, implementation and managed services for complex hybrid IT environments.

VIEWPOINT

RESET TO GROW MANUFACTURING EXECUTION SYSTEMS SUPPORT REVENUE GROWTH WHILE PROMOTING RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY IN TIMES OF DISRUPTION AND MARKET UNCERTAINTY, WRITES KEITH CHAMBERS, VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE, AVEVA

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s the leading Italian producer of extra-virgin olive oil, Farchioni understands the importance of quality and consistency. Every one of the 32 million bottles it produces each year must deliver the same culinary sensation.

Just a few drops of this ambrosial gold on a bit of bread, anywhere in the world, can instantly transport diners to the Mediterranean’s sunny climes, to ancient olive groves and abundant tables, surrounded by friends and flowing conversation. Lower-grade versions simply do not have the same effect, and that’s without going into provenance, terroir and the numerous other factors affecting product quality.

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But millions of people around the world would not be able to enjoy this magical experience if an entire chain of manufacturing processes didn’t work together flawlessly and in seamless harmony. Once a small business owned by two farmers operating from a single mill in Umbria, Farchioni’s empire now extends to beer, wine and flour, of which 25 percent is exported around the world.

That level of scale would be impossible without automating traditional manufacturing processes through digital transformation, a development referred to as Industry 4.0. Food and beverage manufacturing increasingly relies on modern technology such as smart data capturing and analysis,

inventory and operations management, value optimisation, and personalised training. With manufacturing processes calibrated to optimum conditions, production can be maximised while quality remains consistent and wastage is reduced. Alongside, the process yields substantial environmental and sustainability benefits.

For Farchioni, embracing these technologies with AVEVA’s Manufacturing Execution Systems didn’t just help to improve yield and reduce manual labor. The solution offers the confidence that that each individual bottle within a 3,000-quintal batch of olive oil looks, smells, and tastes identical.

chains. The situation changed again this year. The two ends of the supply chain intersected at production plants, where workers had to deal with the impact of these demand swings, alongside supply shortages, rapid onboarding of new suppliers, and packaging changes – all in the face of a growing labor shortage.

Technology helps manufacturers respond to market conditions As Farchioni shows, implementing digital technology into a plant can bring benefits that improve efficiency and productivity, while raising the quality of finished goods – whether in food or other industries. But is that enough to assure success in the new-normal marketplace, where the impact of Covid-19 remains an ever-present reality?

Perhaps more important in today’s market, digital operations management technologies provide consumer packaged goods manufacturers the ability to calibrate their response to fluctuating market and supply conditions. The industry has complex supply chains that can span continents.

The sensitivity of these chains to climate and other environmental issues can cause the cost and availability of ingredients to vary dramatically. These trends have been further amplified by coronavirus-linked work restrictions and altered market demand linked to changing consumer lifestyles, incomes and purchasing patterns.

For instance, in February 2020 for the first time since records were kept, consumers in the US spent more at food service establishments that at retail grocery stores. By the end of the year, spending worth $220 million had shifted from food services to retail sales channels, completely upending supply

Optimise the value chain with a digital thread Digital manufacturing technologies can go a long way to optimising the value chain to create resilience and agility, and to build sustainable, future-proof industrial operations that can respond swiftly to changing market dynamics.

At its heart, value chain optimisation is a digital thread that connects the consumer to and from the plant floor, allowing manufacturers in every sector to grow their revenue, improve their profitability with sustainable practices that meet their commitments to their customers, employees and communities.

This digital thread begins at the point of demand and runs through the supply chain to help build a realistic sales and operations plan that factors in customer service priorities and business KPIs. It factors in operational imperatives such as the cost of production and availability of materials, labor and equipment.

These often contradicting drivers have to be reconciled into an optimised production schedule that balances these competing goals – in a plan that must be executed at the lowest possible cost. Manufacturing Execution Systems typically manage this work, using digital tools for mobility, collaboration and knowledge sharing to ensure maximum productivity.

But people and technology are only two elements of a transformation plan.

The third, process, is where digital transformation has a major additional impact. As plants become increasing agile, so the pace of change accelerates, bringing with it the need for recurring improvements. Advanced analytics and AI can deliver this continual optimisation of shop floor processes and provide operators with key insights

into productivity improvements.

Finally, a digital thread offers visibility for all stakeholders – from the customer to the supply chain planner to the plant floor operator – into the plan’s execution. An agile plant needs to be able to respond quickly to the unexpected, so if a major piece of equipment fails, plans can be reoptimised quickly and customer impacts communicated.

Realise the advantages of digital manufacturing systems Whether it is an olive oil producer or a manufacturer of candy bars, digital Manufacturing Execution Systems that optimise the value chain have several significant benefits: • Improved manufacturing agility and resilience • Ensured sustainability and environmental health and safety • On-time and in full delivery • Increased productivity • Improved quality • Increased performance • Transparency and traceability • Reduced non-compliance Despite technological advances in processing and ingredients, most plants are still collecting and sorting data manually. Transforming this process across a digital thread facilitates optimised performance while supporting revenue growth and sustainability. With this approach, systems can be standardised across plants to leverage supply chain-wide improvements.

Over the past year, we have witnessed developments that may have taken decades to come about be compressed into the space of a few months. These developments have led the World Economic Forum to describe a “great reset” of the business of manufacturing.

With an uncertain business outlook likely to persist for the foreseeable future, only advanced technology solutions can enable manufacturers to stay resilient and responsive within a dynamic business environment. The time to hit the ‘reset’ button is now.

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COVER STORY

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POWERING TRANSFORMATION JAYESH MAGANLAL, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DAMAC PROPERTIES, SHARES HIS VIEWS ON THE EMERGING TRENDS IN PROPTECH AND HOW THE REAL ESTATE GIANT IS STAYING AHEAD OF THE GAME THROUGH INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY ASSETS.

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uilding a digital business is now a mandate across all sectors. For example, the aftermath of the pandemic has propelled the regional real estate sector to double down on digital initiatives to meet customer expectations and deliver seamless services.

Jayesh Maganlal, Chief Information Officer, DAMAC Properties, says that technology needs to be an integral building block for real estate businesses to thrive in the new normal.

“The regional real estate market has always remained competitive and attractive to global customers. Over the past two years, we have seen COVID-19 causing significant disruption leading to both – the sector’s decline and

growth in a short period. This has put immense pressure on businesses to swiftly change their operational direction to one governed by technology,” he says.

Elaborating on the recent trends in PropTech, the DAMAC chief notes that during the pandemic, the agility of real estate companies was put to the test, leading to a quantum leap of digital transformation and adoption in all areas of the industry.

Companies realised that they need to efficiently serve their customers without any disruptions on all platforms and simultaneously be equipped to cater to surge in demands. This has led to a renewed commitment to digital investments.

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COVER STORY

“Besides setting up various digital touchpoints, we have seen an increase in the usage of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) to enhance customer interactions. These technologies have enabled digital property walkthroughs, site tours as well as snagging before handovers.

Even developers and construction firms are using these technologies for site inspections.”

He adds that another growing trend that has emerged is the higher usage of virtual assistants, reinventing how customer interactions are done through various collaboration tools and conversational AI chatbots.

“We have also observed an uptick in data-driven decisions when it comes to development, sales, revenue optimisations, and investments,” he explains. “Additionally, newer companies are deploying technologies like digital twin for facility management, enabling improved preventive maintenance. We’ve also witnessed a rise in new concepts for property and asset management solutions. Finally, another notable trend is the uptake of companies leveraging clean technology to reduce environmental impacts.”

Operating in the region for almost two decades, DAMAC Properties’ digital transformation journey began two years ago with the DAMAC Living app.

“We were one of the first companies in the UAE to create an easy and delightful home ownership process.

Exclusively designed for DAMAC property owners and tenants, DAMAC Living offered an easy way to manage all aspects of owning or renting a property through a single convenient app,” he says. “The thought process behind creating this app was to save our customers valuable time and offer a better experience by using a variety of combined services, to give them updates on what’s happening with their properties.”

While this was the initial intent, over time, the company started evolving and 16

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WE CONTINUE TO QUESTION THE STATUS QUO, DRIVE INNOVATION, AND DISCOVER WHERE THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE, AND WE’VE SEEN SOME POSITIVE RESULTS COME OUT OF IT.

enhancing the customer experience on the app. “Today it is not just a community management app anymore.

We are working towards a single solution for all customer touchpoints at DAMAC, right from when the customer shows interest in our property to when they start residing in them.”

Maganlal highlights that through the app, the company seeks to continue to engage and interact with customers while they stay in DAMAC communities.

“We aim to be closer to our buyers and residents and offer them an enhanced customer experience for all their needs with a single touchpoint via our digital platform.”

More than engagement, the DAMAC Living app also allows customers to do a variety of tasks – from online payments, booking community amenities to availing a host of online services for request management – effortlessly and quickly.

Maganlal adds, “We have seen tremendous customer response for the app. In today’s age, especially

after COVID, everyone is receptive to interacting through digital channels.”

DAMAC employs many advanced technologies for its customer-facing areas and for enhancing its revenue and internal systems, increasing efficiencies, and boosting productivity.

“We are building our capabilities to support our customers from anywhere at any point of time, without any physical limitations of asset or people.

We want to embrace the next level of automation, which is hyper-automation, where we will integrate Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools. This will include having a standard RPA while also leveraging AI and machine learning to get them working together in perfect harmony.”

The company is looking to automate complex business processes to build holistic experiences for its customers and employees.

“It is all about rebuilding the foundation across all the technology stacks. In today’s competitive landscape, speed and agility is the name of the game. This is why we want to ensure that we future-proof our systems to keep pace with the evolving market. To do that, we have to continuously examine the processes that we’ve built to re-engineer them and build a robust integration layer. This will help us to implement new technologies and to build on technologies that we have.”

According to Maganlal, at DAMAC, they consider every day as “day one,” describing their efforts toward innovation as relentless and their journey to digital transformation endless.

“This continuous journey of transformation can be difficult when it comes to business, but it’s not impossible. We continue to question the status quo, drive innovation, and discover where the opportunities are, and we’ve seen some positive results come out of it. We look forward to growing as a digital enterprise.”

EVENT

NAVIGATING A MULTI-CLOUD WORLD AT A CIO ROUNDTABLE EVENT ON THE SIDELINES OF GITEX, VMWARE’S KEY EXECUTIVES SHARED THE BLUEPRINT FOR INNOVATING AND TRANSFORMING BUSINESSES IN THE DIGITAL-FIRST NORM.

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ith the cloud adoption at an inflection point in the Middle East– and with the worlds of data centre, cloud, and edge now converging – there are key questions top of mind for IT leaders seeking to gain competitive advantage from their app modernisation efforts.

Organisations not only contend with more diversity than ever before when it comes to applications, operating environments, and infrastructure – but that they want to embrace this diversity for its potential to unlock innovation and new capabilities. They are seeking freedom to move workloads to any cloud and consistency across multi-cloud environments.

In association with VMware, CXO Insight ME organised an exclusive roundtable for IT leaders to explore adapting to a multi-cloud world and discuss the skills and technology needed to modernise your apps with confidence.

Speaking at the roundtable, Enrico Boverino, SEMEA director of global solution consultants at VMware, said: “I joined VMware ten years ago when we made the promise of creating a softwaredefined data centre. Since then, it has

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been a really fast innovation journey where we continue to add solutions to our portfolio. A decade ago, our main value proposition was around private cloud and we enabled our customers to achieve the same scale and cost savings in their own data centres that cloud service providers offer. Today, the world is at the tipping point of innovation and companies are creating new distributed applications, which is why we have announced our strategy around multicloud and app modernisation at our recent VMworld event.”

He added that recently launched VMware cross-cloud services would help customers navigate the multi-cloud era. “This group of integrated services will help our customers to build, run and better secure apps across any cloud with freedom and flexibility.”

To help customers navigate the multicloud era, Enrico said, VMware CrossCloud services offers to deliver three key advantages: an accelerated journey to the cloud, cost efficiency, flexibility and control across any cloud. VMware CrossCloud services expands the capabilities of VMware’s product portfolio for a multicloud world and will allow customers to

pick and choose the services needed on the desired cloud to meet evolving business demands.

Ahmed Auda, VMware’s regional managing director, said today an average organisation is running roughly 500 applications on clouds and cited a recent survey, which revealed 75 percent of VMware customers are relying on two or more public clouds, and 40% are using three or more.

This multi-cloud approach increases app velocity and innovation and allows organisations to be much more agile and resilient. However, a multi-cloud environment is far more diverse, complex, and distributed than anything organisations have managed in the past.

This complexity often forces trade-offs between moving fast and managing risk, resulting in slower execution while increasing costs. “VMware’s strategy is built to help customers eliminate the tough choices and challenges by giving them a powerful combination of freedom and control in their multi-cloud business,” Auda said.

Nicola Buonnanno, SEMEA senior director at VMware Tanzu, said VMware is the only company that helps customers leverage cloud transformation without complexity and risk. “In the last 18 months, we have seen incredible adoption of digital technologies and rapid business transformation. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by five years. Our Tanzu portfolio, which is a modern applications development platform, combines tools, practices, solutions and platforms so that you can be confident in adopting these new technologies.”

The roundtable was attended by top CIOs in the region, including Sebastian Samuel from AW Rostamani; Sanjay Khanna from RAK Bank; Jayakumar Mohanachandran from Easa Saleh Al Gurg; Nader Ayoub from Malaffi; Vinay Sharma from Gulftainer; Fayaz Badubhai from Al Yousuf; Sunando Choudhuri from ADNEC; Ajay Rathi from Damac Properties; MN Chaturvedi from Al Shirawi Group; Venkatesh Mahadevan from Dubai Investment Group; Prabhakar Posam from Transworld Group; and Khalid Jalal from GARMCO Bahrain.

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FEATURE

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS THE CONVERGING WORLDS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CAN BE A SECURITY NIGHTMARE IF YOU DON’T IDENTIFY AND CLOSE THE GAPS EARLY ON.

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igital transformation requires the convergence of IT and OT networks. With the advent of the IoT, edge computing, and seamlessly expanding networks, CIOs are today faced with the daunting challenge of bridging the divide between OT and IT environments.

Historically, these two have occupied separate domains with very little in common. Now, the need to streamline business processes, glean insights and deliver exponential business transformation is driving IT/OT convergence, especially in verticals such as manufacturing, healthcare and transportation.

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Though connecting IT and OT worlds is a business imperative to achieve operational efficiencies, it has also resulted in potential risks that can disrupt risks. Security in the IT domain is relatively mature with wellestablished stacks and policies, and most OT systems were never designed with cybersecurity in mind. This calls for a complete rethink of cybersecurity strategies.

“The main challenge is that the convergence of IT and OT has been driven by the need for automation, simplicity, and convenience. Security was rarely if ever, prioritised. So industrial organisations now find

themselves burdened by networks that are comprehensively and complexly connected – full of insecure entry points and vulnerabilities to exploit,” says Mark De Simone, Regional Director - MEA at ThycoticCentrify.

Additionally, while IT systems typically have a short refresh cycle of a few years or, in some cases, just months, OT systems are traditionally designed to remain in operation for decades. So, we’re seeing systems that were never intended to be connected to the internet now being integrated into modern IT networks, he says.

Gregory Cardiet, senior director – security engineering, International,

Gregory Cardiet

Mark De Simone

Vectra AI, says two major risks are associated with this convergence. The first is the overall structure and the design of OT solutions that usually cannot be patched the same way that you would in the IT world. As a result, some systems, worth millions, are still running with Windows XP operating systems. Furthermore, due to the competitive landscape, many OT vendors producing large machines, fail and go bankrupt. In this scenario, it is impossible to update and upgrade these systems. And as a consequence, these systems are never touched by the OT administrators to avoid failures.

The operational criteria for IT and OT tend to be different, says Brian Chappell, chief security strategist, EMEA & APAC, BeyondTrust. OT is focused on 100% uptime and simple but robust operation. IT is more tolerant of downtime and operates more complex processes with a high degree of integration between different systems. That said, IT is increasingly relied upon to facilitate business and

ADDITIONALLY, WHILE IT SYSTEMS TYPICALLY HAVE A SHORT REFRESH CYCLE OF A FEW YEARS OR, IN SOME CASES, JUST MONTHS, OT SYSTEMS ARE TRADITIONALLY DESIGNED TO REMAIN IN OPERATION FOR DECADES. SO, WE’RE SEEING SYSTEMS THAT WERE NEVER INTENDED TO BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET NOW BEING INTEGRATED INTO MODERN IT NETWORKS. the demands on uptime, robustness and performance are growing. This is good news for IT-OT convergence, which is also growing. OT cannot hide behind obscurity and difficulty to access security measures.

“Access to OT systems should be tightly controlled, never direct

and always recorded. Access to the systems providing that access should also be tightly controlled and secured with multifactor authentication to ensure that authorisation is only given to the appropriate people. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the security risks that are part of linking IT and OT without due consideration and thoughtful planning,” he adds.

Vijay Jaswal – Chief Technology Officer – Middle East and Turkey, Software AG, offers another perspective on this: “The need to analyse and manage systems is where the security risk stems from. The fact that extensive OT solutions are now connected to the internet for companies to analyse performance poses a potential major risk if systems are not secured. Where there is connectivity, there is a risk of cyberattack.”

He says, for example, all devices used to run a modern-day pipeline are controlled by computers vs. historically controlled physically by people who were also known as engineers. Suppose these modern pipelines connected to an organisation’s internal network get hit with a cyber-attack. In that case, the entire pipeline becomes vulnerable to these malicious attacks risking a shutdown of the entire system, running into losses in millions.

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FEATURE

Brian Chappell

Is there a lack of technology to manage and quantify OT cyber risks?

There is indeed a lack of security expertise with OT environments and most firms rely on third parties to protect their critical physical assets.

“The nature of the challenge is unique at each organisation,” says Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet. “Some are challenged by staffing—either a lack of people or inadequately trained team members.

Some are challenged by inadequate tools to handle threats and vulnerabilities. The cost of providing these things challenges some. Many are challenged by the frequency and number of threats and by the time required to maintain adequate security to manage them.”

He recommends at least to apply the basic practices of security hygiene—taking a proactive approach to security, working toward centralised visibility and control, and tracking and reporting cybersecurity metrics. As OT systems lose their air gaps and become integrated with IT systems and with the internet, OT leaders will need to reinforce security awareness on their teams and bolster their systems with adequate security protection.

Simone from ThycoticCentrify says the challenge with securing OT systems is more a matter of mindset and culture than of technology. With the convergence of IT and OT, the onus 22

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Vijay Jaswal

AS OT SYSTEMS LOSE THEIR AIR GAPS AND BECOME INTEGRATED WITH IT SYSTEMS AND WITH THE INTERNET, OT LEADERS WILL NEED TO REINFORCE SECURITY AWARENESS ON THEIR TEAMS AND BOLSTER THEIR SYSTEMS WITH ADEQUATE SECURITY PROTECTION. of protecting OT systems is shared between IT and OT teams – each of whom has different priorities, standards, and understanding of risks. In the IT realm, confidentiality and integrity are king whereas in OT, availability is of utmost importance. Finding a balance between these viewpoints is the first step to correctly quantifying and addressing OT cyber risks.

How can enterprises minimise the potential for disruption from cyberattacks targeted at OT networks?

Good planning with plenty of testing,

Alain Penel

including table-top exercises, will lead to the best result, says Chappell from BeyondTrust. This isn’t a process to be rushed into, but equally, don’t start by just connecting the OT and IT networks and then looking at the next steps.

The moment the environments are connected, the OT environment will be at a much greater risk, so make sure that initial connection is very tightly controlled and monitored.

He adds this will come naturally from a clear plan moving from the separated architecture to the joinedup architecture where security is in the fabric, not an afterthought. The objective should be a secure, single environment comprising IT and OT components. That will drive the necessary behaviour to deliver the integration with minimum disruption.

Segment the network, says Penel from Fortinet. “Segmentation is a fundamental best practice for securing OT. Segments restrict an attacker’s ability to move in an “east-west” or lateral direction. Because network configurations and trust levels change, segmentation should be dynamic rather than static. Organisations should look for a segmentation approach that continuously monitors the trust levels of users, devices, and applications. It also needs to dynamically control access based on business intent, behavior, and risk, which can dramatically shrink the attack surface.”

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VIEWPOINT

HOW TO NAVIGATE THE CHANGING BUSINESS LANDSCAPE MARK ACKERMAN, AREA VP, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, SERVICENOW, SPELLS OUT FOUR POINTERS FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS IN 2022.

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ear end. It is a time for predictions, is it not? We are supposed to look at the horizon and tell others with confidence what lies beyond. The past two years have made this easier. The pandemic closed off so many avenues to the region’s businesses that we could almost taste the future. Digital transformation, followed by digital transformation, followed by more of the same.

Perhaps this year, we should take a step back. Perhaps we should look at where digital transformation has led us and concentrate on how we capitalise on our lessons and hone existing

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practices into new winning formulas.

So instead of predictions, I offer four pieces of advice to optimise digital transformation and other business areas in 2022.

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Focus on the employee experience to get the full benefit from hybrid work Heading into 2021, arguably the safest prediction was “hybrid work is the future”. Companies came to the gradual realisation that employees, eager for more flexibility in their work lives, would no longer tolerate environments where remote work was not a given and as a consequence, several trialed hybridworking models.

As we head in to 2022, we will see which regional organisations will crumble and which will rise because of hybrid work. To ensure success of hybrid work models, companies should focus on the employee experience (EX) as much as the customer experience. Those that do will prosper.

Those that do not will hemorrhage talent to those that do. EX is about how people navigate the information and solutions they need to be engaged and productive.

With one-click ease, employees should be able to interact with all functions of the business (not just IT) from a single pane of centralised access, while being relieved of their mundane tasks by automated workflows.

Loyal, motivated employees get support and guidance whenever they need it, wherever they are. Their employers meet them where they work, regardless of how they work. Their workplace is safe. And loyal, motivated employees deliver productive, innovative labor.

2

Get ready for more low code In July, the UAE government launched the National Program for Coders — a plan to train 100,000 software professionals, some of whom will go on to create 1,000 digital businesses. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other giants are involved, and annual investment in tech start-ups is expected to rise from US$ 400 million to more than US$ 1 billion.

Initiatives like this have captured the region’s imagination. As ambitious as the idea may sound, it is achievable through the citizen developer. These non-technical domain experts build digital solutions using low-code development platforms (LCDP). A wide range of digital workflows are open to them, and they can plug skills gaps with a lot less training than software developers get. Their business knowledge means they can identify more problems, and LCDPs allow them to — under appropriate governance frameworks — deploy value-adding solutions very quickly.

Meanwhile, technical staff can engage

A RECENT REPORT FROM PWC SHOWED 46% OF MIDDLE EAST CEOS TO BE PLANNING AN INCREASE IN INVESTMENT IN ESG OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS. WHETHER THIS TAKES THE SHAPE OF ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES SUCH AS RESOURCE EFFICIENCY AND NET-ZERO CARBON GOALS, OR A POLITICAL STANCE ON AN EMOTIVE ISSUE, COMPANIES TODAY CANNOT REMAIN ON THE SIDELINES WAITING TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND WILL BLOW. in innovation of their own, creating an environment significantly more agile than the one it replaces.

3

Prepare for a shift from automation to hyper-automation In 2020, a McKinsey survey of organisations across the globe found 31% of them had fully automated at least one business process, and another 35% had pilot schemes in place. But while automation has a proven trackrecord of streamlining workflows, the 2022 stakeholder should demand nextlevel visibility into processes.

Hyper-automation brings together base RPA with business intelligence and integration to create a digital transformation workflow that is laser-focused on optimisation. The methodology requires stepping back from one’s automation instincts to examine the larger corporate picture and how each workflow incorporates people, processes, and systems. It calls

for intelligence to be applied to identify processes for automation.

Meanwhile, integration allows visibility of the dependencies between systems.

And critical thinking — by humans — will be pivotal in deciding whether you will automate a task, digitise a process, or submit an element of the business for further analysis. Adopt this approach and become more agile than ever.

4

Consider your ESG position Throughout the region, consumers and employees are beginning to realise that they have power. Entire communities can be receptive or hostile to a brand because of its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Since enterprises rely on these communities for custom and talent, pleasing them has become a shareholder concern.

A recent report from PwC showed 46% of Middle East CEOs to be planning an increase in investment in ESG over the next three years. Whether this takes the shape of environmental initiatives such as resource efficiency and netzero carbon goals, or a political stance on an emotive issue, companies today cannot remain on the sidelines waiting to see which way the wind will blow.

Perhaps the most important ESG sub-area right now is diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB). This is an integral part of the employee experience, but also has the potential to derail good will with customers if employers do not pay attention to it. Corporates and NGOs are now convinced that DIB, especially as it relates to gender parity, brings real economic advantages. An estimate from PwC cited legal and social barriers to female participation in MENA workforces as the direct cause of an annual aggregate GDP loss of US$575 billion.

A final word Each December, business leaders can only hope for one thing. That they have learned enough to be able to make the optimal calls in the year that follows. To know when to zig and when to zag. Stay goal-oriented, and I am confident you will get it right.

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FEATURE

THE EVOLUTION OF WAN WHY ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION DEMANDS SD-WAN

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hough MPLS and local access still dominate the enterprise wide area network, SD-WAN adoption is going mainstream rapidly, driven by digital transformation initiatives and increasing cloud migration.

MPLS was designed before the cloud era and is beset with issues such as long deployment times and high costs.

SD-WAN, on the other hand, is ideally suited for cloud-based applications and emerging technologies.

According to the latest report by Market Research Future, the global SD-WAN market is bound to touch $19,093.2 million by 2026 and is driven by the need for acceptable networking infrastructure that adheres to the latest security policies and seamless connectivity. And a recent IDC survey found that 42% of respondents have already deployed SD-WAN either in part or in full, with 95% expecting to deploy it within the coming two years.

“WANs designed for a different era are not ready for the unprecedented influx of WAN traffic that cloud adoption brings today. Such traffic causes management 26

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complexity, application-performance unpredictability, and in many cases, data vulnerability,” says Osama Al-Zoubi, CTO, Cisco Middle East and Africa.

He says new business models have driven the need for a new network model.

SD-WAN architecture, which was already positively impacting business prior to the pandemic, is now more crucial than ever. This new approach to network connectivity has proven its ability to lower operational costs and improve resource usage for multisite deployments.

Tarik Belhachemi, MEA Head of Connectivity and UC/CX Business Development, Orange Business Services, says the goal of SD-WAN services is to deliver robust, consistent performance and agility by routing data through the fastest, most reliable connection possible.

It also simplifies the distribution of services to branch sites without sending in an IT team and bandwidth can be scaled according to requirements.

“However, SD-WAN is a highly dynamic technology and needs continuous end-toend monitoring to provide the business

resilience, agility, flexibility and scalability it can deliver. Deployed effectively, SDWAN offers enterprises the capabilities to keep pace with customer’s growing digital demands. SD-WAN, however, isn’t a plugand-play solution. As with any emerging technology, consultancy and careful planning are paramount to reducing risk,” he adds.

Osama Al-Zoubi

Tarik Belhachemi

Managed SD-WAN The growth of the SD-WAN market has presented new opportunities for managed security service providers (MSSPs) to offer managed WAN services both on and off their networks. Recently at GITEX, Zain announced the launch of SD-WAN managed services in collaboration with Cisco. The company is the first service provider in Kuwait to offer world-class SDWAN services to its business customers, enabling them to optimize their networks to suit their unique needs while balancing performance and cost.

“By viewing SD-WAN as a value-added services platform, as opposed to just another service offering, MSSPs can not only open the door to significant benefits for their customers but also expand their own revenue opportunities,” says Kalle Bjorn, Director of Systems Engineering for Middle East with Fortinet.

Belhachemi from Orange Business Services adds that as cloud adoption increases and matures in the region, we are seeing a corresponding rise in interest in managed SD-WAN services.

But SD-WAN is a new technology. Today’s networks are far more complex than they were a decade ago. It is vital that enterprises carefully plan their SD-WAN transformation and don’t underestimate the intricacies of the underlay network.

“Not all service providers will focus on the underlay, especially if they do not provide the network. This is why it is essential to work with a trusted partner to avoid future

Tarek Abbas

Kalle Bjorn

orchestration and compatibility issues in the network transformation. Without a stable, solid underlay, enterprises will not gain the benefits they expect from SD-WAN and risk having significant deployment issues,” he says.

SD-WAN vs. SASE For enterprises embarking on digital transformation initiatives, SD-WAN alone may not bring in the WAN transformation they require, and this is where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) comes in. Though the goal of both technologies might look identical, it is important to understand the different between these two.

“SD-WAN is a software-based approach to building and managing networks that connect geographically dispersed offices.

Most often, companies use SD-WAN to securely connect branch offices to their corporate networks, instead of relying on MPLS connections, firewalls or proprietary hardware to do it,” says Tarek Abbas, Systems Engineering, Emerging Markets, Palo Alto Networks.

A SASE solution provides mobile users, branch offices, and retail locations with secure connectivity and consistent security from any location, by offering companies a single, centralised view of their entire network. This helps companies to quickly identify users, devices and endpoints, apply their networking access and security policies, and security policies a, securely connect

users to their applications and data in a cloud or mobile environment, all while ensuring multi-branch and multi-cloud network security, he adds.

Bjorn from Fortinet says one of the core components of SASE, along with clouddelivered security, is SD-WAN. At the end of the day, SASE’s outcome for the large or mid-market enterprise is to provide consistent security and the best quality of experience. While cloud-delivered security provides that security to users working from anywhere, SD-WAN actually enables that quality of experience. SASE will be incomplete if it doesn’t have SD-WAN as part of the framework.

“A SASE framework should integrate security and networking - not just stitch them together, but create a unified policy so that they’re easier to transform when implemented,” he says.

While SASE and SD-WAN are often mistakenly pitted against one another, they are designed to work in harmony, according to Al-Zoubi from Cisco. SDWAN is the foundation for SASE-enabled architecture and offers the ability to extend IT’s visibility beyond the corporate network and into the Internet and cloud.

“SD-WAN provides full-stack multilayer security capabilities for both on-premises and cloud. It bridges organisations’ current security deployments with their SASE rollout by providing consistent security policy enforcement that can be deployed and managed anywhere,” he sums up.

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AWARDS

CELEBRATING TECHNOLOGY LEADERS CXO INSIGHT ME’S INAUGURAL ICT LEADERSHIP AWARDS TURNED THE SPOTLIGHT ON ORGANISATIONS THAT ARE MAKING SMART BUSINESS DECISIONS WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND THE WHOLE ECOSYSTEM THAT IS FUELING THE GROWTH OF THE ICT SECTOR IN THE REGION

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usiness resilience has been the name of the game during these challenging times.

The pandemic has clearly demonstrated the value of technology.

As a result, businesses in the Middle East have embraced pandemic-driven changes and redefined their business models to tackle the disruptions, reduce costs and gain an edge.

In the last 18 months, we have seen accelerated adoption of new technologies to improve business continuity and growth. Technology spending is now truly the hottest boardroom topic today. We have witnessed how businesses shifted 28

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to remote work almost overnight and ensured their employees had uninterrupted access to information and tools. CIOs leveraged new channels to operate and engage with customers differently. The pandemic has created a landscape that encourages innovation and the adoption of new technologies, which is what CXO Insight ME’s inaugural ICT Leadership Awards were all about.

CXO Insight’s judging panel has picked the most innovative digital transformation projects from a pool of more than 100 shortlisted entries, and vendors driving transformational IT projects in the Middle East.

The gala dinner event was kicked off

by Rasheed Al Omari with a keynote address on how to manage the risks of AI. “No doubt, AI will shape our future.

As we move from experimental to real life use cases, organisations and governments are exposed to new breed of risks and ethical dilemmas related to the adoption of AI,” he said.

This year the CXO team has also decided to recognise the unsung heroes of corporate growth – marketing managers - who don’t often the credit for the part they play in helping businesses to promote brand awareness and sell its products to its customers.

Mubaraka Ibrahim

Ahmed Salim Nasser Al Jabri

Emirates health Services Establishment Best ICT Implementation in government

Ministry of Health, Oman Best implementation in government

Abdalla Al Ali

Mohammed Al Rais

DMCC Best ICT implementation in government

ENOC Best ICT implementation in oil and gas

Vivek Gupta

Jayesh Maganlal

GEMS Education Best ICT implementation in education

DAMAC Properties Best ICT implementation in real estate

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AWARDS

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Mohammad Shahzad

Vinay Sharma

Dubai Developments Best ICT implementation in real estate

Gulftainer Best ICT implementation in logistics

Khalid Jalal

Mohamed Saif Al Mansoori (on behalf)

GARMCO Bahrain Best ICT implementation in manufacturing

Tawazun Economic Council Best ICT implementation in manufacturing

Umesh Moolchandani

Mario Foster (on behalf)

Bin Dasmal Group Best ICT implementation in multi-business group

Al Naboodah Group Enterprises Best ICT implementation in multi-business group

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AWARDS

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Sumith Poolappan

Wael El Khatib

flydubai Best implementation in aviation

ENOVA Facilities Management Best ICT implementation in facilities management

Aliasgar Bohari

Moro Hub

Zulekha Hospital Best ICT implementation in healthcare

Best ICT implementation in service provider

VMware

Micro Focus

Best multi-cloud management vendor

Best digital transformation solutions vendor

NOVEMBER 2021

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AWARDS

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Aruba Networks

Fortinet

Best enterprise networking solutions vendor

Best network security vendor

AVEVA

Sophos

Best industrial digital transformation vendor

Best endpoint protection vendor

CXO INSIGHT ME

Western Digital

Rubrik

Best data storage solutions vendor

Best data management vendor

NOVEMBER 2021

Veritas

Epicor

Best data protection vendor

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Infor

Checkmarx

Best cloud ERP vendor

Best application security vendor

D-Link

Manal Abi Rafeh

Best SMB networking vendor

Fortinet

Best marketing manager

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AWARDS

Heba Darraj

36

Dolly Solanki

VMware

Micro Focus

Best marketing manager

Best marketing manager

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Nikita Kandath

Epicor

CommScope

Best marketing manager

Best marketing manager

Lucy Hurlstone

Darragh Fegan

Zack Bentolila

Rubrik

Veritas

Checkmarx

Best marketing manager

Best marketing manager

Best marketing manager

CXO INSIGHT ME

NOVEMBER 2021

EVENT

FIGHTING CYBERCRIME WITH PROACTIVE SECURITY WE BROUGHT TOGETHER A GROUP OF TOP CYBERSECURITY PRACTITIONERS TO DISCUSS THE EVER-EVOLVING THREAT LANDSCAPE AND WAYS TO SWAT AWAY THREATS.

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he pandemic-induced digital transformation initiatives in the Middle East have increased the attack surface available to cybercriminals. As a result, it is estimated that cybercrime will cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.

In this context, CXO Insight ME, in association with eSentire and its local partner MMA Infosec, organised a roundtable event on the sidelines of its ICT leadership awards event to discuss how managed detection and response (MDR) helps enterprises to fill security gaps.

Piers Morgan, GM-EMEA at eSentire, kicked off the event. “We specialise in MDR. We started two decades ago by offering pen testing to local hedge funds in Toronto as a business. Incidentally, our founder coined the MDR acronym.

MDR means different things to different people – by verticals, solutions, and partners. We have two global 24/7 SOCs in Canada and Ireland, and we see over 20.5 million pieces of data ingested through by our XDR platform every single day. And we deliver over 6000 daily human-led threat investigations with a mean time to contain of 15 minutes,” he said.

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Morgan said eSentire is onboarding a record number of customers with an NPS score of 85 percent while the industry average is around 35-50 percent. “We have zero churn in customers in the last ten years, and we have grown 40-50 percent in terms of revenue year on year. We have also made acquisitions along the way, and we will continue to look at M&A activity to add best in class services to our portfolio.”

In 2020, eSentire launched its cloudnative Atlas XDR platform, which delivers full-spectrum threat visibility and containment across hybrid environments to stop evolving cyberthreats. “All of the data that we look at and monitored is ingested through this underlying XDR platform, which is built on AI technologies.

This enables us to stop breaches and reduce risks in ways unattainable by legacy security products and traditional MSSPs. In tandem, eSentire threat hunters typically actively respond to and contain threats in individual customers’ environments on average once every two minutes,” said Morgan.

He added the rapid-fire adoption of digital transformation had expanded the attack surface, and bad guys are always two or three steps ahead. “Cybersecurity is now a data problem, and no matter how many layers of security you have, bad guys will always find a backdoor to your corporate network. We specialise in setting up alarms and watching those

corporate networks 24/7 so that CISOs can sleep better at night. In addition, our analysts are familiar with customers’ business context to maintain operational integrity and lower risk.” eSentire’s services are divided into three buckets – managed risk services, traditional MDR, and digital forensics and incident response. “We work with central government agencies globally. If you look at the US Federal Government, there are two companies accredited to carry out 24/7 security monitoring, and we are one of those companies. As your business continues to scale and grow, we can ensure that your enterprise becomes even more secure. We work with incountry third-party data centre providers to address data sovereignty requirements mandated by regulators, especially in the Middle East,” commented Morgan.

When it comes to incident response, eSentire offers Incident Response Retainer services, whereby it deploys remote technology for threat containment within four hours, anywhere in the world. “Our time to value in terms of accelerating investigation and closing the incident response cycle is unparalleled. We have a bestof-breed MDR approach by partnering with different technology platforms in analytics, log management, and cloud SIEM. We can also protect your existing investments by offering to bring our own license (BYOL) scenarios,” said Morgan.

The roundtable attendees included: Amit Kumar from MMA Infosec; Ahmed Salim Nasser Al Jabri from Ministry of Health, Oman; Sumith Poolappan from flydubai; Vivek Gupta from GEMS Education; Mohammad Shahzad from Dubai Developments; Wael El Khatib from Enova Facilities Management; and Bashir Shaikh from GCAA.

Others stop at notification.

We take action.

Sophos Managed Threat Response 24/7 cyber threat hunting, detection, and response delivered by an expert team as a fully-managed service.

Learn more at sophos.com/mtr For more information, contact: salesmea@sophos.com

© Copyright 2021. Sophos Ltd. All rights reserved. Registered in England and Wales No. 2096520, The Pentagon, Abingdon Science Park, Abingdon, OX14 3YP, UK Sophos is the registered trademark of Sophos Ltd. All other product and company names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

VIEWPOINT

HOW TO GET THE BEST FROM DNS

NICO CARTRON, PRINCIPAL PRODUCT MANAGER (DNS/ GSLB), VOLTERRA AT F5, ON HOW TO FIX DNS PROBLEMS

and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). DoT adds Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. DoH, is an alternative to DoT whereby DNS queries and responses are encrypted and sent over HTTPS (instead of unencrypted over UDP). Like DoT, DoH ensures that attackers can’t forge or alter DNS traffic (such as man-in-themiddle attacks). And, by encrypting DNS traffic, it protects sensitive information.

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he Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most important protocols on the Internet. In fact, it’s often referred to as ‘the phonebook of the Internet’, although most DNS experts aren’t huge fans of this description.

Essentially, DNS is a decentralised directory.

This is where a DNS resolver – commonly referred to as a ‘DNS lookup’ tool – resolves an individual host name to an IP address.

Say, for instance, you want to visit F5’s website. Rather than memorising the physical (IP) address of F5’s web server, you can just type in “www. f5.com” in your web browser, and DNS will provide your operating system with the correct IP address.

Historically, DNS is an interesting beast. It is an old protocol, and the publication of the first Request for Comments (RFC) dates back to 1984.

DNS has evolved since then, picking up the pace in recent years with the introduction of DNS-over-TLS (DoT)

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It’s always DNS! If you work in IT, chances are you’ve heard somebody exclaim that “it’s always DNS” – usually if something has gone awry. When DNS has hiccups, it is immediately noticed.

The fact is that DNS is often taken for granted. Once it’s up and running people tend to forget about it. This includes performance monitoring and even how the infrastructure was built out in the first place. It is not an ideal situation and means that mistakes made at the outset can cause considerable operational issues over time.

Common setup mistakes include: • running DNS servers in the same location, which would cause a DNS outage if this location experiences an outage, • running DNS infrastructure from a unique network (Autonomous System/ ASN), which would also lead to a DNS outage in case of network issues, • not applying software diversity (i.e., running the same software across all DNS servers, which would allow a bug to impact all servers in play at the same time).

Battling against the outages Recent DNS outages making the headlines include those experienced by

Akamai (July 2021) and Cloudflare (July 2020). The latter resulted in a networkwide outage, which also impacted DNS. Unfortunately, DNS outages will always happen, no matter how redundant systems are. Whether caused by routing issues, software bugs or human error, it is almost impossible to guarantee that a system will always be up and running.

One of the best ways to prevent an outage is to use multiple DNS providers.

Fortunately, it is a straightforward thing to do. The DNS protocol has builtin mechanisms that enable the easy addition of “Secondary DNS services” via zone transfers (the process of copying the contents of the zone file on a primary DNS server to a secondary DNS server).

This means that, whenever a change is performed on your main provider, a notification (NOTIFY) message will be sent to your secondary provider(s), which in turn will ask for the latest changes.

These mechanisms are standard, so you can use most DNS providers as your secondary option (provided they support NOTIFY/Zone transfers, which is the case with most providers).

In addition to creating a Plan B on the server front, having another DNS provider in play can unlock a range of other benefits, including: • Software diversity. Provider B will likely use different DNS software than provider A. If a bug hits A, it (hopefully) won’t affect B. • Network redundancy. Providers serve DNS requests out of their network.

This means that, even if DNS is still up, a network outage will bring it down.

Having a second DNS provider, using a different network/ASN (Autonomous System) helps to mitigate that possibility.

• Latency. Having a low latency is critical to get fast DNS answers. However, some networks have better latencies in specific regions. Having another DNS provider in the mix can help ensure optimal latency across the globe.

Don’t wait for the next outage before you act. It is easier and faster than you think to reinforce your operations with a second DNS provider.

VIEWPOINT

A MATTER OF TRUST VIBIN SHAJU, PRESALES DIRECTOR, EMEA ENTERPRISE, MCAFEE, ON WHY WE MUST GO BEYOND ZERO TRUST TO SECURE TODAY’S DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS

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s cloud migration and newnormal business models continue to complicate security matters, it is little wonder that zero trust has once again become a hot topic among the region’s technologists. A survey from the first half of this year shows 72% of organisations worldwide are examining the viability of zero trust or have already implemented it. And as part of its 2021 Cyber Resilience report, Abu Dhabi-based Digital14 recommended that the UAE “adopt a zero-trust architecture... to avoid prohibitive financial and reputational costs”.

But given current circumstances — in which under-resourced security teams do battle with a burgeoning threat landscape behind a growing attack surface — zero trust alone may not be enough.

The fact that zero-trust security is also known as “perimeterless” security may be counterintuitive but having a digital open-door means we save on resources.

We have now come to accept that getting attacked is not a matter of “if” but “when”, so why expend compute capacity and labor trying to prevent the inevitable?

Instead, by allowing everything in (and adopting the position that trust itself is a vulnerability), organisations take an important first step in achieving the kind of safe environment that allows them to focus on innovation instead of constantly doing battle with malicious infiltrators.

True Zero Trust In the first four months of 2020, McAfee saw a 600% increase worldwide in the use of cloud collaboration services and cyberattacks seemed to mirror this surge, with some estimates putting the increase in incidents at 630%. The UAE saw a 250% increase in cyberattacks in 2020, with the country’s cybersecurity chief citing remote work as a major catalyst.

And Saudi Arabia was subjected to 22.5 million brute force attacks in 2020 on remote desktop protocols.

If we continue to build security postures in which we assume we have caught everything before it enters our environments, then malicious processes gain a “trust” status upon breaching the perimeter and have freedom to roam. Zero trust makes no such assumptions, but its original model focused on networks. Today, this approach may be too limited, and since many are still in the process of implementing zero trust, it would be a pity if they were to successfully reach the end of a project journey only to find that their efforts are insufficient to meet the demands of the modern threat landscape.

Enter “True Zero Trust”.

True Zero Trust — which we should acknowledge is not a new concept — starts with data, eliminating the concepts of “user” or “endpoint” to replace them with a view of the environment in terms of traffic flow. The start and end points of that flow can be laptops, desktops, and servers or they can be IoT sensors, software containers, and virtual machines.

A needs-first approach And so, instead of thinking about the user, device or process that is looking for access, True Zero Trust concentrates on the assets that need protecting. Applications, data, and services do not need to be accessed by everyone and everything. At this point, organisations must ask who needs access to what? To maintain business agility, the answers to this question must be allowed to change at a moment’s notice, so real-time visibility of the data environment is critical.

This expanded vision of zero-trust security is tailor-made for the IT challenges of today, where users, endpoints, and applications can reside anywhere — not just regionally but globally. Remote workers use unvetted personal devices to access digital

assets. And it is not always possible to predict the various networks through which sensitive data will travel as it makes its way from corporate-controlled storage to the employee and back again.

True Zero Trust accounts for the multilocation, multi-network model, while maintaining the flexibility required to allow businesses to get along in the new normal. Employees cannot be restricted to a subset of tasks simply because they are geographically or architecturally removed from the corporate hub. True Zero Trust allows for the operation of unknown endpoints without taking chances on their pedigree.

Zero trust breeds trust True Zero Trust spans users, data, identities, networks, and more. It merges happily with a range of tools to accommodate policies without compromising on stack performance or business operability. And it allows security teams to remediate threats across the entire environment.

While many have yet to look into zerotrust security, it will be impossible for regional organisations to ignore, given extant realities. Employees will expect to be able to work from home at least some of the time, and customers will expect seamless service all of the time. The complexity of the environments required to deliver on these expectations cry out for organisations to go beyond zero trust to True Zero Trust.

Digital transformation is continual. As new technologies emerge, new use cases emerge alongside them. In the GCC region, 5G may be the next such emergence, carrying with it yet more complexities that attach themselves to the IT stack. True Zero Trust is a vital component of any threat posture that hopes to match the pace of ongoing change.

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VIEWPOINT

CYBERSECURITY PREDICTIONS FOR 2022 BEYONDTRUST HAS RELEASED ITS ANNUAL FORECAST OF CYBERSECURITY TRENDS EMERGING FOR THE NEW YEAR AND BEYOND. THESE PROJECTIONS, AUTHORED BY BEYONDTRUST EXPERTS MOREY J. HABER, CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER, BRIAN CHAPPELL, CHIEF SECURITY STRATEGIST EMEA/APAC, AND JAMES MAUDE, LEAD CYBER SECURITY RESEARCHER, ARE BASED ON SHIFTS IN TECHNOLOGY, THREAT ACTOR HABITS, CULTURE, AND DECADES OF COMBINED EXPERIENCE.

or cellular capable, to provide services outside of local area and Wi-Fi networks.

This will allow connectivity using a subscription model and remove the barriers and troubleshooting required for connectivity on home or small business networks.

Prediction #1: Space Travel – Taking advantage of the huge wave of space tourism, expect phishing attacks and faux websites to crop up across social media and the Internet.

Prediction #2: Cybersecurity Talent Resources – 2022 will prove to be the most challenging year yet with regards to the ongoing cybersecurity talent crunch.

Some drivers of this supply-demand imbalance include the accelerated adoption of hybrid cloud and digital transformation initiatives, post-pandemic projects ramping up, and budgets becoming available for spend. Security posture improvements will be at the top of the list of desired projects. The imbalance will cause salary spikes across the board for every level of IT security professional.

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Prediction #4: Ransomware Reinvented – In 2021, the ransomware model evolved to include data extortion based on exfiltrated information. The evolution will continue and new paradigms to extort money will emerge in 2022. Organisations should expect ransomware to become personalised and increasingly involve different types of assets, like IoT, as well as company insiders. Targeted disclosure of exfiltrated information may be perpetrated to specific buyers. We may even start to see more flexible terms of payment, as opposed to lump sum payouts. With installment plans, ransomware operators will decrypt victim assets over time, based on agreed upon payout terms.

Prediction #5: Supply Chain Kinks — Supply chain attacks will further mature in 2022, expand in scope, and increase in sophistication. Expect far more thirdparty solutions and common development practices to be targeted. Organisations need to include third party supply chain breaches in their incident response plans and plan for a public and private response, just in case they become an inadvertent victim for a licensed solution.

Prediction #6: Cyber Insurance Termination — Expect a tsunami of cyber insurance cancellations and a mad scramble to obtain new coverage, potentially at much higher rates. To obtain coverage and ensure the best rates, organisations will need to demonstrate the proper cybersecurity hygiene demanded by cyber insurance underwriters. Failure to have agreed upon cybersecurity controls in place will also be a key argument for insurers to refuse paying out after an incident, or to terminate coverage.

Prediction #7: Freedom of Social Networks — Social networks will be under increasing pressure to control the content posted by their users. This is also likely to result in broader powers for the authorities to trace and identify malicious sources. Expect to see tighter controls on the content that is distributed via social platforms, reliable attestation for the source of the material, and potentially access to the data for authorities.

Prediction #8: Softly, Softly — Next year will see the average time from intrusion to detection grow, giving attackers more time to perform reconnaissance and wreak havoc on systems. Expect a lot of careful hackers to find their way into systems and establish long-term residences there.

Prediction #9: Broken Record — The number of successful attacks will continue to grow, the average cost to the victim organisation per successful attack will rise, and the pattern will repeat. With so many new and shiny technologies to choose from, the IT security basics just aren’t exciting.

The seeds of rushed implementation of remote working and digital transformation bore fruit in the form of once-in-a-decade breaches like SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline and others that seemed to occur monthly. Looking ahead helps us anticipate where cyber threat actors will undoubtedly head as they look to take advantage of this paradigm shift. At BeyondTrust, we plan to provide the best security solutions to address current and future attack vectors, which our customers and partners expect.

BLOG

IT IS TIME TO HIRE A CMO TERENCE SATHYANARAYAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PULSE INNOVATIVE SYSTEMS, WRITES ABOUT HOW A CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER HELPS COMPANY GROWTH.

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chief marketing officer (CMO) is an executive who manages the company’s marketing functions.

The CMO may have a few different responsibilities, but generally, they manage all aspects of the company’s marketing strategy and execution to achieve business goals. As companies evolve, so does their need for someone with experience in creating innovative solutions.

Let’s take a look at how the role of CMO has evolved and the impact they have on a company. A chief marketing officer (CMO) is an executive who manages the company’s marketing functions.

The CMO role has undergone significant changes since the 1980s. The expansion of technology and increased marketing complexity means that marketing leaders must be able to understand all aspects of the business, including strategy, finance, operations, sales, and more. The industry landscape is also changing faster than ever before, with emerging technologies like mobile apps and social media requiring robust capabilities in analytics, content marketing, and more.

In the 1980s, CMOs were mainly charged with running advertising campaigns and promoting their company’s brand in public relations. They also could have been responsible for managing a small marketing team -- everything from product launches to events was the CMO’s responsibility.

As marketers began acquiring larger responsibilities, they moved away from the traditional marketing department structure to a more integrated team. To support this shift, companies began adding new positions such as digital and search engine marketers.

As companies became more customercentric during the 1990s and 2000s, it raised the need for CMOs to understand

their customers’ needs and make decisions based on customer insights.

In response, companies began to build a stronger focus around the customer and added specific roles such as chief customer officers and vice presidents of customer experience. Additionally, CMO’s were charged with taking a more strategic role within their organizations -- managing the company’s marketing strategy instead of just its execution. This meant that they had to keep up with the latest technologies and become more involved with product development.

Today, companies are putting a substantial focus on data-driven marketing with many even employing chief data officers. The emergence of big data has meant that marketers now have access to more information about their customers than ever before, which can help them create better strategies and improve results. As a result, 70% of companies have increased their budgets for marketing analytics in the past year alone. This increase is primarily due to the need for CMOs to help provide analytical insights that can be used across all departments.

In addition, digital has moved from a departmental responsibility to a companywide focus. The CMO today needs to understand how to create and integrate social, mobile, local, and more digital marketing initiatives into the overall marketing strategy. They also must be able to manage this process across all channels -- offline promotions like TV ads and in-store signage still play a vital role in effective campaigns.

A CMO’s main responsibility is to drive growth for the company. They are responsible for managing the company’s marketing function, which includes all areas related to marketing -- advertising, social media, or PR. As technology

continues to advance, so does the need for marketers who understand data analytics and digital strategies. The CMO has very big shoes to fill. The entire company is looking to the CMO to drive growth and keep up with changes in technology.

As the advances in technology have shifted how companies market themselves, hiring someone with experience has become incredibly important for success. CMO’s are responsible for data analytics and digital marketing initiatives, which means they must understand how to create and integrate social, mobile, local, and more digital marketing initiatives into the overall marketing strategy. They are also responsible for managing all channels of a campaign, which requires experience in data analytics that can help them manage offline promotions like TV ads and in-store signage. Finally, CMO’s must remain up-to-date with technology changes to help their company grow.

CMO’s who understand and stay upto-date with the changes in technology will ace their job and be able to help drive revenue growth. CMO’s can increase a company’s ROIC (return on invested capital) by focusing on leveraging data to improve operational efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability. They should focus on improving these three areas concerning how they can leverage data. CMO’s need to be aware of how their company is determining the value of its customers to determine ROI and understand technology changes to drive revenue growth.

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PRODUCTS

Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 Hybrid work has increased the need for high-quality multifunctional headsets, as remote workers seek to reduce background noise from remote workspaces, or simply enjoy music while on the go. In light of this, Bang &

Olufsen and Cisco have announced the creation of the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980, a luxury business headset that pairs Bang & Olufsen’s unique combination of timeless design, unrivaled craftsmanship and powerful sound with Cisco’s integrated meeting controls, Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation, and frictionless IT management capabilities to ensure long-lasting, secure communications.

Key features of the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 include: • Enhanced capabilities for business: With Bluetooth 5.1, Webex integrations, voice prompts and convenient on-ear call controls that allow users to easily mute, answer or end calls, the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 offers industry-leading connectivity and functionality.

• Crystal clear communication: Elevate and enhance calls, meetings, video and music experiences with premium acoustics and audio, including beamforming microphone arrays that create a Virtual Boom Arm and help to power Adaptive Active

Aruba CX 10000 Series

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has introduced the industry’s first Distributed Services Switch enabling enterprises to deploy software-defined stateful services where data is created and processed, eliminating 44

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Noise Cancellation providing a more immersive listening experience. Rich, immersive audio helps users feel as if they are in person and excellent noise canceling lets users focus on the task at hand.

• Lasting comfort and timeless design: The headset is designed to provide unmatched comfort.

The Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 is crafted in a lightweight structure that has been carefully engineered with high-end materials to ensure a stable, enduring fit for all-day use.

• Enterprise-grade management and security: IT administrators can easily deploy, manage, and view real-time analytics of the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 – all from a single platform.

It also provides enterprisegrade hardware and software protection to help calls and conversations stay secure.

The Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 will be available to order starting early 2022 at the suggested resale price of $549.

legacy appliances and host software needed to build the hybrid clouds demanded by modern applications and IT organisations.

The Aruba CX 10000 Series Switch represents a new category of data center switches that combines best-ofbreed Aruba data center L2/3 switching with the industry’s only, fully programmable DPU (Pensando Elba) to deliver stateful software-defined services inline, at scale, with wire-rate performance and orders of magnitude scale and performanceimprovements over traditional data center L2/3 switches at a fraction of their TCO. The Aruba CX 10000 Series Switch with Pensando provides an entirely new class of switching solution to overcome the limitations of legacy architectures. The Aruba CX 10000 will allow operators to extend industry standard leaf-spine networking with stateful distributed microsegmentation, east-west firewalling, NAT, encryption, and telemetry services – all delivered inline, all the time, on every access port, closer to where critical enterprise applications run.

AMD Instinct MI200 AMD has announced the new AMD Instinct MI200 series accelerators, the first exascale-class GPU accelerators.

AMD Instinct MI200 series accelerators includes the world’s fastest high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator, the AMD Instinct MI250X. Built on AMD CDNA 2 architecture, AMD Instinct MI200 series accelerators deliver leading application performance for a broad set of HPC workloads. The AMD Instinct MI250X accelerator provides up to 4.9X better performance than competitive accelerators for double precision (FP64) HPC applications and surpasses 380 teraflops of peak theoretical half-precision (FP16) for AI workloads to enable disruptive approaches in further accelerating data-driven research.

Key capabilities and features of the AMD Instinct MI200 series accelerators include: · AMD CDNA 2 architecture – 2nd Gen Matrix Cores accelerating FP64 and FP32 matrix operations, delivering up to 4X the peak theoretical FP64 performance vs. AMD previous gen GPUs. · Leadership Packaging Technology – Industry-first multi-die GPU design with 2.5D Elevated Fanout Bridge (EFB) technology delivers 1.8X more cores and 2.7X

POLY PRO-GRADE VIDEO CONFERENCING SOLUTIONS

Poly has announced the addition of the Poly Studio X70 and Poly Studio E70 to its family of video conferencing solutions at Zoomtopia 2021. The Poly Studio family is designed to upgrade the video collaboration experience and generate meeting equality by bringing pro-grade audio and video to large workspaces.

The lineup of Poly Studio video conferencing gear brings broadcast-quality video to every meeting, regardless of the participants’ location, so participants can be seen brilliantly and heard clearly. The Poly Studio X70 and Poly Studio E70

higher memory bandwidth vs. AMD previous gen GPUs, offering the industry’s best aggregate peak theoretical memory bandwidth at 3.2 terabytes per second. · 3rd Gen AMD Infinity Fabric technology – Up to 8 Infinity Fabric links connect the AMD Instinct MI200 with 3rd Gen EPYC CPUs and other GPUs in the node to enable unified CPU/GPU memory coherency and maximize system throughput, allowing for an easier on-ramp for CPU codes to tap the power of accelerators.

feature Poly Director AI technology, which includes Acoustic Fence, and NoiseBlockAI, ensures that meetings have the feel of a real live broadcast-quality production with its own in-room director.

The new devices come in the wake of emerging trends that are set to shape the future of remote and hybrid working environments across the globe and in the UAE in particular.

According to the Poly Evolution of the Workplace survey, 44.40 percent of UAE workers noted that better equipment and technology would be the main drivers to return to the office in the future.

Poly DirectorAI is the brain behind Poly’s cutting-edge video experiences. It uses AI and machine learning technology to deliver real-time automatic transitions, framing and tracking that make everyone feel like they are in the room together.

Poly DirectorAI perfects the hybrid working experience by seamlessly connecting those in the meeting room to those joining remotely.

The Poly Studio E70 intelligent camera and Poly Studio X70 video bar are both Zoom-certified solutions that will support Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery to bring meeting equality to medium and large rooms. Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery will use AI to create a gallery view, and send up to three unique video streams to frame-up in-room participants to remote attendees, to make sure everyone gets the face-to-face communication they crave.

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THE BUSINESS CASE FOR ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT SUNIL PAUL, MD OF FINESSE, ON WHY AN ECM PLATFORM IS CRITICAL FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SUCCESS

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rganisations across sectors are turbocharging their digital transformation journeys. Of course, becoming a digital enterprise means different things for different companies. It largely depends on the industry, type of products and services, target audience, and so on.

However, one critical and common element to all digitalisation plans is ensuring content is at the heart of the transformation.

This is where Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions can make a colossal difference. Data is growing at unprecedented rates, both in volume and complexity. The factors driving this growth include rising mobile data, increased adoption of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Industry 4.0 technologies.

Global data creation is estimated to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025, as per a Statista report. Today, everyone knows that content is the new currency, but it is only valuable if you can glean actionable insights.

To do this, data must be stored in an organised way for easy access and analytics when required. Yet, how many companies are guilty of having a large repository of data but struggle to action it? Often businesses find themselves data-rich but insight poor.

Becoming a digital enterprise begins and ends with data. The first step is to effectively capture information, then classify, secure, store it, and activate it to help achieve business objectives,

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understand customers better, and customise marketing strategies.

ECM is the umbrella term used to describe the systematic process of managing an organisation’s content lifecycle. ECM platforms allow businesses to leverage unstructured and inaccessible data and employ the valuable knowledge gained to enhance business efficiencies, streamline processes and deliver engaging customer experiences. These solutions help capture and store documents digitally, access them from any location or device, automate paper-driven processes, and secure them to reduce organisational risk.

An effective ECM can also help build a powerful data compliance strategy.

ECM platforms’ origin goes way back to the 2000s. In 2017, Gartner declared ECM was dead and introduced the term ‘content services’. Over the years, ECM has evolved to involve many more aspects of content services and applications, but is it dead? Market intelligence and advisory firm Mordor Intelligence begs to differ – its recent report values the ECM market at $47.29 billion in 2020 and estimates it will reach $105.56 billion by 2026. There has never been a greater need for content management solutions. But instead of deploying traditional ECM models with central repositories, it is now moving to one where content services technologies are being used.

This helps for contextual content – disseminating the right information to the right user at the right time to help

complete a business task successfully.

Intelligent information is a decisive factor in determining the success of digital transformation. Often businesses know what they need but do not know how to go about it or are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data they must manage.

When designing a modern ECM strategy embedded with content services and applications, begin with a department or function to see the maximum benefits. It is also essential to conduct an analysis of operations to understand the objectives that are desired with ECM solutions.

Mapping out specific goals and KPIs for ECM will help in ensuring business continuity and delivering continuous great customer and employee experiences. Selecting an ECM provider that has the foresight and aligns with your business goals is another critical factor to consider for a successful ECM implementation.

Data is a valuable asset that all organisations in the digital age have access to. By implementing the right strategies and embracing the right tools such as ECM, organisations must harness this data to maximise resources, streamline operations and achieve limitless possibilities in fulfilling their digitalisation ambitions.

microfocus.com

Smarter Service Management for Everyone Smarter for employees. Smarter for IT.