InfraInsight October 2018

Freedom to Cloud WITH ITS HIGHLY INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE CLOUD NUTANIX GIVES ENTERPRISES THE FREEDOM TO BUILD MODERN DATA CENTERS WITH UNLIMITED FLEXIBILITY. /50

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GITEX SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ISSUE 05 OCTOBER 2018 W W W. E C - M E A . C O M

COVER FEATURE

2018

FREEDOM TO CLOUD As Cloud computing and hyperconvergence emerge as the fundamental technology engine for digital transformation initiatives, /50

TOP PLAYERS OF INFRAINSIGHTS 2018

TOP PLAYER SECURITY

ADVERTISER INDEX:

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SAP

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EDITORIAL

Make way while Transformation Shines

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

Welcome to the 2018 edition of The InfraInsights – our annual technology handbook. As every year, the handbook will serve as the go-to-solution reference book for the readers for the year 2019. We have blended solutions from leading/top players as well as emerging players in the ICT domain and presented a 360 degree portfolio of the players based on the solution or technology domain that they cater to. The sections of the feature are based on the key questions that a potential partner or customer would like to know about the solution provider.

The inclination of the market is clearly visible from the responses that we got from the featured companies. Though at a very nascent stage, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Industrial Automation are the key technologies that the solution providers vouch for and wish to take to the market to enhance seamless service delivery. In geographies, seven out of ten companies have plan to explore the Africa market in 2019 owing to the deep penetration of digital initiatives in the continent.

Our cover feature for this year’s edition, readers can see how Nutanix is re-writing business rules with its highly intelligent enterprise cloud and giving enterprises the freedom to build modern data centers with unlimited choice of best-of-breed technology, simplicity and flexibility. Aaron White and Nicolas Leblanc of Nutanix tell us how Nutanix’ s shift to ‘software mode’ is helping the company to further disrupt the datacenter by allowing customers the choice to run Nutanix software on a large number of server platforms.

Digital Transformation is the flavor of the season (and would be for the years to come).

If one has to summarize this issue of InfraInsights in one sentence, the moral of the story would be ‘An agile IT combined with seamless delivery platform that can optimize operation and re-invent products and services is digital transformation in a nutshell.’ The special story that we have put together on the Digital Diary assimilates these transformative models and sees what is NEXT. Happy reading and Happy 2019 in advance! ë

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INFRASTRUCTURE

$

64,845.8 mn

Data Business in Oil and Gas Market Expected to Reach US$ 64,845.8 Mn by 2026 acc to Market research

100 bn

MENA Finance Firms Spend $155 Billion in Digital Disruptive Technologies

$155 mn

Digitization to boost Mideast GDP by $100 billion: Experts

L A T I G I THE D 20 bn

BMI Research predicts the UAEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IT market will reach AED 20 billion in 2018.

When a region is travelling at steadfast speed to reach undefined horizons of excellence, the countries, infrastructure stakeholders and the infrastructure are under tremendous pressure to match pace. The GCC, as we all know, is an ambitious piece of geography that whirlpools innovation and competitive spirit into its core infrastructure and foundation.

Today Digital transformation is the ambition that the region has set its eye on. According to various surveys, the digital dream would flourish over the debris of organizations that failed to adapt or change their back-end operations in sync with the demands of digitization. An agile IT combined with seamless delivery platform that can optimize operation and re-invent products and services is digital transformation in a nutshell. Various studies have stated that, upgrading an organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure regularly is one of the basics yet prime step towards moving a step closer to the digital transformation. As enterprises undertake initiatives such as connected devices, analytics-driven business processes, social media-focused marketing, and mobile-first user experiences, they need reliable, trusted IT to deliver a superior service experience.

In the next few pages, we have tried to put the digital infrastructure of the GCC and META region in general and tried to highlight some key aspects of the region that is further accelerating this drive and the various disciplines brought in by the technology vendors and solution providers to the platform.

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INFRASTRUCTURE

THE DIGITAL DIARY AFRICA The manufacturing production sector in Africa is seeing a significant growth with exponential interest in emerging technologies like 3D printing, robots, cloud computing etc. Deeply researched reports state that the continent is ready for the big transformation. The country has made great strides in technology, ranking second in the sub-Saharan Africa region on the Networked Readiness Index. This, combined with the 147.7 million devices that will be networked in South Africa by 2018, provide great prospects to drive growth and enhance social and economic well-being.

Automation is also rising as one of the preferred technologies to invest into as organizations saw a steeping rise in the wages of low-income African countries as well. Africa has nine of the fastest-growing economies in the world and reports suggest that this can be a reason to invest more in automation technologies to have a knock-effect.

The banking and finance sector is also growing as one of the most advanced sectors of the continent with its significant investment in digital payments and mWallet initiatives. The retail payment has been completely overhauled with digitization.

According to a study, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The retail payments infrastructure is one of the earliest beneficiaries of mobile-phone based payments and transactions platforms. Electronic payments platforms save on transactions costs in terms of time, travel, and even unit costs. Indeed, this revolution cuts across rich and poor, underserved and unserved, and formal and informal businesses.â&#x20AC;?

Yet another milestone that the continent has embarked on is the Kenya eCitizen Digital Platform that is a great initiative by the government to further increase the access of the citizens to the government and easy application of services through online and mobile platform.

African digital transfoarmation into four key areas

retail payments systems

financial inclusion

sustainable business models

Key Infra Projects of Africa (Source: Brookings education)

01 M-TIBA: The M-TIBA savings product is a mobile phone-based health wallet that enables one to save, send, and spend funds specifically for medical treatment

02 M-KOPA Solar: M-KOPA is an innovative solar power solution program that helps low-income consumers acquire high-quality, affordable energy

03 M-Akiba: Launched in March 2017, M-Akiba is a micro-investment in government securities using the mobile phone payments platform

revenue administration

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INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL DIARY: EMERGING VS DIMINISHING TECHNOLOGY 5G will be one of the strongest pillars of smart city. UAE has already rolled out its plan for the next age and mobile IoT networks are geared up to support the smart city initiatives. 5G will bridge wireless and wireline networks, forcing a major network architectural change from radio access to core. Cloud will once again be the key driver here as more and more organizations will need to shift to cloud native applications. Organizations will also need to monitor and manage an end-to-end network.

According to leading service providers, 5G also combines and leverages the capability of a variable bandwidth network with mixed and flexible access. On the flip side, this enhanced flexibility increases the surface vulnerable to threats. As Cisco says, “Securing 5G networks requires complete visibility of the stack managing a use case and controls to take remedial action. Contrary to traditional carrier networks, 5G networks require visibility from the edge to the cloud platform, to the application, across the extended network, to the end point.”

CONNECTED CARS

The Middle East and Africa connected car market is segmented based on products, by communication, by application and by service type. Product is further bifurcated into software and hardware components. Digital dashboards, navigation systems and enhanced infotainment systems are some of the prominent trends in the connected cars market, which is expected to boost the demands of infotainment systems segment growth in the market.

The Middle-East and Africa connected cars market accounted for USD 0.935 billion in 2016. Further, the market is anticipated to expand at compound annual growth rate of 31.5% over the forecast period i.e. 2016-2024 and expected to reach USD 8.6 billion by the end of forecast period i.e. 2024.

DIGITAL WEALTH & IOT The Digital Wealth initiative will safeguard Dubai’s digital wealth by issuing Dubai Digital Certificates to outstanding government and private entities.

The Dubai IoT Strategy seeks to build the world’s most advanced IoT ecosystem in the world’s smartest city to improve people’s lives.

The Internet of Things is the network of physical devices, such as cameras, that are networked together to collect and send data

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INFRASTRUCTURE

AUTONOMOUS CONNECTED DRONES Dubai began testing electric taxi drones in September 2017. Similar to a two-seater helicopter, the Volocopter taxi is designed for 30-minute flights to and from ‘voloports,’ which are basically train stations for flying taxis.

But, despite the tests, experts agree: Autonomous flying taxis almost certainly won’t get off the ground as a commercially viable reality in 2018.

MARS IN DUBAI With a budget of $135 million and a footprint stretching to 1.9 million square feet, the Mars Science City will simulate as closely as possible the conditions of a real life Mars colony — complete with greenhouses for testing out agricultural techniques, solar radiation-blocking 3D printed walls, and far more.

It’s all part of a plan for the United Arab Emirates to send its first unmanned probe to Mars in 2020, and establish a colony there sometime in the next century.

HOTEL OF THE FUTURE Hospitality sector will be seen raising its bars to further heights in the next couple of years. The Rosemont Hotel will be one of the benchmarks for that. The Rosemont Hotel & Residences will feature a giant 360 degree computer-generated rainforests in the public areas, and a robotic host on the reception desk. Along with the requisite trees and plants, it has 75,000-squarefoot rainforest will also include a beach, splash pool, stream, and adventure trails, though there’s no word on whether it’ll be populated with lots of exotic critters and creatures.

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INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITIZATION DIARY – OIL AND GAS: TOWARDS DIGITAL OIL FIELDS From automated decisions to connected infrastructure platforms, the digital oilfield will pave for many disruptive technologies that will create new channels of value and further enhance the human-machine communications. According to a study, (quote) “The days of collecting and storing large volumes of data for later analysis will become a distant memory. The digital oilfield will change expectations for all aspects of our industry ranging from how fast decisions are made to detecting patterns the human eye cannot see in order to take advantage of the insights quicker.”

In the oil and gas sector, technologies such as AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and big data analytics will not only help the back-end operations improve but also align the processes and remain secure and compliant.

$11tn

The oil industry will require to invest about $11 trillion over the next 20 years to meet the demand for crude worldwide

$574bn worth of developments are planned in the future

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INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL DIARY â&#x20AC;&#x201C; WORKPLACE INFRASTRUCTURE If you do not want your workforce to be engaging in shadow IT schemes, giving them the workplace freedom that they want would be inevitable.

Workplace freedom includes tools and benefits that include BYOD, daily life applications etc. While these account for a minimal digital workplace mandate, these are also the tools that make an employee more productive and engaged.

A digital workplace must be agile to change, adaptive

Dubai Municipality launched a digital transformation project to virtualise desktops and consolidate data centres for business applications using VMware

According to Arube HPE study 70% cited improved collaboration thanks to digital technologies verses.

55% of Laggards

to newness and encouraging to transparency.

This all requires a shift in boardroom thinking and corporate culture. Remote workers and remote working is the current preference of millennials unlike the older generation for whom work and office were synonyms. Companies need to think about how the digital workplace extends beyond their head office to support remote workers, partners and customers. IT departments of the respective organizations have to to plan for, and invest in, a working environment without borders. It is the era of a Smart Digital Workplace.

This is where human-centered design meets IoT and building automation.

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Mashreq partners with Virtusa to implement Blue Prismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digital Workforce to drive innovation

Gartner predicts that by 2020 a customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human

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INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL DIARYâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; CRITICAL NATIONAL GRID INFRASTRUCTURE When it comes to the critical grids, digitization is still a few steps away than what has been in theory so far. Telecom is also at par with the other sectors in digital development.

Omni channel service delivery and customization of services based on the user behavior are few of the engagement models that service providers are using.

According to studies, operators are increasingly automating and building in

Etisalat will launch 5G for wireless and fixed lines for triple play for consumers this year

analytics with fast feed-back loops both in the customer as well as network facing sides of the operation.

Artificial intelligence is also paving way for good user experience and improving asset utilization processes and end-user experience. The industrial space will be

UAE telcos can earn Dh12.11b from digitisation with 5G

transformed immensely with the 5G mobile technology and will connect more machines than people in real-time through IoT. Previous mobile technologies such as 3G and 4G were built for human interaction, but 5G will allow industries to cut cables to their machines with the intelligence of the cloud.

POWER AND UTILITIES DEWA, which is behind Dubaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s utilities transformation, is making strategic steps to adopt new technologies in line with the UAE National Innovation Strategy that aims to make UAE one of the most innovative countries in the world. According to a report in an independent newspaper, The emirate has now converted all its independent operating power stations into a network of smart grid enabled power plants. The project involves the development of information systems at each station to transmit joint performance data, as well as the development of the one-way data diode (ODD) and using it to protect each station from cyber-attacks.

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33bn

As per A.T Kearney, in 2 years, an estimated 33 billion products and devices will be connected to the more than 4 billion smartphone users worldwide

INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL DIARY – SMART INFRASTRUCTURE COUNTERPARTS Omantel Partner with Equinix to Open Data Center

IMTAC partnered with Signify to bring Smart City Solutions to Oman with connected lighting technologies

OMAN NAMA Group Launches Smart Metering in Oman

Oman Data Park partners with Cisco for Managed Security Services

Al Hokair plans to embark on SR147b virtual reality market

SAUDI Digitization expected to create half a million jobs in Saudi Arabia by 2020

Blockchain technology would enrich an economy of $9 trillion, KSA share would be $250 billion

Work on Kuwait’s $4bn smart city to start in 2019

KUWAIT According to its 2016 global technology report, Kuwait leads the world in mobile coverage

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South Saad Al Abdullah city in Kuwait is billed as the Middle East’s first development to be both green and ‘smart

In March 2017, Saudi Arabia rented 100 concrete 3D printers from Chinese construction outfit Winsun in a $1.5bn deal to create 5,000 3D-printed villas

Kuwait is modernising its national infrastructure and focusing on smart city developments under the ambitious Kuwait National Development Plan 2035

TOP PLAYER SECURITY

SOPHOS

The Collaboration Strength SOPHOS IS CREATING A SINGLE, CLOUD-BASED MANAGEMENT CONSOLE THAT CLAIMS TO SPAN THEIR ENTIRE PORTFOLIO. THE VENDOR CLAIMS THAT THEY ARE WELL-POSITIONED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES AS A LEADER IN HIGH GROWTH AREAS, LIKE ENDPOINT, CLOUD, NETWORK AND SYNCHRONIZED SECURITY

COMPETITIVENESS: SYNCHRONIZED SECURITY Sophos has pioneered the synchronized security approach that for the first time allows endpoint and network security products to actively and continuously share threat intelligence information to better protect against sophisticated, agile attacks, in a manageable way. Managed through our flagship cloud management platform Sophos Central, synchronized security now offers even more effective and comprehensive security for customers.

INTELLIGENT SECURITY SYSTEM Sophos Central is a security management platform that lets you manage all your Sophos products through a single, intuitive interface. We are creating a single, cloud-based management console that will span our entire portfolio.

The following products are currently available through Sophos Central: Sophos Endpoint Security, Sophos Intercept X, Sophos XG Firewall, Sophos Mobile, Sophos Server Protection, Sophos Synchronized Encryption, Sophos Wireless, Sophos Email Security, Sophos Web Security, and Sophos Phish Threat AI and machine learning. We have upped the ante by applying advanced deep learning neural network technology to the cybersecurity problem. The result is predictive security that will be unmatched in its ability to keep an organization safe – and delivered in a way that is accessible to any size organization.

Today, deep learning has been included in the Group’s Intercept X endpoint protection product, Sophos Sandstorm the sandboxing in Sophos XG Firewall, Sophos Intercept X for Server, and Sophos Email Advanced.

SophosLabs has accelerated its automated

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threat analysis systems by the adoption of this technology. Sophos plans to add the advantage of artificial intelligence to other appropriate areas of its portfolio in due course.

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS Cybersecurity remains a top priority for organisations in the Middle East. Sophos is well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities as a leader in high growth areas, for example next-generation endpoint, cloud, network and synchronized security. We have made strong progress against our strategic goals in both our enduser and network security offerings. We have added significant customer value and expanded our market opportunity across our product lines through numerous product enhancements and additions, including through Sophos Central.

Sophos’ customer base in the region cuts across business domains and also includes government institutions. From a small business to mid-market organization to a large enterprise with internet exposed, Sophos has partnered with a wide range of customers spanning a myriad of verticals including Healthcare, Retail, Education, Government, Service Providers, IT & Telecom and more in the region and innovated security for a wide array of business and security use cases.

YOUR MARKET VERDICT The Sophos-sponsored InfoBrief Synchronized Security Market Analysis – Middle East & Africa, developed by International Data Corporation (IDC), revealed that the MEA countries represented a total security solutions market potential of nearly $1.89 billion in 2015, which is expected to increase at a CAGR of 9.3% to a total of $2.94 billion in 2020 as per the IDC Worldwide Security Spending Guide, H12016. Close to 42% of organizations in the MEA felt ‘highly confident’ of their security posture. ë

HARISH CHIB,

VICE PRESIDENT, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, SOPHOS

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TOP PLAYER SECURITY

VALUEMENTOR

Customer success on priority

VALUEMENTOR HAS LAUNCHED THEIR BIG DATA BASED THREAT HUNTING PLATFORM WHICH ALLOWS CUSTOMERS TO GAIN BETTER INSIGHTS ABOUT THEIR SECURITY INCIDENTS. THE 24X7 SECURITY OPERATIONS CENTRE PROVIDES SECURITY INSIGHTS TO THE CUSTOMERS. ADDITIONALLY, WE HAVE STARTED OUR OPERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

ValueMentor is a specialist Cyber Security company providing Digital Security Services. The key services offered by ValueMentor include the following n Security Testing n Risk & Compliance Services n Managed Security Services n Managed Service Provider n Digital Transformation Where is your customer growth coming from?

ValueMentor attributes its growth to our happy customers. We retain 98% of our 150+ customers.

The referrals are the main source of new business generation for us.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Our internal strength is our team and the partners. We tend to work with a set of partners for a longer period. Continuous innovation is helping our customers get more ROI on the investments they make. We make it a point that the customers gain more every year for the same investment they make. This continuous innovation and evolution in our services helps us retain our customers to the tune of 98% Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

We believe that a knowledgeable and happy workforce fuels our growth. Keeping the team the opportunities they need to excel and at the same

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time constantly challenging them to provide the “intellectual kick” they need for motivation makes it a happy environment.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

We have launched our Big Data based threat hunting platform which allows our customers to gain better insights about their security incidents.

The 24x7 Security Operations centre provides security insights to the customers. Additionally, we have started our operations in the USA. Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

In 2018 we saw huge growth in Managed security services. Many of our customers upgraded to Managed Security testing service from a standard penetration testing. Our risk based Security Testing model is gain more success these days.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We are enhancing our Big Data analytics-based threat hunting platform. We expect to hire senior resources from leading MSSP / MDR application development companies. We intent to grow into the African Markets this year and European markets in 2019.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Digital Transformation is creating a lot of opportunities in the business of Digital Security.

We expect an increase in Cloud, Mobility and Block Chain based security requirements.

BINOY KOONAMMAVU, CEO, VALUEMENTOR

What is the annual turnover of your company?

We were growing 40% YoY for the last 4 years.

However, this year we are expecting a 120% growth in terms of revenue.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

Infrastructure Management Digital Transformation Services What is the number of customers acquired this year?

30 new customers totally 150+ active customers.ë

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TOP PLAYER SECURITY

INFOBLOX

Filling the gap in security INFOBLOX LISTENS TO THEIR CUSTOMERS AND RESPOND TO THEIR NEEDS, WHETHER IT BE LAUNCHING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS THAT SOLVE UNIQUE CUSTOMER CHALLENGES IN THE REGION, OR PRICING THEIR PRODUCTS COMPETITIVELY.

STRENGTHS

relevant to their customers and be seen as trusted advisors.

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Infoblox is the ONLY DDI vendor to offer cybersecurity ecosystem integrations with FireEye, Cisco and Carbon Black for automating incident response. It is the ONLY DDI vendor with an in-house advanced threat intelligence platform and a threat research team. It is also the ONLY DDI vendor to offer threat adapt technology to automatically update protection as new attacks rise.

Where is your customer growth coming from?

We are relevant to all verticals that appreciate security and building a more intelligent network for the future. Critical national infrastructure is a key segment for Infoblox. Some of the industries that we have had major successes in are Government, Telco, Intelligence, Military, Financial and Energy organizations.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

We are definitely one of the first to innovate in products and solutions in the DDI space including DNS security. As a result of our technology innovation, we have nearly 50% of the market share worldwide including a major marketshare in MEA. Although we are willing to work with many partners, we have identified a list of focused partners and developed a partner strategy that will benefit both parties. Our partners know that we have unique solutions that help them address challenges their customers are struggling with as they embark on their digital transformation journey. This helps the channel become more

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OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We continue to invest in innovation and bring to the market products like Infoblox Actionable Network Intelligence, that enables enterprises to support a nimble and dynamic next generation data centre and helps our customers control their network services and take automation and security to the next level.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

We experienced significant growth last fiscal year, and we expect to continue our growth in MEA region this year and expand into territories like Oman, Bahrain, Pakistan and South Africa.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

We are in the midst of a wave of IT transformation and modernization and the opportunities for Infoblox and other IT leaders are very big. When we look at security, we see huge opportunities.

Regional organizations will focus on security as the No. 1 area of IT spend given the fact that not only is the threat landscape constantly changing, but also the political turmoil in certain countries is adding another dimension of cyber warfare.

How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

As part of partner enablement, we conduct partner training sessions at least twice a quarter across various regions depending on the priorities

ALI SLEIMAN,

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR - MEA, INFOBLOX

of the region, availability of partners and requests from partners.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

The announcement of a new program that combines its market-leading DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI) and DNS-based security solutions with a consumption based pricing model to enable Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to fill a gap in their service portfolio.

New updates to our Network Identity Operating System (NIOS) platform enabling organizations to automate core services and data centers such as Red Hat Ansible in order to rapidly deploy network and security services via the cloud. ĂŤ

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TOP PLAYER SECURITY

MIMECAST

A layered approach

MIMECAST SAYS THAT MOST CUSTOMERS UNDERSTAND THAT EMAIL IS ALREADY LARGELY IN THE CLOUD SO HAVING CLEAN EMAIL COMING INTO THEIR ORGANISATIONS IS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY. CUSTOMERS ARE MOVING TO CLOUD AND ARE APPLYING OTHER CONTROLS TO ENSURE THEY PROTECT THEIR DATA, AND THEY CAN SEE THE ADVANTAGES OF USING MATURE CLOUD SOLUTIONS LIKE MIMECAST.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Our key differentiator is that we offer a holistic, cyber resilience for email solution, unlike other vendors who tend to focus on defence only.

These vendors may have a good story around advanced threats, but they fall short in staying ahead of the adversaries and when attempting to combine advanced security with risk mitigation capabilities. It’s no longer enough to focus solely on the email security angle. Mimecast guarantees the overall stability of your entire email environment before, during, and after an incident. Our solution offers a range of advanced targeted threat capabilities with a multi-layered approach to risk mitigation techniques. So, if a breach occurs, you can keep email flowing with our continuity offering, recover from ransomware quickly and safely with our secure and multipurpose archive, and get your employees back online and operational as fast as possible.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

These are both important at Mimecast. We encourage our employees to spend time on their own personal development. We offer several online courses and allow them to pursue external training as well.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

We are proud to have closed some noteworthy customers this year and demonstrated the real value of our technology and services.

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What

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O CTO B E R 2018

caused this success?

Our business grows in line with the market which is no surprise. Transportation, shipping and logistics are strong sectors in the Middle East, especially in the UAE.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

From a geographical perspective, we are only just scratching the surface in the Middle East. We have made significant headway in Dubai but there is still so much opportunity in the rest of the UAE. Our next big frontier is Saudi Arabia and we’re starting to see some traction in this important market. In terms of products, we recently acquired cyber security training and awareness platform, Ataata. The platform aims to reduce human error in the workplace and help enable organisations to become more secure by changing the security culture of their employees.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

As mentioned Saudi Arabia presents a definite opportunity, along with the other growing markets in the Middle East. In terms of Africa, we are well established in South Africa and adequately supported by our partners in neighbouring Southern African countries like Namibia. We are also aggressively expanding into Kenya and the rest of East Africa.

GENERAL INFORMATION What is the annual turnover of your company?

GAAP revenue for 2018 was $261.9 million, an increase of 40% compared to the $186.6 million of GAAP revenue in 2017.

JEFF OGDEN,

GM - MIMECAST MIDDLE EAST

How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

In addition to our annual partner connect conference and boot camps we run monthly partner education, to ensure they are fully up to speed with our enhancements.

What is the number of customers acquired this year?

Globally we have added 3000 customers since the beginning of this year. ë

TOP PLAYER SECURITY

QUEST SOFTWARE

Solving Complex Problems QUEST’S VAST PORTFOLIO PROVIDES THE REQUIREMENTS THAT MANY ORGANIZATIONS NEED TODAY. THE COMPANY SAYS THAT THEIR SOLUTIONS ARE SIMPLE WHICH ENABLES CUSTOMERS THE EASE TO MIGRATE ONSITE, ON PREMISE OR HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS WITH THE SECURITY NEEDED TO ENSURE DATA IS AVAILABLE AT ANYTIME - SAFE AND SECURE!

How has the year 2018 been for Quest?

In 2017, we have gone through 2 major acquisitions for the company. Our company is plan & focus is to grow organically & through acquisitions, so that we can continue to service our clients based on their customer needs and ever-changing evolving technologies. We recently had Balabit acquisition which helped our identity portfolio with access management. We also had Metalogix which helped with our Microsoft solutions. These are the huge steps by our company.

Our company’s strategy is to be a complete end to end solution not only for the partners but also for the end customers.

Since 1987, the company started and it’s been over 30 years. We have customers in over 100 different countries. We have lot of customers and we have been in the region for a long time. So that combination gives us a huge advantage in the market place.

How has the market been for you from the business point of view?

The market for Quest is stable, not too much growth. Sales is something were every business focuses. When it comes to restructuring and acquiring with so much of energy and efforts goes into understanding a new portfolio, your focus and strategy has to shift. If it’s not 100% focus on the sales, how can we expand business.

So the partner program is something that has been shifted this year. The Quest partner circle has now been offering cash back rebates to our partners. The partners are getting profitable and growing portfolio. The strategy has been through developing strong partnership, getting internal partners eco systems.

Tell us about your major partnerships of the year.

Our biggest Partnerships are the latest acquisitions of Metalogix and Balabit. This ensures that Quests will continue growing in double digit for booking and partnerships. These acquisitions

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enable our customers to move to the cloud seamlessly without downtime effecting their business.

Your website states - With Quest, organizations can spend less time on IT administration & more time on business innovation. How? The whole Quest’s purpose is to solve complex problems with simple solutions. Imagine the amount of time you can get back to do other things in your business when you are not bogged down with administration tasks. Our commitment is to invest in continuous technology that drives innovation. By investing and developing exactly what our customers need, was can deliver value to customer and partners alike. Business innovation is a two way street and getting our customers to join our innovation, both parties can benefit in the final outcome.

What are your simple solutions for a complex world?

Our portfolio is vast yet provides the requirements that many organizations need today. Our solutions are simple by enabling customers the ease to migrate onsite, on premise or hybrid environments with the security needed to ensure data is available at any time and safe and secure.

This is extremely important with the growing amount of data daily.

Tell us about your major success stories.

Once of our biggest wins this year was working with the biggest utility client and their merger handling over 45,000 user accounts. Another grand success was securing over 13,000 accounts with the biggest bank in the region. Continuing to service customers on this grand scale is the key to our success.

Earlier CIOs used to backup their data - ‘just in case’ but now it has become a wider cyber resilience strategy. How should a CIO design his

RACHEL MEULEMAN, HEAD OF REGIONAL MARKETING, EMEA EMERGING MARKETS, QUEST

backup & recovery architecture?

Today the biggest requirement for CIOs are simplicity and flexibility without compromising scalability. With continuous data explosion, they cannot risk vulnerability of their environment and must ensure data has on demand access.

Speed and ease is on the top of everyone’s mind.

Time is money and no CIO has time to waste.

Therefore ensuring a quick backup that can be restored, even faster, is going to be the top priority for the business. An ideal CIO’s architecture will encompass fast recovery time, zero downtime, while hosting data on the cloud ensuring access to all their information anywhere, at any time with Quest. ë

TOP PLAYER SECURITY

VALTO TECHNOLOGIES

Carving a niche in document digitization VALTO IS CONSIDERING TO ADD MORE VALUE TO CUSTOMERS BY ENTERING INTO PHYSICAL RECORDS/

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT TO PROVIDE END TO END CONTENT / INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SERVICES, FOR WHICH THE NEED IS INCREASING DAY BY DAY IN UAE AND GCC DUE TO THE LATEST VAT IMPLEMENTATION.

STRENGTHS

a innovative solution for banking industry by early 2019.

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition?

Project understanding, customisation, delivery and after sales support are the only reason we have been able to grow our customer base in multiples. We are a customer-oriented company and look for long term association and engagements with customers.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

We believe we have carved a niche in document digitisation services which have been our major source of revenue for the last three years, but the Content Management solutions implementation are picking up fast along with Virtualisation solutions which we have taken into our core activities only for the past one year.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Healthcare have been a good story for us as almost 30% of our revenue for the past three years the same time we have got multiple customers from logistics, large retail houses, govt and BFSI other than consulting, insurance etc. in that way we have balanced customer base to large extent and we believe in the coming years we will have manufacturing , services, shipping ,logistics and retail will have more role to play in our growth story.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Yes. We have been first movers in some of the areas working, we are in the process of delivering

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O CTO B E R 2018

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

Identifying some of the best solutions and signing up with the principles to represent the region, which we hope will drive our growth plans faster.

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

Information Capture and Content Management â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Information Management has become very important due to the VAT implementation. No specific Industry because Information Capture and Management is important to all.

OPPORTUNITY What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We will be adding one more product line minimum or maximum two more product line.

Digital platforms, IoT and Data Science are of our specific area of interest where we will be focusing in the coming year, other than specific areas of other enterprise applications aimed to ease SME customer growth. We are actively Considering to add more Value to our customers by entering into Physical Records/ information Management so as to provide end to end content / information Management Services,.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Large & Medium Companies and Government organizations are going towards making paperless by implementing software and technologies at the same time, Digitization. Capture and Content

VINAYAN P,

DIRECTOR & BUSINESS HEAD, VALTO TECHNOLOGIES

Management will become more favourable in African Countries.

What is the annual turnover of your company?

AED 5 Million What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

Cyber Security, AI & BI and Mobile Applications What is the number of customers acquired this year?

20 Valued Customers. ĂŤ

TOP PLAYER INFRASTRUCTURE

BITS SECURE IT INFRASTRUCTURE

Walking the extra mile AI DEVELOPMENT IS PROGRESSING RAPIDLY AND ITS PREDICTED THAT AI WILL BECOME MAINSTREAM IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS AND AS A TECHNOLOGY PARTNER, BITS SECURE IS PRIORITIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ROBOTICS WHICH IS INCREASING THE PRODUCTIVITY AND THEREFORE THE PROFITABILITY OF OUR CLIENTS.

STRENGTHS

Bits Secure technically associated with OEM and our R’n’D team closely work with OEM to deliver innovative & integrated technology to our clients.

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

By constantly going through the superfluous mile to generate the best experience for our patrons, BITS Secure will ensure that BITS Secure—and not our competitors—stay in the forefront of our client’s attentions, no matter how good their proposals get.

BITS SECURE’S key focus is to deliberate in terms of extremes: what BITS Secure do es every time, what BITS Secure always provides, or what BITS Secure never does

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

BITS honored of our triumphs, which prove our commitment to distinction to our clients and as an top system integrator of the year 2017 and wireless vendor of the year 2018 in MENA region .

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

BITS Secure’s Operational efficiency measures how we are using the company’s resources As BITS excellence of operational efficiency leads to our higher profits and stronger growth. n Where is your customer growth coming from?

Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Our strong acquaintance in technology solution and reliable provision brings our clients recurrently with new necessities where we could meet their expectations with our innovative solutions which enables us to get referrals. we are serving enormous number of customers in health care & BFSI where bits get influenced and specialized in the network security along with the complete infrastructure solutions. n With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry? Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Bits Secure Has Strong partnership with leading OEM and the product from OEM with our innovative design gives the competitive complete solutions as what they need.

What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

Understanding the growing demand as Bits Secure consider and could meet the customers yearning for a product or amenity’s specific benefit which can be functional and emotional as we believe the importance of our customer which is a key for our business where we can establish anywhere globally.

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Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

Digitalization of amenities has reserved BFSI on modest edge. Due to swift changes in the technology in the globe, this revolution in the technology has a excessive impact on the amenities offered in the business.

Opportunities

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

Economic growth in the middle east is likely to rebound in 2019 and could see the UAE’s economy, which is more developed and diversi-

MOHANBABU MURUGESAN,

BUSINESS HEAD - MIDDLE EAST, BITS SECURE IT INFRASTRUCTURE

fied than most others in MENA region What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

AI development is progressing rapidly and its predicted that AI will become mainstream in the next few years and as a technology partner, We would prioritize as we know the importance of the robotics which is increasing the productivity and therefore the profitability of our clients. ë

Cloud Fundamentals.

Delivered. http://www.cloudquarks.com/

www.redingtonvalue.com

TOP PLAYER INFRASTRUCTURE

STRATEGY

Paving way for organic growth

AS AN EMERGING VAD IN STORAGE, SURVEILLANCE, INFRASTRUCTURE, DATACENTER CABLING AND MUCH MORE, STRATEGY IS ANTICIPATING GROWTH WITHIN THE EXISTING VERTICAL AND HAVE EVALUATED TO EXPAND PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN EAST AFRICA VERY SOON.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 Strategy International FZE is a value added Distributor and we cater to business verticals such as Consumer Electronics, Gaming, Media Storage, Surveillance Storage, Infrastructure and Datacenter Cabling, Video Surveillance, Access Control, AV Door Phones (Intercoms), LED Fixtures.

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION Brand-rex, Leviton, Comelit, LS Cables, JCC, Sony, Sandisk, Western Digital Corporation, Cita.

COMPETIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS In general we welcome healthy competition within our industry and around. However internal challenges to adapt to Market changes with price and product design changes, posts a competitive challenge for all. A quick turnaround on stocks is an ideal situation for any distribution company. We have been ahead on all this with our product mix and overall support from our vendor companies.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 SANDISK – Distributor Award – YoY growth in Africa.

Comelit SpA – Golden Distribution Award – GCC CITA – Appointed as Master Distributor for GCC and Africa.

YOUR MARKET VERDICT Over the past few years we have received good stable growth. We anticipate and are hopeful that the region where we operate will experience growth in general.

STRENGTHS

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O CTO B E R 2018

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

This year has been good in number of ways. We have been able to achieve good substantial growth across our group. We believe our Partners – Vendors and Channel have contributed a lot. Our Product offerings have been at the forefront in terms of our overall revenue growth.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? We work hand in hand with our channel partners – System Integrators, Resellers, Fit-Out integrators. This is the customer breadth we always keep and grow.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

R&D and innovations is integral part of growth.

In our case, the innovations are from our vendor companies. These innovation go through with lot of brain storming session, internally and also with key partners. Go to market plan are devised based on feedbacks and suggestions.

ABISH MOHAMED,

CEO, STRATEGY DISTRIBUTION & MD, TOP MOST GROUP

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We are anticipating growth within our vertical and have evaluated to expand our physical presence in East Africa very soon.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

Based on our business growth and the potentials

discussed with various partners, we assume that business will have gradual growth within GCC and Africa. The countries which will lead to good growth opportunities will be UAE, Qatar, Morocco, Nigeria and couple of countries in East Africa.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

In our industry, we have some new products targeted to POE and IP based solutions. We are also excited to evaluate and offer the latest products based on Category 8 SCS. ë

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TOP PLAYER INFRASTRUCTURE

SAPPHIREIMS

MAKING BUSINESS AGILE & AUTOMATED THROUGHT ITS COMPETITIVE TIL SERVICE DESK AND ASSET MANAGEMENT OFFERINGS, SAPPHIRE IS ASPIRING TO EXPAND THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL PRESENCE AND PRODUCT PORTFOLIO INTO NEW VERTICALS AND NEWER BUSINESS MODELS

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2017 SapphireIMS makes your business functions and processes agile through our suite of ITIL Service Desk, Enterprise Asset Management, Enterprise Service Management, Service Lifecycle Management and Business Service Monitoring Solutions.

In addition, we have an healthcare vertical focused product called HxCentral.

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION AlphaData, Emircom, DM world, Roadmap, AppleCenter, OSI Infotech

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS Here are the key features of the offering where SapphireIMS trumps the competition: l Integrated solution for enterprise of any size l Easy and simple to adapt and manage l Personalized implementation and customer service l Verticalization of the solutions with deep domain expertise

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS Here are the key wins in the ME region - NMC, Red Tag, IFFCO, Business Ware, Shababco

YOUR MARKET VERDICT We are growing our market share in the region with the new wins and by forging new partnerships. The clients are favoring the solution and we stand at a high rating of 4.5/5 in Capterra.

STRENGTHS What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Our growth is coming from following sources: l Geographic: Expansion in Middle East, Africa and South East Asia l Product: Expanding the product into verticals and newer business models, such as SaaS. E.g.

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HxCentral is our vertical-based solution for healthcare. l Organic Growth: Improved client references and client penetration Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? The solution is vertical agnostic. However, we are seeing good traction from the BFSI and Healthcare markets. We’ve recently launched an healthcare specific solution called HxCentral to cater to the needs of the market. Apart from we are seeing that the existing market is growing by 40% YoY and we are seeing good growth from the new geos.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

Here are our plans, much of which is already in the implementation phase Product: l We are adopting the vertical-based approach to make the solutions much sharper and relevant to the business. l As a product strategy, we are adopting new technologies, such as AI, ML, Chat Bots, Analytics and IoT to deliver better value to our clients and to stay ahead of the game. l Flexible delivery models, such as SaaS, OnPremise SaaS and perpetual Geo: l Rapidly expand in the current markets, such as India, ME and South East Asia. Enter aggressively into Africa and the US Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

UAE and SA are the two regions where we see

SHAFI AHAMED,

CEO, SAPPHIREIMS

huge potential for growth.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you? l Digitization of the core process have been ignored for long and we are seeing an increasing realization and demand from our clients. l Automation of operational processes l Workflow design and management l Real-time management of assets through technologies, such as IoT and native device adaptors l There is significant demand for connectors and APIs that would make the entire end-user experience seamless even when diverse IT systems are involved. ë

Meet us @

Hall 7: 7A - A15, 7A - 28

TOP PLAYER INFRASTRUCTURE

RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

Better products for better growth RITTAL’S KEY MILESTONES FOR THIS YEAR HAS BEEN THE LAUNCH OF THEIR NEW ENCLOSURE SERIES – VX 25 FOR THE INDUSTRY, INTRODUCTION OF EDGE COMPUTING SYSTEMS FOR SMART CITIES, INCREASED FOOTPRINT IN THE REGION, DEDICATED FOCUS ON NEW MARKET SEGMENTS WITH INNOVATIVE OFFERINGS AND FINALLY ENHANCED PARTNER PROGRAM FOR EXISTING AND NEW ON-BOARD

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Efficiency and Innovation are portrayed at the highest level with our offering’s that include comprehensive product portfolio for all challenging IT scenarios. Starting from ‘Edge to Hyperscale’ solutions and Innovative technologies. All offerings are sure to be efficient and reliable encompassing a multitude of options for all requirements and helping our partners focus on their core business and achieve more, together.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Innovation = Better Products = Better Growth!

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? IT Infrastructure has become the norm and an integral part of any organisation, market vertical, even the Industrial segment to include. However, potentials are high with the Banking, Healthcare, Retail, Telco’s and the Government, noting their vision and plans.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Innovation is the key to growth for any company and at times the fuel for it also comes from the challenges, ideas or suggestions from the strong partner base that we have. The perfection, performance excellence and the uniqueness reflected from the innovations are our key strengths.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program

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or your organization culture?

Organisation Principles and Ethics of doing business are our success factors and the employees are beholders of the same. Rittal lays great importance on employees and customer relationships equally – which leads to a robust customer intimacy.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

Launch of our New Enclosure series – VX 25 for the Industry, Introduction of Edge Computing Systems for Smart Cities, Increased footprint in the region, dedicated focus on new market segments with innovative offerings and finally Enhanced Partner Program for existing and new on-board..!

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customer’s wants that you can meet?

Customer Intimacy has proven to be the greatest contributing factor in the past, in the present and will carry the same importance for future. Innovative offerings is what makes Rittal distinctive and we are proud to continue sharing Innovative offerings to our clientele / customers/ channel etc.

JOSEPH NAJJAR,

MD - RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

UAE, KSA, EGYPT and East Africa What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Big Data, Edge Computing, Intelligent Building, Industrial Automation, Intelligent Transportation, Cloud Computing and the list continues….

GENERAL INFORMATION How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

Our Partner Programs are implemented every year and continuing successfully. ë

Your Data.

Multiple Clouds.

One 360 Approach.

Data Visibility

Data Protection

Gain granular understanding of the entire unstructured data landscape.

Compliance Readiness

Prove regulatory compliance, automate archiving and respond to eDiscovery matters.

Business Continuity

Minimize interruptions with one-click failover to any environment.

Ensure data recoverability for any workload; enable self-service access to virtual data copies.

INTELLIGENT CORE Classification, Discovery, Policy Automation

Data/Workload Portability

Ensure freedom of data/workload movement and migration across locations and platforms.

Storage Optimization

Boost performance, scalability and availability across any storage while dramatically reducing cost.

www.veritas.com +27 11 020 5250

INFRASTRUCTURE

STORAGE

34.4%

88.91%

According to Future Market Insights, the Middle East storage market was valued at $1,475.9 million in 2014 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 14.4% during 2015-2025 to reach $6,537.6 million by 2025.

SERVICES

85bn

$

Software-as-a-Service revenues to reach $85 billion in 2019: Gartner

Enterprise Storage Trends of 2018 – • Flash will get bigger and faster • 2018 will be the year of services delivery • Artificial intelligence will gain significant traction in the data center • Multi-cloud will become a reality • Hyperconvergence is limited

Cloud Storage Market to be worth 88.91 Billion USD by 2022: Marketsand Markets

SECURITY

7.5bn

15.62% The Middle East & Africa cybersecurity market is expected to reach a value of USD 34.6 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 15.62%, over the forecast period (2018-2023): Mordor Intelligence

Cyber Security Trends for 2018 – • Increasing use of AI for cyberattacks • Passwords to be replaced by biometric authentication • Zero Trust Security is making a comeback

$

Endpoint Security Market to hit $7.5bn by 2024: Global Market Insights

47.65bn

88.91%

Worldwide Enterprise Storage Market Grew 34.4% during the First Quarter of 2018, according to IDC

Managed Security Services Market worth 47.65 Billion USD by 2023: MarketsandMarkets

NETWORKING Enterprise Networking Trends for 2018 – • Spending is up • Lack of security a major fear • SD WAN hits mainstream

35bn

88bn

USD

$

“Data Center Networking Market is projected to reach a revenue of over USD 35 billion in 2024: Global Markets Insights

Software Defined Networking Market to hit $88bn by 2024: Global Market Insights

2m

$

CLOUD

1bn

DH

UAE cloud service market is projected to cross Dh1 billion by 2020: Frost & Sullivan

40

MENA public cloud services market expected to reach nearly $2M by 2020: Gartner

3,248.8m

North Africa Cloud Managed Services Market worth 3,248.8 Million USD by 2020: MarketsandMarkets

Future Trends in Cloud Computing • Serverless cloud computing on the rise • Continuous increase in cloud storage capacity • Growing demand for cloud-based container system • AI and Machine Learning will take center stage

O CTO B E R 2018

VIRTUALIZATION & SERVERS

13.45bn MarketsandMarkets: Desktop Virtualization Market worth 13.45 Billion USD by 2022

13.45bn

The server virtualization market is expected to grow at approximately USD 8 Billion by 2023: Market Research Future

INFRASTRUCTURE

56.05bn MarketsandMarkets Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Market worth 56.05 Billion USD by 2020

Managed Services Market Trends • Migration to the cloud • Blockchain • Artificial Intelligence • SaaS implementation

CABLING

MANAGED PRINT SERVICES

34.4%

7.2%

MPS Market Trends 2018 • The rise of intelligent connected multi-function printers (MFPs) will help vendors capture more mindshare amongst SMBs • Machine learning models for cybersecurity will emerge as a new differentiator.

• Environmentally Sustainable Print Services

Managed Print Services Market worth 50.78 Billion USD by 2023: MarketsandMarkets

The global fiber optic cables market is set to hit US$ 7.95 Bn by 2026, growing with a CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period 2018 to 2026: Credence Research Key players of global submarine optical fibres market – Alcatel Lucent, Huawei Marine Networks Co. Ltd., TE SubCorn, NEC Group, Gulf Bridge International.

17,181.2mn

$

Structured Cabling Market to Touch $17,181.2 Mn by 2022: Market Research Future

UAE power cables market is projected to reach $2.5 billion by 2024: Research and Markets

Trends affecting physical security power solutions – • Adoption of Security Robots will rise • Cloud-Based Video Surveillanceas-a-Service will grow further • Drones will continue to rule • UHD Surveillance Cameras will continue to appeal

POWER SOLUTIONS

1.35bn

$

Hybrid Power Solutions Market Size Worth $1.35 Billion by 2025: Grand View Research

Blockchain 2018 Trends – • Increased use of smart contracts • Increased regulation • Enterprises are now applying Blockchain, not just exploring it • Newer enterprises find it easier to apply Blockchain than legacy businesses • Security continues to be a prime source of innovation

BLOCKCHAIN

7.59bn

$

Grand View Research: Blockchain Technology Market Size Worth $7.59 Billion By 2024

MOBILITY

Virtualization Trends of 2018 – • HCI will begin to replace traditional virtualization • Virtual desktop infrastructure does not need a full stack solution • Corporates to invest more in hybrid cloud protection

2.5bn

$

1.69bn

USD

The global service virtualization market size is expected to reach USD 1.69 billion by 2025: Grand View Research

Major Blockchain Platforms: R3 Corda, Ripple, Request Network, Hyperledger Fabric, Chain, Ethereum, etc

Trends impacting Mobility – • More enterprise tailored apps • Increased adoption of BYOD policy • The need for cross platform apps will increase • Increased adoption of hybrid cloud technology

7.59bn

$

Research And Markets: Mobility as a service market is expected to grow to US$ 358.35 billion by 2025

O CTO B E R 2 018

200bn

$

Mobility on Demand Market to hit $200bn by 2024: Global Market Insights

41

TOP PLAYER INFRASTRUCTURE

MBUZZ

Putting the best foot forward ACCORDING TO MBUZZ, INNOVATION IS THE KEY TO THIS INDUSTRY AND THEREFORE IS EMBEDDED INTO ALL OF THEIR SOLUTIONS AND DELIVERABLES. THE VAD ALSO CLAIMS THAT THEIR CUSTOMER BASE IS VERY STRONG IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR OF SAUDI ARABIA AND THE SMES IN THE UAE

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition?

We provide unique value addition in technology distribution; “Bid Desk” consisting of technocommercial professionals to support through partners, for providing technically abreast intelligent solutions at best of ROI. Bid Desk enhances the competitiveness of our vendors and partners. This empowers the requirements of largest contributors of MENA economy; SME sector, to access latest of technology solutions at lowest acquisition cost.

Where is your customer growth coming from?

We address Middle East and Africa region (MEA). Customer base are mostly Telecom and the public sector in Saudi Arabia and the SMEs sector who contribute 90% of the UAE economy.

Serving SMEs in MENA region through motivated network of system integrators will be our high priority. We also will address the requirements of verticals like Aviation, Education, Healthcare and Banking sectors of the region.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

MBUZZ is having HR model to group best of human resource teams in technology field. Our professionals for technology distribution market are geared upto provide solutions beyond sales and logistics supports. They are skilled to respond to the market requirements and thus to represent great brands of the world. The seniors and business unit heads will focus on team building exercise. We operate with lean and flat model with empower regional team to make decisions and achieve results faster. We train and motivate our team to look beyond achieving numbers by reflecting to the requirements of the end user.

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All team members work on clear roles with time set objectives and reward model, assuring them career growth too.

What did your company do best this year?

MBUZZ expanded to Dubai and Morocco this year (2018).

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

We believe it is the “storage” market that grew the most with demand from data centres and cloud Platforms.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We plan to expand our resource base this year for the geographical reach. Our efforts will be put into Aviation, Education, Healthcare and Banking.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the Middle East. In Africa, we see growth opportunities in Morocco, Algeria and Tunesia.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Cyber security, big data and E-Com are the future.

GENERAL INFORMATION What is the annual turnover of your company?

SABIR SALEEM,

GM - MBUZZ

50M in US $ How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

As we represent multiple diversified brands, at key account level, we will have continuous partner programs during a year.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

Kaloom, Noviflow, Asustor, Czur, Plustek and Lexar. Efforts to close relation with other major 3 brands are in the pipeline. ë

14 - 18 OCTOBER 2018 DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE

Experience Future Urbanism WELCOME TO THE LARGEST TECHNOLOGY EVENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & SOUTH ASIA

Big on numbers.

Bigger on opportunities.

At the centre of the global tech revolution and the region’s digital transformation, GITEX Technology Week brings together the most powerful innovations influencing the future – right from AI to Smart Cities to Blockchain.

4.700+

100.000+

6.238

EXHIBITORS

VISITORS

MEETINGS SET

80%

16.000+

9

EXHIBITORS SECURED OVER 2 BUSINESS DEALS

GOVT & CORP BUYERS

VERTICAL CONFERENCES WITH 100+ HOURS OF CONTENT

*2017 onsite survey conducted through a third party company

JOIN US NOW AT GITEX.COM WITH THE EARLY-BIRD PRICES UNTIL 30TH SEPTEMBER 2018 FOLLOW US

To Exhibit

#GITEX2018

contact the team on +971 4 308 6566/ 6022/ 4090/ 6282/ 6077 gitexsales@dwtc.com

Organised by

Co-located with

TOP PLAYER BLOCKCHAIN

AFRICA MASTER BLOCKCHAIN COMPANY

Creating Secure Payment Methods THE MARKET IN SOUTH AFRICA AND AFRICA AS A WHOLE IS GROWING AND EXPANDING AND LOOKING TOWARDS DIGITIZING MORE OF ITS SERVICES AND INTERACTIONS WITHIN THE ECONOMY. AMBC SAYS THAT THEY ARE THE FIRST TO OFFER A SOLUTION THAT IS USABLE BEYOND PURE SPECULATIVE TRADE AND INSTEAD IS A DAILY TRANSACTIBLE SOLUTION WHICH IS SAFE, EASY TO USE WITH ZERO CUSTOMER FEES.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 Publicly traded Afri Union Coin for international payments and trade to be distributed in December to ICO and presale participants n Listing in Singapore and South Africa February 2019 n South African ANT Token payment platform mid 2019 n

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION n n n n n n

Nelson Mandela Foundation Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation Africa Blockchain Association Pick n Pay Shoprite Checkers Vodacom/MTN Telecoms

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS AUC and the ANT token are digital currencies with purpose beyond the speculative trade and market. The ability for customers to use the ANT solution to make day to day payments and transactions allows ease of use, security and convenience; while the international AUC allows financial mobility and freedom.

It’s a world first to have digital payments and currency be fully utilizable in an economy without worrying for bank accounts, fees, or accessibility

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 Placque awarding by the Nelson Mandela Foundation n Agreement with CoinHub for listing and cooperation n AUC trading platform launch n

STRENGTHS

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What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Besides the outstanding fund raising for the project and uptake by interested parties, the customer base accessibility from the telecoms is boosting the projects spread.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

We are not the first to offer digital currency accessibility in the market, however we are the first to offer a solution that is usable beyond pure speculative trade and instead is a daily transactible solution which is safe, easy to use with zero customer fees.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

The current plan is to expand AUC listing globally. We will have listing presence in Singapore and South Africa in the beginning but want to further expand that accessibility throughout Asia, Middle East, Europe and the Americas.

The accessibility that will be provided will enable customers from Africa to easily access market internationally and vice versa.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

In Africa the continent as a whole has major opportunity for blockchain and our digital currency solution; however the biggest growth opportunities lie in Zimbabwe and Mozambique In the Middle East we believe that the econo-

GEORGE GORDON,

DIRECTOR, AMBC

mies to look at are the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran which have great prospects going into 2019.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

The evolution of cyber security and the advances in biometric and facial recognition systems for security create a fantastic opportunity to create secure payment methods with digital currencies beyond just API’s and personal pins. ë

INNOVATORS IN

DISTRIBUTION StorIT Distribution fzco 2503 Clover Bay Tower, Business Bay, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Tel: +971.4.8819690 | Fax: +971.4.887.1637 | Email: info@storit.ae www.storit.ae

Authorized Value Added Distributor

TOP PLAYER BLOCKCHAIN

NIMONIKS

Blockchain Powered Credentialing Service EDUCRYPT IS AN AFFORDABLE DIGITAL VERIFICATION SERVICE. DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO SUPPORT STUDENTS, EDUCATORS AND EMPLOYERS, ANY CREDENTIALS ON THE PLATFORM CAN BE VERIFIED IN SECONDS

PRODUCT NAME: EDUCRYPT Vision of the product: Fake certificates and degrees are easy to produce, making verification a challenging, time consuming task. Even with current intermediary services, what should take seconds, takes up to 3 months or more, involves multiple individuals, checking multiple systems at multiple institutions. The delay has real implications for people seeking employment or on a submission deadline. EDUCRYPT eases this pain with a trusted, affordable solution.

KEY FEATURES OF THE PRODUCT: EDUCYPT MAKES VERIFYING CREDENTIALS SIMPLE! n Blockchain platform boosts trust and transparency. n Distributed network means data is safe, secure and always accessible. n Intuitive modern design can be quickly understood by any user. n Artificial Intelligence to find meaningful insights about the owner of the credentials. n Affordable pricing. n Vision to drill into grade tracking and extend further in employment history. n Share credentials in seconds.

HOW EDUCRYPT WORKS Credentials added to EDUCRYPT are validated and registered on the blockchain. Owners of the credentials control access by sharing the certified assets from their digital-cert wallet.

BLOCKCHAIN AND AI Nimoniks operates in the InsureTech space with our iCover micro-insurance delivery platform powered by Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. We also provide professional services

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and technical expertise to organizations deploying Blockchain-based solutions. Nimoniks takes pride in building practical solutions using Blockchain technology. Established in 2017, our mission is to be one of the key players in the Blockchain and AI space.

OTHER KEY PRODUCTS Our main product iCover is a Micro-insurance platform powered by Blockchain and enriched with patent - pending Artificial Intelligence and Risk-Sharing features. This is a new way of looking at risk sharing for coverage providers by leveraging the power of Blockchain.

We also built our proprietary Blockchain based Digital Identity platform that counters Piracy through trusted identity management. Pirate block, our Digital Identity platform is designed for SaaS based subscription providers, content streaming services and web-based license key subscriptions.

BLOCKCHAIN AS A DISRUPTING POWER Blockchain is already disrupting many industries but the true value to enterprise lies in the Blockchain ecosystem. Once companies start viewing Blockchain as an economy versus a storage platform it will propel the next-gen enterprise. Our solutions reflect our beliefs since we build practical ecosystems through Blockchain versus treating it as a storage platform.

HARIBHASKAR

FOUNDER, NIMONIKS

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY Our strategy is to go with partners, we are building alliances and strategic partnerships in multiple markets. The hospitality is overwhelming in the middle east market; we are collaborating with some great partners in the Middle East.

ROADMAP Our 2018 roadmap is more than what we expected on the product and consulting front, its going to be an exciting and busy year. ĂŤ

TOP PLAYER BLOCKCHAIN

APLA

Holistic Solution APLA IS A FULL-SERVICE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY COMPANY THAT ENABLES GOVERNMENTS AND BUSINESSES TO WORK FASTER, SAFER AND WITH GREATER IMPACT.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 Blockchain based solutions for e-government and enterprises

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION Finesse Global, Huawei, HP, DiceTek, Red Hat Linux, NOD3 Technology LLC

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS Apla develops solutions based on its own, proprietary blockchain platform.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 This year Apla developed a number of proven use cases: voting system, land registries, financial services, medical records, IP rights distribution, donation and other social good market places.

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? According to Gartner, the business value-add of blockchain will grow to slightly more than $176 billion by 2025, and then it will exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030. Industries that will benefit this technology most are government and semipublic sector. The private sector may highly benefit the blockchain using this technology for a number of business processes.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Apla is the first to offer blockchain platform that unites 3 important features: high usability, short time of solution development and increased security. Apla Blockchain proprietary platform offers users to interact with visual interfaces, instead of code. Solution development takes a week instead of months. Smart Law mechanism secures from cyber-attacks and source code vulnerabilities.

MUHAMMED ARAFATH,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, APLA

Apla provided HalalGuide, a comprehensive ecosystem of 12 platforms that connects Muslims across the globe, with a technical solution that provided traceability and certification of halal products, making it completely transparent to the consumer.

A number of great projects are still in the pipeline: contract with a large Russian oil corporation, e-government of one of the emirates in UAE.

How good is your organization towards one call resolution for customer service?

Apla offers full-service blockchain solutions: from matching business needs with the right technology solution, to step by step implementation of blockchain into existing IT-systems.

STRENGTHS

OPPORTUNITIES

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Consulting, developing proofs-of-concept and providing blockchain solutions on PublicPrivate Build-Operate and Transfer model.

What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

There is a demand for blockchain solu-

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Development of artificial intelligence and the internet of things increase the demand for blockchain based solutions. ĂŤ

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WEAKNESS tions worldwide, so are open for cooperation anywhere. We are happy to see enquiries for blockchain solution from universities and education government departments, and we are happy to offer a sustainable solution for them.

YOUR VALUE-ADDED IT DISTRIBUTOR

INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY

SOFTWARE DEFINED DATA CENTER

DATA PROTECTION

IDENTITY & ACCESS

SECURITY INTELLIGENCE

RISK & COMPLIANCE

Stand SR-J2, Sheikh Rashid Hall Entrance

info@starlinkme.net

DUBAI WORLD TRADE CENTRE I 14 - 18 OCTOBER 2018

www.starlinkme.net

COVER FEATURE

AARON WHITE,

REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST, NUTANIX

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COVER FEATURE

NUTANIX

FREEDOM TO CLOUD

AS CLOUD COMPUTING AND HYPERCONVERGENCE EMERGE AS THE FUNDAMENTAL TECHNOLOGY ENGINE FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES, NUTANIX IS RE-WRITING BUSINESS

NICOLAS LEBLANC,

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF EMERGING MARKETS AND EASTERN EUROPE AT NUTANIX

RULES WITH ITS HIGHLY INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE CLOUD AND GIVING ENTERPRISES THE FREEDOM TO BUILD MODERN DATA CENTERS WITH UNLIMITED CHOICE OF BEST-OF-BREED TECHNOLOGY, SIMPLICITY AND FLEXIBILITY.

Y

es, there is no silver bullet for data chaos in an era defined by multi-cloud environment and digital transformation, but there is definitely a silver lining in the cloud— literally. Well, that is the Nutanix way of putting a highly intelligent and flexible cloud on the palette for the modern enterprises to build their data centers and scale it the way they want to.

Aaron White, Nutanix Regional Director for Middle East and Nicolas Leblanc, Nutanix Senior Director of Emerging Markets and Eastern Europe sat down with Enterprise Channels MEA. The conversation that followed with them dove into how Nutanix’ s shift to ‘software mode’ is helping the company to further disrupt the datacenter by allowing customers the choice to run Nutanix software on a large number of server platforms.

AARON TURNS 1!

Before I take a walk into Nutanix’ business and transformation alley, I turned to Aaron White – who will be completing a year in Nutanix very soon— to know how the journey has been for him. Those of us who are social media savvy would definitely have seen Aaron’s enthusiastic posts that overwhelmingly talks about anything and everything new or updated in Nutanix— be it a new colleague on board, launches,

3bn

WHAT’S THE GOAL

$

Hitting $3bn in billings from software and support in FY’2021

O CTO B E R 2 018

51

COVER FEATURE

T C U D O R P W NE T R E L A

us entric foc plication-c p a e u st iq in n tects aga ugh a u FLOW: n that pro erns thro c tio n o ta c n e N UTAN IX ty m ’ securi microseg ustomers ine (VM) Solves c ual mach rt vi e tiv a d with n . combine al threats nd extern a internal ses to ir databa fresh the re d n a , restore E RA: to clone, N UTAN IX inistrators m d a e hine. s c a a rs datab al time-m Empowe ing a virtu g ra ve le , t in time any poin tions nd regula ecurity, a s t, s o c e g nd mana B EAM : predict a N UTAN IX visualize, to rs e g a IT man Enables uds. ultiple clo m across

partnerships or any new announcements.

“This is my first year with Nutanix and I’ve had to hit the ground running, managing the introduction of both market-changing new technologies and the onboarding of top new talent and partners to enable the company to stay ahead in a very competitive marketplace. It’s been hard work, but worth it, with a great team in place delivering an outstanding customer experience and contributing to the company achieving incredible FY’ 18 financial results globally, with 66% YoY growth in Q4 software and support billings and 49% YoY increase in Q4 software and support revenue.”

I deliberate on the significance of the famous four ‘H’ of Nutanix here –Hungry, Humble, Honest and with Heart and ask Aaron how well he gels with the culture. He says, “The four H’s resonate with everything we do at Nutanix, especially when it comes to the battle for talent where it’s more important than ever that we provide our workforce with a true sense of value and belonging. I’m proud to be part of a team that embraces global best practices and technologies to provide a modern, digital and respectful environment for staff, not only to learn and grow, but to deliver great products and customer service.”

UNDER TRANSITION Nutanix’s growth chart and global revenue reports reflects the company’s dynamic shift to software-based selling. A significant share of the

WHAT’S IN THE ‘CLOUD’ 52

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gross profit finds its root here.

The emergence of Nutanix as an enterprise cloud operating systems company has been successful in omitting the conundrum that Nutanix is just another storage provider.

“Initially, we delivered our software via our own branded appliance and recognized the associated pass-through hardware revenue in our financial reports,” says Nicolas. “However, this raised questions in our investors’ minds whether we really are a software company or just another storage or appliance company. We have now migrated away from pass-through hardwarerelated revenue recognition and emerged as an enterprise cloud operating systems company, or essentially a software company. In line with the market moving to a software-defined everything approach, Nutanix’ shift to ‘software mode’ helps us to further disrupt the datacenter by allowing our customers the choice to run our software on a large number of server platforms.”

RAINBOW AMIDST THE CLOUDS As a pivotal step towards making the journey

of the customers to the multi-cloud world easier, Nutanix has launched three new exciting products at the .NEXT 2018 New Orleans that abides by the company’s vision. “The launches complete our infrastructure-as-a-service offering, expand our platform-as-a-service offering and introduce a new software-as-a-service offering to the market,” says Nicolas.

OF THE PARTNERS, BY THE PARTNERS, FOR THE PARTNERS Nutanix recently launched the Velocity channel partner program that is targeted towards the mid-market customers. Through this, the company is enabling the partners to demonstrate to customers in the mid-market the benefits that hyperconvergence can bring in reducing costs and increasing efficiency. “The program includes accelerated selling processes, incentives and marketing investments for strategic, mid-market focused channel partners. As part of the program, Lenovo is joining forces with Nutanix to provide specific HX product bundles for mid-market customers based on the HX appliance. In addi-

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud platform blends web-scale engineering and consumer-grade design to natively converge server, storage, virtualization and networking into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence.

The result is predictable performance, cloud consumption models, robust security, and seamless application mobility for all enterprise applications at any scale.

COVER FEATURE

ACQUISITION HIGHLIGHTS

Beam is based on Nutanix’s recently-acquired Minjar Botmetric service, which is already used to manage more than $1B of cloud spend across Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

With the recent acquisition of Netsil, Nutanix will leverage Netsil’s advanced stream processing, application discovery and mapping technology to simplify security policy definition for applications running in both public and private clouds.

With its recent acquisition of Frame, Nutanix customers will be able to deliver DaaS from multiple clouds, combining the consumer-grade simplicity and web-scale design of cloud applications

THE GITEX PLAN l The theme of our participation at GITEX 2018 is ‘Freedom to Build’ – with the company giving enterprises the freedom to build modern data centers with unlimited choice of best-of-breed technology, simplicity and flexibility. l CIOs and IT managers visiting the Nutanix stand at GITEX will have the opportunity to hear about the latest trends, strategies and innovations in the field of scalability, management and design of the Enterprise Cloud l Executives from Nutanix will be conducting hourly technical seminars at the stand

10,610(2) TOTAL CUSTOMERS

90

4yrs, 90 NET PROMOTER SCORE

49%

$268M + 49% YOY Q4 SOFTWARE AND SUPPORT REVENUE

1,000

NEW Q4 CUSTOMERS

145+ COUNTRIES SHIPPED TO

54%

$1.2B + 54% YOY – FY’18 SOFTWARE & SUPPORT BILLINGS

tion, the companies are jointly launching a new hyperconverged software-ready product offering, designed specifically for enterprise customers called Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Certified Nodes.”

In today’s cloud era, Nutanix’ charter focuses on the new generation of “born-in-the-cloud” solution providers. A new kind of approach is required for these kinds of channel partners, going beyond typical programs with tiers and clip levels. Flexibility is a key feature of the charter.

It is not a one size fits all channel program. The Nutanix charter includes new marketing tools, multi-touch campaigns and other tools that will help partners brand themselves to customers along with targeting new customers in the market,” adds Aaron.

STRIKING THE RIGHT EQUILIBRIUM Recently, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey spoke about the magic rule of 40 and how it helps business strike a balance in growth and profitability.

I turn to Nicolas for his opinion on the same.

He says, “As our CFO, Duston Williams has said, there are many ways to evaluate the financial health of a company, but none quite as pragmatic and straightforward as the Rule of 40. It allows companies to focus on growth, enables the company’s CFO to set expectations, and manages to squash debates internally. It is a guidepost that keeps businesses honest, helps set expectations, and attracts the right kind of investors.”

“The rule takes into account a simple summation of revenue growth and free cash flow as a percent of revenue. For example, if a business is growing at 20 percent, it should be generating a free cash flow margin of at least 20 percent. If the business is growing at 40 percent, it is okay to have a breakeven on free cash flow generation. If the business is growing at 50 percent, it can lose up to 10 percent on free cash flow. Ultimately, if a business is doing better than the 40 percent rule, that’s even better. It’s not only sound business management but helps set financial expectations both internally and externally,” he adds.

FINALLY The company is justifying the term ‘Futuristic’ by positioning itself as the next generation operating system for the enterprise cloud. The vision of Nutanix and the team is definitely far-flung and the mission quite simple— to be the trusted partner of choice for customers embarking on digital transformation. “We want to be the first vendor that comes to mind as a trusted partner when enterprises in the region are ready to transform their datacenters, their IT operations, and their businesses,” signs off Aaron. ë

O CTO B E R 2 018

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TOP PLAYER ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

RHIENBRUCKE

Templatized solutions on the cloud

RHEINBRÜCK BELIEVES THAT THE ERP MARKET HAS BECOME VERY AGILE IN THE PAST FEW YEARS. TEMPLATIZED SOLUTIONS ON THE CLOUD FOR ERP HAVE BECOME THE NEED OF THE HOUR AND PROVIDING SCALABLE GLOBAL ERP SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES IN THE REGION IS THE COMPANY’S MOTTO.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 RheinBrücke IT Consulting is focused on offering consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions and services. Our solutions portfolio comprises of: n Epicor ERP Solution for Manufacturing, Distribution, Engineering, Procurement and Construction n Epicor HCM n Epicor IScala for Hospitality and Distribution n Epicor Payroll MEA n Copy Company Tool for Epicor n MeRLIN – Strategic Sourcing Software n Surround IT Services on Microsoft Technologies

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION Smartworld RheinBrücke has signed a partnership agreement with Smartworld to deliver Epicor solutions and services to businesses in UAE. Epicor RheinBrücke is an Epicor Platinum Partner across EMEA since 2014 and won the International Partner of the Year in 2016 and 2018.

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS We have achieved the highest certification level of any Epicor partner worldwide. With our in-depth expertise of the region’s requirements and bolt-on products such as Payroll and Copy-CompanyTool, we are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of EMEA enterprises.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 n

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n n

Epicor Technology Innovator of the Year Brand eins, Beste Berater Award Germany

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS FlSmidth, Visteon, Sembcorp, KERN, Arabian Industries, Arabi Enertech, OilServ, Al Muqarram Auto Parts, Bond Interiors, Gemaco Interiors, ZF-TRW.

STRENGTHS Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Our expanding customer base is primarily from the Manufacturing sector, including cable manufacturing and interior design. The other industries that our customer base comprises of are Engineering, Procurement and Construction, Distribution, Hospitality and Oil Field services.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Our core strength is to provide innovative solutions that drive our client’s business growth.

We are a solution driven company and have developed three products, which are globally implemented n MeRLIN – Strategic Sourcing Software n Epicor Payroll MEA – Payroll solution for Epicor ERP 10 and above n CCT - Copy Company Tool, that moves company configuration settings from one company to another, without manual intervention.

OPPORTUNITIES Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

SURESH CHANDRASEKHARAN, CHIEF SOLUTION ARCHITECT

We see high growth opportunities in UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

The following trends are creating opportunities for us. n Big Data Analytics: Self-service, Predictive and preventive analytics and Machine learning. n Artificial Intelligence: Cost analytics, Spend analytics and using AI to provide better customer service. We have started an AI implementation on how to improve customer service. ë

Many Challenges One Partner

AT A GLANCE 750+ CLIENTS Clients in GCC, Levant, North Africa & the Indian Sub-continent

15+ COUNTRIES Supporting our valuable clients in 15+ countries

9.8 / 10 In Customer Satisfaction Index

7 AWARDS won in the last 18 months

OUR SOLUTIONS Threat Exposure Management

EDR & Threat Hunting

Business Risk Intelligence (BRI)

Deception & Response Platform

Email Authentication As A Service

Employee Powered Information Security

Third Party Risk Management Platform

IT Management & Monitoring Tools

1504, Jumeirah Business Center 3, Cluster Y â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates T: +971 4 427 9940 | F: +971 4 428 9038 | E: info@spiresolutions.com | W: spiresolutions.com

TOP PLAYER ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

FOCUS SOFTNET

A Veritable Force

ACCORDING TO FOCUS SOFTNET, THE HALLMARK OF FOCUS GROWTH STORY IS ITS ZEAL AND ABILITY TO KEEP ITSELF TECHNOLOGICALLY AHEAD SO AS TO PROVIDE ITS CUSTOMERS THE BEST. BE IT THE FIRST TO DEVELOP A GUI BASED ERP APPLICATION ON DOS OR AMONG THE VERY FIRST IN PROVIDING BUILT-IN REPORT WRITER OR INTEGRATING BI TOOLS WITH THE ERP, FOCUS CLAIMS THAT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN WAY AHEAD OF ITS COMPETITORS..

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Focus Softnet’s ERP solutions are tailored to suit requirements of Enterprises as well as SMEs. The company’s enterprise solutions are enhanced for mobile and other connected devices further moving to thin-client based cloud solutions. In addition to its ERP solutions, the company also has other industry specific solutions primarily addressing the need of Retail, Warehousing, MRP and Restaurants.

The company’s flagship product – Focus 8 is a next-generation ERP, which integrates business intelligence tools, and provides real-time reporting using multi-dimensional posting of transactions. It has been upgraded with multilingual capability and is now GCC VAT compliant. Today, businesses need ERP systems that are not only fast and strong, but also secure and dynamic. Focus 8 fulfills these requirements with its unmatched flexibility, unbeatable security and a surprising ease of use. It enables clients with scalability, mobility, governance, efficiencies and international standards for every industry.

Focus Softnet has optimized its flagship products for mobile and other connected devices, including thin-PC type terminals. We are offering our regional customers the option to migrate to the cloud using a choice of single and multitenant options. Enterprises with large volume of transactional data that require a dedicated hosting infrastructure, will be able to select the Focus Softnet’s single tenant SaaS option.

Apart from its solutions, Focus Softnet also offers its customers services including managed services, HR and recruitment services, business process consulting, implementations services, amongst others available across the region.

Where is your customer growth coming from?

Focus has been growing with two-pronged approach. On one we help grow our customers

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with state-of-the-art upgrades of new version and features and on the other hand adding new verticals. The latest growth comes from addressing end-to-end requirements of automobile and real estate sector.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

The hallmark of Focus growth story is its zeal and ability to keep itself technologically ahead so as to provide its customers the best. Be it the first to develop a GUI based ERP application on DOS or among the very first in providing built-in report writer or integrating BI tools with the ERP, Focus has always been way ahead of its competitors.

With more than 10000 customers in the GCC, Focus Softnet stands as a veritable force in providing the best solutions to companies operating in the Middle East region. Some of Focus Softnet’s regional customers are Gulf Graft, Taaleem Schools, Khimji Ramdas, National Bonds, Barakat Group, Sharjah University, Sharjah Taxi to name a few.

Focus Softnet works directly with customers in many countries in the region through its offices in the Middle East and Africa.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

The company’s training and development capabilities are the best in industry and it adds value to customer satisfaction. Focus Softnet offers equity ownership to its employees and has achieved highest employee satisfaction with extremely low staff turnover. More than 60% of its employees are part of its team for over 10 years.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

ALI HYDER,

GROUP CEO, FOCUS SOFTNET

Over the last 26 years, Focus Softnet has seen consistent year on year growth with respect to product innovation, revenue and market share.

Many of Focus Softnet’s customers have been with the company since its early days upgrading to newer versions of its solutions. Keeping the likes of Diversy lever on Focus for more than 10 years.

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

Automobile as we added new vertical application.ë

INFRASTRUCTURE

BLOCKCHAIN

CHATBOT

$1.12bn

7,683.7 mn

Chatbot Market Size To Reach $1.25 Billion By 2025 : Grand View Research

Blockchain Market worth 7,683.7 Million USD by 2022: MarketsandMarkets

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

US$191bn Artificial Intelligence Market share will Increase US$ 191 Billion By 2024: Market Watch

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INFRASTRUCTURE

2,467.0mn Robotic Process Automation Market worth 2,467.0 Million USD by 2022: MarketsandMarkets

DRONES $10,738mn the global Commercial Drones Market is projected to reach $10,738 million by 2022 : Allied Market Research

ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA)

DEEP LEARNING US$191bn

3D Printing

US$1965.3mn 3D Printing Plastics Market to reach $1965.3 Million by 2023 : Markets Insider

Deep Learning Market Size Worth $10.2 Billion By 2025 : Grand View Research

O CTO B E R 2 018

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TOP PLAYER ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

CENTRA HUB

Highly evolved approaches CENTRA HUB CLAIMS THAT THEY FIT AMONGST THE FIRST WITHIN THE INDUSTRY TO IMPROVE AND INNOVATE WITHIN EXISTING BEST PRACTICES AND TAKE THE QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD. THE COMPANY ALSO HAS A STRONG PARTNER AND CUSTOMER BASE OVER 17 COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD AND A CUSTOMER BASE OVER SEVERAL THOUSANDS.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition?

Deep verticalized offering over 27 industries particularly real estate, automotive, facilities management etc. Quick implementation with go live faster approach methodologies, deeply engaged with the partner network, agile technologies that can adapt to customer environment easily.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

The partner network with their ongoing engagement with us on the end customer penetration of Centra’s solutions.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? A combination of both, sectors like real estate, automotive etc.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

We fit amongst the first within the industry to improve and innovate within existing best practices and take the quantum leap forward.

We got a strong partner and customer base over 17 countries in the world.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned?

Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

A combination of both. Centra technologies boasts a very high retention of its workforce in

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an industry which is otherwise known for high attrition rates. Further with Centra’s ongoing growth-spurt across geographies and an ever growing partner network we have continually welcomed new team members into the Centra family through a simple yet effective talent acquisition program.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

This year Centra has excelled in the partner engagement journeys through a highly matured CAPP program which includes partner enablement, training and ongoing business support while at the same time acquiring market leaders as key customers across a variety of industries who themselves serve as ambassadors to the Centra brand.

OPPORTUNITIES Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

All the GCC countries are showing tremendous promise in the digital transformation era of today owing to trends in smart Govt. initiatives, the ever increasing demand of mobility solutions by entrepreneurs and corporates, the introduction of regulatory reforms such as VAT and industry specific growth observed such as real estate and automotive have all conspired together to create an environment of growth and opportunity. Also not to forget the continuous aid provided by a variety of global not for profit institutions such as world bank, Unesco etc. concentrating on infrastructural development on the African continent has resulted in extremely exciting opportunities of providing digital transformation solutions across the African landscape.

GENERAL INFORMATION

NISITH NAIK,

CEO, CENTRA HUB

What is the annual turnover of your company?

Turnover 3 Million USD How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

Atleast 2 in a quarter What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

1. Express editions of Enterprise product for quicker go live, 2. Leaner Saas Environments.

What is the number of customers acquired this year?

We acquired 242 new customers in 2017. ë

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TOP PLAYER CABLING

NEXANS

Building a competent marketplace NEXANS HAS INVESTED HEAVILY IN R & D AND INNOVATION AND CLAIM THAT THEY OFFER ONLY THE BEST-OF-BREED HIGH QUALITY CABLING SOLUTIONS. THE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND THE COMPLETE END-TO-END SOLUTION OFFERING BY NEXANS, DIFFERENTIATES THEM FROM MANY OTHER CABLING VENDORS THAT FOCUS ON COMMODITY MARKET.

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Nexans has been positioned as a high-end LAN infrastructure vendor that provides complete end-to-end solutions to major customers in the enterprise market. With a complete range of solutions in both, copper & fibre, we provide end customers with solutions for their LAN infrastructure and Data Centre needs that meet their today’s and tomorrow’s requirements. That includes but not limited to solutions for the future 2,5/5G, 25G and 100 Gbps Ethernet, the Automated Infrastructure Management, and solutions for Data Centres.

In 2017, Nexans unveiled data centre innovations under the name of ‘Smart Choices for Digital Infrastructure’, which includes different data centre infrastructure technologies and support several consecutive generations of active equipment. Additionally, they are flexible and scalable to adapt to future requirements. As part of the vision towards supporting the world’s growing data needs, Nexans also launched new copper-based solutions to support bandwidths of 25Gb/s and 40Gb/s Ethernet and ultra-high density LANmark ENSPACE fiber solutions for the different DC topologies including EOR (Endof-Row), and TOR (Top-of-Rack).

Nexans is also offering its LANactive solution, based on Fiber-to-the-Office (FTTO)-switch in both, office and harsh environments. This is an advanced technology that proved to have lower OPEX & CAPEX compared to standard LAN infrastructure networks. LANactive is an ideal solution to serve large areas like hospitals, airports, universities, and any facility requires lot of Floor Distribution racks or Telecom Rooms.

The company also has a wide range of bestin-class products such as the LANmark 8, LANmark-6A and -7A products, the LANsense Next Generation Analyser (NGA) and the Nexans EMAC (environmental monitoring and access control) devices, complete Data Centre

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Pre-Term solution in both copper and Fibre, and High density patching.

The company also has pre-terminated customised copper assemblies in Cat6A, Cat7A, as well as FO assemblies in OM3, OM4, & OS2.

These solutions enable the rapid deployment of cabling in installations where the time on site must be minimised especially in Data Centre environments; and Slimflex bend-insensitive fibre patch cords, specifically designed for environments with increasing port density, such as the data centre.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Over the last few years, Nexans has experienced significant growth in its Middle East LAN infrastructure business because of winning some large infrastructure projects in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan to name a few.

Due to ongoing infrastructure projects, airports, hotels, hospitals, educational institutes to name a few across the region, Nexans saw the highest demand for structured cabling solutions from these types of clients.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Nexans’ strategy is founded on continuous innovation in products, solutions and services, employee development and customer training. Our goal is to continue to be recognized as reliable and innovative technology partner, supporting the end-users to reduce indirect costs (e.g. TCO), risks while offering reliability and convenience to our business partners.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

TAREK HELMY

REGIONAL DIRECTOR, GULF & MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH & EAST AFRICA, NEXANS CABLING SOLUTIONS

Nexans continues to be a strong player in the LAN infrastructure business having been awarded ‘Best Cabling Vendor’ in the region nine times by four different IT media organizations during the last 5 years. We recently won the Data Centre Solution vendor too. We feel so proud of such achievement, which is unique when compared to similar vendors. ë

TOP PLAYER ENTERPRISE APPLICATION

RIVERBED

Next-gen digital experience

THE CONTINUED WAVE OF BUSINESS INNOVATION IS DRIVING EVER-INCREASING DEMAND FOR RIVERBED’S DIGITAL EXPERIENCE AND NEXT-GENERATION CLOUD NETWORKING AND CLOUD EDGE SOLUTIONS. ACCORDING TO THE COMPANY, DIGITAL PERFORMANCE ISN’T A ONE-TIME JOURNEY. IT ISN’T A FINITE PROJECT WITH A BEGINNING AND AN END.

billion-dollar start-up and every employee has the opportunity to ‘act as an entrepreneur’ and impact our strategic roadmap.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Riverbed has taken a comprehensive and integrated approach to digital performance. Our solutions were designed from the very beginning to support all kinds of business innovations at the edge. Over the past several years we’ve invested and innovated in digital performance, with solutions to measure and manage the digital experience, and a next-generation network to drive digital performance.

Which customers or market segments grew the most this year?

What caused this success?

Banking and Finance, especially in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, is another vertical driving our success. Public sector spending, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, remains strong.

Governments are committed to innovation such as the introduction of smart services that form the basis of their smart city goals.

OPPORTUNITIES

Where is your customer growth coming from?

In the Middle East, we have been especially active in the telecom, government, banking and finance, retail and Oil & Gas sectors.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

Currently, the most active markets in the MEA region are the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Our comprehensive set of solutions brings together a powerful combination of Digital Experience, Next-Generation Cloud Networking and Cloud Edge technologies, delivering new levels of visibility into the digital experience and operational agility to maximize digital performance and dramatically accelerate business performance and outcomes.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Digital performance is about continuously pushing the boundaries of business and resetting the competitive bar for customer experiences, ingenious processes and game-changing efficiencies. That’s why Riverbed is experiencing solid market momentum and remains committed to helping our customers succeed long into the future.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

Despite our 15+ year legacy of success and market leadership, we remain nimble and quick to respond to the rapid changes in the market.

For this reason, we consider ourselves to be a

What is the annual turnover of your company?

Since 2013, we have consistently surpassed more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

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GENERAL INFORMATION

How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

Earlier this year, we launched our entirely

ELIE DIB, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT METNA, RIVERBED

revamped partner program, Riverbed Rise. Since then, we have doubled down on our partnerrelated activities. In September 2018 alone, we conducted nine partner events.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

We continue to periodically upgrade all the solutions that comprise our Digital Performance Platform to add powerful new features sets.

In addition, in recent years we have made several strategic acquisitions, giving us access to complimentary technologies that augment the capabilities of our solutions. ë

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TOP PLAYER DATA CENTER

KALOOM

Creating a niche in DC networking

KALOOM EMPOWERS THE INDIVIDUAL TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND FOCUSES ON AN OPEN WORK ENVIRONMENT WITH TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY WITH ITS MOST AUTOMATED DATACENTER FABRIC ALONG WITH THE MOST ADVANCED SUPPORT FOR CONTAINER AND VM BASED APPLICATIONS.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Kaloom programmable fabric is a fully automated DC networking solution Its differentiated in terms of Kaloom Flow Fabric is released for General Availability l Has been tested by multiple Alpha Customers Major cost reduction l No vendor lock-in, Open l Reduce the OPEX with automation l Reduce the Capex by leveraging white boxes Major performance increase l vSwitch Offload Brings programmability to DC networking l Allow developers to drive innovation l Allow customers to introduce new features and services.

Where is your customer growth coming from? l Our customer segments are Gaming, Enterprise/FSI, Data Center Operators (DCO) and 4G/5G Telco space With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base? l Kaloom is delivering industry first programmable fabric for DC networking space l Kaloom has a strategic partnership with Redhat l Kaloom has a strategic reseller partnership with Mbuzz.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

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Kaloom empowers the individual to take responsibility and focuses on an open work environment with transparency and accountability What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

Kaloom is proud to bring the most automated datacenter fabric along with the most advanced support for Container and VM based applications

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet? l Currently we are growing in North America, ME and APC. In phase two, we will grow more in Europe. l Kaloom is also growing its indirect sales channels for Value Added Resellers/SIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

LAURENT MARCHAND,

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

In Middle East, we see strong growth in all segments with our local partner and investor Mbuzz.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you? l The need for more automation l The need for programmability to enable customers and developers to program the DC networking infrastructure l Cloud drives the need to scale to hyperscale l 5G is driving the standards.

FOUNDER & CEO, KALOOM

l l l

For reseller partners For technology partners For solution partners

GENERAL INFORMATION

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year? l Kaloom Flow Fabric l Kaloom vRouter l Kaloom vSwitch

How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

On a regular basis.

What is the number of customers acquired this year?

10-15 ĂŤ

l

TOP PLAYER SURVEILLANCE

WATCHNET

Future is automation

WATCHNET HAS COME OUT WITH MANY INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS IN THE PAST 2 DECADES SUCH AS IVS FUNCTIONS AND MASS-STORAGE EQUIPMENT ETC. THE COMPANY IS STRONG IN MULTI-LOCATION SECURITY, JAIL SECURITY & TELECOM SEGMENT AND ALSO CLAIMS TO BE ENJOYING MONOPOLY IN MULTI-LOCATION SECURITY.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

WatchNET is far ahead in the competition on the Enterprise Class Security Solutions. Our security management solution is one of the best elements in our product line in which the software has intact integration with all associated systems / equipment.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Surveillance, Storage and Access Control Systems are the most reliable source of our growth and we had recently added Critical Infrastructure / Environmental Monitoring solutions into our product line.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Mostly from the mid & large commercial projects, hospitality as well as Telecom segment.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

WatchNET has come out with many innovative products in the past 2 decades such as IVS functions and mass-storage equipment etc… We are very strong Multi-location security, Jail Security & Telecom segment. We are almost enjoying monopoly in multi-location security.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

We have added couple of solutions in our product line such as Critical Infrastructure / Environ-

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mental Monitoring solution. WatchNET had expanded the business in Building Automation too called M/s. DATOS Automation Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

Multi-location Surveillance, Telecom and Enforcement are our target segment since our security solutions are more stable and reliable which is proven over couple of decades.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

WatchNET foraying into Critical Infrastructure / Environmental Monitoring Solution as well as BMS since automation will be future. We are focusing more into North American & Middle East market.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

United Arab Emirates, KSA, Oman and Bahrain.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

We are one of the leading manufacturers of BMS Controllers and CIMS solution which is trending in the industry.

GENERAL INFORMATION What is the annual turnover of your company?

US$ 12 Million+ How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

SATISH ARYA, GM - MEA, WATCHNET INTERNATIONAL TRADING LLC

Every quarter or more often in different parts of North America & Middle East.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

Building Management System & Environmental Monitoring products are introduced by WatchNET during 2018.

What is the number of customers acquired this year?

We already have 200 system integrators across middle east. ë

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TOP PLAYER CLOUD

SAP

Disruption is key

FOR SAP, THE MENA REGION IS A RAPIDLY-EVOLVING GROWTH MARKET, AND THEY SEE STRONG OPPORTUNITIES IN THE UAE AND THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, ESPECIALLY IN LEVERAGING THE CLOUD TO SUPPORT NATIONAL VISIONS, SMART CITIES, AND MEGA-EVENTS

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

SAP is among the first multi-national technology companies to go-live on public cloud data centers in the Middle East, recently launching them in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. These data centers are the centerpieces of our 5-year USD 200 million investment in the UAE and our 4-year SAR 285 million Saudi investment plan, and will enable new digital business models and national transformation visions.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

We are seeing strong cloud growth across every industry vertical. In the MENA region, our largest industry verticals are Oil and Gas, Utilities, Public Sector, Retail, Passenger Travel and Leisure, and Banking. We are seeing strong market demand for our innovations across the SAP HANA in-memory platform, SAP S/4HANA real-time business suite, C/4HANA customer experience suite, and SAP Leonardo digital innovation system.

How good is your organization towards one call resolution for customer service?

In 2017, we opened our new MENA headquarters in Dubai, which is further supporting our innovation agenda with our first immersive Customer Experience Center in the region, and our first Co-Innovation Lab in the UAE. What are your biggest challenges with the employees? Do you have particularly high turnover in certain departments or a negative perception of the organizational culture?

Our MENA channel partners lead in supporting our customers’ digital transformation. Globally,

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we have over 12,100 partners and 100 innovation and development centers. MENA is a fastgrowing and fast-evolving EMEA region for SAP Global Alliance PartnerEdge Program, with 61% growth from 2015-2016, and channel coverage increasing by 25%.

OPPORTUNITIES Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

The MENA region is a rapidly-evolving growth market, and we see especially strong opportunities in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, especially in leveraging the cloud to support national visions, Smart Cities, and mega-events.

What is the annual turnover of your company?

Worldwide, SAP had revenue of 23.77 billion Euros in FY2017, with over 404,000 customers in over 180 countries. We are seeing a rapidlyexpanding cloud business regionally and worldwide. Our global cloud revenue growth is accelerating – with cloud subscriptions and support revenue growing 30% year-over-year to 1.21 billion Euros (IFRS) in Q2 2018. Year-overyear, new cloud bookings grew at 29% at constant currencies to Q2 2018. This was on top of our record Q1 2018, with cloud revenue up 18% IFRS, and exceed 1 billion Euros for the first time ever in a quarter.

How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

Supporting our MENA channel is vital, with frequent online and in-person training. We are fully supporting our partners and customers in adopting our latest platforms and solutions – including the SAP HANA in-memory platform, SAP S/4HANA real-time business suite, C/4HANA customer experience suite, and SAP Leonardo digital innovation system.

GERGI ABBOUD, SENIOR VP & GM, SAP MIDDLE EAST SOUTH

What is the number of customers acquired this year? Please share the names (Optional) In MENA, our major new customer wins and golives in 2018 have been Fauji Ferilizer Company in Pakistan; ALJ Motors, Awqaf Suleiman Al Rajhi, EA Juffali and Brothers, Emdadat, Global Beverage Company, and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; and Abu Dhabi Distribution Company, Air Arabia, Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group LLC, and Ghassan Abboud Group, and SOUQ.com in the UAE. ë

FOUNDED IN 2009, VALTO HAS EXCELLED IN INCORPORATING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGIES AT THE WORKPLACE TO HELP OUR CLIENTS SCALE TO LARGER HEIGHTS.

Document Scanning and Indexing

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TOP PLAYER HCI

PIVOT3

Workload mobility in a new light

ACCORDING TO PIVOT3, AS MULTI-CLOUD HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS ARE BECOMING MORE COMMON, WORKLOAD MOBILITY NOW REPRESENTS THE NEXT FRONTIER FOR ENTERPRISES, AND VENDORS ARE BEGINNING TO CATCH UP.

Why Flexibility and Mobility is Essential to Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

When it comes to enterprise cloud adoption, workload mobility – the ability to move applications and their associated data to a new environment with zero or very limited downtime – is often a missing piece of the technology puzzle.

Cloud environments tend to be very unique and different from on-premises and hypervisor environments, and by nature of their business model, cloud vendors lack incentive to make it easy for customers to move workloads out and into other environments.

Why is workload mobility so crucial for enterprises?

Workload mobility is a critical feature because it provides the flexibility to run each workload in the most optimal location. For example, as an application goes through its lifecycle, usage characteristics might change. It might make sense initially to run in one particular cloud environment during testing and development, but as the application’s users grow, it might require an environment that offers better scale and performance.

Beyond migration between cloud environments, a true workload mobility capability can migrate between on-premises infrastructures, allowing you to run your workload in the optimal location.

This flexibility also prevents vendor lock in, provides the ability to reuse legacy infrastructures, and makes is easy to move workloads to new infrastructure. Cloud vendors make it difficult to move workloads around by design, wanting you to go all in and stay within their platform. Workload mobility bring new freedom, allowing you to use the platforms and services that best align with your budget and priorities.

Workload mobility is crucial for enterprises that want to build out a multi-cloud strategy for the future. According to Forrester, 41 percent of companies use two to four cloud providers, and 48 percent use five or more providers (via SearchCIO). By the end of 2018, 25 percent of

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total application workloads will be running in the cloud according to a survey of CIOs conducted by Morgan Stanley (via Wall Street Journal). To take advantage of each cloud platform, enterprises will need a strategy that allows easy and simple movement across all environments.

One typical use case is cloud brokering, with workload mobility helping cloud brokers and agents better optimize o provide more services at a better price. There are a number of public cloud offerings available today, with new specialized cloud services coming online all the time. As these cloud offerings change and new ones appear, it may be necessary to move certain workloads to optimize for performance and cost.

MAKING WORKLOAD MOBILITY SEAMLESS There are several technical hurdles that need to be overcome to make workload mobility seamless.

There are number of hypervisors and clouds that must be integrated, each with their own unique interfaces and APIs. A second challenge is with virtual machine conversion. Each hypervisor and cloud has its own version of a VM, and moving a workload from one environment to another requires this conversion, followed by automation of the process.

Finally, data needs to be replicated on a continuous basis so that when the time comes to switch the application over to run in production from the new environment, it can be down with zero or very little downtime. Implementing these capabilities – not to mention making it simple for an end user to implement – is a very significant technical challenge.

Should you consider a workload mobility solution?

Cloud computing brought the promise of simple and scalable capacity, but the reality faced in our multi-cloud world is stark. According to RightScale, 35 percent of cloud spend is wasted.

Silos develop, workloads are orphaned, costs rise and management spirals out of control.

ANAND CHAKRAVARTHI, AREA VICE PRESIDENT, PIVOT3

Consider the following questions to determine if a workload mobility solution might fit your needs Is managing all your infrastructure environments creating challenges and causing headaches?

As automation and intelligence begins to transcend cloud and on-premises infrastructures, workload mobility could soon fuel the next wave of enterprise growth. Imagine a world in which you don’t even need to think about what’s running where, and workloads are automatically moved and prioritized based on the required cost and performance. ë

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TOP PLAYER IOT

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Ecostruxure for the ecosystem

AS MORE ORGANIZATIONS LOOK TO ADOPT INNOVATIONS SUCH AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING, BLOCKCHAIN, AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S ECOSTRUXURE ENABLES A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH IN TACKLING URBAN ISSUES SUCH AS ENERGY, MOBILITY, SUSTAINABILITY, AND WELLBEING.

STRENGTHS

transforming transportation, public safety, and energy management.

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Schneider Electric is leading the Digital Transformation of Energy Management and Automation in Homes, Buildings, Data Centers, Infrastructure and Industries. With global presence in over 100 countries, Schneider is the undisputable leader in Power Management – Medium Voltage, Low Voltage and Secure Power, and in Automation Systems.

Schneider Electric provides integrated efficiency solutions, combining energy, automation and software. In our global Ecosystem, we collaborate with the largest Partner, Integrator and Developer Community on our Open Platform to deliver real-time control and operational efficiency. Our commitment to Innovation, Diversity, and Sustainability ensures that Life Is On everywhere.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We are seeing strong regional momentum for EcoStruxure, our Internet of Things-enabled open and interoperable architecture, across three layers of connected products, edge control, and applications, analytics, and services.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

EcoStruxure is serving as the foundation for Smart Cities across the wider region – including Naya Raipur, India’s first greenfield integrated Smart City, and Istanbul, Turkey, which is

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What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

As more organizations look to adopt innovations such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain, and the Internet of Things, EcoStruxure enables a collaborative approach in tackling urban issues such as energy, mobility, sustainability, and wellbeing.

THREATS Who do you see as an emerging competition?

One of our biggest differentiators is our Go Green in the City competition, which aims to find bold student ideas and innovative solutions for smarter, more energy-efficient cities. Our 2017 edition saw entries from 20,000 young innovators from 3,000 universities across 180 countries.

HANAN DARWISH,

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

How does the changing regulatory environment affect you?

Schneider Electric is aligned with government-led nationwide transformation initiatives, with digital transformation enabling Smart Cities, new levels of energy management, and integrated innovations such as autonomous vehicles and securing critical national infrastructure What is the number of customers acquired this year? Please share the names (Optional) Schneider Electric had 24.7 billion Euros in revenue in FY2017, launched over 100 new products, and won design awards. Regional customers include: n Kuwait Oil Company’s smart training through VR automates and secures oil tankers, rigs, and ports. n ADNOC’s Panorama Command Centre

monitors and optimizes performance of 16 opcos, integrating 100,000 tags for better decision-making. n Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Hospital in Dubai has state-of-the-art healthcare facilities with 18+ smart systems. n Hilton Garden Inn MoE’s building management on EcoStruxure has led to LEED Gold Certification, and a 44% increase in energy efficiency, 12-15% savings in energy, and personalized guest experiences. ë

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TOP PLAYER STORAGE

KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY

Reliability is the cornerstone

KINGSTON BUILDS AND GUARANTEES RELIABILITY AND QUALITY INTO ITS EVERY PRODUCT SO THAT CUSTOMERS CAN COMFORTABLY AND CONFIDENTLY USE THEM. KINGSTON REMAINS COMMITTED TO EXCEEDING INDUSTRY STANDARDS WITH EVERY NEW DEVELOPMENT WHILE RETAINING THE SIGNATURE RELIABILITY OF ITS PRODUCTS.

Tell us about Kingston Technology.

What are your strengths?

In 1987, Kingston Technology entered the market with a single product and has grown to be a world leader in memory products and technology solutions. Combining one of the most extensive and stringent testing processes in the industry along with an exceptional free tech support center and a consistent roll-out of innovative technologies, Kingston has continually set industry standards of innovation, quality and reliability throughout its history.

Kingston has been traditionally strong in the server, desktop and notebook memory upgrade market. USB drives, cards, SSDs and wireless devices were added to its product portfolio starting in 2003. These product lines enabled Kingston to enter more consumer-focused markets.

What are the growth areas of the company?

Besides the consumer market, Kingston’s growth areas are the data center, web hosting industry, and sectors that need the highest level of security for data on the move such as the financial, health care, energy, and military. Kingston’s solutions for the corporate and data center market include server DRAM and SSD product lines. In addition, encrypted USB and SSD (UV500) solutions ensure that data on the move are kept safe and secure and enable peace of mind for companies and organizations with a mobile workforce.

SATA SSDs have rapidly dominated the consumer market and increasingly replace most mechanical hard drives in laptops and desktops.

On the other hand, for data center, next-generation NVMe-based SSDs enable organizations to eliminate many of the bottlenecks that have been traditionally storage bound. This allows for much higher IOPS and lower latency, more rapidly delivering the critical data that is meaningful and useful to their success and operations. Having such capabilities are important to their future growth in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and real-time data

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availability.

Kingston is working on expanding its enterprise SSD product line.

Tell us more about it.

The current lineup includes SATA SSDs optimized for high-performance workloads. As the industry shifts to mainstream U.2 servers, Kingston is ready to power this next generation with forthcoming NVMe SSDs optimized for the platform. The combination of its server memory and enterprise SSDs make Kingston one of the industry’s most complete providers of end-to-end data solutions.

Reliability is the cornerstone of the Kingston product strategy. It has played a key role in maintaining long-term relationships developed over the years with its strategic partners and customers. The company continuously nurtures these well-established ties by providing pre- and post-sales support as well as engineering expertise. Most of the global Fortune 100 companies including major PC makers and hyperscale data centers have used Kingston products and maintained relationships with Kingston for many years.

In addition to focusing on strong relationships, Kingston builds and guarantees reliability and quality into its every product so that customers can comfortably and confidently use them.

Kingston remains committed to exceeding industry standards with every new development while retaining the signature reliability of its products.

Share with our readers your major partnerships and go to market strategy.

Kingston serves an international network of distributors, resellers, retailers and OEM customers across different countries and regions on six continents. In the Middle East and Africa, in particular, Kingston expects healthy growth across the whole region for the rest of 2018 and also in 2019.

Kingston puts the needs of its channel partners

LAURENT SIRGY,

REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR FRANCE, SOUTHERN EUROPE, MEA, KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY EUROPE CO LLP

and end-user customers a priority to make the experience as easy and trouble-free as possible.

Due to the reliability of its products and services, Kingston is renowned as a trusted advisor by its customers and partners.

The privately owned, financially strong company is independent from shareholders or investors. Its financial strength and overall success are built on long term and well-established relationships with its partners, customers, suppliers as well as other industry leaders in the information technology (IT) sector. ë

TOP PLAYER STORAGE

TOSHIBA

All round storage for digital businesses TOSHIBA SAYS THAT THEY ARE A BRAND THAT NEEDS TO BE WATCHED OUT. THE COMPANY CLAIMS THAT BEING A COMPLETE STORAGE VENDOR, THEY ALSO HAVE OTHER TECHNOLOGIES THAT THEY WOULD BE BRINGING IN VERY SOON LIKE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WHICH CAN ENHANCE THE NEW TRENDS IN COMPUTING LIKE EDGE COMPUTING, BIG DATA, ETC.

How has the year 2018 been for Toshiba?

Our Financial year starts from April to March.

Considering the market conditions, the first 6 months has been average but we are definitely expecting the higher growth in the next half.

With regards to storage and surveillance, what does your market look like now?

We have different categories in the storage portfolio. The retail part did have some negative growth. However, we have grown substantially on the surveillance and enterprise storage. We have close to 30% growth in this category which compensated for the negative growth in the retail space.

In the Middle East region, from which market are you getting a lot of traction now?

In the Middle East, we have more than 40% market share in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

KSA is the biggest market followed by UAE & Kuwait.

Its been 2 years since you expanded in South Africa. How has the journey been so far?

South Africa is a highly matured and developed market. People are aware of their IT needs. It is up to us how we venture out with our value additions/ products makes the difference. Overall in 2 years. we have had a phenomenal growth of more than 60% in Africa. This year Africa has been impacted by currency fluctuation which started in August. This impacted the sales in that region.

In 2015, we launched ‘Go Africa’ which was a Toshiba TGFZ strategy and we have been able to Go Wide –Go Deep in Africa region developing various segment which includes B2C and B2B. Going forward, do you think the physical storage market will retain

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its strength?

Yes. It will retain its strength because the amount of data produced or consumed is phenomenally very high. Around 166 zettabytes of data is generated. So, all this data needs to be stored and analysed and driven into a business format. So, a large demand for storage is required across all markets.

Toshiba has a major storage brand. This year we launched one of the highest capacities, the 14-terabyte hard disk. This uses the new technology called the helium technology. These are some of the add-ons and innovative products we are bringing in to cater to the huge growth of the storage demands.

What is your roadmap for the year 2019?

Well, the capacity will keep on increasing. With regards to the hard disks, from 14, it could be 16, 18, 20, 22 terabytes as we go on. Also, significant improvement in the NAND capacity is taking place. From 256GB, it shall be 512GB and soon may be 1TB on a micro SD card. These are the exponential increase in the capacity which you see on the flash storage side.

What is your outlook for the IT sector in Dubai by 2020?

In Dubai, IT is always a fast-growing industry.

There might be slow down due to economic reasons which can get corrected because the implementation of technology in this part of the world is quite fast. Adaptation of new technologies like hyperconvergence, Artificial Intelligence, deep learning etc is being implemented driven by the government initiatives. There might be hiccups but the implementation of technology will be on a higher side.

Any message for your competitors?

We are very proud of being a complete storage vendor. We also have other technologies that we

SANTOSH VARGHESE VP, TOSHIBA GULF FZE

would be bringing in very soon like digital transformation which can enhance the new trends in computing like edge computing, big data, etc.

So, we are a brand that needs to be watched out.

We were only known for notebooks which are things of past. We have moved on to high tech products. So, watch out for Toshiba in the Digital Transformation Era! ë

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TOP PLAYER STORAGE

WESTERN DIGITAL

Purpose-built for data explosion

WD’S MOST RECENT INNOVATION THAT WILL BE LAUNCHED AT GITEX 2018 IS THE WESTERN DIGITAL PURPLE MICROSD CARD THAT COMPLEMENTS THEIR ‘SURVEILLANCE-CLASS’ EDGE-TO-CORE DEVICES PORTFOLIO, ENABLING SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM INTEGRATORS TO CAPTURE, TRANSFORM, PRESERVE, AND ACCESS VIDEO SURVEILLANCE DATA IN REAL-TIME.

STRENGTHS What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Western Digital is always at the forefront of innovation in storage technology. This ensures that our product line is always in tune with market needs.

Our excellent team strives to introduce the latest and best advancements to our customers ahead of the competition and we have several ‘world firsts’ under our belt. In addition, we have a strong team of channel partners who are dedicated to bringing our products to key markets in the region. Our success is the result of our investment and commitment to innovation, team and our partners.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? We are seeing all-round growth at Western Digital. Data is exploding all around us and every individual, corporate or government organization that is capturing or creating data is our customer……. and this is just the start. Data that is created or captured is then shared. So scaling up, everyone who wants to share and access data also becomes a customer.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Over the years, we have consistently delivered breakthrough technology innovations – from 64- and 96-layer 3D NAND to the world’s first Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) - enabling a new class of ultra-high capacity enterprise HDDs designed to meet the future demands of Big Data. We are uniquely positioned to meet customer needs with the

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broadest and deepest portfolio of HDD and flash storage solutions.

Our most recent innovation that will be launched at GITEX 2018 is the Western Digital Purple microSD Card that complements our ‘Surveillance-Class’ Edge-to-Core Devices Portfolio, enabling surveillance system integrators to capture, transform, preserve, and access video surveillance data in real-time.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We have a finger on the pulse of the market and the trends in data expansion, and how these are impacting the business environment in the region. We stay close to our partners and customers to be in tune with their needs and are constantly developing products and solutions that meet the market demand.

We have also invested in strengthening the channel with the Surveillance myWD Programme that aims to train and equip partners to serve this emerging niche market.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

The Middle East and Africa are key markets for Western Digital; and every country in the region presents its own opportunity for our wide range of solutions that expand across MicroSD cards for personal use to larger enterprise solutions.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

The ever-increasing volume and complexity of

SAIFUDDIN KHWAJA,

SENIOR SALES DIRECTOR - MIDDLE EAST, WESTERN DIGITAL

data brings with it unprecedented opportunities. Customers are looking for smart storage solutions to unlock the value of data. To meet this need, we have developed industry-leading solutions that create an environment where the flow of information leads to smarter decisions, breakthrough discoveries and deeper connections. ë

TOP PLAYER MANAGED PRINT SERVICES

KONICA MINOLTA

Following the innovation heritage

WHILST MARKETS ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST ARE COMPOSED LARGELY OF TRANSACTIONAL (ONE-OFF BUSINESS), MANAGED PRINT SERVICES CONTINUE TO GROW AND ARE BEGINNING TO BE REQUESTED IN MORE AND MORE TENDERS. WITH AN R&D STRATEGY FOCUSED ON PROVIDING HOLISTIC SOLUTIONS TO THE CHALLENGES THAT COME WITH DIGITALIZATION, KONICA MINOLTA IS ACTIVELY PARTNERING WITH LEADING PIONEERS.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 Konica Minolta offers an extensive portfolio of software applications, accompanied by diligent business process and consulting, not only to optimize existing structures and workflows, but also to help create and set up entirely new work flows. We are able to offer Capture, Document Management, Enterprise Content Management, to name but a few.

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION We currently have eleven partners in the region including Pakistan.

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS Konica Minolta was a late comer in the region, but since April 2014, our solutions portfolio has grown considerably, especially in MPS Activities.

One of the key areas for us is Pre-sales support.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 We are pleased to make you aware of the following Industry awards in 2018. n BLI (Buyers lab) Pacesetter Award for Smart Workplace 2018 - 2019 n AccurioPress C6100 BLI Most outstanding colour Mid Volume Production Device n BLI (Buyers lab) Best Document Imaging Software Solutions n RabecoSam Sustainability Award Gold Class 2018 n Grand Prize in Nikkei Smart Work Awards 2018

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS Hoshanco in Saudi Arabia, Juma Al Majid, and Al Abbas in Dubai.

YOUR MARKET VERDICT

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In the laser market, there is continued demand for A3 laser and production devices driven largely by an improvement in government spending initiatives. Whilst markets across the Middle East are composed largely of transactional, managed print services continue to grow and are beginning to be requested in more and more tenders.

STRENGTHS What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

Konica Minolta has held the leading market share in UAE for the past few years in the mid production color market.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Our internal strengths have to be our managed print services solutions business, where we have taken a more consultative approach, working very closely with our partners. We do not sell direct in this region, but we support and train all our partners directly. We have excellent relationship with the partners and is supported by a strong and dynamic Konica Minolta team.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area?

There is no intention to expand to new geographical areas in the foreseeable future, as we already have excellent coverage across the GCC region. However, we have launched our new Industrial range of printing machines in the region, starting with the AccurioLabel 90 digital printer, followed with the MGI Jetvarnish 3DS, which is the start of a new product range.

KAZUO KOBAYASHI,

MD, KONICA MINOLTA BUSINESS SOLUTIONS MIDDLE EAST FZE

What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

Konica Minolta is supporting our partners extensively at the moment, security training to sales and presales as well as post sales is high on our business planning strategy for 2018 and beyond.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

The integration between paper and digitalization, offering workflow solutions to make the workplace more efficient. Konica Minolta (MFP) machines can be used for scanning and running various types of solutions and applications in the workplace. ë

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TOP PLAYER MOBILITY

TALARIAX

Transformation ‘Ready’ LEVERAGING THE RECENT INNOVATION IN TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD PRODUCTS AND SERVICES THAT CATER TO EVOLVING NEEDS, TALARIAX IS ALL SET TO SHOWCASE ITS NEW OFFERINGS AT GITEX.

How has this year been for the company?

TalariaX has stepped up its offerings to multiple platforms such as On-premise, Hosted, Cloud as well as Virtual Machine to cater to the evolving needs in the market place. We have just announced a universal API that can establish 2-way communication with different channels (SMS, Email, Social Media Messengers and Collaboration Tools) to establish seamless messaging between an organization and mobile users. This also facilitates easy interoperability with backend infrastructure, applications and users. Meanwhile, our flagship products have done exceedingly well in the market. All this, while the most recent customer wins have been in Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Aerospace, Defense and Government sectors. Thanks to the unstinted efforts of our staff and partners as well as the patronage of our discerning clients, we have had a great year so far.

What are the various solutions you go to the market with? And how have they leveraged your position in the market?

We facilitate enterprise mobility and enhanced remote access security with a wide range of offerings which goes by the brand names sendQuick and sqoope. We have deployed these solutions at major companies to facilitate Alerts from IP addressable infrastructure, Notifications from third party applications, Enterprise Messaging regardless of the language and 2 Factor Authentication via OTP/Soft-token delivered out-of-band for water-tight transaction integrity. They have all been well received. We have now introduced universal API called sendQuick.io that can integrate with and deliver to social media messengers such as whatsapp, facebook messenger, wechat, line, slack, viber, telegram and collaboration tools like microsoft teams and cisco webex. We are optimistic that these developments will continue to ensure a competitive edge for our company and our brands in the marketplace.

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What does your partner ecosystem look like?

We follow a multi-tier ecosystem of partners with a regional distributor followed by their downstream partners. Ideally these are value added resellers or Systems Integrators with specific expertise in a given area. Recently, we have also extended our ecosystem to include Telcos, Aggregators and Service Providers. The OEM segment is something that we were working on and are seeking to expand in the times to come.

In a sentence, define your organizations prime mission and vision?

Our CEO Mr. J S Wong puts it succinctly as follows: TalariaX aims to improve the way companies deliver information to mobile devices, giving information immediately to improve the business functions and life of the individuals.

TalariaX builds products that form the central information delivery infrastructure to mobile devices for all companies, interfacing between systems applications (Machine) to mobile devices (Human).

If you participating in GITEX, what are you planning to showcase this year?

We have had a consistent presence across GITEX and GISEC for years now. We will be showcasing the all new multi-platform, omni-channel gateway and engage with customers to explain our other offerings that are now ready for the market.

How are your solutions aligning with the GITEX theme – ‘Experience Future Urbanism’?

TalariaX offerings aim to be environmentally friendly, socially responsible and secure - to the best extent possible, consistent with the latest technology. We do that by providing a slew of solutions that help save cost, improve efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace.

Future urbanism will be all about self sufficient eco-systems that constantly rejuvenate, adapt and sustain a completely different way of life. TalariaX

ASHOK KUMAR V,

CHIEF OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT - EMEA & SAARC, TALARIAX

has the necessary ingredients to adapt to this changing perspective and be a part of societal transformation.

What is your roadmap for the year 2019?

We have leveraged recent innovations in technology to build products and services that cater to evolving needs. This calls for re-training our partner eco-system to be able to market, sell and support the new offerings. So a lot of our effort will go into ensuring adequate visibility and exposure for the new kids on the block followed by orientation for our channel partners.

The diversity and breath of our offerings also opens up newer channels. We will seek to actively engage these avenues and ensure fulfilment. In tandem, we will also increase our footprint in other markets. ë

TOP PLAYER NETWORKING

NOVIFLOW

Bolstering SDN for next-gen organizations

BY IMPLEMENTING CYBERMAPPER AND GATEWAYMAPPER, NOVIFLOW HAVE EXTENDED THE REACH OF SDN

BASED SOLUTIONS IN WHOLE NEW AREAS WITHOUT REQUIRING SOLUTION PARTNERS TO FACE THE PAIN OF LEARNING HOW TO PROGRAM SDN CONTROLLERS, OR ARCHITECT MATCH-ACTION FORWARDING PLANES.

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

NoviFlow is the world’s leading provider of SDN Network Operating Systems and solutions for programmable match-action data planes. Our solutions are deployed worldwide by global network operators, hyperscale data centers, enterprises and government agencies to accelerate throughput and provide dynamic scaling for the following applications: l Cybersecurity l In-Line Packet Brokering l Load Balancing l BNG/BRAS l Next Generation Central Office l Lifecycle Service Orchestration l SD WAN l Data Center Interconnect What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

We have design wins with multiple multinational companies that have deployed our solutions in over 35 countries on five continents. Growth comes from both existing customers expanding their usage of our high-performance SDN solutions and from new customers coming online from our expansion into new application areas and into new white box switches utilising programmable match-action processors such as the 6.5 Tbps Barefoot Tofino.

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Both. However, in the last 12 months NoviFlow has seen exceptionally strong growth from the cybersecurity and BNG gateway segments.

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With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Yes. From its inception in 2012, NoviFlow has been the leading the commercial deployment of programmable match-action forwarding planes.

NoviFlow sells mostly through a network of authorized resellers, and is actively engaged in expanding that network to include partners in our growing list of solution areas.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

NoviFlow hires a combination of networking industry veterans and top-graded university graduates. Our company culture is based on excellence and we empower all employee to deliver quality in everything we do.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

By implementing CyberMapper and GatewayMapper, NoviFlow have extended the reach of SDN based solutions in whole new areas without requiring solution partners to face the pain of learning how to program SDN controllers, or architect match-action forwarding planes. In conjunction with security services and appliances, NoviFlow reduces latency and operating costs, and increases reliability by significantly simplifying network architectures. NoviFlow solutions also support elastic scaling of security solutions – at line rate – up to Terabits of throughput at a fraction of the cost seen by other solutions.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or

MARC LECLERC,

VP - STRATEGY & MARKETING, NOVIFLOW

expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

As stated above, we are focused heavily on extending the features of our products to meet the needs of Cybersecurity solution vendors and the MSSPs that resell their solutions.

What are the new products/ solutions added to your portfolio this year?

CyberMapper, GatewayMapper, NoviWare for Barefoot Tofino (as implemented for a variety of third party Tofino-based whitebox switches offering up to 6.5 Tbps of capacity. ë

TOP PLAYER BACKUP

ARCSERVE

Unified solution, uninterrupted business FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS, ARCSERVE HAS BEEN TRANSFORMING IT BY REDEFINING HOW ORGANIZATIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD PROTECT THEIR PRICELESS DIGITAL ASSETS.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) is redefining the way organizations protect data through solutions that deliver enterprise power with small team simplicity. Arcserve UDP offers a full range of highly efficient and integrated capabilities, deployable on-premise or in the cloud, with high availability, DR, backup and recovery, and data archiving.

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION We have strong partnerships across the regions in UAE (like Business Continuity Solutions, Teksalah, Fujisoft, etc.), in KSA (Saudi Telecom Solutions, Data Consult, Amaan Solutions, etc.), in Oman (Khimji Ramdas), in Kuwait (Arabian Computer Systems), etc.

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS Arcserve is one of the very few player delivery solutions than can protect the 3 platforms generations: from 1st generation UNIX and Mainframe, 2nd generation Servers and PCs and 3rd Generation Cloud. And beyond the Backup/Restore only capabilities, Arcserve can also prevent any data loss with high availability capabilities that deliver real-time server and application monitoring, automatic and push-button failover, automated end-user redirection, and push-button failback functionality. If we look at all our competitors, they are limited by the capabilities of the legacy backup technologies. In short, they can recover more or less rapidly the data of yesterday.

Arcserve is the primary DR Replication solution for Saudi Telecom Solutions. n Saudi-Based company Jana Marine is protecting his fleet of vessels with the award-winning new Arcserve technology Arcserve Cloud Direct.

Without any on-premises hardware, all the vessels are protected remotely through a Cloud console. n Across Middle-East, the Al Rashed Group deployed Arcserve solutions across 22 datacenters. n

YOUR MARKET VERDICT Arcserve Middle-East is a division of Arcserve EMEA. While the entire market is growing significantly, Arcserve EMEA business grow at five times the market rate.

STRENGTHS What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

In addition of its software sales, one of the most reliable source of financial growth of Arcserve Middle-East is coming from the data protection UDP Appliances.

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry?

Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Arcserve is a leading provider of data protection software and is first to innovate in the industry.

The launch of Arcserve Cloud Direct technology is a good example. It is the only cloud-first solution to meet both RTO/RPO requirements of minutes without extra on-premises hardware.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018

OPPORTUNITIES

Arcserve UDP has been named “Product of the Year” at 2018’s Storage Awards.

What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers

MAJOR CUSTOMER WINS

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MICHAEL ORANGE

REGIONAL SALES MANAGAER MENA, ARCSERVE

wants that you can meet?

Arcserve is continuously improving its UDP Platform with additional functionalities and cloud capabilities. Arcserve has strong footholds in KSA, UAE and Oman but we are looking to expand furthermore our presence in the other countries of the region.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

A technology trend would be DR Replication to cloud (like Saudi Telecom Cloud, Azure or Arcserve Cloud) with more and more a zero tolerance on data loss. Having the guarantee to not lose any data in case of a disaster is going to be the standard expectation from CxO . ë

TOP PLAYER BACKUP

VERITAS

Leveraging BI for Robust Products ACCORDING TO VERITAS, HARNESSING INFORMATION IS AT THE HEART OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT AND IDENTIFYING THE TRUTH IN INFORMATION CAN TRANSFORM OUR LIVES IN WAYS LARGE AND SMALL. VERITAS’ PURPOSE IS TO TURN COMPLEXITY INTO POSSIBILITY FOR CLIENTS, AND FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WIDER WORLD.

SOLUTIONS PORTFOLIO AS OF 2018 l l l l l

360 Data Management focusing on – Data Protection Information Governance Cloud adoption & Portability Reducing storage cost & growth

VENDORS/PARTNERS IN THE REGION We have a robust and dynamic channel community which spans across different level of Veritas partnership program. Veritas Partner Force (VPF) is based on rewarding our partners’ capability, commitment and growth. The program offers you enhanced performance-based benefits and financial rewards, as well as sales and marketing tools to support you throughout the sales-cycle and enable you to build a predictable revenue stream for your business. Besides the transactional and strategic benefits which encourages partners to invest more with Veritas, we conduct regular channel Vcommunity sales and presales enablement sessions for partners, quarterly scheduled product webcasts from the experts, 1:1 focused enablement session run by our Value-added distributors. The sales and presales certification program on Veritas Partnernet is simple and supports the channel reps with multiple learning materials like videos, podcasts, case studies etc.

COMPETITIVENESS OF SOLUTIONS AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS Veritas helps turn your data challenge into comprehensive information management for your business 360 Degree View of Data Management Overview l DATA VISIBILITY: Knowing what you have, where it is, and how long it should be kept. l DATA PROTECTION: Ensuing you can recover you data when you need it. l DATA PORTABILITY: Seamlessly moving

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your data from one place to another. l STORAGE OPTIMIZATION: Avoid vendor lock-in and ensure you get the most from our existing storage investments. l BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Expanding your capability both on premise and into the cloud. l DIGITAL COMPLIANCE: Making sure you have the information and tools needed to address compliance requirements.

RECOGNITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2018 l Dec 2017 - Veritas is ranked the highest among all vendors for “Strategy” by Forrester in the recently published Forrester Wave on Data Resiliency Solutions l Veritas has been positioned as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions since the inception of this report in 1999 l Veritas named leader in 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving l Veritas is Named a Leader in 2017 Forrester Wave for Data Resiliency Solutions l Backup Exec 16 wins five star A-list award as best backup product ever tested by PC Pro

YOUR MARKET VERDICT Harnessing information is at the heart of human achievement. And identifying the truth in information can transform our lives in ways large and small. Our purpose is to turn complexity into possibility — for ourselves, for Veritas, our clients, and for the benefit of the wider world.

STRENGTHS Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? We protect customers most valuable asset which is DATA. We see customers facing big-

MANSOOR IBRAHIM,

DISTRIBUTION SUCCESS MANAGER, VERITAS

gest challenge around Data growth | fragmentation | governance | availability | visibility. We see this across all verticals and industry. Veritas covers it all with our 360 Data Management approach.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We are growing rapidly. We have launched multiple new products over last 3 years and will continue to do so. Geographically, we are driving focus by investing in on ground resources in Middle East countries.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

Cloud adoption, IoT, Digital governance all leading to unstructured Data growth. This is where Veritas adds value from Protection | governance | data portability and reducing storage cost and growth. ë

PRESENTS

TECHTALK AND META CIO AWARDS

25.AUG.2018

07.SEP.2018

VENUE: GHANA

12.NOV.2018 VENUE: KSA

VENUE: KENYA

07.NOV.2018 VENUE: BAHRAIN

27.OCT.2018

20.NOV.2018 VENUE: QATAR

VENUE: EGYPT

27.NOV.2018 VENUE: KUWAIT

GET READY FOR A ‘NEVER-SEEN-BEFORE’ CIO ROADSHOW IN THE META REGION

NOMINATE NOW

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