January 2015

GCC COU NTR I ES DOM I NATE I N ICT DEVE LOPM E NT I N DEX /06

PA G E S 6 8 VOLUME O2 | ISSUE 06 JANUARY 2015 WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH OF IT IN 2015

INDIAECM012015

The IT landscape is changing at a faster pace than ever before. As one more year ends, giving way to a new year; innovation is clearly in the air. /26

XE ROX: “MANAG I NG DIVE RSI FI E D SE RVICES” /40

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EDITORIAL

Happy New Year 2015!

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

Happy New Year 2015 to all of our readers and well-wishers in Middle East and Africa!For the last couple of years, the journey has been very exciting for us and for the entire industry as well. The year 2015 holds a lot of promises; reason being the enterprises have clearly understood the benefits of embracing the new age technology. They have evaluated and run pilots on modern data centres, cloud computing, SDN, Mobility, Big Data, etc. for last two years and now they feel confident of investing in these technologies. Along with the willingness from the industry, the partner community has been equipping itself to address the needs in the market, although there are a lot of upgrades to happen.

The biggest supporter in the region has been the government sector. For example Dubai government under the aegis of the Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has embarked aggressively on making Dubai as a smart city. It means everything will be smart in a two – three years’ time. The scope is really high but to start with the government will ideally look at the public services including transportation, ICT, Utilities, Economy, Urban Panning, etc. to be smart. The government has considered taking up electric cars, smart parking, eco-friendly public transport, multi-modal transport systems, etc., under the smart transport initiative. Similarly, in the ICT sector, the IoT is an area of priority.

The MENA smart grid market will be nearly worth $10 billion cumulatively by 2024. So in Dubai modernizing electricity and water grids through automation is a priority. Along with this, the government will work on renewable energy, smart metering, and securing valuable energy resources through smart grid management, etc.

As per IDC report, public spending from online government initiatives and smart city plans in the ICT sector had touched US$8.27 billion last year across the MEA. Given all the facts and figures, the opportunity for this year is really enormous. As per Khaleej Times reports, The Middle East and Africa is expected to spend US$91 billion in 2015 for IT up from US$71 billion last year. From the technology stand point investment on cloud computing will gain prominence and as per IDC, the four largest regional IT markets namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Africa and Turkey will account for over 60 per cent of total IT spending. At the same time, cyber security will also have a core focus in the region particularly in the UAE and KSA as both appear to be most vulnerable for hacker attacks and cybercrimes. Therefore, there will be huge investment in the cyber security space as well. So watch out for the opportunity!

In this issue, we have compiled some of the best predictions for 2015. Hope you will enjoy reading this. Do send in your feedback. ë

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2015 CONTENTS

VOLUME 02 ISSUE 06 JANUARY 2015 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

COVER STORY

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH OF IT IN 2015

The IT landscape is changing at a faster pace than ever before. As one more year ends, giving way to a new year; innovation is clearly in the air. /28

ANALYSTS VIEW /22

“IT budgets on a roll” MEGHA KUMAR RESEARCH MANAGER, SOFTWARE, IDC- MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA AND TURKEY

MY VIEWS /40

“Managing Diversified Services” DAN SMITH HEAD OF INTEGRATED MARKETING FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA REGION AT XEROX MY VIEWS /46

Building strong bridges between vendors and markets DR ALI BAGHDADI PRESIDENT INGRAM MICRO TECH SOLUTIONS, META

INNOVATIONS /66

EPSON SURECOLOR LARGE-FORMAT PRINTERS

SECURITY SCANNER Securing Enterprises in 2015 /50 A Compilation by Enterprise Channels MEA

Epson’s new range of high-speed, fourcolour large-format SureColorSC-T printers are designed for a variety of graphics, CAD and GIS applications

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 CIOS SPEAK ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 20 ANALYSTS’ VIEWS ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 24 MY VIEWS ::::::::::::::::::: 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 FEATURE: PARTNER STREET ::::::::::::::: 54 DATA CENTER TRENDS::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 60 GUEST TALK : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 64 INNOVATIONS : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 66

ADVERTISER INDEX: EPICOR 02, BROCADE 03, BULWARK 07, EMT 09, COMGUARD 11, FINESSE 13, GISEC 15, ESET 17, ISE 47, RITTAL 49, GEC OPEN 53, ENTERPRISE ADVISER 63, GEMEC 65, STOR IT 67, DELL 68

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CHANNEL

STREET AVAYA AND GOOGLE TEAM UP

Avaya’s collaboration with Google on contact center solutions for businesses combines Avaya’s expertise in customer engagement technologies with Google’s expertise in Web applications and Chromebooks to enable greater simplicity, flexibility and cost efficiency in contact center operations.

The initial project enables simple set-up of new agents and supervisors ideal for managing peak or seasonal demands, as well as supporting business continuity, mobile and remote agent strategies. Customer service agents can access the Avaya contact center agent with Chromebooks through a WebRTC-enabled interface.

FIRST WAVE OF IBM MOBILEFIRST FOR IOS APPS Apple and IBM delivered the first wave of IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions in a new class of made-for-business apps and supporting cloud services that bring IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities to iPhone and iPad users in the enterprise. IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions are now available to enterprise customers in banking, retail, insurance, financial services, telecommunications and for governments and airlines, thanks to an unprecedented collaboration between Apple and IBM. IBM clients today announcing support for IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions include: Citi, Air Canada, Sprint and Banorte.

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JAMIL EZZO, DIRECTOR GENERAL, ICDL ARABIA

GCC Countries Dominate In ICT Development Index ICDL Arabia has expanded on the recent findings of the 2014 report published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ specialized agency for ICT, pointing out the outstanding performance of the GCC countries in the report. The ITU’s flagship annual report ‘Measuring the Information Society Report’ has identified Gulf countries among the group of ‘most dynamic countries,’ having recorded above-average improvements in their ICT Development Index (IDI) rank over the past 12 months.

According to the UN report, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman are the top five among Arab States and within the top 60 globally in the IDI, a composite measure that ranks 166 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills. In the Arab States, Bahrain ranked number one with an IDI of 7.40 while the UAE

jumped 14 places to earn second rank with an IDI of 7.03. Qatar was third with 7.01, followed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in fourth and Oman in fifth position with IDIs of 6.36 and 6.10, respectively.

Jamil Ezzo, Director General, ICDL Arabia, said: “These are exciting times for the ICT sector as the world is shifting towards a smarter society characterized by the integration of fresher technologies, the adoption of new standards and legislations on digital advancement, and the emergence of products and solutions for mobility, business and the likes. The recent UN study demonstrates the GCC countries leading role in the technology shift, with five GCC states joining the world’s top 60 countries in ICT development.

The UAE in particular has made a significant improvement, jumping 14 positions to its current global ranking of 32.”

CHANNEL STREET

emt Launches Market Magnitude Program For Channel Partners emt Distribution successfully concluded its inaugural Market Magnitude program in Dubai, which was attended by several SIs and resellers from Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and other emirates. Market Magnitude aims to train partners on products, technologies and concepts that impact their customer’s environment. The program is carefully crafted to suit the requirements of channel partners as well as impart knowledge and skill-sets to offer right solution rather than just selling a product. This training program focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) the fast

growing segment of the economy in UAE. “We are excited with the response from our channel partners in UAE for market Magnitude, enabling and empowering partners with training, knowledge, education, awareness, skill-sets is the focal point of emt’s partner program. Channel partners are our biggest strength and a wellinformed, well equipped channel is key to our success too.” said Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO at emt Distribution. emt plans to take this program to other parts of the ME, with Bahrain next on the list, to be followed by KSA and Qatar .

PROLOGIX TO BECOME PREMIUM PROVIDER OF CLOUD-BASED IMS Prologix will provide Cloud-based Managed Services and Network & Security Operations Services in2015.

The strategy is to flip the global infrastructure management trend to innovating. This is crucial - especially in the case of SMBs, who operate on tight IT budgets and have limited access to technically skilled resources.

Mr. Sarwan Singh, MD at Prologix said, “Our goal is SARWAN SINGH, MANAGING to establish a Center of Excellence which will be dedi- MR. DIRECTOR AT PROLOGIX cated to showcase the business availability solution, business continuity solution and excellence in customer service. What we would like to tell our customers is that the SLAs & KPIs alone are not a yardstick for us; when we enter into a Managed Services partnership with someone, we will undertake the complete responsibility of their IT network. A 100% network availability at all times will be our basic threshold. We want to take this primary but common stress off the heads of the IT managers.”

“The highlight of our Center of Excellence is the consolidation of Network and Security Operations under a single umbrella resulting in SNOC (Security Network Operations Center).

The SNOC approach reduces the investment and overhead required to manage these traditionally separate aspects of enterprise security management. This also effectively increases knowledge sharing, while decreasing the mean time to response to security threats”, Mr. Singh said.

LIVE VIDEO WILL BE THE NEW “SELFIE” BY 2017

Video and visual technologies are becoming increasingly important for interacting with customers and each other. Gartner predicts that by 2017, live video broadcasting will be the new “selfie” and recommends that product managers start creating a “visual” strategy straight away to accommodate this trend.

“The next generation of consumer services and products has one main theme in common and that is video,” said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. “This means incorporating live video or other real-time technologies into products to engage users in live events and enable more personalized communications, providing better customer support, and offering best-of-breed video and TV experiences to connected homes.”

Over the next 4 years, Gartner expects a noteworthy shift from static photos to video. Although live and user-generated video is still less accessible than static photography, it is also growing in popularity.

By 2018, 76 % of connected-home apps will be accessible from smart TVs. Connected-home services will cost 50 percent less than they do now.” The connectedhome market is showing the usual signs of nascency: low penetration, high interest mainly among technology enthusiasts, and high prices,” said Jessica Ekholm, research director at Gartner.

VEEAM CEMENTS POSITION IN UAE AFTER A SUCCESSFUL 2014 Veeam Software wrapped up its channel activities in 2014 on a high note with impressive Q3 results in the Middle East, including tripledigit percentage growth in the UAE. The company is now preparing for 2015, which is being dubbed ‘a bumper year’by most channel stakeholders.

Veeam’s Q3 2014 results for the Middle East region demonstrated a YoY revenue rise of 158%, when

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compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, revenues for the UAE rose by 118% over the same period. “2014 has been a great year for Veeam in the UAE channel.

In fact, through the course of this year, we have forged partnerships that have really strengthened our position in the GCC – we currently have over 900 clients in the ME, and are confident this figure will increase over 2015,” said Gregg

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Petersen, Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC, Veeam Software.

He added, “Currently, the UAE is leading Veeam’s growth in the Middle East region, representing about 33% of its revenue.”

“Veeam has one of the most well defined and effective partner programmes when compared to other IT vendors operating in MENA region– it is designed to educate and empower partners

to demonstrate their expertise to customers. Our understanding of what our partners need, and how to tailor our support to those needs, is what gives us our edge and has powered our growth in the channel,”said Petersen.

Looking ahead to 2015, industry pundits claim immediate opportunities for the channel lie in building a knowledge base that will help identify opportunities and projects.

CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC

“As transition to 3rd platform becomes a reality, IT departments shall innovate and fuel business transformation driving IT from a mere support function to a strategic enabler” MOHAMMED AMIN, SENIOR VP & REGIONAL MANAGER, TURKEY, EASTERN EUROPE, AFRICA, AND MIDDLE EAST, EMC

6

SECONDS

BIT9 PLUS CARBON BLACK EXTENDS REACH IN UAE

Ooredoo Algeria Reaches 3.5 Million 3G Customers in a Year

The company recently showcased Carbon

Ooredoo Algeria today 400G ultra-broadband mobile confirmed that it has access network in 2014, confirmreached the milestone of ing its leadership position in data 3.5 million 3G customers and digital lifestyle services. within the first year of the Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group launch of the service. More CEO, Ooredoo said: “Across our than 3.5 million customers footprint, Ooredoo’s companies in 25 provinces have chosen are taking the lead in providing Ooredoo’s faster and better data services that enrich our 3G network.

DR. NASSER MARAFIH, GROUP CEO, customers’ lives. Ooredoo Algeria’s OOREDOO Ooredoo Algeria also success in supporting 3.5 million became one of the first operators in the world customers within the first year of its 3G services to achieve network throughput of 63MB per launch demonstrates once again that Ooredoo second, and the first operator in Africa to deploy holds the leadership position in this area.”

Carbon Black in its Advanced Endpoint Threat

Black’s modern features before industry leaders, stakeholders and prospective clients in a highlevel seminar in Dubai. The solution’s real-time detection and response capabilities were also highlighted during the event through the presentation delivered by Dell SecureWorks, which uses Detection (AETD) managed service.

OOREDOO, GSMA AND SOUKTEL PROMOTE DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN MENA Ooredoo is working with the GSMA and Souktel Mobile Solutions to develop new partnerships and enhance current strategies to manage disaster preparedness, following the first-ever Middle East Summit on Mobile Technology and Crisis Response.

INFOR AND E3 JOINT SPONSORS OF HIMSS MIDDLE EAST Infor joined with E3, its specialist healthcare

CANON ME HIGHLIGHTS COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AT PARTNER CONFERENCE

partner for the Middle East, as gold sponsors of

Canon Middle East held its 2014 Partner Conference in Dubai under the theme “One” which highlighted the importance of open communication, new possibilities and extending horizons through enhancing Canon Services.

Anurag Agrawal, Managing Director, Canon Middle East said: “The annual partner conference is a critical event for Canon Middle East in that it provides us with the opportunity to speak openly with partners on their achievements and challenges. The new communication strategy is an extension of the conference and will provide a platform to pursue new possibilities and extend our reach to ensure mutual success.

“A united approach with our partners will enable us to achieve high levels of growth as we continue to focus on a complete business and value proposition that will bring us closer to our markets and meet customer demands. We will also continue to focus on emerging markets, particularly in Africa where Canon is enhancing its operations.”

Dubai on 17-18th December 2014. “The healthcare

this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference, (HIMSS) in industry is growing well in the region. According to Gartner, Healthcare providers in the Middle East and North Africa will spend US $3 billion on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 1.3 percent over 2013 revenues, said Giuseppe Catania, Healthcare Industry manager for the Middle East, Infor.

CITYMAX HOTELS LEVERAGES ARUBA NETWORKS’ WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE Citymax Hotels, the hospitality division of the UAE’s Landmark Group, has leveraged Aruba

APPLICATION ECONOMY CREATES OPPORTUNITY FOR MIDDLE EAST According to Diyaa Zebian, Regional Director for Lower Gulf and Levant, CA Technologies MENA “We live in an Application Economy. In order to succeed in this new reality, all business across industries are challenged by the need to innovate and develop and deliver superior user experiences that engage customers and employees, and it´s all enabled by software”.

The recent study by CA Technologies reveals that there are clear financial benefits for companies embracing the application economy. Companies identified as leaders in this study have seen double the revenue growth, 68% higher profit growth, and 50% more revenue.“DevOps has become a focal point for organizations that recognize the key role that the Application Economy will play in line with the Middle East’s long-term technology-enabled development agenda,” says Zebian.

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Networks’ wireless infrastructure to establish ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks in its Al Barsha and Bur Dubai properties.

BROTHER LAUNCHES NEW MULTIFUNCTION CENTRES IN ME Brother has launched in the Middle East its latest range of inkjet MFCs. The two new models, MFCJ2320 InkBenefit and MFC-J2720 InkBenefit, provide users with a wide range of functionalities that have been customized for business use while also keeping prices affordable.

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CHANNEL STREET

Ooredoo Enhances its Focus on Business Services

Ooredoo at the ITU Telecom results for both. Our World event in Doha outlined portfolio ranges from the group’s progress. The Group connectivity to cloud believes that it has the potential and hosting solutions, to further grow its share of the through to innovaUSD10 billion B2B market. tive new areas like Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group machine-to-machine OOREDOO BUSINESS LAUNCH CEO at Ooredoo said: “Our communications. We Group strategy is built upon putting the needs believe that Ooredoo can take a leadership posiof our customers and operations first, and it is tion across our footprint in the B2B market – and clear that an enhanced focus on business services our continued investment in business will further is currently and will continue to deliver strong accelerate our performance.”

MANAGE ENGINE SERVICE DESK PLUS INTGRATED WITH ZOHO REPORTS ManageEngine’s ServiceDesk Plus is now integrated with Zoho Reports. This lets users easily analyze their IT service desk data as well as create insightful reports and visually rich dashboards for informed decision-making. “ Analysis and insightful recommendations are scarce in IT service desk environments,” said Clarence Rozario, Director of Product Management at Zoho. “With the Zoho Reports integration, IT managers using ServiceDesk Plus can keep track of the key metrics that matter and demonstrate the value of their IT service desk operations in tangible terms to the stakeholders involved.”

MCAFEE ‘THINK BIG’ PARTNER SUMMIT 2014 McAfee’s 4th annual Partner Summit providing channel partners the opportunity to engage with McAfee executives and customers. Highlights of the new partner program include simplified solution competencies, and removal of the need for partners to complete Baseline Certifications.

In 2014 McAfee identified enablement as an area of focus and tripled its investment and drove a 40+ percent increase in Continuing Education participation. The next phase of enablement enhancements are Cloud Runner Platform, Post-Sales Services Enablement and creating a service delivery specialization. The Partner 360 Dashboard provides partners with a detailed analysis of their performance and profitability, allowing them to make better business decisions. McAfee is committed to helping channel partners make money and more easily turn prospects into leads. To help drive this effort, McAfee has made a significant investment in a new marketing platform as part of the McAfee SMARTmarketing initiative.

SAUDI CIOS TO INVEST MORE IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES More than 80% of Saudi-based CIOs expect their IT budgets to increase over the next 12 months. “The rising budgets will inevitably translate into an increase in overall ICT spending, with the primary drivers being investments in the 3rd Platform for innovation and growth, namely cloud, mobile, social, and big data technologies,” says Hamza Naqshbandi, senior manager for IT services at IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa. “Additionally, the survey found that Saudi organizations are gradually opening up to the idea of engaging third parties to take over the management of their IT environments.”

Private cloud remains one of the top priorities in a bid to drive organizational efficiency and productivity, and thereby gain a competitive advantage. The most common drivers of cloud adoption include cost savings due to better resource utilization, quick deployment and maintenance, and scalability.

On the other hand, demand for public cloud remains low, with CIOs still put off by the security risks. However, demand is expected to pick up slowly. Mobility also features high on the list.

Meanwhile, 67% identified the management of IT security as a key concern for the future. Another commonly cited cause of frustration was the scarcity of advanced IT skills in the region, with CIOs facing extreme difficulty in finding and retaining qualified talent for critical emerging technologies such as mobility and analytics.

SAP DELIVERS NETWORKED ECONOMY SOLUTIONS Samsung Electronics and SAP plan to deliver enterprise mobility solutions for a number of industries – starting with Retail, Oil and Gas, Finance, and Healthcare – to create an enterprise mobility ecosystem building on Samsung’s mobile innovations and the SAP Mobile Platform.

Developers can build solutions that leverage the integration between Samsung and SAP on

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SAM ALKHARRAT, PRESIDENT, SAP MENA.

mobile devices and wearables, and cloud solutions based on the SAP

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HANA Cloud Platform mobile services.

SAP is also planning to combine insight with customer engagement to help marketers deliver increased precision, new audiences, and more conversions. By using Facebook’s scalable Custom Audiences targeting capability with SAP solutions for customer engagement, businesses can quickly and cost-effectively scale their campaigns and e-commerce.

“The Middle East has one of the world’s highest mobile device penetration rates, and that is why we are confident these partnerships with major technology industry leaders will help our customers in the region push the envelope of networked economy and unleash innovative customer engagement models,” said Sam Alkharrat, President, SAP MENA.

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CHANNEL STREET

Infor Cloud Suite Tailored for Food and Beverage Infor Cloud Suite Food & Beverage will provide food and beverage manufacturing customers with access to applications in a cloud environment. It offers customers a flexible approach for hosting applications, with a lower upfront IT investment and a subscription-based delivery model. Powered by AWS, Infor CloudSuite combines a beautiful software experience with a strong layer of industry functionality. “Process manufacturers are constantly

MIKE EDGETT, INDUSTRY & SOLUTION STRATEGY DIRECTOR, PROCESS MANUFACTURING, INFOR

searching for an edge to help reduce costs and increase

efficiency, Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage offers a meaningful resource to improve responsiveness and ensure that they always have access to the latest technology from Infor,” said Mike Edgett, industry & solution strategy director, Process Manufacturing, Infor. “Infor is dedicated to providing customers with the most flexible solutions that achieve both immediate and future operations-related savings, without sacrificing the reliability of the technology.”

WEB CLIPS CANON SUPPORTS NEXT GENERATION OF FILMMAKERS Canon ME supported budding young filmmakers and aspiring cinematographers at the 11th edition of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) through hosting a workshop to enhance their knowledge and skills on DSLR cameras, encouraging them to fulfil their cinematic aspirations.

SALES OF SMARTPHONES GREW AGAIN IN THIRD QUARTER OF 2014 Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users were flat in the third quarter of 2014, according to Gartner. However, sales of smartphones to end users grew 20.3 percent to reach 301 million units.

EPSON LAUNCHES SURECOLOR LARGEFORMAT PRINTERS Epson has launched a new range of high-speed, four-colour large-format SureColorSC-T printers

RIVERBED TO BE ACQUIRED BY THOMA BRAVO

designed for a variety of graphics, CAD and GIS

Riverbed Technology has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo and Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investor department of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Under the terms of the agreement, Riverbed stockholders will receive $21.00 per share in cash, or a total of approximately $3.6 billion.

“With the benefit of Thoma Bravo’s knowledge and insights, combined with the added flexibility we will have as a private company, Riverbed will be able to focus on reaching the next level of growth, which will benefit our employees, customers and partners” said Jerry M. Kennelly, chairman and CEO of Riverbed.

shop, architecture, building, engineering, retail

applications within design, commercial print, copy and education environments.

CYBEROAM HOSTS MEET FOR QATAR PARTNERS Cyberoam conducted a successful Partner Meet for its partners in Qatar. The event was attended by more than 50 Cyberoam partners from the region.

MOVEMENTS KRISTIAN THYREGOD, has been promoted to SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT SALES, RIVERBED in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

JUSTIN HARVEY has joined the executive leadership team of RESOLUTION1 SECURITY as CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER. SNB IT Distribution has appointed MUNAF CHOUGULEY as its new CEO.

DR. FRANK HEINRICHT is the New CHAIRMAN of the SENNHEISER supervisory board.

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EPICOR POSITIONED AS A VISIONARY IN THE MAGIC QUADRANT YET AGAIN

NUMBER GAME

Epicor has been positioned by Gartner in the

60

%

of organizations said high start-up costs are a main factor in the delay of implementing 3D printing strategies

“Visionaries” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Single-Instance ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies based on the evaluation of its next-generation Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Epicor ERP version 10.

METABYTE TECHNOLOGIES TEAMS UP WITH METRIC STREAM According to Salil Dighe, CEO of Meta Byte Technologies, “Risk, compliance and quality management programs are core components of any business. Together, Meta Byte Technologies and MetricStream will enable companies in the region to establish and strengthen integrated risk, compliance, and quality management programs by providing next generation technology solutions and expert guidance”.

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CHANNEL STREET

Avaya Ushers in Era of Engagement Avaya has unveiled new communications solutions that address multi-channel communication preferences, while meeting enterprise security, availability, manageability and scalability requirements.

The new “Avaya Engagement Solutions” include innovative technologies that connect locations and functions across the enterprise, integrate communicationsenabled applications into workflows and support

the seamless migration from desk to mobile. Avaya, together with its expanded partner ecosystem, which today now includes Google is ushering in a new “Era of Effortless Engagement,” where natural communications preferences co-exist with enterprise requirements to forge deeper connections between people, and unlock higher levels of productivity and profitability.

DUBAI POLICE JOINS DSG’S MY ID SERVICE Dubai Police has joined DSG ’s MyID service, bringing to 10 the number of entities participating in the service.

Dubai Police customers can now register in the service to obtain a single sign-on which gives them access to a large array of services provided by the police through smart phones. H.E. Ahmad Bin Humaidan, Director General of Dubai Smart Government, said: “Dubai Smart Government strives to provide the H.E. AHMAD BIN HUMAIDAN, infrastructure and shared services to enable government entities DIRECTOR GENERAL OF DUBAI to give the public smooth access to their services round the clock SMART GOVERNMENT wherever they are, thereby contributing effectively to full transformation into smart government.”

INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE STREAMLINES AVERDA CUSTOMER SERVICE HOTLINE Averda has successfully deployed the company’s all-in-one Customer Interaction Center TM(CIC) software solution to support the 800-AVERDA customer service hotline. The contact centre’s operations are based in Dubai and support the UAE, Qatar and Oman with plans to extend the service to Saudi Arabia in the next few months.

“Our objective has always been to provide a seamless customer service experience to averda customers,” said Fabio Di Capua, IT Director, Averda. “In order to address our functional, reporting and user interface business requirements, we were in need of a robust call centre solution that would be flexible, scalable, globally accepted and cost effective, and having evaluated several solutions, we’ve chosen Interactive Intelligence’s solutions as it will allow us to continue to provide customers with the highest level of services.”

RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX FOR SAP HANA ACROSS OPEN HYBRID CLOUD Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the SAP HANA platform is now available for customers to deploy across the open hybrid cloud, including via public cloud providers certified by Red Hat. The additions of new cloud provider partners through the Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider program, as well as new SAP-certified hardware provides customers with an extensive choice of deployment options .

Jim Totton, VP and GM, Platforms Business Unit, Red Hat says, “By extending Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA to the public cloud, we are providing a stable, secure and reliable platform for deployments of SAP HANA across the breadth of the open hybrid cloud. These cloud-based offerings, combined with additional certified providers and configurations of hardware for SAP HANA deliver a set of solutions to help meet the growing enterprise demand for big data applications, all standardized on the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform.”

“SAP HANA enables enterprises to focus on innovation while providing IT simplicity and customer choice.

With the expanded support from new hardware providers and cloud partners for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA, customers have even greater choice”, says Greg McStravick, general manager and global head, Database & Technology, SAP.

XEROX REDEFINES DOCUMENTS’ USAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE Xerox is delivering three new solutions to move enterprises closer to a more digital, paper-less work environment “Printing less isn’t just about using less paper – it’s about working smarter, improving productivity, connecting with clients faster and using data to bolster business,” said Mike Feldman, president, Large Enterprise Operations, Xerox.

Xerox’s Digital Alternatives

16

MIKE FELDMAN, PRESIDENT, LARGE ENTERPRISE OPERATIONS, XEROX

automates paper-based workflows within any large organization.

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The secure, intuitive interface can be deployed across Microsoft Windows-based PCs and Apple iPads. Real-time analytics of the document cycle give enterprises insight on how to better manage their migration from paper-based to digital. Printed documents remain important, but a growing number of businesses want content delivered in electronic formats too. With Xerox

ePublishing Services, clients can do both by using a common document processing workflow.

Xerox has also formed two new strategic partnerships with Hyland and Datawatch to accelerate the migration of paper to digital for government, retail, healthcare, insurance and financial services industries.

SECURE DATA

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CHANNEL STREET

Brocade and Mirantis Partner for Automated and Scalable Networks Brocade has entered into this, Brocade and Mirantis have partnership with Mirantis, partnered to provide a best-in-class to deliver a private cloud solution for cloud service providers solution that is automated, based on Mirantis OpenStack efficient, and elastic. The two distribution and Brocade networkcompanies have partnered to ing technology,” said Jason Nolet, provide a turnkey, OpenStackVice President Data Center and based, On-Demand Data Enterprise Networking, Brocade.

Center solution for service “By becoming a Mirantis JASON NOLET, VICE providers.

Technology Partner, Brocade PRESIDENT DATA CENTER AND ENTERPRISE NETWORKING, “Cloud service providers enriches the OpenStack ecosystem BROCADE. face a number of challenges with robust cloud networking” said in hosting modern data centers .To address Adrian Ionel, CEO, Mirantis.

HUAWEI HIGHLIGHTS A BETTER CONNECTED WORLD Huawei showcased its vision of “Building a Better Connected World” at the ITU Telecom World 2014 outlining a smarter lifestyle featuring futuristic 5G connectivity, ubiquitous broadband, and connected smart cities and smart homes. Mr. Ken Hu, Huawei Deputy Chairman of the Board and Rotating CEO, said,“In the future, broadband networks will continue to be the critical infrastructure to collaborate and engage in business innovation.”. “I believe that the model of innovation in the future would be featured by mesh-shaped new partnerships, enabling any party to participate and innovate. I would suggest all stakeholders to focus less on competition, but more on cooperation. The future of innovation for broadband can create diverse value for multiple winners including customers, enterprises, and investors.”

SAP DELIVERS NEW BUSINESS APPLICATIONS FOR IOT The new solutions include the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution, SAP Connected Logistics software and the SAP Manufacturing Execution application. “The IoT will be the key enabler of industry scenarios and of innovations in the digital economy,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products & Innovation. “It is converging our digital and physical worlds, which will spur new products and services, and even change business models.

BERND LEUKERT, MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF SAP SE, PRODUCTS & INNOVATION

HELP AG PARTNERS WITH SPLUNK

STEPHAN BERNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT HELP AG

Help AG has signed a reseller agreement with Splunk that will enable it to offer Splunk software, including Splunk Enterprise, to businesses in the Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE region. As per the agreement, Help AG will also deliver 24x7 local support and offer professional implementation services.

Stephan Berner, Managing Director at Help AG said, “Splunk software delivers instant visibility and analysis of data from a multitude of sources. We expect to have a very positive market response from government and private enterprises alike.”

“Help AG’s agreement with Splunk will help customers in the region experience the power of Splunk software.

The company boasts an extremely high degree of technical competence, and has been willing to invest time and effort into creating a regional support ecosystem for our market-leading solution,” said Andrew Morris, director of alliances and channels EMEA, Splunk. “Help AG enjoys strong penetration in the government and enterprise sectors and is in a good position to promote Splunk Enterprise in their ongoing business, IT and security dialogues with these customers.”

“GLOBAL” SIGNED AS AUTHORIZED MOBOTIX DISTRIBUTOR Global Distribution has signed a Distribution Agreement with MOBOTIX AG. “The MOBOTIX decentralized concept is the first to make the recording of high resolution video streams practical and cost efficient.” said Phillip Antoniou, Business Development Manager, MEA at MOBOTIX AG. “We are pleased

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to have Global to support us as Global has a great reputation in regional Channel Development and Enablement.”

“We are very proud to have MOBOTIX in our Portfolio and the opportunity for growth in the Physical Security market it offers,” said Imran Batoaq, BU Manager – IT Infrastructure & Physical

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Security for Global Distribution.

“Global’s comprehensive Enterprise

Product Portfolio now allows us to address the fast emerging “Physical Security” market in the Region. That’s another step in our efforts to ensure our Partners are able to embrace Solutions Selling and targeting specific verticals and technologies,” added Mario M. Veljovic, VP Solutions MENA at Global Distribution.

CHANNEL STREET

AUTODESK UNIVERSITY EXTENSION DUBAI 2014

DR. JAYANT DESHPANDE, DIRECTOR CAE DIVISION, OMNIX INTERNATIONAL

The third edition of Autodesk University Extension (AUx) Dubai 2014 opened on 17 December 2014 This edition had interactive workshops, demonstrations, sessions and an exhibition, under the theme, ‘Learn, Connect, Explore.’

AUx Dubai 2014 received enthusiastic response from the industry with top IT brands like Lenovo (Platinum); HP (Gold), Canon (Gold); Dell, NVIDIA, and AGA CAD (Silver) endorsing the event.

“We are very pleased with the overwhelming response for this year’s AUX Dubai, which lived up to its commitment of leading the way towards more design awareness in the UAE and the rest of the region,” said Dr. Jayant Deshpande, Director CAE Division, Omnix International. “This event has helped in establishing a creative forum for the design ecosystem in the Middle East and highlights the importance of design technology in addressing unique challenges in the region. Rest assured, we will remain steadfast in our commitment to work closely with Autodesk in helping develop a highly creative economy in the region.”

AOC Innovates to Promote Eye Health Combating health concerns such as retinal stress and macular degeneration, AOC’s Anti-Blue Light reduces harmful blue light by over 90 % without affecting colour fidelity. Flicker FREE technology prevents eye fatigue.

Excessive exposure to the blue light causes retinal stress. Past efforts towards diminishing displays’ harmful blue light were predominantly limited to software-based approaches and blocking out the blue light through filter mechanisms such as spe-

cial spectacles or cover glass in front of screens. As a result, however, users had to accept negative effects on the colour fidelity. AOC’s new Anti-Blue Light models E2276VWM6 and E2476VWM6 are based on a special LED technology, which shifts the wavelength peak from harmful 450 nm to a safer 460 nm, which reduces harmful blue light by over 90 %, whilst ensuring that just the right amount of blue light is emitted for accurate colour reproduction.

NEW CLOUD MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS FROM VMWARE VMware has facilitated the general availability of new cloud management offerings in the Middle East, including a update to VMware vRealize Suite 6 . VMware and its partner ecosystem continue to deliver new extensions to help customers simplify and automate the management of VMware and third-party technologies. . VMware will also be listing developer content on the VMware Solution Exchange.

VMware Solution Exchange provides a platform for partners and developers to build customer interest in their VMware-related solutions and for the broader management user community to share content.

STARLINK BECOMES A SPLUNK DISTRIBUTOR “With StarLink’s regional experience in security and IT operations, this agreement opens the door for Splunk software to help more organizations leverage machine data for deeper IT and business insights.” said Andrew Morris, EMEA Director of Alliances and Channels, Splunk. “Signing with Splunk is a strategic milestone for StarLink as Splunk is the undisputed leader in providing machine data insight,” said Avinash Advani, VP, AVINASH ADVANI, VP, BUSINESS Business Strategy at StarLink. “With the rapid proliferation of STRATEGY AT STARLINK connected devices, and the advent of the Internet-of-Things, monitoring and analyzing everything becomes even more critical to feed security intelligence and enable smart decision making.”

OOREDOO RECEIVES MAJOR AWARDS FROM COMMSMEA Ooredoo has received a string of awards at the CommsMEA Awards 2014, held in Dubai. The Group’s major investment in 4G and fibre technology received the prestigious “Technology Investment of the Year” award, while its ground-breaking “Simply Do Wonders” campaign with football star Leo Messi received “Marketing Campaign of the Year”.

DR. NASSER MARAFIH, GROUP CEO, OOREDOO

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Ooredoo, said: “These awards demonstrate the range and incredible impact of our initiatives across our footprint. Whether it is pioneering network technology, engaging marketing campaigns that inspire young people, or dedicated programmes to support underserved communities, Ooredoo strives to make a difference and

enrich people’s lives in every market that we operate in.”

“Ooredoo will strive to build on these achievements in 2015.

We continue to break new ground to help our customers and enable them to achieve their aspirations,” concluded Dr. Nasser Marafih.

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CIOS SPEAK

CIOS

2015 as the CIOs see it

menu of technologies is passe ; ICT providers in 2015 will be asked for the best practices to be used to translate and apply business process automation. n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

T

he year 2015 will see the transformation of the CIO to a business leader who shall be responsible for transformation of business processes, management of the resources and cultural evolution of the employees in sync with the dynamic technology trends. The CIOs will be the sacred guards of the most precious enterprise resource- data. Business intelligence will pervade board rooms.

Opportunities 2015 ICT plays a decisive role in today’s organisations as we live in a highly connected world; organisations need to respond quicker and be part of the new community to grab every business opportunity. While the technology evolves and process

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automation becomes a mandatory requirement to all organizations, IT will be empowered to further change the business processes and apply enhancements while automating those manual processes. Dr. Jassim Haji, Director Information Technology, Gulf Air believes that ICT in 2015 will be asked for the best practices to be used for developing resources to translate and apply business process automation. Arun Tewary, VP (IT) & CIO, Emirates Flight Catering looks up to extension of enterprise solutions to smart devices, data analytics and information on demand.

Problems faced during deployment of new technologies Deploying solutions has become much easier in terms of technology and technicality. According to Dr Haji, “there will be no similar challenges to

DR. JASSIM HAJI,

DIRECTOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, GULF AIR

“The support we are expecting from ICT players is to be business partners and to integrate with the IT departments and further understand the aim of the business”

what we had 5 years back in terms of technical implementations and obstacles. However, the main problems will be how flexible for solutions to be changed or improved in a very fast manner in order to respond rapidly to market changes, and how flexible to adapt and change the solution to fit the unique business processes of the companies without jeopardizing operational work.”

Additionally, he believes that finding the right service provider to implement those solutions will be a challenge with a huge competencies expected from various service providers to be seen in the region.

Mr Tewary of EKFC feels that the main problem lies in making “oversold” solutions work. He added, “We are in the midst of implementing an eFax solution with the help of a regional IT solution provider and it turned out to be a nightmare.”

CIOS SPEAK

HOW THE ROLE OF CIOS WILL CHANGE BY 2018 “I” IN CIO MEANS INNOVATION

70

%

During the next two years, the primary role of 70% of CIOs will change from directly managing IT to becoming innovation partners.

ARUN TEWARY,

VP (IT) & CIO, EMIRATES FLIGHT CATERING

“We tried implementing an eFax solution with the help of a regional IT solution provider and it turned out to be a nightmare. The main problem lies in making “oversold” solutions work”

Key areas of investment 2015 Information security will be always the key area for investments while technology refresh and upgrades will be an option if financial and technical benefits or new business opportunities shown. Another area of investment is analytics and predictive modelling. With Big Data and the abundance of data and information, such models can provide competitive edge to companies and surpass their competitors.

Support and cooperation sought from the ICT Players ICT players must understand the business requirement’s to be able to design and implement solutions for the organizations. Presenting a menu of products is not the right way anymore for organizations .“The support we are expecting

FROM CXOS TO STRATEGIC PLANNING PARTNERS

40

%

By 2017, 40% of CIOs will rise to the challenge of becoming strategic partners—and not just act as CxOs.

from ICT players is to be business partners rather than service providers, and to integrate with the IT departments and further understand the aim of the business that they are trying to automate and enhance” says Dr Haji of Gulf Air. When talked of qualities, Mr Tewari quotes truthfulness and sincerity as the two chief attributes sought from the IT partners.

VISION 2015 The customers and competition will always shape the business methodology, hence IT shall adapt to that and the expectation for 2015 that a complete transformation to mobility will be shown by the consumers and businesses will fail for the reason of not having a mobile business solution. “Hence, the vision for 2015 will be to completely moving all consumer applications

to be fully available for mobile usage” adds Dr Haji. He continues, “In terms of technology, our plan is to implement technologies in which we see an added value to the business even though those technologies where available years back, e.g. technologies such as archiving, virtual desktop environment, virtual SAN and network virtualization. Additionally, we will be developing Internet of Things (IoT) to transform the concept itself to a business benefit that enhances our passenger journeys.” Mr Tewari targets at an all the more empowered business in the coming year.

FINALLY...

The role of CIOs is changing; keeping in line with the “survival of the fittest”, those who adapt perfectly with the changing dynamics will prove to be assets to their organizations. ë

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ANALYSTS’ VIEWS

IDC

IT budgets on a roll IDC Predicts MEA ICT Spending to Top $270 Billion in 2015; directly reflecting in higher investment in the leading trends defining the ICT domain worldwide

S

pending on ICT products and services in the Middle East and Africa will cross the $270 billion mark in 2015 and the IT market expected to grow 9% year on year in 2015, according to International Data Corporation’s predictions for the year ahead. This makes MEA the second-fastest growing market worldwide, with the SaaS segment set to perform particularly strongly, expanding 29% year on year to total.

“Converged systems will gain prominence in 2015 and serve as the building blocks to softwaredefined environments across the MEA region in 2016 and beyond,” says Megha Kumar, research manager for software at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. “In the Middle East, demand will be particularly strong from Smart City initiatives and the implementation of large-scale transportation projects, while in Africa the lack of legacy systems will enable organizations to leapfrog to the latest converged technologies as they strive to ease the pressures of ongoing skills shortages.”

IDC expects SaaS uptake to be focused on non-critical workloads such as sales, marketing, CRM, and talent management, with public cloud adoption growing in the region. However, private cloud will continue to be used for critical apps and to provision shared services. “Analytics uptake will also increase in 2015, since organiza-

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tions consider it easier to comprehend than Big Data, both in terms of technology and the value derived from the solution,” continues Kumar.”Big Data will predominantly remain an opportunistic buy in 2015 for a select band of large enterprises, and vendors will need to increase their focus on educating end users and showcasing the value gained from successful deployments if they wish this scenario to change.”

“The year 2015 is also expected to see the rise of the executive buyer, with the MEA region set to follow the worldwide trend of growing lineof-business (LoB) influence over IT spending.”

Says JyotiLalchandani, group vice president and regional MD at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. “Globally, 60% of enterprises plan to structure their IT initiatives into core IT projects and LoB IT projects,” explains Lalchandani. “The CIO will remain in control of the purse strings for the former, but the latter will be at the mercy of the relevant departmental heads. This presents a whole new target audience for the region’s vendor community and raises the prospect of even more shadow IT projects taking place, particularly around the 3rd Platform technologies of cloud, big data, mobility, and social.”

IDC’s top 10 ICT predictions for MEA in 2015: 1. MEA ICT Spending to cross USD 270 billion in 2015

2. IaaS & SaaS will begin to cannibalize & disrupt traditional software & services base 3. The need for agility will drive demand for converged systems 4. Open Data will begin to drive MEA Smart Cities to Innovate 5. Telecommunication firms in MEA will transform to become IT & Digital services players 6. Security investments will remain reactive due to 3rdPlatform uptake 7. The 3rd platform will fuel sector-wide technology innovation 8. Big Data will remain an opportunistic buy in MEA for 2015 9. Mobile will continue to drive innovation in 2015 10. Line of business will impact IT spending; the rise of the executive buyer

ICT SPENDING TO NEAR $37 BILLION IN 2015 IN KSA Spending on ICT products and services in Saudi Arabia will increase 4.6% year on year in 2015 to total $36.95 billion, according to International Data Corporation’s predictions. IT services will see the fastest growth, with the year to be characterized by growing interest in hybrid cloud solutions as the flexibility of this cloud model begins to resonate with Saudi CIOs looking for a viable and effective ‘halfway house’ between on-premise technology and remotely delivered services.

“Over the coming 12 months we expect organizations in Saudi Arabia to increase their investments in the 3rd Platform technologies of cloud, mobility, analytics, and social networking,” says Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil, IDC’s regional director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

“The expanding use of applications, mobile devices, social media, and other technologies will result in an explosion of data within many Saudi organizations, leading many of them to invest in storage infrastructure, data mining, and analytics applications. As such, demand for storage devices, BI tools, and backup and recovery solutions is expected to remain high in 2015.”

IDC’s top 10 ICT predictions for KSA in 2015: 1. The Saudi ICT market will continue to post steady growth, with spending to exceed $36 billion.

2. Regional and local government bodies will place greater focus on driving their Smart City strategies and will begin to examine the viability of various smart initiatives.

ANALYSTS’ VIEWS

MEGHA KUMAR,

RESEARCH MANAGER, SOFTWARE, IDC- MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA AND TURKEY

“LoB IT projects will be at the mercy of the relevant departmental heads.

This presents a whole new target audience for the region’s vendors community.”

3. Telecom operators will intensify their transformation efforts as regulators push for a level playing field.

4. MVNOs will change the dynamics of the consumer mobile market.

5. Next-generation access networks will drive the pervasion of the Internet of Things (IoT).

6. Hybrid cloud models will gain traction as international SaaS providers finally expand their cloud footprints.

7. Investments in business continuity and disaster recovery will gain momentum as “risk” becomes the primary driver for backup as opposed to “compliance”.

8. The majority of Saudi enterprises will continue with basic analytics tools and dashboards, as they will not consider Big Data analytics necessary.

9. Citizen services will help fuel adoption of consolidated ERP systems, and public sector organizations will begin to seek ERP with embedded analytics.

10. There will be over 16 million smartphones in use in the kingdom by the end of 2015, with a 28.0% increase in LTE device shipments, thus providing a broad user base for new operator services.

Megha Kumar, Research Manager, Software, IDC- Middle East, Africa and Turkey comments-

MARKET TRENDS 2015l Technology wise the focus will be around mobility and analytics. l Business wise are the trend is increasing LoB involvement with IT to achieve business objectives. l Consolidation and standardization of processes will drive cloud technology adoption in 2015

BIG DATA & ANALYTICS The need to leverage information for both value and strategic decision making will drive analytics uptake. There will also be the influence from lines of business who will want to use analytics to better gauge customer sentiments and make decisions to gain a competitive edge. Big Data uptake will be limited to select large enterprises.

CONVERGED SYSTEMS Initiatives such as smart cities and projects with the transportation sector will drive the uptake of converged systems. Organizations will seek these integrated systems as they seek cost savings, agility and flexibility.

CLOUD/ SAAS Software as a Service uptake will continue to rise in the region as organizations seek to use SaaS for many non-critical workloads such as HR and CRM. Security concerns will continue to drive

private cloud deployments for critical information within the public sector and BFSI. Operational workloads adoption within public cloud will intensify competition within Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors around price and service levels.

MOBILITY Mobile will continue to drive innovation in the Middle East. Smartphone and tablet penetrations rates are going to continue to increase and sectors are going to look at factors such as mobileenablement of applications and m-government will lead to more citizen services being provisioned as mobile apps. Enterprise mobility strategies and policies will see adoption but will not be as wide spread due to issues around security and device management

ICT MARKET IN THE META REGION The year 2015 is also expected to see the rise of the executive buyer, with the MEA region set to follow the worldwide trend of growing lineof-business (LoB) influence over IT spending.

Globally, 60% of enterprises plan to structure their IT initiatives into core IT projects and LoB IT projects.

The CIO will remain in control of the purse strings for the former, but the latter will be at the mercy of the relevant departmental heads.

This presents a whole new target audience for the region’s vendor community and raises the prospect of even more shadow IT projects taking place, particularly around the 3rd Platform technologies of cloud, big data, mobility, and social.” ë

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ANALYSTS’ VIEWS

GARTNER

Computing Everywhere Tops the List Gartner has highlighted the top 10 technology trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2015.

MERGING THE REAL WORLD AND THE VIRTUAL WORLD

The Internet of Things

Computing Everywhere

3D Printing

INTELLIGENCE EVERYWHERE

Content-Rich Systems

Advanced Pervasive and Invisible Analytics

Smart Machines

THE NEW IT REALITY EMERGES

Cloud/Cloud Computing

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Software-Defined applications and infrastructure

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Web-Scale IT

Risk-Based Security and Self Protection

G

artner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organization in the next three years. ”We have identified the top 10 technology trends that organizations cannot afford to ignore in their strategic planning processes,” said David Cearley. The top trends for 2015 cover three themes: the merging of the real and virtual worlds, the advent of intelligence everywhere, and the technology impact of the digital business shift.

Computing Everywhere As mobile devices continue to proliferate, Gartner predicts an increased emphasis on serving the needs of the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments, as opposed to focusing on devices alone.

Mr. Cearley says, “Increasingly, it’s the overall environment that will need to adapt to the requirements of the mobile user. This will continue to raise significant management challenges for IT organizations as they lose control of user endpoint devices. It will also require increased attention to user experience design.”

The Internet of Things The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models — Manage, Monetize, Operate and Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four “Internets.” Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the IoT has the potential to leverage these four models.

For example, the pay-per-use model can be applied to assets (such as industrial equipment), services (such as pay-as-you-drive insurance), people (such as movers), places (such as parking spots) and systems (such as cloud services).

Enterprises from all industries can leverage these four models.

3D Printing New industrial, biomedical and consumer applications will continue to demonstrate that 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.

Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics Mr. Cearley says “Organizations need to manage how best to filter the huge amounts of data coming from the IoT, social media and wearable devices, and then deliver exactly the right information to the right person, at the right

ANALYSTS’ VIEWS

time. Analytics will become deeply, but invisibly embedded everywhere.” Big data remains an important enabler for this trend but the focus needs to shift to thinking about big questions and big answers first and big data second — the value is in the answers, not the data.

Context-Rich Systems Ubiquitous embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond appropriately.

Context-aware security is an early application of this new capability, but others will emerge.

Smart Machines Deep analytics applied to an understanding of context provide the preconditions for a world of smart machines. This foundation combines with advanced algorithms that allow systems to understand their environment, learn for themselves, and act autonomously. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. Cloud/Client Computing The convergence of cloud and mobile computing will continue to promote the growth of centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device. “Cloud is the new style of elastically scalable, self-service computing, and both internal applications and external applications will be built on this new style,” says Mr. Cearley.

In the near term, the focus for cloud/client will be on synchronizing content and application state across multiple devices and addressing application portability across devices. Over time, applications will evolve to support simultaneous use of multiple devices. In the future, games and enterprise applications alike will use multiple screens and exploit wearables and other devices to deliver an enhanced experience.

Software-Defined Applications and Infrastructure Agile programming of everything from applications to basic infrastructure is essential to enable organizations to deliver the flexibility required to make the digital business work. Software-defined networking, storage, data centers and security are maturing. Cloud services are softwareconfigurable through API calls, and applications, too, increasingly have rich APIs to access their function and content programmatically. To deal with the rapidly changing demands of digital business and scale systems up — or down — rapidly, computing has to move away from static to dynamic models.

Web-Scale IT Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting. More organizations will begin thinking, acting and building applications and infrastructure like Web giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. Web-scale IT does not happen immediately, but will evolve over time as commercial hardware platforms embrace the new models and cloud-optimized and softwaredefined approaches reach mainstream. The first step toward the Web-scale IT future for many organizations should be DevOps — bringing development and operations together in a coordinated way to drive rapid, continuous incremental development of applications and services.

Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection Organizations will increasingly recognize that it is not possible to provide a 100 percent secured environment. Once organizations acknowledge that, they can begin to apply more-sophisticated risk assessment and mitigation tools. On the technical side, recognition that perimeter defense is inadequate and applications need to take a more active role in security gives rise to a new multifaceted approach. Perimeters and firewalls are no longer enough; every app needs to be self-aware and self-protecting.

Additionally, Gartner has revealed its top predictions for IT organizations and IT users for 2015 and beyond.

Gartner’s top predictions for 2015 begin to examine a shift in the age old relationships between man and machine due to the emergence of digital business. l By 2018, digital business will require 50 percent less business process workers and 500 percent more key digital business jobs, compared with traditional models.

By year-end 2016, 50 percent of digital transformation initiatives will be unmanageable due to lack of portfolio management skills, leading to a measurable negative lost market share. l By 2017, a significant disruptive digital business will be launched that was conceived by a computer algorithm.

Through 2015, the most highly valued initial public offerings (IPOs) will involve companies that combine digital markets with physical logistics to challenge pure physical legacy business ecosystems. l By 2018, the total cost of ownership for business operations will be reduced by 30 percent

through smart machines and industrialized services.

By 2015, there will be more than 40 vendors with commercially available managed services offerings leveraging smart machines and industrialized services. l By 2020, developed world life expectancy will increase by 0.5 years due to widespread adoption of wireless health monitoring technology.

By 2017, costs for diabetic care are reduced by 10 percent through the use of smartphones. l By year-end 2016, more than $2 billion in online shopping will be performed exclusively by mobile digital assistants.

By year-end 2015, mobile digital assistants will have taken on tactical mundane processes such as filling out names, addresses and credit card information. l By 2017, U.S. customers’ mobile engagement behavior will drive mobile commerce revenue in the U.S. to 50 percent of U.S. digital commerce revenue.

A renewed interest in mobile payment will arise in 2015, together with a significant increase in mobile commerce (due in part to the introduction of Apple Pay and similar efforts by competitors, such as Google increasing efforts to drive adoption of its NFC-enabled Google Wallet). l By 2017, 70 percent of successful digital business models will rely on deliberately unstable processes designed to shift as customer needs shift.

By the end of 2015, five percent of global organizations will design “super-maneuverable” processes that provide competitive advantage. l By 2017, 50 percent of consumer product investments will be redirected to customer experience innovations.

By 2015, more than half of traditional consumer products will have native digital extensions. l By 2017, nearly 20 percent of durable goods e-tailers will use 3D printing (3DP) to create personalized product offerings.

By 2015, more than 90 percent of durable goods e-tailers will actively seek external partnerships to support the new “personalized” product business models. l By 2020, retail businesses that utilize targeted messaging in combination with internal positioning systems (IPS) will see a five percent increase in sales.

By 2016, there will be an increase in the number of offers from retailers focused on customer location and the length of time in store. ë

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COVER STORY

VENDORS

Opportunities

for growth of IT in 2015 n B Y: S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

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COVER STORY

The IT landscape is changing at a faster pace than ever before. Which trends will dominate the ICT market in Middle East in 2015, which buzzwords will become reality, which technologies will emerge as the clear winners and which will undergo a decay?

Enterprise Channels MEA team talked to the leading ICT vendors in the region about the opportunities for growth in the ICT market this year and the strategies which the honchos have in place to stay ahead of the competition.

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he IT market in the region is moving towards maturity.

Many of the larger organizations have already begun laying the groundwork that will help prepare them for eventual trends such as cloud, big data, mobility and BYOD etc. What has been particularly encouraging is that questions regarding IT security are being raised right from these early stages. This is in contrast to how it was previously wherein security was more of an afterthought. The many high profile data breaches have no doubt been an eye-opener for businesses. This is definitely a global phenomenon and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s good to see that the Middle East does not lag behind in this respect.

EVOLUTION OF ICT MARKET IN MEA A report by research firm IDC forecast that this year, the Middle East will actually be one of the fastest growing IT markets in the world, with spending exceeding $32 billion. An interesting development in the region has been that while previously, it was foreign multinational organizations that were opening their branches in the Middle East, in recent years there has been a reverse trend. Today, there are a number of regional business powerhouses and conglomerates that are expanding across the globe.

Although the market is rebounding, bringing with it increased technology

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spending; those Enterprise and Operators who weathered the downturn understand the need for fiscal prudence when making technology decisions. Reduced Operational Expense (OPEX) is, therefore, the key watchword across the industry. Vendors must rise to that challenge with innovative solutions that provide controlled cost without restricting product use. This means adopting no license models, whereby customers pay operational expenses based on a fixed percentage of hardware regardless of how many features or what performance they consume.

In terms of ICT outlook for the various countries within the region, Saudi is always going to be strong with the government smart city plans and e-service initiatives. The UAE market is also going to be hot as we get closer to Expo 2020. The Expo is going to drive a lot of business. Kuwait has started showing signs of growth. Qatar has had a lot of issues geo-politically and bad press regarding the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but the fact of the matter is that Qatar will be hosting the World Cup and the focus on building infrastructure will drive revenues. Political uncertainties exist in certain pockets across the region, but these are being resolved, albeit slowly. If you look at Egypt, even though the country has its share of problems, things seem to have stabilized a bit and you are beginning to see foreign investment and business picking up again. Through instability also comes opportunity. There are huge business deals happening in Iraq as it rebuilds its infrastructure.

The META region itself has seen some dramatic growth, and meteoric performances spearheaded by the government sectors, and bolstered by the enterprise sectors as well. The SME sector has notably performed with aplomb driving overall growth across the region. As such, these business sectors have, in turn, driven growth in demand for ICT solutions across the board. The demands have not only been through an increased quantity of orders, but also shown a shift from traditional technological solutions to current industry trends of adopting mobility solutions, cloud-enabled systems, and agile networks. Moreover, digital governance has become the norm within the region, spearheading the requirement for continuous R&D, development and product upgrades from technology vendors across the board.

IT TRENDS FOR 2015 The key to success in 2015 is efficiency. IT departments must ensure that any upgrade or expansion accommodates existing needs while being capable of adapting to future technology

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advances, all while managing a demanding IT budget.

The Internet of Everything (IoE) era continues to make rapid progress in enhancing daily lives around the world, with the Middle East being no exception. The IoE era will enable a profound level of collaboration that will change the way we think, the speed by which we invent, how we connect and share information, and the extent to which we can sustain our environment. The UAE ranked an impressive No. 24 out of 148 countries, in the World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index 2014, which measures market conditions and the state of connectivity around the world.

Cloud has been trending for a while now and we’re starting to see many more cloud services being deployed in our region, so this is still a space to watch. Cloud has also been driving our understanding of data usage with latest statistics showing business is nearly doubling its use year on year. Therefore, ‘Big Data’ is fast becoming a priority in the large enterprise, government and health verticals and the networking industry must be ready with innovative solutions to meet the demand.

In 2015, a huge opportunity lies in hybrid enterprises. The enterprise is transforming into a mix of owned applications and cloud-based services, with core apps and data usually running on-premises in private data centers and other apps running in the public cloud. So the enterprise is going hybrid in terms of where and how it hosts its apps. Going hybrid offers opportunities

reduce the cost of running their business, and maximize employee productivity.

In the security domain, the main threats that we see set for 2015 are the rise in targeted attacks, ransomware and malware, and a whole new category of attacks on the new devices that are being connected to the net i.e. the internet of things.

If you look back at the security trends from 2008 till today, you will see DDoS threats are rising. For example cybercriminals have easy accessibility to botnet clients these days.

Risk awareness and risk management are 2 areas where there are many opportunities for the industry as a whole. The number of workers with access to more sophisticated mobile technology is ever increasing. On top of that we are living nowadays in world with more than 50 billion endpoints and each endpoint exposes a potential for risk. Security is and will become more critical now than ever before given the massive increase of data produced by mobile devices, the sophistication of hackers and hyper-connectedness of businesses, their customers and employees.

Domain Name System (DNS) Security is an area that we believe regional organizations will start paying greater attention to as they begin to understand the damaging consequences of inadequate security measures.

Targeted attacks are a rising trend, and next year won’t be an exception. Ransomware will be a key strategy for malware developers and it will be a more relevant threat in coming years. So clearly, there will be plenty of activity in the security domain.

THE ENTERPRISE IS TRANSFORMING INTO A MIX OF OWNED APPLICATIONS AND CLOUD-BASED SERVICES, WITH CORE APPS AND DATA USUALLY RUNNING ON-PREMISES IN PRIVATE DATA CENTERS AND OTHER APPS RUNNING IN THE PUBLIC CLOUD.

to better balance CAPEX investments in owned resources and OPEX spending on cloud-based services, and to leverage the combined capabilities of private and public clouds and networks to evolve toward a location-independent computing model. This advancement allows an enterprise to make the placement of hardware and software a business decision instead of a technical decision.

With location-independent computing, a hybrid enterprise has the flexibility to host applications and data in the locations that best serve the business while ensuring flawless application delivery to better leverage global resources, radically

With high rates of adoption across tablet and smartphone devices throughout the region’s key business markets, companies are looking for solutions to address security, efficiency and reliability of their mobile networks. Businesses that are embracing BYOD must consider the impact of Wi-Fi network capacity & coverage, network security, mobile device security and application policies.

IPv6 migration is something that simply cannot be ignored any longer. Those companies wanting to mitigate their risk are reaching out for Carrier Grade NAT to extend their IPv4 space.

COVER STORY

RABIH DABBOUSSI, GENERAL MANAGER OF CISCO UAE

and let the cloud come to them – they need to prepare for increasing cloud workloads by virtualizing their servers to create secure cloud environments.

Big Data Middle East organizations are eager to capture, manage, and analyze Big Data to drive new insights into business processes and customer insights. Smart Cities across the region are connecting millions of sensors in everyday objects to Wi-Fi networks, generating data that can be used for a wide range of services. For organizations to leverage Big Data, we recommend a three-step process for organizations: identify the data and its business need, define the data they want to collect, and most importantly – figure out how the data will be incorporated back into the business. Then organizations can identify the ICT infrastructure needed to facilitate data collection.

CISCO’S IT PREDICTIONS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST IN 2015 Rabih Dabboussi, General Manager of Cisco UAE discusses some of key the technology trends that will drive technology growth that will impact on and deliver country transformation in 2015.

Cloud Computing The Middle East and Africa is set to post the world’s highest cloud traffic growth rate, increasing more than eight-fold from 31 exabytes in 2013 to 262 exabytes in 2018, according to our Cisco Global Cloud Index (2013 – 2018). The Middle East and Africa will also post the world’s second-highest cloud data center workloads growth at 39 percent CAGR, behind only the Asia Pacific region.While this creates enormous opportunities for business innovation and growth, CIOs cannot sit back

The importance of sensor networks in the building will also grow, as buildings become more intelligent, we see the use of sensors coming into play.

In the wireless sector, we expect operators will continue to modernize their networks and upgrade to LTE while discussing more efficient future architectures. As the middle of the decade, 2015 marks the general acceptance milestone for 4G LTE, meaning the point in the technology evolution when LTE handsets and networks have become stable, generally available and cost effective. Like previous years, 2015 will be marked by continued and accelerating increases in data

Mobility Thanks to technology advancements and lower costs, the number of mobile-connected devices is set to exceed the world’s population by the end of 2014, according to our Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2013–2018.With tech-savvy youth and increasingly mobile workforces, the Middle East and Africa is set to post the world’sfastest mobile data traffic growth rate, increasing 14-fold from 2013 to 2018. As a result, the MEA is set to post world’s highest-growth rate of IPv6-capable smartphones and tablets, growing from 133 million in 2013 to almost 598 million in 2018. Already two countries in the region are leading the next wave of mobile broadband, as Qatar and Oman rank in the Top countries in the world for leading mobile network performance, according to the Cisco Global Cloud

usage. Unlike the past, it will likely occur without rising end user prices, promising increased scrutiny on network efficiency.

The data explosion that is happening globally is related to the digitalization and the amount of data generated on account of the mobility and BYOD trend. Data is growing at an exponential rate and is now being considered a strategic asset to every organization. So one of the top priorities for CIOs in the coming year will be how to manage and protect the data within the organization and how to derive business value out of their data.

Open source is becoming increasingly popular

Index (2013 – 2018) Security In the rapidly evolving world of security threats, total global threat alerts increased 14 percent year-on-year from 2012 to 2013, their highestever level, according to the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report. In particular, the Middle East’s energy, oil, and gas sector seeing a sharp rise in malware attacks.

Middle East organizations need to secure their network beyond the data center to every connected object and device to provide insights before, during, and after a cyber-attack. This is especially true in the region’s Smart Cities, in securing critical infrastructure like homes, power stations, and airports.

Video collaboration The Middle East’s is increasing adopting interoperable, scalable, and cost-effective video collaboration solutions, especially in education, healthcare, and government services.With more than 93 per cent of meeting rooms globally are not equipped with high-quality video, there is a strong opportunity for Middle East organizations to adopt video collaboration to hold global meetings with employees, and seal key deals with customers.

Data Center In MEA,traditional data center traffic will drop from 55% in 2013 to 28% of total data center traffic by 2018, while consumer will grow from 24% in 2013 to 66% of traditional data center traffic in 2018.Middle East data centers of the future will need to dynamically deliver business critical applications. Virtualized data centers provide a flexible foundation, with the next step providing centralized visibility of all applications and systems. ë

in the region, not just because of its cost effectiveness and lack of vendor lock-in, but because customers are finding that it results in better innovation and flexibility. Enterprises and SMBs are beginning to test the waters with open source and consider investing. OpenStack is poised to see greater adoption in 2015 across various verticals on account of the fact that it provides enterprises with the ability to innovate.

In the application development space, DevOps became a popular concept in 2014. It can be expected that Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will become increasingly used in 2015 to help maximize the benefits of DevOps. ë

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ESET- COMPREHENSIVE SMART SECURITY VISION 2015 We continuously work on new protection technologies and improvements of our existing ones. We are focusing on strengthening our position in the business segment and also in the mobile space.

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 Mobile Security & Encryption

PRADEESH VS, GENERAL MANAGER, ESET MIDDLE EAST

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 One of our focus areas will be in further developing and enabling our channel. Our channel strategy flourished in 2014 with the introduction of our ESET Partner Program. We have been extremely happy with the response we have

received from our partners in different countries.

We are currently working towards enhancing this partner program which will no doubt make it even more attractive to our valued partners.

MARKET PRESENCE We already have a very strong presence in the Middle East. In 2014, ESET Middle East recently moved its regional office in Dubai Internet City to a larger office area. This permits us to hold partner and customer trainings at our office itself which is helping us deepen our engagement. We also manage an extensive partner network in 11 countries: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan Egypt and Libya.

HUAWEI - CONNECTING PEOPLE, THINGS AND IDEAS VISION 2015 Huawei is committed to creating more efficient, integrated information systems that connect people, things, and ideas together to help individuals to communicate more freely.

IHABGHATTAS, ASSISTANT PRESIDENT OF HUAWEI MIDDLE EAST

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l Aligning ICT solutions between telecom operators and various enterprise verticals like education, healthcare, and transportation— meeting the ambitions of regional Smart City initiatives and empowering organizations to be more agile in service innovations. l As people want to go online anytime, any-

where, and via any device, Huawei is dedicated to delivering ubiquitous broadband by expanding network capacity, enhancing network enablement and optimizing network management. l Individuals and businesses in the MEA region expect services to be simple and easy to use. Giving customers the chance to enjoy more inspired experiences will be a key focus for Huawei as we provide an even broader range of quality consumer devices alongside more personalized business support systems and operation support systems for operators.

FIRE EYE – INNOVATIVE ADVANCED THREAT PROTECTION VISION 2015 Our vision is to become the de-facto solution standard for advanced cyber threat market.

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 We plan to invest in – l Additional local direct sales resources l Local cyber forensic analysts and l Customer support

RAY KAFITY, VICE PRESIDENT MIDDLE EAST TURKEY AND AFRICA (META) FIREEYE

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GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 We are targeting almost 100% year over year growth. Channels are going to play an increased value in the cyber solution delivery eco system.

We target to expand our market in all sectors of the economy (Government, telecomunication, finance & banking, health & education). Protecting national infrastructure and critical assets of major governments across the META is going to be our prime driver of growth. Channels are going to play an increased role in cyber delivery ecosystem.

MARKET PRESENCE We will emphasize more emphasis on GCC, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Africa regions.

We are considered the leading security vendor for advanced cyber threat prevention solutions.

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RIVERBED-ON THE WAY TO HYBRID ENTERPRISE VISION 2015 Our goals include growing our customer base in the key markets of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt; and deepen ties with our channel partners and Riverbed Technology Alliance partners. Our vision for 2015 is to ensure that we keep these initiatives and objectives on track.

From a technology perspective, our focus in 2015 will be on helping customers leverage Riverbed Application Performance platform to transition to the hybrid enterprise model.

ELIE DIB, HEAD OF CHANNELS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY, NORTH, WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA (METNA) REGION AT RIVERBED

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 Our strategy entails engaging more deeply with a select group of ‘focused’ channel partners; and strengthening local ties with Riverbed Technology Alliance (RTA) partners such as EMC, VMware and Microsoft with the intention of creating joint opportunities.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 Growing from our market leading position as the leader in the WAN optimization domain, we now intend to focus on Riverbed SteelCentral and Riverbed SteelFusion solutions. By diversifying our product portfolio, we have been able to extend our conversation with new and existing partners. This is helping them find new ways in which to enhance and optimize their application and network performance while reducing OPEX and total cost of ownership (TCO).

We are particularly keen on working together with regional telecom providers.

MARKET PRESENCE Riverbed Technology already has a significant presence in the METNA region. Our focus will therefore lie in extending our presence and further developing our channel in key markets.

These include Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A10 NETWORKS- OPTIMIZING PERFORMANCE WITH PARTNERS VISION 2015 The A10 Thunder TPS product line of Threat Protection Systems and our virtualization products are going to be key drivers for growth for our company in this region.

GLEN OGDEN, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AT A10 NETWORKS

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l We are going to continue to invest in new partner programme called Affinity. l We are going to be rolling out the professional services accreditation programme. l We are going to be doing a lot more localization. We are going to invest a lot in partner and end-user training such as advanced security training programmes etc. l As always we continue to invest directly with our partners, for example our Marketing Development Fund allows partners with our approval to accelerate sales through demand generation activities or customer activities. We are also looking to work closely with our partners to raise their profile in the regional media.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 Government spending on smart city initiatives; the frenetic pace of construction with office buildings, hotels etc all requiring network capabilities;IPv6 migration; the transition to the

cloud with its challenges of maintaining availability of applications, scaling current infrastructure, consolidating resources and staff requirements, and keeping networks secure will all drive opportunities for A10 Networks in 2015.

A10 Thunder CGN product line of Carrier Grade Networking gateways provide high-performance, highly transparent address and protocol translation that allows enterprises and service providers to extend their IPv4 network connectivity, while simultaneously making the transition to IPv6.

This is another area of opportunity that we see.

We shall continue to listen to our partners, understand what it is that they need in order to survive in their economic environment and to deliver on those needs in order to help them attain success.

MARKET EXPANSIONS Qatar with the World Cup is certainly becoming a growth market and Egypt as well, as things are beginning to stabilize there. The Middle East as a region is thriving at the moment. We are mindful of the fact that there is not point rushing after new markets. We will instead focus and consolidate in the markets where we have already made investments and grow those markets by looking after our existing customer base while acquiring new ones.

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ARUBA NETWORKS- FINE TUNING MOBILITY VISION 2015 We will be constantly listening to the needs of the market and our customers and will keep fine-tuning our strategy in line with that.

OSAMA ALHAJ-ISSA, CHANNEL DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AND TURKEY AT ARUBA NETWORKS

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l It is our strategy to establish and develop partnerships both horizontally by partnering with leading technology vendors to co-develop integrated solutions and vertically through partner education and training. l We will keep conducting our roadshows like we did in 2014 and our annual EMEA ‘Airheads’ conference encourage partners from this region to attend this very informative and interactive event where they can get trained and share ideas.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 The 2014 Wired and Wireless LAN Magic Quadrant was recently published and Aruba has now captured the #2 spot based on its ‘completeness of vision’ and ‘ability to execute’. Combined with the Gartner NAC Magic Quadrant, we are now in select company … a vendor that enjoys “Leader” status in multiple Gartner MQs!Aruba

Mobility-Defined Networks solution addresses all the challenges of BYOD and as such we believe that there will be a huge uptake of our solutions in 2015.

Aruba Networks started paying special focus on SME market and that took off very nicely and was a strong market for us in the past few months and we expect big opportunities for us in this segment in the coming year as well.

We saw spectacular business growth last year globally and in the ME were we exceeded 33% YOY and we expect the same kind of aggressive growth in the coming year as well.

MARKET PRESENCE We will continue to focus and consolidate our position in the countries where we already have an investment. Aruba’s Middle East regional operations are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a regional base in Dubai, UAE and Istanbul, Turkey.

Countries served by Aruba are UAE, KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Turkey.

BLACKBERRY- DELIVERING VALUE WITH INNOVATION VISION 2015 BlackBerry’s vision is to simply and securely enhance the collaboration and productivity of corporations, countries and the individuals who shape the world.

NADER HENEIN, BLACKBERRY SECURITY DIRECTOR

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l We will continue to focus on our core strengths of security, productivity, communication & collaboration and transforming mobile. We have more than 44.000 patents, a suite of smartphones, the most secure enterprise mobility management platform, a global deployed embedded solution and a popular messaging service. l With a cash and investment balance of $3.1 billion we are well positioned to leverage these assets for acquisitions that help deliver value and position the company move into in growth areas such as healthcare and finance, and other regulated industries that put a premium on security.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 With a global enterprise customer base exceeding our top three enterprise mobility competitors

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combined, we remain the leader in mobile-device management - not just BlackBerry devices, but all devices across our competitors too. We are determined to bring secure enterprise mobility management to more segments and expand our management capabilities to more end-points that only smartphones and tablets. In addition, we continue to be the number one player for customers who care about productivity and enterprise mobility.

Our senior leadership has defined a clear vision and re-engineered the company to focus on our core strengths of security, productivity, communication & collaboration and transforming mobile. In 2015 we will be further capitalizing on these core strengths, continue to invest in R&D and bring new innovations to market. We believe in 2015 and beyond BlackBerry will continue to be the number one player for customers who care about productivity and enterprise mobility.

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CANON MIDDLE EAST- ENHANCING PROXIMITY TO THE MARKETS VISION 2015 Our united approach with partners and strategic focus for the year ahead will amplify our current success while bringing us closer to our markets to meet customer demands.

ANURAG AGRAWAL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CANON ME

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 Canon has outlined a strategic focus on extending new business opportunities by concentrating on refining services such as MPS, Management Document Services and new consumer services such as photo printing and cloud platforms for image management.

meet customer demands.

MARKET PRESENCE In December we held our annual Partner Conference in Abu Dhabi which brought together over 150 partners from 46 countries in the Middle East and Africa. There, we presented a new communication strategy focused on sharing feedback with partners and facilitating decisions in a dynamic market that requires constant evaluation and modifications to customer approach.

We will also continue to focus on emerging markets, particularly in Africa where Canon is enhancing its operations.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 A united approach with our partners will enable us to achieve high levels of growth as we continue to focus on a complete business and value proposition that will bring us closer to our markets and

COMM SCOPE- REDEFINING AGILITY FOR ENTERPRISES VISION 2015 For 2015 we will continue to evolve our Wireless and Enterprise portfolio under the CommScope brand. As much as technology changes, our goal remains the same: to help our customers create, innovate, design, and build faster and better. We’ll never stop connecting and evolving networks for the business of life at home, at work, and on the go.

JIM CURRAN, VP ENTERPRISE SALES AT COMMSCOPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l We remain focused on advanced networking solutions. This is a long-term approach to the development and enhancement of network infrastructure, with the ability to intelligently manage all key resources – assets, space, power, network ports, cooling, and network services – with maximum efficiency. l The key technologies we will focus on are Intelligent Buildings, Data Centres, and the move towards 10, 40 and 100G and Wireless networks.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 CommScope recently acquired two companies with adjacent technologies that fit the needs of our customers; Redwood Systems and iTRACS. For the coming year we are looking at achieving a

high single digit growth.

MARKET PRESENCE CommScope’s operations in the Middle East date back more than 30 years and we have continued to invest in the region in recent years. One of our biggest advantages is our partner community.

With over 2500 business partners around the globe we are able to partner with and deploy our solutions in any corner of the globe and the MEA region is no different as we have active, highly trained partners across the region. Our partners provide best in class integration services for our customers.

Coverage is also an advantage we have, with over 50 CommScope personnel in the region to support our partners and customers. We also have our Executive Briefing Center in our UAE HQ where we host customers and demonstrate our current and future technologies.

We have made great progress in Angola and Kuwait, new markets which have shown strong growth in 2014. Aside from those, KSA, Qatar, UAE remain the leaders.

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COMM VAULT- SOLVING FORWARD VISION 2015 We are expecting huge growth as per our pipeline and forecasts. We are aligning everything -from our internal back office and operations, go-tomarket channel and OEM alliances, marketing as well as coverage in terms of support, sales, pre-sales and implementation services, so that we can meet our client’s demands. Our vision is to consolidate our standing as a leading information management solutions provider.

BASSAMHEMDAN, AVP AT COMMVAULT

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l Cloud is going to be an investment area. l We are going to be enabling Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in the market to offer Backup as a service, Archive as a service etc and that is definitely a big focus area. l Another area will be to focus on our go-tomarket with our OEM partners where we see good growth potential. l We will also continue to focus on marketing, branding and pipeline filling activities.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 The four pillars namely data protection, data archiving, virtual environment protection and end-to-end data protection are definitely going to be growth drivers Looking at the immense opportunities, we are targeting 60% growth in 2015.

MARKET PRESENCE We are expanding our presence in the North Gulf – Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain as well as expanding our coverage in the South Gulf which is UAE, Oman and Yemen. We are definitely reaching out and growing the Saudi market. We have outlined 5 major markets in the region – UAE, KSA, Qatar, Turkey and South Africa and we are increasing our investment in all these countries.

DELL – MINIMIZING COMPLEXITY, MAXIMIZING BUSINESS VISION 2015 Going private allowed Dell to form a much closer relationship with our Partner ecosystem.

Dell values Channel Partners and understands the huge advantage they bring in their regional markets as well as their domains. This year – with the significant developments at Dell, the company will improve channel programs for the Middle East to help Partners accelerate their business and improve their capabilities and expertise around Dell Enterprise and Dell Software.

SHAMS HASAN, ENTERPRISE PRODUCT MANAGER, DELL MIDDLE EAST

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KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l From a geographic perspective, the META markets region is growing quickly for Dell and for Dell Software in particular. Our goal is to work closely with our Channel Partners in order to increase our sales footprint in the region and to grow sales exponentially. I l n addition, we have powerful opportunities for growth all over META in several key lines of business, including data protection and network security. l We will build on the foundation of Dell’s powerful and robust hardware partner community

selling millions of server, storage, and networking solutions every year. l Finally, the identity and access management space is another compelling area of focus for Dell Software and our Channel Partners.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 The IT industry is going through interesting developments as some of our competitors go through mergers, acquisitions, and splits. Dell is steadfast in its strategy. We are here to offer customers end-to-end solutions, to simplify their lives, and give them the power to do more. And the results from last year would agree! Needless to say, we are expecting to carry this momentum into 2015, and are confident our growth trajectory is best placed and fit for what the Middle East asks for, needs, and must have!

MARKET PRESENCE The Dell brand enjoys a privilege and trust with Customers as being amongst the first-choice in all markets when considering IT requirements or business challenges that require technology solutions.

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CYBEROAM - TURNING CHANNEL PARTNERS INTO SECURITY EXPERTS VISION 2015 To strengthen our reach and image as a leading network security player is a primary goal. We are geared to emerge as a trusted network security partner. Our roadmap is not confined only to building innovative and future-ready network security for our customers,we also want to enable security practices and contribute towards creating cyber-security knowledge capital and skilled manpower for MEA. RAVINDER JANOTRA, REGIONAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, CYBEROAM

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l We are increasing our footprint in the cloud and several announcements will be made soon in this regard. l Meanwhile, we will continue to partner more organizations and customers, including enterprise and government offices from various verticals and support emerging network security needs, enabling future-ready defence for their evolving requirements. l Moreover, we are also enabling new opportunities to our channel partners while expanding our MEA ecosystem with extensive offerings, product

line and cutting edge expertise. l We see proactive SMBs making ambitious moves and turning early adopters of emerging IT technologies, and they could be from any domain.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 For MEA, our growth targets for the year are based on general market outlook, which seems to be pretty positive in middle and long term. As IT reaches more people in small businesses, cyber criminals will see new opportunities for malicious campaigns and hacking attacks. And this is where we see an increase in demand for reliable nextgeneration network security solutions.

MARKET PRESENCE We are constantly expanding our partner network and have made significant push towards the same in emerging economies around the world. At the same time our venture in mature markets such has North America has also been successful. This year all we will capitalize more on these markets.

FOCUS SOFTNET - YOUNG, AGILE AND FUTURISTIC VISION 2015 Vision 2015 – “To develop, mobilize and deploy robust business governance and business intelligence solutions on cutting-edge platforms and technologies, empowering client organizations across the globe with real-time and critical business data on mobile and cloud platforms, enabling them to getter govern their businesses on the move”

ROHAN TEJURA, AVP - FOCUS SOFTNET

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l 2015 will be the year of product enhancement, diversification, and roll out. l Moreover, Focus 8 with its capabilities of addressing both generic industries, and bring with it vertical specific expertise, is poised to provide vertical specific solutions to a variety of industries including real estate, hospitality, retail, and warehousing, among others. l The development will be also across platforms, embracing and rolling out greater enhancements on the mobile and cloud platforms providing an all-inclusive environment of business governance and intelligence to client organizations.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 Focus Softnet has just launched its latest, cuttingedge and state-of-the-art high end ERP system, Focus 8, poised at the top spectrum of the Tier 2 and even the Tier 1 markets. With growing demands for such systems within the enterprise and SME markets, Focus is targeting a significant growth, not just in revenues, but market acquisition, territorial expansion, product enhancement, and growth in the scale and spectrum of solutions and services offered. As such, 2015 has all the hallmark makings of a significant year for Focus.

MARKET PRESENCE Within the META region itself, especially Africa, there are many individual countries, ranging from small to large, that are being driven by growth demands. Interestingly enough, these demands are emerging from the government sectors, which are in turn boosting businesses within the enterprise and SME markets alike. Africa will certainly feature on the Focus Radar for 2015 among other regions within the Asia Pacific, European and North American markets.

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EPICOR - INNOVATION WITH EXCELLENCE VISION 2015 In 2015 Epicor will continue to focus on growth.

We have a range of industry-leading solutions.

Coupled with our deep industry knowledge, a feature-rich, true multi-tenant platform and unmatched global capabilities Epicor is in an ideal position to take advantage of the increasing opportunities for growth. We also have a large base of loyal customers and great employees worldwide that are poised to deliver on this vision.

ANISH KANARAN, CHANNEL DIRECTOR FOR EPICOR IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & INDIA

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l Providing deployment choice. l Focus on the user experience l Anywhere, anytime access to ERP data from any device l Mobility especially for ERP l BYOD - It’s important that an ERP solution provides support that enables customers to use their device of choice, while having a consistent experience and be able to enjoy the full benefits of

the specific device they’re using. l ERP solutions will become more agile, more adaptive and more flexible—all of which lowers the total cost of ownership and encourages business to think more strategically about how they can use technology to drive competitive advantage.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 We are looking at strengthening our regional presence by adding more customers and new channel partners. Also in 2015 we are also looking at bringing some new products to the region.

MARKET PRESENCE We already have good geographical presence is most of the major economies in the region.

INFOBLOX - TRUSTED DNS ADVISERS VISION 2015 To become the platform of choice enabling various sectors deemed as national critical infrastructure to visualize, control and protect critical IT assets. Critical national infrastructure includes industries like oil & gas, manufacturing, banking and finance, government and utilities, logistics, healthcare and education.

CHERIF SLEIMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST AT INFOBLOX

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KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l In technology terms, we will continue to focus and invest in developing our technologies in security, virtualization and cloud l Functionally, we will continue to invest in our partner landscape as we have been doing successfully in the past and help them develop capabilities and specialization in security, virtualization and cloud. We have already experienced great success in creating ‘Centers of Excellence’ at some partners who have exceptional Infoblox capabilities and we carry almost the full commercial burden of making this happen. This enables partners to focus on ramping up on the technology rather than finding the money to do so.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 Infoblox being the only vendor worldwide to provide holistic end-to-end DNS security and defense against the widest range of DNS-based attacks such as volumetric, exploits, and DNS hijacking attacks, this is a big area of opportunity for Infoblox in 2015.

Infoblox has been experiencing aggressive growth in this region during past 2 years and we see a further acceleration in 2015.

MARKET PRESENCE In geographical terms, we will strengthen our business in Turkey and invest in Egypt.

COVER STORY

NET APP

- FOCUSED INDUSTRY LEADING SERVICES VISION 2015 The Middle East remains a growth region with a need for all types of infrastructure, whether it is schools, hospitals, roads or IT infrastructure and NetApp is here to help all these industries with their storage and data management requirements.

GRAHAM PORTER, CHANNEL MANAGER MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA & PAKISTAN, NETAPP.

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l In addition to flash and integrated solutions, the other focus for us now is NetApp Data ONTAP, the world’s #1 Open Networked Branded Storage Operating System which we have just upgraded and improved in areas such as clustering of storage arrays. l We remain a 100% partner led business in the region and are adding inside sales to increase coverage which is a significant improvement.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 As a storage vendor, NetApp is targeting growth across key verticals in the region to capitalize on our expertise as well as tap into new and upcoming opportunities. Public sector, health and education are the main priorities with most regional

governments investing in these areas. In terms of storage solutions, we are seeing particular growth in oil and gas which remains a mainstay of many countries’ GDP, while healthcare and media are also experiencing an uptake in storage demand as a result of increased emphasis on video and imaging.

Telcos and banking remain traditionally strong sectors as they rely heavily on IT as an integral part of their business, and government regulations increasingly require data retention policies.

Emerging sectors include security, where demand for storage is expanding drastically as related projects, especially with CCTV, have finally moved to digital/IP based systems MARKET PRESENCE In 2014, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar were strong markets for NetApp with good infrastructure growth, and these will continue to be our key MENA markets in 2015. There are opportunities in other countries but they are smaller and segmented which makes them harder to address.

RED HAT - DEMOCRATIZING CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY VISION 2015 To be the defining technology company of the 21st century; and through our actions strengthen the social fabric by continually democratizing content and technology.

DAVID POSTEL, SENIOR ALLIANCES MANAGER MIDDLE-EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA AT RED HAT

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l We will retain a strong focus on our channel business. Value-added resellers are crucial to our business and so we will continue to expand our partnerships in 2015. l What Red Hat provides is both enabling and disruptive, so we need to focus on those partners that can help us spread the message and implement effectively. Partners who are willing and able to work with us will reap the rewards. l Now that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is mainstream, we will be able to put more emphasis on recruiting middleware, cloud, storage and virtualization partners. l Finally, we aim to work a lot more closely with key ISVs, OEM partners and global system integrators to increase our footprint locally of the

larger size implementations.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 Based on the market opportunities and our sales pipeline and growth over the past two years, I can safely say that we will continue to have very focused growth objectives for the next year in revenue terms.

MARKET PRESENCE We will continue to invest in the key GCC markets. We have been investing for some time now in Turkey and will continue to do so. Other areas of focus will be South Africa and Saudi Arabia, which is one of the biggest IT markets in the META region.

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SAFE NET – SECURING THE BREACH VISION 2015 At SafeNet, we believe that countries in the region today need to provide services that span the digital divide, meeting citizens’ expectations for interacting with and accessing government services at the touch of a button, from healthcare to education, smart transportation, and even tourism services. Increasingly, companies are competing through collaboration. That is, they are building worldwide partner networks to extend their expertise and geographical reach.

SEBASTIEN PAVIE, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, MEA, SAFENET

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l According to the Breach Level Index (BLI) report by SafeNet , top three industries impacted by data breaches are financial services industry, retail industry and technology, social media & other online services. This not only results in significant

financial losses, but also causes a strain on the trusted relationship. SafeNet will continue to focus on these industries as they demand much more attention to protect customers from the breaches. l In 2015 we are looking at making more technologies available “as a service”.

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 We are looking at expanding our market in the region through our channel partners. In 2015 we are also looking at making more technologies available “as a service”.

MARKET PRESENCE With solid experience and structure, SafeNet has expanded in the Middle East region and has strong relationships with channel partners in KSA as well, which is our biggest market in the region.

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC- INNOVATIVE ENERGY MANAGEMENT

ZIAD YOUSSEF, IT BUSINESS, VP-UAE, GULF COUNTRIES

VISION 2015 The GCC presents Schneider Electric with an abundance of growing opportunities to reiterate their market leadership in smart infrastructure, energy efficiency, data centre technology and mobility solutions. We will work in line with the leadership’s vision of transforming Dubai to a smart city and the integrating a smart ecosystem in the country. Schneider Electric is among the top three smart city companies in the world having deployed its smart solutions in over 200 projects across the globe. The launch of Schneider Electric’s first Center of Excellence harnesses the extensive know-how, experience and success in working with over 200 cities in smart management projects worldwide.

l

Efficiency Integration of acquisitions l Focus verticals- education, m-governments, hospitality, healthcare, IT data centres, defence or security bodies, finance and telecom etc. which cannot afford electricity downtime and all industries using UPS l

KEY FOCUS IN 2015 l Organic growth

GROWTH TARGET IN 2015 We expect continuous growth in IT and Infrastructure and a strong contribution from Invensys. Schneider Electric reported third quarter revenues of €6,285 million, up +7% YoY. On an organic basis, revenues were up +1.6% and up +3.9% excluding Infrastructure.

By geography and over the quarter, we see Western Europe stabilizing, U.S. improving and China slowing down as expected, while other new economies show a mixed picture.

picture in MEA is very encouraging as many countries take ambitious steps to enhance their ICT infrastructure and services. In 2015, this will have a positive boost to the socio-economic health of many MEA countries as they further develop their digital economies and improve the living conditions of people through ICT access.

The channel is constantly evolving, with 2015 shaping up to be a promising year. We continue to see areas of growth and a move towards partners selling a complementary portfolio of products and services. This means that they do not have to rely on making just an upfront margin, but also getting annuity revenue.

CONCLUSION Thus we see that many trends which impacted the technology space this year will continue to be front-of-mind for businesses as they enter 2015. A better connected world is on the horizon. We live in a dynamic era where technological progress is continuously revolutionizing how we work, learn, entertain, and live. The overall

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MY VIEWS

96%. The constraint to be successful is not the market, rather the time, head count and the right talent in place to deliver results to our customers.

We wish to be not only the technology leader but also be known for excellent customer support.

Customers mean business, so it’s important that culturally we understand them and reach out to them in the best possible manner.

What kind of changes are you bringing in your go-to-market strategy?

My go-to-market strategy is going to remain the same; it’s going to be partner enablement throughout the region. We are investing heavily in the channel to ensure best experience for the customer. And of course, with that comes customer support of excellent quality.I want that when customers buy from AirWatch, they get the agile experience of AirWatch, backed up by the stability of VMware.

IAN EVANS,

MANAGING DIRECTOR, EMEA, AIRWATCH

“Leading the market for Mobile Enterprise” THE ENTERPRISE OF TODAY IS CHANGING RAPIDLY AND MOBILITY IS FAST BECOMING ENTERPRISE READY. AIRWATCH BY VMWARE SIMPLIFIES MOBILITY FOR ORGANIZATIONS, WHILE EMPOWERING END USERS. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM TALKED TO IAN EVANS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EMEA, AIRWATCH ABOUT THE COMPANY’S GRAND PLANS FOR THE NEW YEAR AND HOW THEY PLAN TO BE THE MARKET LEADERS NOT ONLY IN QUALITY BUT IN QUANTITY AND REACH AS WELL.

What kind of opportunities are you looking at for the year 2015?

2015 is going to be very exciting. In 2014, we grew around 95% YoY and the quarter-over-quarter growth was pretty impressive too.

2014 saw the emergence of some new markets like Russia, and Turkey. I personally have this drive to make the Middle East one of the most successful regions for our company. We have around 130-140 customers now in the ME, mostly in the UAE. But now we also have great coverage in KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman as well. We look at these as the major focus

areas.

My challenge for 2015 is pulling away from certain mature markets and tunnel that straight into the ME. We are planning two shows every quarter in the UAE, one every half-year in the KSA, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. We’ll make sure that we are absolutely seen as the market leaders of this region.

What kind of growth are you predicting 2015 will bring for your company?

We will be conservative next year; so say we target

What are the trends you’re witnessing in MEA in enterprise mobility?

We are seeing that people want to migrate away from their Blackberry Services and are looking for a highly functional smart device that they can. And we got several solutions for that. We are also looking at a lot of application deployment technology now. We are also targeting to be the technology enablers for the smart city. We are looking at integrating with all the government services.

Where are you going to invest maximum of your money in?

Last year, we invested phenomenally in the Connect. Connect is our way of making sure customers know what’s going on. We organise 2-3 day forums discussing company roadmaps, strategies, what we’re doing, what’s the world doing, what the analysts think, etc. We also train our customers and partners. We plan to run a Connect in Dubai every year. May be we can follow it in Riyadh, Qatar and in Africa too.

Last year we held the Mobile World Congress.

Our 2015 edition is going to be held in Barcelona in March. A local connect series will also be conducted in Dubai around that time so that if we miss some of our ME guests in the Barcelona congress, we can make up for that.

So how would you define Vision 2015 for AirWatch ?

Vision is to keep customers at the heart of our business and looking at some new emerging markets. ë

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MY OPINION

DAN SMITH,

HEAD OF INTEGRATED MARKETING FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA REGION AT XEROX

“Managing Diversified Services” ENTERPRISES WITH AUSPICIOUS COMMERCIAL VISION PLAN TOWARDS DIVERSIFYING THEIR BUSINESS ACTIVITIES TO MANAGE RISKS OR EXPAND INTO NEW MARKETS. THE URGE TO ACHIEVE CORPORATE GROWTH THAT OUTSTRIPS THAT OF A FIRM’S PRIMARY INDUSTRY IS AN APPEALING PROSPECT FOR MANAGERS. , DAN SMITH, HEAD OF INTEGRATED MARKETING FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA REGION AT XEROX OFFERS A GREAT INSIGHT ON HOW SHIFTING BUSINESS STRATEGY CAN PROMOTE ANY BUSINESS GROWTH.

What’s your take on business diversification in UAE? How do you approach this market?

The UAE as an economy recognizes business diversification and its positive impact. It has been proven that UAE effectively coped with the global economic downturn and bounced back because of their policy of promoting the diversification of

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its economy years ago.

At Xerox we believe that in the absence of diversification firms are prisoners of their industry. In 2009 Xerox acquired Affiliated Computer Services, which tilted the business model away from printing and more toward add-on services.

The branching out has borne fruit. The H1 2014 financial results revealed that revenue from the

company’s Services business, which represented 57 per cent of total revenue, was $3 billion, up 2 per cent year-over-year or 1 per cent in constant currency.

What companies need to take into consideration while shifting their business focus?

Shifting your business focus is a method of growth strategy. There are many details that an enterprise must factor in before deciding to shift their business focus. First, they must take into account the skillset that they have at their disposal. Then, a detailed research into their market must be conducted. This must be followed by accumulating these insights and knowledge, which combined with your experiences in a slightly different sector, can offer a well-rounded perspective. One of the issues with looking at shifting business focus is to ensure that the necessary changes do not disrupt current business or infrastructure. Outsourcing options such as Managed Print Services allow businesses to focus on their core activities whilst remaining

MY OPINION

assured that business continues. Xerox also offers an array of BPO capabilities from Human Capital Management processes to financial process such as Accounts Payable and invoice processing.

The ability to offload these activities to industry experts like Xerox gives time and energy back to the business which it can devote to growth opportunities.

What challenges do the companies face and how do you tackle them?

There are several ways to diversify and no hard and fast rules exist. One method is to expand and diversify your business into a totally new market where there are new clients, new apparatus and new growth curves. However, sometimes the new venture does not go as planned, or sometimes the success of it is at the expense of your core business.

A better method might be to expand within the realm of your core market. This involves utilizing or advancing your existing equipment to market more profitably to your prevailing client base.

The firms that believe that diversification can put them on the fast track to growth are being gullible and setting themselves up for failure because this strategy can backfire simply because the management failed to understand the teething problems of a new venture. More often, firms in a rush to jump ahead of the competition fail to ask themselves if they are really ready to jump aboard the diversification bandwagon. Do they have the right team leaders to guide and cope with a diverging strategy? Should they combine the diversified business into a single company or branch off as a new business operation? Once those decisions are made then they should stay put for that duration, otherwise all that they are exposing is their poor decision-making skills and also raising serious questions about their judgments on all. Think before you leap!

What is the growth that Xerox expects to see on their Service Led side of the business in the nearest future?

Xerox believes that customer wishes to add value to their business by the use of strategic IT initiatives. Vendors need to deliver service led offerings that allow customers to focus on their core business. Adding value through consultancy, post-sale excellence and the provision of management data to drive efficiency and excellence will increase. Further consumption of IT services, prepackaged and annuity driven is a good example of this trend and we are seeing

significant demand for this type of high quality offerings – not just cost down approaches.

Can you give us insights about the positioning of Xerox Print services and Managed Print Services in the market?

According to market analysts, MPS is growing at around 10% across the region. However, Xerox, through its accredited MPS partner channel, is considerably outpacing this growth. There seems to have been an awakening with many clients to the cost and productivity savings to be gained through deploying an MPS and, naturally, they want to work with the recognised market leader to walk them through the change and manage their document infrastructure moving forward.

Xerox prides itself in being identified by Gartner and IDC as a leader in MPS and that is because we have focused on developing the skills in our own sales people as well as our partners.

Xerox is among the first to enable mobile print-.

This mobility is just one element of MPS which enhances productivity and reduces the time spent

growth that we are targeting. There is a need to be insistent of vendors in terms of training and communication. Providing an added value to services by aligning to customer requirements, listening and acting swiftly to delight those customers is going to play an important role in the kind of growth that we are targeting. Moreover, Xerox has a broad suite of offerings for SMB customers and these can be reseller led with the full backing of the Xerox global infrastructure. The service led offerings will also be paramount. Services led technology challenges continue to be a trend that sees increases, and clients will have to work with vendors on the challenges this brings in security, application development and mobile working.

Xerox has the ability and will be working on a number of strategies to help clients with these challenges and provide users and IT professionals with the best of both worlds.

When it comes to investment, which basket do you plan to put most of the eggs in?

Cloud, BYOD, Smart Applications and Data

“ACCORDING TO MARKET ANALYSTS, MPS IS GROWING AT AROUND 10% ACROSS THE REGION. HOWEVER, XEROX, THROUGH ITS ACCREDITED MPS PARTNER CHANNEL, IS CONSIDERABLY OUTPACING THIS GROWTH. ”

on printing resulting in an increase in productivity and efficiency.

Future developments in MPS include expansion of mobile print, especially as more organisations allow employees to BYOD (bring your own device) into the workplace. Cloud services such as DR/BC (disaster recovery and business continuity). The key as I mentioned earlier is to be able to expand the conversation we have with our customers. One of the key enablers to acceptance of complimentary offerings to MPS has been the transition of purchasing of printing services from procurement to IT. MPS still presents all organisations to make significant cost reductions, which were previously not understood, and to achieve productivity and efficiency improvements.

What is the strategy for 2015; what kind of growth are you targeting?

Alignment and positioning will play a key role in 2015. We hope to leverage it to further the

Analytics, mobile technology and social media play a crucial role to drive the industry and create more opportunities for innovation. Companies, including Xerox, are taking decisions to invest further in these technologies and are aware of the long term benefits this would offer.

There will be trends that continue for the short term or “by consumption” offerings.” The future looks bright for those channel players who can advise and provide services in planning, delivery and customization of the experience.

What is vision 2015 for XEROX? New opportunities for the channel are in smart applications; big data analytics, intelligent transportation systems and traditional value add spaces. In case of MPS, pure technology provision is open to intense market competition yet the provision of a service can be long term and have great value. Channels should look for opportunities to become deeply embedded with customer organizations and margins will follow for good service provision. ë

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gas, hospitality, telecom, finance and healthcare industries. We are already doing it for hospitality, e.g. for Majilis Resort, Tamani Hotel etc.

Which are the segments you’re catering to?

ARC’s customers are in various segments which include Telecom Service Providers, Government, Oil & Gas, Utilities, Financial Sector, Education, Hospitality, Health Care, Industries, Transportation, Retail, Trading, and Real Estate & Construction.

Which are the technology leaders you have been associated with?

ARC has represented leaders which includes Schneider-Electric, Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, Cisco, HP, D-Link, Digi, Fujitsu, McAfee, Symantec, Sonicwall, Samsung, etc.

MOHAMMED ZAMEER,

GENERAL MANAGER, AL ROSTAMANI COMMUNICATIONS

“FutureConsumption of IT” AL ROSTAMANI COMMUNICATIONS IS A LEADING IT & TELECOMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS PROVIDER AND SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR, OFFERING INNOVATIVE, INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES TO CUSTOMERS IN UAE AND OTHER GCC COUNTRIES. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM SPOKE TO MR. MOHAMMED ZAMEER, GENERAL MANAGER, AL

Which are the markets on your radar?

Presently ARC is well established in the UAE and rated as one of the top SIs in the UAE. But when it comes to providing technical support to our suppliers, we do it across the several GCC countries.

The UAE market isn’t saturated yet and there’s a lot of potential here, so we are mostly focused in this region.

The market focus has shifted from products to solutions and is progressing towards services. How is ARC positioned in this scenario?

As we progress towards OPEX models, it would take some time to completely adopt the services model. It may start with making critical and non-critical applications. So, that takes us into the hybrid model. We as integrators provide private cloud facilities. We can also partner with web based application providers and sell it to the customers. We can also provide consultancy services.

ROSTAMANI COMMUNICATIONS ABOUT THE PLANS OF THE SI FOR 2015 AND HOW THEY ARE POSITIONED IN THE SERVICES SCENARIO IN THE IT MARKET.

What have been the major achievements in the year 2014?

The major achievement was the shift in business last year, wherein we did a lot of business in the data centre side. We feel that the future is going to be about businesses around data centre, be it private or public or hybrid. Our achievements in the last year have definitely given us the boost to move forward in 2015.

What’re your plans for 2015?

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We wish to do three thingsl We have a wide range of solutions, capabilities and good credentials, so we feel now we need to grow our reach. So, we will do a lot of expansion in terms of the frontline people. l We wish to consolidate our position in the data centre space and see if we can provide some OPEX offerings in that area. l Since we are an end-to-end solutions provider, we plan to create vertical specific comprehensive end-to-end solution bundles for oil and

How far has virtualization and cloud been adopted for real?

Virtualization is being adopted at least in bits and pieces by most of organisations, especially the large and medium enterprises. Complete adoption of IaaS or SaaS is yet to be achieved.

Which technological trends do you feel shall dominate the market this year?

I feel 2015 is going to be about consuming IT. The end results may take time to show up but the foundation for the same has definitely been laid out. OPEX model will be pre-dominant ë

MY VIEWS

Avaya’s partnership with Google was in news- what’s your perspective on that?

We are constantly on the lookout for partners who can help scale our technologies for the betterment of our customers. Google allowed us to expand our contact centre technology to the masses and be mobile with it. It’s a very strategic relationship; it actually helps us to go where we want to go- be the best in mobility space and engage better with customers.

Please tell us about Avaya’s customer engagement program.

Engagement is being able to help our customers to generate value for the collaboration communication they have. This is our own philosophy in approaching the market as well as approaching our own products and services. We want to engage with our customers and want them to be engaged with their customers.

MOHAMMED AREFF,

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GCC AT AVAYA

“Engaging with partners for the best of innovation” STARTING AS A VOICE-ONLY PROVIDER YEARS AGO, AVAYA HAS BEEN PUTTING ITS EGGS JUST IN THE RIGHT BASKETS-BE IT PARTNERING WITH GOOGLE OR THE FABRIC CONNECT NETWORK FOR DWTC, THEY ARE ALL SET TO BRING IN A SEAMLESS CONNECTED WORLD . ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM TALKED TO MOHAMMED AREFF, MANAGING DIRECTOR, GCC AT AVAYA ABOUT THE STORY OF AVAYA AND DISCUSSED ITS ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS AND

How do you enable your partners?

Majority of our business is done through partners. First, we try to identify those partners who have a match with Avaya’s thinking. Once the match is made, we start training them on how to engage because it’s a professional skill. A lot of vendors or integrators or partners go and give solution value to customers. We want to change that. Solution value is of course important but unless and until, you have delivered the business outcomes, solution value in itself isn’t good enough. Our partners are realizing the value of these engagements.

How do you foresee the year 2015?

I am very optimistic about it. The market is matured for mobility and cloud. Mid-market is growing everywhere. Fabric Connect is gradually becoming an acceptable de-facto standard now, because of all the benefits it provides.

All our solutions are made with mobility in mind; they are all cloud-enabled. We have the right services in place to enable these.

RECENT PARTNERSHIPS.

How was 2014 for Avaya?

Growth has doubled, not just in UAE, but also across the other GCC countries like Kuwait and Qatar and Oman. We did tremendously well with our fabric connect story on the data networking.

Real estate, hospitality, government projects, and banking – we have penetrated all these areas with fabric connect and customers are realizing that Avaya has got a gold mine in the network-

ing space. Fabric Connect is another name for freedom for the network administrators.

We have on-boarded many new partners for our mid-market business. And in call centres, we are almost the de-facto leader. Majority of service providers across GCC have Avaya technology. So, 2014 was a fantastic year indeed. Even worldwide, GCC was recognised as one of the best performing regions.

What is the actual scenario of cloud adoption across Middle East according to you?

Everyone is looking at cloud. When it comes down to cloud, Avaya doesn’t believe that one size fits all. Every organization would have a different flavour of cloud. Even within an organization, different departments can have different cloud requirements. What matters at the end is the business outcome. Our consultant team advises customers according to their requirements. ë

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wrong, how did they get in, where did they go and how do you fix it for the next time. And historically, the money has been spent on the “before” and during but not the “after”. Cisco is unique as we have market-leading, best of breed products in all three categories.

The challenge with buying point products is that everytime you do that, you have problems in integration, joining up, sharing data, skills; on the other hand, when you come to an organization like Cisco, which can do the services for you, then, you remove those gaps.

Which do you consider is the weakest link when it comes to cyber security?

People- Skill Shortage- research has shown that there’s a shortage of 1 million security practitioners globally.

ANTHONY PERRIDGE,

SECURITY SALES DIRECTOR, CISCO

“Security before, during and after breaches” CISCO RECENTLY ORGANISED AN IT SECURITY SEMINAR ADDRESSING THE EVOLVING CYBER SECURITY THREAT LANDSCAPE; THE IMPORTANCE OF NEXTGENERATION SECURITY SOLUTIONS FROM CISCO THAT DELIVER ADVANCED THREAT PROTECTION ACROSS THE ENTIRE ATTACK CONTINUUM ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM TALKED TO ANTHONY PERRIDGE, SECURITY SALES DIRECTOR, CISCO FOR A BETTER PICTURE OF WEAPONS FROM CISCO’S ARSENAL TO BATTLE IT OUT ON THE SECURITY BATTLEFIELD.

How do you visualize the changing threat landscape?

Cyber security is a growing market. The bad news is that the hacker community is growing massively year-on-year. Another disturbing observation is that the time between a breach and the detection of that breach isn’t improving much.

There are three key factors to be considered which are complicating security – l The changing dynamics of how we do business – e.g. BYOD, multiple devices l Security of data on the cloud l Historically, the industry has been

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about point products. But in security, there are no silver bullets.

What organisations need to have is a holistic view of the entire attack- before and after. If you need to partner with an organization that provides you with comprehensive security, you need a company like Cisco that has mechanisms to monitor and protect before, during and after the attacks. So, “before”you harden your assets, make your defences as best as you can; “during” you monitor and look for what’s happening and “after”- you need remediation forensics and the ability to go back in time and see what went

When it comes to verticals, which are the ones taking security more seriously than the others?

The ones that are leading are critical national infrastructure- central govt., defence, water, telcos , finance companies, etc. These are mandated by the Govt. to harden their security. The other verticals don’t have the same pressure.

But the fact is that anybody who has something of value to be stolen is likely to be victim of not just an attack but a targeted attack. Don’t just think about how you are going t protect yourself ; think about what you’re going to do when you’re breached.

What’s Cisco’s Adaptive Firewall all about?

It’s a market innovation which is a threat-centric NGFW. It’s the only one of its kind. It takes a slightly different view from the legacy NGFWs; what you got in there is the world’s leading firewall platform, ASA by Cisco, you got FirePOWER services which is Next Generation IPS from Source Fire and you got advanced malware protection in there.

So, what’s your plan to keep enterprises secure in 2015?

We shall be spreading awareness through seminars. And then our solutions are definitely there for your service.

Basically, what we formed within Cisco is GSSO- Global Security Sales Organization. This is a business unit focused solely on security. This is a bold move by Cisco to recognize that security does need to be built into the infrastructure. Our consultants are there to help enterprises secure their assets in the best fashion. ë

MY VIEWS

in place that will provide our partners better profitability.

In terms of enablement, unlike other vendors, we don’t do certifications just for the sake of it. This new model is for the engineers, for the partners themselves; once they attain this roadmap in terms of NSE 1, NSE 2 and NSE 3, the person would be a Network Security Expert and this would help us as well to reach a specific kind of partnership level.

Our new distribution strategy is more focused on the channels rather than being just following up on opportunities.

Would you like to share any recent partnerships you have entered?

I am working on some very good partnerships.

Our partner summit is being held in January, 2015 in the States. We have major partners from this region joining us; and the commitment to join us for a five-day event in the US really makes me feel very confident about the state of affairs. In 2015, we are really on the right track.

MAYA ZAKHOUR,

MIDDLE EAST CHANNEL DIRECTOR OF FORTINET

“Building Security Experts, Going beyond mere certification”

So which are going to be your key areas of investment in this 2015?

The focus will be on- partners, sales and marketing.

What’s Vision 2015 for Fortinet then?

Vision will be to grow, grow and grow more. This growth is both in terms of numbers, as well as the partner ecosystem.

Give three highlights of Fortinet solutions?

Best product, best value and very high performance.

FORTINET IS A GLOBAL LEADER AND INNOVATOR IN NETWORK SECURITY.

hired in KSA, Jordan, the Levant and Qatar. So, basically 2014 was about a lot of restructuring and growing the team to reach more to the partners.

Moreover, we made excellent revenues especially in the Middle East.

Why should partners choose Fortinet ?

A customer would always want to associate with the leaders in the field and that’s why partners would be pushed to choose us. Once on board, they would understand what’s unique about our partnership It’s not just about signing a form and then left alone to chase your destiny. We define our strategic partners, tactical partners and accordingly set the expectation put the right plans together. Moreover, partners working with us have an excellent profitability, as well as transparency in our operations.

So, how does 2015 look for you?

Channel strategy has been refined further so that we can reach out to more partners in this region.

We have new partner program as well as tools

Who are your distributors in this region?

We have Oxygen in the KSA and Secureway for the rest of the Middle East region. ë

BUT IT’S WORTH MENTIONING THAT SSUCCESSFUL BUSINESS IS ABOUT A PERFECT RECIPE OF THE BEST-OF-BREED SOLUTIONS ALONG WITH THE RIGHTLY CRAFTED CHANNEL MECHANISMS IN PLACE. ONE THING CAN’T GO FAR WITHOUT THE OTHER. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM SPOKE TO MAYA ZAKHOUR, MIDDLE EAST CHANNEL DIRECTOR OF FORTINET ABOUT THE COMPANY’S NEW CHANNEL STRATEGIES FOR THE REGION.

How about a quick highlight about Fortinet’s major achievements in the year 2014?

2014 was a superb year. First of all, our Middle East team grew by around 40% .We moved to a new big office in Dubai. We have a support team here in the UAE. That’s a major achievement considering that many competitors don’t have support teams in this region. Besides that, we have hired some great sales people. We also

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MY VIEWS

partner, Veeam partner, McAfee training partner.

We have also started virtual training classrooms.

We grew significantly in 2014 compared to 2013.

What are going to be your key focus areas in 2015?

From a channel perspective, we are very interested in the SMB Market. This is the part of channel that needs the most support as well as solutions.

As we introduce new solution areas, in order for the partners to be successful, we need to help them by enablement, training, and certification; that’s where we can lend our professional services teams to the partners.

Ingram Micro is in the unique position today of being the most advanced two-tier cloud service provider in the world. We have signed up with 70 SaaS and IaaS providers. Our Business Intelligence unit analyzes and finds the right combination of cloud solutions for our partners.

Mobility is a fast growing area driven by smart devices. Our main interest lies in the services behind these.

DR ALI BAGHDADI,

Which are the new markets on the RADAR? We are looking up to Turkey, Southern Africa, and Morocco. In Middle East, we have feet in most of the countries.

PRESIDENT INGRAM MICRO TECH SOLUTIONS, META

“Building strong bridges between vendors and markets” INGRAM MICRO IS THE WORLD’S LEADING IT DISTRIBUTOR WITH ACCESS TO NEARLY 80 PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S IT SPEND. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM SPOKE TO DR ALI BAGHDADI, PRESIDENT INGRAM MICRO TECH SOLUTIONS, META ABOUT THE VALUE ADDITION AND CHANNEL STRATEGIES OF INGRAM MICRO.

How was 2014 for the company?

2014 has been excellent for us. We are doing a very good job of increasing our profitability and revenue. Ingram Micro over the last two years has made more than a dozen acquisitions and has changed its direction significantly to become more of a Value Add Distributor. We have divided our business into 4 business lines – technology solutions, mobility, cloud and supply-chain services.

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How has been business looking up in the Middle East?

We have presence all across Middle EAST. We are really focused on developing the business and common strategies. In this region, we are very much focused on Value Add Distribution, enterprise and services.

We are part of a global training companyIngram Micro training. We are IBM Training Centres in many countries. We are VMware

How do you see the reception to cloud adoption in the region?

It varies from country to country. Some countries are reluctant due to fear; some due to the internet accessibility and bandwidth; while some are bound by laws restricting data to go on cloud. Having said that, in the UAE in particular, we have seen a great increase in cloud sign ups and sales quarter-overquarter. Leading this transformation is Microsoft with their Office 365, Azure and Dynamic Online.

Our job here is to educate the partners and also help them with the transformation.

Traditional business is not going away anytime soon; we will always have the hybrid model.

Cloud adoption was initially being seen in SMBs but now larger enterprises have joined as well.

Why should partners choose Ingram Micro?

We have the system of one contract for all services. But again, we offer the partners the choice to choose from our extensive portfolio the solutions that are of use to them. Not only we have a huge portfolio; we have excellent enablement strategies in place that includes training, certification and support. Our focus worldwide is to develop the value add or advanced solutions. ë

Our IT infrastructure and Datacentre portfolio of products and solutions give you the edge to make a difference on every opportunity.

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CES ROUND UP

CES 2015

Innovation at the Speed of Awesome!

FROM DRIVERLESS CARS TO SMART HOMES, TECHNOLOGY OF THE FUTURE DAZZLED ON THE CES FLOOR AMAZING ALL AND HINTING AT THE EXCITING TIMES IN THE NEAR FUTURE WHEN SCIENCE FICTION WILL BE TRANSFORMED INTO REALITY AT LIGHT SPEED.

GARY SHAPIRO,

PRESIDENT AND CEO, CEA

n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

T

he new year blast in Las Vegas continued a bit longer as the craziness went to an entirely different level altogether with the unveiling of the International CES 2015 (6th-9th January 2015). Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CEA, kicked off the grand event He announced that revenues for the consumer electronics industry are projected to grow three percent in 2015 to reach an all-time high. He also reinforced the importance of a forward strategic path on innovation both for the industry and the world.

Every major technology company from around the globe was in Las Vegas at the world’s top innovation event by exhibiting, speaking, sponsoring or attending. Shapiro had a one-on-one conversation with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler who eiterated the need for a regulatory paradigm that encourages competition and innovation at the same time. Part of that paradigm, according to Wheeler, is ensuring innovators and consumers have open access to the networks.

Samsung President and CEO of Consumer Electronics Boo-Keun Yoon explored the implications of a fully connected world powered by the Internet of Things (IoT), which he called “science fact,” not science fiction. “The Internet of Things is about people, not things,” he emphasized.

By 2017, Yoon said, 90 percent of all Samsung devices will be IoT-enabled; by 2020, all Samsung devices will be connected to the IoT. Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich said that 2015 will mark the next technology consumer wave. “We’re moving from a twodimensional world to a three-dimensional world,” said Krzanich. “This additional dimension will change how we experience computing.”

The 2015 edition closed as the largest and most amazing CES in show history, breaking all records as innovators across the show floor unveiled technology services that will solve world problems and improve lives. “This CES vastly exceeded our expectations. The show inspired and likely gave almost every attendee a sense that innovation will

provide solutions to a range of global issues from the environment and agriculture to transportation, health and safety,” said Gary Shapiro. “CES is the center of convergence among content, services and products, combining to create amazing new technologies to improve our lives and entertain us. It’s been incredible to see thought leaders from many diverse communities come together for cross industry collaboration.”

“The technology here demonstrates how solutions to global challenges can be effectuated through innovation,” said John Penney, chief strategy officer, Starz. “This year’s show brought an incredibly strong narrative of interdisciplinary interaction across an array of markets and industries. Tremendous!”

The 2015 CES featured technology breakthroughs and product launches across the technology ecosystem, drawing the world’s attention to innovation from driverless cars and 3D printers to life-saving body monitoring systems and connected homes. ë

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REWARDING. Re-imagine your market. At ISE 2015, network with thousands of fellow professionals from all over the world, and make the connections you need to grow your business today and tomorrow. Find out more:

www.iseurope.org

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05.01.15 00:26

SECURITY SCANNER

SECURITY

Securing Enterprises in 2015 A Compilation by Enterprise Channels MEA

T

he web is overflowing with security predictions from analysts, vendors and industry experts; we at Enterprise Channels MEA tried to go through the maximum we could and bring to you the top security trends that are going to be affecting enterprises in the year 2015.

So channels –pull up your socks and be ready before the threats strike. l Technologies and services focused on incident response – rather than just incident prevention – will be high on the agenda for security professionals. There is an ardent need to move beyond focusing purely on the prevention of security incidents. This would also imply resurgence in endpoint security. l Managed Security Services - Identifying IT security incidents in a timely manner requires 24/7 coverage of the network environment. For this, it makes sense to engage the services of a managed security services provider. Nextgeneration security architectures need to integrate discrete security systems into a platform, which

MCAFEE LABS DUBS 2014 “YEAR OF SHAKEN TRUST” HAMED DIAB,

MCAFEE’S REGIONAL DIRECTOR IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

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can correlate threat life elements and break the infection chain in different places. l Security of the cloud will become increasingly important as more organisations move their workloads to the cloud. Lots of investment of cloud providers would go towards efficient enterprise level security for the workloads on cloud. l Targeted attacks most commonly known as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are an increasing trend. And 2015 won’t be an exception.

Ransomware will be a key point for malware developers. l Cybercriminals will continue putting efforts into payment systems the more money circulates on the web. l The Internet of Things trend will continue to interest cyber criminals. The nature of attacks would move from proof-of-concept to mainstream risks. l As the difficulty of exploitation increases, some attackers are moving back to social engineering and we also see attackers focusing on

non-Microsoft platforms. l There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between difference between effective encryption and “marketing” encryption. l The cybersecurity skills shortage is becoming more critical and broadly recognized by governments and industry. The industry as a whole needs to get its act together so that more and more skilled resources may be generated. l The gap between the mainstream world of security and ICS is increasing. This can mean the coming times witnessing a number of more serious flaws exposed and used by attackers. l There is an ongoing transition when it comes to major platforms and protocols and these lower level changes might expose flaws that cybercriminals might capitalize on. E.g. IPv6 stack on Windows 7 and Windows 8 is vulnerable to a resource exhaustion flaw which allows an attacker to send continuous random router advertisements and consume 100% CPU of the system.

“The third quarter of 2014 brought about the latest in a series of events that worked to shake confidence in a Trusted Internet,” said Hamed Diab, McAfee’s regional director in the Middle East and North Africa. “ To restore this shaken trust in the Internet in 2015 will require stronger public-private and cross-industry collaborations, new standards

SECURITY SCANNER

COMPLACENCY TOWARDS SECURITY NEEDS TO CHANGE !!!

l With the continued rise in BYOD, companies have to re-consider their mobile security strategy. Android will be the major target owing to its huge market share; however iOS platforms such as iPhone and the iPad will continue to see new malware as well. l There will be an increase or at least persistence of cyber related SCADA (power, oil, or water) attacks. These attacks will likely be

for a new threat landscape, and shrinking ‘time to detection’ through the superior use of threat data,” concluded Diab.

The trends predicted for 2015 include increased use of cyber warfare and espionage tactics. Unless security controls are built-in to their architectures from the beginning, the rush to deploy IoT devices at scale will outpace the

Mobile security breaches have affected 43 per cent of Middle Eastern organisations in the last twelve months, according to a new study from BT. Despite this, organisations are still not taking sufficient security measures to protect themselves against mobile threats, such as lost or stolen devices and malware infections. The research explored the attitudes of IT decision makers towards security within their organisations.

Mark Hughes, president of BT Security, said: “Today’s threat landscape shifts very quickly so it is important for organisations to start with security in mind, rather than add it as an afterthought. This will ensure that security processes develop with them, and not after them. This makes the task of being security-led much more straightforward.”

Mark Hughes, continued, “If CEOs are passionate about making security practices work, then they will inevitably become an intrinsic part of people’s lives. Problems usually arise when people don’t understand the risks and the impact that neglecting security could cause for the business, as well as for them personally. A security breach could cause a share price drop and reputational brand damage. This means that security is everyone’s job.”

carried out for political reasons or as part of an extortion scheme. It is no exaggeration when it’s being said that the “next world war will be fought on a keyboard”.

FINALLY...

Cybersecurity is going to persist as a business risk; the concerns are no longer limited to security professionals, and have rather permeated the

priorities of security and privacy. This rush and the increasing value of data gathered, processed, and shared by these devices will draw the first notable IoT paradigm attacks in 2015.

Data privacy will continue to be a hot topic.

Ransom ware will evolve its methods of propagation, encryption, and the targets it seeks. More mobile devices are likely to suffer attacks. Point

boardroom in a huge scale. The current scenario demands constant vigilance, smart prevention protocols and effective response mechanisms in place to ensure that at the end, the security breaches don’t taste sweet victory. Enterprises need to evaluate their security investments, considering changes in the organization, and evolution of threat landscape. ë

of sale (POS) attacks will remain lucrative, and a significant upturn in consumer adoption of digital payment systems on mobile devices will provide new attack surfaces that cybercriminals will exploit. The exploitation of vulnerabilities is likely to increase as new flaws are discovered in popular software products. Escaping the sandbox will become a significant IT security battlefield.

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SECURITY SCANNER

PALO ALTO HIGHLIGHTS MALWARE ATTACK VECTORS IN KEY INDUSTRIES

SAEED AGHA,

GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST AT PALO ALTO NETWORKS

Palo Alto Networks has unveiled new analysis of malware trends affecting thousands of organizations in major industries throughout the world. Saeed Agha, General Manager, Middle East at Palo Alto Networks shared that among the findings, which were released today as part of the new Unit 42 Threat Landscape Review, is the persistence of the Kuluoz or Asprox malware family, which accounted for a majority of malware attack sessions affecting industries as varied as healthcare, retail and financial services.

Among the key findings, all verticals saw e-mail (SMTP) and HTTP as the primary channels for malware delivery, but the percentages for each industry vary significantly, indicating that these industries have different threat profiles.

Retail and wholesale organizations received almost 28 percent over the web channel, while hospitality organizations received just two percent over the same channel. Malware was delivered in over 50 distinct applications, 87 percent of which were delivered over e-mail and 11.8 percent through web browsing (HTTP).

Over 90 percent of unique malware samples were delivered in just one or two attacks. One malware family, known as Kulouz or Asprox, was responsible for about 80 percent of all attack sessions recorded during October 2014, impacting nearly 2,000 different organizations.

This malware has plagued Internet users for years, despite multiple attempts to disrupt its infrastructure.

DELL ENHANCES WIRELESS NETWORK SECURITY

PATRICK SWEENEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DELL SECURITY

Dell has launched the new SonicPoint AC Series of wireless access points, which supports the high-performance IEEE802.11ac wireless standard to deliver almost three times that of the last wireless standard (802.11n).Sonic Points combine with deep packet inspection security from DellSonicWALL next-generation firewalls to form a comprehensive wireless network security solution. This combination enables small- and mid-sized organizations to leverage enterprise-class wireless performance and security, while dramatically simplifying wireless network setup and management for a low TOC. This enterprise-level performance enables WiFi-ready devices to connect from greater distances, and use bandwidth-intensive mobile apps, such as video and voice, in higherdensity environments with virtually no signal

degradation.

Patrick Sweeney, executive director, Dell Security said, “When we access a wireless network, we expect it to be high-performing and secure whether that network originates from a coffee shop or a Fortune 100 company and this increased expectation puts a lot of pressure on smaller businesses to provide an exceptional wireless experience that is secure. With the new SonicPointAC Series, these SMBs can take advantage of the improved wireless performance and know that their network is fully secured.

Combine this with a low total cost of ownership, and our customers can be confident that their wireless network is a competitive advantage they don’t have to worry about. They can just focus on their most important job of ensuring their business is successful.”

RESOLUTION1 SECURITY RELEASES NEW THREAT SCANNER TOOL

BRIAN KARNEY,

CEO OF RESOLUTION1 SECURITY

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Resolution1 Security has released the Threat Scanner, a new freeware tool that searches for malware artifacts on a suspect endpoint. Using ThreatScanner, security personnel will be able to quickly and proactively hunt for threats to minimize the impact of an attack by instantly identifying compromised systems. Once installed, they can immediately scan for malware, including those attributed to the recent Regin and Sony Pictures hacks.

“We’ve developed ThreatScanner to help not only our customers, but also the security community at large, by making this freeware tool widely available,” said Brian Karney, CEO of Resolution1 Security. “In today’s advanced threat landscape, enterprises need to be proactive and hunt for threats rather than passively rely on the thousands of daily SIEM alerts. We built ThreatScanner to give security teams additional tools to strengthen their incident response.”

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FEATURE

PARTNER STREET

Opportunities and evolution for partners 2015

META region is growing at a very rapid pace with regards to ICT and is using technology to foster innovation and efficiency. Enterprise Channels MEA team talked to few leading partners of the region in an attempt to understand the progressive change in the role of partners and their plans for 2015.

T

n B Y: S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

here are various innovations that are transforming the IT landscape today and they will continue to play an important role in shaping the ICT market in the coming years. Some examples include cloud computing, data centres, BYOD, personal clouds, and cloud integration mechanisms. What we see is traditional ICT budget is now being shifted towards business users, whereas it would normally have sat solely within the IT department of an organization. We get an increased number of requests directly from businesses rather from their IT departments.

This means that the partners must know the businesses in which they work. This is no longer about providing a one-fits-all product, but a solution that meets a real business need. Customers are more interested in solutions not products, so teams need to work together to bring that solution to them and highlight our knowledge and expertise in their industry.

EVOLUTION OF THE ROLE OF PARTNERS Role of SIs, Distributors, and resellers is changing with evolution of technological understanding of the end Customers. The entire supply chain business has moulded itself to providing service based on technical complexity, requirement and move towards providing value to its customers.

The role has become more solution – oriented.

SIs would require hand-holding by the vendors and distributors for leading-edge technologies.

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Many SI’s have now become vertically focused, and invest in domain expertise like Telecom, Banking.SIs need to deal with the rising levels of complexity due to quickly evolving & sophisticated technologies and the shift in the industries towards lower cost models. The increasing tendency to keep the CAPEX costs low but add-on to the OPEX costs is also something SIs

have to deal with.

Distributors have evolved into VADs. Resellers have understood that mere sale or box-moving of solutions/products in not enough to survive in the competitive market. Hence we see more of Value Added Resellers who have adopted modern marketing techniques to attract new clients while retaining the existing ones. ë

FEATURE

HELP AG- TRUSTED SECURITY ADVISOR

STEPHAN BERNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HELP AG

COMGUARD-PARTNER FOCUSED VALUE CREATION

AJAY SINGH CHAUHAN,

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

TARGET GROWTH – We expect another fantastic and increasing business in 2015. This is due to our specialization and focus on information and cyber security services and solutions. The growth and success is not driven by opportunities, it is based on the clear business objectives we have outlined for the coming years. This goes hand-in-hand with Help AG commitment to invest in local resources in the markets. Our clients view us as their trusted advisor and rely on our expertise and professionalism to design, implement, certify and support their complex IT security infrastructures..Our aim is to maintain this high level of technical competence.

KEY FOCUS – l Focus on existing markets, UAE and Qatar, driven and measured against quality delivery and customer excitement. l Geographical expansion into KSA in 2015 l Launching local Managed Security Services GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYAs part of our go-to-market strategy we focus on less number of vendor partners. This further strengthens our leading position in providing first-class post-sales support services and achieves highest quality delivery combined with customer excitement.

NEW MARKETSWe expect to see continued growth in the UAE and Qatar but are excited to rapidly grow our footprint in KSA in 2015. Oil & Gas is the key vertical in KSA making it a prime target for cyber attacks. We believe that Help AG is ideally positioned to address the challenges faced by enterprises in KSA. We have extensive experience in working with large public sector organizations and since this segment is the driving force behind much of the investment in the country, we are confident that we will be able to win some key customer accounts.

VISION 2015To be the number one trusted partner for information and cyber security services and solutions in Middle East and Africa.

TARGET GROWTH Our primary growth driver should be completeness of solutions, addressing new challenges in security and providing more support to our SI’s in designing more complete solutions. We intend to grow by at least 40 – 50% KEY FOCUS The focus for 2015 will be on building of Big Data, Mobile Solutions, Cloud technology and Virtualization.

We are among the TOP 10 Value Added Distributors in the region. Our focus would be to continue to be close to the partner and be a true value-add distributor.

NEW MARKETS We already have our direct presence in North Africa and Egypt. We would be expanding into West and East African regions.

FOCAL DOMAIN OF OPERATION l Security l Networking l Storage VISION 2015 To consolidate on our existing strengths in the security domain, empower strategic partners with our new technology products, and create market awareness with end-users.

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FEATURE

GLOBAL – BEST TAILOR MADE SOLUTIONS Solutions Selling rather than “Box Moving”.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYWe feel we are in the pole position to drive Solutions Selling and defined this new term in the Region. As such we are focusing on executing our strategy in the next year.

MARIO M. VELJOVIC,

VP SOLUTIONS MENA , GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION

TARGET GROWTH – Global Distribution is among the Top 5 Distributors in the MEA Region and will continue to rank high.

The Group will grow its (1) Mobility, (2) Private Label and (3) Solutions Business accelerated by geographical expansion with many new territories to be entered.

While our Group Company continues to grow at a rate of 15-20% year on year, the

Solutions Distribution is expected to grow next year by 10 fold. Our Solutions Distribution Business comes from a relative low level, hence we expect very strong grow next year.

KEY FOCUS – The investment into our Solutions Distribution business has been made for exactly that reason.

It’s about building strong Intellectual Properties and Expertise in key growth areas and promote

NEW MARKETSGlobal Distribution operates in more than 20 Countries across the Globe with Offices in the UAE, India, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

While we started the Solutions Distribution in the UAE, we are now aggressively rolling it out across the GCC and North Africa.

We have already started deploying staff in the local markets and the Central Team has started to travel extensively to those new markets.

VISION 2015Our Vision is to enable the Reseller Community to embrace Solution Selling and we are committed to support our Partners with all necessary tools and tailor-made solutions for the vertical the Partner is focused on. We are in full swing to execute our Vision, as we continue to believe that this is the future of ICT Distribution.

FDC PRO VALUE – EVOLVING WITH COLLABORATION

RAM PRAVEEN P T,

DIRECTOR - PROVALUE DIVISION

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TARGET GROWTH – 2015 is going to double our growth. 2014 had double digit business increment month over month.

a deep sense of togetherness with our partners.

Being in the same industry, we have to dedicate our time and effort to develop all levels of the industry and we are on track in these efforts.

KEY FOCUS – This year will be focused on service oriented investments in technologies and resources.

NEW MARKETSAs ProValue, we will be expanding beyond Middle East this year.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYNewer vendors with newer and better technologies are emerging into Middle East and we are on the right track to have teamed with all the major to-be trend setters.

VISION 2015To be the most Relevant Value Added Distributor to Vendors and Partners’ Business growth

PARTNER STRATEGYWe will be aggressively working towards partner evolvement and enablement. This has developed

FOCAL DOMAIN OF OPERATIONl Storage l Networking l Infrastructure

FEATURE

PROLOGIX – SEASONED SI WITH DYNAMIC VITALITY

STOR IT - SOLUTIONS WITH COMPETITIVE EDGE

KARTIK SHANKAR,

SARWAN SINGH,

MANAGING DIRECTOR PROLOGIX

TARGET GROWTH – We expect steady growth in the sectors of manufacturing, transport, telecommunication, wholesale and retail trade, education, hospitality and construction. Prologix is extremely well equipped to take on the New Year and the new challenges it will bring. We are also confident of lapping up the opportunities that the changing economy of the oncoming will bring.

Prologix LLC registered a financial growth of over $153 million USD in the year 201314. Our target for the next year is to reach over $200 million USD. KEY FOCUS – Prologix has aligned itself to be a key provider of Managed Services, Cloud-based solutions and Network & Application Security. The company will pursue the verticals of Government, large and small enterprises, education, manufacturing, BFSI, hospitality & healthcare with renewed vigor.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYOur go-to-market strategy will be more customer centric. Our services and offerings would be aimed towards identifying customer pain areas and eliminating them in total.

The SLAs we enter into with our customers will not contain the clauses on just server downtime but on business continuity. We want to take away the IT Managers’ headache of watching monitors to assess network performance and vulnerabilities off their list of tasks and help them focus on their business.

In early 2015, we plan to establish a Customer Excellence Center which will be dedicated to showcase the business availability solution, business continuity solution and excellence in customer service.

NEW MARKETSWe have branch offices in UAE, Qatar, Nigeria & Kenya. In 2015, we will aggressively pursue KSA markets and the Western & Eastern Africa.

VISION 2015Our Vision for 2015 is to become the #1 company in the UAE when it comes to implementation of complete and end-to-end ICT, including Infrastructure, Connectivity, Business Applications, Managed Services and ELV solutions.

SENIOR SALES MANAGER, STORIT

TARGET GROWTH – We are targeting at least a 30% growth in 2015 over the previous year. We foresee a strong demand in cloud related technologies and managed services.

We will be majorly targeting cloud storage solutions and cloud based backup solutions while we enable our end customers to manage information on the move.

KEY FOCUS – l Data storage domain with All-Flash Arrays, Hybrid Arrays and Converged Infrastructure l VDI and Software Defined Storage l Backup, Recovery and Archiving solutions GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYWe are going to gear up and enable our channel to face all disruptive technologies that have already been in the market and those that are yet to come.

We will be focusing on enabling our partners for these emerging technologies which will create new avenues for revenue while simultaneously move our channel partners higher up in the value chain.

NEW MARKETSUAE and Saudi Arabia will continue to lead in 2015. We also expect to see a rise in business from Qatar and Kuwait too.

VISION 2015StorIT remains committed to significant investments in the areas of value added services to provide the very best of breed technology solutions that can give its reseller partners, as well as them, a competitive edge.

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FEATURE

FINESSE – RAPID STRIDES ACROSS VERTICALS

GBM - CONSUMER FOCUSED SOLUTIONS

SUNIL PAUL,

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER | FINESSE

TARGET GROWTH – We are growing at more than 60% year after year since inception. We expect the same growth to continue for us in the next few years as well.

KEY FOCUS – l Big Data & Analytics Solutions, Corporate Performance Management Solutions and Customer Experience Solutions. l Regional KPO / BPO to offer OPEX benefits to our clients in the region. l BFSI ,Telco and the hospitality sector l Finesse will also start focusing into the SME segment.

TARGET GROWTH – Our three main areas of focus where we see key growth in 2015 will be the cloud, already being driven forward with the Dutch Cloud partnership; the enhancement of our services team; and a growth in our data centre business, where we provide 360 solutions that really make a different to a client’s bottom line.

KEY FOCUS – l Services – ensuring that our team s are equipped with the knowledge to provide customers with full-service solutions to their IT requirements l Cloud – we have recently entered into a partnership with a European company, Dutch Cloud, which will bring a completely new cloud operating system to the GBM portfolio and provide clients with access to state-of-the art cloud offerings.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYWe are moving from a direct customer approach towards a channel oriented customer approach.

We will also be organizing several road shows / seminars to create awareness of our innovative offerings.

PARTNER STRATEGYWe have long-term, well established partnerships with international experts, such as IBM and Cisco, which remain strong and will continue into 2015 and beyond. In 2014, we have also begun working with other partners that work well within the GBM portfolio, Dutch Cloud being an example of this, and we will continue to do this in 2015.

NEW MARKETSWe are planning to enter Kuwait and Saudi markets in 2015.

VISION 2015We operate in one of the most fast moving industries in the world and that is a constant challenge and an opportunity for GBM. IN 2015, I expect to see GBM further enhance its service offerings, bringing even greater added value to clients.

VISION 2015As we have clearly secured our position in the BFSI segment as the lead player, we are looking at other segments also to replicate the success model.

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CEO

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FOCAL DOMAIN OF OPERATIONl Services l Agility l Customers

FEATURE

EMT –FLEXIBLY DELIVERING ROBUST SOLUTIONS TARGET GROWTH – We are an ambitious company and have been expanding both product wise and geography wise over past years but on conservative levels we expect to grow by 30% this year.

MOHAMMAD MOBASSERI

CEO, EMT

KEY FOCUSThis year the focus would be educate and transfer knowledge to our channel partners. Last year, we had also launched emt Academy to drive this initiative in much more focused way. This year we are going to be more active and are in process of announcing new initiatives for educating our partners. The academy will also work towards educating end-users about new technologies and solutions that can address their challenges.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGYOur go-to-market strategy has helped us achieve a fast balanced growth which has been instrumental in achieving a healthy and profitable channel for us. This strategy has also helped us in forging stronger ties with our vendors that has resulted in close cooperation with them to get

the best results out of our partnership with vendors.

PARTNER STRATEGYChannel is always evolving and we are continuously in touch with our channel for their requirements to update and improvise our channel programs to serve our partners better and more effectively. As we grow our channel base we keep on revamping our partner strategy to suits the needs of channel.

The key component for our partner strategy is healthy margins for our channel.

VISION 2015This year we envision being the technology channel service provider and specialist value added distributor of choice in Middle East with global reach.

FOCAL DOMAIN OF OPERATIONl Security l Storage l Mobility

E-HOSTING DATAFORT- PIONEER IN MANAGED SERVICES TARGET GROWTH – In 2015, cloud will definitely be a major growth area for eHDF as we offer both hosted private and public cloud services.

SMEs account for 90 per cent of businesses in the UAE and they have a huge need for outsourced IT services. Our new services will definitely see an increased uptake in this region.

YASSER ZEINELDIN

KEY FOCUS – l Fortified existing services portfolio l Collaboration with new technology partners . l Infrastructure upgrades, hiring skilled resources and R&D

CEO, EHOSTING DATAFORT

NEW MARKETSThrough our new services like Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), Managed Remote Back-up services and BIZPACK for SMBs ,this market segment is definitely on the radar. We also partnered with Microsoft to resell Office 365 cloud-based service in the Gulf.

VISION 2015eHDF is UAE’s leading managed hosting and cloud infrastructure services provider. In 2015, we will continue to focus on providing the highest level of managed IT and Cloud services to achieve customer satisfaction and deliver service excellence in accordance with international industry standards.

CONCLUSION The role of the channel in the application space is evolving as the clients started asking for clear value addition. So it’s time that the channel

should gear up with adequate implementation and training skills and also by offering proper local support. The IT industry is much more

holistic, with many more external, individual factors impacting the way it Is implemented in everyday life – at a personal and a business level.

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TOP 5 DATA CENTRE TRENDS

DATA CENTER

Top 5 data centre trends to watch in 2015 What does 2015 hold in store for data centre professionals? Read on as Dimension Data experts discuss the top trends to watch and their expected impact on business.

BIG GETS BIGGER, SMALL GETS SMALLER

“Today, every CIO I talk to isn’t asking if they should move to the cloud. Now it’s a question of how much of their environments they can move to the cloud and how quickly they can make the transition”

KEVIN LEAHY,

DIMENSION DATA’S GROUP GENERAL MANAGER FOR DATA CENTRES

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The data centre market is entering a period of unprecedented transition, and the pace of this change looks set to accelerate during the year ahead. Smaller, enterprise-owned data centres are shrinking in size and on the other end of the scale, the growth of mega facilities continues

unabated. Kevin Leahy, Dimension Data’s Group General Manager for Data Centres explains: ‘A year or two ago, we were debating whether the data centre and the cloud were quite ready to come together. Clients were concerned as to whether the cloud was geared to support produc-

TOP 5 DATA CENTRE TRENDS

tion workloads and compliance requirements.

But today, every CIO I talk to isn’t asking if they should move to the cloud. Now it’s a question of how much of their environments they can move to the cloud and how quickly they can make the transition.’

This has dramatic implications for the

data centre itself. Organisations need to re-evaluate: • the amount of data centre space they need • where their remaining data centre facilities should be located On the other end of the scale, large data centres, typically owned by industry and cloud

provider heavyweights, see nothing but growth on the horizon. These giant facilities are expanding either due to the fact that they’re absorbing the capacity being transferred to them from customers looking to exploit the cloud model, or simply as a result of the nature and complexity of the businesses they serve.

UNLOCKING THE VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TECHNOLOGY ITSELF

“Every client I speak to is at a different level of maturity and most feel they have a fair amount of work to do. The goal is to move the organisation forward, in a structured manner” FRANK CASEY,

DIMENSION DATA’S DIRECTOR FOR MANAGED SERVICES

The next data centre trend to watch relates to technology, or rather, the ability to unlock its true value. Leahy explains: ‘Increasingly, CIOs aren’t asking for our assistance with technology issues, they’re seeking help in updating their operational processes so that they can extract maximum value from their technology investments.’

Frank Casey, Dimension Data’s Director for Managed Services agrees: ‘It’s all about internal maturity. Every client I speak to is at a different level of maturity and most feel they have a fair amount of work to do. The goal is to move the

organisation forward, in a structured manner.’

Casey sees automation as key to extracting maximum value from technology. ‘Most IT teams are focused on making sure that infrastructure is up and running, and, due to workload and time pressures, aren’t thinking about how they can drive greater levels of automation.’

Making informed decisions regarding new technology investments is critical to ensuring you extract maximum value from them. The market is moving to bundled technologies that feature high levels of automation.

AGILITY: IT’S ABOUT EXPLORING THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE Treb Ryan, Chief Strategy Officer for Dimension Data’s ITaaS Service Unit believes that IT organisations need to use technology advancements to explore the art of the possible. Investing in Agile software development technology is a first step in capitalising on these opportunities. IT leaders need to instil a culture of people, processes, and

software working together and responding to change, rather than following a rigid plan.

The concept of consumption-based billing for IT capacity is a key enabler of this transformation. But the advantages extend well beyond cost savings alone; this model empowers IT teams to test new ideas quickly, and unleash innovation,

without exposing the business to risk. Developers can try things out without having to put in place formal structures. And if something works, great; if it doesn’t, then they can go back and try something else.

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TOP 5 DATA CENTRE TRENDS

‘SOFTWARE-DRIVEN’ TRANSFORMS INTO BUSINESS VALUE

“Value stream mapping is a ‘pencil and paper’ process that allows you to visualise the impact of your activities on the business and prioritise your activities.”

COLIN MCNAMARA, CHIEF CLOUD ARCHITECT AT DIMENSION DATA SUBSIDIARY NEXUS

As they look ahead to 2015, the challenge facing many organisations is how to ensure that their efforts in implementing Agile-based methodologies result in tangible business value.

Colin McNamara, Chief Cloud Architect at Dimension Data subsidiary, Nexus, shares some of his insights and experiences: ‘One of the tools that our agile software development team uses

in its development operations and with clients, is value stream mapping. It’s a ‘pencil and paper’ process that allows you to visualise the impact of your activities on the business and prioritise your activities.’

McNamara also believes that open source technologies like OpenStack and OpenDaylight can also add significant value.

IT’S TIME TO BE BOLD ABOUT EXTRACTING THE VALUE OF INFORMATION

“The type of storage you need will depend on what you want to accomplish with your data and how you want to accomplish it”

TREB RYAN,

CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER DIMENSION DATA’S ITAAS SERVICE UNIT

While there’s a lot of hype in the market around big data and analytics, most organisations are in the early stages of finding ways to derive more value from their data and find ways to translate it into competitive advantage.

Leahy elaborates: ‘Most CIOs I speak to have implemented virtualisation and are starting to explore and adopt cloud. But few have attacked

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the information challenge head on, mainly because that requires engagement with business units. IT teams and the business aren’t used to working so closely.’ Leahy believes that it’s time for data centre professionals to move beyond managing infrastructure and trying to find ways to reduce storage costs, and begin to explore the potential new value inherent in information.

Ryan cautions that decisions regarding data and storage can’t be made in isolation, especially in the era of analytics and big data. ‘The type of storage you need will depend on what you want to accomplish with your data and how you want to accomplish it. It’s not as simple as saying ‘‘I want to get into big data, so I’ll just start accessing the tools.”’

Hadoop and MapReduce are built on the premise that you have fast sequential read access to cheap disks. However, traditional cloud servers don’t offer this capability. They’re designed for highly transactional applications. So it’s important to consider what you want to do with your data. Do you want to perform transactions?

Or do you want to archive it and later extract it and aggregate it into a big data construct? You also need to think about how applications are optimised to ensure you’re able to get the data back out of the storage environment when you need it.

Object storage is another area of growing interest on the part of businesses that are testing the big data waters.

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GUEST TALK

INFORMATION SECURITY

Target Breach: Changing information management in retail TARGET + HACK… These two words are creating big news all around the world of information security since last couple of months.

n WORDS: FIROSH UMMER, MANAGING D I R E C T O R F O R E M E A AT P A L A D I O N N E TWORKS

WHAT WENT WRONG??….

For the benefit of the larger audience, here’s a quick recap of what happened at Target. During the holiday season in December 2013, some users with criminal intent compromised the network security of more than 1800+ Target stores spread across US and managed to get hold of personal information like name, telephone numbers, email IDs and mailing address of around 70 million credit card holders!.

The attackers used specially crafted malware to steal the customer information from the POS (Point of Sale) terminals which are used to swipe the credit cards for billing.

WHY IT WENT WRONG?…

The entire episode of Target data breach had just begun to unfold and nearly about the same time, the retail industry in the US saw another blow. This time it was another big retailer in the US retail chain – Neiman Marcus!! The kind of attack pattern was again similar to that of Target. However, the

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number of impacted users was less compared to Target. After doing a thorough investigation, the teams came to know that the kind of technology in use to process the entire transaction (card, POS terminals, etc) were quite old and outdated!!

Yes, that’s true! The retail industry across United States is still using credit cards with magnetic stripe for performing transactions. Whereas most of the countries across world have shifted to a newer technology – Chip and PIN! The POS terminals used to swipe the traditional credit cards functioned in such a way that they stored customer information albeit for a fraction of a second onto its local memory for processing. The malware used in this case, was so built that it copied or skimmed that data and sent it to its command and control server!

WHAT NEXT?…

Since the cause of Target and other such retailer breach is now known, there is a big shift which has started across United States payment industry. So what is this new technology and what impact it has created on US payment

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industry??!! You guessed it right.

It’s the chip and PIN technology for credit cards.

Chip and PIN is the brand name adopted by the banking industries in many countries for the rollout of the EMV smart card payment system for credit, debit and ATM cards. The word “chip” refers to a computer chip embedded in the smartcard whereas the word “PIN” refers to a personal identification number that must be supplied by the customer.

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and VISA. This is a global standard for payment cards based on chip technology. EMV standard is managed jointly by these three payment industry giants. Use of chips on the cards helps in encrypting the data stored on the card, even while it is being swiped, making it more difficult to be compromised.

The card is built in such a way that it encrypts the each transaction differently. Banks and retailers are replacing traditional magnetic stripe equipment with smartcard technology, where credit and debit cards contain an embedded microchip and are authenticated automatically using a personal

identification number (PIN).

When a customer wishes to pay for goods using this system, the card is placed into a POS terminal, which connects to the chip on the card. To complete the transaction, the customer enters a 4-digit PIN. When the POS terminal is connected to the network, the authenticity of the card and chip can be confirmed, along with the PIN, with the bank servers. If the POS terminal is not connected to the network, the chip can confirm to the terminal if PIN was entered correctly.

So how a chip enabled card is is different from that of a magnetic stripe card? Chip-and-PIN is the most secure type of credit card technology. Instead of a signature being used for identity verification, which is normally at back of any credit card, it requires you to enter a four-digit PIN that must correspond to information contained in a computer chip embedded within the card.

Since the big hack of millions of customer data, US payment industry is now shifting to this new technology, which in itself is the big change that has entered into the most advanced nation. ë

GULF ENTERPRISE MOBILITY EXHIBITION & CONFERENCE

MOBILITY & SECURITY STRATEGY FOR MIDDLE EAST GOVERNMENT & ENTERPRISE www.gemec.ae

26 - 28 APRIL 2015 Dubai World Trade Centre

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To further your competitive positioning and showcase your solutions to a qualified audience of industry decision-makers, please contact:

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INNOVATIONS

Epson SureColor Large-format Printers Epson’s new range of high-speed, fourcolour large-format SureColorSC-T printers are designed for a variety of graphics, CAD and GIS applications within design, commercial print, copy shop, architecture, building, engineering, retail and education environments.

The new roll-fed SureColor SC-T range features nine models offering a choice of widths, productivity and scanning capability.

Recognising the market’s need for maximum productivity and the flexibility to switch quickly between different media if required, the new models feature double paper rolls with auto paper loading and auto switching

between rolls.

Epson has further increased the versatility of the printers by integrating a 36-inch wide colour scanner with the new multi-function 44-inch and 36-inch SureColor SC-T7200MFP and SC-T5200MFP models. These are the first Epson large-format printers with a scanner that gives users the flexibility to digitise large-format hard copies and scan-to-file, scan-toemail or scan-to-share with other SC-T printers. An A1 original can be scanned and printed in about 39 seconds. These multi-function printers are also available in either single or double-roll configurations.

To further maximise performance,

the new SureColor SC-T range features ultra-fast image processing, optional 320GB hard drive for significant print spooling functionality and secure networking. To ensure the printers fit seamlessly into design and print environments, PostScript support with dual 1.6Ghz CPUs is available as an option on all the new SureColor SC-T printers which enables users to print multiple file formats, including large data-rich files, quickly and directly from leading design and CAD programs.

The SureColor SC-T printers are designed to fit easily into an office environment, with sleek styling, small footprint, and front operation.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Fast, reliable and economical 4-colour printer n Prints on coated and non-coated media up to 44 inches (1118mm, A0+ size) wide and board up to 1.5mm thick n Double roll feature maximises productivity by giving quick access to choice of media with auto paper loading and automatic switching between rolls n Integral 36-inch scanner enables scan-to-folder, scan-to –email and scanto-share with other SC-T printers. n Takes 39 seconds to scan and print an A1 print on plain paper n Optimised running costs with a choice of cartridge sizes: 700ml, 350ml and 110ml n 1 GB RAM central processing unit for fast data processing and performance and optional 320GB HDD for job caching and recall

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

INFOBLOXTRINZIC 2200 APPLIANCE The Trinzic DDI appliances are purpose-buit, high-performance hardware devices that form the foundation of an organization’s network services and reporting solutions. All models can be deployed individually or in high availability pairs (HA) / Distributed architecture, leveraging Infoblox’s Grid architecture for optimal service resiliency.

Appliance-based delivery of IP network services and reporting has become a recommended industry best practice for any size organization. Appliances are inherently more reliable, manageable, scalable, and secure than software running on general-purpose servers whose understood operating systems are more easily compromised.

The 2200 Trinzic Appliances support Lights Out Management (LOM) for remote site communication and management, feature a Unit Identification Button / LED, and utilize the latest technology for achieving energy efficiency.

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KEY CAPABILITIES n DNS Queries per Second – 61,000 to 143, 000 n DHCP Leases per Second - 375 to 600 n Hardware Redundancy – Hot swappable redundant power supplies fans and four disks RAID 10

E N I F REDE

ENTRY-LEVEL STORAGE AND DATA PROTECTION SIMPLE.EFFICIENT.PROTECTED.

Simple and efficient application-driven unified storage that works the way you do.

The smarter backup appliance that drastically reduces time and effort.

Harnessing the value of information

Authorised Value Added Distributor StorIT Distribution fzco | P.O.Box 17417 Jebel Ali Freezone Dubai, United Arab Emirates Tel: +971.4.881.9690 | Fax: +971.4.887.1637 | Email: info@storit.ae | Web: www.storit.ae

*Based on internal Dell analysis in July 2013 based on Dell Compellent flash-optimised vs.spinning disk arrays and an internal test performed by Dell in March 2013 with Storage v6.310 on dual SC8000 controllers running OLIP type workloads using IOmeter with a 100% random, 70/30 read/wirte mix and 8K sector transfer size achieved this IOPS performance.

Actual performance/latency will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability **Based on internal Dell analysis performed in May 2013, comparing similar Dell Compellent offerings to EMC VNX Family, HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP EVA, IMB V7000, IBM XIV, Hitachi Data Systems HUS 100 Family,and Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Family and competitive US list pricing from Gartner Inc, Cp Storage, as of June 2013. Š 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.