Redington Value Plus March 2015

valueplus presents

the

q u a r t e r ly

A special publication from Redington Gulf Value Division

March 2015 05 EMC

20

Tripp Lite

07

21

VMware

Check Point

09 Cisco

24 HP

11

Symantec

29

Vision Solutions

14

Dell Software

33

Red Hat

18

Oracle

Innovation era

Redington Value leads the way in optimizing opportunities in new and emerging technologies.

For more information or to place an order on Vision Solutions, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

05

07

Exploring growth

Battling the bot

contents 05 EMC: Exploring growth 07 Check Point: Battling the bot 09 Cisco: Security tactics 11 Symantec: Being smart about security

09

Security tactics

14 Dell Software: Data optimization 18 Oracle: Succeed with storage 20 Tripp Lite: Integrated Healthcare Solutions 21 VMware: The EVO-RAIL Engine 24 HP: Strategizing with cloud 29 Vision Solutions: A planned approach 33 Red Hat: Growing with partners

from the director: Dear Partners,

Y

ear after year, the team at Redington Gulf ensures that we are at the forefront of delivering leading technologies and supporting our partners. This year will be no exception. We have several initiatives planned for the channel community, which partners can look forward to in the following months.

The market has got off to a slow start and the primary reasons behind that are political turbulence in neighboring countries, currency fluctuations and inadequate planning. Very often, we don’t pay enough attention to planning.

Channel partners must be on top

of market trends and make a habit out of reading industry-related news, in order to plan more thoroughly and ease their execution. Being at a position to predict market trends can make all the difference between a partner who is successful and one who is not. Unfortunately, today it seems that staying abreast of these current affairs is not as common as it should be. While we, along with vendors do our best to ensure partners don’t miss important industry tidings, it is imperative for partners to take the initiative themselves and stay updated. This will help you to strategize better and take informed decisions. Planning is important, and I want to urge all our partners to focus more on

establishing clear objectives and working towards them.

Every New Year is another opportunity for us to better ourselves and to raise the bar. Partners are the most integral component of our ecosystem and as a company we will continue to invest in this area to enable and guide you better.

We look forward to strengthening our partnerships with you and growing together over the next few months..

Yours sincerely,

Raj Shankar, Managing Director, Redington Gulf

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Viewpoint by Ramkumar

Keep evolving Dear Partners,

hope the year has begun on a positive note for all of you. In my last note, I had emphasized the importance of moving towards a solutions selling model and this is something I must reiterate even more this year. It is necessary to evolve to maximize the opportunities present in the market today.

Redington Value, identifying the potential in the industry, is already in the process to be a comprehensive solutions distributor. In 2015, we will continue to see the market developing efforts to keep up with the emerging trends and shape businesses towards technologies such as cloud, mobility and big data. We have also observed that Internet of Things technology is leading several boardroom discussions. While this means additional prospects for partners as it is an opportunity to tap into newer avenues of growth, it is critical to understand your core competencies and hone it. We, at Redington Value, are striving towards the goal of educating and training partners in these new technologies.

Our partnership with ADEO last year is a definitive step towards this goal.

The pure play consulting and training organization will support and work with us to offer inclusive training programmes to our partners. Our channel partners can look forward to several initiatives from us in this regard in the following months.

We have had a good start to the year 2015 and we are looking forward

I

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The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

to our participation at the leading security show, GISEC this year.

Regional firms are increasingly becoming aware of the importance to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to securing their premises. Recent security breach incidents have further enhanced this thought-process. As we move forward and adopt the new technologies, security will be the single most important factor for businesses to consider. And as a value-added distributor, we understand the market opportunity that exists here and will enhance our focus on security. In the coming months, you will see us bringing on board several security vendors and this will be another contributing factor for our partners’ profitability in 2015.

While business is moving slowly because of market volatility in the region, we believe the year has the potential to be excellent, provided we play our cards right. This translates into seizing opportunities and embracing the new area without hesitation. We like to also point out that we are going to be present right beside you, to back you up and support you along the way.

Wish you a prosperous and an exciting year ahead. And we look forward to continuing our associations with you and building on it.

Regards, Ramkumar B President, Redington Gulf Value Division

EMC | in-depth

Exploring growth Learn how to optimise EMC’s hyper-converged infrastructure appliance solution – VSPEX BLUE.

A

gile, Scalable and Trusted Hyper-converged Infrastructure Appliance Rapidly growing Midmarket and Enterprise customers as well as Managed Service Providers (MSP) are looking for a simpler, more flexible, automated and dynamic infrastructure that will better align IT resources with continually changing business demands.

EMC VSPEX BLUE, is a hyper-converged infrastructure

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

March 2015

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in-depth | EMC

appliance (HCIA) powered

by Intel Xeon processor technology and EMC software.

EMC VSPEX BLUE enhances business agility by allowing IT to build, deploy, scale and maintain their HCIA through a more flexible operational framework. EMC VSPEX BLUE, offers the fastest, lowest risk path to new application and technology adoption.

Automating the provisioning of the complete deployment lifecycle enables IT organizations with agility, operational simplicity and reduced risk.

VSPEX BLUE DESCRIPTION EMC VSPEX BLUE redefines simplicity by delivering virtualization, compute, storage, networking and data protection in an agile, scalable, easy to manage hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.

Available as a single product for simple ordering, EMC VSPEX BLUE accelerates time-to-value by enabling customers to go from power-on to VM creation in 15 minutes. Designed for simplicity, fully orchestrated installation, management, patches and upgrades,

EMC VSPEX BLUE provides linear scaling capability that grows based on your business needs. One call global support from EMC, for both hardware and software, lets customers rest assured knowing they have 24x7 support and repair service. The EMC VSPEX BLUE architecture is a scale-out system consisting of common modular building blocks that scale linearly from one to four 2U/4 node appliances. The VSPEX BLUE approach is ideal for virtualization of Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO), Test/Development and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) in customer and managed services environments.

VSPEX BLUE VALUE EMC VSPEX BLUE is fundamentally the fastest way to deploy virtualized infrastructure, giving IT the flexibility to manage costs, enhance service delivery, meet evolving expectations and increase business revenue. IT organizations want better control over IT services, fully automated provisioning, scale capacity

EMC VSPEX BLUE is fundamentally the fastest way to deploy virtualized infrastructure, giving IT the flexibility to manage costs, enhance service delivery, meet evolving expectations and increase business revenue.

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ESSENTIALS Redefine Simplicity: Agile, Scalable and Trusted

Agile: • Respond quickly to changing business demands • Speed time-to-deployment with single, elastic pool of resources • Streamlined operations with automated deployment, upgrades and patches Scalable: • Linear scale-out with small increment, cost-effective building block approach • Eliminate need for pre-planned infrastructure purchases • Cloud gateway provides unlimited cloud storage Trusted: • One call global support with single point of accountability for hardware and software • ESRS enables remote monitoring, diagnostics and repair • Industry leading Data Protection safeguards your entire system

and simplified operations, deploying infrastructure quickly and easily. EMC VSPEX BLUE, powered

by Intel XEON processor technology, enables rapid IT transformation, integrating virtualization, compute, networking, storage and data protection into a single, all-inclusive appliance to dramatically lower risk and speeds time to production.

EMC VSPEX BLUE data protection incorporates EMC RecoverPoint for VMs and VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced. EMC RecoverPoint for VMs offers operational and disaster recovery, replication and

continuous data protection at the VM level.

VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced provides centralized backup and recovery and is based on EMC Avamar technology.

Further, with the EMC CloudArray gateway, you can securely expand storage capacity without limits.

EMC CloudArray works seamlessly with your existing infrastructure to efficiently access all the on-demand public cloud storage and backup resources you desire. EMC VSPEX BLUE is backed by a single point of support from EMC 24x7 for both hardware and software.

Check Point | focus

Battling the bot

Ram Narayanan, Channel Manager, GCC, Check Point Software Technologies, discusses malware and bot attack trends and steps for firms to turn the tide.

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ardly a month seems to go by without a malware attack hitting the headlines, or reports of Government agencies taking down another global cybercriminal network. And the last few months were no exception, as the disruption of the Gameover Zeus botnet, CryptoLocker ransomware scam and the cease of operations of Code Spaces after being hacked,

became front page news.

The attacks involving these malware agents, which investigators believe they have stalled temporarily, are estimated to have infected over 1 million computers worldwide. It’s easy to think that the news coverage of these high profile malware and bot attacks distorts the truth, but the statistics don’t lie. Our own 2014 Security Report revealed

that on an average day, the average enterprise business experiences: • A bot infection on the company’s network communicates with its command and control centre every 3 minutes.

• A known malware variant is being downloaded to the company’s network every 10 minutes.

• A new, unknown malware

variant is being downloaded to the company network every 27 minutes.

• The company’s network is infected with a new bot every 24 hours.

• (Download the full ‘2014 Security Report’ from www.

Check Point.com ) The unknown malware explosion This data highlights the increasing threat that malware

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focus | Check Point

poses to businesses. However if this trend is to be reversed, it is important to gain a firm grasp of why it is happening.

While traditional security technologies such as anti-virus and Intrusion Prevention are effective in detecting attempts to exploit known software vulnerabilities, hackers are acutely aware of this and tailor their efforts accordingly. As a result, they invest time in either testing malware against these technologies to check whether they are detected or on trying to exploit new, unknown vulnerabilities and infection methods to get through conventional security defences.

In 2013, our report found that 2.2 pieces of unknown malware struck organizations every hour, a rate of 53 every day – and 58 percent of organisations experienced a user downloading malware every two hours or less, a threefold increase compared to 2012.

Two main factors were behind this sudden increase in frequency. First, attackers were employing automated mechanisms for creating evasive, unknown malware on a large scale, and then targeting organizations around the world through coordinated campaigns in order to maximise their effectiveness. Key tools used by malware authors are ‘crypters’.

Crypters disguise executables through the use of various encryption and encoding schemes, which the author can combine and re-combine to hide malware.

Second, the manual investigation and response processes usually employed to mitigate targeted attacks were

unable to keep up with this high volume of incidents.

Rise of the bot As hackers increased the sophistication of malware, our research found a corresponding increase in bot infections and activity. Bots infiltrate and move round a network quietly gathering information and communicating it to outside sources. While the theme for bot attacks and infiltration was of a lower value of smarter, more targeted attacks, for bots the converse was found to be true with high volume, high frequency and more active infestations. This not only

The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

Reversing the trend This all paints a very bleak picture: it seems that as soon as one issue is dealt with, several more are being created.

However there are practical steps organisations can take to reduce their exposure to risk from malware and bots.

Implement a multi-layered security system Conventional anti-virus software

It is essential that companies use anti-bot detection technology to monitor and track bots that also prevents them communicating with external servers. means that businesses are struggling with the volume of attack but have to contend with increased activity representing a serious threat to organisations trying to protect the security of their data and systems.

Moreover the stakes for bot infections arguable increased with the advent of a new generation of ransomware – exemplified by CryptoLocker which encrypts data on a PC and holds it to ransom for payment. An important trait of CryptoLocker is that the malware agent is bot-like in behaviour and needs to find and initiate communication

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with a command and control server before it can begin the encryption process. This shows that bot detection can play an important proactive, preventive role in defence against malware.

is no longer adequate protection against cyber-criminals. While it performs an important function in an overall security it is essential businesses implement a multi-layered approach to security. Solutions such as threat emulation, or sandboxing, provide exactly that by preventing suspicious programmes ever reaching the network. By implementing this technology organisations will relieve the burden on existing systems and reduce their potential risk of a malware attack.

(Refer to 300 unknown Malware – Nailed report on www.Check Point.com )

Implement a dedicated bot detection solution It is essential that companies use anti-bot detection technology to monitor and track bots that also prevents them communicating with external servers. This should include extended IPS protection that enables blocking for critical severity attacks that covers network, server and infrastructure systems provided by a variety of vendors and platforms.

Better intelligence The only way that a business can truly keep pace with new and evolving threats is to gather and share intelligence on new attacks as quickly as possible. Companies should like to implement such systems that provide real-time updates based on a global intelligence marketplace. By doing so, organisations will be able to update their protection in real-time reducing the risk of a successful attack.

Much like securing a car or home, there is no absolute failsafe for IT security as it’s impossible to accurately predict the lengths criminals will go to in order to gain access to sensitive information. However, by following these three steps, organisations will not only better protect themselves, but also make it harder for criminals to come up with new ways to damage IT systems and infrastructure.

This won’t just stop the gap between security and criminal activity growing, but also start bridging it – delivering greater security for us all.

Cisco | highlight

Security tactics Cisco outlines the features and benefits of its cyber threat defense solution in an evolving threat landscape.

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ell-understood and known security threats are effectively combated by a welldesigned and mature security infrastructure that includes components like intrusion prevention, antivirus, content security, and firewall. But customwritten threats designed for specific targets with specific intent represent a tougher challenge.

Customized threats are designed For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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highlight | cisco

based on specific knowledge of a target, often based on reconnaissance of the network or people at the organization, or both.

Once the custom threat has breached the perimeter defenses of the network, it typically spreads laterally in the interior of the network where threat defense devices are not generally pervasively deployed. By remaining quiet and hidden in the noise of normal network traffic, the threats can spread under the radar among specific targets. Perimeter defenses do not have visibility into these threats. Many times these threats are actually introduced inside the perimeter via social engineering, spear phishing, or external media like USB drives. And while prevention is important, even the most diligent patching will not completely guard against these threats.

The risk and damage caused by advanced cyber threats varies by source. Victims of these types of security breaches are not motivated to disclose their impacts, but primary research into advanced cyber threats indicates that this is a quickly growing problem with significant impact.

Once these threats have penetrated the network perimeter, the only place left to identify them is where they live: the network interior. One must look for ‘fingerprints’ of

the threat by analyzing traffic patterns across the switches and routers that comprise the network interior. From this analysis, one can gain insight into patterns that are indicative of advanced cyber threat traffic.

Whether it is an internal client trying to set up peer-topeer connections with other clients on its subnet or clients communicating with unusual regions of the world, analysis of traffic patterns provides visibility into potential cyber threats.

Overview of the Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution The Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution combines the following elements to provide visibility into the most evasive and dangerous cyber threats: • Unique interior network traffic telemetry utilizing scalable unsampled NetFlow capabilities of Cisco Catalyst switches, Cisco routers, and NetFlow Generation Appliances (NGA), as well as NetFlow Security Event Logging (NSEL) from Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances • Network traffic analysis capabilities provided by the Lancope StealthWatch System.

Cisco has partnered with Lancope to jointly develop and offer the Cisco Cyber Threat

Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution focuses on complex and dangerous information security threats that lurk in networks for months or years at a time stealing vital information.

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Once the custom threat has breached the perimeter defenses of the network, it typically spreads laterally in the interior of the network where threat defense devices are not generally pervasively deployed.

Defense solution • Identity, firewall, and application-type contextual information for discerning the nature and severity of a threat.

These context points are delivered by the Cisco Identity Services Engine, ASA firewalls, and Cisco routers, respectively • With this telemetry and contextual information, a network security analyst can, from a single pane of glass, identify suspicious activity, gather pertinent user information, identify the application, and look up other relevant security context. This enables assessment of the nature and the potential danger of the suspicious activity. With this information, the analyst can decipher the correct next steps for advanced cyber threats such as: • Network reconnaissance - The act of probing the network looking for attack vectors that can be exploited by customcrafted cyber threats • Network interior malware propagation - Spreading malware across hosts for the purpose of gathering security reconnaissance data, exfiltrating data, or creating back doors to the network • Command and control traffic Communications between the

attacker and the compromised internal hosts • Data theft - Exporting sensitive information back to the attacker, generally via command and control communications Benefits of the Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution The Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution focuses on the most complex and dangerous information security threats threats that lurk in networks for months or years at a time stealing vital information and disrupting operations. Cisco provides visibility into these threats and context to decipher their potential damage.

Key benefits of the Cisco Cyber Threat Defense solution: • Provides threat defense in the network interior, where the most elusive and dangerous threats target • Detects threat closer to the source to minimize damage and propagation • Enables scalable, ubiquitous, and cost-effective security telemetry throughout the network • Simplifies manual, errorprone, and expensive threat investigation processes • Uses the Cisco switching, routing, and ASA 5500 network footprint.

symantec | in-depth

Being smart about security Symantec offers intelligent security for today’s connected enterprise and details how to be cyber resilient.

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o keep pace in today’s competitive world, organizations are embracing more open and connected ways of doing business. They rely increasingly on virtualization, social media, extranets, the cloud, and the Internet of Things. Many allow employees to use their personal devices for work. All these connections make an enterprise more agile and competitive. But they also open the door to a dizzying array of new security threats. Indeed, by 2020 more than 50 billion things will be connected to the Internet—and that’s 50 billion more security concerns.

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March 2015

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in-depth | symantec

Many organizations take on this challenge with the traditional weapons of defense.

But these are not up to the challenge. The old way— continually throwing personnel and point products at the problem—is no longer effective.

No company can simultaneously analyze alerts, track vulnerabilities, implement security policies across systems, and effectively assess volumes of threat data in real time. No company can achieve a culture of speed and innovation when every process is bogged down by arduous and inflexible security protocols.

In our constantly more complex corporate landscape, security success means intelligence, vigilance, and rapid reaction. It does not mean an ever-higher brick wall. There is no brute-force strategy effective against increasingly varied, speedy, and sophisticated attacks.

Enterprises must admit that breaches will happen in spite of an organization’s best efforts and acknowledge that, even if it is safe today, there will certainly be a new, more virulent threat tomorrow. The answer is a layered security approach that is flexible, scalable, and threatfocused, that gives visibility across the attack spectrum and defends the enterprise before, during, and after an attack.

The solution is cyber resilience To minimize the damage of attacks in today’s threat landscape, organizations must fundamentally change the way they think about security. They must understand that

eliminating risk entirely is not possible. And they must admit that a stubborn insistence on trying to do so will slow agility and innovation, and will blunt their competitive edge. Instead, organizations should focus on cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience is a smart approach to security. It recognizes that workers will make mistakes. It acknowledges that cybercriminals, armed with increasingly sophisticated methods and spurred by increasingly lucrative rewards,

The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

Look to Symantec We have the solutions you need to implement the layered security necessary for a cyber-resilient enterprise, from securing the data center and server-to-server communications to the organization’s endpoints and gateways, remote access, mobile devices, and the cloud. Our solutions help you discover, track, and protect data and users.

Symantec Global Intelligence Network maintains worldwide visibility into the threat landscape via 65 million attack sensors that constantly monitor networks and vulnerabilities. will find cracks in even the most advanced security systems. It realizes that today’s attacks are less frequently one-off attempts than they are sustained campaigns. It knows that the best defense is to anticipate breaches, identify them as soon as they happen, and fix them quickly. It monitors vital business assets and uses security intelligence to guide actions and support agility. It’s not a defensive stance focused on malware but a realistic strategy of resilience.

So where do you find a vendor with the ability to implement an effective plan of cyber resilience?

Look to a vendor with years of security experience, the most advanced security architecture,

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and industry leading solutions and resources of security intelligence.

And our managed security service offerings provide monitoring and big data analysis.

We gather malicious code intelligence from more than 130 million client, server, and gateway systems that have deployed our protection products. Our distributed honeypot network collects data from around the globe, capturing previously unseen threats and attacks and providing valuable insight into attacker methods.

We have thousands of experts worldwide and a cutting-edge approach to security built on decades of experience. We have five PCI-certified Security Operations Centers around the globe staffed with topflight

security professionals. We have the scale to protect information wherever it’s stored or accessed.

And we have the capacity to respond to attacks immediately.

Symantec Global Intelligence Network maintains worldwide visibility into the threat landscape via 65 million attack sensors that constantly monitor networks and vulnerabilities. It gathers data from one of the world’s most extensive antifraud communities of enterprises and security vendors. It checks more than 1.4 billion web requests and 8 billion emails a day.

We possess the back-end architecture required to support your big data needs, collecting 10 trillion security logs per year from more than 100 discreet technologies. We provide hosted services, including authentication services that utilize a tier-4 military-grade data center, handling more than 3 billion validations per day and issuing nearly 300 million certificates into device ecosystems. And, just as important, we provide the reliability and scalability to guarantee that it’s all there when you need it.

Our assets give our analysts unparalleled sources of data with which to identify, analyze, and provide informed commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam. And they give your security teams the access to find and analyze the intelligence that matters to you, to quickly return actionable data that you can use to continually refine your systems and protect your organization better today than yesterday.

E N I F E RED

SIMPLICITY

AGILE. SCALABLE. TRUSTED. BUSINE SS

PARTNER For more information or to place an order on EMC, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

focus | Dell Software

Data optimization Dell Software discusses in depth why enterprises should not have a one-size-fits-all approach towards data protection.

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D

ata is your organization’s currency. You probably have dozens or hundreds of terabytes to cope with, and as you adapt to business opportunity, data explodes, with double-digit annual growth rates.

That’s a big problem. After all, you must ensure that data is available, where and when it’s needed. And that’s hard because delays, downtime, and disasters occur without warning, causing added complexity, complication, and challenges that extend from the customer to the CEO.

Without data, your organization won’t stay alive. How do you cope?

You’re always protecting your data, of course. You have data protection plans that are tailored for your unique business complexity. You have backup strategies attuned to different platforms, different operating systems, different locations, and different levels of criticality. Or do you?

As per a recent Forrester survey, many organizations take a one-size-fits-all approach to their data protection.

What’s wrong with that?

Well, if you’ve ever used a screwdriver to hammer a nail, you know that the right tool for the job is an essential part of doing good work. But it’s an approach many backup vendors don’t appreciate.

To extend the analogy, instead of providing a hammer, a screwdriver, a ruler, and a chisel, typical backup vendors give you a knife with a bunch of added tools and gizmos. It’s a compromise.

Yes, you can work with the knife – but it’s hard to get the job done effectively or efficiently. You’re also being asked to pay for the compass, the corkscrew, and the magnifying glass -- widgets that you’ll never use, don’t value, and resent paying for.

Every task is different, and you need the right tool for the task at hand.

Does it really make sense to use the same tool to back up: • Both cloud and UNIX environments?

• Virtual and physical workloads?

• Mission-critical and archival workloads?

your business at risk because there’s a cost to compromise.

That same Forrester study indicated that many organizations are missing out on optimal business protection because of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. They’re not using the right tool for the job. They’re overprotecting their noncritical applications and underprotecting their critical ones.

They’re trying to back up virtual applications and legacy workloads with the same tool, ignoring that the tool isn’t ideal for both requirements. And they’re not seeing how this approach compromises their ability to cope with delays, downtime, or disaster until something drastic happens and business success becomes a business nightmare.

No. You want the tools to build a tailor-made solution for your unique backup requirements.

Without the right tools, you’re settling for a one-size-fits-all approach -- and you’re putting

Dell Software’s approach: Tailored tools for better business resilience We have what you want, and we’ve stripped out complexity, higher costs, and the compromises you’ve accepted as

What should you do?

Other vendors ask you to compromise your backup. But you don’t have to over-pay or under-protect. Pick the right tool for the job, and don’t ever settle for a one-size-fits-all data protection solution.

We’re addressing the need for tailored business resilience by bundling all the data protection software you need with a seamless capacity-based pricing model.

a part of your backup strategy.

Dell offers several data protection platforms built for distinct requirements. But for the first time, we’re addressing the need for tailored business resilience by bundling all the data protection software you need with a seamless capacitybased pricing model.

We call it the Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite and it matches your backup to your business.

In it, we include three approaches to data protection that encompass physical, virtual, and cloud workloads across nearly any OS. You get full access to the Dell data protection portfolio -- AppAssure, NetVault Backup, and vRanger – licensed by front end terabyte. Working together, we deliver unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and high availability.

AppAssure – unifies backup, replication, and recovery in one software solution. Designed for virtual, physical, and cloud environments, AppAssure continually checks your backups to ensure they will be ready when you need them. AppAssure uses the AppAssure Smart Agent to meet stringent Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), and it delivers the replication, virtual standby, and Live Recovery features that provide extremely fast recovery methods for meeting stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).

NetVault Backup – highly scalable, comprehensive backup and recovery that covers both legacy and contemporary workloads for enterprises who have to unify backup across diverse IT environments. It supports the widest variety of operating systems and

Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite • Scale to protect thousands of VMs via agentless technology, active block mapping, compression and dedupe.

• Provide high availability through 288 snapshots/ day, virtual standby, and Live Recovery.

• Ensure that critical workloads are restored in minutes not hours.

• Protect an enterprise with scalable, unparalleled ease of use.

• Reduce data storage footprint by up to 90% • Result in potential cost savings of up to 55% for large environments of over 250TB.

applications—e.g. Informix, DB2, PostgreSQL, and SAP-- while designed to simplify data backup and recovery. vRanger – built for small and large virtual environments, easily deployed to one or many hypervisors across your environment, it’s a simplistic architecture with a unique set of features that supports both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V to better cope with heterogeneous data center virtualization.

With our all-inclusive suite of products, you can protect across legacy, physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure with products built for your unique business requirements.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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For more information or to place an order on VMware, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

IT Agility Delivered Cisco Unified Computing System

Š 2011–2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public information.

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focus | Oracle

Succeed with storage Oracle FS1 Flash Storage System can deliver significant business value for organizations in the region.

I

ntelligent, efficient, economical flash storage from Oracle You need high-performance, scalable storage that will not only evolve and adapt as your data grows, but also empower you to overcome the challenges of increasingly virtualized environments, faster servers and scale-out applications, and latency-sensitive applications that you manage – right now. You need flash storage, but not all the time.

Oracle has been a leader in flash technology innovation since 2008. And we have a solution to make you a digital master. Built upon five generations of flash

hardware and software expertise, the Oracle FS1 automatically delivers the flash performance your critical applications’ ‘hot’ data needs while providing you with the option to take advantage of the economics of disk to store lower priority data. Coengineered with Oracle servers, operating systems, applications and databases, Oracle FS1 provides unique functionality that delivers significant business value.

When deployed in conjunction with Oracle Database 11gR2 and 12c, Oracle FS1 delivers net incremental business-enabling, cost-saving, efficiency-

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maximizing, and performanceenhancing capabilities. With the Oracle FS1, you can consolidate storage while achieving predictable performance for multiple diverse workloads in enterprise computing or multitenant environments.

The most intelligent flash storage system in the industry QoS Plus is Oracle’s patented Quality of Service for storage, a policy-based feature incorporating business priority and performance optimization with sub-LUN automatic tiering across up to four tiers of flash and disk – all in one simple

management framework.

The approach also divides data into fixed blocks to build a ‘heat map’ of hot, warm and cold data.

It continuously maps, evaluates, and adapts to changing access patterns, moving blocks, promoting to flash or demoting them to disk media based on the application’s business-priority and SLAs. And, Oracle’s auto-tiering technology achieves unmatched levels of granularity – 640KB blocks – allowing better ‘heat level’ distinction and 400x more efficient placement of data into appropriate tiers than competitive systems.

oracle | focus

With QoS Plus delivering flash performance only when you need it, and automatically moving data to more economical media when you don’t based on business value – not on a first in-first out model like other systems – your storage system responds to your business priorities and actual data usage with highly granular efficiency.

Rapidly ‘learning’ from, and adapting to, what your business wants and needs, FS1 is the first flash storage system that dynamically restructures storage pools and optimizes $/IOP and $/ GB on-the-fly.

Furthermore, Storage Domains enable you to create virtual storage machines within an Oracle FS1, each with their own QoS Plus settings, isolating applications from each other to meet stringent SLAs and avoid penalties. By leveraging Oracle FS1’s Storage Domains, you can lower operational expenses as you consolidate multiple SAN arrays, reducing management, power, cooling, and space costs.

Oracle FS1 is: Enterprise-grade SAN storage The Oracle FS1 is designed with enterprise-grade hardware and software features to provide maximum uptime, data availability, and application access. These features deliver rapid failover capabilities; warm start technology for upgrades and error containment; no single point of failure; application-tostorage data integrity verification; and optional local or remote replication.

The most scalable Flash storage system in the industry Thanks to an all-new scale-out architecture, FS1-2 offers up to 3.6 petabytes (PB) of all-flash

storage, or 7PB of flash in a 16node scale-out configuration providing over a million IOPs of performance, and between three and 10 times the flash capacity of comparative solutions.

Extensive, proven data services included with FS1 While all-flash startups offer few, immature data services, and established vendors charge ‘a la carte’, all-in-box data services are standard features of the FS1 included in the base system price.

For example, FSI comes with a complete suite of management software, including QoS Plus, Storage Domains, and Application Profiles. Data protection and data availability features include a full suite of copy services, read/write clones, and application-consistent recovery with Data Protection Manager. To get an equivalent set of data management services from one of our competitors would cost $225,000. In contrast, FS1’s data services cost $0. That’s quite a CAPEX savings with FS1.

The most cost-effective flash storage system of its kind Maximizing the power of flash, while exploiting the economics of disk storage, the Oracle FS1 delivers the lowest cost per IOP and per terabyte. With the ability to consolidate multiple storage arrays, it can lower operational expenses in management, power, cooling and space. Plus, all of the necessary software is included at no extra fee.

Purpose-built to make flash storage extremely efficient FS1 manages data placement dynamically, in real-time, with minimal administrator intervention. Its multi-level,

The Oracle FS1 is designed with enterprise-grade hardware and software features to provide maximum uptime, data availability, and application access. dynamic virtualization allows for optimal resource allocation. And it moves data in 640KB segments – which means it’s 400x more efficient in preserving valuable flash resources that other vendors waste.

Co-engineered with Oracle Database and applications Engineered alongside Oracle Database and applications, FS1 has been proven to reduce storage requirements by up to 40 percent and speed queries by up to 5x. That’s because we designed our solutions to work together from the onset – giving you access to Oracle-only features such as Hybrid Columnar Compression and Automatic Data Optimization. In addition, Oracle FS1 comes with predefined Application Profiles that provide tuned and tested out-of-the-box storage optimization for Oracle Database and key enterprise applications. With one click you can reduce the time to set up, provision and deploy Oracle Database and applications—with a minimum amount of administration.

Designed to disrupt the economics of the storage industry Large-scale ITaaS. The cloud. New business technologies have exploded – technologies that can revolutionize the way your organization works. With the extreme security and granular

SLA management within Storage Domains, you can set up dedicated virtual storage machines for users, applications, or companies – making Oracle FS1 an ideal platform for private, hybrid, and public clouds.

We believe your storage solution shouldn’t hold you back in deploying game-changing IT advancements, which is why we offer optimized multi-dimension economics, no additional cost for proven advanced data services, secure multi-tenancy and service prioritization.

Totally unique Oracle FS1 is one-of-a-kind: delivering the combination of data movement based on business priority, granular auto-tiering across four tiers of media, and secure multitenancy with one storage system. Promising maximum uptime with rapid failover and no single point of failure, as well as simplified tools to remove human error, FS1 offers unrivalled business benefits.

Become a digital master With so much intelligence, capacity and speed, enterprises of all kinds stand to benefit from the Oracle FS1 storage system.

Reducing costs and risk, there are productivity, efficiency and economy gains to be realized across your organization. With Oracle FS1 you can master your digital world.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

March 2015

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highlight | Tripp Lite

Tripp Lite: Integrated Healthcare Solutions From server room to patient room, power, protect, secure, cool, control and connect your electrical and electronic equipment with affordable IT infrastructure solutions from a single, trusted source.

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RING THE TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW TO THE BUILDINGS OF YESTERDAY As technology continues to transform healthcare, you face the difficult task of supporting growing technology use while budgets are under pressure. You may be dealing with aging facilities, a hodgepodge of equipment and other less-thanideal conditions you don’t have the time or money to fix right now.

Regardless of circumstance, you’re still expected to meet governmental and internal mandates as diverse as electronic healthcare records, unified communications and ensuring patient safety as more and more electronic devices enter patient care areas.

Tripp Lite has the products, experience and expertise to help you build a state-of-the-art data center, but if you need to get by with a converted supply closet, we still have you covered. With thousands of cost-effective, vendor-neutral IT infrastructure solutions designed to work with

your existing systems, we can help you expand, improve operational efficiency and meet regulatory requirements without breaking the bank.

RECEIVE PERSONALIZED SERVICE FROM A RELIABLE PARTNER Tripp Lite is known for reliable products and affordable prices, but what really sets us apart is our willingness to work closely with you. Some suppliers think a stack of cardboard boxes is a solution.

You’re left to integrate all your new stuff with all your old stuff, which can be most of the work.

When you choose Tripp Lite, we help you customize a fully integrated solution that’s flexible enough to work with your existing systems and infrastructure, regardless of vendor or vintage. We evaluate your unique requirements and provide detailed, practical advice that allows you to balance technical requirements and budgetary realities.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

Why do we give away valuable advice that other companies charge for? Because when you compare Tripp Lite to the competition, we believe that you’ll choose us. And after you’ve worked with us, we’re confident that you’ll be a repeat customer.

TRIPP LITE IS THERE FOR YOU BEFORE AND AFTER YOUR PURCHASE We can help you: • Define objectives and technical requirements • Evaluate the installation site, including existing systems and infrastructure • Examine systems to ensure they’re correctly powered, protected and configured • Audit power capacity requirements and right-size systems before consolidation, virtualization and other projects • Plan airflow management and cooling for low-, medium- or high-density deployments • Prepare for future

infrastructure growth and evolving IT requirements • Integrate new equipment with existing systems Tripp Lite service advantages: • A long history of providing responsive customer service • Single-source, single-contact convenience for planning, ordering, delivery, service and support • Free technical support from experienced staff • Dedicated specialists and reseller partners attuned to the unique needs and requirements of healthcare customers • Clear alternatives that allow you to balance technical requirements and budgetary limits • Convenient contact via phone, Web, e-mail or chat – choose the method that works best for you • Flexible support options, including preventative maintenance, extended warranties and on-site service.

VMware | In-depth

The EVO: RAIL Engine VMware’s latest hyper-converged infrastructure appliance solution, EVO:RAIL, combines compute, networking, and storage resources into a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance to create a simple, easy to deploy, all-in-one solution.

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ith EVO:RAIL, customers experience a radically new, end-to-end user experience that drives simplicity. Deployment, configuration, and management are enabled through a new, intuitive HTML5- based user interface.

EVO:RAIL streamlines initial configuration with simple input for IP addresses, VLANs, hostnames, and passwords. Then EVO:RAIL creates the new ESXi™ hosts, implements data services, and configures vCenter Server. Within minutes EVO:RAIL is configured and ready to create VMs! Users create VMs with only a few clicks to select the guest OS, VM size, VLAN, and security options. EVO:RAIL simplifies virtual machine sizing by offering single-click small, medium, and large configurations, as well as single-click security policies.

EVO:RAIL provides a dashboard to view VMs. Compute and storage management is revolutionized with health monitors for CPU, memory, storage, and VM usage for entire clusters, individual appliances, and individual nodes.

EVO:RAIL streamlines log collection, licensing, and offers language choice for globalization.

With a minimum of four independent ESXi hosts in an EVO:RAIL cluster, patching and upgrading are non-disruptive and require zero downtime.

EVO:RAIL is optimized for the new VMware user as well as for

experienced administrators.

Minimal IT experience is required to deploy, configure, and manage EVO:RAIL, allowing it to be used where there is limited or no IT staff on-site. As EVO:RAIL utilizes VMware’s core products, administrators can apply existing VMware knowledge, best practices, and processes.

Automatic Scale-Out EVO:RAIL radically simplifies scaleout. Increasing compute, networking, and storage resources is as easy as powering up a new appliance to join an existing EVO:RAIL cluster. EVO:RAIL automatically discovers the new appliance and then distributes the configuration to seamlessly add new appliances with only a password and a few mouse clicks. EVO:RAIL can scale out to four appliances— for a total of 16 ESXi hosts and one Virtual SAN datastore, backed by a single vCenter Server and EVO:RAIL instance.

Software Bundle The EVO:RAIL software bundle is fully loaded onto the Qualified EVO:RAIL Partner’s hardware. It is comprised of: • EVO:RAIL Deployment, Configuration, and Management • vSphere Enterprise Plus, including ESXi for compute • VMware Virtual SAN for storage • vCenter Server • vCenter Log Insight Fault Tolerance and Reliability The EVO:RAIL appliance has four independent nodes with dedicated compute, network, and storage resources: • Four ESXi hosts in a single appliance enables resiliency for hardware failures or maintenance • Two fully redundant power supplies • Two redundant 10GbE NIC ports per node for all communication • ESXi boot device, HDDs and SSDs are all enterprise-grade

• Fault-tolerant Virtual SAN datastore Compute and Storage EVO:RAIL is sized to run approximately 100 average-sized, general-purpose, data center VMs. There are no restrictions on application type. EVO:RAIL supports any application that a customer would run on vSphere.

EVO:RAIL creates a single Virtual SAN datastore from all local HDDs on each ESXi host in an EVO:RAIL cluster. Virtual SAN read caching and write buffering uses SSD capacity. Total storage capacity is 14.4 TB raw HDD and 1.6 TB SSD for read/write cache per EVO:RAIL appliance.

General-purpose Server VM profile: 2 vCPU, 4GB vMEM, 60GB vDisk, with redundancy.

Actual capacity varies by VM size and workload.

Horizon View virtual desktop profile: 2vCPU, 2GB vMEM, 32GB vDisk linked clones. Actual capacity varies by desktop size and workload.

Virtual SAN datastore: Usable space will vary, based on fault tolerance settings.

Networking Each node in EVO:RAIL has two 10GbE network ports (either SFP+or RJ45). Each port must be connected to a 10GbE top-of-rack switch that has IPv4 and IPv6 multicast enabled. Remote / lights out management is available on each node through a 1GbE IPMI port that can connect to a management network.

EVO:RAIL supports four types of traffic: Management, vSphere vMotion®, Virtual SAN, and Virtual Machine. Traffic isolation on separate VLANs is recommended for vSphere vMotion, Virtual SAN, and VMs.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

March 2015

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Oracle FS1 Flash Storage System

Intelligent, Efficient, Economical

For more information or to place an order on Oracle, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

Data protection that grows with your customer’s environment Trust backup and recovery solutions from Dell Software As your customer’s physical and virtual environment evolves, their data protection policies should too. Dell NetVault Backup and AppAssure, along with backup-to-disk appliances like the Dell DR and DL systems, ensure your customers will meet their backup windows and recovers any piece of data at any time – all while keeping pace with their growing data environment.

For more information visit software.dell.com/solutions/data-protection/

For more information or to place an order on Dell Software, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

focus | hp

Strategizing with cloud HP discusses how its CloudSystem portfolio can address customer’s cloud requirements, irrespective of which phase they are in.

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rganizations have different objectives for investing in cloud projects. Some want to move their existing, traditional applications to cloud, so that they can save money through further automation. Others plan to innovate, and aim to use cloud as an application platform for competitive advantage.

The HP CloudSystem portfolio is a market leading cloud platform primarily because it is complete, integrated and open. It

is also equipped with the following features: • Powered by Cloud OS, it is HP’s enterprise-grade version of OpenStack.

• Supports cloud bursting to public cloud; Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, HP Public Cloud and CloudAgile are compliant service providers.

• Cloud services can be easily provisioned for use in just minutes to increase IT agility and responsiveness.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

• Applications can be deployed quickly and reliably using more than 200 Cloud Maps that include best practices.

• CloudSystem can be installed and fully deployed in hours, instead of days or weeks.

• CloudSystem reduces TCO by 43% through increased productivity.

CloudSystem provides IT organizations with a fast-track to cloud, so that they can dramatically improve business

agility and productivity. It reinforces HP’s Converged Cloud strategy by offering consistency, choice and confidence.

Consistency is delivered through the new face of cloud that improves the productivity of all users through ease of use and automation. Choice reduces risk by offering the most open and flexible hybrid cloud solution.

Confidence is accelerated because CloudSystem provides easy access to the cloud, which can be upgraded seamlessly and cost-

effectively – it is an integrated solution that offers value in hours.

The latest version of CloudSystem includes a broad range of new functions that deliver significant business benefits. The service marketplace, designer and admin console improve productivity because they are easy to use and expedite tasks through automation and orchestration.

CloudSystem is designed to be open and flexible to reduce risk and avoid vendor lock-in. It is powered by HP Cloud OS, an enterprise-grade version of OpenStack. CloudSystem supports a variety of hypervisors, and bursting to a variety of public cloud platforms.

CloudSystem is built on HP ConvergedSystem, therefore it can be delivered quickly and installed and deployed in just hours. And the value on a proven and integrated platform can be immediately evaluated.

Consistency is demonstrated by the consumer-inspired experience HP has engineered into CloudSystem. This new face of cloud provides a set of user experiences that blend well with the broader Converged Cloud Architecture. The administrator uses an appliance-based management console, which shares the user experience and management capabilities of HP OneView. This allows for a much more integrated look and feel for administration tasks and also allows next-gen CloudSystem to leverage resources that are managed both within and beyond cloud pools. For consumers and architects, an updated design template allows for more consistent template development and design, and the solution marketplace provides a consistent method to request

cloud services, whether it’s infrastructure-based or more broadly at the application and service provider level.

CloudSystem provides an open and common management platform across multiple environments that is easy to use.

This provides end-to-end efficiencies for users that result in much higher productivity and greater business agility.

Next-gen CloudSystem is architected to be able to function with existing CloudSystem environments, whether the cloud comprises of new infrastructure solutions driven by OpenStack (Cloud OS)-based use cases, existing cloud solutions (such as from CloudSystem Matrix), or public clouds. The common marketplace offering can have visibility to all of these environments, allowing for a centrally-managed solution for all cloud resources.

CloudSystem is a HP Converged System that is workload optimized for the cloud. It is an integrated product that is easy to procure, install and support, because it all comes from one vendor.

CloudSystem is available in two models: Foundation and Enterprise CloudSystem Foundation is powered by HP Cloud OS, a version of OpenStack that has been enhanced by HP to be more robust and enterprise-grade.

Foundation includes OpenStack service offerings such as Nova (compute), Cinder (block storage volumes), Neutron (networking), Keystone (identity), Glance (image) and Horizon (dashboard).

Foundation incorporates a workflow engine to automate administration tasks that is based on HP Operations Orchestration.

This is aligned with HP OneView,

CloudSystem is a HP Converged System that is workload optimized for the cloud.

It is an integrated product that is easy to procure, install and support, because it all comes from one vendor. so administrators can manage cloud resource pools from a common, easy to use interface.

CloudSystem Enterprise offers all the capabilities of CloudSystem Foundation plus provisioning of advanced infrastructure and application services in minutes. It also has the following features: • Enterprise-class lifecycle management for hybrid cloud services • Service Marketplace, making it easy for consumers to request cloud services through Cloud Service Automation • Drag-and-drop designer for rapidly defining new multitier cloud services • Pre-defined service catalog entries for popular applications, with more than 200 HP Cloud Maps • Integrated capacity planning, disaster recovery, and bursting to public clouds through the Matrix Operating Environment The optional Server Automation Virtual Appliance (SAVA) provides the ability to manage the entire lifecycle of servers including provisioning, patch management, software deployment and audit and compliance for up to 3000 servers.

HP understands that customers will evolve to cloud in

different phases. Customers who are just beginning to virtualize are probably not ready for private clouds. They need to first focus on standardization, consolidation, and virtualization.

Gains in these areas lay the groundwork for cloud-based approaches. HP has introduced the new ConvergedSystem for Virtualization to provide customers with a convenient starting point.

Generally, customers who have already virtualized significant parts of their infrastructure are the most ready for private cloud— the next logical step in IT evolution. The most advanced customers are those who can understand the complete vision of cloud and the possibility to broker services across many different delivery models.

However, most customers are not prepared for that today, but they should understand that ultimate vision. The Next Generation of CloudSystem models offer customers even more options.

They can proceed gradually on a step-by-step approach with CloudSystem Foundation or jump forward with CloudSystem Enterprise with Server Automation packages.

Regardless of where you are on your journey, HP offers solutions that meet your needs today while laying the groundwork for future expansion.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

March 2015

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Information is the key to protecting information. That’s why our security solutions are backed by world-class intelligence to help you identify threats in real time and keep your information safe. When you can do it safely, you can do it all. Start doing more at symantec.com/security-intelligence

#GoKnow Copyright Š 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, and the Checkmark Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries.

For more information or to place an order on Symantec, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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For more information or to place an order on Veeam, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

For more information or to place an order on Trend Micro, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com FLO002051 - Value Plus GITEX AD V9.indd 1

2014/09/08 5:24 PM

Vision solutions | opinion

A planned approach Alan Arnold, EVP and Chief Technology Officer, Vision Solutions, says high availability and disaster recovery planning are essential to make all data accessible in moments of crisis.

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cience fiction often points to alternate universes that transcend space and time.

While these themes pique the curiosity of many through Sci-Fi novels and movies, these notions sometimes seem too fantastical to carry much weight in the real world.

Similarly, today’s business data may also seem like a distant illusion or figment of the imagination, stored away in a virtual world where it cannot be seen or touched. Or destroyed.

Until it is.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

March 2015

The ValuePlus Quarterly

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opinion | Vision solutions

As companies who have experienced data loss can attest, the physical world we live in and the virtual world are deeply intertwined—and a crisis in a virtual space can have very real consequences.

Equally so, a physical disaster can wreak tremendous damage on virtual data environments.

In either scenario, companies must face this reality head-on, or risk shattering their illusion of invincibility – once it’s too late.

Eighty-seven percent of IT professionals said in the event of data loss, their companies have no disaster recovery plan or they lack total confidence in what’s in place, according to Vision Solutions’ 2015 State of Resilience Report.

But with knowledge of software-based, byte-level replication, organizations can change the way they perceive high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR).

Software-based replication eliminates anxiety and ensures that every bit of data is protected and retrievable, regardless of the challenge, on any platform, in any combination of physical, virtual or cloud servers.

Seventy percent of companies

still rely on tape backup and offsite storage, even though tape delivers slower recovery times amid greater operational complexity. Tape is also vulnerable to problems very much tied to the physical world— heat, light and dust.

Traditional recovery strategies rely on snapshots to preserve data—but the data is only as good as the latest snapshot. A retail business, for example, may collect thousands of transactions over the course of a day. Hospitals accumulate patient records second by second that are used to make life or death decisions. If a server crashes, it could lose all of the organization’s most recent data.

Forty five percent of companies said they’ve experienced data loss due to disaster, server failure, application failure or human error, the survey reported. The damage was significant—roughly one quarter of those respondents had lost a day or more of data.

In the wake of such a catastrophe, companies lose time, money and trust.

If you want to truly recover your environment, you don’t want to lose any data—it

Real-time replication solutions are now proven in the marketplace, having demonstrated how it makes data protection less complicated.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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The ValuePlus Quarterly March 2015

doesn’t make sense to say, “I have 99 percent of my data, so I’m good.” It’s got to be 100 percent, so companies need to be 100 percent protected. Even one fragment of missing data could lead to a huge financial cost, provoke a lawsuit or, in the case of a hospital, prove dire for a patient.

Organizations that use realtime byte-level replication can simply switch over to an identical environment and pick up where the first one failed. The solution works faster than traditional methods because it doesn’t repetitively capture all the data with each snapshot. It only updates what’s new, building a comprehensive record of every byte, so companies can be up and running quickly with their data intact.

Because of the complexity of data centers today, given the amount of data available from business development and with increasing options for acquiring data, it is imperative to have an HA/DR solution that is flexible enough to run across any platform, operating system or environment—not just from like system, so that your solutions for data protection can grow and evolve as your company does. With companies’ data requirements becoming only more demanding moving forward, solutions need to be implemented in a straightforward way that’s tailored to the company’s operations—large or small.

Being confident that the data is continually protected in

Alan Arnold, EVP and Chief Technology Officer, Vision Solutions

any scenario or within any environment is a necessity for business stability.

Business demands that the solutions coexist with the company’s environment and have total awareness of what’s going on. When they detect a problem, they know where the organization lost its operating system or server and have already captured the most recent information. Recovery can begin the second they move to another environment.

Real-time replication solutions are now proven in the marketplace, having demonstrated how it makes data protection less complicated.

And with the right solution in place, disaster recovery actually becomes quite simple.

Knowing that, you’ll realize that comprehensive HA/DR does not have to be an illusion – it is a business reality well in your grasp.

REIMAGINE THE SERVER AS A BUSINESS ACCELERATOR.

HP ProLiant Gen9 servers powered by Intel® Xeon® processors

Introducing HP ProLiant Gen9—advance your compute capabilities with triple the capacity1 and lower TCO.2 Accelerate service delivery by 66X.3 And push workloads 4X faster.4 Position yourself to drive opportunity, grab market share, and inspire success across your business. Reimagine the server. Think compute.

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. 1Substantiation for triple the capacity: HP 2 Substantiation for lower TCO: 100 DL380 G6 servers consolidated down to 16 DL380 Gen9 enabling 62% TCO savings over 3 years including initial acquisition costs. There is also a potential reduction in monthly 3 OPEX expenditure of over 80%. Includes software support for vSphere and Windows. Also includes a 25% discount on hardware. August 2014. Anonymous customer results. Customer was able to reduce the time to build and deploy infrastructure for 12 call centers from 66 days to 1. Total of 2000 servers were deployed. IDC whitepaper sponsored by HP, Achieving Organizational Transformation with HP Converged Infrastructure Solutions for SDDC, January 2014, IDC #246385. 4SmartCache Performance done with equivalent controller in a controlled environment. HP Smart Storage engineers, Houston, TX, as of 18 May 2014 posted on internal SmartCache wiki page. HP OneView support for HP ProLiant Gen9 rack (DL) and blade (BL) servers will be available with HP OneView 1.20 in Dec. 2014. Customers who purchase HP OneView licenses now will be granted rights to use HP Insight Control software and may transition to HP OneView 1.20 with no additional license or support fees. Customers also have the option to purchase HP Insight Control. © 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

For more information or to place an order on HP, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

Redington Value Events

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2

3

4

1. Oracle-Link Consulting End Customer Event in Dubai, UAE

3. Veeam-EBM Event: Introduction to Veeam Availability Suite v8 in Dubai, UAE

2. HP ESSN Partner Roadshow in Doha, Qatar

4. EMC End Customer Round Table with Partner ACCS in Lagos, Nigeria

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Red Hat | interview

Growing with partners Christopher Saul, Distribution Sales Manager, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Red Hat, explains how the company is enabling partners to help them optimise the current market trends and grow profitably. have an attractive sales incentive running, which puts $500 into the pocket of a partner’s sales rep who closes deals of a certain value for our focused product sets. I also intend to implement a rebate programme for our bigger partners. At Red Hat, we have the freedom to do what is right for the region.

C

an you elaborate on the business focus for 2015?

We want to build on the success of 2014. We are a growing company with a growing set of partners in the region. From a channel point of view, the motto is ‘recruit and retain’. There are several key partners we work very well with and we need to make sure we continue to be successful at what we’re already doing with them.

At the same time, certain countries require some more connected and committed partners, therefore we are actively recruiting.

Could you discuss the EMEA partner programme at Red Hat? Red Hat’s programme stands out in the market because we reward

partners who make the effort to invest with us. We have the regular aspects such as a tiered structure based on the certifications a partner has. Ours levels are Ready, Advanced and Premier.

What makes us different is the money that’s made available directly to the channel and the way the local team can create incentives and programmes that reflect the needs of local partners.

What kind of incentives and rebates can partners earn?

We have used our budgets to subsidise training costs for partners moving from one level to the next, contribute towards consultancy engagements, focused marketing events and even sales incentives for partner sales managers. We currently

How does Red Hat enable and train partners?

Partners have access to excellent online training. I have worked for a few vendors and I must say, Red Hat’s content stands out.

Very practical and very relevant.

Redington play a big role here, using their excellent pre-sales engineer, who used to work for Red Hat, to enable partner teams.

Partners with existing Unix skills make the switch extremely easily, as do partners with engineers who really enjoy getting deep into technology.

The key element, in my experience, is ‘learning by doing’.

I like to see Red Hat sales staff being taken to see customers by their partners. When a partner’s sales team sees one of our guys work their magic and the opportunity that’s out there becomes clear, they’ll learn on the job pretty quickly.

What can partners expect from Red Hat in 2015?

This year, you will see Red Hat investing more in the region and in our partners. We are

committed and our team is growing to reflect that. Our alliances with the major hardware vendors are also going from strength to strength - for a relatively small company in terms of employees, Redington’s channel are going to be hearing a lot of major vendors talking to them about Red Hat. What are the technologies partners should bet on this year?

It won’t be a surprise for anyone to read my answer - ‘cloud’. A lot of vendors are talking about it, we are actually selling it.

We are also seeing huge traction around our Middleware stack. Customers are realising that Red Hat gives them the same quality and breadth of features of the proprietary platforms out there, but in a very cost-effective manner. That typically translates into partners being able to sell a lot more of their own services.

How should partners optimise opportunities in cloud?

Talk to us first – we have a very clear product set that addresses everything customers need. We are also very good at articulating those messages when face to face with the end user. The difficulty, however, can be working out what a customer really does need.

Cloud means different things to different people and the channel needs to make money out of it as well. We can put it all together in a way that benefits everyone.

Anything else you like to add?

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Be proactive and get in touch with us.

Red Hat partners make good margins and, thanks to our subscription model, have very good repeat business. I haven’t met a partner yet who thinks that’s a bad idea, so drop us a line and let’s see what we can do together.

For more information, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

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For more information or to place an order on Red Hat, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

For more information or to place an order on Tripp Lite, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com

SOMETIMES, YOUR NETWORK IS FULL OF

SURPRISES...

Your corporate network offers access to valuable and sensitive information.

Information that must never fall into the wrong hands.

Can you be sure there aren’t any hidden “surprises” threatening your most precious data assets? No stealthy malware, back doors, data leaks or other security vulnerabilities?

Don’t be caught unprepared. Uncover potential risks on your enterprise network.

For more information or to place an order on Check Point, please write to sales.value@redingtongulf.com