October 2013

I BT STR E NGTH E NS QATAR OPE RATION

/16

PA G E S 5 6 VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 03 OCTOBER 2013 WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

SECURITY

ISPs VS MALWARES ISPs should now be looking into the aspect of protecting and cleansing the network under them. /50

False Cover MEA.indd 1

08/10/13 8:42 AM

Experience Innovations Embrace growth.

Introducing...

LCP DX and ISR (Integrated Server Room) Rittal Integrated Server Room & Data Centre solutions at Gitex 2013…

• Witness the new generation TS IT Racks, fully loaded with system accessories • Capture a live demo of Rittal’s new LCP DX, the Inline cooling system with DX technology • Chilled Water based LCP’s in an Aisle containment • Dynamic Rack Control & Live display of Rizone (Rittal DCIM software)

A visual treat with a testimony to innovative engineering & product development.

Win BIG with Rittal Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Participate & WIN with daily draws on Rittal stand

Visit us: Hall 1- Stand A1-7 20 - 24 October 2013

Rittal Middle East FZE Post Box 17599, Dubai, UAE I Tel: +971-4-3416855 I Email: info@rittal-middle-east.com

Advts MEA.indd 7

06/10/13 10:57 AM

SAS SIG NS STOR IT AS DISTR I B UTOR PARTN E R..

/10

PA G E S 5 6 VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 03 OCTOBER 2013 WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

SPEEDING UP THE CLOUD JOURNEY Besides offering operation efficiency and cost savings, cloud computing brings flexibility in businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality /38

INDIAECMOCT2013

MEA MARKET

PARTN E R I NG TH E R IG HT CHAN N E L /36

Cover MEA.indd 1

07/10/13 9:52 PM

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

MY

K

Advts MEA.indd 1

06/10/13 10:55 AM

EDITORIAL

A Key to Understand the Market

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A EDITOR@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

This Gitex is going to be a spectacular display of technology solutions with presence of more than 1400 exhibitors representing various brands within the ICT domain. The biggest thrust of the show is going to be Cloud Computing and Big Data and the biggest showcase among all the products and solutions is going to be security solutions followed by Cloud Computing. Nevertheless, one can get to see most of the technologies and applications influencing consumer and commercial market under one roof.

The importance of Gitex is that it is the biggest indicator of the trends in the region.

Being present in the expo means one is realizing the trends that are arround willingness of the market to embrace technologies. Today, without seeing ROI, no vendor will be ready to invest and being present in the expo shows that the vendors are assured of their ROI. Various data points showing that the entire Middle East and Africa region is going to grow faster. There are mammoth projects coming up in the region. Some days back there was news that UAE is going to be a financial capital of the world. Similarly, the MENA region’s hospitality and tourism sector is rapidly investing on technologies. According to a report from investment bank Alpen Capital, the industry growth is projected to increase from US$19.2 billion in 2011 to USD 28.3 billion by 2016. So, if the ICT takes 10 per cent of the share it comes around, US$2.8 bllion from the hospitality sector only. Besides there are traditional big buyers of the region including government, Telco, Oil & Gas; followed by retail, distribution, hospitality industry, etc. Combining the entire opportunity, the market is going to explode absolutely as far as IT is concerned.

So the gist is that the region is absolutely ready for new technologies like Cloud Computing, Big Data and BYOD; not to forget other solutions including datacentre, networking, security, telephony, applications, automation, management and services naturally fall into place automatically.

Therefore, Gitex is going to hold key to both vendors and customers. There is a huge hype around this and expectation is really high. Vistors from the entire Gulf region and Africa will be present in the show to understand the new solutions. Principals from Europe and US will have their solutions shocased in the show either directly or through their channel partners.

As a responsive media house in the region, we are also present in the expo as as media partner. I will request you to visit our booth at Concourse 1 CC1-10A and grab the latest company. Plus, we have put in our best of efforts to bring out a Solutions Handbook, which carries view points of the leaders in various technologies. It will be of great help to understand the new solutions. Before pushing off, do not forget to ask for a copy of the Handbook. ë

PRINTED BY AL GHURAIR PRINTING & PUBLISHING LLC. MASAFI COMPOUND, SATWA, P.O.BOX: 5613, DUBAI, UAE

MEA PUBLISHER: SANJIB MOHAPATRA

SALES AND ADVERTISING RONAK SAMANTARAY

COO: TUSHAR SAH00

ronak@accentinfomedia.com

EDITOR: SANJAY MOHAPATRA

M: + 971 555 120 490

sanjay@accentinfomedia.com M: +971 555 119 432 ASSOCIATE EDITOR: NIVEDAN PRAKASH nivedan@accentinfomedia.com ASSISTANT EDITOR: KARMA NEGI karma@enterprisechannels.com REPORTER: APARAJITA CHOUDHURY aparajita@enterprisechannels.com REPORTER: MANALI MISRA manali@accentinfomedia.com VISUALIZER: MANAS RANJAN

PRODUCTION & CIRCULATION RICHA SAMANTARAY + 971 529 943 982

I N FO M E DIA PUBLISHED BY ACCENT INFOMEDIA MEA FZ-LLC PO BOX : 500653, DUBAI, UAE 223, BUILDING 20 , DUBAI MEDIA CITY, DUBAI, UAE PHONE : +971 (0) 4368 8523

SUBSCRIPTIONS INFO@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

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 ACCURACY OF ALL INFORMATION IN THIS MAGAZINE, THEY WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ERRORSTHEREIN.

LEAD VISUALIZER: DPR CHOUDHARY

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Edit.indd 5

05

08/10/13 8:43 AM

CONTENTS VOLUME 01 ISSUE 02 OCTOBER 2013 W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

2013

COVER STORY

MEA MARKET: SPEEDING UP THE CLOUD JOURNEY

The rapid adoption of cloud computing technology in the Middle East & Africa market is a very positive indicator of the growing appreciation of the powerful capabilities of the cloud. /38 MY VIEWS /34

“SECURING THE CLOUD INVESTMENTS” SCOTT HAGENUS, DIRECTOR OF CHANNEL, GFI SOFTWARE

MY VIEWS /49

“Our Vertical Integration is our Competitive Edge” TAREQ HUSSEINI, SALES DIRECTOR MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA SANDISK

INNOVATIONS /53

OKI MB700 SERIES

SECURITY

FEATURE

Contego /46

Wireless /46

Setting High Standards

Offloading The Traffic

OKI new range of A4 mono MFPs designed to expand on the recent success of the award winning MC700 Series of A4 colour MFPs launched earlier this year.

WIRELESS /46

Offloading The Traffic CHRISTIAN JONSSON, DIRECTOR SALES, AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST, APTILO NETWORKS

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 05 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08 CORPORATE::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 22, 36 LEADERS’ PITCTH::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 28 PARTNER STREET:::::::::: 26, 29, 30, 48, 52

06

Contents.indd 6

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

08/10/13 8:43 AM

Authorized Distributor

prologixdistribution

prologixuae

Š 2013 Prologix LLC, All rights reserved. Prologix LLC and Prologix Distribution logo are registered trademarks of Prologix LLC in the United Arab Emirates and various countries

Advts MEA.indd 2

06/10/13 10:56 AM

CHANNEL

STREET INJAZAT TO SUPPORT PLANNED INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENTS

Injazat Data Systems will extend its full support for nationwide efforts to uplift project management excellence at the upcoming Emirates Project Management Academy Conference (EPMA) taking place on September 30, 2013 at the Mazoon Ball Room of the Etihad Jumeirah Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

Injazat, a major sponsor of the conference, notes that more certified Project Managers are needed to ensure that planned infrastructure developments across the UAE worth an estimated USD 690 billion are delivered on time and to the highest quality.

HELP AG SECURITY ANALYSTS QUALIFY FOR FINALS OF WORLD CYBERLYMPICS Two Middle East ethical hackers from Help AG have qualified to participate in the World Finals of the Global CyberLympics, an EC-Council Foundation initiative supported by the United Nation’s ITU, being held on 19th September 2013 in Georgia, USA. Ali Hussein and Tudor Enache, the only Middle East participants, are part of a six person team that secured its place in the final by besting 73 other teams.

The Global CyberLympics aims to create an opportunity for ethical hacking to be accepted and practiced for the purpose of understanding what it takes to protect and secure critical information and assets.

08

Channel Street.indd 8

SAID AKAR, DISTRICT MANAGER SOUTH GULF, EMC

Big Data Will Lead to Better Decision Making EMC Corporation released the findings of a survey that asked 237 IT decision makers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their perspective on the challenges and opportunities that Big Data and IT transformation and related skills can present to their companies. The key findings reveal that in the UAE, Big Data is giving rise to markedly improved decision making and is having a significant impact on companies’ competitive differentiation and ability to avert risk. 87% of respondents in the UAE reported that decisions in their organization could be improved with a better use of data, and 67% agree that their senior teams trust Big Data insights to make truly transformative business decisions.

“This is a core part of IT transformation, a process which UAE businesses are well underway with. The majority of businesses in the region have already set out to virtualize and create cloudenabled businesses and even more incredibly, some have created a fully software defined infrastructure.

This approach, combined with Big Data analytics

will see the agility and competitiveness of UAE businesses increase massively,” said Said Akar, District Manager South Gulf, EMC However, in the UAE, 27% of companies surveyed have no current plans for implementing Big Data technology while budget (64%) was the most important factor for overall business decision making, the most common reason cited as the inhibitor to Big Data adoption was the lack of a clear business case or proven ROI (57%). Samir Mardini, Head of Talent Consulting MENA, Aon Hewitt Middle East said, “To cater to the increasing demand for a qualified pool of local resources in the country, the UAE continues to witness an increased focus on skills and development through strategic alliances and partnerships between industry leaders and academia, to introduce the student body to technologies like cloud computing, virtualization and big data to create a qualified workforce capable of leading the future of the country and sustaining its growth for years to come.”

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

Advts MEA.indd 3

06/10/13 10:56 AM

CHANNEL STREET

SAS Signs StorIT As Distributor Partner Joseph, CEO, StorIT DistribuStorIT announced that it has tion fzco. signed a distribution agreement “At SAS, we have a rigorous with SAS, a leader in business selection criteria while choosing intelligence and analytics softpartners. We want to ensure ware, to promote and distribute that our partners can add value SAS Visual Analytics through to our products, invest in skills its extensive channel network in training and have consulting and the region. With the addition of implementation skills. StorIT SAS Visual Analytics to its solid was selected as a key partner portfolio of data management based on its strong regional and storage solutions, StorIT is knowledge, domain and market now poised to offer cutting-edge expertise and extensive technical Big Data solutions to its customBOBY JOSEPH, CEO, STORIT DISTRIBUTION FZCO skills. StorIT is a reputed and ers in the Middle East. established specialist distributor “SAS Visual Analytics brings in the data management and storage solutions together analytics, reporting and visualization in space with capabilities of a systems integrator. By one simple-to-use product, where companies will including SAS Visual Analytics to its portfolio, be able to use the speed of thought analysis and StorIT will be able to deliver tremendous value its capability to explore huge amounts of data to and support to its reseller network,” Ravi Acharya, make quick business decisions. We are delighted Regional Channel Manager, SAS Middle East to partner with SAS to bring this innovative soluexplained. tion to our customers in the region,” said Boby

BROCADE AND ARUBA TEAM UP Brocade and Aruba Networks announced a strategic relationship to deliver an openstandards based unified campus network to support secure mobility, the proliferation of mobile devices within campus environments, BYOD initiatives and emerging technologies, such as SDN. “Campus networks are buckling under the proliferation of today’s mobile initiatives, which makes this space ripe for disruption LLOYD and ready for the CARNEY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE application of intelOFFICER, BROCADE ligent solutions,” said Lloyd Carney, Chief Executive Officer, Brocade. “We view the campus network as the on-ramp to the virtualized data center and look forward to collaborating with Aruba to apply our cloud and SDN technologies to create a more unified and simplified solution.”

Talariax sendQuick Entera - A revolution in SMS Communications TalariaX introduces sendQuick Entera - Enterprise messaging solution. sendQuick Entera is an SMS Gateway appliance for IT Alerts, Enterprise messaging, Business process and Third Party application integration. sendQuick Entera helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in key areas of Enterprise Communications while reducing cost.

Traditional means of communication such as emails, voice calls and faxes are expensive. By nature, they are not efficient or reliable. In comparison, SMS (Text) messaging is cost effective, highly efficient, reliable and non-intrusive - making it ideal for getting the messages across - fast. SMS can be deployed in a plethora of ways

10

Channel Street.indd 10

within business processes in order to be competitive in a demanding business environment. sendQuick Entera is designed as a plug-and-play appliance. It can be configured and installed for any business (the gateway is sector agnostic) in the matter of minutes, saving time and money. Designed to fit one’s Local Area Network, sendQuick Entera will convert email messages, HTTP Post and other messaging formats received from back end applications and send them as SMS to designated recipients. In addition, it has the ability to convert alert messages from monitoring and security infrastructure to SMS, providing instant and concise information on

the events as they happen - right across the business.

The management of Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa Resort & Spa, a world renowned 5 star hospitality chain was looking for a solution which would ensure uninterrupted IT infrastructure at the back-end as it is the core representation of the hotel’s services. With the integration of sendQuick Entera and 2-way SMS communication, response time has improved by leaps and bounds. Shangri-La engineers are now mobile and yet able to respond when required.

Similarly, Tenet Insurance, a leading insurance company in Singapore since the 1950’s, discovered vast improvements to

service quality and response time after they implemented SMS alerts for IT management.

In the Middle East, sendQuick Entera is used by reputed clientele such as Central Bank of Bahrain, Ministry of Health, KPMG, SLRB, Oman Refineries and Petrochemicals, University of Bahrain, Ministry of Finance, Haya Water, Pension Fund Commission, GPIC, Ajman Bank, Tatweer Petroleum, Royal Saudi Land Force, Al Baraka Bank among others. Ashok Kumar, Chief of Business Development, EMEA & SAARC at TalariaX spearheads operations in the region. Today, sendQuick has clientele in 20+ countries from Australia to the United States.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

STILL FRAUGHT WITH IT MANAGEMENT HICCUPS?

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

Gain control through SMS (Text) alert notifications and 2 Factor Authentication

CMY

K

sendQuick® is the industry’s first appliance based SMS gateway for enterprise messaging. Implemented by clientele across 20+ countries worldwide - many being Fortune Global 500 companies from industries that include banking, finance, insurance, manufacturing, retail, government and healthcare. Enterprises depend on sendQuick® to send SMS (Text) for IT alerts, 2 factor authentication with SMS OTP, SMS marketing and emergency broadcasting as part of their business IT management. sendQuick® is supported by a growing network of channel partners from Australia to the United States. sendQuick® Customers can be found globally in countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Switzerland, United States of America, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Philippines, Australia and Singapore.

Take the first step and be notified by sendQuick® SMS (Text) appliance gateway. visit www.talariax.com │ enquire info@talariax.com

Singapore │ USA │ Malaysia

Advts MEA.indd 4

06/10/13 10:56 AM

CHANNEL STREET

Spectrami Conducts TechWorkshop

EDIMAX UNVEILS USB DUAL-BAND 802.11AC ADAPTER

hands on training. Nikhil executed Spectrami in association with General the TechWorkshop and explained Dynamics Fidelis Cybersecurity the advantages of Fidelis XPS while Solutions recently conducted a explaining the disruptive nature of training workshop for its channel advanced threats for businesses and partners on Fidelis XPS in Dubai, how Fidelis can secure enterprises UAE. The TechWorkshop focused against such threats. on imparting skills-sets, knowledge Anand Choudha, MD, Spectrami, and information to enable partners to said, “The TechWorkshop provides understand and assess the requireANAND an excellent platform for us to ments of a customer while suggesting CHOUDHA, MD, SPECTRAMI be in sync with channel partners Fidelis XPS, a solution for Advanced by updating and upgrading their skills and Threat Defense to counter the rise in Advanced knowledge about the product that is key in Persistent Threats. understanding customer requirements. Clear Channel partners servicing industry verticals understanding of customer’s requirements and like Telecom, Banking, Government, Healthcare technology helps partners in offering a right and others attended the workshop. Nikhil solution to the customer. Fidelis XPS is perfect Das, Senior Security Engineer from General solution for the management and prevention Dynamics Fidelis updated partners on latest of advanced threats for the enterprises in developments in the IT security space, discussed region.” the key features of Fidelis XPS and gave them

SAFENET ADDS APPONCHIP TO SENTINEL ENVELOP SafeNet announced an enhanced version of the Sentinel Envelope file-wrapper technology within its Sentinel License Development Kit (LDK), the company’s award-winning software protection, licensing, and entitlement management system. With the new AppOnChip functionality within Sentinel Envelope, software developers bind protected software to hardware keys, requiring the physical presence of the key to not only validate usage authorization but to execute the code itself, further strengthening the protection SafeNet provides to its software monetization customers. AppOnChip is a fully automated process for binding a Sentinel hardware key to protected software by forcing selected pieces of code to execute on the key. In the absence of the key, the application fails to execute.

Edimax Middle East announced the launch of EW-7822UAC wireless USB adapter. The launch sets a new global standard for Wi-Fi adapters with a device that is the first and fastest of its kind in the world.

The EW-7822UAC supports USB 3.0, the newest specification of the USB standard which specifies a maximum data transmission speed of 5Gbps. Approximately 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 standard which specifies a maximum speed of 480Mbps. It presents USB 3.0 with blistering speeds for consumers to enjoy the fast, reliable Wi-Fi that their devices demand.

ICDL URGES TO FOCUS ON IT SECURITY ICDL GCC Foundation is strongly urging the region’s governments to push for greater vigilance against cyber-crime. The Foundation points out how, early this year, a global cyber crime ring was able to steal USD45 million from two Gulf-based banks.

This incident has sparked serious concerns on the region’s ability to combat cyber crimes and maintain acceptable levels of IT security. Since the GCC has one of the highest Internet growth rate in the World and has been adopting the latest technologies,

PROLEXIC TO PROTECT ANB AGAINST DDOS ATTACKS Prolexic announced that Arab National Bank (ANB) has selected its 24/7 monitoring and mitigation services to protect the bank’s online banking and e-trading websites.

“Arab National Bank is aware of the risk of DDoS in the financial services sector and has taken proactive action to minimize its impact,” said Stuart Scholly, President, Prolexic.

“More than ten of the world’s largest banks trust Prolexic for DDoS

12

Channel Street.indd 12

protection, and we are delighted to welcome Arab National Bank to our global financial services client base.”

“Prolexic could give us 24/7 monitoring plus the bandwidth capacity and flexibility to route both national and international traffic through its global scrubbing centers,” said Alrebdi Al Rebdi, Head of Information Security, Arab National Bank. “That, plus a time-to-mitigate SLA, gave us the confidence that

Prolexic could protect ANB against DDoS.” Prolexic’s PLXrouted service met ANB’s criteria for providing maximum protection against the broadest range of DDoS attack types and sustained high-bandwidth attacks. Prolexic’s DDoS protection service for ANB also includes 24/7 monitoring by Prolexic’s Security Operations Center (SOC). ANB also works with a local Prolexic global

partner, Cyberia, which provides dedicated engineers to provide local support. ANB has not come under DDoS attack since PLXrouted was implemented, the press release announced.

“Said ITG-Head of Telecoms at ANB, Jamil M. Barakat. “As we have learned at ANB, it is critically important to have a good and reliable DDoS mitigation solution in place.”

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

Advts MEA.indd 5

06/10/13 10:57 AM

CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in the demand from the hospitality and tourism sector in the MENA region upgrading their IT infrastructure.

ALIFIYA SURA, OMNIX INTERNATIONAL

Contego Solutions Deploys AntAnalyzer Contego Solutions announced that it has successfully installed the next generation AntAnalyzer forensic workstation by German manufacturer mh Service. This will further enhance Contego Solutions digital forensic lab capabilities and will propel Contego to be the first commercial company in the region that is working with the highest performing investigation unit, the press release announced.

“We are excited to have appointed Contego Solutions as a Partner in the Middle East. With our leading edge AntAnalyzer forensic workstation, clients in the Middle East will now be able to use the advanced processing capabilities of

Contego Solutions’ lab,” said Kai Jessen, Director of Sales, mh Service.

The workstation has been installed at Contego’s cutting-edge computer forensics lab in Dubai and offers the highest performance level with three leading forensic software solutions in the market - Access Data FTK, Guidance Software Encase and Nuix. In the mh Service test, the AntAnalyzer Enterprise unit was capable to make use of all available machine’s resources. With all options turned on in FTK (including indexing, hashing with MD5 and SHA1, KFF categorization, data and meta carving, etc.) the system processed the Windows 7 Image (160 GB) in only 2 hours and 32 minutes.

6

SECONDS

SANDISK 256G COMPACTFLASH CARD SanDisk announced the availability of the 256GB SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash memory card. It is the world’s first high-capacity, highperformance CompactFlash card with the latest Video Performance Guarantee (VPG-65) specification, the press release announced. Also being announced by SanDisk are faster speeds across all other capacities of the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash line of memory cards.

SIMMTRONICS LAUNCHES XPAD MINI Simmtronics has launched its XPad Mini, super tablet designed to deliver high-end performance at minimal cost.

Powered by a Quad Core 1.0 GHz Processor, the Mini will surely appeal to both corporate executives who regularly work with presentations and spreadsheets as well as to diehard gamers who seek high-definition resolution for their gaming requirements. The ultra-fast processor means that users can achieve more by simultaneously surfing, multiple video viewing, emailing, downloading apps and play games.

AASTRA NAMED NUMBER ONE

WASEELA TO DEMONSTRATE ITS MAJOR TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS Waseela, the leading ICT System Integrator and Managed Services provider in the MENA region, plans to demonstrate six technologies and solutions in collaboration with its vendors at GITEX 2013. These state-of-the-art solutions include the latest technological advancement in wireless technologies and latest convergence trends of ICT technologies, which will be of interest to telecom operators, public safety organizations, oil and gas companies and large enterprises.

Waseela will significantly expand its exhibition and its demonstration of activities in this year’s GITEX participation These new technological demonstrations include LTE critical communication solutions, WiFi offloading and WiFi monetization solutions, including WiFi-based active RFID and locationbased applications, in addition to high-capacity IP-based Microwave solutions.

In line with Aastra has been named by MZA Ltd as the leading supplier brand of DECT handsets to businesses in the EMEA region in 2012.

Peter Ditmar Hofman, Regional President for Aastra Telecom Asia, Middle East & Africa, commented, “As a result of developing our own DECT technology, we are able to lead the way in the business DECT market. Aastra focuses on offering industry-leading wireless products, with dedicated business features. Our solutions are highly reliable, whether used by nurses or by hotel staff who need to receive urgent messages.”

AOC LAUNCHES NEW MONITOR FAMILY AOC sets out to once again generate some

SOPHOS MAINTAINS ITS LEADERSHIP POSITION Sophos announced it is once again positioned in the “Leaders” quadrant of Gartner 2013 “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection.” The quadrant is based on an assessment of a company’s market understanding, strategy and completeness of vision within the Mobile Data Protection (MDP) industry. MDP products are defined as products that protect access to secure data on storage systems in notebooks, removable media, desktops and servers. Buyers want common protection policies across multiple platforms, minimal support costs and proof of protection.

“To be positioned as a leader for the past eight years is a testament to our product teams who continue to deliver innovative encryption and data protection products,” said John Shaw, Vice President for end user security products at Sophos. “An aggressive roadmap, coupled with our plans to make it even simpler for small and medium sized businesses to protect their data by encrypting drives, files, cloud storage and mobile files invisibly, positions us for even more success in the months and years ahead.”

14

Channel Street.indd 14

movement in the monitor market with a fresh and competitive monitor line. More than 20 different ultra-slim 70 series models are to follow the product family 50. Available in various sizes, resolutions and equipment variants, the new 70 series offers solid display technologies in an attractive, texturised housing at affordable prices – from entry-level monitors for standard applications to advanced professional models with ultra-high resolutions. The 70 series widescreen models offer diagonals from 46.9 to 68.6 cm, and resolutions from 1366 x 768 pixels (WXGA) to stunning 2560 x 1440 pixels (WQHD).

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

R

Advts MEA.indd 6

06/10/13 10:57 AM

CHANNEL STREET

IBT Strengthens Qatar Operation The leading end to end ICT solution provider in the GCC region, Intelligent Business Technologies aka IBT has expanded its operations in Qatar.

Although IBT had six employees in Qatar for technical support and implementation but each time there were any sales enquiry people had to travel from HQ (Dubai) to Qatar to close the deal.

In order to avoid the hassles, Jai Mulani, CEO of the company, said, “We have added another six people to take care of sales and admin. Now our Qatar office is fully functional response centre in terms of engineering and sales. Locally this office is capable to take any decision.”

“Although we have some good customers in Qatar, but this market is small for us looking

at its potential for IT Infrastructure and Managed Services. In a few quarters from now we will add more MULANI, CEO, resources to address this JAI IBT market. I am expecting by next two quarters we will have 25 people,” he added.As per Mulani, as of now there is no company in Qatar as competent as IBT is in verticals including Cloud Computing, BPO and Messaging Solutions.

He maintains, “We have a few major accounts in Qatar for whom we are managing Data Center and now we will be aggressively approaching Qatar market to acquire maximum market share.”

FIRST ALL-FEMALE BUSINESS PROCESS SERVICES CENTER IN KSA Saudi Aramco, GE and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the launch of the first all-female business process services center in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The center will be staffed by Saudi females with TCS and GE owning 76% and 24% equity in the new venture, which will initially serve Saudi Aramco and GE as anchor clients.

The new business process services center will serve as a building block to localize the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Kingdom. The three partners will work together with the intention of scaling up the new venture to create up to 3,000 jobs for Saudi professional females. GE will create up to 1,000 employment opportunities for this initiative.

The center will help corporations in the Kingdom to take advantage of a globally accepted business and operating model which allows business to focus on core competencies.

NETAPP AIMS FOR SEAMLESS CLOUD DATA MANAGEMENT NetApp extended its strategy and commitment to provide seamless cloud management across any blend of private and public cloud resources.

NetApp’s strategy is to use Data ONTAP, as a universal data platform across cloud environments. Data ONTAP will enable dynamic data portability across all clouds and will support extensive customer choice for application, technology, and cloud partner options. Already more than 175 cloud service providers deliver cloud services built on Data ONTAP. IDC has named NetApp Data ONTAP as the world’s number-one branded storage operating system.

Jay Kidd, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, NetApp said, “Regardless of the ultimate computing destination, the CIO will maintain ownership of the organization’s data. The introduction of new multicloud architectures makes data governance more complex because data is distributed, and not under direct control. Our vision is to create an enterprise data management solution, with the clustered Data ONTAP operating system at its core, which will span the customers’ data storage landscape, irrespective of data type or location.”

HP AND VMWARE TO DELIVER NETWORKING SOLUTIONS HP and VMware plans to collaborate to deliver the industry’s first federated network solution, designed to provide customers unified automation of, and visibility into, their physical and virtual data center networks, enabling business agility and improving business continuity.

The new HP-VMware networking solution will federate the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller with the VMware NSX network virtualization

16

Channel Street.indd 16

“Networks must be platform to provide agile enough to enable customers with an the adoption of cloud integrated approach and mobility while to automating their ensuring continuity,” physical and virtual said Gautam Raj, network infrastrucNetworking Sales ture. The networking Director, HP Middle solution will provide East. “Building upon a centralized view, our SDN leadership, unified automation, the HP-VMware visibility and control GAUTAM RAJ, NETWORKING SALES networking solution of the complete data DIRECTOR, HP ME unifies visibility and automation center network, improving agility, of the physical and virtual network monitoring and troubleshooting.

with a common control plane, enabling new application and service delivery in minutes rather than months.”

The HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller also will include support for VMware Open vSwitch Database (OVSDB) management protocol. This enables HP FlexFabric switches to participate in the automated provisioning of the virtual network, which will be delivered by VMware NSX network virtualization platform.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

Advts01.indd 16

03/09/13 10:52 PM

CHANNEL STREET

Comguard and Ixia Team Up Comguard announced that it has partnered with Ixia to offer network visibility solutions that will revolutionize the way Middle Eastern enterprises and service providers monitor their networks.

Comguard will offer Ixia’s portfolio of network visibility solutions including the Anue Net Tool Optimizer (NTO) and GTP Session Controller (GSC) to their customers in the region. The NTO portfolio of network monitoring switches,

also known as network packet brokers, provides complete visibility into physical and virtual networks, improves network security monitoring and optimizes monitoring tool performance. The GSC enables mobile carriers to gain better insight and control over individual user sessions in order to increase customers’ quality of experience.

Jayadevan K., Senior Vice President-Value Business, Comguard, said, “This partner-

ship with Ixia will enable us to further expand our market base with innovations for equipment manufacturers, service providers, enterprises, and government agencies.

These solutions provide leading network visibility platforms that offer clarity into physical and virtual production networks for improved performance, security, resiliency, and application delivery of cloud, data center, and service provider networks.”

WEB CLIPS EPSON LAUNCHES A4 SCANNERS Epson has announced the UAE launch of its latest range of A4 scanners to boost paper capture productivity for electronic document archiving and distribution. With high scanning speeds and advanced feed technology, the WorkForce DS-510 and DS-510N are designed to improve efficiency and integrate seamlessly into document management and cloud systems. The new compact models have scanning speeds of up to 26ppm/52ipm in both monochrome and colour and an ADF with a capacity of 50 A4 pages.

AOC TO SHOWCASE SPECIALIST GAMING MONITORS AT GITEX AOC has announced that it is going to create a massive shakeup in the regional monitor industry

WATCHGUARD REVEALS NEW SOLUTIONS WatchGuard Technologies introduced a new WatchGuard XCS 880 hardware through which enterprises can protect themselves against the growing challenges around email and other webbased threats. By joining forces with NCP engineering, WatchGuard integrates IPsec VPN client in its XTM to make deployment simple. In addition to the partnership, companies can ensure secure cloud access while leveraging WatchGuard’s comprehensive and multi-layered defense by introducing its first Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution for Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

Delivering 20% more processing power, twice the email throughput per dollar, and consuming less than half the energy of previous models, the XCS 880 protects against inbound threats such as virus, blended threats and network attacks, while helping control outbound information to prevent data loss. The XCS 880 is designed to meet the demanding growing challenges around email and other web-based content security needs of large enterprises.

by showcasing a wide range of display products at GITEX Technology Week 2013.

Through its 30 square meter booth at GITEX Technology Week 2013, AOC will be displaying Style myDisplay (Gaming-myUltraSpeed, myMultiPlay, myConnect, and Smart Monitor), Professional Line displays and the other Style and Value Line products (Miracast, MHL/IPS and 3D).

CREATIVE INTRODUCES NEW SIGNATURE T-SERIES Creative Technology recently introduced its new flagship T4 Wireless Signature Series 2.1 speaker system, the T30 Wireless Signature Series 2.0 speaker system and the T15 Wireless 2.0 speaker system. These new high-perfor-

MOVEMENTS Symantec announced HUW OWEN as VP sales and marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

MMD has appointed VINEETH SEBASTIAN as the new Regional Sales Director for MEA. Alcatel-Lucent appoints MANISH PUNJABI as its Channel Marketing Manager for MEA. Riverbed Technology appoints KRISTIAN THYREGOD as VP of sales, Mohammad Mobasseri joins EMT Distribution as CEO

18

Channel Street.indd 18

50

NUMBER GAME

percent

of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017

mance speakers feature Bluetooth and Near Field Communication (NFC) wireless connectivity to enhance ease-of-use for mobile device, PC and Mac users. Creative unveiled the new speaker models at IFA Berlin from September 6 -11 at Stand 110, Hall 3.2.

NEC DISPLAY SOLUTIONS EXPANDS ITS MDVIEW SERIES NEC Display Solutions Europe is helping healthcare professionals deliver reliable and high quality patient care with the addition of an advanced 24-inch LCD display to its MDview Series, which incorporates the latest display technologies to provide an even clearer image.

The 2.3MP NEC MDview243 combines a highresolution in plane switching (IPS) LCD panel with LED backlighting to guarantee maximum precision and colour accuracy in clinical review.

The inclusion of LED backlighting means lower power consumption and a longer lifespan.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:54 PM

Let's Create, Disrupt & Re-imagine together

GITEX WORLD

GITEX EDGE

12 dedicated sector-based industry platforms showcasing the world’s biggest technology brands

GITEX TRENDS

9 re-imagined and new visitor features created to empower your GITEX experience

4 disruptive knowledge platforms covering Big Data, Cloud Computing, Digital Strategies and more

REGISTER NOW TO SAVE MORE AND FAST-TRACK ACCESS www.gitex.com/accesspass GET INVOLVED

GITEX TECHNOLOGY GROUP

GitexTechnologyWeek GITEXTECHWEEK

@gitextechweek

GitexTechWeek

blog.gitex.com

CONTACT INFORMATION For visitor and delegate enquiries, please contact the GITEX Team at: gitex@dwtc.com or visit www.gitex.com for more information about the event Organised by

STUDENT LAB IN ASSOCIATION WITH

OFFICIAL COUNTRY PARTNER

CO-located events

Student Lab Lead Sponsor

Government Headline Sponsor

GULFCOMMS ENDORSED AND SUPPORTED BY

Official Technology Car PARTNER

Content Hub Sponsor

Smart Sessions Sponsor

MOBILE, APPS & CONTENT HEADLINE SPONSOR

OFFICIAL PUBLISHER

SUPPORTED BY

Strategic Partner

OFFICIAL TRAVEL PARTNER

MAJLIS LOUNGE SPONSOR

INDUSTRY PARTNER SMART SESSIONS

OFFICIAL SCREEN & GITEX TV PARTNER

GITEX TRENDS SPONSORS AND PARTNERS Cloud Confex DIAMOND Sponsor

Cloud Confex PLATINUM SponsorS

CLOUD CONFEX GOLD Sponsors

GTW Ad - Enterprise Channel MEA E 19x28cm (240913).indd 1 Advts MEA.indd 9

BIG DATA DIAMOND Sponsor

Big Data Platinum Sponsors

BIG DATA GOLD Sponsors

DIGITAL STRATEGIES FORUM STRATEGIC SPONSOR

GITEX TRENDS Knowledge PARTNER

9/25/13 9:24 AM 08/10/13 8:41 AM

CHANNEL STREET

StarLink Releases MOVEit 8.0 systems. In addition, the system StarLink along with its partner allows mobile users to send files to Ipswitch File Transfer announced the each other, and share information release of MOVEit 8.0. It is a software securely and helps confidently meet package that, for the first time, enables security and compliance demands. mobile workers to reliably and proSaid, Rich Kennelly, President, ductively transfer files as part of key Ipswitch File Transfer. “The new business processes, while providing MOVEit 8.0 Mobile MFT empowIT the security, visibility and control ers our customers to adopt mobile required to confidently conduct busi- AVINASH ADVANI STARLINK without feeling that they are taking ness, the press release announced. unacceptable security risks.”

MOVEit solves problems that businesses “We are pleased to offer our customers in have faced for years; trying to balance security the MENA region with MOVEit System an ITand productivity in their mobile work policies. approved solution to securely transfer large busiMOVEit System extends Managed File Transfer ness files reliably, thus confidently meeting SLAs functionality to mobile users on iOS and Android and compliance requirements with complete devices, integrating mobile into a company’s control over customers file transfer activity,” said existing file–based processes. It makes files from Avinash Advani, Director – Business Strategy, their business systems available to mobile users, StarLink. allows users to upload new files, and automates the movement of those files back to their business

EPICOR POSITIONED IN “VISIONARIES” QUADRANT Epicor Software Corporation announced it has been positioned by Gartner in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Single-Instance ERP Product-Centric Midmarket Companies based on evaluation of its next-generation Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. It’s the fourth consecutive placement in the Visionaries category for Epicor.

The MQ for ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies focuses on ERP systems that support a single instance strategy for multi-entity midmarket and upper-midmarket companies.

User organizations in this market are independent companies with revenue between approximately $200 million and $1 billion, and up to 10,000 or more employees.

“We believe our four consecutive placements in the ‘Visionaries’ quadrant are testament to our customer-centric focus and commitment to design and implement software solutions that help businesses achieve the agility and flexibility today’s global environment demands,” said Pervez Qureshi, President and CEO of Epicor.

BROTHER INTERNATIONAL GULF LAUNCHED NEW PRINTERS SERIES Brother International has launched its latest range of Monochrome laser printers/Multi-Function Centres models at a special event held on Thursday at the Emirates Ballroom of the JW Marriott Marquis hotel. The new series, which includes the HL-1110, DCP-1510, MFC-1810 and MFC-1815, have been specially designed to meet the demands of reliability, high quality and cost-effective prints from the region’s consumers and SMEs. The launching ceremony was led

by Soichi Murakami, MD, Brother International and was graced by the invited guest of honour, His Excellency Daisuke Matsunaga, Consul General of Japan. Also present during the event were VIPs that included Ibrahim Al Janahi, Deputy CEO, Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza), Kazutoshi Kato, General Manager- Corporate Communications Department, Bother Industries, Shinji Tada, GM, Marketing Control Department, Brother International Corporation , the parent subsidiary of Brother International FZE and more than 20 distributors from across the region along with their Tier-1 partners.

In addition to the launching of the four new models, the event also introduced the company’s new logo, which showcases Brother International’s 100-year mark of excellence as a leading Japanese company.

CIOs WANT TO CENTRALIZE APPLICATIONS: RIVERBED An independent market research survey commissioned by Riverbed Technology reveals that 62% of IT decision makers in the Middle East are looking to centralize applications during 2013. This survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne, the independent specialist technology market research company. 400 CIOs in United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Poland and United Kingdom were questioned

20

Channel Street.indd 20

as part of the survey.

56% of those surveyed in the Middle East indicated that security and compliance was a primary concern for investment, with 54% citing server virtualization as a priority.

Additionally, 52% reported server upgrades as a priority, making these three areas the most common CIO spending priorities for 2013.

74% of CIOs in the Middle East are planning a consolidation project

reported data security as the key driver for their programmes. Other reasons provided for undertaking consolidation projects included a desire for greater control of application and server upgrades (also at 74 %) and the need to reduce the cost of managing distributed servers at the branch office layer (61 %).

The study also revealed that the biggest barrier to embarking on a virtualization/consolidation project

was application performance over the WAN, with 60 % of those not undertaking a project citing this reason. The costs of initial set-up as well as complexity were also reported as concerns by 50 % and 46 % respectively. “This study shows that more CIOs than ever recognise the importance of centralizing technology and data to gain efficiencies. ” said Willem Hendrickx, SVP EMEA at Riverbed.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:55 PM

CHANNEL STREET

DELL IMPROVES CHANNEL PARTNER PROGRAMS Dell announced improvements to its channel partner programs, including software-specific enhancements to its PartnerDirect program through four new software competencies, as well as new service provider and referral programs.

The enhancements highlight Dell’s commitment to enabling channel partners to sell end-to-end solutions through one simple

MATRIX TO SHOWCASE NAVAN CNX200 AT GITEX Matrix Comsec will showcase its Office-in-a-Box solution NAVAN CNX200 at GITEX Technology Week 2013, Dubai.

“GITEX is a major technology event in MEASA region, bringing ICT professionals under common platform. Matrix is participating in GITEX this year to showcase its latest telecom solution such as IP based business phone systems, converged voice & data solutions, Android/iOS mobile softphone and GSM-VoIP gateways,” said Dipesh Patel, Business Manager, Middle East & Africa.

PANASONIC TO DISPLAY B2B AND B2G SOLUTIONS With an aim to significantly increase the contribution of B2B and B2G segments to Panasonic’s overall revenue, Panasonic Marketing Middle East & Africa (PMMAF) will showcase its much popular B2B and B2G business solutions this GITEX 2013 at Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC), from 20 to 24 October.

Panasonic plans to actively promote and create new B2B and B2G opportunities catering to diverse industry verticals,

program, and increase the scope and revenue potential of their partnerships. Partners selling a mix of Dell hardware and software can now achieve Premier status through a mixed competency, while an advanced competency offers a path to Premier for partners specializing in a single line of business. Today also marks the official transition of legacy North America and EMEA partners from disparate partner

programs such as Quest Partner Circle into the PartnerDirect program. The KACE, AppAssure, and SonicWALL partner communities had been transitioned earlier in the program’s lifecycle and fit well into the four software competencies introduced today.

The program features customized requirements and revenue thresholds for software partners to achieve Premier and Preferred

Partner status. PartnerDirect competencies provide specialized learning paths for channel partners to validate and distinguish their expertise, leading to increased profitability and competitive advantage. The new software competencies announced today are as Security, Systems Management, Data Protection, and Information Management.

BeyondTrust Conducts IT Security Summit knees no matter where they are in BeyondTrust, the security industry’s the world. Companies and internet only provider of Context-Aware users alike need to understand the Security Intelligence, welcomed IT need to be secure. Threats can drain Security Leaders to their annual companies of millions of dollars and Middle East IT Security Summit at lead to the loss of critical and sensitive The Jumeirah Towers Hotel. CTO and data. The Middle East is no different ex-hacker Marc Maiffret ran a session from any other geography, the threat focused on “The Threat Landscape landscape is changing and becoming – Staying Ahead of the Change.”

MARC MAIFFRET, more sophisticated – organizations Maiffret discussed how the threat CTO AND EX-HACKER need to adapt.” landscape has shifted and what was “The Gulf region is a prime target for cyber-crimonce a safe place to peruse and share information inals due to its economic strength and widespread is now trolled by hackers, bots and organized use of social media, but if businesses take smart cyber-crime groups. precautions to reinforce their defenses both inside “In an age where information is power, organiand out these risks may be avoided,” said Maiffret. zations security teams need to stay ahead of the BeyondTrust will be exhibiting their full bad guys and protect the organizational assets,” portfolio of security products at this year’s Gitex said Maiffret. “95 percent of all attacks come Technology Week, held from October the 20th – from known vulnerabilities and are preventable.

24th at The Dubai World Trade Centre.

Cyber-attacks can bring any business to their

SOFTWARE AG TO PARTICIPATE IN SAUDI ARABIA CIO SUMMIT Software AG will discuss the importance of harnessing the power of business process management (BPM) to attain optimal levels of operational excellence during the Saudi Arabia CIO Summit taking place fromSeptember 17 to 18, 2013 at the InterContinental Hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Running under the theme ‘Seize the Moment: Transform, Innovate, Collaborate,’ the upcoming third edition of the Saudi Arabia CIO Summit is being organized by global IT market research firm IDC. The event will tackle in depth how CIOs should proceed amidst Saudi Arabia’s ongoing IT transformation.

Vijay Jaswal, Software AG’s Chief Technology Officer for the Middle East and Turkey will deliver a presentation titled ‘Bring Your Strategy to Life’ during the opening day’s afternoon roundtables.

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Channel Street.indd 21

21

07/10/13 9:55 PM

CORPORATE

SAGE

Meeting Key Challenges in the Mining Industry

High levels of transactions across all segments of the mining sector, involving industry players of all sizes seeking deals all over the world, continue to rapidly change the face of the global mining industry.

T

ABOUT SAGE

he mining industry faces very specific challenges, creating a need for business solutions that can cater for their precise business processes. So says Deon Oelofse, Sage’s Strategic Sales Manager-KSA Region.

He explains that there are a number of hurdles that mining organisations need to overcome, including balancing short-term responses with long-term strategy and weighing the long timescales needed for major infrastructure projects, such as mine development, against sharp downturns in prices and demand.

“As part of a mature industry, these companies must also achieve enhanced profitability, in a large part through best-in-class performance and disciplined cost control as market demand for their products strongly fluctuates. At any point in time, commodity prices may be high or low, but management teams know that these price levels are cyclical. In the face of fluctuating demand and cyclical pricing, operating an efficient and streamlined business, as well as squeezing costs, is critical.”

High levels of transactions across all segments of the sector, involving industry players of all sizes seeking deals all over the world, continue to rapidly change the face of the global mining industry.

22

Sage-new.indd 22

“Major capital investment decisions are being made in this increasingly volatile operating and price environment, where future returns on the capital invested are increasingly uncertain,” says Oelofse. “Given these attributes of their operating environment, global mining companies are placing increasingly higher priority on the need for effective corporate risk management.”

Furthermore, the ability to recruit strategically and retain key employees and scarce skills in mining companies is more important now than ever before and is imperative to the future of the industry.

Oelofse maintains that the Sage ERP X3 integrated business management solution is an ideal option for the mining sector as it drives performance and will rise to the challenges facing this type of business. “These benefits are achieved by helping control the effects of globalisation related to international development, new market expansion, or changes in corporate ecosystem.”

In addition to this, Sage ERP X3 can also: • Run all of your company’s activities on one system and improve the efficiency of your processes; • Make internal and external collaboration easier by increasing a business’ ability to respond and anticipate;

Sage Middle East is the regional office of the Sage Group plc, Sage Middle East has over 6,000 customers and provides a range of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions through a network of partners and consultants in UAE, KSA, Egypt, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon. For more information please visit http://www.me.sage.com

DEON OELOFSE

SAGE’S STRATEGIC SALES MANAGER-KSA

“With its Web 2.0 technology, Sage ERP X3 focuses on collaboration and customisable ergonomics to simplify processes and increase efficiency.”

• Improve customer satisfaction; and • Guarantee a quick return on investment and controlling operating costs.

“With its Web 2.0 technology, Sage ERP X3 focuses on collaboration and customisable ergonomics to simplify processes and increase efficiency,” states Oelofse. “Thanks to its application extensions, its international scope and its expert and advanced functionalities, Sage ERP X3 adapts to your company regardless of size or organisational style. It helps to constantly align operations with the company strategy and to run activities with 360-degree visibility.”

According to Keith Fenner, Senior Vice President Sales – Sage ERP Africa and Middle East. Enterprise Asset Maintenance (EAM) is a crucial part of a capital-intensive business like the mining industry. “Sage ERP X3’s ability to manage maintenance planning schedules, job cards and rotables management with equipment master files held separately but fully integrated to the fixed assets suite was an essential step forward. Sage ERP X3 EAM allows us to provide a completely integrated maintenance suite that has transactional flows touching assets, inventory, internal issues, procurement, job cards and costing to the general ledger.” ë

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

08/10/13 10:17 PM

Advts MEA.indd 10

08/10/13 10:00 PM

CORPORATE

WATCHGUARD

To Double the Revenue NextYear Despite the presence of big names in the region, the growth of WatchGuard has been quite good so far but the time has come to up the ante and notch a bigger pie.

n WORDS: TUSHAR SAHOO <TUSHAR@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM> n PHOTOS: AGENCY

T

he growing adoption of BYOD, Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Wireless technology in the Middle East and Africa region has accentuated the concern around cyber security. It has mandated the organizations - irrespective of their size - big or small to deploy enterprise-class security solutions. Their budget allocation for acquiring requisite solutions has also grown manifold.

This situation has allowed the deployment of a variety of security solutions on ground and UTM has emerged as one of the fastest growing technologies. Enterprise Channels MEA spoke to John Spoor, Regional Manager Middle East, WatchGuard to know about their strategy in the market.

The biggest USP of WatchGuard UTMs is that these boxes are three and half times faster in speed vis-à-vis most of the competitors’ products.

As per John, WatchGuard UTM houses all the best- of -breed technologies. For example, Websense engine is being used for URL filtering, Commtouch is being used for AntiSpam, similarly, for Antivirus Kaspersky and McAfee and for DLP, Sophos engines are used.

The interesting thing is that Sophos has not yet started selling its own DLP whereas WatchGuard has already announced the inclusion in the market. It has been well received so far as the company is receiving a lot of enquiries. The DLP module introduced now is for gateway level

24

though but the company is expecting to launch an end-point DLP soon.

John points out, “Now Access Points are controlled by our UTM devices. This is extremely important to the market. Most of the UTM vendors have this product. The only vendor that I have not seen with any form of access point is Cyberoam in Middle East. Therefore, we are seeing a lot of Cyberoam partners coming to us in this region and we are attacking their market very hard with major offers. One of the offers is, anybody buying our 5 series and above boxes will get a free Access Pont.”

From the marketing strategy perspective according to John as far as UTM market is concerned, it is about displacing the competitive products. 90% of the companies have some form of device for controlling anti-spam, URL filtering, application control, etc. It is a matter of offering them to cross grade or upgrade, which is why WatchGuard has special pricing offer now. For some companies WatchGuard is even swapping or exchanging the old boxes for their new boxes.

He adds, “We are introducing ‘red and stack’ offer in Q4. It means if the customer has a competitive UTM and they want to buy our UTM, we will give our box for free but the condition is that he will have to take a three years’ of subscription.”

From the partners’ stand point, John says, “We also have a cash incentive offer for the partners, under which we pay cash directly to the sales person. It ranges from US$50 for small upgrade

deal to US$2000 for the biggest boxes. This kind of money can double or triple somebody’s monthly salary. We have one customer who has opted for 18 bigger boxes for exchange and the partner who is closing that deal will be getting US$18, 000 for one deal. This offers ran from July to September. Depending upon the success of this programme, we might choose to run it again.”

He is also optimistic about introducing one more scheme during the Q1 of next year, which is called ‘Security Pays’. Under this, every time a partner closes Watch Guard deal and registers in the WatchGuard website, his card will be charged with money. This is for the professional and expert partners though.

John’s goal is to double the revenue next year and triple in next two-three years. And from the partners’ number perspective, he wants to see it grow as per the geographies. Therefore the company is undergoing a huge campaign to recruit the new partners. John adds, “There are so many territories, which are not covered properly such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, etc.

We need to have more expert and professional partners in those countries. But at the same time I am very careful about not to alienate our existing partners because if people start to feel that there is too much of competition for them, it is not going to run on our favour.”

However, the company won’t change its distribution channel strategy because it has seen a lot of changes during the past two-three years.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

Corporate-WatchGuard.indd 24

07/10/13 9:55 PM

CORPORATE

JOHN SPOOR

REGIONAL MANAGER MIDDLE EAST, WATCHGUARD

“Now Access Points are controlled by our UTM devices. This is extremely important to the market. Most of the UTM vendors have this product. The only vendor that I have not seen with any form of access points is Cyberoam in Middle East. Therefore, we are seeing a lot of Cyberoam partners coming to us in this region and we are attacking their market very hard with major offers.”

John adds, “Once we spend certain amount of time in building relationship with the distributor partners, as soon as we start upsetting that relationships, we start it again from square one.”

From the competition stand point, John is very clear as he maintains, “There are very good UTM vendors in the market and it is not the case of taking their space rather; it is the case of us trying to be the best what we can be and providing our advantages.” Today, analysts and media in and around Middle East speak highly of WatchGuard;

so dose the global agencies and consultants. It has moved from bottom left to top right corner in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and changed other vendors’ positing.

John says, “We are faster, we have more features and we are priced more competitively. With all these reasons in place why should not the people be choosing WatchGuard solutions over others?”

Plus, WatchGuard has an adequate MDF allocation in the region to support its growth targets.

He adds, “We are investing heavily in exposures.

We have run print and online campaigns. We have also invested for Gitex. Also we are spending a lot of money on end-user lead generation initiatives.

FINALLY… With an immediate goal of doubling its revenue next year, WatchGuard definitely wants to expand its foot prints to the enterprise sector. At the moment the company is creating some customers case studies, which will make their mission easy while approaching an enterprise customer. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Corporate-WatchGuard.indd 25

25

07/10/13 9:55 PM

Channel Street

bulwark

Master of Selling Security Solutions Bulwark, a military jargon, meaning defensive structure, truly associates with the functionality of Bulwark Technologies., the Dubai based ICT company.

n words: Tushar Sahoo <tushar@accentinfomedia.com>

S

tarted in 2000, Bulwark is a mature value added distributor in the security domain. Bulwark Technologies’ strength lies in identifying pain areas of the ICT market as far as security is concerned and providing niche solutions for that. Jose Thomas, MD, Bulwark Technologies, recounts, “When we started our operations, there were very few partners who were selling security solutions.

So most of the security solutions we brought in were new to the region and some of today’s big companies were taking baby steps in security at that time. We had spent a lot of our time and efforts in educating the customers. They were very much keen in knowing the technology and security but were not ready to invest. So our initial phase had gone mostly educating and creating awareness for the products.”

“Year 2005 onwards, people started acknowledging the importance of IT security. Initially people thought that the security is something which has to do with internet but later on they started realising that threats have been also happening internally,” he adds.

With the proliferation of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and BYOD, people are adopting various technologies to manage their application and data with a mobile workforce.

Each and every employee, depending on the level of privileges, may have access to a lot of confidential information of the organization they are working with or associated with. With the higher usage of smart phones and other cloud based technology solutions, these information data

26

o cto b e r 2013

MEA

moves out of enterprise’s premises very often.

So it is very important that proper data security control measures are taken up by companies using appropriate security solutions. Depending on the type and importance of such data, they need to implement various levels of security using right security investment.

Today, enterprise security also involves creating policy around giving access to the employees, partners and customers. So they need to adopt various technologies to secure their information.

Bulwark offers specialised solutions from 12 to 14 vendors to address the customer needs. Today,

90-95 per cent of Bulwark’s portfolio houses unique security solutions. These solutions are offered in different sub-categories i.e. UTM / Firewall/VPN, Endpoint Security/Antivirus, Email Server & Collaboration Platform, Email Archival Solutions, Mobile Device Management, Secure File transfer / Mobile File Sharing, Help desk/Asset, Management/Classroom – Instruction Management, Vulnerability / Least Privilege Management, Previleged Identity Management, SIEM, Log Management, Authentication Solutions, Privileged Identity Management, Database Security, Carrier-class Unified Communications,

brands associated with bullwark

corporate

Jose Thomas

MD, Bulwark Technologies

“The security industry is changing most dynamically and you need to be very much up-to-date in terms of technology developments in the market.”

and Web Analytics.

If one analyses these solutions, these are really unique. For example, today most of the companies are talking about MDM Solutions for BYOD but beyond that there are also issues like files sharing securely. Bulwark provides Accellion, which gives enterprise-class secure mobile file sharing solutions. As per Jose, it allows the file to open but you cannot copy or transfer. It makes the file encrypted and the file access is provisioned to expire after a given period. Accellion supports deployment on-premise or off-premise; in a virtual, public, private, or hybrid cloud, or a FIPS 140-2 certified environment.

Another power pack solution is PIM or privileged identity management. The company offers Cyber-Ark Software to address this market. It specializes in protecting and managing privileged users, applications and sensitive information to improve compliance, productivity and protect organizations against insider threats and advanced external threats. It offers solution for securing, managing, automatically changing and monitoring all activities associated with Privileged Accounts. It is deployable over cloud and also on –premise. As per Jose, this solution allows the admin person to pin point on the privileged user who has been responsible for

any kind of changes and subsequent security breaches, if any.

Similarly, another very unique product is classroom management software called NetSupport School. It allows teachers to instruct, monitor and interact with students individually, as a predefined group or as a whole class.

Jose adds, “We keep on adding at least 3-4 products on a yearly basis. The security industry is changing most dynamically and you need to be very much up-to-date in terms of technology updates in the market.”

The company has segregated its portfolio in two categories. One is fast moving distribution products, where Bulwark enables the partners and their engineers in terms of sales and support to do entire activities. Regular partner training programmes are conducted to keep the partners with the latest product updates . Also, the company generates leads to support those brands.

These products include UTM from Cyberoam, antivirus / endpoint security products from ESET and other products from NetSupport, MailStore, Kerio . The other set of products fall under the high-end enterprise security category, where the typical sales cycle is longer. For these products, Bulwark helps the partners and SIs to do product demo and POC to the customers.

Normally, the delayed sales cycle discourages partners to allocate dedicated resources but Bulwark takes up such challenges to position the products in the market. The company has a team of certified engineers to provide support starting from creating PoC to handholding for sales and post-sales support.

On premise, the company has inhouse facilities for testing and demo set up for various products.

Jose says, “Support and services is the USP of our company. We conduct regular training programme to partners free of cost for most of the products. So whoever wants to come from our partners’ community can come and join. On the other hand, all of our technical and sales people get regular trainings conducted by the vendors.”

With the addition of products into the kitty of Bulwark, its head count has also grown year-onyear. Today, it has 25 plus people tem strength to handle technology and sales. There are more than 250 channel partners under them as well.

Bulwark invests heavily on events, trade shows, advertisements and social media to ascertain their market position with unique offerings.

From geo perspective, Bulwark is very strong in GCC countries. Apart from that the company is also doing business with partners in in Egypt, Jordan Libya and Yemen.

Finally...

Bulwark’s growth has been healthy all these years in terms of top line – at least 20-25 per cent year on year, and this year UIFZ migIt go for a growth of 50-60 per cent. However, Jose maintains that bottom line is pretty tight due to various reasons including low margin and higher operating cost.

Last first two quarters of this year have been very productive for the company and going forward the coming quarters are expected to be good as well.. ë

o cto b e r 2 013

MEA

27

LEADERS’ PITCH

TALARIAX

Set To Storm SMS Market

While entry of IP based messaging applications are pulling a heavy punch at SMS market, Juniper Research predicts that the B-to-C SMS market will overtake P-to-P texting by 2016. n WORDS: KARMA NEGI <KARMA@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

JS WONG

CEO, TALARIAX PTE. LTD

Whether you are sitting in a meeting or at the dentists, you can’t entertain a call but you can always check messages. Hence it makes SMS a non-intrusive and economical way to communicate. Over time it has not only influenced personal communications but also has added great value to enterprise communications. Today, there is not a single enterprise or a B-to-C company, which is not using SMS. But there is a lot more to be achieved with SMS service.

“SMS or Short Messaging Service is a text based communication alternative, 160 characters in length. A message sent by SMS is delivered instantaneously to recipients’ mobile phone.

What’s more, SMS is cost effective and nonintrusive making it the ideal messaging choice in a fast paced world where efficiency is everything,” says, JS Wong, CEO, TalariaX Pte.Ltd. Starting its operations in Singapore during 1992, TalariaX Pte. Ltd. specializes in mobile application development and gateway appliances leveraging SMS, MMS and 3G technologies.

TalariaX sendQuick® launched in 2002 is the industry’s first appliance-based SMS (Text) gateway for enterprise messaging. “sendQuick® appliances are deployed across 20+ countries in several industry verticals that includes banking & finance, government, petrochemical, healthcare, manufacturing and retail.”, JS reinforces.

But it is extremely laborious, time consuming and difficult to set up an SMS gateway for Enterprise applications.

TalariaX sendQuick® SMS gateway appliances

28

are self-sufficient plug-and-play appliances that have built in royalty free OS, license free database as well as application (that caters to niche areas) and supports unlimited users as well. TalariaX sendQuick® SMS appliance gateway product range supports various enterprise applications such as IT alerts/notifications, operations support, business continuity planning and 2-factor authentication with SMS OTP. TalariaX sendQuick® supports key mobile technologies including GSM and CDMA. TalariaX offerings are sector agnostic. The target market is any enterprise with a need to SMS enable their IT infrastructure or applications with total control vested within the organization.

Other than IT(Hardware/Software/Applications/ Appliances), sendQuick® appliances can also integrate to any IP addressable device i.e., CCTV, Time Attendance, Access Control, Power System, BMS, Climate Control in a matter of minutes to alert on status.

TalariaX’s GTM strategy has been to develop a multi-tier partner ecosystem comprising of exclusive distributors with their downstream SIs and resellers in the respective markets.

The company is open to the idea of selling directly to clientele in the absence of a partner, only if existing partners cannot cater to the request for whatever reason.

Today, TalariaX Partners can install and support sendQuick® appliances right across the GCC. In the MEA region, TalariaX has clients in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon,

“sendQuick® appliances are deployed in more than 20+ countries across several industry verticals that includes banking & finance, government, petrochemical, healthcare, manufacturing and retail.”

Morocco, Kenya and Tanzania. Talariax has distributors and resellers from Australia to the United States.

Partner empowerment program consists of regular training, marketing aids and participation in key trade shows. Apart from this, experienced TalariaX executives evaluate partner’s needs from time to time and devise required supports with view to constantly rejuvenate the channel.

FINALLY… It’s evident that TalariaX sendQuick has carved a niche for itself and has set its sights for a great future by constantly striving to improve the way in which organizations communicate. ë

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

Enterprise Application-TalariaX.indd 28

07/10/13 9:56 PM

PARTNER STREET

SPECTRAMI

Carving a niche With so many VADs existing in the MENA region, each one is trying to make a difference. Spectrami is doing it in its own way. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

S

eeing is believing’, a clichéd adage but Spectrami makes business sense out of this.

In line with this philosophy, the regional VAD opened a Customer Experience Centre (CEC) in Dubai.

Customers and channel partners can visit CEC to see the live working of systems. “The customers in Middle East are sceptical about product’s performance and support available once they have bought it. We make sure that there is a proper system in place through CEC or managed services desk where customers can be helped remotely,” elaborates Anand Choudha, MD, Spectrami.

Adding value to services and products is basic for every VAD. However, Spectrami stresses on how differently it can do it. It follows a model termed as Vendor Extension Model (VEM) where replicating the success of

ANAND CHOUDHA

MD, SPECTRAMI

“We don’t want to be a brand collector but offer solutions that customer wants and it should make business sense to everyone in the channel as well”

region. We need to make sure that the channel understands that there is a market for the technology which gives them confidence,” tells Choudha.

Spectrami is a 100% channel company. It does not transact with the customers but at times engages with them to make sure that the customers are aware about the solution that it has released in market. “We help in doing PoC but at the end everything is routed through a reseller or a channel in the local country,” says Choudha.

He clarifies that the technology offered

by Spectrami is very niche. Hence, technical enablement and training plays a critical role.

“Till the time our resellers get enabled enough to do it on their own, we offer implementation services through our channels,” says Choudha.

He believes that customers prefer to have a local support. Spectrami is based out of Dubai and is planning to expand in rest of the MEA region.

With local presence already in KSA, Qatar, Morocco, presence in Africa region is in the offing by next year.

Spectrami has solutions focused around Security and Storage and is driven by customers’ needs. As informed by Choudha, Spectrami is planning to enter two new partnerships soon.

Permeating mobile platforms and concepts like BYOD, customers are looking at tools which can help manage those platforms and it is looking for related partnerships. However, Spectrami is cautious about its alliances. “We don’t want to be a brand collector but offer solutions that customer wants and it should make business sense to everyone in the channel as well,” says Choudha.

Spectrami has a vision to develop the business in the security and storage space. “In this domain we want to be associated with niche and specialised players. The technology we buy should be highly recommended by industry experts,” tells Choudha.

Spectrami represents five technologies from the field of Storage and Security. It includes Actifio, General Dynamics Fidelis Cybersecurity Solutions, LogRhythm, Verdasys, and Tenable.

“We are exclusive to most of the technologies that we represent. It is because of the simple fact that we were the first ones to bring these technologies to the market, the vendors trust us and feel that we are the right partners,” comments Choudha.

FINALLY... vendor in the market customised to the local conditions is important. “Taking care of every facet of the business is crucial be it channel, technical, sales enablement or identifying the right partner which is the key to success in this

Focus along with commitment is the mantra for Spectrami’s success. Last year, Spectrami did a business of seven million USD and with current projections it is hoping to cross 10 million USD this year. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Anand Choudha of Spectrami.indd 29

29

07/10/13 9:56 PM

PARTNER STREET

AVINASH ADVANI

DIRECTOR BUSINESS STRATEGY, STARLINK

“Many vendors in our portfolio don’t have local presence; we act as an extension to their teams. We only and always work through the channel as a true VAD would do”

30

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

partner street_ StarLink.indd 30

07/10/13 9:56 PM

PARTNER STREET

STARLINK

Ensuring Quick ROI for Vendors From following a different approach in creating a customer base to segregating its portfolio of vendors, StarLink adds uniqueness in every aspect to achieve what it calls being a ‘true’ VAD. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

S

tarLink was founded in 2005 and since then the company has expanded its strength from two to 85 people spanning across 14 countries. StarLink’s forte is niche IT security Value Added distribution. It provides end-to-end services with lead generation, business development, sales, pre sales (demos, presentations, PoCs), implementation, and support. All of the StarLink’s solutions cater to the enterprises across all verticals. When the company was started, the focus was on Banking and Finance. Today it has broadened its ambit to telecommunications, Oil & Gas and Government.

StarLink along with two other companies in the group muster a turnover of USD 30 million.

However, this year, StarLink is expecting a turnover of USD 30 million out of the group’s projected USD 50 million.

Avinash Advani, Director Business Strategy, StarLink explains on different levels how the company is a ‘true’ Value Added Distributor (VAD). He describes the unique approach of StarLink in pitching to its customers. “When we are reaching out to customers, we are not selling 18 products but we are telling them four stories.

Compliance, Advanced Persistent Threat (APT),

Encryption and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Vulnerability Management are the topics which directly address customers’ existing needs. Our goal is not to increase the number of vendors but to get the right set of vendors who bring these stories,” Advani explains.

StarLink has a well-structured model for managing its portfolio of vendors. It has classified its vendors on the basis of Core, Emerging and Growth. The core includes IBM InfoSphere Guardium, Dell Software, Fire Eye, SafeNet, and Tripwire. Advani explains that these products and solutions have been in the region for several years and are already doing multi-million dollar business. Vendors like Boole Server, Iron Key, Guidance Software, Netoptics, Titus, BlueCoat which have been in the market for a couple of years with existing customer base form the emerging solutions category. Under growth, new technologies like Bit9, Venafi, RedSeal Networks, Core Security are grouped.

When a new vendor enters the market, StarLink develops the market for the vendor along with developing the channel. “Many vendors in our portfolio don’t have local presence; we act as an extension to their teams. We develop the channel for these vendors. We only and always

work through the channel as a true VAD would do,” says Advani.

In line of its belief that it is critical to have local presence so as to effectively offer the vendors what they require, StarLink has ground teams in local countries. These teams provide end to end services including sales, marketing, lead generation, pre sales activities, implementation services and support. With 55 channel partners, StarLink operates in 14 countries with offices in Dubai, Riyadh, Istanbul, Kuwait, Johannesberg, and Doha. “When we expand to new markets, there is a challenge for the management team to understand the local market and culture, differences in taxation, customs duty. The key to our success lies in the fact that our local teams made up of local people,” states Advani.

In order to give each product the required focus, StarLink has split the teams by product within that area. If the local teams are unable to tackle a problem, they can approach StarLink’s team which has a Hybrid Team in Cloud Environment. “The country teams focus in building the revenue for that country and the product management team focuses on each vendor. When these two combine we achieve a true value added distribution,” elaborates Advani.

When the vendor is new to StarLink’s portfolio, the VAD follows a high-touch model where StarLink does majority of the work and the partner is included close to the end of sales lifecycle. “As the vendor matures with market proliferation, it moves to a mid-touch model where StarLink goes side by side with the channel to help in developing and closing the opportunities. As the product gets highly prolific in the market, it becomes a low-touch model where the partner drives the opportunities completely and StarLink functions in a more traditional value added distribution role,” elaborates Advani. This progression and transition is where StarLink prides itself. He claims that many vendors look to join StarLink’s portfolio because of this model.

“They feel that we not only have the ability to create a channel for them but simultaneously create a market share for them without having to wait for the channel to be ready. This is what we call true value added distribution. Because of our value added services to FireEye, it has reached over 50 customers in just one and a half year,” adds Advani.

FINALLY...

StarLink is in no rush of expansion. Currently, it is focusing on maximizing the opportunity creation for its existing portfolio. StarLink has a goal to be a 100 million dollar IT security ‘true’ VAD and the largest one. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

partner street_ StarLink.indd 31

31

07/10/13 9:56 PM

SECURITY

CONTEGO

Setting High Standards

Digital Forensics is seeing an emerging role in today’s scenario where the threat of digital fraud and cyber attacks looms over almost every company. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM> n PHOTOS: AGENCY

W

TIMM C. LEMCKE

MD, CONTEGO SOLUTIONS

“We are one of the few companies focusing on digital forensics. Our team is specialised and it is always good to deal with a specialised company rather than the one which has a whole range of solutions” 32

security-contengo.indd 32

ith the advent of cloud and new concepts like BYOD, cyber security has become an even more pressing issue for enterprises.

Companies are constantly looking for prevention and mitigation procedures to shield themselves against cyber attacks and Digital Forensics is one of them. Timm C. Lemcke, MD, Contego Solutions rightly remarks, “It is apparent that threats and crime grow in the same ratio as the demand for digital communication and products.”

Contego Solutions is a UAE based company specialising in fields of Digital Forensics, Professional Services, Training & Certification and Data Centre and System Integration. Lemcke informs that the idea behind Contego Solutions was to set up an organization with a pure focus on digital forensics. “We investigate on enterprise level. We also do consultancy for law enforcement agencies in terms of design of digital forensic laboratories. We offer turnkey solutions to our clients and provide digital forensic labs to enterprise organizations such as airlines, law firms, and Oil & Gas,” he adds.

There is increasing number of challenges for enterprises to manage IT security infrastructure and the need is imperative as well. Ahmed Ali, Technical Manager and Head of Technical Unit, Contego Solutions says, “Now-a-days we are facing very sophisticated and advanced type of attacks with new types of vulnerability getting discovered frequently. Having a firewall is not enough for any enterprise, there is a need for

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:57 PM

SECURITY

TEAM CONTEGO: (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) AHMED ALI, TECHNICAL MANAGER AND HEAD OF TECHNICAL UNIT, SAMANTHA MATHER, MANAGING CONSULTANT,, SORREN GALIZA, ADMIN MANAGER, TIMM C. LEMCKE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, NUMAN AHMAD, DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

incident response system.” Incident response systems are structured to handle any cyber attack and to respond to them in a manner that will limit cost.

Numan Ahmad, Director, Business Development, Contego Solutions explains how important the role of Digital Forensics is. “One has to expect the unexpected as there is no concept like 100% security. However, being prepared for the unexpected gives an edge. Digital Forensic should be a part of every organisation’s Information Security strategy. It establishes a timeline of what happened and gives an overview of facts that determine what happened and incorporate investigation,” he says.

The value of digital forensics lies in the fact that listing all security vulnerabilities during the investigation allows improving the overall security of organisation which will be used to minimise potential financial loss or any future security incidents. However, there are challenges while solving cases. “There is a lot of information which is not required. So, we need to limit the time and oversee the cost once the client tells

what exactly he wants,” adds Samantha Mather, Managing Consultant, Contego Solutions.

Another challenge which Ahmad points out is that customers question on the ROI. Many companies are unaware of Digital Forensics and Lemcke tells that the need from customer’s end often comes too late. “Hence, we arrive at the scene after an incident has already happened. It’s not a prevention solution but an investigation afterwards as to what happened.

We train our clients and try to bring awareness in terms of response; how to isolate the threat the moment it happens. We try to teach them not to touch anything so that we can investigate from the moment when it happened,” he remarks.

Contego Solutions has made huge investments in its infrastructure. It has an in-house lab and the all the units are on standby so that the team can be mobile to investigate out of its office location.

Lemcke prefers to call Contego Solutions a one stop company in regards to digital forensics. “We are one of the few companies focusing on digital forensics. Our team is specialised and it is always good to deal with a specialised company than the

one which has a whole range of solutions. One of our partners is mh Services and with their solutions we are able to do investigations 30% faster than others,” he says.

The company believes in working with partners. “You need a strong partner in the country outside your own especially somebody who knows the local language. Some partners are deeply structured within the law enforcement agencies. We work with them on regular basis for in house exhibitions, training programs and road shows,” says Lemcke. In terms of hardware, Contego Solutions we works with Dell and mh Services. Most of the brands it is distributing or reselling are software solutions. It also offer vendor specific training programmes where certification is directly from its partners.

FINALLY… Lemcke is optimistic about the opportunities in the market for Digital Forensics. “At this moment we might be niche but one of our biggest tasks is to bring out awareness regarding what we can do for the companies,” he concludes. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

security-contengo.indd 33

33

07/10/13 9:57 PM

MY VIEWS

applications themselves are maintained by the vendor / service provider.

This frees up the IT administrator’s time and resources to focus on business building projects and improvements to the network. In our case, the current GFI Cloud service set has the added benefit of not storing sensitive company data in the cloud. The services such as antivirus, patch management, server and work station monitoring all function via on-premises agents on machines and report back to the cloud console. All alerting, reporting and administration is handled at cloud level but the actual basic function is at machine level.

SCOTT HAGENUS

DIRECTOR OF CHANNEL, GFI SOFTWARE

“Securing the Cloud Investments” WHILE THE CLOUD ADOPTION IS GAINING MOMENTUM IN THE MEA REGION, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS ARE ALSO LOOKING FOR SINGLE INTEGRATED PLATFORM THAT COULD NOT ONLY MANAGE THEIR ENTIRE NETWORK BUT ALSO SECURE IT THOROUGHLY. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS SPOKE TO SCOTT HAGENUS, DIRECTOR OF CHANNEL, GFI SOFTWARE,

What kind of uptake are you seeing for cloud computing in MEA? We have seen a steady increase in the number of companies opening up to cloud technologies, especially for essential day-to-day services such as network monitoring, antivirus and patch management as well as asset tracking. GFI recently started offering GFI Cloud in MEA and to our distribution partners on the back of steady growth of our MSP offering. GFI Cloud is essentially a cloud-based platform from which we can deliver multiple services to businesses making deployment, configuration fast and extremely easy to use.

34

What are the benefits of moving to the cloud vis-a-vis using in-house servers?

The use of on-premises software and hardware comes with a certain amount of overhead.

Maintaining the hardware, operating system, software, patching and protecting the system and ensuring up-time, all consume time and resources. This distracts from more strategic projects that can help enable a business to focus on growing. Moving the more fundamental IT functions to the cloud means that the business no longer has to maintain the infrastructure hosting applications, and it also means that the state of the

In the enterprise market, what are the key expectations from the customers for cloud computing? How prominent is the growth for public, private and hybrid clouds?

Private and hybrid cloud approaches have seen a progressive uptick in the enterprise space.

Fundamentally, large business has the resources to run a private cloud and keep full control of their data. Private and hybrid cloud gives them greater ‘anytime, anywhere’ access while maintaining full control of sensitive and business critical data. Functions that are important but less sensitive tend to move to a public cloud. It really is a matter of prioritization and business risk assessment.

Cloud migration is still not as seamless as it is thought out to be, leading to lock-in situation for enterprises. How do you ensure that the customer doesn’t feel locked-in to your cloud?

Lock-in happens when you move data to the cloud and you change that data into a format that makes it extremely difficult to move away from the vendor/ service provider. This is NOT the case with GFI Cloud. GFI Cloud should be considered a platform from which we deliver different services - antivirus, patch management, server and work station monitoring, asset tracking and so on. If you look closely, any one of these services or all of them can be switched out without major impact to a business. GFI Cloud is licensed per services, per machine, per year.

Worst case scenario if someone no longer needed a service before their year is up, is that they would not be getting the full value of their investment.

On the investment topic, GFI Cloud services are extremely well priced making it an even more attractive solution for business.

What applications are most

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

My Views-Scott Hagenus of GFI.indd 34

07/10/13 9:57 PM

MY VIEWS

suited for the cloud? Are you seeing mission-critical applications moving to private/public clouds?

That is a big question to answer, and depends on the needs of the businesses making decisions on cloud based applications. For companies working daily with large sets of data, in low bandwidth areas, using Cloud-based ERPs, for instance, could pose problems. On the other hand, using patch management or antivirus agents on the network and having the alerting, configuration, reporting etc delivered by the cloud is an extremely attractive option. It removes the burden of managing hardware and software upgrades from the business and places that firmly on the vendor/service provider, while still giving local performance to the nuts and bolts engine doing the work to protect the businesses infrastructure.

Conversely, if bandwidth and stability of connection is not an issue, then larger organizations looking to streamline and simplify aspects of their business may choose to move many functions to the cloud including communications. Email, email protection, archiving, network monitoring, antivirus, web protection, and certain modes of communication are all very well

suited to either cloud-based delivery or a hybrid approach.

our standard processes. The beauty of GFI Cloud is that it delivers the core functions of many of our existing on-premises software, from the cloud. We have also put in place a system by which partners can give their customers special trial evaluation links, and those evaluations are then tied to that partner in our leads systems. In effect, we are doing as much as we can to make

What are you doing in order to enable partners in the cloud computing space?

GFI Cloud was built with our partners in mind.

The sales model is kept as close to on-premises

“THE BEAUTY OF GFI CLOUD IS THAT IT DELIVERS THE CORE FUNCTIONS OF MANY OF OUR EXISTING ON-PREMISES SOFTWARE, FROM THE CLOUD. BESIDES, GFI CLOUD SERVICES ARE EXTREMELY WELL PRICED.”

based subscription models as possible and the purchasing process follows the same pattern. We have worked diligently to make GFI Cloud, channel friendly. We have also made sure we ran sessions to walk them through not just the standard functionality and sales enablement presentations, but we also incorporated the actual procurement process to demonstrate just how similar it is to

sure partners who actively promote GFI Cloud, get the benefit of their efforts.

Could you name some of your important partners who are capable of cloud integration and distribution?

In the MEA region, GFI partners with Comguard and Africa SD on our cloud-based solutions. ë

Business opportunity!

FOR DISTRIBUTORS, TRADE PARTNERS AND RETAIL AFFILIATES. to carter the demands of IT & electronic products across the region, cursor has launced 200 SKUs across 20 different product categories!

mid-700 3g

mid-800 pro

Cares your expectation

corporate office: jebel ali | +971 4 880 8858 showroom: bur dubai | +971 4 393 3575

hs- bt555

android smart tv transformer op-w35

hs-400c cobra

ups active professional series

bt-2855

bt-301

bt-9000W

power supply

IT ACCESSORIES | SPEAKERS | TABLETS | LIFESTYLE | POWER PRODUCTS | CABLES SALES@CURSORTECHNOLOGIES.COM

www.cursortechnologies.com

www.facebook.com/cursor technologies

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

My Views-Scott Hagenus of GFI.indd 35

35

07/10/13 9:57 PM

INFRASTRUCTURE

RITTAL

Partnering the Right Channel

The growing economies of the Middle East region and increasing deployment of IT hardware to drive the need for racks and enclosures in the coming days. n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM> n PHOTOS: AGENCY

T

he market for racks and enclosures in the Middle East region is growing at a rapid pace. The primary reason behind this growth is the development of both networking and data center infrastructure. Despite the political instability in the region, Gartner forecasts that the ICT market in Middle East to hit $192bn in 2013, which will certainly give a fillip to this market.

Also, according to IMS Research, revenues of IT racks and enclosures are forecast to grow by nearly a billion dollars over the next five years – from an estimated $1.7 billion in 2011 to $2.6 billion at the end of 2016. Most of the revenues will be added in Asia, where new data center construction and upgrades are driving a fast rate of growth. Middle East is another region that is expected to grow by double digits over the next five years.

Sensing the ample opportunities lying in this region, the racks and enclosures leader, Rittal is betting big on this market. In fact, the company has emerged as one of the world’s leading system suppliers for enclosures, power distribution, climate control, IT infrastructure and software and services. Today, customers from all vertical industries are making use of systems and solutions from Rittal.

Talking about the significance of racks and enclosures, Rajesh Rajan, Sales Manager, IT Infrastructure, Rittal Middle East, says, “Racks

36

Coroprate-Rittal.indd 36

or enclosures house your multi-million dollar IT equipments and it’s a pity if the role of racks and enclosures go unnoticed. The stability, load rating, ventilation capabilities, cable management, the feature of being tool -less to reduce the complexity and man hours, flexibility to host equipments of different depths from different manufacturers, all leads towards an efficient solution that contributes to the overall performance. We still see a two to three page specification given for racks in tenders and this goes against the notion that the contribution of the racks goes unnoticed.”

While strengthening its position in the Middle East market, Rittal is promoting data center physical infrastructure and physical security for IT and data centers in the region.

The data center physical infrastructure includes racks, power system, cooling system, monitoring and remote management systems and DCIM. Physical security includes specialized enclosures to protect the IT equipments from physical threats, combined with the cooling unit for such enclosures, access control, environmental monitoring and fire detection and extinguishing system. Physical security for data centre is achieved by offering an IT security room from Rittal.

Highlighting the competitive advantage over other players, Rajan, points out, “Rittal is a single source for both physical infrastructure and physical security for data centers. Rittal’s chilled

RAJESH RAJAN

SALES MANAGER, IT INFRASTRUCTURE, RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

“With its energy efficient modular UPS and Inline cooling units, Rittal offers scalability in power and cooling capacities that allows a pay as you grow approach in data centre design, leading to better efficiency”

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:57 PM

INFRASTRUCTURE

RITTAL - THE SYSTEM FASTER - BETTER - WORLDWIDE.

IGNATIUS EMANUEL

MARKETING MANAGER, RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

“Rittal Middle East has always been committed towards growth of partners in the region.

We achieve this through our ‘Efficiency

by Design’ module helping our partners to take advantage of the opportunities.” water based Liquid Cooling Package (LCP) offers unsurpassed efficiency with a cooling capacity of 60KW in a 300mm wide Inline system. With its energy efficient modular UPS and Inline cooling units, Rittal offers scalability in power and cooling capacities that allows a pay as you grow approach in data centre design, leading to better efficiency.”

“The Middle East Market is a vast pool of recognized mix of niche as well as traditional industries that prevail. Vertical focus is more of a strategic call in the enterprise business model.

We focus on Oil & Gas, manufacturing, IT, ICT, Federal, healthcare, and automation sectors, to name a few,” adds Ignatius Emanuel, Marketing Manager, Rittal Middle East.

Meanwhile, the company is present in about 14 countries in the region with around 30 personnel

THE MIDDLE EAST MARKET IS A VAST POOL OF RECOGNIZED MIX OF NICHE AS WELL AS TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIES THAT PREVAIL. VERTICAL FOCUS IS MORE OF A STRAGETIC CALL.

manning the operations in the market. Besides, it is working with around 30 partners and system integrators in the region.

As far as go to market strategy is concerned, Rittal has a distribution channel for certain products and Data Center Integration Partners for the DC solution, where the products are more service oriented, and requires an infrastructure to be set up before installing them.

Giving an overview of the partner incentive programs, Emanuel states, “Partners are your strength in the market and taking care of them is quite important. Our specialized rebate programs help the partners on a 2-fold or 3-fold rebate incentivizing model included with strategic innovative marketing programs to fulfill and encircling a complete 360 degree approach.”

“Brand equity plays a vital role in the industries and markets we operate and for our partners too. Rittal Middle East has always been committed towards growth of partners in the region. We achieve this through our ‘Efficiency by Design’ module - helping our partners to take advantage of the opportunities to stay ahead on any opportunity in the market requiring the best solutions and systems. We have innovative solutions focused on modular enclosure systems, power distribution systems, system climate control and IT systems that are required for integrated DC solutions. This help the partners strengthen their offerings to end

customers on new technologies. Rittal Middle East encourages and organizes quarterly specific product trainings for our channel partners at our local office as well as our headquarters based out of Germany. The continuous focus on partners not only helps us bring out the best for them but also help them grow with Rittal,” adds Emanuel.

Meanwhile, in the upcoming Gitex exhibition in Dubai, the company is launching its Inline cooling unit, LCP DX, which is based on DX technology. It will also display other products within the network infrastructure and data centers. Basic safe to offer physical security for IT equipments will also be at display this year along with the Smart Package, a full-fledged rack with power, cooling, monitoring and access control inside.

“Last year, we had over 800 registrations and we expect to exceed 1100 this year. All our distribution partners and data center integration partners would join us during the course of Gitex,” says Rajan.

FINALLY… Rittal is quite bullish about its growth in the Middle East market. The reason being that the company has been maintaining a consistent double digit growth over the last five years and looking at the results so far, it is looking to register the highest growth ever this year. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Coroprate-Rittal.indd 37

37

07/10/13 9:57 PM

COVER STORY

Speeding up the Cloud Journey MEA MARKET

The rapid adoption of cloud computing technology in the Middle East & Africa market is a very positive indicator of the growing appreciation of the powerful capabilities of the cloud.

n WORDS: NIVEDAN PRAKASH <NIVEDAN@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>â&#x20AC;&#x192; n PHOTOS: ISTOCK

A

s the whole cloud computing concept is gaining importance in technology markets worldwide, Middle East and Africa (MEA) market is not far behind in embracing this technology. Apparently, the Middle East has long been recognized as a prolific market for cloud computing. The GCC region is fast gaining traction due to the aggressive government-led infrastructure development.

In the UAE, a steadily increasing number of organizations are exploring the viability of using cloud services.

According to IDC, the spending on cloud in the UAE is expected to grow at a rate of over 40 percent through to 2016. The total spending on cloud delivery in Saudi Arabia is expected to increase 34.86 percent year on year in 2012 with long term spending to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 49.7 percent between 2012 and 2016.

As per Gartner estimates, the Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services

38

Cover story.indd 38

market will see strong growth in 2013 with revenue forecast to reach $462.3 million in 2013, 24.5 percent increase from 2012.The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market is forecast to grow 13.4 percent in 2012 to total $371.2 million, compared to $110 billion worldwide.

UPTAKE IN THE REGION Today, the Middle East & Africa is seen as a major market to adopt cloud computing. In fact, it has moved from the hype cycle to a situation where the market is witnessing large scale deployments and technology vendors helping their customers in that process. Today, organizations from different vertical industries are adopting some sort of cloud technology in different ways, whether it is infrastructure or application.

The Gartner report suggests that cloud services spending continue to outpace other parts of the IT marketplace. Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is the largest segment in the cloud services market, as it accounted for approximately

38 percent of the total Middle East and Northern Africa market in 2012. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) will continue as the high-growth sectors of the cloud service market through 2016.

Cloud management and security services will also exhibit strong growth through 2016.

Sherif AbdElGawad, Business Solution Strategist - VMware UAE, comments, â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the MEA region, cloud computing has been the buzz word for the long time but gradually, it is becoming a reality now. As the technology has matured, the awareness is also increasing. We are seeing that customers are adopting cloud technology in some way or the other. One of our missions is to enable our customers and we do so by educating the market. Hence, our lot of effort goes into finding out the ways of educating the market, which comprises of the customer ecosystem as well as partners, in terms of designing the roadmap to the cloud and looking beyond virtualization. We also work closely with our customers while understanding their business drivers and demands,

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA REGION, THE SPENDING ON CLOUD SERVICES IS EXPECTED TO GROW AT A AROUND 20.2 PERCENT THROUGH 2016. SOURCE: GARTNER

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Cover story.indd 39

39

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

where they are today and aspire to go in future, and how do we fill the gaps. We help them with technical side as well as business development cycles so that they achieve their business goals.”

“We have noticed an increased uptake in the public cloud space and private cloud installations.

Organizations and governments are acknowledging cloud computing as the next big thing. By providing different cloud models that meet the different sectors requirements, we expect the uptake of cloud computing in the Middle East and Africa to accelerate,” says Marc Jessiman, Solutions Director, Dimension Data UAE. While the cloud adoption is gradually gaining momentum in this region, one trend that is clearly visible here is that the advancement and adoption of public cloud is limited to the small and mid-market segments; whereas, the large enterprises are going in for private cloud deployments.

“SMB’s may turn to the public cloud in order to avail of enterprise class services without the inhibiting cost overheads. Enterprises are instead choosing to test the waters by deploying private and hybrid cloud models. I think at first this will be the way to go since the legal aspects pertaining to public cloud models are still far from being standardized. We have seen virtualization become something of a norm among our large customers,” points out Khaled Kamel, Territory Channel Manager – MENA, Brocade Communications.

EMC believes that larger enterprises would adopt a private cloud model for most of their IT over the next couple of years. This also resonates with what leading analysts are projecting, which is that private cloud deployment will grow much faster than public cloud adoption.

Travers Nicholas, Manager – Systems Engineers, Levant & Africa, EMC, states, “Public cloud providers in the region and around the world are relatively new and concerns about availability and security are still high. For IT departments supporting mission or business critical services, the public cloud model is not yet mature enough for some of their most important services and most sensitive data. A private cloud model addresses most of the concerns with today’s legacy IT infrastructures and as a result offers most of the benefits of cloud computing without the risks and concerns around public implementation.”

“IT regulations around cloud service providers have not been ratified yet in all countries in the ME region. Well defined processes and regulations for resolving a conflict between a public cloud consumer and the cloud service provider are needed to increase public cloud adoption.

40

Cover story.indd 40

SHERIF ABDELGAWAD, BUSINESS SOLUTION STRATEGIST - VMWARE UAE

MARC JESSIMAN, SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR, DIMENSION DATA UAE

“We are seeing that customers are adopting cloud technology in some way or the other. One of our missions is to enable our customers by educating the market.”

“By providing different cloud models that meet the different sectors requirements, we expect the uptake of cloud computing in the Middle East and Africa to accelerate.”

ACCORDING TO GARTNER, IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA REGION, THE SPENDING ON CLOUD SERVICES IS EXPECTED TO GROW AT A AROUND 20.2 PERCENT THROUGH 2016.

There is a learning curve for the IT staff to get up to speed with cloud technologies and acquire the best practices around them. It’s safest to climb this learning curve within a private model. Recognizing the importance of the people readiness aspect, EMC launched in 2011 the first cloud certification in the industry to help IT professionals build the required expertise in cloud computing technologies,” adds Nicholas.

AbdElGawad further highlights, “Today, cloud is a hype where everyone is talking about this technology. It’s a journey and hence very difficult to quantify the adoption level. We are the global leaders of virtualization wherein we enjoy 60 to 70 percent market share. Since virtualization is a first step in the journey towards cloud, you can very well assume the level of adoption of cloud computing amongst the enterprises. While small

and medium enterprises are embracing public cloud, large organizations are building their own private cloud. Most of the telcos are talking about having their own private cloud in order to compete with the likes of Amazon and in the process retaining their customers. Banks are following the same approach of retaining and offering value to the customers.”

If we look at the market-wise segmentation of the public and private cloud adoption, then we will find that in the Middle East, many organizations are showing a lot of interest in public cloud as they start to experience and learn about this new consumption model. The private cloud discussions are starting to gain momentum now, and it is expected that the hybrid cloud adoption will follow on naturally as organizations build confidence and grow their usage over time.

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

CLOUD SERVICES OFFERED BY PARTNERS

KHALED KAMEL, TERRITORY CHANNEL MANAGER – MENA, BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS

TRAVERS NICHOLAS, MANAGER – SYSTEMS ENGINEERS, LEVANT & AFRICA, EMC

“Enterprises are instead choosing to test the waters by deploying private and hybrid cloud models. I think at first this will be the way to go.”

“There is a learning curve for the IT staff to get up to speed with cloud technologies and acquire the best practices around them.”

In the Africa market, while the public cloud remains significant, private cloud seem to be the main target for medium to large businesses. Even governments in East and West Africa have put a strategy in place to convert their ICT infrastructure from a cost centre to a revenue centre, and to deliver services to citizens using cloud technology. In some instances, public sector institutions had started working on multi-year strategies to build hybrid cloud models.

However, one factor that is limiting the adoption of cloud in MEA is the regulations. In the Middle East, there is a great deal of confusion in the marketplace regarding regulations. This comes from organizations applying outdated data protection guidelines to cloud-based data. Data sovereignty remains a key topic of discussion in the UAE. Industry experts are of the view that that there is a requirement of clear guidelines and education around this for clients, vendors and system integrators.

“In Africa, there seems to be great discrepancies from one country to the other in terms of regulations linked to cloud technology. A regulatory strategy needs to be adopted to ensure the adoption of cloud computing with minimal risk which may include monitoring of develop-

ments in the regulatory field, careful preparation of cloud computing contracts and, cross-border standardization and regulation,” points our Jessiman.

On the other hand, Sarwan Singh, MD of Prologix LLC is of the view that governments in MEA are very much supportive. The only bottleneck is to enable internet at better price and allow VOIP services – both of these would support the growth of this sector.

CUSTOMERS’ KEY EXPECTATIONS In the enterprise market, the customers are increasingly aware of the business value that cloud computing brings and are taking steps towards transition to the cloud. As far as expectations are concerned, they are looking to benefit from increased agility to deliver infrastructure to the business, reduced management overhead of an automated cloud platform, and the ability to leverage public cloud to reduce costs.

Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO at Comguard, asserts, “Businesses should have the leverage of migrating in and out of the cloud and switching providers whenever they want, and there should be no lock-in period. Cloud computing services

• Dimension Data Managed Cloud Platform (MCP) is a fully-managed foundation for an organization’s cloud strategy. While Private MCPs deliver a fully-managed private cloud service, Public MCPs are accessible by the general public and meet the requirements of a true public cloud, including selfservice, pay-per-use and with standardized services. Then, there is a Provider MCP which is dedicated to a single service provider for the use of its client or a single client.

• ManageEngine offers business application services and monitoring services that extend from monitoring not just websites, but also servers, applications and give performance insight into your public and private cloud infrastructure. The monitoring is done from more than 50 locations that enable a user to exactly gauge the end-user experience on the performance of their website and applications from a global perspective.

• Comguard is equipped to address issues like third party trust, multi-tenancy, encryption, and compliance.

• Prologix has started its cloud product portfolio under ProXAS and would be launching M2M, DMS (Document management Solutions), Exchange as Service to start and later bring more application under the same.

should have the capability to integrate smoothly with the on premise IT. Cloud providers still lack round-the-clock service, which results in frequent disruptions. It is important to monitor the service being provided using internal or third-party tools. It is vital to have plans to supervise usage, performance, robustness, and business dependency of these services.”

“Customer expects safety of data as well as

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Cover story.indd 41

41

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

availability and cloud services to be based within country to reduce latency and enhanced support.

With large telcos , ISPs and other infrastructures mushrooming up faster in the countries, this is enabling the customers to plan private and hybrid cloud. Public cloud is already becoming popular not only among customers for their personal use but also among SMB companies for document management and other business practices,” opines Singh.

In the current scenario, customers also look at service delivery and billing, as it is difficult to assess the costs involved due to the on-demand nature of the services. Budgeting and assessment of the cost will be very difficult for the customers unless the service providers have some good and comparable benchmarks to offer. Besides, the enterprise customers look at performance and bandwidth cost. The reason being they can save money on hardware but they have to spend more for the bandwidth. This can be a low cost for smaller applications but can be significantly high for the data-intensive applications. Delivering intensive and complex data over the network requires sufficient bandwidth. Because of this, many businesses are waiting for a reduced cost before switching to the cloud.

Meanwhile, the logic behind the fast adoption of cloud computing are the numerous benefits that can be reaped by moving to the cloud visà-vis using in-house servers. Cloud computing essentially delivers software applications over the internet, which users can easily access through a web browser. Some of the most complex and even costly applications are now suddenly within reach of consumers, who only need to log on to the internet to launch many of the basic and even advanced computer applications they use each day with a simple click of the mouse. They need not worry about intricate installations, costly maintenance charges or backup concerns.

“More and more enterprises recognise that software, infrastructure and platform delivered as on-demand services can offer strategic advantages in terms of scalability and cost effectiveness, because systems can scale dynamically rather than be built for usage scenarios that may not arise. The cloud model allows senior IT strategists to set aside maintenance and patchwork and manage the network at arm’s length to agreed service levels and standards. With cloud-based services, capacity can be added (and removed) on demand, and paid for on a per-usage basis.

Virtualisation of servers, applications, desktops, storage and other infrastructural components can be the first step on a journey that ends with moving mission-critical applications to a cloud provider, which then has an impact on the

42

Cover story.indd 42

SARWAN SINGH, MD, PROLOGIX LLC

AJAY SINGH CHAUHAN, CEO, COMGUARD

“Governments in MEA are very much supportive. The only bottleneck is to enable internet at better price and allow VOIP services – both of these would support the growth of this sector.”

“With large telcos , ISPs and other infrastructures mushrooming up faster in the countries, this is enabling the customers to plan private and hybrid cloud.”

“AN INCREASING NUMBER OF IT DECISION MAKERS ARE SEEKING A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW CLOUD WILL FIT WITHIN THEIR ORGANIZATION”

company’s internal culture,” explains Kamel.

Deniz Kilyar, Director of Line of Business, Cloud & Mobility Solutions, SAP MENA, asserts, “Typical value proposition of cloud deployment compared to on-premises include agility to adopt new technologies, flexibility to scale and reduce usage volume, quicker deployment timeframes, quicker time to value, and converting high upfront cap-ex investment to smoothed cash outflow of op-ex. In addition to these, there are significant value propositions for SAP Cloud solutions by Pillar. For example, Success Factors as a cloud based best-of-breed HCM domain solution, brings wealth of knowhow and transforms the Human Capital Management/ Performance Management framework in a

company. The Ariba Network can also connect customers to a global network of suppliers.”

On the other hand, cloud migration is still not as seamless as it is thought out to be, leading to lock-in situation for enterprises. In this scenario, cloud vendors are coming out with innovative ways in order to ensure that the customer doesn’t feel locked-in to their cloud.

For example, EMC provides technology solutions that are suitable for cloud service providers to deploy and host cloud services. “The EMC approach is to provide freedom, control, and choice to our customers. For example, a customer that deploys virtual machines to a VCE Vblock hosted with a VMware and EMC powered cloud service provider is able to migrate those

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

DENIZ KILYAR, DIRECTOR OF LINE OF BUSINESS, CLOUD & MOBILITY SOLUTIONS, SAP MENA

“Cloud solutions offer much more flexibility to customers to scale up and down. Customers can also relatively easily migrate to another solution at the end of their contract.” virtual machines at any time to a different cloud service provider, or to an internal private cloud infrastructure. This is one of the benefits of using the same technology base in the internal private cloud, the hosted private cloud, and the public cloud,” points out Nicholas.

Talking about SAP’s approach, Kilyar says, “Cloud solutions offer much more flexibility to customers to scale up and down. Customers can also relatively easily migrate to another solution at the end of their contract. SAP provides flexible contractual terms that specifies the time that customers are supposed to take their data from the cloud if they wish to abandon the instance.

Transferring data to the customer’s next platform will then entail data conversion and implementation work.”

MAJOR CONCERNS FOR CIOS By now, it is very much clear that cloud computing is an important technological breakthrough that has redefined the computing landscape.

From the point of view of IT vendors, cloud computing has created exciting new possibilities

to synergize and grow their business, benefiting largely from economies of scale. On the other hand, an increasing number of IT decision makers are seeking a deeper understanding of how cloud will fit within their organization.

While cloud computing helps unlock unprecedented growth opportunities, it is equally important to remember that there are certain areas of concern that the IT decision makers need to watch out for. According to a survey conducted by IDC, in the MEA region, over 80% of high-level IT decision makers in the financial sector acknowledge that cloud computing offers significant tangible benefits. However, approximately half of the survey respondents believe that cloud computing is difficult to implement.

When we talk about cloud, there are many areas of concern for the CIOs, like for example, privacy risks, no direct visibility to data, bandwidth impact while data availability, and integrity as well as confidentiality. Besides, there are issues like vendor lock-in, security of the provider, and both upfront and hidden costs. Out of these, the major concern area related to cloud is security of the data they are storing.

“From a holistic approach, security is a major concern and to be more specific, data and systems integrity. The development of private and public clouds are major and it is rapidly growing while attracting the attention of most IT managers, and may be the most worrying types are the IaaS and SaaS since administrators and officers lack visibility of their content. We are going through a major change now a days and embracing that change has a positive advantages on corporate CAPEX in terms of IT expenditure,” says Tony Zabaneh, Senior Sales Engineer, Trend Micro Middle East Adding further, Florian Malecki, EMEA Product & Solution Marketing Director, Dell Software, asserts, “Cloud infrastructure pushes users to create traffic over the WAN, which creates two problems. First, both business-critical and productivity-draining traffic must contend for the same bandwidth. To solve these IT organizations needs a way to manage the allocation of bandwidth by application. Second, by creating an environment that forces large numbers of users to the internet, cloud computing fosters users going to web sites in general, exposing them to malware and other threats. Increased web traffic means greater exposure to web-borne attacks, intrusions, spyware, botnets and other threats. These threats are constantly increasing in number and sophistication, driven by a global profit-driven shadow economy built upon the proliferation of malware.”

Echoing his views on the same, Sebastien

CLOUD SECURITY SOLUTIONS IN THE OFFING • Dell SonicWALL’s SuperMassive E10000 Series is designed for large networks to deliver scalability, reliability and deep security at multi-gigabit speeds. Also available is the NSA 9000 Series and NSA Gen6 that are designed to deliver powerful threat prevention against a vast spectrum of network attacks with unprecedented speed, thanks to multi-core performance architecture.

• McAfee has a number of SaaS based solutions, but beyond that, the company is providing technologies leveraging Intel hardware that can be used to provide end customers the assurance that the CSP has deployed adequate security.

• With SafeNetProtectV, organizations can encrypt and secure entire virtual machines, protecting their assets from theft or exposure, ensuring cloud data is isolated and secured—even in shared, multi-tenant cloud environments used for application hosting, data storage, or disaster recovery.

SafeNet Authentication Service delivers authentication as a service, both as onpremise and Cloud-based delivery model, to enable organizations to easily apply strong authentication onto multiple access points.

• Trend Micro’s Deep Security provides multi-layered protection for cloud servers to ensure the maximum security. Then, there is Secure Cloud which is a purpose built security tool to encrypt servers residing in the cloud.

Pavie, Regional Sales Director – MEA, SafeNet, further highlights that virtualization technologies and cloud services continue to present some significant challenges for the security teams tasked with safeguarding sensitive data, such

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Cover story.indd 43

43

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

as the increased data volumes and mobility in virtual environments, where it is easier than ever to move and copy sensitive data; the risk of data destruction and retention; and administrative exposure, as cloud and virtualization ultimately introduce more privileged users and a new class of administrators.

“Businesses looking to move their data centers to the cloud are faced with significant security concerns around data governance, controlling access to critical applications and complying with security regulations across the globe, which ultimately poses security concerns over the cloud.

That is why it is crucial for enterprises to protect the data itself in these virtual environments and it is their responsibility to make sure that, no matter where the data resides, it is protected,” adds Pavie.

MITIGATING THE PERCEPTIONS Looking at the security concern, technology vendors are mitigating the risks by deploying the right controls and security tools. Many vendors like Trend Micro are considering the mass growth towards cloud and developing specific purpose built solutions for it.

According to Malecki, IT organizations need a single solution that can effectively address both problems, by controlling all application traffic and mitigating all corresponding threats.

Fortunately, Next-Generation Firewalls with application intelligence, control and visualization capabilities, such as the DellSonicWALL Next Generation Firewalls, can leverage the benefits of the cloud securely and with confidence. NextGeneration Firewalls allow IT organizations to identify and enforce policy-based controls on both cloud-based and on-premise applications in use, and securely identify users regardless of port or protocol. These solutions can help manage bandwidth for cloud applications and users, as well as eliminate the malware and productivity threats that come along with cloud consumption.

“Providing assurance can be met through a number of mechanisms, for example, standards play an important role. Equally more active measures to provide an on-going assurance regime are now becoming available. This includes the work such as CloudAudit from the Cloud Security Alliance could well be the norm in the future,” opines Raj Samani, CTO, McAfee MEA. Giving his perspective, Pavie suggests that the first step that organizations need to do is to protect the data and one of the safest ways to do that is through encryption. Virtual and cloud security solutions, like all enterprise security, need to be managed in a layered approach to the information protection lifecycle that combines

44

Cover story.indd 44

FLORIAN MALECKI, EMEA PRODUCT & SOLUTION MARKETING DIRECTOR, DELL SOFTWARE

SEBASTIEN PAVIE, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR – MEA, SAFENET

“Next-Generation Firewalls allow IT organizations to identify and enforce policy-based controls on both cloud-based and on-premise applications in use, and securely identify users regardless of port or protocol.”

“Virtual and cloud security solutions, like all enterprise security, need to be managed in a layered approach to the information protection lifecycle.”

encryption, access policies, key management, content security, and authentication. These layers need to be integrated into a flexible framework that allows the organization to adapt to the risk it faces.

ROLE OF CLOUD SERVICES BROKERAGES Today, enterprises look at negotiating multiple contracts with numerous cloud service providers.

As the use of multiple cloud services increases, enterprises should look to cloud services brokerages (CSBs) to facilitate consumption as part of an overall hybrid IT strategy. As cloud computing adoption proliferates, so does the need for consumption assistance. A cloud services brokerage is a third party company that adds value to cloud services on behalf of cloud service consumers.

Their goal is to make the service more specific to a company, or to integrate or aggregate services, to enhance their security, or to do anything which adds a significant layer of value to the original cloud services being offered.

“Brokerage services instil a model of trust and help cloud vendors in expanding their capabilities in regions beyond their established territory.

Moreover, as the margin in cloud services is relatively less, brokerage services tend to package relevant services along with marketing other cloud capabilities, thus becoming smart service providers understanding the pulse of their regional customers,” says Gibu Mathew, Director – Product Management, ManageEngine.

Instead of spending time and money to address these problems internally, consumers can leverage solutions offered by CSBs that allow organizations to focus on other pressing business needs instead. A viable CSB provider can make it less expensive, easier, safer and more productive for companies to navigate, integrate, consume and extend cloud services, particularly when they span multiple, diverse cloud services providers.

Hence, it can be stated here that CSBs can help CIOs in not only managing their cloud investments but also encourage new investments.

Chauhan highlights, “As an aggregator, broker-

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:58 PM

COVER STORY

RAJ SAMANI, CTO, MCAFEE MEA

“Providing assurance can be met through a number of mechanisms, for example, standards play an important role.”

ages help businesses by bringing together multiple cloud services, which is increasingly important as managing relationships with multiple cloud providers can quickly become unwieldy. As businesses continue to add cloud solutions to their system, brokerages also take on the role of integrator, helping a business integrate this new solution with other IT systems. Finally, the customization aspect of a brokerage adds to the capabilities of the cloud service to perform new functions, increasing the utility of the cloud service itself so that it better fits the needs of the individual business and makes it value for the cost.”

According to Gartner, without a cloud services brokerage, businesses would need to manage each cloud solution individually during every phase from adoption to customization and growth. Brokerage services take this burden off of businesses not only by managing all of these interactions, but also by integrating the various services to work with one another. This allows the organization to invest time and resources into new investments.

However, Jessiman holds a different view on this aspect. He believes that there is confusion right now to most CIOs who are not mature in their approach to cloud. The aggregation of the services by brokerages provides a lot of choice for

GIBU MATHEW, DIRECTOR – PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, MANAGEENGINE

“Brokerage services instil a model of trust and help cloud vendors in expanding their capabilities in regions beyond their established territory.” services, but this doesn’t assist to define a clear strategy. One of the biggest challenges faced by organizations is the location and governance of the data. This concern is much harder to address using brokerage services that are usually a gateway to a multitude of services located worldwide.

VENDOR-PARTNER COLLABORATION In this competitive scenario and in order to tap opportunities in the cloud computing space, the vendors have not only come up with unique enablement programs for their partners, but also supporting them to build capacity and capability for offering and enabling cloud services.

For instance, the tech giant, EMC enables its VSPP partners the opportunity to build various core services in the IT as a Service infrastructure space, ranging from compute, storage, security and data protection (Backup and data continuity) service offerings. In these cases, EMC and the VSPP Partner can build differentiated services that address concerns of private/public managed offerings.

“A key differentiator for EMC VSPP partners is the ability to build both public and private cloud solutions with strong integration between platforms, leading to true Hybrid clouds which

Enterprise customers are demanding today,” says Nicholas.

The Brocade Alliance Partner Network (APN) program prepares and rewards partners who invest in developing knowledge-rich practices to address new technology trends such as virtualization, network convergence and cloud computing.

“Designed to help partners build business models that realize revenue opportunities from professional services and cloud hosted services among current customers, while growing net new business opportunities, the APN program enables partners to extend their reach through almost effortless marketing and technology enablement solutions,” asserts Kamel.

Meanwhile, for Comguard, vendors are enhancing capability by on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, location independence, rapid elasticity, and measured service. And they are enhancing capacity by homogeneity, virtualization, resilient computing, low cost software, geographic distribution, service orientation, and advanced security technologies.

For Dimension Data, the vendors are supporting its cloud strategies by positioning Dimension Data Cloud Services as the best approach to gain the benefits cloud has to offer. Global vendors find Dimension Data to be the only partner that can host their cloud services, applications and platforms to the local market in the form of a private cloud model, defeating the major clients’ concerns around security, data sovereignty and bandwidth constraints. Those same vendors have certified, invested and built more capacity to support the company’s cloud platform.

“Vendors providing virtual servers space at different geographical locations have expanded our point of presence to more than 50 locations.

This gives us the ability to monitor and give an in-depth insight into the performance of websites from an end-user perspective. Back in the days of physical server acquisition involving complex procedures and technical scalability, the scope for expansion was tedious, if not confined. Thus vendors offering virtual server space are a boon to organizations expanding their reach globally,” states Zabaneh.

FINALLY...

Globally, cloud computing will continue to be one of the biggest drivers of IT and business transformation, which is evident with the worldwide adoption of this technology. In fact, the current economic scenario has aided the explosion of cloud technology. Ditto for the MEA market, wherein the enterprises are increasingly looking to boost their growth by buying into the cloud market. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Cover story.indd 45

45

07/10/13 9:58 PM

FEATURE

WIRELESS

Offloading The Traffic With tremendous growth in mobile data traffic and limited availability of spectrum license, Wi-Fi offloading seems to be a viable option. Mobile operators are looking to decrease CapEx and Aptilo Networks is mapping out its strategy to tap the market at the right time.

n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

W

ith the number of smartphone users growing, mobile data traffic has witnessed an immense surge. Research predicts that overall mobile data traffic will continue the trend to double each year with video being the fastest growing segment. To reduce traffic on cellular networks, operators across the regions are looking at Wi-Fi as an option and the MEA market is no exception. To tap the opportunity at the right moment and support the growth of mobile wireless including Wi-Fi, Aptilo Networks started its operations in Dubai this July by establishing a regional sales office in the region.

“We wanted to be prepared because we think business is growing here. We have already seen an enormous explosion of business in Latin America,” says Christian Jonsson, Director Sales, Africa and Middle East, Aptilo Networks.

“We think Africa will be the next explosion and Middle East will continue its steady growth”.

Through its office in Dubai, Aptilo covers the entire MEA market.

With approximately the revenue of 18 million USD in 2013, Aptilo eyes 30% growth globally in 2013. Aptilo has been doing business in the region since 2004, and is currently working with a number of service provider Wi-Fi customers in the Middle East including du in the United Arab Emirates, STC (Saudi Telecom Company) in Saudi Arabia and Batelco in the Kingdom of Bahrain as well as several deployments in Africa.

46

Feature-Wireless.indd 46

He believes that the mobile data offloading is one of the hottest trends in the telecom industry and that’s where Aptilo is focusing now. “If we look market-wise, the explosion of the devices combined with the explosion of data per device is staggering. There will be 10-20 times more data in the next five years. Hence, the interest is not just in cellular networks but it is growing in Wi-fi,” says Jonsson.

According to Cisco Consulting Services (CCS) report, the number of mobile phone subscribers in the UAE is more than the number of people in the region. The mobile subscription rate in the UAE surpassed 159% and mobile data accounts for nearly half of the subscriptions. “Looking at what’s going on in the market, we make sure we have smart functions that fit with what the customers want. That’s the beauty of a smaller company. We can quickly move with the market.

We can be at the technology forefront driving our part of the business with smart functions,” remarks Jonsson.

Aptilo has around 120 customers and enables more than 90 carrier Wi-Fi networks globally.

“We are leaders in the Wi-Fi offloading space and have very strategic partnership agreements with the players in this field,” comments Jonsson.

He elaborates on the channel ecosystem of Aptilo. “We work primarily with Wi-Fi eco-system partners and system integrators. We become the knowledge center for our partners and help them put together the solution. We help them set up the POCs. We are always looking for new

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 9:59 PM

FEATURE

CHRISTIAN JONSSON, DIRECTOR SALES, AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST, APTILO NETWORKS

“If we look market-wise, the explosion of the devices combined with the explosion of data per device is staggering. There will be 10-20 times more data in the next five years.

Hence, the interest is not just in cellular networks but it is growing in Wi-fi”

managed service which is very popular now. They just add the radio and gateway infrastructure and then the Aptilo system is run from one of our data centers. All of the back-end voucher processing, payment flows, policy control and subscriber management is handled by us. It helps customers do very rapid deployments without any big upfront investments and managing by themselves,” explains Jonsson.

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the number of home APs will reach a quarter-billion by 2014, compared with 154 million in 2011. In addition, the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) projects that global IP

channel partners as they are the ones who bring solutions to our customers,” says Jonsson.

Some 70-80% of Aptilo’s business is where customers own the license. “The other 20-30% is where we run the back-end for them as a

GLOBAL MOBILE TRAFFIC: VOICE AND DATA, 2010-17 10,000

Data: Mobile PCs/tablets

Monthly PetaBytes (10 B

Data: Mobile phones 8,000 Voice 6,000

15X

4,000

2,000

0 2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

MOBILE DATA TRAFFIC WILL GROW ~15 TIMES

BY THE END OF 2017

traffic transmitted over Wi-Fi will represents 46 percent of all IP traffic by 2015. Jonsson sees huge potential in the African market. “I think the way you can build networks with high capacity to a very low reasonable cost makes it ideal to use Wi-Fi in Africa. It is simple and accessible. It has really been a key thing to make sure that if people can have Wi-Fi, businesses will be attracted.

There is tremendous interest for Wi-Fi in Africa,” says Jonsson According to him, there is no operator today that is not looking at Wi-Fi. Mobile data offloading can maximize benefits of Wi-Fi and decrease the overall costs. Based on Cisco IBSG’s analysis, mobile users in the UAE market are expected to consume 677 petabytes of mobile bandwidth by 2017 due to increased adoption of smartphones and tablets. A mobile data offload strategy will help operators reduce costs by 26 percent, or $316 million. To serve the demand and reduce HSPA and LTE investment costs, the mobile operators will have to look at Wi-Fi offloading as an option.

FINALLY..

There is tremendous pressure on mobile operators to provide coverage of mobile data traffic.

There is increased interest in Wi-Fi because it would help shoot up revenues and decrease the costs. However, in the competitive service provider market , the players with the right strategy will survive. ë

Source: Ericsson (June 2012)

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Feature-Wireless.indd 47

47

07/10/13 9:59 PM

PARTNER STREET

FVC

Defining Differently The role of any VAD is justified not only by what value it adds but also how it adds and in that regard, FVC is all set to become a differentiator. n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

A

s the role of a VAD is diversifying in today’s scenario so are the ways to define one.

Dharmendra Parmar, General Manager, Marketing, FVC defines it in his own way wherein he believes in evangelising a concept as a VAD. This new generation VAD has solutions ranging from Unified Communications, Information Security and Advanced Networking. FVC has its own unique way of handling a product or solution. “We take a new product relatively less known in the market and we evangelise the concept. We do it through Product Managers who have specialised knowledge on individual products. There are Territory Managers to make sure that we are driving sales and a team of Channel Managers identify the right set of partners in each territory to work with,” explains Parmar.

With head-quarters in Dubai, FVC is all-pervasive in MENA region. Following the concept of being close to partners to help them run the business, FVC has offices in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Cairo, Beirut, Casablanca, Nairobi, and Labos. There are representatives in Karachi and Islamabad to handle business in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has an office in London too.

There are 140 people across eight countries.

FVC is an authorised training partner for all of its major vendors. Parmar feels that training

48

DHARMENDRA PARMAR

GENERAL MANAGER, MARKETING FVC

“Buying a combination of products together adds more value than buying them individually”

is the key part of enablement to the value FVC adds. He informs that FVC spends a lot on training centres and equipment, training sales, and technical training. Empowering the channel partners is another crucial part of the company’s value addition. “We help the partners in running their business not just expecting how much business they are going to add for us.

It’s about training the sales people, engineers, providing help in marketing, pitching to the customers in the beginning, proposals for new and complex solutions. This is how we empower our partners,” explains Parmar.

The partners have a certification level as determined by the vendors. It is a kind of assurance to the vendors that the people are knowledgeable enough to support and implement their technologies. “We believe in doing business through our partners, it’s a long term relationship and partners trust us that we won’t engage in direct business. We try to have solutions that help them differentiate themselves from the competition and drive their margins,” informs Parmar. FVC has 150 channel partners in these countries with whom the business is regular FVC has a high touch business model where its team is available to assist the partners to go to the customers. “The business is done through channel but at times we need a high touch model when the product is new or a solution is complex,” he adds.

FVC is quite conscious in choosing its gamut of vendors. “When we sign up we try that the offerings from the different vendors don’t compete. We try to pick products that complement each other and not compete. It also helps in proposing the customers in a different way.

Buying a combination of products together adds more value than buying them individually,” elaborates Parmar.

There are new vendors which FVC has added in its portfolio. The most recent is Cyan and Watchful Software. Recently, FVC signed a MoU with Ankabut to implement Managed Unified Communications Service for UAE education community based on the latest Real-Presence platform from Polycom and Microsoft. It has also signed a joint-venture with du for managed video services and similar arrangements with other telecoms in the region.

FINALLY..

FVC continues to expand within its three key domains of expertise. It has already created its space in the market with being a differentiator in the way it caters its customers and partners. ë

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

Dharmendra Parmar of FVC.indd 48

07/10/13 9:59 PM

MY VIEW

TAREQ HUSSEINI

SALES DIRECTOR MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA SANDISK

“Our Vertical Integration is our Competitive Edge” “ON THE RETAIL SIDE WE ARE GROWING BY 35-38% YEAR ON YEAR. ON THE ENTERPRISE PART WE ARE STILL IN THE INITIAL STAGES.”

We have seen a lot of SanDisk’s consumer side of business, how the company is positioned for enterprise market?

The enterprise market is quite a promising segment for SanDisk. Today enterprise makes up 65% of our revenue globally. This includes sales and relationships with our vendors.

What are the solutions you have in your kitty for the enterprise market?

We have a complete range of solutions from a storage perspective. We have acquired a few companies in the last few months that are dedicated to providing enterprise solutions.

What is the channel and

distribution strategy?

We have a new sales team for Middle East and Africa. They will be looking specifically in this region and at the moment we are looking for distributors, channel partners and agents in the region.

What is your incentivization and empowerment strategy?

We have incentive programmes which includes training.

How do you focus on branding and marketing activities?

We have a large branding and marketing presence in the region. In the retail sector SanDisk can be seen in the region’s most popular electronic stores

and within the media in the region. We recently erected a billboard on Sheikh Zayed Road. We are constantly coming up with different marketing strategies to brand ourselves in innovative and interactive ways.

How are your operations in the region from geo presence stand point?

The UAE is the gateway for us in the region.

This is closely followed by Turkey we see a lot of enterprise activities happening here from manufacturing, supply and advancement.

What are you competitive advantage vis-à-vis the competition?

Our vertical integration is our competitive edge.

Our raw materials, software and 360 degree solution is all controlled by SanDisk, this is different to our competitors. So I think our customers keep this authenticity in mind when purchasing the product. This is what What is your growth curve in the region and expectation for this year?

On the retail side we are growing by 35-38% year on year. On the enterprise part we are still in the initial stages but we are expecting a large percentage growth in this sector. As the market grows so will our enterprise business. ë

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

My Views-SanDisk.indd 49

49

07/10/13 9:59 PM

COVER STORY

SECURITY

ISPs vs Malwares ISPs should now be looking into the aspect of protecting and cleansing the network under them.

ABOUT ESCAN

n WORDS: TUSHAR SAHOO <TUSHAR@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

50

escan.indd 50

C

yber security today has become a monumental concern. With the evolution of Internet, the definition and the payload of a virus has changed considerably. Initially, all they did was to infect and spread via removable media. However, they transformed themselves into Remote Access Trojans with enhanced capabilities of infecting unsuspecting users, via email or websites. Due to internet, their payloads also varied. Some came with Keyloggers, some with password stealing capabilities, while others provided an alternate network for carrying out other malicious tasks as Internet provided a transportation medium for the stolen information and everything and anything is now connected to Internet.

Botnets are a group of infected PCs which will listen to the commands issued from a remote server.

These infected PCs are primarily used to send SPAM/ Phishing/ Infectious emails, carry out DDoS attacks, etc. Malware unlike Botnet are primarily into stealing information or may behave like a Ransomware. However similar to Botnet, a malware has the capability to connect to a Command and Control server (CnC) and accept commands. These malware and Botnets, all form a part of an Exploit Kit which is sold by the developer to cyber criminals.

Security Solution vendors are 24x7 battling these pieces of codes and advisories are issued; updates are released to ensure timely detection. In todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scenario, one may wonder what an ISP has got to do with Malware and Botnets when protection of the PC is the onus of the user.

An IP address plays a very important role in the life of a Malware or an Exploit Kit. A Malware in order to communicate with its CnC needs to know the domainname or the IP address of the CnC. Although, domain names can be registered by anyone and with any of the existing thousands of registrars, IP address for a server can only be obtained from an ISP or from the Data Center where these servers have been installed.

When large networks are compromised by cyber criminals with Botnets, they send large amounts of spam, host phishing websites, wage Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and initiate various other such malicious activities. Such security concerns lead to myriad of costs for businesses, governments, as

eScan, today, has become a renowned name in providing Information Security Solution and continues to grow worldwide. eScan range of products covers a wide portfolio such as Content Security, Endpoint Security and Mobile Security solutions that are specifically designed as per the IT security needs of SOHO, SMB, Corporate as well as Enterprise segments.

In accordance to its global expansion strategy, Middle East is one of the major focuses of eScan. Recently the leading anti-virus brand announced the opening of eScan Middle East as a stepahead to strengthen its business in Middle East. Under newly opened eScan Middle East, the brand will majorly cater to UAE,

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

08/10/13 8:45 AM

COVER STORY

well as individual IT users. With enterprises increasingly adapting new technologies such as the cloud, virtualization and social networks, cyber-attacks using Botnet has proven remarkably resilient method as an entry point into corporate networks.

One of the significant factors that led to these cyber security issues is the inadequate security level that is maintained by IT users, be it any segment. Surprisingly, most of the times, the computers that are compromised and turned into Botnet in order to conduct such illicit activities are usually owned by home Internet users and small businesses who are unaware that their computers have been recruited / compromised.

Generally, ISPs have been playing the transparent role of acting as gateway. However, it seems imperative that ISPs should now be looking into the aspect of protecting and cleansing the network under them. In such situation, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) play a pivotal role in preventing the operation of botnets on the PC of IT users as well as certain types of malicious cyber behavior. They can provide more security at a lower cost, particularly for individual Internet users and small businesses.

Sometime back FBI had initiated a worldwide operation called Ghost Click, wherein most of the ISPs had proactively blocked access to rogue DNS servers. The Bot in question was DNS Changer Bot. FBI took over the DNS infrastructure of the Botnet and replaced it with legitimate servers. This was done to ensure that users and businesses affected by the Bot, and get ample time to clean up their systems before the complete infrastructure is taken down. During this, many of the ISPs initiated the corrective measures to redirect the DNS requests made by the Bots to legitimate servers. However, blocking of traffic to the known Botnet CnCs, Rogue DNS servers, identification of SPAM spewing hosts from within their networks is something which needs to be thought upon.

MalwareMustDie, an Anti-Malware research group, have been regularly providing CERTs and affected ISPs with real-time Kelihos Botnet monitoring information.

The information is primarily used to clean up their networks. It really does not matter whether the ISPs use these real-time feeds or create their own monitoring services.

However, the ultimate result of blocking malicious attempts should take precedence.

According to a recent analysis on mobile Botnets such as Zitmo by FortiGuard Labs, mobile Botnets have many features and functionality same as of traditional PC Botnets.

While it has been predicted that due to this similarity in features between these platforms, new forms of Direct-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are expected that will leverage both PC and mobile devices simultaneously.

For instance, in case of an infected computer and mobile device, both will share the same command and control server and attack protocol, and hence act on command at the same time. This means that two separate Botnets that were earlier running on a computer and a mobile OS such as Android will now turn into one monolithic Botnet that will be controlling multiple endpoints.

Botnets and Malware not only affect individuals but also Corporate Networks, which in turn hinder the economic growth of any country. The day individual countries start recognizing Botnets and Malware traffic as a threat to their economy, we hope that ISPs would start providing proactive detection and blocking of such malicious traffic.

Swedish telecom operator, TeliaSonera have set a precedent by being known for providing safe computing experience by creating an automated monitoring and alerting system to identify infected devices, alert their owners, and remove the devices from the network until cleaned. If all the ISPs proactively start processing Malware domains or IPs as done

by TeliaSonera, then we can surely think of having a secured internet experience. ë

Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait regions with an aim to continue delivering eScan range of security solutions to help protect IT users across the region as well as focus on further strengthening its robust distribution and channel model.

Looking at the current scenario of cyber security threats, eScan looks forward to ensure that IT users across the region enjoy secured computing environment. In context to the brands further expansion plans in Middle East. eScan has also tie-ups with Sharaf DG eScan Av and Eros Group that will offer eScan range of security solutions for Android with Samsung Mobile Phones. This will effectively enhance the availability of eScan range of products and strengthen our standing in the market.

GOVIND RAMMURTHY, CEO & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ESCAN

“Internet Service Providers (ISPs) play a pivotal role in preventing the operation of botnets on the PC of IT users as well as certain types of malicious cyber behavior.”

PROFILE Mr. Govind Rammurthy set up MicroWorld in the year 1993 started indigenously developing Anti-Virus and Content Security solutions.

And within a short span, he has transformed MicroWorld into a global company with a large partner network spread across the world.

Mr. Govind Rammurthy has been in the IT industry since 1990s. He has been involved in developing products for the Information Security Industry for more than 21 years and is a recognized software expert in the industry circles. Today, as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Mr. Rammurthy takes a hands-on approach in managing day-to-day affairs of the Company and is also responsible for the technical aspect of the business.

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

escan.indd 51

51

08/10/13 8:45 AM

PARTNER STREET

CONDO PROTEGO

Being a Specialist Condo Protego doesn’t believe that offering solutions only from two areas is a deterrent instead it helps in a specialised approach n WORDS: MANALI MISRA <MANALI@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM>

C

ontrary to the popular belief that having a one stop solution is an easy way out for many companies, Andrew Calthorpe, CEO, Condo Protego feels that the number of such companies is few and far between. Condo Protego is an integrator of data protection and storage with principal suppliers being EMC and Symantec. Not selling the entire gamut of solutions is in no way a hindrance to company’s success. Instead Calthorpe takes it as an advantage. “Because we only offer storage and data protection, we have to be really good at it. We have to understand our products com-

52

ANDREW CALTHORPE

CEO, CONDO PROTEGO

“The key is we fully understand what the customer wants and we make sure that the customer understands what we really have to offer and deliver”

pletely and implement them. Other companies are also offering what we have but for them it is a part of their entire range and for us it is just those two. There are a very few customers who want one company to offer all the solutions,” he opines.

Calthorpe feels that the customers are looking for a specialist for catering to their requirements. “We are the company which doesn’t provide everything but gives majority of the core infrastructure that includes EMC and Symantec products for storage and back-up and archiving respectively,” he says.

Storage and Security are the two key areas where enterprises are focusing. The amount of data generated is continuously growing and hence storage is one of the crucial investments.

According to Gartner, worldwide security software market grew 7.9 % in 2012. The report complements that the advent of cloud and concepts like BYOD, there is an extra attention on security. EMC and Symantec, the leading providers in storage and security solutions are chosen by Condo Protego as Calthorpe feels they offer the best of products. “We stand behind the products that we believe are the best. We are winning on the merits of our capabilities and benefits of the product. There is no reason why we shouldn’t win as we have the best products,” he tells.

Condo Protego offers solutions in the UAE and services outside the region. Calthorpe informs that the major customers are a mix and match of large banks, education establishments, government, and manufacturing. Condo Protego has a dedicated sales team which generates leads for customers but participating in events like GITEX and others also helps. This year it will be at the Symantec’s booth at GITEX. “The key is we fully understand what the customer wants and we make sure that the customer understands what we really have to offer and deliver,” tells Calthorpe.

Condo Protego is expecting a double digit growth this year. “In Q2, we have already done more business than we did in last year. The business will certainly grow by 50%,” informs Calthorpe.

FINALLY Condo Protego is optimistic about the company’s growth with its specialised offering. After establishing its customer base, the company intends to grow it and get new business in the region. ë

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

partner street- CondoProtego.indd 52

07/10/13 10:00 PM

INNOVATIONS

OKI MB700 Series OKI new range of A4 mono MFPs, the MB700 Series, designed to expand on the recent success of the award winning MC700 Series of A4 colour MFPs launched

earlier this year.

The MC700/MB700 Series provide additional levels of business productivity through sXP (smart Extendable Platform),

an embedded open platform offering enhanced workflow integration and document management, across the business. The new range of mono and

KEY CAPABILITIES n High performance n Unrivalled flexibility n All models have a convenience stapler as standard to facilitate post production finishing. n The DFN models come with an internal finisher for automated document collation and stapling. n All models come with a 23cm, colour-backlit touch screen with an easy-to-use control panel enabling personalised user settings. n In all models the scanner and the print engine are based on OKI’s LED technology n Delivering print speeds of up to 40ppm (MC780) and 52ppm (MB770). n Duplex printing and scanning, flexible scan destinations and formats and large-capacity 160GB hard drive as standard. n Secure PIN printing

colour MFPs provide additional flexibility, allowing organisations to select the model and options specific to their business needs, for optimum print effectiveness.

As with the new MB700 Series, the MC700 Series offers organisations greater business productivity, workflow integration and document management.

The MC700/MB700 Series enables businesses to move from a manual paper-based workflow into a digital workflow.

The open architecture sXP enables seamless integration of workflows into the end user’s information infrastructure allowing businesses to benefit from lower costs, improved productivity and operational efficiencies.

The MC700/MB700 Series is also backed by OKI Europe’s three-year warranty on registration of the product within 30 days.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

ADATA DASHDRIVE AIR MODEL ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 is a versatile wireless reader that can read and stream data from USB storage media and SD memory cards, and also functions as a power bank that can charge other mobile devices.

As smartphones and tablet computers continue to replace traditional desktop systems in worldwide markets, wireless network availability and power charging sources become omnipresent requirements. The AE400 can be an easy to operate wireless hotspot, with support for 802.11 b/g/n wireless networking. When functioning as a network bridge, the internet connection can be shared by up to 10 devices at the same time.

The surface of the AE400 gleams with a modern, hexagonal lattice design, giving a hint of the potent integral power bank within. The power bank has a capacity of 5000 mAh, which translates to a charging capacity of approximately two full charges for a smartphone. This combination of functions- USB storage & card reader, and power bank, make the DashDrive Air AE400 an extremely versatile and multifunctional addition that can reduce the number of electronic accessories needed for full data access on the go.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Permits for wireless data transfer between mobile devices and SD card, USB flash drive, or portable HDD. n Supports up to 3 users simultaneously streaming 1080P video, or up to 5 users simultaneously streaming 720p video. n Supportsed operating systems include iOS, Android, Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8), OS X, and Linux 2.4+. n The DashDrive Air Elite App (for users of iOS 5.0 & Android 2.3 or later versions) is free for download from both the Apple App Store and Google play.

O CTO B E R 2 013

MEA

Innovations.indd 53

53

07/10/13 10:01 PM

INNOVATIONS

Epson A4 Scanners in UAE With high scanning speeds and advanced feed technology, Epson WorkForce DS-510 and DS-510N are designed to improve efficiency and integrate seamlessly into document management and cloud systems.

The new compact models have scanning speeds of up to 26ppm/52ipm in both monochrome and colour and an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) with a capacity of 50 A4 pages. To speed up large batch scanning, both models offer one-pass duplex scanning, HW JPEG compression and double-feed detection with ultrasonic sensor. The versatile scanners have advanced feed technology, which allows for smooth paper loading and reduces the risk of multi-feeds for reliable paper capture when processing large batches.

When combined with Epson Document Capture Pro, the optional Network Interface Unit offers ‘push scan’ features and customisation of ‘scan to’ commands, such as ‘scan to email’, ‘scan to Microsoft SharePoint and ‘scan to cloud’. The WorkForce DS-510N is network ready.

The EpsonScan software offers a wide range of functionality including barcode recognition, zonal OCR support, TWAIN, ISIS and WIA drivers. Epson Document Capture Pro client and server as well as Document Capture for Mac are compatible for both the models to speed up workflow and enable users to capture, convert and distribute scanned information in virtually any document repository or document management system.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Fast colour scanning speeds of 26ppm / 52ipm at 200 / 300dpi n HardwareJPEG compression n Epson advanced feed technology and double feed detection n Compact to fit in any office environment n Epson Document Capture Pro (Windows client) n Epson Document Capture Pro Server ( Windows Server) n Epson Document Capture (Mac) n Network Interface Unit for easy sharing between multiple users with Push Scan n Daily duty cycle of 3,000 pages n Twain, WIA and ISIS driver support for enhanced compatibility with DMS n ENERGY STAR qualified

54

Innovations.indd 54

Dell S6000 Switch Dell S6000, the industry’s highest-density 1RU 10/40GbE switching platform, is ideal for highly-virtualized data centres. A fixed form factor design, the S6000 doubles the density and throughput while consuming up to 50 percent less power than previous generation top-of-rack switches. Built-in advanced virtualization and automation features help customers scale larger virtual deployments in a smaller physical footprint, and helps solve the challenge of bridging virtualized and non-virtualized aspects of the infrastructure.

The S6000 platform can help customers unify virtualized and non-virtualized IT elements, providing a gateway to a software-defined enterprise. It delivers a re-imagining of the data centre backbone. The 40Gb/s data centre core transition begins in earnest with the arrival of high-density fixed-configuration switches.

S6000 is Fresh Air capable and validated as part of Dell’s Fresh Air cooling solution for servers, storage and networking. By leveraging the thermal and reliability advantages engineered into this portfolio of equipment, customers are able to run data centres even warmer, helping reduce additional maintenance and infrastructure costs, while enabling lower overall energy consumption. To help accelerate the adoption of Network Virtualization technologies, it will be imperative for organizations to have visibility across both the virtualized and physical network environment.

The Dell S6000 is tightly integrated with VMware solutions to enable a holistic view of the network environment that will enable faster troubleshooting and more effective provisioning. Further, S6000 switching platformis expected to be available from this month.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Supports advanced network virtualization and software-defined networking features including hardware-accelerated layer 2 gateway functionality for use with VMware NSX, n Bridging traffic between virtualized and non-virtualized environments. n Also previewing enhanced functionality with Active Fabric Manager (AFM) 2.0 specifically for VMware environments. n Active Fabric Manager provides simplified configuration, management and monitoring of Dell Active Fabric leaf and spine elements. n With AFM 2.0, will be introducing command line interface functionality for VMware vSphere Distributed Switch n Supports OpenFlow for controller-based applications n Bare Metal Provisioning (BMP) for rapid and automated deployments n Virtual Server Networking (VSN) for automated VM mobility and VLAN configuration n Perl and Python scripting for maximum programmability and interworkings with development operations (DevOps).

O CTO B E R 2013

MEA

07/10/13 10:01 PM

IT Outsourcing and Remote Infrastructure Management Solutions

Outsourcing IT services can accelerate your business growth as it frees up your time and internal resources to focus squarely on your core competencies.

providers, deal with crises, troubleshoot problems and run your network on your behalf … in the right way, in the right place and always at the right time.

But there are a myriad of competencies and skills to take into consideration when evaluating a potential services partner.

We’ve invested significantly in our people, processes, and systems to be able to move beyond management of point technologies to management of entire technology domain, particularly in the IT infrastructure space.

Does Service Provider have a proven track record in your vertical industry?

Are its IT services best practice aligned?

Is its services business robust and growing?

Does it have Solid Partnership with Hardware & Software vendors?

In IBT, we can answer all of these questions with a resounding ‘yes’. We manage vendors and service

We’re also your ideal choice of partner if you have – or are considering – adopting more of a strategic approach to sourcing IT, commonly known as Multisourcing. Our specialized client engagement teams can collaborate effectively with your other partners to deliver a seamless service experience.

Contact Us to discuss how we can help you maximize the Multisourcing opportunity.

P.O. Box: 124372, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Dubai Office Phone: +9714 3860110, Fax : +9714 3860557 Email: info@ibtevolve.com, Website: www.ibtevolve.com

Advts01.indd 18

03/09/13 10:55 PM

Advts MEA.indd 8

07/10/13 11:34 PM