60mins Day 4 - AM (2021)

Application Implementation Application Modernization

GITEX 60MINS 2021 PARTNERS

GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK tahawultech.com

Show dates: 17-21 October 2021, Dubai World Trade Centre | Exhibition hours: 10am-5pm

StarLink signs strategic Staying ahead of the game distribution agreement with F5 for Gulf & Levant region Silmi Khanfir, Director of Cloud and XaaS-Middle East & Africa at Mindware, tells Anita Joseph, Editor, Reseller ME, about how the pandemic has been a learning experience and how Mindware has major plans in store for 2022.

The pandemic has been a learning experience, says Silmi Khanfir. “Therefore, it’s a pleasure to be back at GITEX with a stronger portfolio, taking advantage of the lessons that we learnt during the crisis.

We realised that there a lot of solutions that go in the direction of more security and business continuitysolutions that allow customers and business partners to have faster connectivity, continuous

F5 empowers its customers – the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, financial and educational institutions, government entities, and consumer brands – to create, secure, and operate applications that deliver extraordinary digital experiences.

StarLink, the fastest growing “True” Valueadded Distributor (VAD) in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region, has announced an agreement for the distribution of F5 solutions across the Gulf and Levant.

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Flying High

Silmi Khanfir

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Will SD-WAN increase opportunity in the Channel?

Savio Dias, Senior Director - Sales Engineering Avaya International (EMEA & APAC) who was part of the judging panel at the GITEX High Flyer program, tells Anita Joseph, Editor Reseller ME, about how the Simon Pamplin, chief technologist, WAN Edge EMEA at Aruba whole program strengthens the UAE’s reputation as an innovation Silver Peak, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, examines how hub and throws light on the huge talent pool available in the region. channel partners can maximise the growing demand for SD-WAN. The High Flyers Program is testament to the immense talent and creativity of young minds in the region. According to Savio: “The High Flyers is a great platform. In this process of digital transformation, talent is going to become the greatest hurdle to overcome and the high flyer program is proof that talent exists in abundance.

The program started 6 Savio Dias

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Security powered by data Anita Joseph, Editor, Security Middle East, caught up with Firas Ghanem, Regional Director, Middle East & Pakistan at ThreatQuotient, to learn more about ThreatQ, its open and extensible tool that empowers organisations to accelerate detection and response.

Over the past year, the pandemic has been a catalyst for accelerated digital transformation and companies are now working hard to adapt and maintain the pace they set themselves. Alongside several other challenges, the new ‘work from anywhere’ mandate has been a prevailing shift that businesses have had to embrace. Remote working is the new norm, and the

Redefining the business landscape Martin Uchytil, Director-Dell Financial Services, MERAT, tells Anita Joseph how the new Apex Flex on Demand technology is helping to support today’s fast paced business landscape.

ThreatQuotient, a leading security operations platform innovator, is showcasing ThreatQ, its advanced Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), at GITEX Technology Week. With ThreatQ, ThreatQuotient will be demonstrating a range of solutions that support data-driven approaches such as Extended Detected and Response (XDR) and Security Firas Ghanem

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Simon Pamplin

What is Dell Technologies announcing around Apex today?

We have recently announced the launching in the UAE, Saudi and Qatar, Apex Flex on Demand solution which is part of the overall Apex solutions portfolio that is being rolled out across the globe. With APEX Flex on Demand, customers can Martin Uchytil

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orchestration. This is in line with our strategy to accelerate our customers’ digitisation journey by empowering them with best-of-breed solutions and services through our channel network. We have earned our trustedadvisory role through our expert sales and technical expertise, which is supported by a solid

services arm, training academy and best-in-class operational excellence.”

Nasser El Abdouli, Director of Channel Sales for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa at F5, said: “Our strategic partnership with StarLink will be very beneficial for business and organisations across the Gulf and Levant region. More than ever, F5 can secure and deliver extraordinary digital experiences by simplifying traditional application delivery, enabling modern app delivery at scale, securing every application wherever deployed, and using data to unlock the value of insights and automation.”

Meet StarLink and F5 teams at GITEX 2021.

To book a meeting: https://www. starlinkme.net/gitex2021

their businesses to be sustainable for the future and to move away from traditional solutions and become more flexible and agile. This is what endusers want and business partners must follow the trend and help them with transformation”, Khanfir says.

That’s not all: Mindware has major plans in store for 2022.

“There are four new aspects that we are announcing at GITEX and which we intend to focus on in 2022: we have signed on a couple of new vendors, new hybrid cloud providers and also we have enriched our marketplace with new ISVs that are part of our cloud ecosystem and for which we are announcing an attractive program, including enablement, marketing and incentives to support them in their cloud

transformation journey leveraging Microsoft Azure.

We are also announcing a new refreshed offering of professional services from consultancy, to implementation to migration to optimisation of cloud environments-this is what we are adding to our portfolio of services.

We are announcing as well, a new support centre to help our business partners address issues that their end-users have, so that they can provide an end-toend support structure. The next important things is our geo expansion in Africa.

This year, we merged three distributors from the MIDIS group into our Mindware business since we have a larger region to cover, additional countries and we will be physically present in four countries in Africa, so that’s going to be one of our key focus areas”, he adds.

ThreatQuotient accelerates and simplifies investigations and collaboration across teams for proactive detection, analysis, and response to threats and data.

ThreatQuotient recently released its report titled State of Cyber Security Automation Adoption in 2021, a new research focused on understanding the importance, challenges and trends facing businesses when it comes to automating their IT security systems. Based on survey results from 250 senior cybersecurity professionals at UK companies employing 2,000+ people from a

range of industries, the report determined 98% intend to automate more in the next 12 months, but 41% have a lack of trust in automation’s outcomes.

The report surveyed five key vertical markets: central government, defense, critical national infrastructure - energy and utilities, retail and financial services. The research examines what IT security use cases or processes organisations have already automated and what they are planning to automate, as well as budgets, skills, resources, issues around trust, and assesses the overall outlook for IT security automation.

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StarLink...

We are extremely pleased to partner with F5, a market leader in multiple domains – app security, traffic management, cloud security and optimisation, as well as automation and orchestration. This is in line with our strategy to accelerate our customers’ digitisation journey by empowering them with best-of-breed solutions and services through our channel network.”

A global leader in multicloud application security and delivery, F5 empowers its customers – the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, financial and educational institutions, government entities, and consumer brands – to

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Mindware...

accessibility and acceptable performance because they are working remotely. This hybrid workplace concept forced us to focus on other solutions and emerge stronger this year”.

According to him, the technologies that will drive growth next year will focus on how to avoid sudden, unexpected situations in future. They will be centred around business continuity and sustainability-how businesses can make sure that their applications are up and running even during emergencies and unexpected crisis situations-how can businesses provide their teams with a seamless online working environment that allows them to collaborate, meet and interact virtually 4 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

ThreatQuotient...

Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms.

ThreatQ is an open and extensible tool that empowers organisations to automate the intelligence lifecycle, quickly understand threats, make informed decisions, and accelerate detection and response.

It supports both standard and custom integrations, with feeds and security systems. ThreatQ also enables data-driven Extended Detection & Response (XDR). Its adaptive data engine imports and aggregates

create, secure, and operate applications that deliver extraordinary digital experiences.

Fuelled by automation and AI-driven insights, these applications naturally adapt based on their changing environment so

companies can focus on their core business, boost speed to market, improve operations, and build trust with their customers. By enabling these adaptive applications, F5 – with its NGINX, Shape Security, and Volterra technologies

– offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for every digital organisation in the world.

Mahmoud Nimer, president, StarLink, said: “We are extremely pleased to partner with F5, a market leader in multiple domains – app security, traffic management, cloud security and optimisation, as well as automation and

and access business applications from anywhere, how can they help business partners and clients move faster or accelerate their cloud/ digital transformation.

“These are not new topics, but the pandemic brought them to the foreground and accelerated conversations around them”, Khanfir says. “So, it’s clear that there is a necessity to digitalise faster and move

a lot faster to the cloud.

The pandemic was a kind of proof-of-concept for many customers that, for example, migrating applications to the cloud, works. Pre-pandemic, a lot of customers were reluctant about the idea of the cloud and they were thinking in a very traditional manner. Now, they are seeing several customers implementing digital transformation successfully and realising that clients and end-users are looking for cloud-based solutions, so they are more confident and encouraged to do the same”.

He also points out that pandemics and crisis situations like these very often come with deep learnings. “A lot of vendors at this point need our help as distributor, to make the channel aware of the need to move from the costly

and inflexible traditional models to the subscription and consumption-based business. So, this is what we see as a huge trend.

Another relevant trend is that everything you used to have in your data centre, can now be provided as a service. So we don’t need it permanently and locally, we can outsource it or buy it as a service and pay only what we need and use. This is what we call ‘Everything-as-a-Service’all these services allow customers and partners to overcome sudden, unforeseen situations like the pandemic”.

So, how are partners coping post the pandemic?

“We learnt from the pandemic how to sustain our business and we are sharing these best practices with our partners and advising them about how to transform

external and internal data, curates and analyses it for decision making and action, and exports a prioritised data flow across the infrastructure.

Moreover, ThreatQ’s SOAR harmonises disparate systems to orchestrate and automate response.

“At GITEX 2021, we plan to increase the visibility of our ThreatQ platform,” said Firas Ghanem, Regional Director, Middle East & Pakistan at ThreatQuotient. “We hope to engage with CISOs and CTI heads from across the region, as well as international visitors, to explain how ThreatQuotient can assist them in enhancing their

security operations and CTI practice. GITEX is an important platform for ThreatQuotient; as the Middle East’s largest, most anticipated, and influential exhibitions, there is an excellent opportunity to connect with industry professionals, be it with our partners, existing or potential customers, or individual experts.”

ThreatQuotient combines human intelligence and automation in a threatcentric platform by integrating an organisation’s existing processes and technologies into a single security architecture.

With customisable

Here in the Middle East, people are adopting new trends faster than they did 10 years ago”.

We hope to engage with CISOs and CTI heads from across the region, as well as international visitors, to explain how ThreatQuotient can assist them in enhancing their security operations and CTI practice”. workflows, customerdefined configurations and integrations,

GovTech Founder, CPIMEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015), Publishing Director Natasha Pendleton, Group Sales Director Kausar Syed, Senior Sales Manager Sabita Miranda, Editors Mark Forker, Anita Joseph, Daniel Shepherd, Senior Designer Analou Balbero, Web Developer Adarsh Snehajan, Photographer Eduardo Buenagua

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Think outside the ‘box’ While the pandemic has brought cloud into the focus of top executives, there is still more to do before cloud is mainstream for business heads, according to Ranjith Kaippada, Managing Director at Cloud Box Technologies.

Ranjith Kaippada

The pandemic has become the most disruptive single factor of this millennium. But the pandemic also brought into the spotlight, the survival benefit played by cloud platforms and services. In order for organisations to work through remote and distributed teams, the only way forward is to use cloud-based collaboration and communication.

Consultants at global research company Gartner, refer to cloud as the bright spot coming out of the pandemic.

But they also point out that the usage of cloud, has not yet reached its strategic potential.

The role of the CIO and specialised cloud partners are critical to help scale the usage of cloud through business generating innovation opportunities for the organisation.

Here are some initiatives that CIOs can lead, with the guidance of specialised cloud partners, to help generate scale and innovation with the opportunity to launch new business models.

Make cloud a strategic benefit and not cost alternative The first misconception to be cleared up inside the organisation is that cloud is cheaper. For the

senior management, the total costs associated with any cloud platform and the risks involved are paramount. According to Gartner, the current outlook of global and regional CEOs is to leverage technology to gain a competitive edge in the market place and to avoid being disrupted by being a laggard in technology adoption.

Adopting and staying up to date with cloud computing technologies, allows CIOs working alongside specialised cloud partners, to provide service platforms for their organisation to drive innovation. Cloud enabled service platforms allow front office, back office, middle office to be agile and deliver high value customer engagements and customer experiences.

In order to deliver this, adopting and implementing cloud needs to be a strategic initiative mapped to business objectives and transforming business processes.

Hence investment can be mapped to business returns and gains. Easy

access to data by all business units across geographies, networks and platforms is one of the early benefits of adopting cloud platforms.

Accelerating roll out of cloud across the organisation The benefit of cloud platforms come when there is scale out adoption. Cloud helps to reduce the cost of digital operations wherever there is scale of adoption, and this soon leads to adopting additional platforms of cloud or multi-cloud adoption.

Gartner points out that in its 2020 Cloud Behavior Study, 76% of end users were using more than one cloud provider.

A multi-cloud strategy allows business to use the best platforms suitable for their requirements and their practices. But it also adds to complexity for CIOs and may require partnering with specialised cloud service partners.

While adding additional cloud platforms to an organisation’s technology stack helps to build a cloud centre of excellence, CIOs need to work closely with their business partners to buyin their adoption and align closely with their current and future objectives.

Lack of alignment with business will create lack of end user adoption,

Looking ahead

Halfway thru 2021, what are some of the key learnings?

2020 provided the world with new dimensions of work and a different level of expectation about B2B relationships. At DME Prolink, our roadmap has been to address a larger vertical of ethernet systems and our conviction in the value what we sell, and we have been able to position ourselves on multiple projects across different verticals. We opened a distribution

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channel that helps us reach out to more customers across the region. Our extensive solutions consist, among others, of a comprehensive 25year warranty that offers enhanced customer acceptance across the region.

What is your outlook for the next two years?

How are you planning to strengthen your channel partnership to tackle challenges?

In 2020, we invested our

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Controlling and directing innovation through tools A key benefit of cloud is the ability to be agile and work in real time.

This helps business to move to the next level of performance and customer experience.

A multi-cloud strategy allows business to use the best platforms suitable for their requirements and their practices.”

Automating processes, data training, and anticipating market behavior, are the next logical areas of innovation for CIOs while working closely with business.

CIOs can work with specialised partners to

forward to offering our support in KSA and Africa as well.

Sasrik Vallath, division manager, DME Prolink, tells Anita Joseph that the company plans to focus on enhancing customer experience and identifying new opportunities, going forward.

Sasrik Vallath

leading to low scales of operation, high costs and failure to transform the business. Increasing cloud complexity builds security risks and this can be outsourced to specialised cloud partners.

time in identifying new horizons of passive infrastructure selling space across continuously changing market dynamics. Our efforts focused on recognizing gaps that will be created by the eviction/acquisition of several companies.

Today, business meetings have transformed to rooms demanding higher bandwidth usage. The new Wi-Fi 6 technology deploys an extended usage of physical infrastructure. Passive Optical Networks that bring 40G to the desk is the new normal. New technologies not only address the demand for higher bandwidth, but also help to significantly optimise CAPEX and OPEX. From the introduction of Control and AV Cables to the existing product line that included ethernet copper cables/ connectivity, fibre cables/ connectivity and the

Cabinet range, we offer our channel partners an unparalleled extensive one-stop-shop solution.

With the support of our partners in Oman, Bahrain and Qatar, we have conveyed and provided support to some extremely significant projects.

As the next step of our expansion, we look

Not only do we manufacture high-end products, but we also ensure that end-users are offered the fullest performance capacity throughout the entire lifetime of the product.”

How do you think you can make a difference going forward?

Over the years, we have focused on developing a strong support team to address concerns, especially for end-users. Not only do we manufacture highend products, but we also ensure that endusers are offered the fullest performance capacity throughout the entire lifetime of the product. We have also enhanced our post sale audit team so that they can be deployed on-site during installation and provide reports to end-users about compliance with industry best practices. We help design large scale IT infrastructure projects optimising cost, enhancing scalability and assuring a full-fledged robust system. Our training and enablement facility has won high praise and appreciation from consultants, end-users and partners.

With digital transformation

bring in infrastructure automation tools, multicloud and hybrid cloud orchestration, selfservice and on-demand environment creation, resource provisioning and configuration management, DevOps, amongst others.

With its digital platform capabilities, cloud offers the opportunity to develop new revenue streams, that were not feasible previously. Hence it is imperative for CIOs to facilitate the building of new business frameworks leveraging newly adopted cloud platforms across the organisation.

Building a cloud centre of excellence allow success stories to be repeated across various businesses and various operations of the organisation. A critical part of gaining scale in cloud adoption is to minimise the challenges of migration, by repeating success stories and planning for adoption and migration obstacles.

Traditional IT solutions are unable to meet the challenges of the post pandemic recovery phase including remote teams and business continuity in a cost-effective manner.

Cloud on the other hand does, and CIOs with the help of specialised channel partners can take organisations and its business to the next level of excellence.

gathering momentum, what are some of the challenges your company is facing, if at all, in this journey and how are you addressing it?

Seamless integration and scalability play a significant role in the acceptance of the technological advancement adapted by the company, mainly due to changes in work-life and health, extensive usage of virtual communication and innovative ideas of resource monitoring and performance enhancement. We support our customers with an open platform on digitisation initiatives, with an extensive range of copper, fibre, cabinets with management and monitoring solutions, offering high-end reliable connectivity to the new components of their digital strategy.

By offering robust high bandwidth infrastructure, we facilitate unified transformation across business models and operational processes, with a significant positive impact on customer experience. www.tahawultech.com

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HPE Aruba.. net has widened in terms of business locations; instead of being fixed, viable ‘office’ settings could now be coffee shops, homes, shared spaces, and pop-up venues. This has altered the concept of a branch office; while the apps used are the same, the way they are accessed and secured is different, which is putting increased pressure on organisations to transform their WAN and security architectures.

Many organisations have tried to manage this shift by stretching their legacy router and firewall-centric infrastructure that simply can’t sustain the pace and aren’t flexible enough for modern applications primarily hosted in the cloud. As a result, there is a growing demand for SD-WAN, which relies on a cloud-first architecture. But how can channel partners maximise SD-WAN as a growth opportunity? And what should they look out for when it comes to identifying potential customers?

A New Conversation One of the key benefits of SD-WAN is that it aligns the network to the desired

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Avaya...

months ago and GITEX was the culmination of it.

Again, it is the culmination of one small step but the beginning of a whole new step”, he said.

GITEX High Flyer saw 500 of the region’s most promising students from 15 top academic institutions from all over- Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Ras Al Khaimah etcapply to secure one of a hundred internships at leading public and private sector organisations, including Avaya. The selection process tested the students’ technical, problem-solving and presentation skills in areas such as education, sustainability, healthcare, mobility and evaluated their teamwork, communication skills and creativity.

“At Avaya, we are focused on nurturing talent and our support of the GITEX High Flyer is a great example of this”, Savio said. He added that Avaya’s role in the program as a strategic

At Avaya, we are focused on nurturing talent and our support of the GITEX High Flyer is a great example of this”. www.tahawultech.com

outcomes of the business.

The network is built around the needs of the business and the software creates an agile virtual network enabling acceleration and innovation that can’t be matched by traditional networks. With SDWAN automation and intelligence, the network becomes self-driving, simplifying processes and driving efficiencies that ensure business leaders can get on with running their companies instead of worrying about the accessibility and security of their business applications.

This shift in approach presents a huge opportunity for channel partners – particularly those who have sold traditional networking.

Instead of talking to IT departments about new network ‘products’, resellers can now speak to business leaders about WAN and security transformation that will enable them to deliver on broader company goals and objectives, and gain time to market advantages.

This means partners can target a new audience with a fundamentally new approach to unifying network and security

architectures, instead focusing on addressing strategic business challenges for customers rather than simply reselling networking gear.

An entry to cloud Businesses across every sector are considering some form of digital transformation, but this is often accompanied by concerns around complexity and disruption.

SD-WAN eradicates those concerns – with the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform, for example, it’s now possible to extend the network into AWS, Azure, Google or Oracle with a few mouse clicks, meaning businesses don’t need to worry about embracing a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy. This level of simplicity makes SD-WAN an attractive proposition for businesses considering cloud migration and gives partners another opportunity to have a strategic business discussion with customers.

Furthermore, as partners continue supporting customers in their adoption and evolution of WAN and security transformation, they will have the ability

Today’s new technologies have also empowered modern video cameras to see better in any light and in high resolution. Hikvision’s security cameras with their signature ColorVu technology are great examples of this”. to establish profitable SDWAN business practices that will fuel their own growth and profitability in a sustainable manner.

To ensure resellers succeed throughout their SD-Wan journey, they should partner with a trusted provider that offers ongoing training and certification.

SD-WAN-ready Businesses Of course, cloud transformation is a broad brush to target companies with but there are ways to narrow the focus.

Businesses most ripe for SD-WAN will be those struggling to sustain high quality of experience for end users or those with latency issues. Partners should listen for customers who are currently unable to deliver consistent application performance, or who are complaining

about application availability, which has an inevitable impact on productivity and trade.

These are all signals that SD-WAN would provide a viable solution.

It’s also a good time for partners to re-engage with businesses that put major projects on hold due to COVID. Though many initiatives were accelerated during the pandemic, enabling SD-WAN to deliver almost instant agility and speed to help businesses sustain and improve operations, a large number were postponed or cancelled entirely. In those cases, companies now find themselves trailing behind their digitally savvy peers and losing competitive advantage.

Partners should encourage conversations with customers to identify the need for increased

efficiency, particularly for those still holding back on transformation projects.

Furthermore, as businesses continue their shift to the cloud, many are struggling with how to segment and secure cloud-destined application traffic. SD-WAN presents an opportunity to discuss both WAN and security transformation and how to help businesses to deliver edge to cloud network security. Addressing this issue also has significant business ramifications.

The Bright Side The good thing about SD-WAN is that it’s sector agnostic, so resellers have a vast target market and addressable market to serve. SD-WAN is driven by business needs and will benefit any geographically distributed business, which casts the net wide in a post-pandemic world.

As organisations continue their journey down the road of digital transformation, the need for agility and speed at the Edge will only accelerate. With SD-WAN ripe for picking, partners should be able to maximise market opportunity and ensure their customers can achieve business goals in a digital-first world.

investment in the future of not only Avaya, but the regional technology industry as a whole. “The programme consolidates the UAE’s position as a knowledge and innovation hub, and the quality and talent of the young minds here is phenomenal”, he pointed out.

The judging criteria consisted of parameters like the idea, the presentation, the feasibility of the idea and how easy it is, to execute the idea. We had about four or five key criteria and it also depended on how well they answered the judges’ questions.

Savio said the whole experience was exciting and eye-opening. “It was diverse, it was multicultural and the ideas came from everywhere.

The High Flyers was an absolutely amazing program and it just shows how creative and versatile the youth of today are.”

GITEX High Flyer is the latest initiative supported by Avaya to develop technology talent around the world. Avaya Academy, launched over three years ago, helps provide a direct progression for new graduates and IT industry newcomers to begin their technology careers.

With many current Avaya employees and experts having graduated from the Academy, it has been proven to enhance technical skills and address changing customer demands. @tahawultech

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Securing the connected landscape Sakkeer Hussain, director - Sales & Marketing, D-Link Middle East & Africa, on how the demand for secure and reliable managed WiFi solutions is now stronger than ever, with organisations focusing on security at the core of their business.

Sakkeer Hussain

With remote working/ cloud computing becoming increasingly popular, the security of devices is top priority for both organisations and employees now. How does D-Link ensure the security of its remote and managed Wi-fi devices?

Hybrid or remote work is here to stay. With this in mind, it is now more important than ever for organisations to provide their employees with robust, reliable and secure network connectivity.

D-Link’s wireless and cloud-managed devices are designed with security in mind. Our Nuclias Cloud Access Points are equipped with the latest 128-bit Personal and 192bit enterprise encryption,

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Dell...

acquire the technology you need to support their changing business, with payments that scale to match their actual usage.

Today’s fast-moving business environment drives the need for immediate technology solution availability. Many customers buy excess capacity upfront and pay for technology they don’t use, which consumes additional budget and creates the risk that other critical projects will not be funded. Flex on Demand allows customers the elastic capacity to pay for technology as they use it, and the payment adjusts to match their actual usage. Apex Flex on Demand is open for all of Dell Technologies infrastructure stack.

Customers really have a full choice of whatever product in whatever configuration they would like to use.

Why is Apex such a big focus for Dell Technologies?

Customer needs are changing and have been changing for a while now.

Digital transformation has been happening even before the pandemic and

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which protects customers’ business and its data from malicious motives. It gives network administrators better control and visibility over their wireless access points, giving them peace of mind as they enable their respective organisations to achieve increased productivity and business resilience.

At D-Link, we are continuously innovating to make sure that our products and services are designed with security at the core. In addition, we constantly working with our technology and channel partners to ensure that our customers in the region are well-equipped and adept to effectively leverage our solutions to achieve their secure connectivity needs.

all the businesses have started to seriously think about where the future is going and how we can thrive. As they do this, they start thinking of what business outcomes they can deliver to their customers and all of a sudden they started to feel the pressure of delivering simplified and more agile IT solutions, so that they can focus on the business outcomes rather than wonder how to spend time and focus on operating IT infrastructure. So the customers are looking to Dell Technologies as the leading IT solutions provider in the world.

We’re the only organisation that has an end-to-end solutions portfolio to deliver as a service, flexible consumption solutions that can enable them to tackle their future needs.

For us, this just strengthens the belief that we’re on the right journey because for more than a decade, we’ve been working on flexible consumption solutions as a service and delivering them to the customers.

Apex is an evolution of our efforts at what we’ve been designing for over a decade now, because we’ve been listening to customers, we’ve been

@tahawultech

What are some of the top security trends in this space (remote/hybrid work) at the moment?

What is it that customers insist on the most?

As customers embrace remote and hybrid work models for their businesses, security is increasingly being prioritised. Adversaries exploit the same advanced technologies that businesses use and take advantage of any vulnerabilities. With hybrid work models, there is an immediate need to secure the collaboration tools that are used for business. Companies must also secure their data, assets and applications as they embrace multicloud environments.

Also, companies have to establish stronger access control solutions since remote workers need to be able to access corporate data from where ever they are. Data security is another important area where organisations have to increase their focus.

With long-term hybrid work plans in place, who and how corporate data is used is of utmost significance.

The most important element that customers are emphasising on are having seamless networking and connectivity solutions. All

looking at the market and at what is happening in the industry. We, therefore, started to innovate further on the solutions that we already had and expand the portfolio. Which is mainly Apex, because we believe that it fully represents where we want to get to.

the technologies that are adopted in hybrid models will not work well without strong, fast and secure WiFi connections.

What are some of the security challenges faced while implementing a smooth and seamless remote working process? How do you address these challenges?

One of the primary challenges is the expanded attack surface. With employees working from home, they are no longer covered by the tools and monitoring on company’s corporate network. This means that customers’ security teams are under extra pressure to employ

Addressing today’s security challenges comes down to establishing clear security policies and ensuring employees are aware of the consequences.”

we’re trying to deliver the solutions that allow customers to focus on the business and allow them to let us manage, define, design and deploy for them so that they can refocus

safeguards on networks that employees use every day. This requires businesses to rethink their security strategies to account for many more potential vectors for attacks.

Another big challenge is around data security.

Data is now no longer confined to the walls of a physical office. With remote working, employees use their own personal devices and often access public WiFi networks.

This needs to be seriously addressed by customers by enhancing user awareness and sharing best practices.

Weak passwords that are not regularly updated is yet another issue.

Companies need to encourage employees to have strong security hygiene, ensuring that they employ the necessary preventive measures against cyber-attacks including adopting a secure home Wi-Fi connectivity as well as leveraging strong passwords for their devices.

Also, while implementing hybrid work models, backup and recovery systems are not thought of.

If an employee’s personal device gets compromised and it happens to be the same device he uses for work, there are high chances that company data will be lost without any backups.

Organisations must also invest in robust data security solutions and purchase products and

solutions that have security deeply integrated into them.

Addressing today’s security challenges comes down to establishing clear security policies and ensuring employees are aware of the consequences.

Now more than ever, it is vital for organisations to understand that security is everyone’s responsibility.

their energies and budgets on critical issues that allow them to succeed. At the moment, businesses are really looking for ways to drive efficiencies, while spending less resources

to do so. That’s what we listen to, we’re working very hard to innovate, enable and bring more and more solutions that can help customers thrive in the multicloud world.

What is your forecast for the remote device/ managed Wi-fi security market in 2022?

What became pertinent over the last few months is that the future of work is hybrid. With organizations across multiple industries revealing plans to continue operating in hybrid models, insecure devices accessing corporate WiFi will pose a significant threat. We can expect cybercriminals to continue to take advantage of this moving forward. A study by Cybersecurity Ventures forecasts that global cybercrime costs will reach $10.5 trillion by 2025. This means that organisations need to ensure that they put security at the core of every aspect of their business spanning from endpoints to the network.

This will further drive the demand for secure and reliable managed WiFi solutions. With tools such as the Nuclias Connect and Nuclias Cloud, businesses can benefit from not only seamless network access and unlimited scalability but also advanced security.

What are your views on the growth of the as-aservice consumption model?

At the moment, as customer needs change, the future needs are less predictable by businesses, so they’re thinking about how can we have what we need available to us without having to go through the typically lengthy procurement processes, and how we can we avoid over provisioning and under provisioning resources which has always been the problem and nowadays it is even more so. Recent studies predict that by 2024, over 50% of data centre resources will be consumed on an “as-aservice” basis. And more so, moving those resources to the Edge from the data centre is becoming much more difficult for the customers to predict, plan, budget and manage.

So, from our perspective, www.tahawultech.com

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EXPLORE SOLUTIONS

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Sustainable digital transformation The twin sustainability goals of power diversification and efficiency require strengthening capacity and minimising loses. This is something that can be enhanced by digital transformation says Dr Tariq Aslam, Head of MEA, AVEVA.

Dr Tariq Aslam

Sustainability objectives are high on power companies’ agendas as they look to ensure energy security, hit ‘green’ targets and meet customer demand, all while protecting and potentially improving their financial outcomes.

With these goals in mind, power firms around the world are undertaking a wide variety of sustainabilityfocused projects, from expanding their renewable energy capacity through to upgrading existing infrastructure.

Power companies realise the need to diversify their sources and improve efficiencies in order to boost energy security, become more sustainable and stay competitive.

Today’s forward-thinking industry leaders are therefore already investing heavily in digitalisation; digital transformation is expected to continue growing in the coming years

as organisations come to understand that it’s more than a slogan.

In truth, it’s something they need to foster in order to ensure compliance with the growing number of local, regional, national and international regulations.

Challenges behind digital transformation: But digital transformation isn’t without its own challenges. New tools, technologies and work processes first need to be put in place, and then accepted and adopted by a diverse workforce likely to include employees that aren’t digital natives.

To ensure a smooth transition, digitalisation needs to be embraced from the top down. Leaders must cultivate a business-wide openness to change and develop an organisational mindset centered around creating and driving value.

Without bringing together their people,

work processes, strategy and technology, digital transformation efforts are likely to fail. This is because digitisation provides possibilities - but needs to be supported by a holistic combination of all aspects of the business, and most importantly the buy-in of employees, in order to succeed.

Although technology is key, digital transformation should not be viewed as a technology project.

Instead, it should be seen as a work transformation program, focused on the wider business rather than the IT department.

With this mindset, you’re most likely to succeed and see a wide range of benefits from reduced costs and a rise in productivity, through to improvements in safety, reliability and efficiency as staff are empowered with not only the right enabling technologies to transform how they work, but also the right company culture and training.

The power industry’s need to find efficiencies: The need to find efficiencies within the power sector is clear. In the Middle East alone, it’s been reported that generating capacity needs to increase by 40% in order to meet 2030’s expected electricity demand.

In the European Union (EU), there’s still a lot of work to be done in order to hit the European Commission’s (EC) target

A new approach to security Binson Xu, president MENA region at Hikvision, tells Security ME how the company’s ‘Secure-by-design’ philosophy ensures that security is built into every stage of its product production process- right from the idea-to final production and delivery.

Digital transformation empowers the power sector to engineer smarter, operate better and drive sustainable efficiency.” of 53% of Europe’s power needs being met by renewable and nuclear.

Digitalisation is essentially replacing manual processes with digital processes, or further upgrading a digital solution with a more advanced technology and is playing a key role in helping power companies to meet these and other challenges.

It does this by providing a 3600 view of plant performance through the use of digital twins – realtime digital representations of physical assets – and automated asset performance management (APM) solutions.

These use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to provide information on how assets are running and predict future behavior. This can be applied to advanced diagnostics, enabling workers to detect potential faults before they occur,

us. During the pandemic, we changed all of our sales and marketing services and facilities from offline to online/offline, to ensure the best possible response time and efficient support for our customers.

doing very well right now.

Binson Xu

How would you describe the video security market in the region, especially postpandemic?

At the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for video security equipment decreased significantly for some time. However, as the world and the region recovered, the market

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returned to growth with an overall demand higher than pre-COVID times. People began to care even more about their personal safety and in their communities.

There was also an upsurge in demand from online businesses for remote monitoring solutions and services. So, in short, the video security business is

@tahawultech

What has Hikvision’s strategy been, for growth and diversification in the market?

We normally divide the business into channel business and project business. As far as the channel business is concerned, we always keep improving our channel coverage to make sure that all our customers can get easy access to our products and services. This is a key element of our strategy.

For the project business, our main objective is to provide solutions to our customers across different verticals, to make sure they can really meet their business requirements and expectations. This is also a key strategic focus area for

How does Hikvision ensure the security of its products?

First of all, Hikvision has implemented ‘Secureby-design’, which is a cybersecurity philosophy or approach that aims to bake security into every stage of a product’s production process. It begins at the conceptual phase when a video camera or other product is still on the drawing board, and it extends through development and testing, right through to final production and delivery.

Hikvision has its own cyber labs to make sure all of our hardware and software are certified and quality-checked and adhere to the most rigorous international certification standards. We follow all standard protocols and

or opportunities to further optimise efficiencies.

The insights provided can help reduce operational and maintenance costs by approximately 20%, dramatically reduce fuel costs, significantly improve asset safety, efficiency and reliably, and drive productivity, all by providing fast and accurate data about where and how power is being generated, transmitted and distributed.

Changing the way we work: With technologies such as AI and ML, digital transformation improves work process efficiencies and accuracy, and minimises waste by automating calculations and the use of data.

Amongst other things, this enables businesses to optimise their workforces by freeing up experts from manual tasks to focus on more intensive, businesscritical projects.

Just take a look at the benefits ENEL, an international producer and distributer of electricity and gas, gained from its digital transformation.

Having adopted APM to drive the organisation’s autonomous plant vision, it was able to remotely monitor its 1,275 renewable assets. This was particularly beneficial when the pandemic hit in 2020, as it enabled staff to pivot overnight to working from home, ensuring the resiliency and continued sustainable delivery of the company’s critical services.

Since implementation, ENEL’s APM solution has detected more than 220 events early, which

APIs and upgrade our firmware and software regularly to make sure we can improve and enhance our products as per market requirements. This is basically what we do, to make sure our products are safe and secure for use.

Hikvision has its own cyber labs to make sure all of our hardware and software are certified and qualitychecked and adhere to the most rigorous international certification standards.”

prevented failures from occurring, and optimised performance across 23GW of power. “Digitalisation has truly enabled us to maximise returns,” says ENEL’s Digital Transformation Director Matteo Cantu.

Benefits of digitalisation in the power sector: Another example comes from US-based Duke Energy, which introduced APM software to centrally monitor its power generation assets. Using strategically placed sensors to send data to AVEVA predictive analytics AIinfused software, Duke can detect equipment failure before it happens – driving better performance and improving uptime.

The company has saved US$50m through reduced failures, including a saving of $30m from a single early catch event.

There remain many challenges for the power industry, but diversification, new technologies and business models continue to point to a positive, more sustainable future. Digital transformation empowers the power sector to engineer smarter, operate better and drive sustainable efficiency, so make the most of the latest technologies available to you.

Technology providers are here to offer guidance, and have the tools to help you along your journey to sustainability and operational excellence.

From design and build to operation and maintenance, there’s a solution to meet your organisation’s bespoke needs and a partner keen to show you the way.

What is Hikvision’s plan for the regional market in the coming years?

Again, for the region, we have divided our business by channels and projects.

In the channel, we have already achieved good coverage to support our customers effectively, and now we would like to provide a one-stop-shop solution for all partners, so that they can benefit from access to a wider range of products from Hikvision. For the project business, we can see that the trends shaping the market right now are digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that the demand for cloud and IoT are also ramping up. Our goal is to provide vertical solutions matching those opportunities and the fundamental needs of our end-users to protect people and assets, while also improving operational efficiency to help make their businesses more profitable. So that’s going to be our strategy and focus for the region. www.tahawultech.com

Russia has a powerful cybersecurity industry.

We are No.1 in strong authentication, electronic signature and software protection domains.

Create a secure cryptographic environment at the state level for the exchange of essential information.

1 Strong authentication and electronic signature

2 Software monetization and protect against reverse-engineering

3 Consulting and training in cybersecurity

Be sure you are protected Technologies for a secure future aktiv-company.com mpany.com

uardant.com global.guardant.com

www.tahawultech.com

@tahawultech

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advance the IT leader’s march towards a complete digital takeover.

How low can you go Rahul Bhageeradhan, Global Director – Digital Architecture at Kissflow has offered his take on the lucrative low-code market and documented 4 key clear metrics that businesses can use to measure the ROI of low-code. development by at least 50%, and 29% of companies have seen a 2X or more jump in delivery time.

Rahul Bhageeradhan

The worldwide Low-code market is projected to total $13.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 22.6% from 2020. With massively accelerated application development lifecycles, this comes as little surprise. However, given the pressure businesses are under to justify every investment, CIOs must look to answer whether there are specific ways to measure if Low-code platforms are living up to their cost.

So how can CIOs and IT leaders do so? Here are four options that you are probably already tracking that can help you show whether or not you are getting your money’s worth from a low-code platform.

ROI METRIC #1: REDUCED IT BACKLOG As the demand for more custom applications mounts, most IT teams don’t have an effective way to handle it. One area where a Lowcode platform should have a significant effect is on reducing the number of IT application requests and/or allowing developers to work through them faster.

A Low-code platform geared toward citizen developers lets you offload the responsibility for creation of these applications from the IT team onto the business leaders themselves. Recent reports indicate that 71% of organisations that leverage citizen development have sped up application

How to Measure Track the number of requests you currently have for custom applications.

Invite business leaders to submit their wish list for new tools. Make an assessment of how long it would take your IT team to clear off all the requests without a Lowcode platform.

Compare the complete list with the capabilities of the Low-code platform.

Which apps could be made by the requester, and which ones are complex enough that they require IT to be involved? How quickly could the request queue be reduced?

ROI METRIC #2: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROGRESS Every CIO’s biggest priority is digital transformation.

After the main systems of an organization are digitised, IT teams are often faced with a never-ending list of processes and systems that need to be brought into the digital fold. The task is overwhelming, and most solutions don’t scale.

Implementing a Low-code platform should greatly

How to Measure Use your current digital transformation roadmap.

What realistic benchmarks have you currently set? After implementing a Low-code platform, how would your roadmap change? What requirements are simple enough that a business user could bring his or her own department into a fully digital space? How much time could you eliminate from the entire transformation roadmap? How much more complete of a transformation would be possible?

ROI METRIC #3: REDUCED IT SPEND While IT budgets are not extremely tight right now, technology development has always had a scaling problem. This can be eliminated by choosing a Low-code platform with the right pricing model. A Lowcode tool priced per user often allows you to create an unlimited number of apps on the platform, with the cost of each app going down the more apps you create.

Platforms that are priced on a per-app basis will offer more firmly correlated cost savings based on how many apps you create.

How to Measure One metric you will use: what would it cost me to build the same number of apps with and without the Low-code platform?

Accelerating the shift to edge computing Chris Docherty, Regional Manager Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), Lenovo Middle East, has penned an exclusive op-ed which highlights how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the shift towards ‘edge computing’.

Chris Docherty

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have spurred fundamental changes in the ways we live and work. They have also exposed some weaknesses in the broader IT architectures that support us in our day-to-day life.

Some of the changes, including remote work, more virtual collaboration, increased video streaming, an ongoing rise in online gaming, and an increased need for data security are likely to last long after the pandemic passes. Meanwhile, the infrastructure shift towards intelligent edge

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computing will be widely accelerated. According to IDC, over one quarter (28%) of companies in the GCC say they will invest in edge technologies.

One of the applications created in response to COVID-19 is the real-time mask and social distancing identification. An effective prevention measure is to wear a mask in crowded places while maintaining physical distance. To help enforce these measures and generate data on habits, governments and other orgs explored and deployed automated, realtime detection methods.

@tahawultech

See Lenovo’s work with UNC Chapel Hill, for example.

High data transmission speed and low latency enabled by edge computing supports real-time image and video handling with deep learning and other intelligent technologies to support public health precautions.

COVID-19 also changed the way we work, making remote work or working from home “the new normal”—what we’ve called the remote revolution. Many companies already stated they will not return to the old ways of working even when the pandemic danger has passed. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies can help lessen the need for spending on hardware devices company wide. This enables employees to use their personal devices from home, and that—combined with edge computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)—makes for less expensive and more flexible work operations.

Perhaps even more importantly, our culture has changed—and this shift

has been further catalysed by the ongoing pandemic changing expectations for both employers and employees.

A survey of 1,000 white collar professionals in the Middle East, conducted by recruitment company Robert Walters, found that 38% of professionals would like full-time remote working, and a further 32% would like to be able to work remotely at least half of the time.

Beyond the two use cases above, we also see new trends in online shopping, gaming, and entertainment, which are becoming the new gold standard for consumption, driven in part by lockdown policies. These new ways of consuming media bring new

Lenovo is supporting businesses everywhere by enabling them at the Edge.”

Given the current demand for custom apps, how many additional staff would you require to complete all the work in a desired time frame? What would be the complete cost to the company for these additional resources?

Another part of the equation is the current cost of all the single-point solutions used across the organisation. What solutions have been rejected/delayed due to no additional budget?

Could all of these needs be created with custom apps from a Low-code platform?

than among those without Low-code. While potentially the hardest to quantify, this return might be the most valuable.

ROI METRIC #4: REDUCED STRESS One of the most common, but least discussed, reasons for turning to a Low-code solution is simply the level of chaos that most IT teams are constantly facing.

When deadlines aren’t met, tensions rise. Studies show that among IT teams that used Low-code solutions, business units are 21% happier with lead times

How to Measure How much time does your IT team currently spend on support tickets, feature enhancements, and escalations around existing applications? Shifting to a Low-code platform should greatly reduce these.

What projects have you said “no” to recently? When the IT team is swamped with existing tasks, there is a lot of opportunity lost and added stress by turning down and diverting high-impact projects.

How do other business units feel towards IT? Take a survey of other business leaders to ask how they feel about IT. Are they satisfied by the response time, development time, and other metrics? A Low-code development platform can go a long way to improve these relationships as IT becomes an enabler rather than a stopgap.

Whether you are a large enterprise or an emerging SMB, a Low-code platform can provide lots of dividends.

Identifying your primary success metrics is the best place to start. Are you primarily looking for a tool for decreasing the IT backlog?

Reducing stress? Advancing digital transformation?

Having a clear picture in mind will help you extract the greatest value from your Low-code investment.

challenges to traditional IT infrastructure. As more and more customer workloads require fast response and interlocks, edge computing is the most efficient way to address new challenges like reducing response time, providing better customer experiences, and reducing the bandwidth requirement from edge to cloud to help optimise OPEX and CAPEX from the networking infrastructure side.

Edge computing is also helping transform smart cities, which can also help provide a quicker response to a public emergency crisis like COVID-19 by bringing computing, storage, and artificial intelligence/ machine learning technologies to where data is being generated: e.g. public emergency healthcare, public security, public transportation, remote education, etc.

Coming out of the COVID outbreak, leaders are upgrading their business with the help of edge computing. Because of its advantages, edge computing is rapidly becoming a focus not only for emergency use cases such as COVID-19, but also for the intelligent evolution of industry.

Lenovo is supporting businesses everywhere by

enabling them at the Edge.

In manufacturing clients are using Lenovo big data to better forecast market demand. A retail customer is piloting a cashless store where payment is enabled with facial recognition. In healthcare augmented reality is transforming cancer research.

And we’re working to transform cities too.

One example is Bogota; deploying a Lenovo Edge solution to enable efficiency and scale at its central control room, which manages over 1,000 cameras.

Going beyond that we also see Edge as an enabler and driver of Artificial Intelligence. At a time when the speed and agility of processes within businesses critically impacts operations, our customers demand more powerful, secure and flexible solutions. Lenovo’s technology architecture is purpose-built to deliver real-time, valuable insights from edge to core to cloud, enabling a new era of intelligence where customers can fully realise the potential of the data at their disposal. Being able to handle and compute real time data is where Edge is enabling the next phase of artificial intelligence.

Implementing a low-code platform should greatly advance IT leaders march towards a complete digital takeover.”

What would the current/ potential savings be?

www.tahawultech.com

Dubai-based tech start-up TERRACEZ to empower data-led enhancement of customer experience for enterprises across the region organisation’s top-line grow”, Dharmendra adds.

While a young startup, TERRACEZ already boasts several successful implementations across the region, including large Food and Beverage conglomerates, as well as real estate, and services operation industries in utilities, & facility services. Taking an omnichannel and end-toend approach to business process optimization, TERRACEZ implements Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions for Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Finance and Operations; as well as Microsoft Power Platform and e-invoicing solutions, and Dynamics 365 Business Central. With the industry-agnostic Microsoft Dynamics 365 portfolio, TERRACEZ offers a wide range of implementation specialities - from empowering digital selling,

to financial modules that integrate ERP, managing processes and assets along with CRM; from unifying relationship data and driving personalized experiences using actionable insights, to enabling proactive and predictive Field Services using IoT, AI & Mixed Reality “The opportunity for tech-led efficiencies across large and small enterprises in Dubai and the larger Middle East, is staggering”, Dharmendra reiterates. “And businesses are becoming increasingly aware that even a powerful solution suite, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, needs a service-driven, customised, and strategy-led implementation, to optimise process enhancement, customer acquisition and retention, and eventually, improves bottomlines.

TERRACEZ addresses this need, by optimally leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite, for the exact needs of a business”.

Buoyed by the initial success the start-up has achieved, TERRACEZ is targeting 5X growth as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Dynamics AX Upgrade, and Power BI implementation partners, by next year, through a vigorous expansion across the Middle East, North America and Canada.

warehouses, factories and production sites. It will also be adopted by the company’s international offices, outside of the Middle East region. The networks enables seamless mobility across all Al Ghurair Investment offices.

Employees can work from any office with the network automatically recognising and authenticating them.

This improves the ability of teams from different group businesses to meet and collaborate.

Mr. Hussain says the strength of the Aruba network means the company’s workplaces have become wireless-first.

“Teams are accessing an increasing range of cloud applications via the wireless network. We’re running video calls wirelessly and the construction design teams are using heavy CAD applications off the Wi-Fi”, Mr. Hussain adds.

“The freedom to access your applications and to work from any office can only help the group”.

In addition, the network upgrade now allows Al Ghurair Investment to integrate CCTV, building management, access control and parking systems across its facilities.

Ultimately, the Aruba ESP architecture is a key enabler of Al Ghurair Investment’s 2025 strategy. Workplace flexibility and access to the latest productivity apps reinforce the organisation as a modern, progressive employer.

“It is a business that can attract the best talent in the Middle East and where individuals can build exciting careers”, Ms. Sheahan says. “Resources that were previously managing or trouble-shooting network infrastructure across the different business units can now be deployed in more strategic ventures. Our network modernisation is a key enabler of our strategic objectives and provides several benefits.

New business will be faster to onboard and thus faster to deliver value; a central control point enables IT to provide a better service to the business and, of course, security is integral to everything we do”.

“Digital transformation is very much about an organisation-wide culture change. We are a purposeled organisation – driven to enhance life. We have a number of transformation programmes to support our vision including the Fit for Future Leadership programme, a dedicated function to focus on enhancing customer journeys and employee experience and a groupwide ERP modernisation program as well as a culture change programme to embed innovation as part of our DNA. We are a global, diversified business group with a vast array of products and services. The Aruba network provides the very thing that large businesses crave the most: agility”, Ms. Sheahan concludes.

TERRACEZ, is set to transform the customer experience and business transformation space with their customised audit-identify-digitalise approach, to help enterprises automate and unify data collection and analysis across omnichannel touchpoints and empower a superior customer experience.

Dharmendra Panwar

TERRACEZ, a dynamic, progressive, and aggressively growing Dubai-based tech startup, is disrupting the customer experience and business transformation space; helping businesses digitally transform, by automating repetitive tasks, unifying data-collection and analysis across omnichannel touchpoints, and empowering an insightsled superior customer

experience using Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions.

Their signature “Engage, Envision, Embrace” (EEE) approach differentiates them in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 space, with this deep-dive audit-identifydigitalise process helping customise implementation as per specific customer challenges.

Founded by the innovation driven duo of Ashish Rana and Dharmendra Panwar - a

team with strong credentials, industry experience and expertise, TERRACEZ have set themselves apart in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Implementation in Canada, the UAE, and the KSA; as well as delivering Dynamics AX Upgrade, Power BI, Power Platform Implementation, and Dynamics 365 Support Services, in the GCC. The team has differentiated TERRACEZ by blending a deep understanding of client challenges with a personalised and customised implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications, while upholding a focus on enhancing customer experience. “Across sectors, delivering enhanced customer experiences and engagement is a critical competitive advantage for businesses. But data silos, and time spent on non-automated tasks

that don’t add value, compromise the ability of an organisation to focus on the customer experience.

TERRACEZ offers a data-led insights model that is the key to overcoming these limitations and ensuring a delightful omnichannel customer experience”, says TERRACEZ Founder & CEO Dharmendra Panwar.

“Our value proposition is our strategic deep-dive approach, “Engage, Envision, Embrace” (EEE), that identifies organisational functions and processes that are ripe for digitalisation, and then maps the inherent strengths of Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions to the exact needs of our customer. We blend this with a focus on ensuring a delightful omnichannel customer experience using data unification and insights.

This enables CXOs, CMO’s, CEO’s to enhance customer acquisition and retention, ultimately helping the

Al Ghurair chooses Aruba to Create a Digital Transformation Platform Al Ghurair Selects Aruba to Create a Platform for Digital Transformation, Cultural Change and new Business Opportunities.

Executives of Al Ghurair Investment and HPE Aruba at GITEX 2021

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, today announced that UAE-based Al Ghurair Investment has implemented networking technology from Aruba that delivers resilient, future-ready infrastructure to accelerate digital transformation. The technology provides a scalable secure network template for consistent deployment and user experience, enables consistent wireless-first workplace with bandwidth to support critical business applications, cuts Wi-Fi deployment times from days to hours and enables Zero Touch deployments across international operations.

The deployment also reduces network costs through standardisation and consolidation.

Founded in 1960 in Dubai, Al Ghurair Investment has

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developed into a major diversified business group with operations spanning more than 20 countries across the globe and employing approximately 28,000 people. “The Al Ghurair family name is synonymous with the development of the region itself. Like the UAE, Al Ghurair Investment has constantly evolved, embracing new ways of doing things in the pursuit of excellence. Our digital transformation is the next exciting part of our development, as we turn to technology to become a more data-driven, efficient and agile business”, says Ms. Marinda Sheahan, Group Vice President - IT, Al Ghurair Investment.

Due to the diversified nature of the business, IT infrastructures have historically been built in-business – with teams

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embedding individual solutions. With digital transformation a priority in each of Al Ghurair Investment’s business units, the group needed to establish a singular network approach. The company wanted central oversight, tighter integration between business units and the means to graft new applications on to the network.

The cloud-native and service-oriented Aruba Edge Services Platform (ESP) was fully aligned with the company’s vision for its digital future and unique requirements. Aruba Central enables the unified management of wired and wireless infrastructure and delivers AI-powered insights, workflow automation and robust security, all as subscribed services. “Aruba Central

reflected our broader cloud strategy and our desire for a cloud-based solution. It gives us visibility, speed of deployment and control”, says Mr. Aaamir Hussain, Network and Data Manager, Al Ghurair Investment.

The engagement establishes consistency across Al Ghurair Investment’s network architecture. It also brings network infrastructure in line with other shared services across the group.

“It has made my life considerably easier”, says Mr. Hussain. “Aruba Central means I can now manage 75 branches from one pane of glass”.

The project has strengthened data security.

Aruba ClearPass ensures consistent policy-based governance in terms of the types of users and devices that can access each part of the network and gives visibility of network activity.

“We have all the security we need in place, from endpoint to cloud”, says Mr. Hussain.

“All our perimeters are secured with the flexibility of appropriate role-based and context-oriented policies”.

The network now hosts 3,500 office users using Microsoft Teams and the plan is to roll out to Al Ghurair Investment’s

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