EC-MEA July 2021

DECENTRALISATION OF DATACENTRES

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KASEYA HACK

PA G E S 6 8 VOLUME O8 | ISSUE 10 J U LY 2 0 2 1 WWW.EC-MEA.COM

KERRY GRIMES, Head of Global Partners, AVEVA.

AVEVA

EMBEDDING DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY

INTO INDUSTRIAL CHANNEL Cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics, big data, cross selling, sustainability, are now inside AVEVA’s industrial channel programme.

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AE

CENTRE OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE

MANAGING DIRECTOR TUSHAR SAHOO TUSHAR@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM EDITOR ARUN SHANKAR ARUN@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM CEO RONAK SAMANTARAY RONAK@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM

ARUN SHANKAR, EDITOR A R U N @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M

Since data resides in the datacentre, the datacentre continues to be the centre of the digital universe. With workloads and storage of data growing exponentially, managing the capacity and infrastructure of a datacentre is one such challenge.

Another challenge is the growing importance of the cloud and edge of the network as repositories of data, traffic and devices. This is driving the transformation of the datacentre requiring a different stack of technologies and platforms to support these additional forms of the datacentre.

Intel is now building next generation of processors for cloud-ready datacentres. Says Intel’s Ahmed Ibrahim at Intel, the 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable platform is designed to handle workloads from cloud to network to edge and provide benefits across a range of customer use cases.

More and more on-premises datacentres are transforming to cloud-based and hybrid datacentres, and with this the ever-increasing data volume poses a challenge in data protection. It is critical new datacentre technologies come with robust security solutions.

Datacentre migration from conventional to cloud-based has become a priority for organisations. Despite adoption of new datacentre technologies, the migration process is one of the biggest challenges, points out Intel’s Ibrahim. Lack of skills to handle complexities poses a challenge when migrating from a traditional datacentre to a virtual platform.

The move towards decentralisation of datacentres is driven by new business needs to accommodate digital landscape and proliferation of IoT says Charbel Zreiby Director at Dell Technologies. 75% of enterprise data will be processed outside a traditional centralised datacentre or cloud by 2025. Edge datacentres and network topologies, such as spine-leaf architectures, have emerged allowing for lower data latencies.

Along the same lines, Chris Docherty at Lenovo says datacentres infrastructure will need to transform to be future ready. Organisations are mixing cloud, edge, on-premises computing in hybrid environments, and focusing on the demands of specific workloads resulting in complexity.

The corporate datacentre is still an essential component but demands on the infrastructure have changed dramatically. Creating a transformation plan and an infrastructure strategy that is future proofed against these changes is the challenge, points out Docherty.

Transformation of work is also driving datacentre transformation. With changes in the world of work, datacentre transformation has become more critical than ever while networks remain overburdened with flood of data, indicates Gaurav Mohan at Netscout. The goal is speed, agility, convenience, cost-effectiveness.

Adding intelligence and making the datacentre’s energy assets sustainable for the future demand and supply ecosystem is an approach recommended by Eaton. Ashraf Yehia at Eaton asks whether the UPS of an enterprise datacentre is ready for micro-grid services of the future. Operators in large datacentres have the opportunity to transform their UPS into a profit center, supporting the grid as a distributed energy resource.

Turn the pages to read more about the transforming datacentre.

Also, in this issue what the industry has to say about the Kaseya hack and how even industrial software vendors like Aveva are paying attention to their channel partner programmes.

Best wishes for a safe summer vacation ahead.ë

GLOBAL HEAD, CONTENT AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES ANUSHREE DIXIT ANUSHREE@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM GROUP SALES HEAD RICHA S RICHA@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM EVENTS EXECUTIVE GURLEEN ROOPRAI GURLEEN@GECMDIAGROUP.COM RONIT GHOSH RONIT@GECMDIAGROUP.COM JENNEFER LORRAINE MENDOZA JENNEFER@GECMDIAGROUP.COM SALES AND ADVERTISING RONAK SAMANTARAY RONAK@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM PH: + 971 555 120 490 PRODUCTION, CIRCULATION, SUBSCRIPTIONS INFO@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM DESIGNER AJAY ARYA ASSISTANT DESIGNER RAHUL ARYA DESIGNED BY

SUBSCRIPTIONS INFO@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM SOCIAL MARKETING & DIGITAL COMMUNICATION YASOBANT MISHRA YASOBANT@GECMEDIAGROUP.COM PRINTED BY Al Ghurair Printing & Publishing LLC. Masafi Compound, Satwa, P.O.Box: 5613, Dubai, UAE # 203 , 2nd Floor G2 Circular Building , Dubai Production City (IMPZ) Phone : +971 4 564 8684 31 FOXTAIL LAN, MONMOUTH JUNCTION, NJ - 08852 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PHONE NO: + 1 732 794 5918 A PUBLICATION LICENSED BY International Media Production Zone, Dubai, UAE @copyright 2013 Accent Infomedia. All rights reserved. while the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracyof all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

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CONTENTS 29-41/ SPECIAL REPORT

CENTER OF DIGITAL ENTERPRISES

Intel: Building next generation processors for cloud ready datacentres

CommScope: Driving latency into the single millisecond range

R&M: Preparing cabling infrastructure for tomorrow’s workloads

du: Partnerships key to support datacentre transformation

Kingston Technology: 5G, IIoT, homes, driving creation of micro datacentres

NETSCOUT: Transformation of work driving datacentre transformation

Eaton: Is your datacentre’s UPS ready for micro-grid services

Schneider Electric: Sustainability becoming differentiator for datacentres

Dell Technologies: Future of datacentres will be hybrid and distributed Lenovo: Datacentre’s infrastructure will need to transform to be future ready

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EDITOR’S PAGE

Pure Storage: The vision of an all-flash datacentre Siemon: Preparing infrastructure for next capacity datacentres

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SECURITY

07-09

VIEWPOINT

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BTX Road Show 2021

Adjusting your security posture between on-premises and edge

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EVENTS

CHANNEL 20-22

SECURITY

How the Kaseya hack has impacted 1,500 businesses

INNOVATION

INNOVATION

Technology infrastructure solutions for the new business environment

42-45/ COVER STORY

AVEVA’S NEW CHANNEL STRATEGY

COMBINING DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY J U LY 2 0 21

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VIEWPOINT

TOP SEVEN EXPECTATIONS FROM AN IOT PLATFORM Vendors are under pressure to build digital platforms that can meet a wide range of OEM and partner expectations around the Internet of Things.

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hen it comes to the Internet of Things, users want it all: A platform that can support every step of their IoT development lifecycle.

And, it seems a platform like that offers the biggest benefits.

According to a commissioned Forrester Consulting study on the Total Economic Impact of Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform, buyers seeking an IoT platform had very specific requirements in mind - seven of them to be exact.

The report, based on customer interviews, revealed that there are seven things IoT users want from their platforms. Below is a summary.

1 LOW TECHNICAL BARRIERS TO ENTRY Interviewees said their organisations want a platform that is technically sophisticated yet easy to deploy, with the ability to test new ideas and stand-up proofs of concept. For smart equipment, the ability to offer lightweight service offerings for customers - without a dedicated software engineering practice - was an essential requirement.

2 ABILITY TO REBRAND Service providers and smart equipment manufacturers in particular use IoT platforms to deliver a variety of services to their customers. The ability to sell them under their own brand name was key to making the most of their existing brand equity.

3 COSTS THAT SCALE WITH USAGE Companies want an IoT platform partner that can grow alongside them, one that lets them expand their offerings over time to better serve their customers. Since customer adoption of these services and products occur over time, it was important that costs scale with increased usage.

4 EASE OF ADDING NEW DEVICES AND PROTOCOLS Interviewees want a platform that makes it easy to add new types of hardware without a lot of effort. This was particularly important to companies that frequently integrate new devices as part of professional services engagements with their customers.

AMANDA BROWN,

Director, Product Marketing IoT and Analytics, Software AG.

Since customer adoption occurs over time, it was important costs scale with increased usage We are experiencing a lot of pull through hardware revenue because we are able to have conversations with our customers about digital capabilities, said the CEO of an industrial automation manufacturer when interviewed.

5 SCALABILITY AND MULTITENANCY Respondents want a platform that can support multiple projects and programs. For IoT service providers the ability to support hundreds or thousands of individual customers, multitenancy was an especially important requirement. In a smart city project, for example, a multitenant architecture was necessary since each agency was working to develop focused solutions, all under a parent tenant.

6 PORTABILITY AND FLEXIBILITY Interviewees said they want a platform that can support a range of devices in distributed environments. Users want a range of options for deployment including a container-based architecture, across cloud environments, in customer data centers, and a range of edge hardware devices.

7 ANALYTICS AND DASHBOARDS

Companies want an IoT platform partner that can grow alongside them.

Some companies want a platform with sophisticated, out-ofthe-box dashboards for equipment monitoring. Others said it was important that dashboards be highly configurable since they often build custom views for their customers..ë

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VIEWPOINT

SLOWDOWN IN IT SPENDING IS NOT ON THE CARDS AHEAD The number one big move companies plan to make is increasing technology investment, moving the IT function to the cloud, and acting on acquisitions.

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ome consequences of the pandemic will be around for years, but a slowdown in gutsy business moves is not one of them. In fact, 80% of executives in a new survey said their organisations are planning big moves in the next 18 months, such as acquiring a new business or divesting one, launching a new business model, or implementing automation for core business processes.

To learn how executives are feeling about the future—and what their plans might be—MIT Technology Review Insights conducted surveys and in-depth interviews with more than 300 financial officers and C-suite executives around the world, from more than a dozen industries. Here are some of the highlights.

Executives are upbeat about their companies’ futures. In fact, 39% have already made a big move, and 27% are contemplating such plans for 2021. Only 12% of the executives plan on the business equivalent of hunkering down for survival.

The number one big move companies plan to make is increasing technology investment 60%, followed by making structural changes 47%, moving the IT function to the cloud 46%, and acting on a merger or acquisition 39%.

Looking at responses geographically, increasing technology investment is the top choice across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific; it is also the top choice for large enterprises $1 billion and up and midmarket companies under $1 billion.

What will these companies be investing in? Predictive analytics to improve operational efficiencies 58% top the list, but companies also want new cloudbased solutions.

Large organisations favor business model changes that drive cost-reduction projects 70%, compared with their midmarket peers 42%. The Asia-Pacific region also prioritised cost reduction 63%, compared with EMEA 56% and the Americas 50%.

Of course, every plan has challenges. In the case of business plans, lack of budget usually tops the list: 44% of respondents said budget was their biggest hurdle to success. Other concerns like security risks and compliance 13% and missing skill sets and processes 15% were also cited.

While limited budgets are a reality, an important consideration for CFOs and other executives is the role modernised applications play in their big plans.

Gradual organisational changes can be handled manually, but a corporate acquisition might bring an influx of people

EMMA HITZKE,

Senior Product Marketing Director, Emerging Technology, Oracle.

Automated risk management helps insulate organisations and can help them confidently manage an acquisition For example, mergers and acquisitions do not come without risk. Gradual organisational changes can be handled manually—such as adding two new payroll clerks to the system and making sure they have the right access. But a corporate acquisition might bring an influx of people who need to work with company financials.

This disruption can open your ERP system to enormous risk, whether from human error or malicious activity such as fraud.

By contrast, automated and embedded risk management helps insulate organisations and can help them more confidently manage an acquisition.

Even for companies focused on cost reduction and resource optimisation, cloud applications are essential to achieve their goals. For example, machine-learning algorithms, which learn from large data sets, can help companies automate common operations e.g., invoice matching, improve accuracy, and use fewer manual touches to stay compliant with global financial and data governance regulations.

As more functions, such as the financial close and financial reporting, are automated, employees will stop spending time doing repetitive tasks often subject to human error, freeing up time to do more analytical work that ultimately leads to better decision-making.ë

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20+ awards winners announced for BTX Road Show 2021 North Gulf edition The top transformation executives, enterprises, solution providers operating in the North Gulf were recognised at the BTX Road Show 2021 North Gulf awards show.

GEC Media Group, publishers of Business Transformation, Enterprise Channels MEA, The Titans, Cyber Sentinels, announced the winners of the BTX Top Executive Awards, BTX Enterprise Awards, BTX Solution Awards, as part of the BTX Road Show 2021 North Gulf edition.

There are three sets of awards as described below.

BTX TOP EXECUTIVE AWARDS

Recognising leadership driving transformation This award recognises top executive who have accelerated digital and business transformation through the pandemic and created a better future for their business. They have empowered remote teams, managed change, flattened organisational structure, made it agile and secure, managed customer satisfaction, and implemented digital tools like cloud, analytics, data integration, amongst others.

BTX ENTERPRISE AWARDS

Recognising success stories in transformation This award recognises enterprise that have embraced digital transformation and digital tools through the pandemic and achieved success in various areas. Such enterprises would have rebuilt customer experiences, managed customer expectations, leveraged online sales models, built forecasting models, have in-depth and ready analysis of market and demand trends, built close collaboration and data sharing amongst teams, amongst others.

BTX SOLUTION AWARDS

Recognising solutions for transformation This award recognises the leading, exemplary, heroic efforts by vendors, channel partners, integrators, consultants, to manage the challenges of the end user community through the lockdowns of the pandemic. This part of the IT industry helped the end user community to successfully pivot their business models by using digital technologies and create a sustainable business through the pandemic and ahead, amongst others.

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EVENTS

The announced winners of the BTX Road Show 2021 North Gulf edition include:

BTX TOP EXECUTIVE AWARDS n

Osama Islam, Basamh Trading Company

n Meshal Alotaibi, Specialised by stc n Syed Fakruddin Albeez, Dar Al Arkan n Meshal ALFouwais, Saudi Electricity Company n Amr Salah, Emaar - King Abdullah Economic City n Dr Jassim Haji, IGOAI n Ahmed Saleh AlBalooshi, Fintech ICT Services and Consultations n Dr Harpreet Seth, Heriot-Watt University Dubai n Naif Almubaireek, RC Jubail City n Gulam Subani, Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare n Waqas Ul Hassan, Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare n Majed Aljadeed, Mujahideen, Ministry of Interior, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia n Abdallah Farrayih, The Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, Jordan n Shaker AlOwainati, Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance n Sobhi Batterjee, Saudi German Hospital

BTX SOLUTION AWARDS n SAP n Nutanix n Aruba n Pure Storage n Finesse

With the successful completion of the BTX Road Show 2021, North Gulf edition, the next BTX South Gulf edition will take place on 23 August followed by BTX Asia on 26 August and BTX Africa on 27 September.

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CHANNEL

CyberKnight adds HelpSystems’ GoAnywhere managed file transfer in go to market

VIVEK GUPTA, Co-Founder and COO, CyberKnight.

CyberKnight announced expanded partnership with HelpSystems that involves selling its managed file transfer solution GoAnywhere in the Middle East. The enhanced partnership is based on strong customer demand for a secure and fast way to share information amid an environment exploding in data, devices, and channels.

“GoAnywhere helps thousands of customers around the world achieve better file security, data transfers, and automatic encryption,” said Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder and COO, CyberKnight.

“By extending our partnership with HelpSystems, within which we already offer cybersecurity solutions from Core Security and Clearswift, GoAnywhere will help regional enterprise and government organisations simplify and secure file transfer while reducing costs, improving user experience, and complying with data security regulations.”

“GoAnywhere caters well to the Middle East with multiple deployment options including on-premises, in the cloud, or within a hybrid environment. Our goal is to help more customers securely share information in an automation fashion while leveraging CyberKnight’s deeprooted channel partnerships, enterprise and government customer relationships, and strong cybersecurity expertise,” said Gideon Wilkins, EMEA Partner Manager, HelpSystems.

Nutanix expands Elevate Partner Programme to include service providers Nutanix announced the launch of the Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program, further extending the benefits of the Elevate Partner Program to now include service providers globally. The programme empowers service provider partners – including managed and cloud service providers – to build highlydifferentiated hybrid and multicloud services delivering increased profitability and faster time-to-market.

As many organisations look for opportunities to simplify their IT operations, IDC forecasts the managed cloud services market to grow to $101.1B by 2024. With this opportunity, comes the challenge of service providers meeting increasingly individualised customer demands while staying profitable. The Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program helps service providers improve margins and agility by addressing the lock-in and minimum commitment requirements encountered in traditional service provider vendor models and programs.

This service provider programme adds two partnership levels to Nutanix Elevate: Authorised Service Provider and Professional Service Provider. Authorised Service Providers

CHRISTIAN ALVAREZ, SVP Worldwide Channels at Nutanix.

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will include partners new to Nutanix or those delivering Nutanix services to small to midmarket organisations.

Professional Service Provider will deliver differentiated services for enterprise organisations. Partners who join the programme will be able to take advantage of all the benefits outlined in the Elevate Service Provider Program Guide including training, Not for Resale NFR and Nutanix XLAB software licenses, and enablement support. Professional Service Provider partners will be able to take advantage of expanded support from Nutanix including marketing materials, potential market development funds, sales tools, goal-based financial incentives and rebates, and personalised insights in Nutanix’s Partner Portal.

Nutanix is running a Service Provider Starter Pack promotional offer for new partners joining the Elevate Service Provider Program. This promotional offer includes training, certification and the right Nutanix software to help our partners bring their differentiated services to production and start generating revenue. This offer is available immediately.

CHANNEL

Itancia to distribute Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud solution in Europe, Africa

CHRISTOPHER GERAUD, Partner Account Manager Cloud at Acronis.

ITANCIA, an eco-friendly, value-added distributor specialising in business communications, networking, and cybersecurity solutions, and Acronis, announced the signing of an aggregation agreement. The partnership agreement means ITANCIA now offers the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud solution to all its partners in Europe and Africa.

Acronis expands ITANCIA’s portfolio of cybersecurity solutions, adding this comprehensive range of backup, anti-virus protection, next-generation AI-driven anti-malware protection, and endpoint protection management.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is specifically designed for service providers, who can now offer their customers this single-installation, industry-leading solution to enhance data protection with additional on-demand services. Its integration and automation make service providers’ jobs easier, reducing complexity while increasing productivity and cutting operating costs.

Sophos recognises outstanding Middle East and Africa channel partners Sophos, announced winners of 2021 Middle East and Africa Partner Awards during the virtual Sophos MEA Partner Awards 2021 on June 2, 2021. Sophos recognised the winning partners for their business commitment and success over the last fiscal year.

Sophos 2021 Middle East Partner Award Winners GCC Distributor Awards Distributor Excellence Award - Naizak GES General Trading Growth Distributor of the Year - Aptec Distribution UAE Emerging Partner of the Year - CADD Emirates Mid-Market Partner of the Year - Cell Information Technology Partner of the Year - Gerab System Solutions Small Business Partner of the Year - Pinnacle Computer Systems Small Business Partner of the Year - Bluechip Computer Systems Enterprise Partner of the Year - Cad Gulf Individual Contributor of the Year - Nufin Kamar, Gerab System Solutions New Partner of the Year – Know All Edge IT Infrastrucure Public Sector Partner of the Year - BCS Technologies Top Performer - Visiontech Systems International Synchronised Security Partner of the Year Net Desire Technologies BAHRAIN Emerging Partner of the Year – Wajda International Technology Services

Enterprise Partner of the Year - Kanoo Information Technology Individual Contributor of the Year - Gareth, Kanoo Information Technology Mid-Market Partner of the Year - Almoayed ICT New Partner of the Year - Almoayed Computer Partner of the Year - iWorld Connect Public Sector Partner of the Year - Bahrain Telecommunications Company Synchronised Security Partner of the Year Kalaam Telecom Top Performer - Canar Trading SAUDI ARABIA Cloud Partner of the year - WAVES Technologies Emerging Partner of the Year - Clear Vision Mid-Market Partner of the Year - Metal World IT Partner of the Year - Systems Front Information Technology Small Business Partner of the Year - Moxmon Synchronised Security Partner of the Year Gulf Computer Services OMAN Emerging Partner of the Year - MHD InfoTech Individual Contributor of the Year - Sagar Saxena, Al Khalili Technology Mid-Market Partner of the Year - Intertech Oman KUWAIT Public Sector Partner of the Year - ASC Small Business Partner of the Year - BroadBITS General Trading Company

HARISH CHIB, vice president, Middle East and Africa, Sophos.

Synchronised Security Partner of the Year Future Communication Company Top Performer - Burhantech QATAR New Partner of the Year - Star Link Small Business Partner of the Year - TSQatar EGYPT Distributor of the Year - Gateworx Emerging Partner of the Year - IT Fusion New Partner of the Year - Softline Partner of the Year - UC Solutions Synchronised Security Partner of the Year Digital Planets JORDAN Emerging Partner of the Year - Fastrabbit Mid-Market Partner of the Year - GCEsoft Partner of the Year - Amwajtech Small Business Partner of the Year - Mayasoft LEBANON Emerging Partner of the Year - Tetracom Partner of the Year - Teletrade Small Business Partner of the Year - Engineering Design and Manufacturing

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CHANNEL

(left to right) Amish Sabharwal, Executive Vice President, Engineering Business, AVEVA. Darren Martin, Group CTO, Wood.

AVEVA and Wood launch Connected Build using AVEVA Enterprise Resource AVEVA has formed a new alliance with Wood, the global consulting and engineering company, to accelerate digital transformation of industries such as power, energy, chemicals and mining with the launch of a new solution called Connected Build, a key part of their Digital Twin offering. Wood has standardised its use of AVEVA Enterprise Resource Management as a key component of the Connected Build offering to its industrial clients globally.

Connected Build optimises project delivery while improving collaboration on new build projects and facilitating the digital modernisation of existing

plants and refurbishments. The new solution capitalises on design efficiencies to deliver the build accurately the first time, unlocking sustainability and value benefits while ensuring worker safety.

As part of Wood’s vision for operational excellence, leveraging technology to standardise and optimise delivery is key to achieving efficiencies and to meet sustainability targets.

The new Connected Build solution is a key part of Wood’s Engineering Digital Twin strategy by sharing project status and materials availability data in real-time with all stakeholders, optimising project execution through benefits such as improved labor productivity, reduced material waste and costs, shortened project cycles and improved yield.

When applied to the engineering and build phases, the Connected Build approach results in rapid and seamless project handover, while shortening time to production and improving digital resiliency for Wood’s clients.

Initial deployments of Wood’s Connected Build Digital Twin have set a new benchmark for digital engineering, boosting safety, and improving overall asset performance while delivering savings on the total cost of the project and an additional saving in operations and maintenance.

Huawei offers $200,000 for app development contest using mobile OS HMS App Huawei announced the launch of the 2021 edition of Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest Apps UP, a leading worldwide competition for mobile app developers. Apps UP will see talented developers compete against each other to create seamless, smart, innovative digital experiences that improve lives in a variety of ways, and explore the future applications of digital intelligence.

The competition is once again split across five geographical regions, with up to $200,000 in cash prizes up for grabs for developers in each, including the Middle East and Africa

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MEA region.

Awards will be across eight categories: Best App, Best Game, Best Social Impact App, Excellent Student Award, and Honorable Mention, with multiple cash prizes within each category. A Tech Women’s Award has been added to this year’s edition, which aims to recognise outstanding women in tech. Best HMS Core Innovation Award and All-Scenario Coverage Award have also been introduced to the 2021 edition of the competition. Individual prize amounts range from US$3,000 to US$15,000.

Contestants can enter individually or as part of

a team of up to three members.

Those participating in the competition will be able to access the power of HMS Core, a leading development environment for Huawei phones. HMS Core enables safe and seamless implementation of features such as secure sign-in, in-app payments and downloads, ad placement, alerts, real-time positioning, and cloud backup. Crucial for app and content creators, HMS Core is designed to facilitate efficient app development, enabling developers to focus on creating the best user experiences.

As part of Huawei’s commitment to empower and support rising developers, the tech giant is providing a series of workshops, training modules and courses on its developer website. The training series acts as a startingline for global and regional developers, underpinning Huawei’s global vision that effectively fosters their development and enhances their skillset, transforming them into certified developers. Interested developers can attend and complete these virtual courses to build applications using the HMS kits and participate in the contest.

Participants can register and submit entries between 10th June and 20th August 2021.

Winners are then selected in October 2021, through a combination of public voting and a panel of judges made up of industry leaders drawn from each region.

CHANNEL

Spire Solutions, Subex announce partnership to focus on oil and gas, manufacturing, healthcare Subex, a provider of digital trust, Internet of Things and Operational Technology cybersecurity solutions, and Spire Solutions, Middle East and Africa’s leading VAD, have announced a strategic tie-up to address the steep rise in cyberattacks and associated cyber risks in the region.

As per the findings of Subex’s latest threat landscape report, segments such as oil and gas, manufacturing, and healthcare have been at the receiving end of complex and persistent cyberattacks in the Middle East. The volume of inbound cyberattacks grew by 67 percent in the first 4 months of 2021 and continues to increase with each passing month.

A major area of concern in the region is that some of the cyberattacks are targeting the health and safety mechanisms in industrial facilities leading to occupational safety risks to employees. The collaboration between Subex

and Spire will ensure that these businesses are protected at critical infrastructure level security with the most comprehensive stack of Internet of Things, Operational Technology, and converged environment IoT-OT and Information Tech protection solutions.

Subex and Spire have also just been awarded a project by a major oil and gas entity in the Middle East to meet its cybersecurity, device discovery, and cyber risk assessment requirements. The said entity currently manages refinery, petrochemicals, and LNG import operations through one of the biggest petroleum complexes in the region.

As part of the project, Subex is deploying its IoT and OT security solution Subex Secure to detect, contain and address unauthorised intrusions and threats, improve cybersecurity posture, and ensure overall protection from malware and disruption caused by cyberat-

MOHIEDDIN KHARNOUB, Chief Revenue Officer of Spire.

tacks. The project will help the entity focus on its core business objectives while Subex and Spire ensure secure operations, assets, and infrastructure across locations and projects.

Subex currently runs the world’s biggest adaptive honeypot network spread across over 70 cities. This gives the company the width and depth in threat intelligence aggregation that helps in detecting the latest and the most sophisticated cyber threats.

Synology appoints ASBIS Middle East as distributor for MENA region Synology announced a partnership with ASBIS Middle East in the MENA region, with over 30 years of experience and a comprehensive portfolio of IT solutions.

“At a time when business continuity and sustainability is crucial, digital transformation is an imperative need for businesses,” said Mike Chen, Senior Sales Manager at Synology. “Our solutions enable businesses to be more flexible and better deal with uncertainties and new challenges in a cost-effective manner. Our partnership with ASBIS enables Synology to serve customers in the MENA market better.”

ASBIS ME Product Manager Najeem Thajudeen said: “Partnering with Synology is definitely a step in the right direction for us. Synology is an industry leader in network-attached storage solutions, moving over a million units a year worldwide.

He added: “2021 is a significant year for us as we resume moving forward on transformative IT technologies at an accelerated rate. Big data, artificial intelligence, and 5G are all technologies that will push storage demand higher.”

“ASBIS is able to combine its state-of-the-art supply chain management and market experience with Synology’s innovative and market-proven solutions, providing our local partners with the tools to deploy next-generation data management solutions confidently,” he said.

ASBIS has already started shipping Synology solutions and providing consultancy services through its trusted partners in the Middle East.

MIKE CHEN, Senior Sales Manager, Synology.

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GCG Enterprise Solutions head of the class with ViewSonic EdTech Solutions While history has always had an inevitable influence on the content of education, it has had little impact on its format. Whether riding to school on a horse to being dropped off in an electric car, the learner’s classroomteacher dynamic has remained relatively unchanged until now. It has taken an international pandemic to thrust children and young adults into an unprecedented world of innovative

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learning practices that their parents never thought possible. Good or bad, now that they’ve had a taste for it, there’s no turning back.

Many companies stepped up to the challenges that pandemic social distancing imposed on the education sector with innovative ideas that substituted the physical connection between teacher and student with a virtual one. Once such a company took

this opportunity to enhance the whole school system with tools and technologies they’d developed for the business sector.

As one of the leaders in innovative multimedia, ViewSonic has developed a range of smart classroom solutions that have virtually replaced the need for face-to-face classroom formats while adding interactive capabilities that enable real-time delivery of enriched

CHANNEL

JAMEEL MOHAMED MEERAN, GCG Enterprise Solutions Product Manager for ViewSonic.

content to students logged in from anywhere in the world.

To introduce these cutting-edge solutions to educational institutions in the Middle East, ViewSonic enlisted the help of a local partner, business solutions provider GCG Enterprise Solutions.

An early player at the frontier of digital education (EdTech) in the region, GCG Enterprise Solutions had supported ViewSonic’s smart classroom solutions for some three years, which put them in a propitious position when the pandemic struck in early 2020.

To find out more about the ViewSonic solutions technology and its benefits for education, we spoke to GCG Enterprise Solutions’ resident expert Jameel Mohamed Meeran. As a product manager in GCG for ViewSonic products, Jameel has worked in the AV industry for 11 years in UAE and the MENA region. A techno-commercial engineer with a background in electronics and communication engineering, Jameel’s expertise in visual solutions put him in a great position to take the lead on the ViewSonic brand and, in three years, has been instrumental in the success of many landmark projects for the company such as Sharjah/Abu Dhabi airports, DHA, Crown Prince Court, to name few.

His success comes from adapting quickly to new technologies and creating strategies around them to serve his market needs. When the pandemic hit, it presented an opportunity but also a few challenges.

“GCG Enterprise Solutions has had mixed reactions from the market to the new

technology. It’s reasonable that many institutions have neither the will nor the wherewithal to integrate new learning technologies into their current teaching models, both positions coming from a lack of understanding.

The truth is that things have changed, and industries that embrace the change will have a distinct competitive advantage. In contrast, others will have to adapt quickly to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving educational system. In our interactions with current clients in the education department, and new clients interested in the tech, we’ve done our best to clear up many of the misconceptions about using digital technology solutions in schools.”

A customer-oriented company, GCG Enterprise Solutions has 40+ years of experience in the UAE market, providing Digital Imaging & Office Services Solutions. As a provider of solutions that make business easier for their clients, the inevitable next step was to integrate digital technologies that brought people closer together in business interests. GCG’s close relationship with ViewSonic in the education sector has to date yielded big projects in the region, including Aldar schools, Al Dhafra schools, AUS and others.

“GCG Enterprise Solutions has a strong presales and post-sales team for ViewSonic’s business. We’re extremely proud of our status as the authorized distributor and Service center for ViewSonic in UAE, so we’ve put a lot into the education sector with dedicated sales offices and service centers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Our team is always on the move, providing on-site demos and proofs-of-concept to the many educational institutions in the region.

We offer a complete package of solutions to education institutions, including AI interactive whiteboards, security systems, printing solutions and hardware leasing options.”

The solutions ViewSonic has adapted for the education sector will undoubtedly have far-reaching implications for the future of learning. Jameel doesn’t shy from the truth in his analysis of the situation, “Covid has impacted a lot in the education sector; it stopped students from going to schools/universities. Students have suffered a lot without the real-life learning experience. And you can’t learn from a PowerPoint. Students need to interact and engage with teachers, who can explain the content and that was missing, even from online platforms like Zoom.”

He explains further that the evolution of the education sector was a hotbed for technological innovation.

“From normal whiteboard to an LED

display almost overnight! We’ve improved the technology available to the Education Sector immensely. We are currently at an advanced stage of smart classroom solutions.”

He’s referring to ViewSonic’s wireless mirroring of any smart device to their large format interactive panel, allowing students to share their ideas to the board from the safety of their seats using their personal devices.

The company’s highly advanced whiteboard software is not only capable of sharing the screen remotely to student devices, but it can also record copies of the content presented in sessions for sharing at any time. Educators are also able to import written, image and video content at the touch of a button. For security, teachers in the classroom environment have complete control over school-distributed devices, ensuring students only have access to relevant content.

“Our ViewSonic solutions support Distance or Hybrid learning too, moving the teaching from inside the classroom into the hands of the student, anywhere and anytime.

Imagine the benefits to a school that no longer has to worry about limiting its numbers of students to the room’s capacity? In an ideal world, that means reducing the fees to be more inclusive while increasing headcounts to balance the books — it’s a win-win!”

A glance at GCG Enterprise Solutions’ social media platforms shows that they’ve been very active in marketing the ViewSonic EdTech solutions with webinars and participation in educational events like GESS (Dubai Education Exhibition and Conference), but what are the next steps going forward?

“Well, as a trend, we’re over distance learning now, I think. I believe many learners have already forgotten what it was like to ‘go to school as usual. We’ve also worked close enough with schools to see that a new, hybrid learning model will soon be the new norm, where a student’s learning experience will include a balance of the home and classroom.

With ViewSonic, we’ll continue to focus on the latter, helping our teachers overcome today’s challenges and familiarize themselves with the new technology, so they remain relevant to students’ needs. And while we do that, we’ll develop even more ways to disrupt, enhance and advance the learning experience forever.”

This content has been commercially sponsored by the vendor.

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(Left to right) Dr Mohamed Alkanhal, Dean of Computer and Information Sciences, PSU; Saif Mashat, Country General Manager for Saudi Arabia.

Saudi’s Prince Sultan University to set up VMware IT Academy VMware and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan University, announced they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop plans to establish the first regional VMware IT Academy in the Gulf, supporting youth digital skills development and the aims of Saudi Vision 2030.

VMware IT Academy is a public-private partnership to help individuals gain the foundational digital knowledge they need to compete in today’s workforce by providing access to undergraduate certifications and

ongoing skills education. PSU, the first private university in Saudi Arabia, already offers select VMware courses and now plans to expand this with more tutors and the comprehensive range of courses to its more than 6,000 undergraduate students.

As the regional hub, the university will also be responsible for implementing the IT Academy programme across other higher educational institutions and training the new tutors to further enhance Saudi Arabia’s skill sets.

StarLink opens Africa HQ, StarLink Academy in Cairo StarLink, a specialised cyber and cloud value-added distributor in the META region, announced expansion plans for Africa with headquarters based out of Egypt. Starlink inaugurated a new office space in Cairo. The StarLink Egypt Office located in the heart of Cairo city is a standalone building, spanning 15,000 sq ft, with the Services Competency Centre and StarLink Academy.

Egypt is strategically positioned to cater to the African continent and StarLink will be at an advantage to promote and support their vendors with distribution in Africa, North, South, Central, Eastern and Western Africa, as well as through its satellite offices in Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya. This is aimed at boosting the company’s plans to operate from close quarters with the channel community, to grow the network, as well as strengthen existing partnerships.

Egypt is established as the tech-hub of Africa, with high market potential, making it one of the fastest growing economies due to its geographical and cultural proximity to the vast continent. The country’s tech calibre being a huge edge makes it a haven for technical talent which StarLink aims to capitalise on and has strategic hiring plans in the pipeline as part of their regional investment - close to 100 resources in the next couple of years to maximise market reach and to accelerate the company’s presence and growth in the African continent.

StarLink forecasts a closure of $50 million in Egypt alone, this year and aims to double its revenue to $100 Million with revenue generated from the rest of Africa region.

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The regional VMware IT Academy will help students to develop advanced IT skills in areas including modern apps, cloud and automation, and digital workspace. Courses will initially be delivered online due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. PSU already has 16 tutors trained to deliver the VMware IT Academy syllabus, and it is anticipated that teaching will start in September.

In line with Saudi Vision 2030’s aims to empower women in the workforce, PSU and VMware are committed to encouraging women to participate in the programme and progress their careers in ICT. Three of the PSU tutors trained to deliver the VMware courses are women, and the university is planning initiatives to maximise the number of female students who enroll on the courses.

VMware has collaborated with PSU since 2017, when VMware partnered with PSU on the Education for Employment initiative E4E, which helps Saudi graduates from any university gain vocational IT skills for employment.

The E4E programme, which includes courses on VMware Virtual Data Center and VMware vSphere, has already helped 141 graduates gain employment between 2019 and 2020, with a further 100 students on track to be hired in 2021 as a result of the programme.

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GRAPHIC: PALO ALTO UNIT 42

WHAT ARE THE LEARNINGS FROM THE KASEYA HACK?

Top industry executives explore the learnings of the Kaseya hack that impacted the VSA tool used by managed service providers in delivering their downstream services.

A

ccording to advisories posted on the Kaseya website, its VSA product has unfortunately been the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack. This has been localised to a number of on-premises customers. In an effort to be transparent with customers, Kaseya shared information concerning the recent ransomware attack.

To date, we are aware of fewer than 60 Kaseya customers, all of whom were using the VSA on-premises product, who were directly compromised by this attack. While many of these customers provide IT services to multiple other companies, we understand the total impact thus far has been to fewer than 1,500 downstream businesses. We have not found evidence that any of our SaaS customers were compromised.

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VSA is the only Kaseya product affected by the attack and all other IT Complete modules are not impacted. We have been advised by our outside experts, that customers who experienced ransomware and receive communication from the attackers should not click on any links -- they may be weaponized.

US based Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation continue to respond to the recent supplychain ransomware attack leveraging a vulnerability in Kaseya VSA software against multiple managed service providers and their customers.

CISA and FBI strongly urge affected MSPs and their customers to follow their guidance.

SECURITY

Chet Wisniewski, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos.

Most organisations relying on MSPs are far more secure with the assistance of their providers than they would be without. It does highlight the dangers of supply chain risk and it is something MSPs need to take very seriously though. As with any tool or service, if you are going to run software on-premise as opposed to using a cloudhosted service you should not expose it to the open Internet. All services should be behind firewalls and require VPN with multi-factor authentication to access.

As with most security issues, segmentation and identification are critical. Ensuring that accounts can only access accounts they manage, ensuring all administrative access requires multi-factor authentication, etc. In this case not exposing remote access servers to the open Internet would have prevented it from being exploited by a zero-day exploit.

MSPs should review what services might be exposed outside of their firewalls and ensure they are fully patched. Aside from things like web servers and VPNs, all services should be brought into the demilitarised zone and only accessible by personnel through VPN and authenticated with multi-factor authentication.

We discourage customers from using on-premise solutions that require regular updating. Our security program continuously tests for vulnerabilities using both internal and external testers in addition to running a bug bounty program to encourage responsible disclosure of anything we miss. Through aggressive monitoring of access to our cloud platform we have early visibility into anyone who may be attempting to exploit unknown vulnerabilities.

Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East Turkey and Africa, Attivo Networks.

Organisations often focus on cyber hygiene and information sharing practices to stop a future breach, but it has proved inefficient. The recent large-scale Kaseya cyber-attack is a clear signal for organisations to not implicitly trust their software providers to protect them from threats that can cause downstream damage.

The Kaseya cyber-attack has proven how one weak link in the network can lead to abuse from persistent threat actors to break into a network, thus accessing confidential and private data. Instead, companies must have an assumed breach posture for their cybersecurity strategy, preparing for the worst and using the appropriate security controls to detect attackers inside their networks.

Even when organisations deploy detection mechanisms, attackers have proven they can find a way into the network past firewalls and perimeter tools, making it critical to add identity-based detection and response to their controls. Also, by remaining aware of vulnerabilities from the get-go, organisations can stay on top of identified weaknesses and understand potential attack paths so that they can add obstacles like cyber deception to through their adversaries off course.

Supply chain incidents such as the Kaseya event are causing irreversible damage both financially and reputationally to unsuspecting victims. Stopping Zero-day attacks is complex. However, understanding how attack techniques work and how to derail activities at stage 2 of the attack cycle can have a material impact in mitigating the time an attacker has in the network and their ability to cause harm.

Charles Carmakal, SVP and CTO, Mandiant.

On July 2, 2021, an affiliate of REvil-Sodinokibi exploited multiple vulnerabilities in the Kaseya VSA product to distribute a ransomware encryptor to connected endpoints. Kaseya VSA is a remote monitoring and management solution used by managed service providers and organisations to remotely manage computer systems.

Many of the impacted organisations are very small family businesses who are only now discovering the impacts because of the holiday weekend.

REvil ransomware-as-a-service RaaS has been marketed in Russianlanguage underground forums since May 2019.

In the RaaS business model, a central group develops ransomware, communicates with victims, and runs back end infrastructure, while partners, or affiliates, carry out intrusions and deploy the ransomware.

The RaaS is operated by the actor UNKN who does not accept Englishspeaking partners and does not allow partners to target CIS countries, including Ukraine. While the known affiliates are Russian speaking, it is probable that some of the operators may not physically reside in Russia.

Notably, following the Colonial Pipeline incident, UNKN tried to restrict targeting of REvil affiliates, insisting on vetting targets prior to ransomware deployment.

REvil took credit for the operation on the evening of July 4th, claiming to have impacted over a million systems. They are asking $70 million for a universal decryptor which could be used to unlock any system affected by this incident. This exorbitant demand is the largest on record.

In private conversations, REvil has proactively decreased their demands, and they have been known to exaggerate the scope and impact of their intrusions. Furthermore, at this time, REvil has not leaked data from their intrusions, a scheme they often use to pressure victims into paying ransoms.

As long as criminals can demand ransoms in the tens of millions of dollars, and are unlikely to face jail, this problem will continue to grow from bad to worse. These actors are well-funded and highly motivated and only dramatic, collaborative action is going to turn back the tide.

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Kevin Reed, CISO at Acronis.

Far as we are aware, REvil’s systems involve a high degree of automation - humans are only involved if a victim wants to negotiate a price. So, they may not really need to scale to cover the long tail of $45,000 ransoms. Victim pays to a predefined Bitcoin wallet; they detect the payment and release the decryption key for the victim – no human involved at this stage.

I think the offer of a universal decryptor is a PR stunt. If they indeed encrypted one million systems, assuming 1,000 systems per victim, it is in the range of 1,000 victims – which correlates with some of the earlier findings reported.

With an average of $45,000 per victim - was their standard fee in this case - that makes up $45 million. Yes, some victims were individually targeted and had higher ransoms, but I doubt the total target reached $70 million. Also, those individually targeted victims will be handled by humans anyway and their numbers seem not large enough at this point to impose the REvil scale-out problem.

So, $70 million does not look like a discount for the mass decryption, nor is it cheaper in any way – so either they are being stupid, or they are just playing to see if this will work. Similar stunts worked for them in the past. They may not even expect to get the money and are just using this to occupy the news cycle longer.

While they will cash a significant sum, I doubt they will be getting the $70 million from the insurers – that would take cooperation and flexibility I find unlikely on both sides.

Lior Div, CEO and Co-founder, Cybereason.

The global Kaseya attack is a reminder that the public and private sector need to change the way cyber conflict is fought. The truth is that attackers still enjoy the advantage. The goal is not to block and prevent all attacks - operations like Kaseya and SolarWinds demonstrate that is not always possible – but rather, the goal is to quickly detect suspicious or malicious activity, and ensure you have the visibility, intelligence, and context to understand and remove the threat.

We need to shift focus from dealing with ransomware after the fact to disrupting the earliest stages of attacks through behavioral detections - this is the operation centric approach to cybersecurity. We cannot just focus on the ransomware attack - by then it is too late. Look at the earlier stages of the attack when criminals are inserting malicious code into the supply chain for instance.

The ransomware is the symptom of the larger disease we need to treat.

This newest attack will once again start the debate about whether it makes sense to rip and replace legacy computer networks used by public and private sector organisations. That simply is not going to fix the problem. We have spent trillions of dollars on cybersecurity over the past 20 years. And in many ways, we are no safer today. We could spend another $250 billion or $250 trillion and it will only incrementally help. What matters is how the money is spent.

In general, it does not pay to pay ransoms. A recent Cybereason global research study found that 90% of UAE companies that paid a ransom were hit a second time. Overall, paying ransoms only emboldens threat actors and drives up ransom demands.

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JSWorm attacks target companies in engineering, manufacturing, energy, utilities, finance As targeted ransomware continues to haunt businesses all over the globe, one can’t help but look deeper into the operations of particular ransomware gangs. This helps to better understand them and develop more advanced protection against the threats they pose.

Kaspersky researchers took apart and inspected a curious specimen or, more correctly, specimens belonging to the JSWorm group, which demonstrated its agility when it comes to upgrading its toolset. The group, which has previously focused on mass-scale operations, was able to quickly adapt and evolve into a highly-targeted operation in just two years, developing over eight distinct malware brand names.

Each rebranded variant had different aspects of the code, renamed file extensions, cryptographic schemes and encryption keys altered. Together with name changes, the developers of this ransomware have also been reworking their code and trying different approaches to distribution, which shows they are highly adaptivity and have vast resources at hand.

JSWorm has been detected across the globe – from North and South America Brazil, Argentina, USA to the Middle East and Africa South Africa, Turkey, Iran, Europe Italy, France, Germany, and APAC Vietnam, with more than a third 39% of malwares all the enterprises and individuals this group

targeted in 2020 located in APAC. When it comes to target industries, it is clear that this ransomware family eyes critical infrastructure and major sectors across the world. Nearly half 41% of JSWorm attacks were targeted against companies in the Engineering and Manufacturing industry. Energy and Utilities 10%, Finance 10%, Professional and Consumer Services 10%, Transportation 7%, and Healthcare 7% were also at the top of their list.

To remain protected against JSWorm and other types of ransomware, Kaspersky recommends: l Not exposing remote desktop services such as RDP to public networks unless absolutely necessary and always use strong passwords for them. l Making sure commercial VPN solutions and other server-side software are always up to date as exploitation of this type of software is a common infection vector for ransomware.

Always keep client-side applications up to date as well. l Focusing your defense strategy on detecting lateral movements and data exfiltration

to the internet. Pay special attention to the outgoing traffic to detect cybercriminal connections. Back up data regularly. Make sure you can quickly access it in an emergency when needed. Use the latest Threat Intelligence information to stay aware of actual TTPs used by threat actors. l Using solutions like Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response and the Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response service to help identify and stop an attack at the early stages, before the attackers achieve their ultimate goals. l Protecting the corporate environment and educating your employees. Dedicated training courses can help, such as those provided in the Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform. l Using a reliable endpoint security solution, such as Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business that is powered by exploit prevention, behavior detection and a remediation engine that is able to roll back malicious actions.

KESB also has self-defense mechanisms that can prevent its removal by cybercriminals.

Frequent meetings seen as unpleasant, fatigue from video calls, findings by Kaspersky 41% of employees in the United Arab Emirates confirmed that they have pretended their devices were installing updates so they would not have to attend a call or meeting. This excuse is plausible because software updates can disrupt workdays, with more than half 59% of employees saying they have been late to a call because of updates. These are the findings of a recent study commissioned by Kaspersky to explore workers’ attitudes and habits toward updates.

Frequent meetings are often seen as one of the most unpleasant things in the office routine. The transition to remote work and

virtual meetings has not helped the issue, as people experienced fatigue from video calls and felt more tired at the end of the working day. As the recent Kaspersky research shows, some employees found an excuse to skip some of their calls – they pretended that their work devices were unavailable due to updates.

Their colleagues may believe the deception, as they could relate to the experience of needing to update a device themselves. In addition to missed appointments, 48% of employees have lost part of their unsaved work or data when their PC or laptop restarted after installing updates.

EGOR KHARCHENKO, IT Service and Asset Group Manager at Kaspersky.

All in all, some employees see this device downtime as an opportunity to procrastinate, with 36% of respondents admitting that they have installed updates to deliberately waste time at work. Nevertheless, employees mostly don’t like it when their work is interrupted, so 74% wish updates happened outside of work hours to maintain their productivity.

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CYBERGYM opens UAE office, plans CyberFrame facility in next phase CYBERGYM, announced opening of its office in the UAE. The branch in Dubai marks CYBERGYM’s entry into the GCC region, and is the latest in a growing, world-wide network of facilities that provide organisations with cyber-training programmes, custom built to emulate their own infrastructures and technologies.

In light of the pandemic and ongoing social distancing restrictions, CYBERGYM will initially offer its training solutions to organisations in the region through virtual channels. CYBERGYM’s Virtual Cloud Arena technology enables multiple remote online users to access tailored training in defending against a wide spectrum of cyberattacks.

In the next phase of its expansion, CYBERGYM intends to build a full-scale CyberFrame facility in the UAE, through which investors, service providers, governments and integrators can run their own training facility leveraging CYBERGYM’s

OFIR HASON, Co-Founder and CEO of CYBERGYM.

technologies.

The UAE, and the GCC region as a whole, has been targeted by a rising wave of cyberattacks since the outbreak of the Covid-19

pandemic, with a 250% increase in 2020, according to the head of the UAE Government Cyber Security. Experts claim that this trend, which has been exacerbated by the growth in online users in recent years and the explosion of the work-from-home culture, is unlikely to subside anytime soon.

In a recent survey, over 46% of organisations in the UAE reported that the pandemic has significantly increased their vulnerability to cybercrime, while 71% said they expect to invest additional resources in cyber security measures.

Organisations such as NATO, Microsoft and Israel Electric Corporation train their employees using CYBERGYM’s attack scenarios. CYBERGYM’s programmes are developed, and continuously updated, based on real operational experience and knowledge of emerging threats. The Dubaibased branch will provide virtual, custombuilt cyber-training programmes to defend against the rising tide of cyberattacks.

Symphony Technology buys out FireEye products for $1.2B unlocking Mandiant FireEye, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell the FireEye products business, including the FireEye name, to a consortium led by Symphony Technology Group in an all-cash transaction for $1.2 billion, before taxes and transaction-related expenses. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

This will separate FireEye’s network, email, endpoint, and cloud security products, along with the related security management and orchestration platform, from Mandiant’s controls-agnostic software and services, enabling both organisations to accelerate growth investments, pursue new go-to-market pathways, and focus innovation on their respective solutions.

The FireEye products business and

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Mandiant Solutions will continue to operate as a single entity until the transaction closes, allowing management and STG to develop a successful transition of the FireEye products business to a standalone entity within the STG portfolio.

Mandiant Solutions has established its position as the market leader in threat intelligence and cybersecurity expertise from the front lines, serving enterprises, governments and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

With a mission of making every organisation secure from cyber threats, Mandiant is scaling its intelligence and expertise through the open Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform. With Mandiant Advantage, customers of all sizes can access the latest threat intelligence from the front lines, automate alert investigation and prioritisation, and validate the effectiveness of security controls products from any vendor.

KEVIN MANDIA, Chief Executive Officer, FireEye.

FireEye pioneered the advanced threat detection market with the introduction of its Multi-Vector Execution MVX engine for network security. Since then, FireEye has continuously innovated to advance its detection and prevention technologies through machine-learning and advanced analytics while extending across network, email, endpoint, and cloud security products, and the related security management and orchestration platform.

SECURITY

AMIN HANAFIEH, Country Director, UAE, VMware.

AHMED EL SAADI, Regional Director of Sales, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, VMware.

Applications, workloads viewed most vulnerable in data journey, VMware report VMware, released UAE findings from the fourth installment of the Global Security Insights Report, based on an online survey of 3,542 CIOs, CTOs and CISOs in December 2020 from across the globe, including 250 in the UAE. The report explores the impact of cyberattacks and breaches on organizations and details how security teams are adapting to these challenges.

Accelerated digital transformation has caused security teams to face evolving threats as cybercriminals seize the opportunity to execute targeted attacks exploiting fast-tracked innovation and the anywhere workforce.

Close to 80% of organisations surveyed in the UAE experienced cyberattacks due to more employees working from home, highlighting the vulnerabilities in legacy security technology and postures.

The Global Security Insights Report provides intelligence on the cybersecurity landscape, attack and defense trends, along with the security priorities for organisations this year to maintain resilience. The key findings include: A lack of urgency despite surge in material breaches 80% of respondents have suffered a breach in the last twelve months with 85% considered material, meaning they were reported to

regulators. Yet, security professionals have underestimated the likelihood of a material breach. 70% say they fear a material breach in the next year, and just 31% have updated their security policy and approach to mitigate the risk.

Resurgence of ransomware and remote work creates unpredictable attack surface 81% of respondents said attack volumes had increased – with majority pointing to employees working from home as the cause – and 84% said attacks had become more sophisticated. Cloud-based attacks were the most frequently experienced attack type in the past year, whereas the leading breach causes process weaknesses 14%, followed by out of date 12% security.

Cloud-first security strategies are now universal 99% of respondents already use or plan to use a cloud-first security strategy. But the move to cloud has expanded the threat surface.

More than four fifths 82% agree they need to view security differently now that the attack surface has expanded. 37% of respondents said they plan to build more security into their infrastructure and apps and reduce the number of point solutions.

Applications and workloads are top CISO concerns

Applications and workloads are viewed as the most vulnerable points on the data journey. 78% of respondents agree they need better visibility over data and apps in order to pre-empt attacks. 74% of respondents also shared that their senior leadership team feel increasingly worried about bringing new applications to market because of the growing threat and damage of cyberattacks.

Security concerns are holding back adoption of AI The next frontier for business innovation may be artificial intelligence, but more than half of respondents 76% say that security concerns are holding them back from embracing AI and machine learning.

The pandemic and shift to anywhere work have undoubtedly changed the threat landscape requiring security teams to transform their cybersecurity strategies and stay one step ahead of attackers. Key focus areas for the coming year must include improving visibility into all endpoints and workloads, responding to the resurgence of ransomware, delivering security as a distributed service, and adopting an intrinsic approach to cloud-first security.

Erratic employee behaviour, personal device and home network use reduce visibility, creating blind spots and dark corners where attacks go undetected

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LUCIA MILICA, Global Resident CISO at Proofpoint.

70% UAE respondents consider human error biggest vulnerability in Proofpoint’s CISO 2021 report Proofpoint released its inaugural 2021 Voice of the CISO report which explores key challenges facing chief information security officers after an unprecedented twelve months. 72% of CISOs in the UAE feel their organisation is unprepared to handle a cyberattack and 70% consider human error to be their biggest cyber vulnerability, proving that the work-fromhome model necessitated by the pandemic has tested CISOs like never before.

This year’s Voice of the CISO report examines global third-party survey responses from more than 1,400 CISOs at mid to large size organisations across different industries.

Throughout the course of Q1 2021, one hundred CISOs were interviewed in each market across 14 countries: the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, and Singapore.

Proofpoint’s Voice of the CISO 2021 report highlights general trends as well as regional differences amongst the global CISO community.

Key findings from the UAE include: CISOs are on high alert across a range of threats: faced with a relentless attack landscape, 68% of surveyed CISOs in the UAE feel at risk of suffering a material cyberattack in the next

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12 months.

When asked about the types of attacks they expect to face, insider threats 29%, phishing 28% and Business Email Compromise 25% topped the list. Despite dominating recent headlines, supply chain attacks and ransomware were of similar concern with 22%.

Cloud Account Compromise O365 or G suite accounts being compromised was bottom of the list with 15% - the lowest percentage across all regions.

Organisational cyber preparedness is still a major concern More than a year on into a pandemic that forever changed the threat landscape, 72% of CISOs in the UAE feel their organisation is unprepared to cope with a targeted cyberattack in 2021. Cyber risk is also on the rise: 71% of CISOs in the region are more concerned about the repercussions of a cyberattack in 2021 than they were in 2020, the highest percentage across the 14 surveyed global countries.

User awareness doesn’t always lead to behavioral change While 69% of survey respondents believe employees understand their role in protecting their organisation from cyber threats, 70% of CISOs in the UAE still consider human

error to be their organisation’s biggest cyber vulnerability. CISOs in the UAE listed using unauthorised devices, tools, and applications as well as falling victim to phishing emails as the most likely ways employees put their business at risk.

Long term hybrid work environments present a new challenge for CISOs 66% of CISOs in the UAE agree that remote working has made their organisation more vulnerable to targeted cyberattacks, with 76% revealing they had seen an increase in targeted attacks in the last 12 months, the highest among the surveyed countries.

High risk, high reward likely to be a common cyber theme over the next two years 70% of CISOs in the UAE believe that cybercrime will become even more profitable for attackers, while 64% believe that it will become riskier for cybercriminals.

CISOs will adapt their cybersecurity strategy to stay ahead Overall, the majority of global CISOs expect their cybersecurity budget to increase by 11% or more over the next two years, and 77% of CISOs in the UAE believe they will be able to better resist and recover from cyberattacks by 2023. Top three priorities across the board for UAE CISOs over the next two years are: addressing supplier risk 29%, supporting remote working 28%, as well as enabling business innovation 28%.

2020 elevated the CISO role, as well as the expectations from the business 67% of UAE CISOs agree that expectations on their function are excessive. The perceived lack of support from the boardroom persists with only 31% of UAE CISOs strongly agreeing that their board see eye-to-eye with them on issues of cybersecurity.

“The good enough approach of the past 12 months will simply not work in the long term: with businesses unlikely to ever return to pre-pandemic working practices, the mandate to strengthen cyber security defenses has never been more pressing,” said Ryan Kalember, Executive Vice President of Cybersecurity Strategy for Proofpoint.

“CISOs hold a business-critical function, now more than ever. The findings from our report emphasise that CISOs need the tools to mitigate risk and develop a strategy that takes a people-centric approach to cybersecurity protection and emphasises awareness training to address ever-changing conditions, like those experienced by organisations throughout the pandemic.”

SECURITY

JOHN SHIER, Sr Research Scientist, Sophos.

Sophos Playbook 2021 finds median dwell time 11 days, 81% ransomware in 2020 Sophos, released the Active Adversary Playbook 2021, detailing attacker behaviors and the tools, techniques and procedures that Sophos’ frontline threat hunters and incident responders saw in the wild in 2020. The TTP detection data also covers early 2021. The findings show that the median attacker dwell time before detection was 11 days – or 264 hours – with the longest undetected intrusion lasting 15 months. Ransomware featured in 81% of incidents and 69% of attacks involved the use of the remote desktop protocol for lateral movement inside the network.

The playbook is based on Sophos telemetry as well as 81 incident investigations and insight from the Sophos Managed Threat Response team of threat hunters and analysts and the Sophos Rapid Response team of incident responders. The aim is to help security teams understand what adversaries do during attacks and how to spot and defend against malicious activity on their network.

The median attacker dwell time before detection was 11 days To put this in context, 11 days potentially provide attackers with 264 hours for malicious

activity, such as lateral movement, reconnaissance, credential dumping, data exfiltration, and more. Considering that some of these activities can take just minutes or a few hours to implement – often taking place at night or outside standard working hours – 11 days offers attackers plenty of time to cause damage in an organisation’s network. It is also worth noting that ransomware attacks tend to have a shorter dwell time than “stealth” attacks, because they are all about destruction 90% of attacks seen involved the use of the Remote Desktop Protocol RDP And in 69% of all cases, attackers used RDP for internal lateral movement – Security measures for RDP, such a VPNs and multi-factor authentication tend to focus on protecting external access. However, these don’t work if the attacker is already inside the network.

The use of RDP for internal lateral movement is increasingly common in active, handson-keyboard attacks such as those involving ransomware Interesting correlations emerge among the top five tools found in victim networks For instance, when PowerShell is used in an

attack, Cobalt Strike is seen in 58% of cases, PsExec in 49%, Mimikatz in 33%, and GMER in 19%. Cobalt Strike and PsExec are used together in 27% of attacks, while Mimikatz and PsExec occur together in 31% of attacks. Lastly, the combination of Cobalt Strike, PowerShell and PsExec occurs in 12% of all attacks. Such correlations are important because their detection can serve as an early warning of an impending attack or confirm the presence of an active attack Ransomware was involved in 81% of the attacks Sophos investigated The release of ransomware is often the point at which an attack becomes visible to an IT security team. It is, therefore, not surprising that the vast majority of the incidents Sophos responded to involved ransomware. Other attack types Sophos investigated included exfiltration only, cryptominers, banking trojans, wipers, droppers, pen test/attack tools, and more “The threat landscape is becoming more crowded and complex, with attacks launched by adversaries with a wide range of skills and resources, from script kiddies to nation-state backed threat groups. This can make life challenging for defenders,” said John Shier, Sophos Sr Research Scientist. “Over the last year, our incident responders helped to neutralise attacks launched by more than 37 attack groups, using more than 400 different tools between them. Many of these tools are also used by IT administrators and security professionals for their everyday tasks and spotting the difference between benign and malicious activity isn’t always easy.

“With adversaries spending a median of 11 days in the network, implementing their attack while blending in with routine IT activity, it is critical that defenders understand the warning signs to look out for and investigate.

One of the biggest red flags, for instance, is when a legitimate tool or activity is detected in an unexpected place. Most of all, defenders should remember that technology can do a great deal but, in today’s threat landscape, may not be enough by itself. Human experience and the ability to respond are a vital part of any security solution.”

Other topics covered in the playbook include the tactics and techniques most likely to signpost an active threat and warrant closer investigation, the earliest signs of attack, the most widely seen stagers, threat types and malicious artefacts, the most prevalent adversary groups seen, and more.

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SPECIAL REPORT

CHRIS DOCHERTY, Lenovo

AHMED IBRAHIM, Intel

ALFRED THARWAT, R&M

ANTOINE HARB, Kingston Technology

ASHRAF YEHIA, Eaton

CHARBEL ZREIBY, Dell Technologies

EHAB KANARY, CommScope Infrastructure

FARID FARAIDOONI, du

GAURAV MOHAN, NETSCOUT

HAKIM LAZIZI, Schneider Electric

JAMES PETTER, Pure Storage

NARENDER VASANDANI, Siemon

DATACENTRES

CENTER OF DIGITAL

ENTERPRISES

Managing hybrid clouds are becoming a key part of enterprise datacentres boosted by hyperconvergence, virtualisation, reliability, availability.

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SPECIAL REPORT

BUILDING NEXT GENERATION PROCESSORS FOR CLOUD READY DATACENTRES Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable platform is designed to handle workloads from cloud to network to edge and provide benefits across a range of customer use cases.

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ntel recently launched its new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors code-named Ice Lake, Intel’s advanced performance datacentre platform. Combined with Intel’s portfolio of Intel Optane persistent memory and storage, Ethernet adapters, FPGAs and optimised software solutions, the new datacentre platform delivers performance and workload optimisations across hybrid-cloud, high-performance computing HPC, networking and intelligent edge applications.

Furthermore, building on over 10 years of delivering solutions, Intel Xeon Scalable processors are supported by more than 500 ready-todeploy Intel Market Ready and Intel Select Solutions that help to accelerate customer deployments – with more than 80% of the existing Intel Select Solutions portfolio being refreshed to take advantage of 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

Intel is announcing seven new or updated optimised solution reference designs for the datacentre that utilise the latest Intel products and technologies, including 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, with more solutions from the portfolio being updated throughout the year.

Intel Select Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft SQL, Open Cloud, simulation and modeling, NFVI Forwarding Platform and Visual Cloud Delivery Network are being updated, and a new solution, Intel Select Solutions for Virtual Radio Access Networks vRAN, is being introduced.

With emerging technologies and increasing business requirement, the need for and importance of datacentres is growing exponentially.

The rising demand has led companies to innovate and evolve rapidly as more and more on-premises datacentres are transforming to cloudbased and hybrid datacentres, which will be the key factors for changing datacentre technologies.

The ever-increasing data volume also poses challenges in data protection. Hence, it is critical that new datacentre technologies come with robust security solutions as organisations advance toward implementing digitalisation.

Intel’s new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors come with builtin Intel SGX, which protects sensitive code and data with the smallest potential attack surface within the system. It is also the only datacentre processors with built-In AI; delivering on average 46% increased per-

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AHMED IBRAHIM,

Director, Sales Enablement Service Providers EMEA, Intel

formance to power the industry’s broadest range of workloads — from the cloud to the network to the intelligent edge.

Datacentre migration from conventional set up to cloud-based has become a priority for organisations across industries globally. And despite the rise and adoption of new datacentre technologies, the migration process is one of the biggest challenges. Additionally, the lack of limited skills and knowledge to handle the complexities also poses a challenge in the seamless transition from a traditional datacentre to a virtual platform.

Earlier this year Intel announced the official launch of the new Intel Partner Alliance. The alliance unifies longstanding Intel partner programs, such as Intel Technology Provider, Intel IoT Solutions Alliance and Intel Cloud Insider, into a single, streamlined offering for the full partner ecosystem. The new program is designed to enhance Intel’s relationship with valued partners and together accelerate new market opportunities in an increasingly data-centric world.

Intel recognises that solutions to meet data-centric opportunities are becoming more complex and require a much greater degree of ecosystem collaboration. With the launch of Intel Partner Alliance, every member will find new value, like intelligent matchmaking, that connects them with partners and solutions specifically tailored to their business needs.

This program brings together partner programs and partner roles under one umbrella to better facilitate collaboration and advanced solutions for growth.

Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable platform is designed to handle the diversity of workloads from the cloud to the network to the edge. Intel is delivering several processor platform technology enhancements that directly provide benefit across a wide range of customer use cases. ë

SPECIAL REPORT

PREPARING CABLING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR TOMORROW’S WORKLOADS Datacentres are moving into the cloud, which is adding demand and complexity into security, rollout speeds, monitoring, data availability, expertise.

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ata growth is boosting demand for efficiencies in the areas of energy management and operational efficiencies. Migration to 100, 200, and 400 Gbit per sec are ongoing. This is promoting the need for more cabling, ultra-high-density solutions, and Datacentre Infrastructure Management to optimise capacity and space usage.

Future innovation includes intuitive user interfaces and the use of artificial intelligence AI to keep infrastructure manageable. The trend towards using more fiber is increasing, with 40 and 100 Gbit per sec requiring eight fibers in parallel pairs and higher speeds requiring 16 or 32 pairs. Highly flexible two-layer leaf-spine architectures are replacing traditional three-tier architecture to avoid congestion, reduce latencies, and support high availability.

Simultaneously, we see enterprise datacentres increasingly moving into the cloud. This is bringing new demand and complexity in areas including security, rollout speeds, monitoring, data availability, expertise, planning reliability, and customisation.

An example of a global customer is Iron Mountain Datacentres, which operates a global colocation platform that enables customers to build tailored, sustainable, carrier and cloud-neutral data solutions. The company leads the datacentre industry in highly regulated compliance, environmental sustainability, physical security and business continuity.

The company was looking for a new optical distribution frame solution to centralise fiber optic management in a single cabinet that could hold everything. R&M delivered a configuration of the Optical Distribution Frames with a capacity of 2,304 optical fibers. Each of these consists of ODF SCM modules and cable management, LC Duplex connectivity, Mixed splice and breakout cabling, designed to suit customer requirements, glass doors that provide a view of the entire fiber optic and patch management.

R&M recently introduced inteliPhy net 3.0, software for Datacentre Infrastructure Management. This latest iteration incorporates a host of new features focused on further simplifying datacentre design, planning, and management via a single, centralised dashboard.

In addition to extensive monitoring functions, inteliPhy 3.0 enables

ALFRED THARWAT,

RCDD, Head of Presales, Training and Consultancy, R&M

With the new 48 port panel, fiber optic and copper cabling can be accommodated within a single height unit saving half the rack space traditionally required

users to create their own metamodels which can represent a pre-configured device with various plug-in cards or a completely assembled and wired cabinet. To aid datacentre planning and administration, this solution offers comprehensive work order management capabilities.

Another innovative datacentre solution that R&M introduce to the region this year has been our revolutionary mixed-use Netscale 48 patch panel. With this new 48 port panel, both fiber optic and copper cabling can be accommodated within a single height unit, effectively saving up to half the rack space traditionally required for a combination of both media.ë

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SPECIAL REPORT

5G, IIOT, HOMES, DRIVING CREATION OF MICRO DATACENTRES Globally we are pushing data, application, network access to the edge, what will happen with the explosion of ultra-fast 5G connectivity, smart factories?

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hilst the world seems to be on a quest to push all data access, application access and interconnectivity out to edge networking concepts, what will happen when the eventual explosion of the ultra-fast 5G connectivity comes around - let alone adoption of the Industrial IoT path for smart factories of tomorrow? If you see these trends coming, it is logical to assume that the time of the micro datacentre will be upon us.

With home working now being accepted as a normal business function it also seems essential to create micro datacentres to cater for the localised growth.

Global technology vendors know their systems, but you cannot beat over 30 years of experience in memory and storage. Therefore, when it comes to finding the optimum networked storage and storage management solution it is helpful to work with a storage provider that offers both strong technology expertise and robust deployment and professional services capabilities.

At Kingston Technology presale consulting, design, and assessment services are offered to help the customers with these complex scenarios. Due to those solutions, customers are more likely to build a storage solution that will meet both their present and future needs while increasing their ROI and lowering the overall TCO of their storage solution.

With more than 100,000 customers, Hosteur has seen the demand for hosting services has grown significantly in recent years. This increase in demand translates into a large requirement for RAM and storage to ensure that they can meet our customer’s needs. Hosteur were facing the challenge of having to implement new servers quickly in response to demand, supply large capacities of DRAM and ensure good MTBF to all their customers.

To support the growth and demand from their ever-growing customer base, Hosteur looked to Kingston as a trusted partner, a reliable brand with great support through our Ask an Expert service and dedicated account manager. Hosteur decided to trial and test Kingston Enterprise SSDs in their servers which were supplied as evaluation units, free of charge. Hosteur wanted to see how our DC Enterprise SSDs could increase storage, performance and minimise downtime to provide their customers with best-in-class service.

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ANTOINE HARB,

Team Leader, Middle East and North Africa, Kingston Technology

Hostmein needed a reliable performance solution for its servers to uphold its best-in-class service offering while remaining competitive. It was looking to upgrade its server’s storage from HDD to full SSD for direct attached storage and for its software-defined storage applications. Another critical aspect was data security as HDD SSD storage cannot leave the facilities without being physically destroyed, which most of the hardware vendors would not offer as a service if a replacement were required.

Kingston offered a full technical review process and provided a solution based on its hardware with our Ask an Expert service. Kingston sent proof-of-concept DC500 SSDs to allow Hostmein to test in its own infrastructure. Kingston’s DC500 SSDs were compatible with the Dell and HP Servers that the company is currently operating and are performing well.

By partnering with Kingston, Hostmein was able to provide a cuttingedge and reliable solution to its customers and improve hardware performance. Hostmein reduced its overall server TCO and lowered its data center power cost by 60% by replacing its high-RPM mechanical HDD with Kingston’s DC500 SSD, which helped towards its environmental initiatives.

Kingston Technology has announced availability of its new DC1500M, a U.2 datacentre NVMe PCIe SSD for mixed-use workloads. Leveraging a high-performance Gen 3.0 x4 PCIe NVMe design, the DC1500M delivers predictable random IO performance as well as predictable latencies over a wide range of workloads.ë

SPECIAL REPORT

IS YOUR DATACENTRE’S UPS READY FOR MICROGRID SERVICES Operators in large datacentres have the opportunity to transform their UPS into a profit center, supporting the grid as a distributed energy resource.

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For datacentre operators, the uninterruptible power supply UPS has long represented a critical safeguard against potentially damaging power anomalies, as well as vital battery backup to ensure business continuity during an unexpected power outage.

Yet thanks to new technology, datacentre UPSs now have the capability to achieve a dual benefit — transforming from a load on the grid to a value-generating asset. Most large-scale datacentres have deployed substantial battery banks to provide adequate backup in the event of a blackout.

Yet the reality is, these batteries sit unused the vast majority of the time because power outages occur infrequently. Operators in today’s hyperscale, multi-tenant and other large datacentres now have the opportunity to leverage this underutilised asset, turning their UPS into a profit center and supporting the grid as a distributed energy resource.

With Eaton’s EnergyAware technology, the UPSs can help organisations optimise the energy costs and generate additional revenue as markets open up for grid services. Opportunities include providing peak shaving to help avoid or reduce demand charges; shifting energy consumption for time-of-use rate optimisation; and providing frequency regulation to help grid operators meet explosive growth demands.

The energy aware technology also enhances faster adoption of renewable energy into the power grid improving the sustainability score for datacentres.

Current methods of datacentre design involve a mix and match approach to component selection and often utilise products from multiple manufacturers to completing the power chain. This approach has served us well for the last 30 years but cannot deliver the expectations of the next generation of customer and the datacentres they require.

Accelerated construction programs and leaner builds require a more integrated system-level approach that can shave cost and improve uptime. Manufacturers are ideally positioned to combine complete component understanding with deep-dive design experience to produce a more finely tuned electrical system.

This results in not just performance gains for the customer but also significant cost savings across the complete life cycle of the datacentre

ASHRAF YEHIA,

Managing Director, Eaton Middle East

UPSs have the capability to deliver dual benefit — transforming from a load on the grid to a value-generating asset from the initial build to end of life.

A systems level approach to design will define the future of datacentres.

Eaton has a vision for the future of the datacentre which is as smart and nimble as the systems which run on it. By advocating a systems approach to data infrastructure and working with partners across the industry to realise standards and methods which help us to navigate the change we know is coming, Eaton wants to bring about the datacentre of the future.

Eaton is a power management company, providing energy-efficient solutions that help customers use electrical, fluid, and mechanical power more reliably, efficiently, safely, and sustainably. Eaton provides missioncritical datacentre solutions, including backup power protection and power distribution equipment that ensure a steady flow of high-quality power.

These solutions offer higher availability and reliability to accommodate lower power and cooling redundancy for less downtime. Its solutions help manage your datacentre power and fit-for-purpose thermal management system as strategic assets that drive real business results.ë

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SPECIAL REPORT

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

FUTURE OF DATACENTRES WILL BE HYBRID AND DISTRIBUTED The move towards decentralisation of datacentres is driven by new business needs to accommodate digital landscape and proliferation of IoT.

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As enterprise infrastructure demands are growing, so is the need for datacentres to transform, be scalable, and agile.

The future of datacentres will be hybrid and distributed, with use cases encompassing the cloud and edge. According to Gartner, 75% of enterprise data will be processed outside a traditional centralised datacentre or cloud by 2025.

The move towards decentralisation of datacentres is driven by new business needs to accommodate a fast-changing digital landscape and proliferation of IoT. Edge datacentres and network topologies, such as spine-leaf architectures, have emerged allowing for lower data latencies. Hyperconverged infrastructure is also increasing, where software-defined IT infrastructure is taking center stage, as it encompasses all the elements of a traditional datacentre with a move away from legacy infrastructure.

It is an interesting time to see how these conditions are challenging CIOs to rethink the role of the datacentre and ultimately find solutions that will allow their organisations to succeed in the digital era.

Datacentre monitoring and maintenance, especially storage infrastructure is becoming more distributed and scaled out, can be increasingly harder to manage and may put added strain on IT teams.

Organisations therefore are opting for automation to monitor, manage and maintain the routine processes and workflows of datacentres, freeing IT teams for further innovation.

Moreover, having a proper plan and strategy outlining project roadmaps, including proper data backup, efficient security systems, and migration in phases, are essential in safeguarding connectivity and ensuring customers do not experience unwanted losses. Datacentre power usage can also be a challenge, but advances in energy efficiency and server virtualisation are helping to reduce energy consumption and costs.

On the Global Alliances, there are three different partner types that we work closely with: Cloud Service Providers CSP who leverage Dell Tech’s pay-as-you-go, self-service and off premises cloud services; Strategic Outsourcers who manage and host services on and off premises; and System Integrators who provide services including business consulting and technology integration.

For enterprises, having a modernised datacentre is one such key pri-

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CHARBEL ZREIBY,

Director Channel Presales MERAT

ority, as data storage and management are essential to unlocking the vast potential enterprise data holds. Customers are using Dell Technologies’ solutions to store and protect their data in a multi-cloud world, to manage the data pipelines as these flow from different sources into their systems in a connected world and to harness the power of that data by accelerating its insights and realising faster outcomes.

Dell Technologies delivers tailored IT infrastructure from the edge to the core to the cloud for customers who want to expand their capabilities.

With Dell Technologies, organisations can set the standard for datacentre agility, efficiency, and management, and build the datacentre athey need with proven effectiveness in harsh environments.

Dell EMC’s Modular Datacentre solutions allow organisations to scale faster with unique validations, address unique business requirements with tailored infrastructure, accelerate transformation to a software-defined datacentre with Dell EMC product offerings, and outpace brick-andmortar by delivering datacentre capacity with speed, quality and efficiency.

These include edge datacentres, machine learning and storage servers, such as the PowerEdge series built for enterprises, Software-defined datacentre SDDC offerings where infrastructure is virtualised and delivered “as-a-service”, and datacentre consolidation and migration solutions. Dell Technologies also provides a portfolio of data storage technologies for modern and legacy applications, such as the PowerStore and PowerMax series, architected for a variety of data sets – including unstructured, semistructured and structured data.ë

SPECIAL REPORT

LENOVO

DATACENTRES INFRASTRUCTURE WILL NEED TO TRANSFORM TO BE FUTURE READY Organisations are mixing cloud, edge, on-premises computing in hybrid environments, and focusing on the demands of specific workloads resulting in complexity.

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he main transformation in datacentres is based in the need for companies to adjust their data infrastructure to meet increasingly complex requirements. Organisations are mixing cloud, edge, and on-premise computing in hybrid environments, and focusing on the demands of specific workloads.

This means it is important that their data infrastructure has the flexibility to scale to meet their needs, to move workloads to the right platform, seamlessly integrate across platforms and reduce the complexity of managing a diverse environment.

Enterprise CIOs need to be aware of the fundamental shifts in the ecosystem, for example, the proliferation of connected devices that are online and generating enterprise data but are creating and processing that data outside of the traditional datacentres and cloud, at the edge.

In addition, data governance and legislation effects where data can and cannot be stored, which has necessitated this shift to a hybrid cloud model where the corporate datacentre is still an essential component, but the demands on the infrastructure have changed dramatically. It is one thing to be aware of these new technologies and the shifts in the ecosystem but creating a transformation plan and an infrastructure strategy that will be future proofed against these changes is a challenge.

Lenovo is supporting enterprise customers to address these challenges, a suite of edge-to-cloud advisory and implementation services, to help them to understand where they are on their digital transformation journey and which custom solution matches their unique workloads.

In the datacentre, Lenovo has a long and rich history of collaboration with Intel. The ongoing partnership on AI and HPC has delivered a number of significant technology achievements, and we continue to work on datacentre technologies including cooing. Lenovo is also a partner for Intel Select Solutions, which create verified hardware and software solutions that are optimised for performance and ease of deployment for common application stacks.

Lenovo’s datacentre expertise covers a wide range of areas, from general datacentre infrastructure, storage, software, SDN and services, through to advanced offerings including high performance computing, AI, IoT, and Edge. As such, you will find Lenovo solutions powering

CHRIS DOCHERTY,

Regional Manager Infrastructure Solutions Group ISG, Middle East, Egypt, and Levant

datacentres in across all industries and vertical sectors.

Lenovo is a recognised leader in datacentre solutions, and offers industry-leading servers, storage, SDI networking, services, and support to our enterprise customers. Lenovo is also the number-one supercomputer provider, according to Top500.org, and partners in creating some of the most sophisticated supercomputers in the world.

Lenovo has built a complete datacentre portfolio, based on compute, storage, networking hardware and services, along with engineered solutions for specific workloads including AI, Blockchain, DevOps, and Big Data. Lenovo has a partnership with Microsoft, AMD, VMware, NetApp, Nutanix, Veeam, SAP and others, which enable customers a wide choice of solutions for their requirements.

Lenovo’s solutions have been designed for these complex deployment scenarios, with features such as end-to-end data management that is architected and implemented for requirements from the edge to core to the cloud; encrypted data protection and protection of data at motion, at rest and in the cloud; integration with leading public cloud platforms and enterprise applications and workloads; and intelligence and automation to ease implementation, and support embedded analytics for future-proofed data management, delivering superior long-time economic and operational value to the organisation.ë

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SPECIAL REPORT

COMMSCOPE

DRIVING LATENCY INTO THE SINGLE MILLISECOND RANGE The volume of digital traffic pouring into the datacentre continues to climb, while a new generation of applications is driving latency requirements lower.

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he demands on the network, like speed and capacity, are constantly increasing. New technologies on the horizon can enable 400G in the near future and 800G soon after. As business needs evolve, datacentres are expected to perform and meet customer demands.

One critical step is looking at cabling options. We are also focusing on helping customers plan for the convergence of the real and digital worlds. This includes the need to consistently develop solutions that integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information. Machines can process information nearly as fast as they receive it.

If the rate of technology acceleration is any indication of what lies ahead, enterprise datacentres better strap in. As latency becomes more critical to the end-user, more fibre will be pushed deeper into the network. The volume of digital traffic pouring into the datacentre continues to climb; meanwhile, a new generation of applications driven by advancements like 5G, AI and machine-to-machine communications is driving latency requirements into the single millisecond range.

With 100G having driven higher and higher fibre counts, larger hyperscale and cloud-based datacentres confronted their inevitable leap to 400G. With switches and servers on schedule to require 400G and 800G connections, the physical layer must continuously optimise network capacity.

The amount of support that CommScope customers can access continues to grow thanks to the continued expansion of CommScope’s PartnerPRO Network.

To help enterprises navigate the multi-tenant datacentre MTDC space, which is both crowded and competitive, CommScope developed the Multi-Tenant Data Centre Alliance programme. By partnering with industry-leading MTDC providers globally, we can provide alliance partners, best-in-class connectivity solutions and a dedicated, global support team.

CommScope builds its products and solutions to deploy simply, operate reliably, and provide the adaptability for its clients’ enterprise datacentre needs to expand as demands grow.

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EHAB KANARY,

CommScope Infrastructure EMEA, Emerging Markets Sales VP

To help enterprises navigate the multitenant datacentre space, CommScope developed the MultiTenant Data Centre Alliance programme

Its solutions for enterprise datacentres include automated infrastructure management platform, fibre raceways, high-speed migration, preterminated copper and fibre infrastructure, enterprise switches, and smart structured cabling.ë

SPECIAL REPORT

DU

PARTNERSHIPS KEY TO SUPPORT DATACENTRE TRANSFORMATION New technologies are improving virtualisation, cloud solutions are eliminating security concerns, optical transport networks are creating low latency.

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ecent times have witnessed innovation and transformation come to fruition with regards to datacentre solutions, trends that continue to unfold. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are being pursued to optimise, automate, and manage datacentre solutions and operations.

At the same time, new technologies are improving virtualisation performance, cloud solutions are eliminating security concerns, and Optical Transport Networks are ensuring solutions are more efficient than ever before backed by low latency.

In addition to the benefits they provide, enterprise datacentres and solutions are also accompanied by challenges. Firstly, the scaling out process cannot be successful without ensuring data protection against emerging threats. Enterprise datacentres are tasked with storing and managing infrastructure for clients from many verticals, meaning they are subject to malicious attacks from cybercriminals which must be permanently dispelled.

Another key challenge in terms of solutions’ innovation is ensuring continuous real-time data monitoring. Data traffic and demands, power usage, and cooling must always be recorded in real-time, without which optimised deployments and performance will not be sustainable.

Partnerships and alliances are crucial components of du’s enterprise datacentre solutions. To ensure successful and seamless delivery to every customers, du has previously entered into an alliance with global interconnection and datacentre company Equinix, with both parties collaborating to establish a world-class carrier-neutral hub where carriers, content and cloud providers, and enterprise customers collocate critical datacentre infrastructure.

Built on a foundation of hybrid and multi-cloud, du equips enterprises and clients with next-generation digital infrastructure, supporting transformation projects by providing agile, resilient, secure, and scalable solutions comprising complete managed services, in-country datacentre processes, and software-defined enterprise networks. du’s DSO Dubai and Kizad Abu Dhabi facilities that are soon going to open, and both datacentres will support the UAE government and financial organisations in outsourcing their datacentre requirements.

FARID FARAIDOONI,

Chief New Business and Innovation Officer

Enterprises benefit from access to the Equinix ecosystem, which provides critical data infrastructure and connectivity services Furthermore, du’s enterprise data solutions have also proven invaluable in other areas, empowering companies in healthcare, hospitality, and logistics to address unique challenges and transform digitally. du’s colocation services help to safeguard mission-critical data with build-in redundancy, Uninterruptible Power Supply systems, backup generator systems, and precision environmental systems HVAC. Passive Cross Connects enables direct access to the carriers, cloud and content providers, and enterprises, while technicians provide 24x7 assistance for remote management, custom installations, and equipment troubleshooting.

Enterprise datacentres also benefit from access to the Equinix ecosystem, which provides critical data infrastructure and connectivity services.

Moreover, enterprises that choose du’s datacentre solutions benefit from world-class infrastructure delivered with local knowledge and expertise.ë

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SPECIAL REPORT

NETSCOUT

TRANSFORMATION OF WORK DRIVING DATACENTRE TRANSFORMATION With changes in the world of work, datacentre transformation has become more critical than ever while networks remain overburdened with flood of data.

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oday’s digital world runs on the enterprises’ ability to build a great customer experience anytime, anywhere. This requires instant access to information and a fundamental shift in how enterprises think about datacentres.

Shifts in datacentre transformation strategies and projects have become unavoidable over the last year as companies, employees, and IT organisations respond to the dynamic demands presented by the global health crisis.

Companies have moved to public and private clouds, co-location facilities, the edge cloud, and evolving datacentres using virtualisation and software-defined networks. The goal is speed, agility, convenience, and cost-effectiveness.

Acceleration in the public cloud and SaaS adoption and migrations will be key focus areas for organisations in the coming months.

With unprecedented changes in the world of work, datacentre transformation has become more critical than ever. Networks are overburdened as a new flood of data from IoT devices began streaming in from every corner of the globe.

One key challenge for businesses is migrating data across various cloud environments, private, public, or hybrid. Additionally, as data is dispersed across multiple complex environments, gaining visibility into data and storage infrastructures has become increasingly difficult.

Data access is the lifeblood of the digital enterprise, but increased infrastructure complexity, cloud visibility silos, and application dependencies make it hard to deliver a consistent, secure user experience.

Supporting a seamless digital experience and datacentre operations amidst strict time constraints, limited resources, and a lack of systemwide visibility is nearly impossible.

NETSCOUT’s enterprise data solutions are adopted across various verticals, including manufacturing, hospitals, retail, e-commerce, and financial services. NETSCOUT solutions for datacentres are used across industries to improve IT efficiencies, gain visibility across cloud environments and applications, and consolidate datacentre operations.

These solutions offer several benefits to end-users, including lower operating expenses, a single-vendor approach to service assurance, smart visibility, and packet broker technology. Visibility enhancements

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GAURAV MOHAN,

VP Sales South Asia, MEA and CIS

Goal is speed, agility, convenience, cost-effectiveness also allow network operators to meet their targets for reliable business application performance and reduced downtime instances. Thus, these solutions allow organisations to optimise datacentre capabilities effectively, improving the overall performance of these enterprises.

NETSCOUT’s market-leading solutions, nGeniusONE Service Assurance and the award-winning synthetic testing offering, nGeniusPULSE, work to ensure network and application performance and provide critical insights into the end-user experience.

This product can map, measure, and test user experience and performance, throughout legacy, private, and public cloud environments, providing enterprises with the intelligence to assess, plan, migrate, and cloud-optimise their applications and boost customer experiences.

As datacentres race toward software-centric solutions and underlying network designs evolve, IT teams and service providers look for ways to maximise investments with agile solutions designed to grow with the network.

NETSCOUT’s ISNG software and hardware appliance options provide industry-best flexibility for strategic deployment throughout the enterprise, government, commercial, and service provider networks. ë

SPECIAL REPORT

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

SUSTAINABILITY BECOMING DIFFERENTIATOR FOR DATACENTRES 57% view sustainability as a competitive differentiator but only 43% said they have strategic sustainability initiatives in place for their infrastructure.

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recent 451 Research report surveyed 800+ datacentre providers worldwide and discovered the majority of respondents 57% view sustainability as a competitive differentiator and cite customer expectations as a major driver. But only 43% said they have strategic sustainability initiatives and efficiency improvements in place for their infrastructure.

That means that the majority of datacentre providers across the globe lack a strategic plan for sustainability at a time when customers are demanding it and regulations may soon require it.

Schneider Electric addresses this challenge with a comprehensive framework of reference design offering a true sustainable Data center design, highly efficient secure power and cooling capital equipment components, with effective proven Datacenter operations method statement and procedures.

In the fast-changing world of datacentre design, some say that a datacentre becomes obsolete the day it is built and commissioned.

Although this is an extreme view, the reality is that most datacentre and business executives are faced with the ongoing challenge of outsourcing or modernising.

In many cases, datacentre managers find themselves running a datacentre that they had no part in designing. Perhaps they were hired to replace a retiring datacentre manager, and they may be inheriting a host of problems and some outdated technologies.

Ultimately, the datacentre has to be modified in order to accommodate the business goals of the company, and industries requirements in terms of agility, scalability and Uptime of operations. If an aging facility is inherited, common issues that need to be resolved include lack of space, inefficient cooling, or a power infrastructure that is not flexible enough to accommodate rapid growth.

These facilities should be armed with adequate power and protections throughout the clock to maintain the safety of the data and also so that any data can be retrieved at any point in time. Hence, datacentres require an uninterrupted power supply UPS and Efficient Cooling to have very low to no downtime.

Demand for datacentre capacity is on an uptick with Gartner predicting that end-user spending on global datacentre infrastructure will

HAKIM LAZIZI,

Secure Power Leader, Middle East and Africa

reach $200 billion in 2021, a 6% increase over 2020 expenditures.

Operators of enterprise datacentres, cloud and service providers and colocation facilities are under increasing pressure to meet growing demand while also improving uptime and performance, managing costs, and advancing their organisation’s sustainability goals. One approach to addressing these challenges lies in selecting the right UPS and cooling system for the datacentre.

Schneider Electric offers high-quality UPS and reliable batteries systems as power backup solutions for large datacentres. Schneider Electric 3 phase UPS system ensures end-to-end power supply and other critical systems.

With an uninterruptible power supply, datacentres can enjoy smooth internet connectivity, which helps them deliver their services without any hindrances.

Schneider Electric’s partnerships go beyond solutions, technologies and trainings. They provide enterprises with future-facing opportunities to better navigate in the new electric world, and collaboration to help them win more business.

There are 650,000+ members in Schneider Electric’s open-partner ecosystem – a network of panel builders, contractors, mass systems integrators and global alliances all working together, offering collaborative opportunities.

In addition, Schneider electric offers 200+ digital tools, open platforms architectures and solutions, that enable enterprises to expand their offer and win new business in the digitally evolving environment.

Datacentres are necessary facilities that store vast amounts of sensitive data. ë

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SPECIAL COVER STORY REPORT

PURE STORAGE

THE VISION OF AN ALL-FLASH DATACENTRE COMING TRUE

The all-flash datacentre is coming true and sounding the death knell for spinning disk and hybrid, while another advantage is reduction in power, space, cooling costs.

J

ust over ten years ago Pure set out to create the all-flash datacentre, and to make all-flash technology accessible for every organisation and every workload. This is coming true and it will sound the death knell for spinning disk and make hybrid solutions obsolete. Another advantage is that Pure’s technology delivers savings in power, space, and cooling costs.

Pure Storage works with the most innovative Technology Alliance Partners in the world to enable customers to do more with data. Pure’s Technology Alliance Partner Programme enables leading hardware, software, and multi-cloud vendors to build pre-tested joint solutions that span AI, analytics, cloud, modern data protection, and much more, so customers can deploy with confidence. Some of our strategic partnerships include: Amazon Web Services works with Pure Storage to provide data management solutions and hybrid applications that simultaneously leverage the agility and innovation of private, edge, SaaS, and cloud. These solutions help solve the challenges of meeting the increasing demands of modern applications and supporting customers’ cloud strategy.

Cisco and Pure partner closely to provide confidence and value to joint customers and channel partners. Cisco and Pure brought FlashStack converged infrastructure to market to help customers focus on the initiatives that are most important to their business. With FlashStack, they have the infrastructure that will adapt and grow to new challenge and business requirements without compromise.

Pure Storage and VMware together help customers unify their VMware private and public clouds with a modern enterprise storage platform.

Simple and integrated, optimised for efficiency and performance, and hybrid by design, the partnership helps customers effortlessly virtualise and consolidate applications and desktops while delivering high performance with sub-millisecond storage latency. Plus, they can manage everything with VMware vCenter.

Pure helps customers maximise the value of their Microsoft application data, innovate faster and deliver a consistent end-user experience, on-premises and in the cloud.

Metito is a global provider of intelligent water management and

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JAMES PETTER,

International Vice President

alternative energy solutions. It has deployed Pure’s technology to improve the performance of its business-critical applications, provide cost predictability, and simplify storage management.

Saudi Arabia’s Institute of Public Administration is tasked with the continual education of public employees with a view to enhance their efficiency and is responsible for the administrative organisation of government departments. IPA is using Pure’s technology to successfully execute on its core objective of training and up-skilling public sector employees.

Pure Storage FlashArray//XTM is the world’s first 100% all-flash end-toend NVMe and NVMe-oF array, optimised for corporate and enterprise environments. It provides high performance, reliability, and availability for mission-critical operations — both block and file.

Pure Storage FlashArray//C — the first all-QLC flash array — provides a 100% NVMe all-flash foundation for capacity-oriented applications, test and development workloads, multisite disaster recovery, and data protection.

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced all-flash storage solution for consolidating fast file and object data. Pure FlashBlade is the industry’s leading Unified Fast File and Object UFFO storage platform that consolidates unstructured data and accelerates organisations’ progress to insight, innovation and time to market.

Developed jointly with Cisco, FlashStack combines compute, network, and storage to provide a modern infrastructure platform for businesscritical applications, DevOps, and analytics.

Portworx by Pure Storage provides a fully integrated solution for persistent storage, data protection, disaster recovery, data security, cross-cloud and data migrations, and automated capacity management for applications running on Kubernetes. ë

SPECIAL REPORT

SIEMON

PREPARING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR NEXT CAPACITY DATACENTRES As capacity datacentres migrate to higher speeds, they require low loss fibre connectivity to support multiple networks over a range of configurations.

T

The rise of connected technologies including 5G, telehealth and autonomous vehicles raises technical limitations such as latency. Edge datacentres have emerged to reduce the distances between end users, their devices, and the IT resources that support them. These edge facilities must support large data volumes at high speeds and they require a greater number of physical connections within a much smaller space.

Implementing high-speed interconnect solutions will support transmission speeds from 10Gbps to 100Gbps, whilst high-capacity fibre designs 144 LC fibres or 864 MTP within a 1U enclosure offer superior port density and provide easy ports access and cable management.

As we see the demand for flexibility, scalability, higher bandwidth rise, fibre optic cabling is emerging as the dominant media type for datacentre infrastructure. Fibre application speeds are moving towards 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps, which leads to the adoption of MPO-MTP connectivity.

MPO-MTP technology makes it easier, more cost-effective and less complex to deploy high-capacity backbone fibre links and at the same time, it paves the road from current 10 to future 40, 100 and 400 gigabit Ethernet throughputs.

As today’s high-density datacentres migrate to higher speeds, they require low loss fibre connectivity to support multiple mated connections for flexible patching options over a wide range of distances and configurations while remaining within link loss budgets.

Over the years Siemon has developed an ecosystem of datacentre partners who are all specialists in what they do. Their complementary products and services combine with Siemon’s high-performance IT infrastructure solutions to deliver additional value and support to Siemon customers.

Amongst them are global leaders in datacentre switching, cooling and cloud networking solutions. Siemon also partners with leading datacentre infrastructure management DCIM providers such as Graphical Networks and Maya HTT to help customers effectively manage, monitor, control and document their datacentre.

Siemon designed a new cabling architecture and installed highperformance cabling products at SurfSARA, a collaborative ICT

NARENDER VASANDANI,

RCDD, Technical Services Group Manager, India, Middle East, Africa.

Edge datacentres have emerged to reduce the distances between end users, devices, IT resources organisation for Dutch education and research based in Amsterdam. The infrastructure comprises of a high-density plug-and-play fibre system that supports high-speed parallel optic applications at 40 and 100 Gbps or duplex applications at 10 and 25 Gbps. Low-loss fibre cabling ensure application support.

Siemon also installed its IT infrastructure solutions at the datacentre of the University of Sussex in the UK. Here, Siemon’s Z-MAX 6A F-UTP solution combines superb performance and unparalleled usability with security and robust noise immunity.

With its WheelHouse product portfolio, Siemon offers a complete range of advanced datacentre solutions to support the enterprise datacentre.

Wheelhouse includes Z-MAX category 6A F-UTP, TERA category 7A and category 8.2 high-performance twisted-pair copper cabling systems as well as LightHouse advanced fibre optic cabling solutions which include Base-8 and Base-12 plug and play fibre systems.

High speed interconnect assemblies that support up to 100 Gbps applications are also part of the WheelHouse product range as well as a comprehensive line of datacentre cabinets and racks, power distribution and automated infrastructure management. ë

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COVER STORY

KERRY GRIMES, Head of Global Partners, AVEVA.

AVEVA’S NEW CHANNEL STRATEGY

COMBINING DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY

IT industry’s latest digital platforms, sustainability practices, cross-selling, are now part of AVEVA’s industrial channel programme.

COVER STORY

WHY DID AVEVA ACQUIRE OSISOFT

BY ARUN SHANKAR

D

igital transformation has impacted all business and industries, with varying degree of adoption and pace. While traditional IT enterprise applications have been migrating to cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service and pay-as-yougo models for more than a decade, the pandemic has triggered interest in other software areas as well.

The industrial sector, in particular, has been slow to embrace the possibilities of digital transformation, often relying on piecemeal point solutions that reinforce organisational silos. AVEVA, a global vendor in sustainable digital transformation across the industrial sector, offers a digital-first platform approach that allows organisations to track sustainability targets at the same time.

AVEVA’s solutions are source-agnostic and interoperable in the cloud, and addresses multiple use cases supporting greener outcomes.

“Industrial enterprises are responding to the changed ways in which we do business in the new normal,” says Kerry Grimes, Head of Global Partners, AVEVA. “The rapid move to industrial digital transformation has been enhanced by the pandemic. Alongside, increasing stakeholder demand for greener and more sustainable outcomes forcing industrial organisations to rethink value chains. Embedding digital solutions at the heart of the industrial enterprise responds to both challenges.”

Grimes is a recognisable face to channel partners in his role as Head of AVEVA’s partner organisation, which comprises of strategic partners such as Schneider Electric and Microsoft, as well as technology and channel partners, including distributors, systems integrators, OEM partners and solutions providers.

He offers a rundown of how the company’s products can leverage the benefits of digital transformation and sustainability for customers with a focus on Human Machine Interface, HMI and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, SCADA software.

Traditionally close to

90%

of OSIsoft business has been sold direct

Over the past year, AVEVA has doubled down its efforts to support industries in their digital transformation journeys with a suite of cloud, big data, AI and industrial IoT solutions. The British multinational has been unveiling new solutions and initiatives to drive engineering efficiency, operational excellence, resiliency and agility to help shape a digital sustainable future across the industrial sector.

In March this year, AVEVA acquired OSIsoft, a California-based manufacturer of real-time data management application software, to meet the needs of industrial companies and accelerate their digital transformation. The combined portfolio brings OSIsoft’s data management together with AVEVA’s industrial software to unlock what the company calls Performance Intelligence. The concept was developed by AVEVA to explain how the combination of industrial data management and software unlocks success in today’s operating environment.

The recent acquisition of OSIsoft allows the AVEVA to lead in the Historian Big Data space and visualisation space, enhancing its monitoring control portfolio. By integrating OSIsoft’s intelligent tools into its industrial automation software portfolio, AVEVA now provides solutions that span edge, plant, and enterprise deployments.

OSIsoft’s Performance Intelligence connects information and artificial intelligence, to enable faster and accurate decision making, helping industries boost sustainability. By pairing the capabilities of OSIsoft’s PI System with AVEVA’S industrial software, Performance Intelligence gives people behind essential processes, reliable data to understand the industrial lifecycle.

Areas where Performance Intelligence is likely to have most impact include organisational productivity, operational agility, and sustainability.

Traditionally, close to 90% of OSIsoft business has been sold direct, indicates Grimes. “They have done some OEM agreements with industry automation vendors that I want to leverage and capitalise on, because it gives us a foot in the door,” Grimes expresses.

With OSIsoft, there is the opportunity for AVEVA to cross sell some of its control portfolio solutions into the industrial automation space.

The OSIsoft go to market model is mostly direct business, with only 10-15% of the business sold through OEM channels. OSIsoft has been using industry automation vendors as their distribution channel partners. The merger allows both sides to make use of their channel partner programmes.

AND WHY IS OSISOFT BIG FOR AVEVA “It has been a great acquisition for us, not just in terms of technology, but how we can bring together the different pieces of our partner programme. We can now enable our channel to take OSI’s PI through, and we can leverage where their strength was with industry automation players, to promote our hardware agnostic software. As well as other pieces of the AVEVA portfolio as well,” says Grimes.

“We are now bringing together two leading fields of technologies,” says Grimes. “I believe the whole Performance Intelligence area is at its crossroads.”

AVEVA’s Asset Lifecycle products work horizontally, and include engineering, designing, operations, analysing, and maintaining the plant. Operations control and the HMI SCADA offering is positioned in the middle of the operations and asset management lifecycles and Historian process control.

“That is where we intersect operations control with the whole HMI SCADA platform,” adds Grimes. AVEVA expects Performance Intelli-

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COVER STORY

Close to

85%

of AVEVA’S HMI SCADA business is sold through AVEVA distributors

gence to help customers manage plant assets as well as their production. Whatever type of production, Performance Intelligence is set up to deliver results.

Grimes feels Performance Intelligence is really big. Performance Intelligence provides greater operational agility and resilience for industries by connecting the power of information and AI with human insight.

By pairing the trusted capabilities of OSIsoft’s PI System with AVEVA’s software portfolio, the people managing essential processes benefit from rich data that allows them to visualise the entire industrial lifecycle. This empowers them to make faster and precise decisions and enables companies to boost sustainability performance.

AVEVA’S LEASED APPROACH TO SOFTWARE Other than changing product architecture of operations and asset management lifecycle, AVEVA is also altering how systems, including HMI SCADA, are sold through the channel. IT industry software vendors have successfully moved their end customers from a perpetual licensing, capital purchase to a recurring operating purchase. This is

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making purchase and usage of software agile and flexible.

However, unlike IT industry, industrial software players like AVEVA struggle to make it work on the plant floor. And the reason is, industrial plants are built to work for ten years, without having to do anything more to keep them going. While all that is starting to change in the world of digital transformation, plant floor managers still have an aversion to subscriptions, points out Grimes.

AVEVA’s response is to offer technological solutions with on-demand access. “What we are doing is we are creating these AVEVA operation control bundles, available through our AVEVA Flex plan. It is a bundle for the edge, for supervisory level and for the enterprise. We can actually go from edge to enterprise with these bundles,” according to him.

But unlike AVEVA’s previous pricing model, the AVEVA operations control software bundles are going to be priced differently. AVEVA’s previous pricing model was based on hardware and not on the end user. “This is not necessarily optimised for how the customer wants to buy. The customer wants to make sure they are seeing a strong value proposition,” says Grimes.

AVEVA is changing the pricing model of its operations software control bundles. It will now be slab-based using two parameters, including a slab-wise determination of the number of users as well as counting of the number of sites in the small, medium, large levels. “If you do the multiplication, there is the total bill,” indicates Grimes.

The company will now offer its entire operations software portfolio to a particular site at a specific price. It will not just be licenses for individual products. Within these operations control software bundles, AVEVA has multiple HMI SCADA products, and covers everything from the edge to the core and to the systems.

Another limitation from the previous pricing model was that, there were functional overlaps in the products. And since different customers used the software at different places and at different times, the per-use pricing was confusing.

AVEVA’s new operations control software bundles now allow end customers to use all of its products, the way they want to use them. “And we

COVER STORY

give a bunch of Flex credits for what you are doing.

So, we can manage it with our subscription database, and tie it back to the AVEVA Flex model that we had announced a year ago,” says Grimes. “This whole site centric model is going to be key for our customers, as it gives them freedom on how they want to buy.”

AVEVA Flex Subscriptions also give systems integrators access to provide a recurring expense for software licensing on a periodic basis versus the one-time perpetual licensing purchase model.

This recurring license purchase allows customers to move from capital asset purchases to operating expenditures, matching budgets to requirements.

Customers can increase or reduce their software licensing based on their activity levels.

“We work closely with our systems integrator partners and our main focus now is to actively expand our network,” he adds.

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL VALUE FOR CHANNEL The AVEVA Partner Network allows systems integrators to engage with over 4,500 partner companies and 5,700 plus certified developers across industrial segments. It opens up opportunities for enhanced global collaborations, higher margin businesses and allows systems integrators to leverage complimentary skills from other partners and improve brand equity through certifications and endorsements.

The company recently enhanced its Partner Network for System Integrators program by providing access to a broader spectrum of the AVEVA portfolio for training and certification. The improved programme presents further opportunities for system integrators to offer increased value to their customers through application of AVEVA software.

The AVEVA System Integrator Certifications range from the entry-level Registered System Integrator up to Certified System Integrator, then at the highest level, Endorsed System Integrator. Systems integrators are classified according to this tiered system, which is based on experience with specific products, proven industry expertise, markets served and degree of desired business collaboration with AVEVA. System integrators can leverage cloud benefits through AVEVA Connect, a unified industrial software cloud platform that spans the company’s entire software portfolio. It offers easy access for systems integrators to provide AVEVA products and services in the cloud.

By using AVEVA Connect, system integrators can gain benefits such as scalability, flexible pricing, high-availability, disaster-recovery, moving from infrastructure costs to operating costs, collaboration and faster response times.

Microsoft recognises AVEVA as #1 energy cross-sell partner AVEVA was recognised as the 2021 Microsoft Energy Partner of the Year as well as was named a finalist for 2021 Microsoft Sustainability Changemaker Partner.

AVEVA was chosen from a set of more than 4,400 nominations from over 100 countries with an elaborate selection process.

AVEVA and Microsoft work together to enhance customer experiences across the industrial value chain. In energy, organisations deploying AVEVA Energy Management and Performance Solutions also benefit from using Microsoft Energy Core solutions.

In the process, customers realise reductions in project implementation times of up to 60% when compared to bespoke implementations of intelligent operations – thanks to real-time, 360-degree view of the value chain, and predictive maintenance and operations. Grimes says the benefits work equally well for other sectors.

AVEVA recently announced its participation in Microsoft’s Sustainability Global Campaign. “As one of Microsoft’s leading partners, AVEVA enables customers to execute their net-zero carbon pledges through cutting-edge sustainability solutions. Developing green industrial processes are increasingly becoming a top priority for organisations as they reduce any adverse impact on the environment and allow for streamlined and efficient operations,” adds Grimes.

AVEVA and Microsoft are committed to empowering industries to action their sustainability goals.

Close to 85% of AVEVA’S HMI SCADA business is sold through AVEVA distributors.

“That is one of the things we do not want to change,” says Grimes. “AVEVA distributors boost reach and coverage in their region, they also support customers. It does not make sense for us to go in those markets and build that kind of support and try to do something different when our distributors already have those strengths in place.” From an AVEVA partner point of view, they know what is in it for them, he adds.

AVEVA distributors can also benefit from the company’s AVEVA Select programme, which is designed specifically for select AVEVA distribution partners. The AVEVA Select Partner designation allows distributor partners to enable customers simplify design, optimise production, and maximise performance, to accelerate their digital transformation agendas. ë

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2021 ROADSHOW AUGUST-NOVEMBER, 2021 36 COUNTRIES 4000 C-LEVEL EXECS 300+ SESSIONS 200+ EXHIBITORS

#ChangeX

INNOVATION

TRIPP LITE

TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS FOR THE NEW BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT The rapid adoption of digital transformation and modernisation of healthcare systems has drawn attention to power efficiency inside the datacentre.

The IT infrastructure of business systems, whether it is a country, city, commercial company or government organisation, is essential to efficient operation. The rapid development of technology, signaling the end of the information era and the beginning of the digital era, has put new demands on IT companies to provide solutions for today’s needs.

“Digital transformation for a company begins with the modernisation and optimisation of IT infrastructure, which must meet its basic principles: availability, security, manageability and scalability,” said Alexander Khalaev, Vice President of Sales, Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. Operating since 1922, Tripp Lite has established a global reputation by providing quality solutions, from desktop to critical infrastructure, for current trends.

Tripp Lite’s workspace solutions offer many products for a remote office, including single-phase UPS systems, power strips, surge protectors, power and interface cables, docking stations, monitor mounts and charging stations. PDUs, UPS systems, KVMs and console servers with remote management capabilities for data centers and servers will also be essential to enable IT personnel to quickly respond to issues.

The growth of Ecommerce, financial transactions, IoT and edge computing has also increased the need for high-speed data transfers, emphasising the importance of power protection, power redundancy, cooling and cable networks.

Tripp Lite’s SmartOnline double-conversion UPS systems meet these demands, ensuring reliable operation of critical server rack equipment. Features include mechanical bypass, controlled outlets and new Power Alert software that enables remote control of equipment.

To build a centralised uninterruptible power supply system, Tripp Lite offers several types of UPS systems up to 400 kVA, including models with the option for parallel operation. In addition to UPS systems, Tripp Lite has a comprehensive data solution, including modular PDUs, KVM switches, SCS equipment, cable support systems and server racks to increase cooling efficiency.

Additionally, there are several products designed specifically for colocation data centers, including racks

that allow two customers to place equipment in separate sections, and additional protection from outside access.

Tripp Lite PDUs are available in more than 50 models, including products with varying number of outlets and the ability for connection to the mains. Other options include basic and measuring models, as well as products with an Ethernet network interface. Certain models provide remote monitoring, control and status reporting.

New Tripp Lite software offers access to these features for operators to control equipment while off-site.

Hospital equipment has also become more prominent due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Tripp Lite offers medical UPS systems to help keep healthcare equipment powered in critical times.

The SmartPro Hospital Grade line-interactive models feature built-in isolation transformers and extended battery runtime, available with both classic lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries.

The models comply with the international standard UL60601-for use in the patient care area or mobile medical units. In addition to UPS systems, Tripp Lite has several products specifically for healthcare environments, including inverters for mobile medical units, isolation transformers, surge protectors for data lines and cables with antibacterial coating.

To meet the fast-growing need for edge computing, Tripp Lite EdgeReady Micro Data Centers are an excellent solution. Customised for customer requirements, the essential components of the MDC — racks, UPS systems with control cards, environmental sensors, and power distribution units — come assembled and ready for deployment.

Air conditioners, batteries, and other accessories can add to meet the specific need. Advanced hardware and software functionality can automatically reboot equipment, reducing downtime and maintenance costs.

“As demands constantly shift, Tripp Lite is dedicated to customers and their needs. We are focused on providing reliable technological

ALEXANDER KHALAEV,

Vice President of Sales, Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia, Tripp Lite.

Hospital equipment has also become more prominent due to the Covid-19 pandemic infrastructure solutions to help companies efficiently operate,” concluded Alexander Khalaev.

This content has been sponsored by the vendor. ë

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INNOVATION

INFOBLOX

ADJUSTING YOUR SECURITY POSTURE BETWEEN ON-PREMISES AND EDGE Providing a unified security between on-premises and edge is a challenge organisations are facing which requires a change in security strategy.

Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, 21% of organisations globally had over half of their workforce working remotely compared to 50% of the organisations during Covid-19 crisis. The borderless enterprise is one that is characterised by high levels of remote work, high adoption of cloud-based services and applications, and a large number of dispersed IoT, mobile and other devices.

During the pandemic and associated shutdown, VPN access, secure DNS, secure web gateway, and cloud security solutions like cloud access security broker were the most commonly provided network cybersecurity services.

These services are critical and effective for remote users and secure access; however, many organisations were not ready in adopting such a security strategy yet or prepared for the spike in demand for remote access. Work from home users are becoming the edge of the network.

Providing a unified security posture between on premises and the edge is the main technical challenge organisations are still facing which requires a change in the cyber security strategy to adapt with the new norm.

Addition of secure DNS and endpoint security, followed by addition of artificial intelligence to detect anomalous behavior, multi-factor authentication, DDI for network and device visibility and security were the four, as a service offering, most common taken to secure networks and employees while teleworking during the shutdown.

These actions were taking the most attention in the majority of the organisations given the risk and cyber threat encountered with work from home users on the business. 46% of the surveyed organisations shifted IT resources towards cybersecurity to protect their network during the crises.

This also highlights the challenge and the shortage in IT and cyber security skills and resources most organisations went through during and post the crises which is leading them to rethink and optimise their investments in their IT and security

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strategies.

In a borderless organisation cloud and the Internet becomes the enterprise network, users may access from anywhere and they become the edge. Unifying the security posture, replicating and extending the security defense systems and policies from on premises to the edge is the main challenge in cyber security today.

This extended attack surface is where we witnessed critical attacks targeting the edge and remote users as a channel to attack enterprise applications and services. Malware exploits, ransomware, phishing and social engineering attacks are the common form of attacks we are seeing targeting a borderless enterprise.

Infoblox as a global vendor in hybrid DDI including DNS, DHCP, IPAM and DNS security, shifting the business operation to borderless DDI is becoming foundational to provide visibility and control on user access to the network regardless of whether the user is on premises or at the edge.

DDI is not only retaining the availability, scalability and agility to network services, but importantly enriching the security stack with critical DDI information that can be integrated and leveraged by the different cyber security systems in place like the NAC, SEIM, SOAR, vulnerability tools and many others to empower and enhance incident response.

While DNS security is becoming the first line of defense to block malware, exploits and other malicious activity spread across the network.

DNS is the first interconnectivity traffic users, applications, IoT and others requires in any borderless enterprise, hardening and securing DNS is critical to protect the business at the earliest stage, then spreading the intelligence to the security ecosystem for faster mitigation and remediation, which we at Infoblox strive to do with our customers every day.

This content is sponsored by the vendor.ë

WISSAM SAADEDDINE,

Senior Manager MENA, Infoblox.

40%

of surveyed organisations expect more than half of their workforce to be working remotely

REAL LIFE

400 Accor hotels to adopt Infor Sunsystems SaaS financial solution Infor, announced that Accor IMEA, an augmented hospitality leader with more than 400 hotels in India, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, is transforming its accounting systems with Infor SunSystems, a powerful financial management solution, on AWS. The transformation will position the group to benefit from an anticipated rebound in the region’s hospitality sector as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic abates and the region gears up for mega events including Expo 2020 Dubai.

Accor operates over 5,100 hotels across 110 countries globally. It has deployed Infor SunSystems to develop its new chart of accounts, and to manage and automate the finances for its hotels in the India, Middle East, Africa and Turkey region.

The hotel group was previously using an on-premises solution for its accounts in the Middle East and wanted to migrate to a SaaS model on the public cloud to provide greater resilience, help standardise its systems, and improve overall efficiency, oversight and security.

Given the complexity of managing accounts across multiple jurisdictions, Accor needed a solution capable of providing a unified chart of accounts for its hotels across the region, while also being compliant with the internationally recognised Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry USALI. The SaaS solution also gives greater flexibility for members of the accounts teams to work remotely during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, proving greater operational resiliency.

By adopting Infor SunSystems, Accor will also streamline its budgeting and forecasting processes, enabling hotel managers to improve their ability to plan ahead. It will drastically reduce downtime caused by hardware problems and software updates.

More than 50 Accor hotels across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, and Oman are already covered by the SunSystems solution, and more hotels are in the process of migrating to the solution. Accor hopes to see about 200 hotels live on it by the end of the year.

Leading hotel group digitally transforms its

JOHNY ZAKHEM, Chief Financial Officer, Accor IMEAT.

financial management with Infor SunSystems on AWS, positioning the group for regional hospitality rebound Since signing the initial agreement, the Accor IMEA regional Corporate Finance team based in Dubai have also migrated to the Infor Cloud, demonstrating the clear benefits for individual hotels and at a regional level.

Deutsche Bank to migrate database to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer Oracle and Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s largest financial services organisations, announced a multi-year collaboration to modernise the bank’s database technology and accelerate its digital transformation. The agreement will see Deutsche Bank upgrade its existing database systems and migrate the bulk of its Oracle Database estate to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, an on-premises deployment option of the Oracle Exadata Cloud Service, to support applications that either will not move to the public cloud or may in the future.

This will provide a dedicated platform to support and scale the bank’s existing missioncritical systems and services including trading, payments processing, risk and capital planning, and regulatory reporting.

Migrating its systems to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer will enable Deutsche Bank to consolidate existing critical applications on a single platform while complying with its

data residency requirements and significantly reducing operational costs. Oracle’s service can run in Deutsche Bank’s current data centers as well as in future cloud co-location sites, minimising latency while supporting the shift of applications to the cloud.

It will enable Deutsche Bank to drive data integration across its business in order to streamline operations, provide unified oversight of core service processes and implementations, and easily develop and scale applications based on customer demand.

The two companies have also agreed to form a joint innovation partnership, bringing together Oracle and Deutsche Bank engineering and technology teams to explore potential uses for data security technologies, blockchain, AI and analytics to shape the design of new financial products and services.

The collaboration supports Deutsche Bank’s multi-year digital transformation initiative

JUAN LOAIZA, Executive Vice President, Mission-Critical Database Technologies, Oracle.

led by its Technology, Data and Innovation division, and is a logical further step in the bank’s overall cloud strategy. This includes establishing a strategic public cloud partnership in December 2020.

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REAL LIFE

Saudi Arabia’s Basamh Trading implements SAP S4 HANA, Warehouse Management Basamh Trading and Industries Group, one of Saudi Arabia’s most successful purpose-led fast-moving consumer goods businesses in in the Middle East and Africa, announced its digital transformation is driving the GCC’s $253 billion retail market.

Basamh, with top brands Goody, Cofique, and Treva, and a distributor of a range of quality brands such as Perfetto, Betty Croker, Nature Valley, Bugles, Best Mix, Glade, Raid, Pledge and Windex, is supporting FMCG innovation with its 5-year digital transformation strategy LEAP, with global technology company SAP. Central to the strategy is the Leap to Digital L2D program that is enabling sustainable profitability.

With a world-class enterprise resources planning system, Basamh has standardised, streamlined, and integrated business processes across finance, procurement, sales, and distribution.

Basamh’s solutions cover nearly 1,200 employees in 12 branches in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In response, Basamh implemented the SAP S4 HANA realtime business suite and SAP SuccessFactors human experience management suite with channel partner LABS. Basamh also implemented the SAP Extended Warehouse Management solution with channel partner Westernacher, and various enterprise solutions with the channel partner Vistex.

(Left to right) Khalid Temairik, Group CEO, Basamh Trading and Industries Group; Maher Barrayah, Group CFO, IT and Procurement, Basamh Trading and Industries Group; Osama Islam, Group IT Director, Basamh Trading and Industries Group; Ahmed Al-Faifi, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, SAP Middle East North.

Recognising its success, Basamh has won an SAP MENA Quality Award, Gold in the category Business Transformation – Middle East North. Judges praised Basamh for successfully managing the complex project by taking three key actions: change management and constant communication with employees, training employees on digital skills, and organisational change in restructuring companies.

Qatar’s United Development using Sitecore Experience Platform United Development Company, a Qatari public shareholding company, announced its digital transformation with Sitecore, driving new levels of innovation in Qatar’s real estate market.

Qatar’s real estate market is seeing new levels of optimism, thanks to a growing white-collar workforce, regulations that allow for more freehold ownership and permanent residency, and real estate projects that support Qatar National Vision 2030. As a result, the value of Qatar’s real estate deals exceeded QAR 15 billion in H2 2020, according to a recent report by KPMG. United Development Company, whose developments include long-term residential, commercial, and entertainment projects, such as The Pearl-Qatar and Gewani Island, is digitally transforming with the channel partner Advancya.

As a result, United Development Company is integrating and optimising its customer experiences across its website, digital marketing, and social media channels.

Using the Sitecore Experience Platform, United Development Company is updating content faster, especially by easily create new pages for marketing campaigns that are linked to the social media tracking software. The company is also adding dynamic content based on personas, all under the same unified backend interface of Sitecore. United Development Company is also using select Sitecore personalisation features to enable translation between English and

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MOHAMMED ALKHOTANI, Area Vice President of Middle East and Africa, Sitecore.

Arabic content.

Overall, United Development Company has optimised costs, as staff spend less time creating and updating content, and gained efficiency by sharing content across the website and chatbot.

REAL LIFE

DWTC adopts Avaya OneCloud CCaaS for employees and customers As Dubai’s events industry continues to lead the world following its post-pandemic reopening, Dubai World Trade Centre DWTC, is taking a major step towards embracing digital capabilities that better connect its customers and employees across any touchpoint with Avaya OneCloud CCaaS. Coming as DWTC’s initial foray into cloud-based communications technologies, the Avaya solution will enable composable experiences for both its exhibitor customers and internal users.

This will enable DWTC to: l Effortlessly connect digital touchpoints across the entire customer journey, with a

FARID FAROUQ, Vice President, IT, Procurement and Contracts, Dubai World Trade Centre.

focus on email, chat and voice. l Intelligently match customers with the best DWTC employees to serve their needs. l Deliver personalised agent experiences through a customisable workspace that easily

Ahl Masr Hospital Egypt to improve care through Avaya OneCloud Ahl Masr Hospital, the first and largest hospital and research center in the Middle East and Africa to offer free burn and associated trauma treatment, is set to significantly advance burn patient care across Egypt with seamless connectivity enabled by Avaya.

The hospital, run by the Ahl Masr Foundation, eventually aims to receive over 300,000 patients per year, operating an intensive care unit, an incubator department, a surgical department, specialised clinics and laser treatment. Apart from these cutting-edge in-patient facilities, the hospital will also become a hub that extends burn treatment expertise across

Egypt and the wider region.

It will do this through implementing an advanced Avaya OneCloud UCaaS solution that enables seamless collaboration between staff at the hospital, the Ahl Masr headquarters office, and satellite branches across the country.

At its main hospital, seamless connectivity between staff and patients – across voice, text and video, accessible through dedicated in-room devices, will improve the level of care.

Avaya is also working with the foundation to enable telemedicine through a dedicated control room, with small, rural branches communicating with the main hospital through

brings customer insights from different applications and systems into a single pane of glass. l Help DWTC stay ahead of every customer interaction by predicting needs and proactively engaging customers with actionable insights infused throughout the customer journey.

Dubai World Trade Center selected Avaya OneCloud CCaaS to leverage the flexibility, agility and innovation-on-demand of a multicloud ecosystem that enables them to rapidly address their constantly changing business needs by providing access to industry-leading applications and cloud technology. Avaya OneCloud CCaaS is currently available in approximately 40 countries, expanding into the Middle East and Africa last month.

Avaya OneCloud CCaaS enables organisations to leverage prebuilt apps to extend existing capabilities, as well as use build-yourown apps to create unique solutions to meet specific, customised needs.

video – enabling the delivery of proper treatment with speed.

In Egypt, there are 250,000 burn cases every year, 37% of which result in fatalities in the first six hours if proper treatment is not administered. Over 50% of burn victims in the country are children, 18% of whom end up with a form of handicap, and 99% of whom suffer some disruption to their education.

Ahl Masr Hospital aims to address these challenges by providing free and timely medical treatment, rehabilitation and psychological services.

Apart from uplifting patient care in its main hospital, the solution will enable the hospital to become a hub that extends burn treatment expertise across Egypt and the wider region “We are a knowledge hub, and timely communication is key to our success in that capacity. Apart from our efforts at the hospital itself, we provide support to small healthcare units around the country, so that they can provide a high level of care to burn victims. We need all these places to be very well connected – you cannot have delays in communications when a patient’s life is in danger,” said Heba EL Sewedy Founder and Chairwoman at Ahl Masr Foundation.

“This project is about enabling not only the main hospital with the right tools to serve patients well, but also extend our teams’ expertise across the country.”

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REAL LIFE

SAP, Deloitte to use cloud to initiate digital transformation at Tabreed Global technology company SAP announced its partnership with Tabreed, National Central Cooling Company, UAE’s international district cooling developer, in a move that will contribute to the digital transformation of the district cooling industry.

In the Middle East, population growth, diversified economic growth, the hot climate and government visions for environmental sustainability all favor the growth of district cooling. As a result, the Middle East’s district cooling market is valued at $8 billion, according to Global Market Insights, and poised for an 8% year-on-year growth between 2021 and 2027.

(Left to right) Sergio Maccotta, Senior Vice President, SAP Middle East South; Bader Saeed Al Lamki, CEO; Tabreed and Tim Parr, CEO, Consulting, Deloitte Middle East.

As part of its digital transformation journey, Tabreed, working with Deloitte and SAP, will deploy a variety of innovative technological solutions, including the SAP S4 HANA business suite for real-time insights and analytics, the SAP Ariba platform for digitally-based and simplified procurement, SAP SuccessFactors for an improved human resources experience and the SAP Analytics Cloud for better datadriven decision making. All the solutions will

run on the SAP public cloud data centre in the UAE, in full compliance of data regulations.

Speaking of the partnership, Bader Saeed Al Lamki, CEO, Tabreed, said: “This digital transformation initiative we have embarked upon with SAP and Deloitte will greatly benefit our business. Access to real-time data would unlock additional analytical capabilities which further drive our financial and operational competitiveness and enhance our value add to our clients.”

Virtus Informatics implements Aruba at Kuwait’s Amiri Hospital Amiri Hospital, one of Kuwait’s most established medical facilities, has leveraged new network architecture from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, to pioneer new innovations and standards in digital health, telemedicine and in-patient care in Kuwait.

The implementation has resulted in 99.9% network availability, enabled introduction of remote healthcare, staff mobility, and other digital healthcare services, facilitated 60% reduction in hospital footfall while serving same patient volumes and increased appointment efficiency by 120%.

The IT Infrastructure supports the Health Informatics Platform, employing best of breed solutions and integrating with existing systems, delivered through the Kuwait based systems integrator, Virtus Informatics.

“To enhance our operations, we were seeking a HIMSS EMRAM Level 5 certification and aimed to establish ourselves as a Smart Hospital that offers digital services and advanced technologies for patient care.

We recognised that a secure, reliable, and high-performance network infrastructure would be essential to achieving this ambition,” said Dr Ali Al Alanda, Director of the Hospital.

In line with its digital transformation vision, the hospital now delivers all services

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–including registration, appointment setting, and prescription management – through the Digital Gateway Derwaza. “We have set up the Gateway for the convenience of our patients with seamless and secure access, and high-performance for a remarkable user experience,” he said.

With a pervasive wireless coverage now in place, underpinned by a robust and scalable wired network, Amiri hospital has been able to introduce new and innovative technologies to enhance patient care.

“We have implemented over 50 portable devices, that give our medical practitioners instant secure access to patient records, wherever and whenever they need it,” said Dr Raed Syed Hashem, Head of Disaster Management Team.

“This not only empowers our staff to perform their duties more effectively, but it also serves as a highly visual example to patients, of Amiri Hospital’s commitment to pioneering the latest digital technologies.”

The Covid-19 pandemic best demonstrated the value and capabilities of Aruba’s infrastructure. “Nearly overnight, we had a pressing need to serve thousands of patients remotely,” said Dr Hashem. “We suddenly had to manage remote network access for thousands of people, and the platform not

DR RAED SYED HASHEM, Head of Disaster Management Team at Amiri Hospital.

only delivered the performance we needed, but also effectively protected the network from the fifty plus attacks and malicious access attempts we typically faced each day,” he added.

During the lockdown, the Hospital successfully migrated 80% of its services to digital channels and consequently were able to reduce the footfall by 60% while still offering world class care to its patients. As pandemic related restrictions were lifted, Amiri Hospital managed to maintain this reduction in footfall while enhancing patient and staff satisfaction.

“Today, we still have over 400 patients per day who receive remote consultancy. This is not only more convenient, but it has also enhanced appointment efficiency by 120% as we have been able to manage scheduling and staff utilisation in a far more effective manner,” he said.

REAL LIFE

Aramco LIFE mobile application and website built on Sitecore platform Aramco LIFE is a comprehensive mobile app experience and information marketplace that empowers and engages the people of Aramco, transforming the company’s internal communications.

Originally, the assignment for AKQA was to simply digitise Aramco’s weekly newsletters and magazines. But in order to do justice to the company’s strong culture spanning more than eight decades, and the people of Aramco’s rich contribution across multiple communities, much more was needed. And so, Aramco LIFE was born.

Aramco LIFE is a combined app and website based on the Sitecore platform. A content hub and information marketplace for news, articles, and updates. It provides a digital version of the

company’s publications and content, grouped by topic and publication.

The channel includes user engagement, social feed, personalisation of content, and content segmentation for employees and the public.

Fahad Al Dhubaib, Public Affairs General Manager at Aramco, states: “Innovation is the cornerstone of everything we do at Aramco, and we have embarked on a digital transformation programme that touches all aspects of our business.”

Sitecore CEO Steve Tzikakis says: “Aramco LIFE showcases Sitecore’s wide ranging capabilities for creating transformative and exciting digital experiences. Today, through the partnership with Sitecore, Aramco can seamlessly

FAHAD AL DHUBAIB, Public Affairs General Manager at Aramco.

deliver personalised content across multiple touchpoints at every step along the customer journey. We are thrilled that Sitecore’s versatile technology has helped Aramco’s achieve its goals in offering ultimate customer satisfaction and engagement.”

UAE IT leaders agree modernising CX is worth the investment Customer experience is a top priority for most UAE businesses, 62%, new research from Rackspace Technology shows. The study revealed much greater understanding amongst UAE business leaders to improve CX than in most other countries surveyed.

Rackspace Technology, launched the How Applications Impact Customer Experience report. The study found that UAE business leaders were very receptive to adopting new ways of using technology to improve customer experience. In fact, only 16% reported their organisation is not receptive to new ways of using technology to improve CX. One contributing factor for this positive outlook is that 83% of UAE IT leaders believe their non-tech C-suite executives fully understand the bottom-line benefits of applications. Only a fifth 20% reporting their organisation is very or highly resistant to change regarding technology.

In addition, more than half 54% of UAE respondents said it takes only weeks to reach a consensus before changes to improve CX are agreed upon.

There’s broad consensus among UAE IT leaders that modernising applications

MAHESH DESAI, Chief Relationship Officer, EMEA at Rackspace Technology.

to improve their CX is worth the investment, Rackspace Technology’s research shows. Over three quarters 78% of UAE IT leaders said that applications have a high impact on improving CX, and more than three in five 69% would invest in purchasing or replacing an app for this reason.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that IT leaders report that, as a result of delaying modernising applications, 57% failed to meet new regulations, nearly half 46% reported reduced levels of customer service, while more than a third 33% experienced a cost to the ultimate bottom-line due.

Further to these consequences, threequarters of UAE organisations believe business revenue 100% will be impacted if they fail to modernise legacy applications in the next two to three years.

While the research found that four-fifths 85% of UAE businesses are currently modernising less than 50% of their applications, IT leaders can look forward to rapid progress.

A large majority 94% of UAE IT leaders said the appreciation of the value of applications to their business or industry had grown in the past five years.

To help overcome the fear and complexity around application modernisation, a half 50% of UAE businesses are turning to external partners for support, with a proven ability to deliver modernisation to the cloud and microservices cited as the most crucial consideration when choosing a partner 32%.

Mahesh Desai, Chief Relationship Officer, EMEA at Rackspace Technology, comments: “CX really is the holy grail for companies, particularly with the rapid adoption of digital services over the past 12 months.

Investing in and improving CX with new technology is now the bare minimum that organisations need to do to keep up with the competition.

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REAL LIFE

du renews collaboration with Atos focusing on 5G driven transformation Atos announced that it has renewed its contract with du to strengthen their longstanding collaboration dating back to 2012 and accelerate du’s digital objectives in the areas of application modernisation and digitalisation.

As a strategic partner, Atos will help transform du’s current operating model towards agile ways of working over the next five years,

creating additional business value, boosting efficiency, enhancing time to market, increasing quality of deliverables, and improving overall service efficiency.

Atos will support the telecom giant in its vision of becoming a digital powerhouse, transforming current applications development and strengthening its service excellence

BEACON RED and Quali to provide national critical services in GCC BEACON RED, a solutions-provider that focuses on tackling complex national security threats and a subsidiary of EDGE Group, and Quali, the Texas-based Infrastructure

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Automation at Scale company, have entered a strategic partnership to provide cybersecurity and related services for governments, military and critical infrastructure projects across the

and maintenance delivery model. This will help achieve agility, reduce cost of ownership, and enhance operational efficiency in competitive environments.

As part of the new contract, Atos will also provide business adoption solutions to help du immediately embark on executing its target reference architecture to achieve its successful application modernisation journey, with a scalable and sustainable transformation methodology. The overall focus is to improve customer satisfaction, enhance user experience, increase digital enablement, and introduce enhanced operational efficiencies through increased automation.

Fahad Al Hassawi, CEO at EITC, commented: “Application modernisation and digitalisation represents the next phase as du continues to pursue its transformation and 5G deployment agenda. From the outset, we identified that an operation of this magnitude required insights and expertise from a reliable partner with the capabilities and toolsets to improve the speed to market of new applications and support growth and operational excellence.”

six-member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Under the terms of the agreement, BEACON RED and Quali will deliver a joint solution that enables customers to establish complex cyber range and interoperability testing scenarios for their clients in the GCC region. In doing so, the agreement seeks to strengthen cybersecurity support for critical deployments and enhance the management of secured environments.

Through leveraging Quali’s CloudShell infrastructure automation platform as part of the solution, BEACON RED can offer customers an enhanced level of security.

BEACON RED’s customers in the Middle East can now access Quali products through BEACON RED’s implementation team. Guaranteeing safe and supported infrastructure deployments to address current threats like cyberattacks, the products also work well to eliminate threats in remote working scenarios that are vulnerable to attacks.

Furthermore, BEACON RED employs one of the region’s most distinguished cybersecurity subject matter experts – capable of deploying Quali software for cyber range and interoperability use cases.

PRODUCTS

MIKE CHEN,

Senior Sales Manager, Synology.

Synology announces DSM 7.0 and expansion of C2 cloud services Synology announced the release of DiskStation Manager DSM 7.0 and a massive expansion of the Synology C2 platform with four new cloud services. Focusing on enhancing security, system management capabilities, and improving data collaboration, DSM 7.0 is an enormous step forward for Synology’s NAS and SAN product lines.

Building upon the success of C2 Storage, Synology is rolling out both hybrid and cloudonly products, including a new password manager, directory as a service, cloud backup, and secure file transferring solutions. Synology is heavily invested in expanding the availability

of its cloud platform by starting work on opening a new data center location to expand its services to the Asia Pacific region.

Over eight million of Synology’s data management solutions have been deployed worldwide, each powered by the DSM operating system. As the world’s largest NAS OS, DSM uniquely combines storage interoperability, backup and data protection capabilities, and robust synchronisation and collaboration solutions together to address increasingly distributed workplaces and sources of data.

Synology-developed add-ons, such as Synology Drive, Active Backup suite, and more, feature

more than six million monthly downloads.

DSM 7.0, the next leap forward for the platform, will be released on June 29. Launching together with the massive new update includes brand new hybrid-cloud services, such as Active Insight, a large-scale device monitoring and diagnostics solution, Hybrid Share, which combines C2 storage flexibility and synchronisation capabilities with on-premises solutions, and C2 Identity, a hybrid cloud directory as a service to simplify cross-site domain management.

Together with platform improvements such as supporting up to 1 PB volumes for superlarge tasks, DSM 7.0 also introduces security improvements in the form of Secure SignIn. This brand-new authentication system makes two-factor effortless and straightforward to use.

Launching immediately afterward, C2 Password, C2 Transfer, and C2 Backup are standalone solutions that address modern needs to protect passwords, share sensitive files, and back up any endpoints and common SaaS cloud services.

Already in the works is a new data center in Taiwan, which lies in the middle of all key markets in the Asia Pacific region. The expansion enables the entire C2 portfolio to be closer to customers, reducing latency and improving the end user experience in a manner similar to how Synology on-premises NAS and SAN solutions are doing for edge deployments.

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PRODUCTS

PETER DESANTIS, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure, AWS.

AWS to open next infrastructure region located in UAE Amazon Web Services, an Amazon.com company, announced it plans to open an infrastructure region in the United Arab Emirates in the first half of 2022. The new AWS Middle East Region will consist of three Availability Zones and become AWS’s second region in the Middle East with the existing AWS Region in Bahrain, giving customers more choice and flexibility to leverage advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud.

Globally, AWS has 80 Availability Zones across 25 geographic regions, with plans to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

AWS Regions are comprised of Availability Zones, which place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a

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single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that leverage multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones and across multiple regions to achieve even greater fault tolerance. The addition of the AWS Middle East UAE Region will enable local customers with data residency requirements to store their data in the UAE while also providing even lower latency across the country.

The new AWS Middle East Region UAE Region will build upon AWS’s existing investment in the country, which includes two AWS

Direct Connect locations and two Amazon CloudFront edge locations launched in 2018.

AWS also continues to build teams of account managers, technical account managers, partner managers, systems engineers, solutions architects, professional services, and more roles to help customers of all sizes move to AWS. In addition to infrastructure, AWS continues to make investments in education initiatives, training, and start-up enablement programs to support the UAE’s digital transformation and economic development plans.

Enterprises choose AWS to become more agile and innovative, and include Al Tayer Group, Aramex, AXA Gulf, Axiom Telecom, Emirates NBD, Flydubai, Gulf News, MBC Group, OSN, Seera Group, Virgin Middle East, and many more. MENA public sector organisations are using AWS to drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, and better serve the citizens of the region.

They include the Communications and Information Technology Regulatory Authority of Kuwait CITRA, Dubai Expo 2020, Egypt Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of Bahrain’s Ministries, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, University of Bahrain, and many more.

MENA startups building their businesses on top of AWS to scale rapidly and expand around the world include Alef Education, Anghami, Careem, Dubizzle, EKar, Fetchr, Haraj, Health at Hand, Maestro Pizza, Mawdoo3.com, Property Finder, Sarwa, Souqalmal, StarzPlay, and Yallacompare.

Middle East-based AWS Partner Network APN Partners also welcomed the news of the planned AWS Middle East UAE Region.

The APN includes tens of thousands of Independent Software Vendors ISVs and Systems Integrators SIs around the world.

AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN helps by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support.

Examples of AWS Middle East Partners include Accenture, Deloitte, Bespin Global MEA, Citrus Consulting, Cloud4c, Crayon, Du, Etisalat, F5, Integra Technologies, Keplerworx, Palo Alto Networks, Rackspace, Redington, SAP, Splunk, TCS, Trend Micro, VMWare, Wipro, and Zero & One. Deloitte is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and a strategic global systems integrator.

PRODUCTS

Infovista releases AI Model to manage 5G wireless networks Infovista, a global vendor in network lifecycle automation, announced availability of its Artificial Intelligence Model, the world’s first commercially available AI-based propagation model that changes the way wireless networks can be planned and optimised.

Infovista’s AIM has been built around state-of-the-art machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow to focus on training and inference of deep neural networks. The project utilised over 10 million data points collected by the company during the last 15 years and

spans multiple sub-6 GHz and millimetre wave bands, geographic locations, antenna heights, weather conditions, seasonal foliage variations and hundreds of additional variables – across urban, mixed and rural environments.

The AI-model predictions have been extensively validated against real-world measurement sampling data and are proven to deliver network plans that are 25% more accurate compared to those delivered using traditional propagation models. The initial testing shows that this improved accuracy translates into up

to 20% CAPEX savings when it comes to radio site investments.

AIM avoids labour-intensive and repetitive calibration and parameter manipulation. It fully fits with the Network Lifecycle Automation vision of Infovista that aims to expand the reach of automation beyond network and service operations, into planning, testing and deployment, and reporting and monetisation.

AIM is embedded into Infovista’s awardwinning Planet software, which also includes an integrated feed of crowdsourced subscriber-centric data available in all geographies. Combining both provides mobile operators with higher accuracy and more efficient network planning workflows.

Operators are at different stages within the 5G rollout, but the majority are still faced with the massive task of selecting, testing and commissioning new sites.

Over time the combination of AIM with crowdsourced data will mean the new platform will enable operators to fully automate network planning thus allowing them to deploy in new frequency bands faster than eve. Automated data collection and processing contribute to significantly reducing the cost of propagation model calibration and optimising drive testing, helping accelerate 5G deployments to new levels.

Software AG enhances webMethods with improvements to API, microservices Software AG announced new innovations of its webMethods platform for APIs, Integration and Microservices. With this release, companies can simplify and accelerate their digital transformation initiatives while also speeding their adoption of cloud.

According to a recent Gartner report, application leaders struggle to deliver APIs while minimising the workload hitting their systems of record. But APIs enable digital modernisation and companies are increasingly adopting APIs and microservices as the building blocks for innovation. Furthermore, recent research from Software AG and Vanson Bourne shows that 97 percent of organisations believe it would be beneficial to combine the utilisation of APIs, microservices and integration together as a bundled solution.

Latest release makes it possible for anyone – from business users to power users – to free

their data to deliver new applications and services The latest updates to webMethods include: l To simplify cloud adoption, Software AG has added AI and ML-assisted smart mapping. Now users are given suggested mappings based on the combined best practices across the platform, reducing the effort of building integrations. l A new online community gives partners and users the opportunity to share cloud connectors as well as integration templates, or “recipes,” to build their projects faster and with fewer errors. l Democratise and speed development and integration of data and services for use in applications with a new graphical flow editor for power users, as well as a drag and drop UI for business user’s multi-persona interface. l Enhancements to develop productivity with improved DevOps capabilities including

SURAJ KUMAR, GM of API, Integration and Microservices at Software AG.

open APIs for all API Management and Microservices deployment functionality, containerised runtimes, helm charts, and CI/CD samples to simplify update rollout. l Eliminate the complexity of managing business application with webMethods AppMesh that ties together its API Management and Microservices platforms to bring application-level visibility and control.

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GUEST COLUMN

DAVID NOËL,

Regional Vice President, Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, AppDynamics.

PANDEMIC FLIP, CREATION OF OVERWHELMING IT COMPLEXITY

Technologists find themselves without tools to cut through complexity and turn data into insights and get visibility to monitor their IT estate.

A

fter more than a year of urgent and rapid digital transformation in response to the global pandemic, technologists find themselves struggling to manage spiralling levels of complexity within the IT department.

In Agents of Transformation 2021: The Rise of Full-Stack

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Observability, 79% of UAE technologists claimed that their response to Covid-19 has created more IT complexity than they have ever experienced.

The need to meet dramatically changed customer and employee demands during the pandemic has seen organisations develop and launch new digital services at breakneck speed,

GUEST COLUMN

whilst accelerating their cloud computing initiatives to add greater agility and resilience to their IT operations. AppDynamics research found that the average speed of digital transformation has been three times faster since the beginning of the pandemic.

But whilst these digital transformation projects have undoubtedly delivered on their objectives – many businesses simply would not exist today if they had not – they have also left technologists dealing with a sprawling IT estate, across a patchwork of legacy and cloud technologies.

With heightened pressure to deliver faultless digital experiences to customers and employ-

ees at all times, technologists have recognised the need to monitor the full IT estate, from customer-facing applications through to third party services and core infrastructure such as network and security.

But this enhanced monitoring has meant that technologists are now facing soaring volumes of data from up and down their IT stack, and this data noise is further adding to the complexity which is now engulfing many IT departments.

Unfortunately, many technologists find themselves without the tools they need to cut through complexity and turn this mass of data into meaningful and actionable insights. They do not have the visibility they need to monitor

As many as

85%

of UAE technologists are still relying on multiple, disconnected monitoring solutions performance across their IT estate and to identify issues early so they can be fixed before they impact end users.

Research found that as many as 85% of UAE technologists are still relying on multiple, disconnected monitoring solutions — 11% higher than the global average — and this is making their day-to-day activities extremely challenging, if not impossible. They are being asked to deliver digital transformation at ever greater speeds and maintain faultless digital experiences at all times, yet they are unable to easily identify technology performance issues and monitor their IT estate in a single, unified view.

Regional technologists do not just need visibility into IT performance to tackle complexity; they also need to understand how performance issues impact customers and the business. They need a business lens on technology performance in order to prioritise actions, innovation and investment based on real-world commercial impact.

Despite the critical role that technology is now playing within organisations, many technologists still lack the strategy and tools to effectively measure how technology decisions impact business outcomes. They have no hard data to tell them where they should be focus-

ing their attention and are instead having to rely on instinct and gut feeling when deciding priorities.

On a day-to-day basis, the inability to link technology performance to customer and business outcomes makes it extremely difficult for technologists to make the right decisions as they look to drive innovation and deliver faultless digital experiences.

64% admit that they waste a lot of time because they cannot easily isolate where performance issues are actually happening. And even when they do identify issues, technologists do not know which of them actually matter most.

The result is long hours spent and huge frustration in the IT department.

UAE technologists are rightly concerned about the consequences of not connecting IT performance to real-time business data. 83% fear that the inability to connect full-stack observability with business performance will be detrimental to their business in 2021 and 67% are worried that it will mean they cannot exploit the full benefits of the digital transformation they have already driven over the past year.

Organisations simply cannot afford to jeopardise the innovation gains of 2020 or to falter

Yet they are unable to identify performance issues and monitor IT estate in a single, unified view as they look for even greater innovation in the year ahead.

The landscape in which technologists are operating has changed massively due to the pandemic. For more than a year, technologists have been working under intense pressure at the sharp end of their organisations’ response to the pandemic, battling through complexity to deliver innovation and seamless digital experiences. And it should be said that technologists in the region have undeniably risen to the challenge.

But we have now reached a point where traditional, pre-pandemic tools and processes have been rendered obsolete in the face of this heightened IT complexity. It simply is not sustainable or fair for technologists to continue to be asked to hurry through innovation projects and deliver enhanced digital experiences when they still do not have the right level of visibility across their IT estate.

With the speed of digital transformation set to accelerate even further over the year ahead, business and IT leaders need to take notice: almost all 99% UAE technologists state that having the ability to monitor all technical areas across their IT stack and directly link technical performance to business outcomes will be important during 2021; 79% of them cite this as being critical to their ability to meet their organisations’ innovation goals.

The message is clear. Unless technologists have access to a whole new level of visibility and insight into technology performance, and the ability to link this to business outcomes, then organisations in the UAE are hugely jeopardising their digital transformation ambitions.

Surely that is a risk no business can afford to take in 2021.

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GUEST COLUMN

OSSAMA ELDEEB,

Director, Partner Organisation, VMware, Middle East, Turkey and North Africa.

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE LINKED TO SOFTWARE CODE DEVELOPMENT

The opportunity is in addressing at application and infrastructure level, solving the developer experience and operator experience across clouds.

E

arlier this year three quarters of CIOs named application modernisation as a top priority, but at the same time almost 48% of executives admitted it had been over a year since they have made improvements to their application portfolios. Why is there this perceived conflict between what they want to achieve and what they are actioning?

Too often it’s the risk to business operations, combined with the

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cost of another in-place patch or upgrade, that is felt to be too high.

On top of that, complex architectures and inconsistent approaches to creating, running, managing and protecting applications are holding development back.

This approach is not sustainable. IDC predicts that, by 2025, nearly two thirds of enterprises will be prolific software producers with code deployed daily, more than 90% of applications will be

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cloud native, and there will be 1.6 times more developers than today. And it is the developer who has become crucial, as they become more influential in broader IT and infrastructure decisions.

Also, it is containerisation that has been a game-changer for developers to create and deploy applications faster and at unprecedented scale. In fact, this use of containers is only going to grow – according to Gartner, by 2025, more than 80% of software vendors will offer their application software in container format, up from less than 10% today.

Kubernetes, an open-source platform for managing containerised workloads and ser-

vices, is leading the charge. Currently, 86% of containerised applications are on Kubernetes.

But where are we today? Do enterprises fully understand the opportunity presented by Kubernetes? Where are the hurdles to adoption – and how can partners help enterprises take advantage?

Firstly, let’s start with why enterprises are modernising in this way. Above and beyond everything else, this is about building new revenue-generating customer experiences via applications – as the future of business differentiation and customer-facing services begins and ends with an organisation’s application portfolio.

More than

90%

of applications will be cloud native, and there will be 1.6 times more developers than today Then, sitting alongside this, are the pressing needs to manage a growing volume of software vulnerabilities, and to drive competitive advantage from new innovations now being offered by the cloud.

With these points, however, lie immediate challenges. We are seeing application teams being asked to break down monolithic applications and rebuild as microservices-based applications, development teams under pressure to deliver new features to customers faster, and enterprises facing outsized security risks from compromised containers and applications.

At the heart of all of this is the issue of complexity – that of the modern applications themselves, and how they are often made up of multiple VMs, containers, and services, and run across a variety of heterogeneous architectures.

The number one obstacle is that it is difficult to match the needs of applications to the right underlying infrastructure.

The challenge, and opportunity, lies in addressing this at both an application and infrastructure level – solving the developer experience and operator experience across clouds, while addressing the most common scenarios enterprises encounter in their efforts to modernise infrastructure and applications.

And the technology to do this is out there;

we can now simplify operations of Kubernetes for multi-cloud, centralising management and governance for many clusters and teams across on-premises, public clouds and edge environments.

This is about democratising infrastructure; extending an enterprise ready Kubernetes operating model across organisations’ data centers and public clouds so they can run and manage modernised workloads alongside existing software – a single platform for running all applications.

Below are three key ways in which Kubernetes platforms can benefit enterprises, and the main consideration points for partners as they enable organisations to use this to futureproof their application delivery and supporting infrastructure.

#1 ALIGNING STAKEHOLDERS WITH A SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH Instead of different stakeholders making decisions based on different data sources, there’s the opportunity to bring everything together into one complete picture of the stack. This is about centralised visibility and management; the ability to ingest all data sources and apply analytics and then route results to the right person.

With this, infrastructure leaders can see the health of their environments, and developers can see the behaviour of their applications in production. So, everyone makes better decisions, together.

#2 ENSURING RELIABLE COMMUNICATION ACROSS CLOUDS WITH NO APPLICATION CODE CHANGES As their estates of modern applications grows, enterprises will have more endpoints to monitor and more services to maintain. This necessitates central visibility of endpoints across VMs and containers, on-premises and public clouds, and the use of global policies to ensure compliance and audit trails are ever-present.

The goal is improved security and resiliency, as organisations build new, cloud native applications or rearchitect and containerise existing business-critical workloads using curated, validated and always updated images.

#3 GETTING MORE SOFTWARE INTO PRODUCTION, AT SPEED The path to production is composed of many pieces, and developers have to navigate many steps to get their code into production. It’s full of friction that slows down development cycles.

Platforms can pull everything together into an integrated and automated path, so developers can write five lines of code to push their software into production, including all dependencies and accounting for security.

Improving developer capacity in this way means the organisation can deliver better software, faster. That means more revenue generating features, faster patches and happier customers.

A comparison of elite, those organisations in the highest possible performance category, versus low performing organisations shows the former have 208x more frequent code deploys, a 2,604x faster time to restore service, and 7x better change failure rates1.

Yet too many organisations still suffer from layers of manual processes designed to minimise risk and ensure compliance – making application releases infrequent, high-risk events. In addition, a lack of cloud native experience and expertise exacerbates the challenge.

The opportunity for IT and developers to fuel greater digital transformation lies in keeping it as simple as possible. The reality is that some businesses are more ready for Kubernetes than others.

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ANALYST’S CORNER

TOP 10 THREAT DETECTIONS FOR MICROSOFT AZURE AD AND OFFICE 365 As the usage of cloud increases, end users may experience an increasing number of suspicious incidents in their usage of Azure Active Directory and Office 365.

T

he focus is on the top 10 Office 365 and Azure AD detections customers see by relative frequency. It is important to keep in mind that threat detection and response is easiest when adversaries take actions that are obviously malicious. The unfortunate reality for modern network defenders, however, is that adversaries increasingly find that such overt action is unnecessary when existing services and access used throughout an organisation can simply be coopted, misused and abused.

This makes it critical that modern network defenders understand the intersection that may exist between the types of actions an adversary would need to take to progress towards their objectives and the behaviors routinely taken by authorised users across the enterprise. In cases where these behaviors intersect, the key factors in distinguishing the adversary and insider threat from a benign user is intent, context and authorisation.

Having the insight and knowledge that meaningful artificial intelligence can provide through constant analysation of how users access, use and configure their cloud apps, while also knowing how your hosts, accounts and workloads are being accessed— can make all the difference.

This difference can mean being able to see the clear contrast between something serious like a detection that notifies you about suspicious mail forwarding in Office 365 versus seeing a multitude of notifications that don’t pose a threat, or maybe worse—not seeing anything.

The security stakes are already at an all-time high with threats like account takeovers costing companies billions in annual losses, but the good news is that the behavior used in these criminal tactics are no longer a secret when you involve artificial intelligence.

Many of the detections represent anomalous behavior and not all of these detections are due to malicious activity. Meanwhile, some may represent infrequent behavior that is abnormal for the environment, while others may represent behavior that is against policy. Regardless of the activity, these detections still represent a large attack surface that our customers need to manage.

Without a clear expectation of what is authorised, often in the form of prescriptive policy, security defenders will have difficultly doing anything but solving for the obvious threats. That is why organisations need to have a vision for what authorised use looks like when it comes to the cloud services they adopt,

MATT PIEKLIK, Senior Consulting Analyst, Vectra AI.

TIM WADE, Technical Director of the CTO team, Vectra AI. which is often expressed via policy.

Vision for authorised use of cloud services should consider: l Which services and behaviors are authorised? l Under what context are they authorised? l Are users authorised to leverage cloud storage and how should they interact with external entities? l What operational parameters and safeguards are expected to accompany behaviors involving these cloud services?

Even with a clear vision, organisations quickly get into trouble when there is a lack of visibility. This is because they lack the ability to monitor and measure deviations from their vision. Solving

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for this challenge involves understanding the behaviors adversaries are motivated to take, and intentionally collecting and aggregating the data that uncovers these behaviors in a way that can be operationalised by security staff. l Services: Are defenders able to detect malicious attacks carried out through enterprise cloud services? Things like detecting PowerAutomate abuse for command and control, despite the protections deployed around those capabilities? l Management: Are defenders able to identify the misuse and abuse of administrative and management functions, such as risky exchange operations that enable adversaries and insiders to escalate privileges or to

collect and exfiltrate sensitive information? l Supply Chain: Are defenders able to uncover instances where trusted suppliers and service providers have been compromised, giving adversaries a beachhead that bypasses an organisation’s preventative and protective controls?

Security leaders should be confident answering these questions as they require more than simple compliance checks or benchmarks—these questions are best pressure tested through active investigations, threat hunts and security testing exercises.

A number of these threat detections represent activities that provide ease of use, collaboration with external parties and provisioning of

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administrative access to the Azure AD environment. Being able to easily share documents from OneDrive or SharePoint facilitates the sharing of information with external parties, but it also provides a means for an attacker to gain access to information already in place or staged in these services.

In this instance, most of the detections are Office 365 Suspicious Download Activity, Office 365 Suspicious SharePoint Operation and Office 365 Suspicious Sharing Activity.

Some of the detections could be triggered from communicating and collaborating with external users via Microsoft Teams, which is certainly convenient for legitimate users.

However, it can also be a convenient means for attackers to find useful information or obtain documents and information. It’s not uncommon to receive detections that notify about Office 365 External Teams access.

A number of these threat detections represent activities that provide ease of use, collaboration with external parties and provisioning of administrative access to the Azure AD environment.

Vectra calculated the relative frequency of threat detections that were triggered during a three-month span based on customer size.

Looking at the top 10 threat detections per

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customer size small, medium and large—the larger the customer, the smaller the percentage of detections that trigger on a per detection type basis.

This general trend of larger companies triggering fewer detections when compared to smaller companies tells us that the larger companies’ users and administrators may perform Office 365 and Azure AD activity more consistently compared to smaller organisations.

Looking at the breakdown of which detection types were in the top 10 for each customer size, we see medium and small companies have the same top 10 threat detections, albeit with different detection type rankings. Large customers’ top 10 breakdown shows us that Office 365 DLL Hijacking, Office 365 Unusual Scripting Engine and Office 365 Suspicious eDiscovery Exfil were in the top 10, however those did not make the top 10 for medium and small companies.

Medium and small companies included Office 365 Suspicious SharePoint Operation, Office 365 Suspicious eDiscovery Search and Azure AD Suspicious Operation in their top 10, while large companies did not.

This tells us large companies have a higher prevalence of users accessing applications stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. Storage of

applications in the cloud facilitates actors being able to replace or insert malicious executables and DLLs into commonly accessed shares, making the access of these file types more frequent while being less noticeable and a more effective technique for actors.

The fact that Suspicious Office 365 eDiscovery Search did not make large companies’ top 10 but Office 365 Suspicious eDiscovery Exfil did, tells us that the users who perform these types of searches at large companies generally perform eDiscovery more consistently, and pull-down data from those searches more frequently compared to smaller companies.

Office 365 eDiscovery Exfil detection will trigger on every occurrence of an account previewing or exporting data from an eDiscovery search. Access to eDiscovery provides almost complete unfettered access across all components of Office 365 to an actor, allowing them to easily search for and obtain information. ë

Excerpted from the report: Vision and Visibility, Top 10 Threat Detections for Microsoft Azure AD and Office 365 by Vectra.

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