Enterprise Channels MEA

DE LL E M C WOR LD 2017 H IG H LIG HTS / 32

PA G E S 5 2 VOLUME O4 JUNE 2017

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ISSUE 11

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‘Integrate’ It is time to wake up to a new reality of integration in Enterprise Applications.

Comprehension, Logic and Learning— any application that does not evolve to inculcate these attributes will definitely not see the sunrise of 2020. /24

24.7.365 AVAI L AB I LITY KE E PS CUSTOM E RS LOYAL- VE EAM /22

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to Exist

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INFRASTRUCTURE FORUM 2017 28TH NOV 2017

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EDITORIAL

Feeding the Soul of the Borderless Enterprises

ANUSHREE DIXIT A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M

June is probably one of the best time of the year, when you can sit and reflect on how the first half of the year has been; how far have you come with your pre-set objectives; where are you standing now and how do you plan for the next six months. It is good to see that the first half of the year has been very exciting for the ICT world, especially for the Middle East market. Coming out of the Cloud clichés, we could actually see some serious investments and inventions in new gen technologies. Partners and partner ecosystems are emerging like never before and are pushing their boundaries beyond the limits.

This was very evident from two of the major events that was held in the previous month— The Dell EMC World 2017 and The Aruba Atmosphere 2017. The doors were open to innovations and it was great to see the channel partners making some serious moves to satiate the needs of the ever-evolving customers. With some real life examples, competitive use cases, and great customer case studies the air was fragrant with IT breathing a new wave of dynamism into the business efficiencies.

After all, digitization is not just about bringing new technologies into the enterprise or switching old ones with new. It is a revolution— that seeks not just the technologies to reinvent themselves, but the organization to rethink.

Re-think its very own roots. One has to remember that, projects fail not because of the failure in technology but because the organization is not buckledup for that transformation.

In this issue of Enterprise Channels MEA, we have tried to bring in the highlights from some of the major events that we hosted in May and how they left a mark in the era of Transformation.

As the holy month of Ramadan closes in a few weeks, Enterprise Channels MEA is ready with some exciting announcements and events for the next quarter.

Stay tuned!

Ramadan Kareem!ë

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2017 CONTENTS

VOLUME 04 ISSUE 11 JUNE 2017 W W W. E C - M E A . C O M

COVER STORY

‘INTEGRATE’ TO EXIST

It is time to wake up to a new reality of integration in Enterprise Applications. Comprehension, Logic and Learning— any application that does not evolve to inculcate these attributes will definitely not see the sunrise of 2020 /24 SEAMLESS /30

BREATHING SIMPLICITY INTO THE PAYMENT INDUSTRY NIRANJ SANGAL, GROUP CEO, OMA EMIRATES GROUP

INNOVATIONS /49

SPECIAL STORY Simplified Convergence /46

ARUBA 8400 SWITCH SERIES

A breakthrough campus core switch that extends intelligence from the edge to the core and allows CIOs to derive better business outcomes from their networks.

SPECIAL STORY /40

ARUBA ATMOSPHERE 2017

EDITORIAL :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04 CHANNEL STREET :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 FOCUS STORY “FOCUS KUWAIT” ::::::::::: 42 BAHRAIN ROUNDTABLE /38

INNOVATIONS :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 49

BAHRAIN CIO ROUNDTABLE UNLOCKED NEW SKYLINES FOR OPEX-SAVVY ENTERPRISES ‘SPEED’ ADVERTISER INDEX: CIF 02, EMITAC 03, VEEAM 07, REDHAT 09, OMA 11, RAMADAN 13, SPIRE 15, GEC AWARDS 2017 17, FINESSE 19, DARKMATTER 21, SOPHOS 23, DELL EMC WORLD 45, GBM 51, GEC OPEN 52

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05

CHANNEL

STREET MICHAEL DELL, CEO OF DELL TECHNOLOGIES

Dell Technologies Simplifies IoT for Customers with New IoT Products and Partnerships Dell Technologies has announced new Internet of Things (IoT) products and partnerships to help customers take the complexity out of their IoT deployments and more quickly realize Digital Transformation. Dell has carefully curated a group of IoT software and services partners through the Dell IoT Solutions Partner and Dell EMC Partner Programs.

Many partners have deep, proven expertise in industry-specific IoT challenges, and can help

with everything from managing multiprotocol data sources to security to analytics.

New partners recently added to the program include Analog Devices, Atos, Bosch, ForgeRock, IOTech, Mocana and Modius. Dell and Bosch have jointly developed an Industry 4.0 jump start kit to help customers implement IoT projects quickly to realize faster ROI. The kit consists of multiple Bosch XDK sensors, a Dell Edge Gateway, ready-to-go use-cases, cloud

SAP LEONARDO ACCELERATES INNOVATION & UNLOCKS EXPONENTIAL VALUE SAP has harnessed its digital core, bold technologies of the future and its expertise in ERP to help customers make everything digital, programmable, smarter. SAP’s commitment to an open ecosystem and strong partnerships will be key for the cloud-based enterprise, seen as a cornerstone for the new global economy. The expanded .SAP Leonardo brings together differentiating software capabilities in machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, analytics and blockchain on SAP Cloud Platform together with SAP experience, deep process and industry knowledge, and advanced design thinking methodology.

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integration and software, all preconfigured.

Atos and Dell EMC are working together to build an IoT service management framework, Atos Codex IoT Services, to allow customers to be assured that all users can continuously create value from their connected devices.

Atom AMPD, an enterprise-level communications solution provider, will also bundle their software with Dell Edge Gateways and Embedded Box PCs.

VMWARE AND AZURE TOUCH A NEW ‘HORIZON’ IN CLOUD VMware will deliver VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. The integration helps customers accelerate the move to Windows 10 and brings VMware virtual desktops and applications to the increasing global presence of Azure in the enterprise – available in 38 regions globally. “The addition of VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure puts VMware in a unique position to offer customers several infrastructure options for virtual desktops and applications with the flexibility to move between different platforms,” said Sumit Dhawan, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “This is an example of VMware executing against its cross-cloud strategy and bringing innovation to the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) category it pioneered in 2009.”

ENTERPRISES STRUGGLE to deliver Availability across even the most modern environments

Veeam recently surveyed over 1000 global enterprise decision makers to understand the protection, recovery and Availability challenges faced by modern organizations. Research insights identified a startling amount of under-protected or unreliably recoverable data within these organizations, seriously hindering their digital transformation strategies.

It's alarming to see that...

82% 77%

Resulting downtime is inevitable and extremely costly!

Downtime happens and it costs the average enterprise each year

of organizations are experiencing an Availability Gap and are unable to meet the uptime SLAs expected

of organizations are experiencing a Protection Gap and are unable to protect data frequently or reliably

$21.8 MILLION 36%

Cost increase year-over-year

How is this affecting digital transformation within the enterprise?

The impact of downtime or data loss

MORE THAN JUST MONEY...

69%

of enterprises recognize that digital transformation is critical to their future

Loss of customer confidence,

Damage to brand integrity,

Loss of employee confidence,

Diversion of project resources,

48%

40%

33%

28%

66%

45%

are planning these initiatives now

admit a lack of Availability is stifling innovation

What can your organization afford to lose?

With an average annual cost of $21.8M in Availability challenges, organizations cannot afford the status quo any longer. Organizations must accelerate their planning and implementation of modern Availability solutions that will ensure reliable and rapid recovery.

LEARN MORE

go.veeam.com/2017-availability-report

CHANNEL STREET

GBM Named Partner of the Year

by F5

NETAPP INTRODUCES NEW HYBRID CLOUD OFFERING

Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has been named as the “Partner of the Year in Europe, Middle East, and Africa” at the annual F5 Agility 2017 conference in Barcelona, Spain. The award seeks to recognize a partner of F5 Networks which has demonstrated exemplary performance in business growth, customer focus, and technical excellence.Commenting on this award, Michael Schoenrock, Director, Channel Sales EMEA, F5 Networks, said “The past year has been full of success across EMEA and our partners been at the heart of it all.

HID GLOBAL EXPANDS IOT PORTFOLIO HID Global revealed its extended portfolio of innovative IoT with its latest offerings that help organizations take the leap to a new level of asset and equipment management. HID Location Services for Item Management precisely monitors the location and movement of assets and equipment across multiple locations or in a specific area, and the new HID Condition Monitoring Services provides real-time analysis of equipment performance and health. The offerings provide a simple solution for streamlining the daily operations in hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and a wide range of industrial organizations requiring instant, actionable data to optimize workflow, processes and equipment efficiency.

NetApp introduced new hybrid cloud offerings that give customers unprecedented ability to use data for competitive advantage.The announcements expand the company’s Data Fabric solutions and services portfolio to include the industry’s first enterprise-scale hyper converged solution (HCI), new consumption purchase models, improved all-flash capabilities, and hybrid cloud offerings that simplify moving data to and from the public cloud.

NetApp’s hybrid cloud innovations allow customers to break down barriers to transformation by helping them to unify data across the widest range of cloud and on-premises environments. When data is at the heart of transformation, organizations are empowered to create more customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation, and optimize operations.

“Organizations that understand how to derive the full value from their data will see their digital transformations drive greater competitive advantage in the shortest amount of time,” said Simon Robinson, Research vice president, at 451 Research.

“To succeed, customers need to change their mindsets on data management, to liberate themselves from data siloes and seek approaches that unite data no matter where it resides. NetApp’s expanded portfolio, with its new HCI, hybrid cloud, and consumption model solutions, provides the means to maximize the impact of data, no matter where it lives, and create new value across the organization.”

IST LAUNCHES CLOUD-BASED DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PLATFORM Continuing to build on their 15-year legacy of enabling enterprises in the Middle East to deploy customer-centric contact centers that deliver improved customer outcomes, IST launched IST OmniCloud, a cloudbased digital customer

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experience platform, and IST Sentiment Analysis. Available as independent solutions or as an integrated platform, IST OmniCloud and IST Sentiment Analysis allow enterprises to build a comprehensively integrated customer

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experience across web, email and social channels and gain actionable customer intelligence that will enable them to reduce costs, acquire more customers, expand business in to new markets and improve customer retention.

SHERIF FAHMY, MARKETING MANAGER AT IST.

CHANNEL STREET

Mimecast and PhishMe collaborate to improve Cyber Resilience

6

SECONDS

STARLINK AWARDED RIVERBED EMEA DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR The awards were presented at the Riverbed Partner Summit 2017. This summit brings the company’s most influential partners together with Riverbed leadership to drive further coordination and collaboration to capitalize on the enormous market opportunity being created by the shift to the cloud, digital transformation and evolving channel dynamics

ED JENNINGS, COO AT MIMECAST

L&T INFOTECH IS LTI NOW Larsen & Toubro Infotech launched its new brand identity as LTI. Encapsulated in the tagline ‘Let’s Solve’, LTI looks to partnering with clients to help them compete better in a world where digital and physical are converging. The core idea of the brand, ‘Pioneering Solutions in a Converging World’ drives entire organization to design, innovate and invest in solutions that help clients accelerate digital transformation.

EFATOORA COMPLEMENTS SMART DUBAI INITIATIVE eFatoora is being launched in Dubai following lab testing and pilots with key partners in the UAE. eFatoora offers an effortless, non-

Mimecast Limited collaborated with PhishMe to integrate their expansive security educational content to help organizations improve employee awareness of common email-borne attacks. The power of Mimecast and PhishMe together provides customers with enhanced cyber resilience against the latest spear-phishing, ransomware and impersonation attacks that are plaguing organizations today. Through this partnership, organizations can now harness powerful security controls with impactful education from the

cloud. “Most organizations lack both sufficient technical security controls and end-user education when it comes to identifying and stopping the latest email-borne threats,” said Ed Jennings, COO at Mimecast.

“Conditioning employees to recognize phishing email is critical to reaching the end goal of identifying and reporting attacks to security teams to minimize business impact,” said Allan Carey, VP of Business Development, PhishMe.

disruptive experience to consumers with digital adaptable technology with seamless integration.

The launch of eFatoora complements the Smart Dubai initiative, which is a visionary effort undertaken by the Emirate to transform it into the world’s smartest and happiest city by ensuring the sustained happiness of its citizens, residents and visitors by 2021.

BATELCO AND TATA COMMUNICATIONS JOIN HANDS Batelco and Tata Communications have signed an agreement further strengthening their

PULSE SECURE TO ACQUIRE VADC BUSINESS FROM BROCADE

partnership to extend the reach of their global

An affiliate of Pulse Secure, LLC (“Pulse Secure has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire assets associated with the Virtual Application Delivery Controller (vADC) product family from Brocade Communications Systems. The transaction includes a leased research and development facility in Cambridge, UK and associated customer support and maintenance contracts. This acquisition will add significant new capabilities to the Pulse Secure Access Platform, allowing Pulse Secure to deliver a complete end-to-end solution designed to reduce cost and complexity, increase security, and delight users. “The combined company’s nearly 750 employees postacquisition will be uniquely focused on delivering secure access for people, devices, things, and services,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO of Pulse Secure.”

Communications as a cloud partner to ensure

data centre, cloud and connectivity solutions to their customers. Batelco has chosen Tata high levels of flexibility and reliability for its customers through Tata Communications’ IZO Cloud Enablement Platform. Batelco Bahrain CEO Eng. Muna Al Hashemi said that forming strategic partnerships with world leading organisations such as Tata Communications is an important pillar of Batelco’s global expansion plans and crucial in supporting Batelco’s trusted and resilient networks.

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CHANNEL STREET

Help AG Signs Reseller Agreement with TITUS

STEPHAN BERNER, CEO AT HELP AG

Help AG signed a reseller agreement with TITUS who provides flexible classification solutions that allow for the accurate identification of email, documents, and other unstructured file types.

TITUS Classification enables people and technology within organizations to better understand, value, and protect information assets, leading to enhanced information governance and sharing decisions. Stephan Berner, CEO at Help AG, said,”Data is the new oil in the Middle East. The consumption, sharing, and analysis of information is what drives business but at the same time, these essential functions add security risk if not properly managed and monitored. In over a decade, we have established ourselves as the

trusted security advisor to many of the region’s largest government, defence and financial institutions. Through our partnership with TITUS, we will now focus on solving these enterprises’ most critical data protection challenges.” Mitch Robinson, President and COO at TITUS, said, “We are pleased to have the opportunity to work with Help AG to significantly grow our presence in the Middle East. Help AG’s track record and their wealth of knowledge and experience in the security sector will enable TITUS to increase the introduction of our solutions to enterprises throughout the area. We are looking forward to strengthening our relationships and growing our enterprise customer base in this region.”

CONNECT SELECTS INFINET TO SERVE AS THE BACKBONE OF THEIR NEW WIRELESS NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE Connect has selected InfiNet Wireless solutions to serve as the backbone of their new wireless network infrastructure. The upgraded platform will allow Connect to meet the highbandwidth and zero-downtime demands of premium residential and enterprises customers across the country, while at the same time significantly reducing maintenance and service costs. Jubran El Ayan, RF Manager at Connect explained, “We are using a WiMAX Network, on the 2.3 GHz frequency band, to serve residential customers. While we are able to meet the standard bandwidth requirements of our residential customers, some of our premium residential and corporate customers such as banks and retail outlets, require high bandwidth. Our existing WiMAX platform is limited to 5 Mbps for downlink and 2 Mbps for uplink which meant that we simply could not meet such bandwidth requirements.”

“These service providers account for a large portion of our customer base and over the last couple of years, we have made significant investments in developing solutions, like the InfiLINK XG and InfiLINK XG-1000, to cater to this sector. Having worked closely with Mada in Kuwait, it is gratifying that their sister company in Lebanon, Connect, have also selected InfiNet’s solutions to improve service to their customers. I look forward to supporting them over the years to come as they achieve their growth ambitions in the region,” concluded Kamal Mokrani, Global Vice President, InfiNet Wireless

COMMSCOPE DISCUSSES NEXT GENERATION WIRELESS NETWORKS AT 5G MENA As the bandwidth needs of communications networks continue to grow, the next wave in mobile innovation, 5G, is beginning to take shape. Helping network operators prepare for 5G is where CommScope is focused, which the company will demonstrate at 5G MENA 2017.

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“CommScope is working with network operators in the MENA region on how new technologies such as 5G will be deployed so that they are ready to address the bandwidth and service needs of their customers,” said Joseph Habib, Head of Service Providers in the Middle East, CommScope. CommScope’s

fundamental viewpoint is that 5G will be a “network of networks”—a convergence of wireline and wireless with deep fibre penetration in both to support the variety of 5G use cases. The wireless industry has coalesced around three primary use cases for 5G: enhanced mobile broadband, the Internet of Things

and ultra-low latency applications.

5G envisions super-fast data rates for each user, massive machine-tomachine communications in which billions of devices send short bursts of information to other systems, and futuristic applications like autonomous cars and augmented reality.

wishes all readers May the blessings of the holy month bring prosperity in abundance to all

www.ec-mea.com, www.gec360.org

CHANNEL STREET

IFS and ISYX Shake Hands The IFS and ISYX partnership will help deliver IFS’s innovative product portfolio to customers across the Middle East and Africa. ISYX will work with IFS to build a strong customer base.

As part of the agreement, ISYX will market and deploy IFS’s complete range of enterprise applications including enterprise resource planning, enterprise asset management (EAM) and field service management (FSM) for its customers across the MEA region.

WEB CLIPS NXN JOINS MCAFEE TO LAUNCH MSSP IN MIDDLE EAST NXN (formerly neXgen Group) has joined forces with McAfee to launch a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) practice in the Middle East. The MSSP practice will enable NXN to build on their already impressive Smart City Managed Service offering by providing governments & enterprises in the GCC, particularly in the critical infrastructure sector, security monitoring, threat detection and analysis services.

SHAROON SHAMSUDDIN, CEO OF ISYX TECHNOLOGIES AND LUIS ORTEGA, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR IFS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH ASIA AND AFRICA

TEAMBASE RECOGNIZED AS 2017 MICROSOFT COUNTRY PARTNER OF THE YEAR Teambase has won the 2017 Microsoft

SECLORE APPOINTS REDINGTON GULF AS VAD

Country Partner of the Year Award for

Seclore Technologies has appointed Redington Gulf as a Value-Added Distributor for the region. Seclore is committing additional investment to expanding and developing its presence and impact in the Middle East, following the opening of a new regional office in Dubai, in April 2017. Seclore is expanding its GCC presence and operations in response to increasing demand for its solutions. Amit Malhotra, VP Sales India Middle East & Africa, Seclore, comments: “We are already active in the GCC with a particular focus on the UAE, where our GCC regional office provides technical expertise and support closer to our customers. Data losses are at all-time high and information centric security is gaining momentum, highlighted by the recent global ransomware attacks, so our timing is very appropriate as data security is pushed to the top of the corporate agenda.”

honoured among a global field of top Micro-

United Arab Emirates. The company was soft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

BATELCO & GULF AIR MARK 40 YEARS OF PARTNERSHIP Batelco and Gulf Air, marking 40 years of partnership, have signed an agreement that will extend their longstanding business relationship and ensure the delivery of the latest communications solutions for Gulf Air’s

MOVEMENTS MICROSOFT Appoints Sayed Hashish as Regional General Manager for Microsoft Gulf.

GRAHAM PORTER is Head of Channels for Middle East at Veeam

75 NUMBER GAME

percent AARON WHITE is the New Regional Director for Sage Middle East

Cerner MEA appoints ADRIAN DEY as GM for Qatar & Michael Schelper as COO MEA

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According to Gartner, by 2020, Advanced Security Analytics Will Be Embedded in at Least 75 Percent of Security Products

evolving operation. Under the agreement, Batelco will provide Gulf Air with the latest communications solutions based on Dedicated Internet Access, Local MPLS and Global MPLS networks. Batelco is committed to boosting the digital drive in the Kingdom to promote more efficient processes and operations.

TREND MICRO APPOINTS GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE Trend Micro has appointed Global Knowledge to provide training to all its partners and customers across MEA. These training programs and courses will be offered to industry professionals looking to maximizing their knowledge and skills on all Trend Micro solutions, including those powered by XGen security. Trend Micro training courses include hands-on and virtual practice labs featuring the relevant scenarios in server security, cloud security and small business content security.

CHANNEL STREET

Sophos Recognizes Top Performing Channel Partners

Sophos presented awards to six of its top performing channel partners from the MEA region at its EMEA Partner Conference which was held in Lisbon, Portugal between 9th – 11th May, 2017. These awards were in recognition for their proactive approach and significant achievements in FY 17. The event attracted 750 attendees across Europe, MEA.“We would like to congratulate our winning partners and extend our gratitude to all our partners for their continuous support and commitment in embracing our complete IT

security value proposition and recognizing the benefits of delivering our award-winning, simpleto-use security solutions to their customers, ” commented Harish Chib, Vice President Middle East & Africa, Sophos. “As a 100 percent channel focused business, the success of our channel partners is vital to the success of Sophos and it’s an honour for us to work with some of the best channel partners in MEA in order to provide to the products and the best customers service,” he continued.

EHOSTING DATAFORT LAUNCHES CYBER DEFENSE CENTRE ”eHDF’s CDC deploys advanced security intelligence and automation tools to help identify threats more quickly and with greater accuracy and precision. Our CDC teams deliver threat hunting services using a combination of Threat Intelligence and end point technologies that allow us to detect more complex threats that may be dormant in a customer’s environment,” said, Yasser Zeineldin, CEO, eHosting DataFort. The CDC comes at a crucial time when organizations in the Middle East are faced with advanced and persistent security threats.

JUNIPER UNIFIES SECURITY ENFORCEMENT WITH SDSN Juniper Networks has made enhancements to its Software-Defined Secure Networks (SDSN) platform to deliver pervasive security across multi-vendor environments, public clouds and private clouds. Powered by automated enforcement, real-time intelligence and machine learning, SDSN knows when and how to defend an organization’s people, data and infrastructure, while using an open framework to help simplify their operation.

Juniper is broadening this ecosystem through enhancements to its Junos Space Security Director Policy Enforcer, which automates security policy enforcement across the network, preventing threats across firewalls, Juniper switches and now third-party switches – an industry first. Additionally, Security Director and vSRX will also be compatible with VMware NSX to provide elevated management, policy enforcement, Layer 4-7 next-generation firewall and threat containment for applications in the private cloud.Hatem Hariri, general manager, Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks said, “Following the recent high-profile global cyber-attacks that crippled many organizations, cybersecurity is no longer a concern for only CISOs. Juniper’s Software-Defined Secure Networks platform can help enhance the existing security infrastructure already in place across organizations, both private and public.”

SMART GRID SECURITY SUMMIT ADDRESSES CRITICAL SECURITY NEEDS The 2nd Annual Smart Grid Security Summit, a security conference dedicated to utilities, regulators, ministries, consultants, researchers and vendors, took place on May 22, 2017 Organized by the OSGP Alliance. The conference has gathered industry stakeholders

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from the region and the world to discuss critical smart grid security needs through a series of case studies and related presentations.

Mariusz Jurcyzk, Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project Manager for Tauron Group presented the first case study on

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AMIplus Smart City Wroclaw, focusing on interoperability and security as the key priorities for Smart Grids. H.E. Dr. Rashid Alleem, Chairman, SEWA said: “The Smart Grid system is a perfect solution for our diversification efforts to gradually steer

away from non-renewable energy resources. The case studies and roundtable sessions provide valuable insights on energy-efficient technologies that will ensure uninterrupted supply, optimized efficiency, and rationalized consumption.”

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KNET Selects Gemalto to Supply Confirm Authentication Server Gemalto has been selected by KNET, Kuwait’s national Shared Electronic Banking Service Company, and jointly owned by 11 Kuwait’s banking institutions, to supply its Confirm Authentication Server. Gemalto’s solution generates One-Time-Passwords for online authentication, enabling millions of safe eTransactions in the country via the KNET e-payment gateway and delivering a step change in fraud protection.

The secure platform is highly customizable and it can support a wide range of authentication

and signing methods. Starting with SMS OTP, it will ultimately enable banks to expand towards Gemalto Mobile Protector and Secure Messenger solutions. KNET ePayment gateway also serves the country’s government entities, for the payment of fees and bills related to over 60 governmental electronic payment services. “With eCommerce and eGovernment services booming in Kuwait, providers and end users alike needed stronger protection,” said Abdulla Al-Ajmi, CEO for KNET.

MITIGATING GROWING RISKS OF ACCOUNT TAKEOVERS Digital Shadows unveiled research into some of the main techniques cybercriminals are using to target organizations using stolen credentials which have been reused across a variety of sites and online forums. The report “Protect Your Customer and Employee Accounts: 7 Ways To Mitigate The Growing Risks Of Account Takeovers” also outlines what measures organizations can implement to protect against such attacks.

The research reveals that cybercriminals are increasingly turning to credential stuffing tools to automate attempts at account takeover. This is a type of brute force attack whereby large sets of credentials are automatically inserted into login pages until a match with an existing account is found. Based on configurations, the most common targets for these attacks are the gaming, technology, broadcasting and retail sectors.

Last year Digital Shadows found that 97% of businesses in the ‘Forbes 1000’ had their valuable credentials exposed, usually by employees using the same details across multiple sites and platforms. Now criminals are recognizing that employees often have poor username and password discipline to use these in mass automated credential stuffing attacks aiming to gain access to corporate networks.

ATTIVO NETWORKS DESIGNS NEW TECHNOLOGY TO FIGHT RANSOMWARE Attivo Networks has urged not only healthcare, but all industries to take immediate steps in the wake of Friday’s global ransomware attacks. “The recent massive cyberattack manifested a significant change in the cyber realm. It was indicative of cybercriminals crossing the lines of ethical boundaries at the expense of public safety” says Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East, Turkey & Africa at Attivo Networks.

WannaCry Ransomware hit globally and has been referred to as a weapon of mass destruction based on its ability to spread like wildfire once it has gained access to unpatched computers. The impact has been significant and has targeted financial, energy, transportation, government, and hospitals. The malicious software behind the onslaught appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows.

“There are solutions in the marketplace today that can isolate ransomware immediately upon an attacker’s attempted access to networked drives or their in-network lateral movement,” added Kafity. “It is noted that Attivo’s high interaction deception techniques have been Attivo Labs tested to slow down the encryption process by 25x. This slows down the WannaCry Ransomware and provides incident response teams valuable time to respond and isolate the attacks either manually or automatically through 3rd party integrations”. The Attivo Networks solution for ransomware starts by providing a “motion sensor” that alerts the organization of an attacker that tries to encrypt the decoy drive or compromise a Windows SMB vulnerability.

EPICOR ERP’S LATEST VERSION STRENGTHENS CLOUD-FIRST ARCHITECTURE Epicor has introduced the latest version of Epicor ERP, building on the strengths of its cloud-first architecture. The latest release provides powerful new capabilities to support operational excellence, improved visibility, and revenue expansion—critical to achieve sustained growth in

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the increasingly competitive and fast-paced global business arena, with new functionality to support top-line revenue growth while controlling bottom-line costs.“With margins for products eroding, customer demands increasing, and an uncertain and somewhat unstable global

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economy, manufacturers need to use technology to increase their business agility, and enable strategic decision-making,” said Scott Hays, senior vice president, product marketing, Epicor.

“Designed to support how people work, today and in the future, Epicor ERP helps businesses make

the most of technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data and analytics, social collaboration, mobility and additive manufacturing.” The new release also features fully integrated enterprise content management capabilities from the company’s January 2017 acquisition of DocStar.

CHANNEL STREET

Pulse Secure Signs Spectrami as VAD

Pulse Secure has signed a new distribution relationship with Spectrami, under the terms of which Spectrami will offer its innovative Vendor Extension Model (VEM) to serve a channel community of Middle East regional partners through a full multi point engagement from pre-sales, sales, marketing, delivery and channel fulfilment.

“We are witnessing increased demand from across the region for Secure Access solutions ready for the next generation of workers and agile organisations and our new partnership with Pulse Secure offers a perfect foundation to help

our channel deliver comprehensive end-to-end solutions,” said Anas Handous, Director, Global Alliance at Spectrami.

Leveraging local teams of sales and technical resources in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, Spectrami will offer the complete portfolio of Pulse Secure products across access control, SSL VPN, and mobile device security while working closely with partners to deliver promotional activities and educational programs for end customers.

RED HAT STRENGTHENS IT OPENSHIFT CONTAINER PLATFORM Red Hat and Amazon Web Services extended strategic alliance to natively integrate access to AWS services into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Through this unique offering, Red Hat will make AWS services accessible directly within Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, allowing customers to take advantage of the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud whether they’re using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on AWS or in an on-premises environment. Customers will be able to seamlessly configure and deploy a range of AWS services such as Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and Elastic Load Balancing with just a few clicks from directly within the Red Hat OpenShift console.

CERN SELECTS ARUBA HPE WIRELESS NETWORKS Aruba, a HPE company said that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is upgrading its wireless network with Aruba 802.11ac Wave 2 access points and mobility controllers.

The world’s largest physics lab, in which the Worldwide Web originated, is moving to a state-of-the-art wireless campus to ensure maximal workplace productivity for the 12,000 staff, visiting scientists and contract workers onsite everyday who require secure gigabit mobility across CERN’s 200+ building campus.To enable its staff and scientists to achieve their research goals, CERN decided to upgrade its infrastructure to provide a modern, mobile-first campus that could accommodate the nearly 20,000 different devices that need to connect to the network daily.

Reliable coverage across its campus, enabling visiting scientists and workers to use their own mobile devices, and the ability to properly sandbox visitor devices and detect ‘rogue’ access points, were key concerns for the CERN IT staff.

“Moving from our current network to a controller-based network that enables seamless roaming from one building to another and can help us provide different levels of connectivity based on the type of user connecting were top priorities for us,” said Tony Cass, Leader of the Communications Systems Group and Physicist at CERN. While CERN already had a highperformance HPE wired network in place, they wanted to update their wireless network to keep up with user demands for greater mobility.

REALIZING COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH SYSTEM WITH UNIFIED PATIENT DATABASE The Ministry of Health and Prevention hosted the third workshop on unified patient record database, in the presence of coordinating committee members from concerned health authorities and government bodies such as Abu Dhabi Health Authority, Dubai Health Authority, Dubai Healthcare City, Emirates

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Identity Authority, and Purehealth.

H.E. Awad Saghir Al Ketbi, Assistant Undersecretary for the Support Services Sector, led the opening of the workshop to emphasize the importance of the unified database project. H.E. said that coordination and integrated support from all concerned parties are the key to achiev-

ing the goals of the National Agenda aimed at building a comprehensive health system, The initiative is also in alignment with the Ministry’s strategy to improve the quality of its work systems, enhance health facilities, and ensure easy access to healthcare services according to international standards. Ali Juma Al Ajmi, Direc-

tor of the Ministry’s Information Technology Department, said that the unified patient database project seeks to provide contemporary patient care, save time and expenses, improve local healthcare, enhance patient participation, and maintain privacy according to the highest international standards.

GUEST TALK

24.7.365 Availability Keeps Customers Loyal VEEAM

In this digital age, unexpected downtime can be hugely damaging to companies — both financially and with regards to their reputation.

n M O H A M A D R I Z K , M A N A G E R S Y S T E M E N G I N E E R S , M I D D L E E A S T AT V E E A M

The lightning-fast pace of technological innovation is forcing organizations to change the way they operate or risk falling behind. As IT leaders and analysts say, every company is now becoming a software company.

We’ve entered a new era of the Always-On Enterprise, where businesses operate globally on an 24.7.365 basis, and where IT services and applications must run continuously. The need to deliver round-the-clock access to applications and data has never been more critical. Companies want to ensure business continuity and thus cope with the new demands of their customers, employees and partners to remain competitive.

Mobility, connected devices, cloud technologies and virtualization are transforming business

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operations in every industry. Health care organizations are improving patient outcomes with digital patient records. Financial services companies are delivering mobile banking while keeping pace with growing regulations. Manufacturers are driving efficiencies and cutting costs through logistics. Higher education institutions are keeping students and faculties connected with apps, data and virtual classrooms across devices.

Retail companies are finding new ways to interact with customers to keep their registers ringing, both online and in store.

The highest spending IT budgets are allocated to improve the customer experience. Customer loyalty, which plays a primary role for every company and covers all industries, relies on them

having confidence in uninterrupted and always available services. Companies spend billions on building brands and getting loyal customers, but all these efforts and investments can be lost or seriously damaged very quickly.

Internal events like power failures and negligence, or even external things like hacking, lightning and flooding, may undermine the proper functioning of a company. This can cause the loss of key data, in addition to negatively impacting a company’s reputation and revenue.

In the latest Veeam market & customer survey conducted with ESG, the 2017 Veeam Availability Report, chief information officers reported that downtime incidents are on the rise, costing Middle East enterprises an average of $21.8 million annually. On top of the financial damage, there’s always irreparable damage to reputation and customer confidence. The study shows that more than half (57%) of regional enterprises see a loss of customer confidence, and 48 percent experienced damage to brand integrity, which affect both brand reputation and customer retention. Looking at internal implications, nearly half of respondents (43%) see diminished employee confidence and 30 percent have experienced a diversion of project resources to ‘clean up’ the mess. 48% say impact is reduced stock price, which along with loss in customer confidence is their biggest concern.

It’s not easy to keep customers around in today’s highly competitive market, but it’s even more difficult to meet their expectations and keep them satisfied. Digital transformation is making companies rethink the role of IT in their business and dictates the need to adopt and properly balance modern technologies and solutions for the benefit of the business. Your investment in IT today will pay out for your brand loyalty tomorrow. If you want to provide better customer experience and get higher customer satisfaction rates, your business should be Always-On with its applications and have services always available — 24.7.365. ë

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05.10.2016 18:54:21

COVER STORY

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ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

‘Integrate’ It is time to wake up to a new reality of integration in Enterprise Applications.

Comprehension, Logic and Learning— any application that does not evolve to inculcate these attributes will definitely not see the sunrise of 2020. Mobile and IoT technologies integrated with AI features are already enabling data driven solutions. Intelligent, adaptive, real-time analytics is the way to customer wins.

to Exist n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

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hen I cite the example of the newly introduced Robocop in Dubai, I may not be precisely talking on the subject of enterprise application. But, the invention (that is a striking testimony of automation that has stepped on to the streets) speaks out the mind of the globe, that has a huge appetite for integrated, novel and intelligent solutions and applications like never before. Picking facts from reports, he can detect a person’s emotions and facial expressions, and can change his own expression and greetings accordingly to be as humane as possible to calm a person. The Robocop will use facial recognition software to help police officers identify and catch offenders, as well as broadcast live video feeds.

So, that is the way and direction in which applications have evolved. Integrated cloud platforms, smart devices, artificial intel-

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COVER STORY

“Big Data analytics has become a big industry driver and has seen exponential growth in the region as enterprises look to this trend for informed decision making to give their business a competitive edge.”

-KERRY KOUTSIKOS,

“Customers are increasingly looking for solutions and partners who will digitally enable their businesses for them to become more efficient, gain new customers as well as market share” -ROBERT KOVAL,

“At ValueMentor, Enterprise Application Security service includes 4 key stages, Security Governance, Security Design, Security Assessment & Secure Deployments” -BINOY KOONAMMAVU

ligence and other agents are together fuelling the very existence of enterprise applications.

Research, Global Enterprise Application Market size is estimated to be worth USD 259.51 billion by 2022 and according to a new study by Grand View Research, increasing need among organization for single data access point is anticipated to drive industry growth over the forecast period.

Implementation of enterprise application solution enables real time data and information flow along with level running of business process.

Use of these solutions enable better customer engagement, inventory management, quality management and supply chain management.

Increasing IT budget of the companies is expected to favor industry growth over the next seven years. Availability of open source solution and high maintenance cost may hinder industry growth over the next seven years.

According to ValueMentor, Another key area that requires attention is the security of the application. Most of the enterprise applications undergo a lot of customization. In many cases, we have seen these customizations adds weaknesses as well. Secure design thinking is a key concept an organization can adapt so that the customizations are also secure by design. According to reports, the emergence of smart data discovery capabilities, machine learning and automation of the entire analytics workflow will drive a new flurry of buying because of its potential value to reduce time to insights from advanced analytics and deliver them to a broader set of people across the enterprise.

“Big Data analytics has become a big industry driver and has seen exponential growth in the region as enterprises look to this trend for informed decision making to give their business a competitive edge. With the rise of intuitive Big Data analytical tools, businesses across the Middle East are beginning to feel more assertive in their exploration of this technology, especially with benefits now being understood by IT decision makers and C-Suite in how the effective

COUNTRY MANAGER, MEA & TURKEY, QLIK

MAKING WAY FOR MODERN APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES It is time to unify. Scattered interface would be the last thing that an organization would want in today’s timeline. And believe it or not, the need for a comprehensive single interface would be the most sought after and at the same time, the most challenging aspect for enterprise application as VAT gets introduced. I am sure we all have started getting numerous emails and calls from various ERP vendors and their sales team for VAT training and telling us about the possible implications that it would have on our systems.

Coming to our concern here; Should the enterprises be actually worrying about the aftermath of VAT implementation (if at all the implication is huge)? Or should the vendors and their partners be more equipped to tackle this and have the customer just subscribe or avail the service from the vendor or partner?

According to report published by Grand View

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EVOLVING CALIBRES Yes, there is a mounting pressure to introduce intelligence based analytics in the enterprise software. Machine learning is getting mainstream and not limited to the academia’s research lab.

IBM’s recent services in Watson technology is a striking evidence of that.

CEO & PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT, VALUEMENTOR.

COVER STORY

2015

2020

$ 887.5 mn

$ 2404.5 mn

Middle East cloud applications market is expected to grow from $887.5 Million in 2015 to $2404.5 Million by 2020

“We adopt security best practices and static analysis tools for detecting problems.”

-AHRAR NAQVI, CEO, EBRYX

2016

2021 USD 98.03 bn

USD 48.24 bn

Global Mobile Enterprise Application Market to Grow from USD 48.24 Billion in 2016 to USD 98.03 Billion by 2021

use of deriving insights from business intelligence can become the basis of providing their business a competitive edge,” says Kerry Koutsikos, Country Manager, MEA & Turkey, Qlik

SAAS- REACH AND UPTAKE Saas is a very strong paradigm and it saves a lot of investment in order to deploy your software in house and manage that. So, it works very well to a lot of use cases.,” says Ahrar Naqvi, CEO, Ebryx “The modern enterprise application market is at a very interesting place right now and it is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

Customers are increasingly looking for solutions and partners who will digitally enable their businesses for them to become more efficient, gain new customers as well as market share. We are also seeing adoption and wider acceptance of the cloud and SaaS offerings amongst our clients who are increasingly looking for innovative business models and partnerships. In order to succeed the modern enterprise applications space, vendors need to become true enablers and business partners to their customers,” said – Robert Koval,

Managing Director Teambase The emergence of Software as a Service (SaaS) has significantly impated the way in which a CIO moulded his budget. Breathing that much needed ease into the application offering models, SaaS brought in that extra added value that a CIO was looking for. Cloud native and cloud based applications propelled it further. As the SaaS model affords ease of adapting to changing business pace, agility, improved performance, and a lower total cost of ownership, the adoption of cloud is set to increase in the coming years. “Most of our applications are cloud based. So they are intended for containerized cloud deployment.

And we are using native cloud services in building our applications.” said Ahrar.

SURVIVING THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION While talking to some solution providers at the recently held GISEC 2017 show, we could see that niche technologies like Artificial intelligence and machine learning have already made their way into mainstream enterprise, but the service providers were seerin an inceased challenge in

running it down the organization, as the skill sets are not at par with the technology. 42 percent of respondents to a Tech Pro Research survey said their company lacks the skills necessary to implement and support AI and machine learning, and only 28 percent said they had firsthand experience with the technology. “At ValueMentor, Enterprise Application Security service includes 4 key stages, Security Governance, Security Design, Security Assessment & Secure Deployments.

A high secure application environment can be achieved only by executing all the 4 stages” says Binoy Koonammavu, Principal Consultant, ValueMentor.

FINALLY It is time to fill in the gaps. Solution providers need to understand that the market is ripe and customers are spoilt for choice. Switching from one solution to another is just a pitch away. The pace with which start-ups and new companies are coming to the marketplace, it would be a testing time for the giants and legacy vedors.

It is time to bring in that DIFFERENCE. ë

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SPECIAL STORY

Epicor Customer Summit MENA underlines

Critical An up and close highlight of the Epicor Customer Summit MENA 2017. In conversation with some key Epicor partners and customers and their experiences with Epicor as a new generation ERP vendor.

Roadmap n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >

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eld at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Dubai, UAE, the Epicor Customer Summit MENA brought together over 120 customers from all over the region and included discussions on new releases, road map, VAT and announcement of 2017 Epicor Customer Excellence Award Winners.

The event was held following the announcement of the general availability of Epicor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution Epicor iScala. Designed specifically to support small to medium midmarket companies and subsidiaries of larger multi-nationals located in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia, the latest version of iScala features a brand new user interface in addition to new functionality that help companies drive cost efficiencies, take advantage of new global growth opportunities, and protect the business.

During the event, we had the opportunity to talk to some of the long-standing customers of Epicor and explored their experiences with the ERP vendor. Saeed Salem Abu Qafrah, CEO of Abu Qafrah Holding said, “ Our relationship with Epicor started in 2015 and since then Epicor has played a pivotal role in ensuring that the business efficiency and pace matched our visions. Epicor has helped us in delivering major projects seamlessly and we would be continuing this relationship for future as well.”

Sreekumar Nair – Finance Manager, Gemini Technical Industries, said, “Gemini is a very old and established name. As a manufacturing company, the need for an integrated ERP system was a mandate from day 1. The partnership wit Epicor has been really wonderful so far and I am sure it will just get better with time.” Sarath Bala, IT Manager, Gemini Technical Industries said, “The implementation has been really great. If this project is a success we will expand it to all our branches in the emirates.

The current scenario of MIS is dense and businesses need overall monitoring. All

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the information has to be on the fingertips that can breath ease into the workplace and business efficiencies.”

Shabbir Kathiriyawala, IT Manager, Western Furniture said, “Earlier we were using a small software, but with the advancement of the organization and technology we moved to an extensive ERP for our inventory that can give us tremendous value as we are dealing with huge products. Epicor has given us that value and it has been a great journey so far. The interface is very user-friendly and it allows us to have more data for analyses. It is highly customizable and we can tailor it as per our need.”

Epicor also recognized the winners of the 2017 Epicor Customer Excellence Awards program for the Middle East region. The global awards program, now in its second year, recognizes innovative organisations that have successfully transformed operations by deploying Epicor solutions and services to achieve excellence in business efficiency, customer experience, and overall performance.

Based in Amman, Jordan, Ocean Fresh Fish

is the Business Transformation winner, chosen for clearly demonstrating best-in-class business transformation and measurable business value from their Epicor iScala implementation.

The winner in the Technology Innovator category is Epicor iScala customer Abu Qafrh Holding from Saudi Arabia. The organisation was selected for demonstrating how they’ve used technology to drive innovation throughout their business to achieve measurable success.

The Customer Experience award winner is Jordan based, Siniora Food Industries PLC who have transformed customer experience through the implementation and adoption of Epicor iScala across their four plants in Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) has demonstrated measurable business benefits with Epicor Cloud ERP and are the winner in the Cloud Deployment category.

United Arab Emirates based Gemini Technical Industries won the Rapid Time to Value award for demonstrating a fast implementation and deployment of Epicor ERP through motivated project

teams, efficient and effective staffing, training, and production readiness.

Award entries were judged by the complexity of the project, including what business areas were impacted by the scope of the project—clearly stated objectives, why was this initiative started?

What were the deliverables? How was success defined? As well as overall business impact of the initiative relative to stated goals: What was achieved? How did this compare to the original KPIs? Talking about the event, Monzer Tohme, regional vice president, Middle East & Africa, Epicor Software said that, “The market has been challenging owing to the geo political situations, but we have has a strong foothold in the region and have seen strong growth of 35% YoY. The ERP market has gone through great disruption. BI and AI have reinvented the game. Epicor is at the center of these innovations with our various transitions in the user interfaces, combining crucial elements of BI, which makes us an idela choice for the CFOs and CIOs who are in the lookout for simplified yet cutting edge technology.” ë

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SEAMLESS

OMA EMIRATES

BREATHING SIMPLICITY INTO THE PAYMENT INDUSTRY

A

t the Seamless Middle East 2017, we got the opportunity to sit down with Oma Emirates and their long standing partners— Ingenico Group. The conversation that followed was a reflection on the Security DNA of Ingenico and how it flowed into the service delivery patterns of OMA Emirates Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group said, “As you see, in the last 3 years, Ingenico has been dominating this market in terms of any product offerings and services.

Overall in banking and non-banking, we have over 60% of the market share. It is the portability, security and stability that makes our offerings stand a class apart from the other solution providers in the market and gives us that edge.

We have been working with Ingenico for over a decade now and this is a testimony to that.”

Talking about the key strengths of Ingenico as a partner, Francois Voyron, MD MEA of Ingenico Group said, “We cannot compromise security.

Security is in our DNA. We always follow the latest standards and latest certifications.” Adding to that Niranj said, “Ingenico introduced terminals iCT and iWL 6 years back. The competition probably came in the market after 2 years. Hence, we understood the market pulse and that is where I feel that security as well as the product has been exceptionally well driven by them. Banks trust Ingenico more than any other competition terminal. Today, preference wise, it is not about the breach, it is about the service and product offerings. Ingenico does have quite a large terminal base. Security is a very important feature that Ingenico looks at. For everybody it is just a

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NIRANJ SANGAL,

GROUP CEO, OMA EMIRATES GROUP

device but for us and Ingenico it’s the security that that runs the whole feature. The solution and the security is seamless.”

At the Seamless Middle East 2017 OMA Emirates also launched their recent range of products and

solutions like the iSMP and iCMP range of PoS machines that provide payments anytime and anywhere. Talking about the simplicity of the technology that Ingenico and OMA Emirates are bringing to the market, Evren Gurleroglu, Sales Director ME, Ingenico Group said, “Payment is complicated industry but our objective is to make it seamless, to provide solutions with a good user experience. People are used to using smartphones, tablets and they expect the same behavior from POS. There is no compromise on security.” Omni channel and its longevity was one more topic that garnered a lot of attention during the event. Speaking on that Niranj said, “Omnichannel will never die, it would probably be renamed. BI is only a concept to understand customer behavior which is now getting added to the omnichannel. For example, which day do I pay my electricity bill or what is the pattern of paying it, what is the pattern of payments that I need to make it? BI helps to understand the usability of my payments that I look at. “ The Middle East is seeing an increasing number of organizations building on their loyalty programmes, OMA Emirates also showcased its ‘Benefit Beyond’ common branded card that hosts multi loyalty programmes. The platform allows card holders to avail of points across multiple outlets including airlines, supermarkets, entertainment, etc. It is not restricted to redeeming points within the same store or chain of stores where the purchase is made. The first of its kind regional concept provides the option of white labelling for customers to have their own loyalty cards but runs on the ‘Bazaar’ common platform. ë

SEAMLESS

TELR

HID GLOBAL

WISAM YAGHMOUR,

DIRECTOR OF SALES MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, PHYSICAL ACCESS CONTROL SOLUTIONS EMEA WITH HID GLOBAL

SIRISH KUMAR,

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, TELR

Telr showcased future online payment solutions

T

elr is an e-commerce solution who provide services critical to the growth of the businesses of all size online merchants. Telr is in Middle East since 4 years and has also launched in India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan and recently licensed the technology to a telecom operator in Indonesia. Telr merchants, through focus on digitization, offer taxi services, sell fashion products, offer services to open legal entities in UAE, collect management services fees from residents in apartments and enable to travel to different parts of the world. “We see online entrepreneurs use our tools to accept and manage online payments via website, mobile and social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Clearly, we feel excited to have invested in a strong experienced team in UAE and in local data centres with emphasis on online security, thereby partnering with UAE based entrepreneurs to help them grow in GCC and beyond” said Sirish Kumar, CEO and Co-Founder, Telr.com. Telr’s team, leveraging its rich experience, has built proprietary anti-fraud and risk management solutions. This has helped Telr offer advanced anti-fraud solutions to SMEs and start-ups that are generally offered only to large merchants. This helps the SME and startups increase their revenues by having a success ratio of transactions without compromising fraudulent consumer behavior. “We are getting to those markets where merchants are using social media as a surge of smart phone penetration and there is lot of cross border work as well. We have now merchants which have grown internationally and more importantly we can now help them get 15 currencies in this country” concluded Sirish. ë

HID Global’s mobility and smart card technologies in Seamless

I

n Seamless, HID Global showcased a complete new platform called HID integrated platform that shows a connected environment for financial services, financial banking and enterprise solutions where one can have a complete seamless solution. The mobile security is on demand.

Mobility is increasing day after day and the organizations are spending on enterprise segments, and financial services. “Our main focus in Seamless is the connected environment with our IoT devices which will allow us to track millions of devices and humans within the facility itself. So within our platform, organization will have a better experience and operational excellence and monitoring devices and monitoring people, tracking assets and people. In connected environment, HID Global in one of the leaders in terms of issuing, manufacturing and managing identities “said Wisam Yaghmour, Director of Sales Middle East and Africa, Physical Access Control Solutions EMEA with HID Global. A end-user HID Global study conducted in the Middle East, which surveyed decision makers from diverse industry verticals revealed that although many organisations still use access cards, 89 percent of decision makers are looking to upgrade their access control solutions.

Security within most organisations will constitute a mixed technology environment of advanced smart cards, smartphones and wearables. “Security is a top concern for financial institutions across the region. Innovative Middle East companies, particularly banks, are seeking to deploy the most advanced access control technologies as part of their goal to expand the capabilities of a smartphone or smart card,” said Wisam. ë

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DELL EMC WORLD

DELL EMC WORLD 2017

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DELL EMC WORLD

-RICHA DHANDA,

DIRECTOR, PRODUCT MARKETING, DELL EMC DATA PROTECTION

KEY TAKEWAYS FROM THE EVENT The focus continues not only on how the business technology landscape is changing for customers that may continue to monitor and we kind of bring those ideas into our solutions so that they can not only solve customers’ todays challenges but also future and emerging challenges so that our technology remains relevant as well ascustomers’ investments in our solutions are more future proof. So we continue to focus on a lot of customer.

When it comes to MEA, customers are not very open. What kind of strategies are you planning to reach out to this region?

I think for any solutions that we bring to market as Dell EMC, we focus on customer and we bring those solutions to market, to go after them holistically with all our force. So, as I am representing data protection solutions, we have announced three different things today.

They fall in two categories. The integrated appliance for overall data protection and the second announcement is on use of cloud for data protection. So, both of those have been built on how technology and business landscape is all evolving and what customers have been asking us. We are leveraging all marketing channels to kind of drive the awareness for those solutions. We have different programs to help customers adopt those solutions and kind of learn how to use them in their specific environment and even the financial card, on how Dell EMC together assist customers with financial programs, kind of procure different products, manage their OPEX/CAPEX however they want to and kind of drive the adoption in those customers. So, it is education to awareness, to making sure if the customers want services, making solutions easy to deploy, easy to procure and also kind of, later on during their life cycle easy to manage and based on future proofing, the overall technology investment they will make. So, that is how our overall messaging is and that is what we are taking to customers. So, if you look at some of our competitors, they might have a solution focused on some specific thing or limited number of applications whereas our approach is to go wide. So, we provide the solution like all our portfolio has the strategy of supporting wide ecosystem of applications, be it physical, virtual or next generation.

Data protection solutions, the way they are built, I think everybody protects their data. So, it has applicability across all verticals. And that is where all our customers are. If you look at our customers, they are very nice, spread across all the verticals. Certain verticals are more legally bound to protect data, be it, healthcare, financial services federal. We don’t build solutions which are only for specific verticals. We mature them if a specific thing needs to be added for a specific vertical, sometimes federal has certain requirements, healthcare has certain requirements, and we provide them as add-ons. We are not just focused on that. They have overall verticals spread in terms of adoption and that is how they are built.

Certainly every company wants maximum market share and that is always something to aspire for a company. From my perspective I would say that it is being balanced by providing customers not only with the best solutions which provide broad coverage in terms of workloads and at the same time being open to other things, so if you look at the ______ we support, VMware is a part of the company. We support not only that Hyper-V, which is from our partner, Microsoft. So, it provides work within the industry, so that customers have overall spectrum. So, we keep things integrated at the same time we are open for partnership.

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DELL EMC WORLD

-MARIUS HAAS,

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DELL EMC COMMERCIAL SALES

“Partner programs have been well received but we continue to make adjustments where our partners are telling us they would like to see some changes or additions. And we have seen tremendous growth especially in Europe. And customers of all types all sizes are going through this digital transformation process and they are looking for someone to help them in their journey. It is not just a technology conversation but it’s a business model transformation as well as conversation and they are asking us to provide more data scientists to provide more intelligent people to help do the forensics around how do you go create.The technology and innovation that’s been driven across the portfolio in all of the Dell technology companies and it’s our job to make sure that we position it and provide it to our customers in a business problem solving capability.. Another offering is; Cloud Flex. There is a program specifically for the hyper converged ecosystem around the VxRail making that available to customers. We created a program for all storage products and solutions.

Adding virtue stream to the partner program also is key. We have over 365 distributors around the world.”

INTEL— Data is the New Oil. Intel is building new and creative ways to advance productivity and collaboration while arming IT with solutions to effectively manage PCs to drive down costs and increase uptime to thrive in a digital world.

THE ERA OF HUMAN MACHINE PARTNERSHIPS A panel discussion about the changing relationship between technology and people. Top visionaries and technology activists Jordan Howard from GenYNot, Brian Mullins from Daqri and Liam Quinn from Dell examined the real implications that emerging technologies have for society as a whole and how these new dynamics will manifest in business and in work.

New VMware Pulse IoT Center, Dell EMC IoT Technology Advisory Services simplify IoT deployments

New IoT partnerships with Atos, Bosch and more

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DELL EMC WORLD

-MICHAEL DELL, Dell EMC and VMware, founding members of new EdgeX Foundry Linux Foundation project, join 50 other companies to build open framework for edge computing

Circular Board unveils Alice, the first-ever artificial intelligence platform for women entrepreneurs.

Developed in partnership with Dell and Pivotal, Alice is on a mission to make it possible for significantly more female founders to succeed at unprecedented levels. Driven by data analytics, Alice is a virtual advisor that connects women entrepreneurs in real time with the resources needed to scale based on startup stage, location, industry, revenue and individual needs.

CHAIRMAN & CEO, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

Michael Dell’s keynote was as alliterative as Dell EMC’s roadmap for the 2017. He kicked off the keynote by saying, “It gives us immense pleasure to see some 13, 500 Inventors and Innovators, protectors and predictors, teachers and technologists assembled here. You are some of world’s leading organizations that are going through unprecedented change.and we are here to propel that change and help you realize the digital transformation goals.” Michael Dell’s keynote speech focused on pitching how Dell Technologies can help businesses run their IT operations, retain and understand data, and develop new applications. “We have the strongest and the furthest reach, with more direct customers and more powerful channel partners than any other tech company anywhere,” said Michael .Yet another milestone in Dell Technologies journey is the ocean plastic packaging. Dell recycled plastics collected from waterways and beaches for use in the new packaging tray for its Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, building on Dell’s broader sustainable supply chain strategy. In 2017, its ocean plastics pilot will keep 16,000 pounds of plastic from entering the ocean

IT Transformation REALIZED Award Winners are AIG, CITI, Columbia Sportswear Company, Express Scripts, Jaguar Land Rover and Molina Healthcare

Dell Technologies Unveils Venture Arm Formerly in Stealth — Dell Technologies Capital. Ventures team invests approximately $100 million annually in promising founders and startups to bring innovative technology to customers

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BAHRAIN ROUNDTABLE

Bahrain CIO Roundtable Unlocked New Skylines for OPEX-savvy Enterprises Following the path of the market’s inclination and optimal shift to OPEX models and underlining the growing demand for managed and cloud services, Enterprise Channels MEA hosted an exclusive CIO round table in Bahrain that was powered by Emitac Enterprise Solutions.

A

s the modern enterprises gear up to the new emerging reality of digitization, the vendors and channel partners are already up for a paradigm shift to Service-based partnerships with the customers.

Demand for cutting edge opex models, rise in value propositions and increased competition in the market has positioned ‘Services’ as the new mandate for gaining customer confidence.

The journey of the market from ProductsSolutions-Services has been an exciting one for the CIOs. It is time to make that giant leap now

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and disregard the legacies.

Enterprise Channels MEA, under the umbrella of Enterprise Adviser, hosted a highly customized roundtable, powered by Emitac Enterprise Solutions, that put ‘Services’ on the center table and explored what is in store for the future. Under observation would be the Kingdom of Bahrain’s demand for end-to-end services and the maturity of the market in embracing this shift.

The event, held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manama on 15th May, 2017, gathered leading technology and business decision makers in the country from various sectors and put together an

interactive conversation around the shift of the market towards service dominated architectures and what do the CIOs expect from a solution provider in these changing times.

EES will be focusing and investing more on the services as it believes that is where the market is moving towards. At the end of the day, everything rounds up to services. Customers have realized that at the end of the day, they have to focus on their core business. For many organizations, IT is not a business critical department, hence they wish to cut down costs on IT services as their business became more competitive. Customers

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BAHRAIN ROUNDTABLE

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BAHRAIN ROUNDTABLE

are moving from CAPEX to OPEX and a huge focus is on BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) It is becoming more and more acceptable in this market and more project will come to the surface.

EES made significant investments in Managed Services and our NoC/ SDC. “Cloud Computing is transforming the way we do business and so are we altering our approach to meet the needs of our customer’s accordingly.

All our solutions work with each other in a hybrid model between on-premises & cloud allowing phased migration of the workloads helping organizations to move from traditional on-premises to public cloud.” - Says Basel Samara, VP of Sales, Emitac Enterprise Solutions.

I would like to thank the EC MEA team and EES for the eventfor such a rich meeting. It wasa wonderful opportunity to share and exchange knowledge with other experts,” says NezarMa-

roof, Director of eGovernment Strategy, IGA, Bahrain.

“This shift to cloud based IaaS and SaaS is inevitable mainly due to zero based CAPEX, and faster time to market. As businesses focus more on value services to their end users, using cloud architecture can help them server the customers faster, less cost and less maintenance activities in the long term in addition to higher securities measures. The US and UK markets have already shifted and chosen cloud architecture for application deployments, we are now seeing this trend in the middle east as well,” said FawazShakralla, Director of IT Projects, BIPD – Bahrain Institute for Political Development.

Naser Mohamed Moosa, Chief, Information Technology Officer, Public Prosecution, Kingdom of Bahrain said,“In order to be able to keep up with the increase in the legal workload

and actions and to keep up with the technological revolution in the legal field. We upgraded our ICT infrastructure by using the latest virtualization tools and wireless communications to link multiple prosecution locations together while obtaining high level of security using this type of communication.”

As a futuristic technology publication, Enterprise Channels MEA’s vision in hosting this roundtable was to give the CIOs and other decision makers an apt platform to bring out the pain points and the challenges that they are experiencing, rather than limiting the event to a mere presentations-centric one way conversation.

Going against the conventions, the roundtable gathered over 26 attendees from various government and private sectors of Bahrain who indulged in some serious tete-a-tete with Emitac Enterprise Solutions leadership team. ë

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SPECIAL STORY

Aruba Atmosphere 2017

that has come from them is that ‘ we are making a difference’. We have challenges like every other company, there’s always things that doesn’t work exactly as planned. What we have to do is— understand them, fix them and move on. That’s the customer first, customer last kind of mentality that we have in our company.

-

MORTEN ILLUM, VP OF EMEA, ARUBA, A HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE COMPANY

How has the ‘Atmosphere’ Experience been?

This is the biggest event which tells me that we have a ‘Place’. We were acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 2 years ago and there had been many speculations on what would happen to the brand ‘Aruba’. The event and the magnanimous turnout is the best answer to those speculations. I’m very proud of what my team have achieved. We are really focused on customers and bringing value to them rather than just technology. The best thing or experience is the feedback from the customers and partners that I have met. The singular opinion

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KeertiMelkote, in his presentation talked about how IOT, 4 or 5 years back, was just a matter of conversation and how practical it is at this point in time. So from you perspective, since you head the EMEA region, what kind of adoption do you see when we say connected workplace.

I am seeing a huge demand in real life IOT. I can give you an example of a football stadium that we have recently equipped, very large football club in Europe that has access points below the seats and enabled with Bluetooth capability that has given the audience the choice to not leave their seat during the match and order for any refreshments from your app. It has been a very strong business case. The app also enables the streaming of live videos in the stadiumowing to the great bandwidth on the network. Now, this is IoT for me in real life and I can see a huge demand for it.

Apart from hospitality and retail, that have been the major focus areas

for Aruba, how do you plan to take your solutions to the other verticals?

First and foremost, it varies from region, there is no one model which fits the whole of EMEA. We have to understand what is the need of the local market and where do we go. I think in some countries we have more finance capabilities and opportunities but in general I am a big believer of understanding something well, being good at it and deliver on that. If you go too broad, you want to cover everything in the market I think you don’t understand the sectors you are in well enough.

What is the one key message to your partners and customers?

They have to go deeper into the portfolio;they have to understand the whole technology shift which is happening in the market; they have to get acquainted with our whole software product portfolio, because there is the intelligence of what customer needs, get ready around the solutioning we are providing and go and co-deliver to the market. If you do that there is a huge opportunity in front of us. It is all about making real life examples and solutions that really makes a difference in the market. I really do believe we have a business opportunity that is as ready as it can be. It is only about how well we understand it and how well we execute it to the market we are in, and I am right there to support them. ë

SPECIAL STORY

1700 attendees which is too big so we need to be careful to keep this intimacy that peoples atmosphere. Same with US we passed 2000 attendees for this type of event and Singapore would be the same.

-

ALAIN CARPENTIER, VP OF WORLDWIDE SALES, ARUBA HPE

Tell us about the experience of organizing such a massive event like this, of bringing all the partners, and media together? How has it been for you?

I think it’s incredible. We have 3 events like this around the world. In US, Singapore and then in EMEA and then we decided to extend it last year because we have more demand now we have one in Australia and one in India.

Because there is an appetite from customers and partners to visit us and we saw a direct connection between the number of attendees and growth of a business because this event is mainly a certification training event. We want to be sure that we give value to the customer and partner. We see growth, this year in EMEA there is 30% growth so now we are around

As you’re heading the worldwide sales,which market do you see picking up the most for your kind of services and solutions?

The needs are different. Rather than the market, I think it’s more vertical driven. In the UAE, Hospitality, education are very strong verticals.

At the end, the needs are different but the way to address the issues is the same. The digital hospital you have in the middle eastis very similar to the digital hospital we have in the north of Europe.

I would say in the middle east we see a strong emergence of state of the art education sector and a booming industry of hospitality. We see also healthcare growing as the region has a great appetite towards servicesAnd what you see this morning is around customer experience and engaging with customers and we develop new services around healthcare and we see IOT coming around this segment. And it’s clear that we are at the centre of this strategy.

We start to see transformation, we see a big interest around the planet we can transform one place into a digital workplace. That is also something we start to see and its equal everywhere.

From a pure branding point of view, what kind of difference have you seen from being Aruba to Aruba HPE? I think there was an existing synergy between

the culture ofHPE and Aruba and the members fit very well. The whole idea was to maintain the equilibrium while keeping the brand images intact and that is the beauty of this combination.

The velocity is intact, the DNA is, you have seen the founder on stage, 2 years after acquisition. We started to see the effect of the leverage on HPE. We have won huge deals that was impossible for Aruba or HPE to win in the past as individual entities. This combination help us to take the best of the two world. The customers do not hesitate to move with us. And we want to be the easiest companion to work with and that was the customer first customer last DNA that Aruba had.

We have seen a huge growth from the revenue side as well. I think we were able to keep intact the Aruba DNA despite all the transformation.

I’m pretty sure that we will see the Aruba case in the business schools in future. They can analyse what we have done because it is quite unique to manage this type of integration.

What would be the key take away for your partners and customers from this event?

The take away is that we will continue to innovate and address the challenges that organizations are facing today in the wake of Digitization.

We are here to share innovation, share what we are doing, share what we have, where we are going to do and also to highlight the connection between the customers and partners. We are seeing an increased interest amongst the customers and partners for events like this where they can exchange knowledge and ideas, hence it is very crucial for us to continue to invest in the growing community and such events. ë

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FEATURE

FOCUS KUWAIT

A Seamless

Connected

Nation

Kuwait has started looking beyond oil with a vision 2035 in mind marking its way onto the world stage by becoming a smart city. ‘Kuwait 2035’ aims to complete projects of electronic government which have led to the rapid adoption and implementation of new technologies including the national eID initiative.

Kuwait is certainly making its mark with advancement onto becoming a smart city with government and commercial eServices already in effect.

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n B Y: A I S H A N I Z A M U D D I N K H A N < A I S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

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n a span of just four years, Kuwait jumped 23 places in the United Nations e-Government Development Index (EGDI), providing inspiration and vision to stakeholders looking to recognize the benefits of national eID technologies on a global stage.The national eID initiative is a landmark for Kuwait as it brings about substantial improvement in the speed, convenience, efficiency and accessibility of eServices throughout Kuwait.

INVESTMENT IN KUWAIT Kuwait’s investment landscape has experiencedfundamental reforms due to stable infrastructure and a strong and growing economy. As per Kuwait’s 2035 Vision digital transformation is very important and in line with Kuwait National Agenda.

An investment for the Kuwaiti government is building the State’s electronic ID (eID) platform that has been in effect since 2008. Kuwait’s national eID Scheme is a

FEATURE

program that will change the future of Kuwait as a country. It will transform the way citizens and residents access government services allowing for ease of access to public and private sector services.

The eID will be a product of a large regional initiative being taken by the GCC to guarantee a digital and modern approach to identification processes.

“Other investment opportunities in Kuwait are in the areas of electronic services (eServices), which enable the Kuwaiti government and local businesses to automate their functions, making processes secure, seamless and more convenient

for citizens. With the national eID scheme, Kuwaiti citizens can access electronic services, using their eID as the primary authentication tool at self-service kiosks, says Etienne Veyret, Marketing Director, Government Projects at Gemalto.

With the growing influx of working class expatriates and the with the recent regulatory reform, investment in real estate within Kuwait have greatly improved.

Furthermore, “with regards to the banking, financial services and insurance segment, there is a huge opportunity to invest more in data protection, especially as consumers are increasingly

concerned about cybersecurity and the protection of their finances and confidential information,” said Etienne Veyret The strong interest of eBanking in the State presents substantial opportunities for the entire financial services industry. Kuwait Credit Bank has deployed the national eID as the most secure tool to access its online services, which makes banking simpler and safer for end-users and other Kuwaiti banks are expected to follow suit.

SMART CITY Kuwait’s long term strategy, ‘Kuwait 2035’ aims to

New Kuwait strategic plan aims at diversifying the natonal economy to reduce its dependence on oil revenues.

Large mega projects under way: Silk City, the Subbiya Causeway, Boubiyan Island container harbor

New infrastructure investment of USD 4.0 Billion by the Kuwaiti government

Kuwait aims at raising REVENUES FROM kd 13.3 billion next year to as much as KD 50 billion in the last year of the plan

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FEATURE

“Kuwaiti businesses should deploy end-to-end encryption to protect their data along with authentication and access controls to protect their assets.”

-ETIENNE VEYRET,

MARKETING DIRECTOR GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS AT GEMALTO

complete projects of electronic government which have led to the rapid adoption and implementation of new technologies including the national eID initiative. The national eID initiative brings about substantial improvement in the speed, convenience, efficiency and accessibility of eServices throughout Kuwait. “eServices are the key to paperless transactions between citizens and the government and are crucial to achieving a smart city. Millions of Kuwaitis are already reaping the benefits of digital government, and enjoying new standards of simplicity and convenience when interacting and accessing public bodies and services. Kuwait’s best practices are demonstrating the advantages of adopting a national eID card, most notably as the cornerstone for both a digital government platform and the development of smart cities,” said Etienne Veyret.

POPULAR TECHNOLOGIES Cybersecurity has gained significant importance

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“Kuwait needs to invest more in security and also in any types of hardware and software solutions as cyber threats are emerging.”

-ALI SOLEYMANI, GENERAL MANAGER – SALES, CONDUIT SOLUTIONS & TECHNOLOGIES

“Some of our key wins in Kuwait recently includes customers like National Bank of Kuwait, Council of Ministers, Kuwait Investment Authority and Kuwait International Bank.”

-ANAND CHOUDHA, MANAGING DIRECTOR, SPECTRAMI

in the past year mainly due to cyberattacks, around Kuwait’s oil and gas industry along with other sectors. Hence Kuwait has made cybersecurity a priority with improved technology and data protection plans. Gemalto’s Breach Level Index 2016 revealed that Middle East data breaches are up 16.67% compared to 2015, with approximately 45.2 million data records compromised in 2016 compared to 38.5 million in the previous year.

“To address such threats, we see many Kuwaiti business deploying perimeter security to protect their data. According to Gemalto’s Data Security Confidence Index 2016 Report, 94% of Middle East companies still feel that perimeter security systems are effective in keeping unauthorized users out of their business networks,” comments Etienne Veyret.

The technology environment in Kuwait is not as developed as it is with its other GCC counterparts, but we are working towards a steady growth in that direction. More and more people have come to realise that technology and business go hand in hand and this is the way forward.

LOOKING AHEAD OF OIL & GAS The kuwaiti market has become a highly lucrative market due the new infrastructure investment of USD 4.0 Billion by the Kuwaiti government.

Due to this, the companies have started to infuse funds in cyber-security technologies to safeguard their investments. “In the past, it has been an oildependent economy but now we have witnessed business opportunities in the banking and finance sector, government & ministries, Education sector and Enterprise sector.” Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami.

FINALLY The Kuwaiti government aims to be part of the digital transformation of this era; making processes secure, seamless and more convenient for its citizens. The eID scheme does just this by providing firm foundations for new and exciting developments in the years ahead. With its investment is cyber-security technologies, Kuwait has taken a stand to protect its digital landscape. ë

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SPECIAL STORY

Simplified

Convergence It is no doubt that converged and hyperconverged infrastructure is transforming todays’ modern IT world.

Simplifying IT means increased innovation and lower maintenance work. In the GCC, 2017 is a critical year for data centre transformation and implementation of hyper-converged infrastructure for all sizes of industries and organizations. The largest benefit of simplified convergence goes to the customer.

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onverged and hyper-converged infrastructures are streamlining operations as well as keeping on track with in-demand business needs. By using hyperconverged infrastructure and software-defined data centres, costs can easily be cut by 50 percent for organizations due to virtualized storage and servers, and flash storage; in turn, thriving future business requirements.

CONVERGED OR HYPER CONVERGED?

The choice is yours and there is no one-size-fits-all mantra when it comes to selecting CI or HCI. “The key thing is to look at what type of applications being given on top of the infrastructure. The application needs to define the infrastructure strategy. If it is the oracle database then the hyper converged strategy to run oracle database, oracle applications and oracle hardware makes a lot of sense. If it is non-mission critical scale out application then a commodity converged infrastructure might make sense. This is the major differentiator,”

SPECIAL STORY

“At Pure we offer a CI solution in partnership with Cisco FlashStack is a streamlined, flexible, transformative approach to IT infrastructure.

It fully supports missioncritical enterprise applications and provides a robust platform for cloud services.”

-CHRISTIAN PUTZ,

“We have a huge focus on the Oracle cloud, the public cloud, we leverage all our R&D to develop our hardware and software together in our cloud data centres.”

-HIDIR MAG,

REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT SYSTEMS SALES MEA, ORACLE MEA

“In the GCC, VMware is seeing strong demand for our hyper-converged solutions, powered by vSAN softwaredefined storage and vSphere server virtualization.”

-OSSAMA ELDEEB, SENIOR MANAGER, MENA PARTNER ORGANIZATION, VMWARE

DIRECTOR, EEMEA, PURE STORAGE

73% of business say Cloud deployments enable them to better retain customers Over 90% of them believe that Cloud enables faster innovation

73 %

Over 2/3 of business already have applications running on their premises that access information in Public Cloud nearly three quarters say it’s important for on premise and Public Cloud applications to have the same user experience

71% of enterprises plan to deploy more Private Cloud services 68% of them plan to deploy more hybrid Cloud services

71 %

The market for hyper-converged integrated systems (HCIS) will grow 79 % to reach almost $2 billion in 2016, propelling it toward mainstream use in the next five years.

87 % 79 % According to Gartner, HCIS will be the fastestgrowing segment of the overall market for integrated systems

hyper-converged infrastructure sales grew by 87 percent year-on-year.

comments Hidir Mag. “HCI has gained popularity for two reasons – for one, compute and storage are supplied by a single vendor and secondly, deployment simplicity is high when using strictly defined hardware systems,” comments Christian Putz.

The risks of these Benefits: 1. Architectural or technical risks are based on the aggregation of compute and storage into a single chassis. l The combined node approach results in a significant increase in complexity when scaling, upgrading, or maintaining HCI systems. For example, to increase storage capacity, HCI customers must purchase additional nodes – thus purchasing additional compute resources which may not be required. l This aggregated approach, along with the inefficiency of mirroring data and storage I/O across a large number of nodes and the complexities involved with virtualization software and the 3rd party networking of nodes at scale, is why HCI is generally suitable only for smaller deployments (under 8 nodes).

2. Business-related concerns with HCI include the risk of vendor lock-in due to proprietary

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KEY ADVANTAGES OF FLASHSTACK INCLUDE: n

STREAMLINED OPERATIONS l

Simplify data centre operations and IT

infrastructure lifecycle l

Manage everything from one place

l

Reduce risk and lower IT costs

l

Remain always on, with always high

performance

“Condo Protego’s strength lies in our experience and expertise in enterprise infrastructure and our deep understanding of the market-leading technologies.

Our consultative approach leads to bespoke solutions that are best suited for each scenario.”

-SAVITHA BHASKAR, COO, CONDO PROTEGO

n

FLEXIBLE GROWTH l

Scale freely, without downtime as business

requirements change l

Essentially eliminate planned downtime

l

Handle demanding critical workloads with

ease and without the need for performance tuning n

CHOICE AND TRANSFORMATION l

Deliver more value to the business, faster

l

Improve user experiences and deliver IT on

demand l

Capture technical innovation without having

to rip and replace n

BUILT FOR THE CLOUD l

Cloud capabilities are built in, including full

integration with cloud platforms from Cisco, VMware, OpenStack and others l

Integrated automation frees administrators to

focus on application and service delivery

software, the overall inefficiency of managing large numbers of individual nodes, and cost. l HCI costs are higher than those of purposebuilt hardware due to the distributed nature of their storage and computer systems. l Costs of HCI are calculated without taking into account networking, software, and other high-value systems required for HCI deployments. l Particularly for critical workloads the hardware costs of HCI may be 2 or 3 times that of a highly-available converged infrastructure architecture. l Manageability of HCI becomes geometrically more complex with scale (even with good management software) and is one of the hidden costs of HCI systems.

“Based on the risk-reward of HCI, it might make sense for small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) as these organizations tend to have generalist IT staff who want to use the prepackaged nature of HCI to provide IT resources with minimal investment and low complexity. For larger enterprises that prefer more customizable, flexible, scalable architectures, I would recom-

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mend stand-alone storage solutions (like Pure’s FlashArray//M) or converged infrastructure solutions (like Pure’s FlashStack),” said Christian Putz.

According to Savitha Bhaskar, “Pre-built converged infrastructure is ideal for mission-critical workloads, while hyper-converged infrastructure trades reliability for flexibility. But the converged vs hyper-converged dilemma will depend on various factors, including the target workloads, required resiliency, and guaranteed performance versus agility and scalability. Customers should work with specialists, like Condo Protego, who can perform a complete requirement analysis and recommend the best solution for each use case. For many customers, a mix of both options may often represent the best option, with the goal being to reduce time spent on infrastructure management, while enabling the business on its digital transformation journey.”

GCC ORGANIZATIONS READY FOR HCI SHIFT? Industry reports suggest a strong global growth for hyper-converged infrastructure. GCC channel

partners holding vendor certifications and having local experience in hyper-converged infrastructure are have an advantage as they can allow customers to accept digital transformation and initiate new digital business models.

“Going all-in for hyper-converged infrastructure can be challenge for many GCC CIOs. Channel partners should be monitoring their customers’ storage refresh cycles, and start bringing customers on board with software-defined storage. CIOs that succeed with software-defined storage can open up a wider discussion on software-defined data centres, with cloud-based server and network virtualization that leads to hyper-converged infrastructure,” comments Ossama Eldeeb.

“What I really would like to recommend to customers to define the HC strategy is to look at which software they are running and how they can create the best ROI out of the software that they are running. For example, if it is the Oracle database, we provide the best ROI to run the Oracle data base because the faster you can run the oracle database the more cost effective it becomes,” comments Hidir Mag. “In the GCC, VMware is seeing strong demand for our hyper-converged solutions, powered by vSAN, the industry’s first native hyper-converged infrastructure, to accelerate their data centre modernization with security, lower total cost of ownership, and higher all flash performance.

Showing the strong growth, VMware has more than doubled the number of vSAN customers over the past 12 months, and vSAN has an annual run rate of USD 300 million,” comments Ossama Eldeeb.

As part of VMware’s Cross-Cloud Strategy, organizations can also combine vSAN with the VMware NSX network virtualization and security platform to extend storage and services on different public clouds.

“GCC organizations, ranging from small- and medium-sized enterprises to large multi-national enterprises, are already posting strong interest and uptake in converged and hyper-converged infrastructure,” said Savitha Bhaskar.

FINALLY Convergence eradicates many IT complications for organizations. Having a single interface takes care of reporting, monitoring, and many other aspects. Having a unified system there is improved flexibility to meet more business demands. While hyper-converged IT infrastructures are fresh data centres, products are rapidly growing to meet the scale and manageability required by enterprise IT administrators. ë

INNOVATIONS

KEY CAPABILITIES n High performance 19.2 terabits per second switching (1.2Tbps/slot) capacity n Carrier-class high availability with redundant management, power and fabric n ArubaOS-CX enables automation and usability using built-in REST APIs and Python scripts n Intelligent monitoring and visibility with Aruba Network Analytics Engine n Advanced Layer 2/3 feature set includes BGP, OSPF, VRF, and IPv6 n Compact 8U chassis with high density, line rate 10GbE/40GbE/100GbE connectivity n Multi-chassis link aggregation

Aruba 8400 Switch Series A breakthrough campus core switch that extends intelligence from the edge to the core and allows CIOs to derive better business outcomes from their networks. Aruba is introducing a new enterprise core and aggregation switch and the industry’s most advanced operating system, ArubaOS-CX, designed for modern mobility, cloud, and

IoT requirements. Taking a leap beyond today’s antiquated switching platforms, the Aruba 8400 Core Switch Series and ArubaOS-CX are purpose-built for emerging mobile-cloud business applications and changing traffic patterns that are being driven by the massive flood of data sources and growth in IoT.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ GECMEDIAGROUP.COM

OCÉ COLORADO 1640 Working with the attributes of UVgel, the Océ Colorado 1640 has been engineered to the highest industrial standards to meet the peak production requirements of businesses of all sizes, producing high volumes of wide format graphics within the short turnaround times demanded by clients. Canon UVgel ink is instantly ‘pinned’ on contact with the substrate, resulting in a highly controlled and precisely positioned dot with minimal gain. By minimising ink spread and coalescence on the media,

the required volume of ink can be printed in each pass, delivering rich, intense images at ultra high speed.

The state-of-the-art low temperature LED-UV curing system moves independently from the printing carriage, enabling uniform, post-print UV curing that further contributes to print speed and print quality. The cured UVgel prints are instantly dry and ready for finishing or laminating, ideal for businesses handling jobs demanding fast turnaround and installation.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Canon UVgel technology reduces ink consumption by as much as 40% compared with competitive technologies n Top speed of 159 m²/hr for applications such as billboards or outdoor banners n The printer operates at a speed of 40 m²/hr n Delivers excellent image quality and repeatability, print after print. n Instantly ‘pinned’ UVgel dot produces sharp images with minimal dot gain and virtually no satellites n UVgel is a low-heat process using LED curing, ensuring minimal media distortion and extending the range of printable substrates n UVgel ink reproduces a large colour gamut comparable with eco solvent inks

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INNOVATIONS

Elite X2 1012 G2 With flexible work arrangements on the rise and security breaches more prevalent than ever, HP spoke with thousands of SMBs, enterprises, IT decision makers and end users to better understand their individual pain points and desires before designing its newest premium commercial x2 device: the Elite x2 1012 G2. The average company faces 106 targeted cyber-attacks per year, which is why the Elite x2 makes no security sacrifices. Mobile users are protected with multi–layered enterprise–class security and malware protection with HP Sure Start, HP BIOSphere, HP WorkWise, Power-on Authentication and Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0.) Additionally, secure and quick user authentication with a dual biometric option is built-in. The Elite x2 1012 G2 offers best in class collaboration to ease customers’ ability to work seamlessly with others, regardless of geographic location. As the first commercial detachable to be certified for Skype for Business, the Elite x2 includes HP Noise Cancellation and Audio Boost software for improved voice clarity, even when being used in a noisy office or café environment.

KEY CAPABILITIES n 7th generation Core-I processors and optional vPro (same processing power as a traditional notebook) n Up to 16 GB of RAM and quadrupled the storage of the first generation Elite x2 n At about 8 mm thin, it’s the same thinness as a #2 pencil n More than 10 hours of battery life, and fast-charging capability that can charge the battery halfway in 30 minutes n 12.3-inch (31.2cm) display is both stunning and durable with bonded Corning Gorilla Glass 4

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J U N E 2017

MEA

WORLD’S FIRST AUTONOMOUS ROBOCOP Dubai Police has welcomed a new member on to its force. He doesn’t need a visa, medical insurance or hours of training, and he is ready to engage with Dubai’s residents and millions of tourists across the city’s streets.

The world’s first operational robot policeman, officially joined the line of duty today, greeting guests at the opening of the 4th Gulf Information Security Expo and Conference (GISEC), including Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Head of Security for the Emirate of Dubai. Adding value to the existing police force, the robot’s integrated system allows it to be linked to various social media channels, such as Twitter, as well as artificial intelligence systems, mobile applications and websites, among others.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Standing 170 centimetres tall and weighing 100 kilograms n Equipped with an emotion detector which can recognise gestures and hand signals from up to 1.5 metres away n Robocop can also detect a person’s emotions and facial expressions and has the ability to change his expression and greetings accordingly to put people at ease n Facial recognition software to help police officers identify and catch offenders, as well as broadcast live video feeds n With a built-in tablet device, people can complete smart police services through RoboCop using credit cards for payments n Transmit and communicate in six languages, including Arabic, English and more n The robot can chat and interact, respond to public queries, shake hands and offer a military salute.

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