GITEX Innovations

GITEX THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2019

INDUSTRY LEADERS WHO ARE PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF TECHNOLOGY

A SUPPLEMENT OF

CONTENTS Innovation goes beyond technology – it means empowering employees, improving customer experience, optimising processes and providing better products. This year’s GITEX Innovations supplement shares the compelling insights of 22 technology leaders who are excelling in all these aspects while pushing the boundaries of the region’s digital transformation journey.

4 2CRSi

6 A10 Networks

10 Barracuda

12 Bitdefender

16 CrowdStrike

24 ESET

28 Fortinet

Software IT Network 30 Gulf Distribution 34 Gulf Distribution 36 Hikvision

40 Huawei

-A 42 Injazat Mubadala Company

46 Ivanti

48 Lenovo

52 Reveille

60 WebNMS

64 Western Digital

68 ZephyrTel

54 ScreenCheck 56 Veritas

18 Dell Technologies 22 Emircom

Founder, CPIMEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015), Publishing Director Natasha Pendleton, Group Sales Director Kausar Syed, Business Development Manager Youssef Hariz, Senior Sales Manager Sabita Miranda, Deputy Editor Sharon Saldanha, Editor Mark Forker, Deputy Editor Giorgia Guantario, Online Editor Adelle Geronimo, Design Manager Froilan Cosgafa, Senior Designer Analou Balbero, Designer Marlou Delaben, Operations Manager Cherylann D’Abreo, Web Developer Jefferson de Joya, Abbas Madh, Photographers Charls Thomas, Maksym Poriechkin

Cutting-edge technology that is more efficient and greener 2CRSi is planning exciting interactive sessions at this year’s GITEX to showcase its products. Nirmal Menon, 2CRSi channel manager, explains how the solutions that the company will be demonstrating offer benefits to both customers and the environment.

Nirmal Menon, channel manager, 2CRSi

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Data has been branded as the new oil in today’s digital economy and its growth has been faster than ever before. How has this impacted your organisation’s solutions?

I can agree partially only to the metaphor of comparing oil and data. It is true that a tremendous boom has happened in the generation of data in recent years. About 80 percent of data in today’s world has been created within the last two of three years; this is something explosive.

The data boom is destined to grow in geometric progression, which will push the existing infrastructure to scale out beyond its capacity.

The scalability is dependent on multiple factors (such as power and area) which may act as a deterrent in meeting the storage and computing needs of these times.

This shows the importance of the 2CRSi ethos of bringing forward technological innovations to ensure that the infrastructure is ready to meet the scalability challenges of today and tomorrow.

We offer the maximum high performance with the most efficient architecture with regards to computing power, energy consumption and built area.

Success is not just about attaining enormous savings in operational cost and efficiency, but is also about the legacy of greener technology, national development and a better planet for future generations.

What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019?

Since the beginning of this year, our focus has been to educate and enable the channel. The creation of a fully fledged service centre was also achieved this year, giving our entire product line up a strong after-sales support system locally.

These efforts will continue along with our pursuit of increased sales and improved lead times for customised solutions. The reduction in the lead time for customised solution will benefit channel partners and end users. Our active engagement to ensure end-to-

Success is not just about attaining enormous savings in operational cost and efficiency, but the legacy of greener technology, national development and a better planet for future generations. end interaction, awareness and support is appreciated by all of of our channel partners along with the end users.

The positive feedback on our pricing strategies from end users and partners makes us increase our commitment to bringing cutting-edge technology in costeffective solutions. We offer support for their faster adoption and implementation.

By end of the third quarter of this year, our stocks will be replenished to a level to support our whole plans for the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Looking ahead at 2020, what are your plans in terms of new market opportunities?

The whole of Africa is an exciting opportunity and we do have certain serious discussions in progress with leading distributors of the region. Our strategy of “Pay for what you need” was very interesting for them. Our dedicated team is working on a market strategy in order to set up and execute the business plans in an efficient manner.

We also look forward to confirmed attendance of prospective clients from African countries, Turkey, Pakistan and others. These meetings and visits will help us to receive in person feedback, insights and market trends, for example.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

The forecast and leading purpose of the GITEX week is to interact with the end users who are eagerly waiting to engage with us regarding the future ready technology displayed in our booth.

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GITEX is a great platform to interact, engage and present our technology and it will speed us towards our goals for this region and for the whole of the Middle East.

We are scheduled to conduct two interactive sessions every day for the visitors to understand our products. Our sessions will also reveal our past success stories pertaining to Dassault Group, OVH, Blade (Shadow PC) and others, allowing us to showcase our core strengths and demonstrate our aspirations.

The sessions will educate the people and this region about why the top technology enthusiasts and researchers utilise our solutions at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and Caltech (California Institute of Technology).

What differentiates your company for your competitors?

The core capability of utmost customisation is the single major factor that differentiates us from our competitors. We are 100 percent channelcentric with a start-up’s mentality.

One of our exhibits that will be a crowd favourite will be a performance workstation with Nvidia P5000 with 16GB of video memory. This alone will portray why we are excited about stepping towards the limits of performance and innovation to reach excellence.

Also, one of the other key factors that separates us from others, and is part of our legacy, is our belief and efforts towards a greener tomorrow with greener technology like Immersion Ready Servers and OCPbased energy efficient rack solutions.

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Preparing for 5G and a multi-cloud world As the Middle East’s technological landscape prepares for widescale changes, Gunter Reiss, vice president of worldwide marketing at A10 Networks, describes how the company’s solutions can help enterprises deal with the challenges they face.

Gunter Reiss, vice president, worldwide marketing, A10 Networks

The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud?

The entry of major public cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft in the Middle East will see many organisations adopting a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud model and leveraging a variety of clouds for their application infrastructure.

With multiple disparate environments to manage, on top of inherent application complexity, deploying applications becomes more complex. Organisations need efficient, agile and high-performance solutions that also provide centralised management and analytics across the entire application infrastructure.

The A10 Networks Thunder Containers solution can help solve many issues.

The addition of a container solution to the A10 Networks’ portfolio helps support a mix of application architectures, from traditional monolithic to distributed microservices, with the same code, the same management all-inclusive API and the same feature-set to help organisations combine new and legacy services for more agile infrastructures.

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APPLICATIONS IN THE CLOUD: BEST PRACTICE FOR DELIVERY, SECURITY AND VISIBILITY

In environments that span from on-premises to public,

KEY CHALLENGES WE’RE FACING

private and hybrid clouds, application delivery, security

As these trends converge, businesses are up against a

and visibility can become complex and inefficient.

specific set of challenges. Here are the four primary

With 84 percent of enterprises now using a multi-cloud strategy*, this issue is more pressing than ever before.

GROWING INDUSTRY TRENDS Today, all companies are undergoing digital transformation

challenges we see: Driving agility Supporting multiple environments Increasing efficiency Security

in some form. Regardless of industry and focus, technology is now at the center of how enterprises are run. Here are

HOW TO RESOLVE THOSE CHALLENGES

some of the trends that have risen to prominence as a result.

Ultimately, the objective is to deliver a consistent,

APPLICATIONS ARE CHANGING Widespread use of mobile devices has put applications at our fingertips. Apps are an integral part of every company and they are expected to be updated, delivered and deployed as quickly as possible.

user-friendly experience when deploying applications.

This can be achieved through:

AUTOMATION VISIBILITY & CONTROL

DEPLOYMENT MODELS ARE CHANGING Thanks to global demand for application availability and agility, apps are no longer bound to the data center. Rather,

MANAGEMENT

applications are deployed across multiple data centers and in a multi-cloud environments.

*According to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera.

LEARN MORE AT A10NETWORKS.COM

The A10 Networks team will be at GITEX in Sheikh Rashid Hall, booth SR-J10.

Visit https://events.a10networks.com/gitex-2019/ to book a meeting with the team.

In addition, it can eliminate the struggle between NetOps/SecOps and DevOps with a unified and consistent application, featureset and policy control across traditional data centre and multi-cloud environments.

Nowadays data security is one of the major concerns for organisations. How can your organisation help companies have a strong security strategy?

In today’s sophisticated security landscape, a breach can happen unexpectedly at any point in time, and every second is critical when it comes to protection and remediation.

Automation of cybersecurity systems can make the difference in those crucial moments during a breach to help regain control and minimise any damage.

We believe the future of cybersecurity for 5G and multi-cloud rests on ‘Intelligent Automation’ coupled with machine learning, ensuring that business-critical applications are protected, reliable, and always available.

Our company’s AI-driven application and network security solutions offer customers 5G security, DDoS protection and multi-cloud application visibility, analytics and automation.

Our security solutions cover four broad areas: Multi-Cloud Security: From small and midsize businesses and large enterprises to service providers and cloud operators, organisations are hosting a large and rapidly growing set of mission-critical applications across multiple clouds.

A purpose-built solution, A10 Thunder ADC, ensures these applications are highly available, accelerated and secure.

SSL Inspection: In a multi-vendor enterprise perimeter security stack, decrypting SSL traffic at each hop can prove to be inefficient and costly.

However, with over 80 percent of the

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internet traffic encrypted, along with a sharp increase in encrypted malware attacks, organisations might be forced to do just that. A10 Networks’ Thunder SSL Insight (Thunder SSLi) ensures the entire security infrastructure has visibility into encrypted traffic, while retaining optimal performance.

DDoS Protection: Distributed Denial of Service attacks are the most costly and fastest-growing cybercrime. The industry’s highest performance automated DDoS protection, A10 Networks’ Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS), detects attacks across the network and mitigates DDoS attacks at the network edge.

The company recently added Zero-day Automated Protection (ZAP) capabilities to its Thunder TPS family.

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It is a good opportunity to nurture important customer and channel relationships as we introduce them to our wider team. In addition to meeting current customers, we can share our solutions with new customers to demonstrate how together we can protect and help them maintain business as usual. The company will demonstrate its entire portfolio of solutions and during the event, executives from A10 Networks will run a series of presentations delivered on the booth daily.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

5G and multi-cloud environments, I believe, are two of today’s biggest trends.

The transition to 5G will bring about a

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Organisations need efficient, agile and highperformance solutions that also provide centralised management and analytics across the entire application infrastructure.

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5G Security: 5G security is critical for emerging-use cases to be successful and infrastructure to be reliable.

A10 Networks’ Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW) is a leading security solution that incorporates multiple security functions for enterprise and service provider deployments, including a highly scalable and high-performance firewall, IPsec VPN, secure web gateway, Carrier-Grade NAT, with integrated DDoS protection and traffic steering in a single, standalone product.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

GITEX is the largest technology show in the Middle East, and as such it is an essential platform for A10 Networks to demonstrate our wide portfolio of solutions.

whole new set of possible and exciting new use cases. The established goal of 5G is a focus on enhanced mobile broadband, machine-to-machine type communication and ultra-reliable, lowlatency communication.

In a recent survey commissioned by A10 Networks, smart cities, industrial automation and smart manufacturing, ultra-high-speed connectivity, fixed wireless broadband and connected vehicles were all cited as key use-case drivers for 5G. In their ongoing pursuit of digital transformation, an acute imperative worldwide, organisations are increasingly adopting hybrid IT and embracing multicloud infrastructures. They’re doing so to increase business agility and to compete more effectively against both new and established rivals across a range of industries.

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Keeping the focus on security during migration to the cloud Barracuda is aiming to help organisations deal with the cybersecurity hurdles involved in migration to the cloud. But, explains Toni El Inati, regional vice president, sales, Middle East, Turkey & CEE, there are many additional cybersecurity challenges to deal with too.

Toni El Inati, regional vice president sales, Middle East, Turkey & CEE, Barracuda

The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud security?

As digital transformation becomes a reality for many companies and with the move to cloud a key aspect of that, attention is not always on security. However, many are finding that this a key obstacle in their journey to the cloud.

At Barracuda, our approach to cloud security is to be able to provide the same experience that organisations are used to on-premise in terms of the level of security, but in the cloud.

From day one, Barracuda products have been built with the cloud in mind.

Barracuda understands an organisation’s level of risk when migrating to the cloud and can support organisations in multiple ways to mitigate those risks no matter what platform they are looking to move to.

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Looking ahead at 2020, what are your plans in terms of new market opportunities?

Looking at past years, there were a lot of concerns and restrictions from the government sectors regarding cloud adoption.

But now there is a transition towards it and big cloud players have taken a different approach by opening data centres locally. As a result, we see big demand from the government sector and this will be our focus for 2020.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? At this year’s GITEX, we will be showcasing a number of our key products including: – Cloud Security Guardian for Azure: this agentless Software-as-a-Service solution provides end-to-end visibility regarding the security posture of public cloud workloads, ensures continuous compliance, and automates remediation of security incidents.

– Total Email Protection: this ensures your organisation is secured against emailborne threats. Its multi-layered approach combines the most advanced protection available with the radical simplicity and ease of use that Barracuda is known for.

– Forensics and Incident Response: this is an innovative solution allowing organisations to proactively respond to targeted attacks that were delivered to users’ inboxes. The solution automates a process that otherwise can take hours or even days to complete.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

– A big trend over the next year is government and security companies starting to work together to improve regulations to protect companies and individuals. Time after time, organisations have shown they cannot be trusted with users’ data because it is not secured properly and ends up available to be

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“Our ability to successfully foster that spirit of invention has played a key role in our continued success.”

exploited easily by attackers.

– We’ll see security awareness training solutions evolve to provide further automation. This will go beyond making it possible for customers to download everything they need for a single campaign. Organisations need to build a comprehensive security awareness programme that addresses the most important security topics users need to deal with, using campaigns that are tightly correlated and build on each other as part of a well-designed programme.

– Migration to the cloud has become a megatrend. This has led to new requirements in terms of securing

services and the required infrastructure.

In particular, star-shaped WAN topologies with central Internet access must be redesigned with regard to their compatibility with increasing use of cloud services, with SD-WAN the keyword.

– While it’s long been known that the cybersecurity industry has a significant skills gap, what’s less known is that this gap is increasing. Get ready for a skills gap tipping point. As cyber attackers’ tactics become ever more sophisticated and, more importantly, harder to spot, they are needing ever more hours of the good guys’ time to identify and stop.

– Account takeover is one of the biggest

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threat vectors in the cybersecurity industry today. More and more organisations are getting hit, and the attacks are getting more and more targeted. Attackers are moving away from the relatively standard phishing email, as they are finding that strategically targeting business executive accounts is much more lucrative. The level of personalisation in these attacks will reach new heights.

– In the same vein, a big problem in cybersecurity that will grow bigger is identity – how do we know if someone is who they say they are? This challenge will become ever greater as more organisations move to the cloud and remote logins become more common.

– The public cloud market is maturing, and we expect to see a huge appetite for cloud security. Businesses aren’t just experimenting with the public cloud anymore, and now that more customers have critical infrastructure and workloads on platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure, they’re realising they need purpose-built cloud security solutions to help them protect workloads moving to these platforms. As workload migration accelerates to the public cloud, security risk professionals will need to get more actively involved in their DevOps team’s processes, so they can automate the application of governance and compliance controls.

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Cybersecurity heavyweight expands its offerings to Middle East enterprises

With more than 500 million users globally, Bitdefender is one of the world’s top cybersecurity companies. Tarek Kuzbari, the company’s regional director for the Middle East, explains how the company has been extending its range of services.

Tarek Kuzbari, regional director, Middle East, Bitdefender

Nowadays data security is one of the majors concerns for organisations. How can your organisation help companies have a strong security strategy?

Bitdefender is a global cybersecurity player, tried and trusted by 150 partners and more than 500 million users in over 150 countries across the globe.

We are an engineering company at our core, with more than 50 percent of our work force in research and development, and we are a technology provider for more than 38 percent of the global security industry.

This explains why we have been consistently at the top of most leading third-party independent comparatives for more than seven years in a row.

Bitdefender is a full-stack security provider ensuring protection for endpoints, mobile devices, gateways, proxies, appliances, traffic, data and IoT devices.

We have technology alliances with Citrix, Vmware, Nutanix, Linux Foundation, Microsoft and NETGEAR.

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END-TO-END BREACH AVOIDANCE @ENDPOINT @NETWORK @CLOUD

Network Traffic Security Analytics Early detection of advanced threats Complete visibility across all devices Automated security alerts triage

Find out more at Gitex 2019 in Sheikh Rashid Hall, Stand SR-E2. bitdefender.com

In the past three years alone we have had 100 patents issued for core technologies, and have 230 more currently filed for examination.

What differentiates your company for your competitors?

At Bitdefender, we are led by a vision to be the most trusted cybersecurity technology provider in the world, which means we constantly anticipate, innovate and go the extra mile to ensure our customers are protected against cyberattacks.

Bitdefender is the provider of choice, embedded in more than 38 percent of the world’s security solutions. Our product portfolio currently includes endpoint protection platforms (EPP), endpoint detection and response (EDR), advanced cyber threat intelligence (CTI), network traffic analytics (NTA) and sandboxing, as well as training and knowledge-transfer services.

As of today, several high-profile government entities and enterprises in the region rely on Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security to safeguard their most critical assets, whether it be in physical, virtualised or cloud environments.

With the recent integration of Network Traffic Security Analytics (NTSA) into the GravityZone platform, we can now offer Middle East enterprises a more efficient, comprehensive and layered approach to security – a capability that no other vendor in the industry currently offers.

From just a single console, security teams can now threat hunt and conduct investigations on both the endpoint and the network, saving them considerable time in the detection and remediation of threats.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? We aren’t specifically launching any new products or services, but through a mix of live demonstrations and hourly presentations at the stand at GITEX, we will highlight how Bitdefender Network Traffic

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We are an engineering company at our core, with more than 50 percent of our work force in research and development, and we are a technology provider for more than 38 percent of the global security industry.

Security Analytics (NTSA) utilises network traffic to provide an effective threat and breach-detection solution, improving the security posture of IoT infrastructures.

We will also showcase how Bitdefender GravityZone can offer organisations an endto-end breach avoidance platform across endpoint, network and cloud, enabling them to protect both IoT and IT infrastructures by yielding complete visibility on securityrelevant events across both environments, and providing the tools to respond proactively before an attacker can establish a presence in the infrastructure.

To further highlight the challenges around IoT security and advise Middle East organisations on how best to secure their infrastructures, we will host a 25-minute presentation in the X-Labs area entitled, “Defending IIoT: From Stuxnet to Trisis – 10 years of industrial cyberattacks.” Led by Bogdan Carlescu, cybersecurity evangelist at Bitdefender, the presentation will highlight the evolution of industrial attacks between the two milestones, Stuxnet and Trisis. During the session, Bogdan will also lay out Bitdefender’s predictions for 2020.

What are the most exciting developments in the Middle East’s technology landscape over the last 12 months?

This year has brought interesting developments in terms of new emerging threats, significant “upgrades” to old threats, and a change in cybercriminal tactics when choosing targets and tools to increase revenue.

The number and complexity of reported

vulnerabilities has increased, with security researchers disclosing not just vulnerabilities in software, but also in hardware.

– Ransomware is still a steady presence, with new families appearing, and varying ransom notes based on compromised endpoint or data.

– Cryptocurrency miners, considered an important threat in 2018, have been refined by threat actors and kept as serious threats that endanger infrastructure and pose serious security risks to organisations.

– Fileless malware, usually associated with advanced persistent threats and cyberespionage campaigns, has started being adopted en masse to deliver seemingly benign threats, such as cryptominers.

A recent study by IDC shows that between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will touch $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

Despite the promise of digital transformation to drive business initiatives, security concerns are a primary worry for the tech executives at the helm of these projects.

The digital transformation is altering security needs in some fundamental ways.

It is expanding the attack surface, increasing the potential for organisational damage and, as a consequence, making it imperative for organisations to take a continuous improvement approach to security.

Cybersecurity defenses and processes need to be continuously monitored and to evolve to adapt to the changing threat landscape.

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Striking back at the growing cybersecurity threats The cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike says that the regional threat landscape is growing as IoT devices and crowd workloads proliferate. Rawad Sarieddine, senior director at CrowdStrike META, talks about how his company can protect the region’s organisations.

Rawad Sarieddine, senior director, CrowdStrike META The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud security?

We foresee a great rise in cloud adoption potential in the region, as the best solutions in the digital market today are becoming increasingly delivered uniquely on the cloud.

The expansion of the giant public cloud providers into the region is fuelling this growth potential, and this is perfectly in line with our strategy and vision as a pure cloud delivered security company.

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As a cloud-native technology, we are distinctively positioned to protect cloud workloads, so we are happy to see this ecosystem shift.

What differentiates your company for your competitors?

Over the past few years, we have transformed at a record pace into a market leader, and we continue to get stellar recognitions from the likes of Gartner and Forrester.

Enterprises have come to terms with the fact that they need to modernise their endpoint security strategy, and

replace legacy vendors.

They look at CrowdStrike as a uniquely positioned ecosystem that offers unmatched protection, detection and response capabilities, along with IT hygiene, vulnerability management, and world-class threat intelligence.

This is achieved through a single lightweight agent and a single cloud-based console that can cater to customers ranging from a few endpoints to hundreds of thousands.

Data has been branded as the new oil in today’s digital economy

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Our duty as a leading cybersecurity provider is to constantly evolve our technology to protect every asset. Our customers count on us and we are there for them.

GITEX provides an excellent opportunity to connect with peers and customers as well, and we hope that GITEX keeps up the great success of previous years.

and its growth is faster than ever before. How has this impacted your organisation in terms of data security? “Security First� is the motto that permeates everything we do at CrowdStrike.

In the era of digital transformation, we are witnessing an unprecedented proliferation of IoT devices and cloud workloads, and the threat landscape is obviously growing as result.

Our duty as a leading cybersecurity

provider is to constantly evolve our technology to protect every asset. Our customers count on us and we are there for them.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

GITEX is the leading technology event in the region, and we aim to leverage the platform of GITEX to reach a large audience of potential partners, showcasing our unique solutions and our latest technology advancements.

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Can you highlight any major regional customers you have on-boarded over the last 12 months? How are they using your technologies and services to grow their business?

While we generally refrain from publicly sharing our customers list, we have managed over the last year to vastly grow our customer base across different sectors, and in different countries across the region.

We currently provide our endpoint protection and endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology to customers of all sizes, while our premium threat intelligence solution caters to the bespoke requirements of government entities, telecommunications companies, the largest financial organisations and oil and gas operators in the Middle East

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Helping organisations on their digital transformation journey Organisations in the region face many hurdles as they embrace the latest technology. Mohammed Amin, senior vice president, Middle East, Russia, Africa and Turkey (MERAT) at Dell Technologies, describes how the company is aiming to overcome these barriers.

Mohammed Amin, senior vice president, Middle East, Russia, Africa and Turkey (MERAT), Dell Technologies SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware.

It stands as a $91.3 billion market leader with the industry’s most expansive portfolio from the edge to the core to the cloud.

Please give us a brief overview of your company, products and services.

Dell Technologies is a unique family of businesses that provides the essential infrastructure for organisations to build their digital future, transform their IT functions and protect their most important asset, information.

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The company has strong capabilities in the fastest-growing areas of the industry, including hybrid cloud, software-defined data centres, converged infrastructure, platform-as-a-service, data analytics, mobility and cybersecurity.

The Dell Technologies family of businesses includes Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA,

What will be the company’s focus this year at GITEX? We live in a time of unprecedented change where countries in the Middle East and Africa have already begun to undertake digitisation initiatives and developed digital strategies to improve citizen services and drive business transformation.

Given the pace of change today and the constant risk of falling behind, Dell Technologies commissioned a study entitled Digital Transformation Index, which surveyed 4,000 businesses globally, including some from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to determine the progress of organisations in their digital transformation journeys, their priorities, plans and investments and the barriers they face.

According to this survey, 90 percent of organisations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are facing major barriers to digital transformation.

Dell Technologies is committed to delivering the most innovative technologies to help customers in the region overcome these barriers.

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Across the region, we seek to become the technology industry’s most trusted advisor, providing capabilities spanning strategy development, consultative services, and solution deployment and support to help customers and partners drive the digital transformation of their businesses.

GITEX Technology Week is a platform to engage with key stakeholders, including our partners and customers, to understand the challenges faced by them and share our broad capabilities to enable them to be more competitive, optimise costs and drive innovation.

At the event, we will present the power of our family of strategically aligned businesses to help organisations make digital transformation a reality through information technology solutions from edge to core to the cloud.

Our team of digital transformation specialists will be able to address the unique concerns of each individual and organisation, and provide them with specific guidance on how to enable real transformation from the edge to the core to the cloud to enhance their productivity, efficiency and profitability.

What can visitors at GITEX 2019 expect when they visit the Dell Technologies stand?

Located at the entrance of hall 6, Dell Technologies will have a 222-square-metre stand where visitors will get first-hand experience of the power of our solutions at our four main zones: Modern IT Solutions, Digital Enterprise, Future Ready Workforce and Security Transformation Furthermore, the Dell Technologies stand will feature a 360 Immersive Experience room that will introduce people to the four transformation pillars – digital, IT, workforce, and security – as well as reinforce our commitment to sustainability.

Although we have a wide variety of award-winning products and services to showcase, our focus is on developing and nurturing relationships with visitors who are interested in knowing more or who are currently progressing on their digital transformation journey.

We understand that every company has a unique set of barriers and challenges, be it lack of skillsets, limited workforce or insufficient finances.

The theme this year is “Synergising the Mind and Technology Economy” – what are your thoughts on this?

We are on the cusp of the next era of humanmachine partnerships. Essentially, we’ve worked and lived alongside machines for centuries but, by 2030, these partnerships will become deeper, richer and more immersive than ever before, helping us surpass our own limitations.

These machines, fuelled by an exponential increases in data, processing power and connectivity, will open-up new possibilities beyond our grasp today.

A collaborative future where people partner with machines to build on their mutual strengths provides tremendous possibilities to improve the conditions for everyday living.

For individuals, domain expertise, the combination of experience, context, and knowledge on how “things get done” will continue to be a decidedly human trait over the next decade.

If we engage in the hard work of empowering human-machine partnerships to succeed, I truly believe their impact

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What is the relevance of this annual technology exhibition to your business in the region?

With an attentive and relevant audience, GITEX is the perfect opportunity to share our latest news and plans for the near term and the longer term around products, solutions, initiatives, partnerships and much more.

The conversations that are sparked at GITEX lead to very tangible impacts in the real world, whether they are new projects, new agreements or new partnerships.

Mohammed Amin, Senior VicePresident, Middle East Russia, Africa & Turkey (MERAT)

“We live in a digital world where companies that fail to embrace digital transformation will become obsolete, while organisations that innovate will continue to win. In fact, 67 percent of business leaders say their company will no longer be competitive if it can’t be significantly more digital by 2020, according to a Gartner survey. In this crucial yet exciting time, Dell Technologies is working tirelessly to design advanced solutions to help customers modernise their IT infrastructure and take advantage of disruptive technology trends to transform their business. Committed to making transformation real for organisations across the region, we look forward to the opportunities GITEX presents to not only strengthen our position as trusted advisors to our customers, but also to help businesses chart a successful digital roadmap to innovate, adopt and capitalise on new opportunities.” on society will enrich us all. Under the theme of, “Synergising the Mind and Technology Economy,” GITEX 2019 brings this conversation to the forefront, inviting stakeholders to work together towards the creation of a new techno-humanity society characterised by the perfect synchronisation between technology and humanity.

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Emircom looks ahead to GITEX – and to Expo 2020 Dubai

Emircom has helped to spearhead a string of major infrastructure projects in the region. Ghassan Khoury, the general manager of Emircom Abu Dhabi, explains how there is much more to come on the horizon.

Ghassan Khoury, general manager, Emircom Abu Dhabi The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud?

We started with the Internet of Things World Forum in 2015 in Dubai. We realised that with the rapid demand for solutions covering the Internet of Things, virtual reality, big data and artificial intelligence, the need to consolidate, aggregate and make data available everywhere at anytime is increasing exponentially.

We developed specific applications for police cars, smart parking and smart learning systems back in 2015.

Since then, we have been growing our services to offer our customers smart solutions that help them reduce their operating cost, increase their visibility on operations and automate their response to incidents so they run an efficient and agile operation in different segments.

Without the power of the cloud this wouldn’t been possible

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What differentiates your company from your competitors?

In the UAE there are a handful of good systems integrators and we are all good at what we do and we serve the country by giving our best.

Personally I have worked with many companies before in different locations.

Working with Emircom for the past 13 years has made me appreciate the atmosphere that has developed since 1984, when Emircom was founded.

We love difficult cases. The more difficult they are, the more you will see more people helping each other to make it work. We love helping a customer with zero budget to reduce their cost and we stay close to our customers in their ups and downs.

We are an early adopter of technology and this has given us success, and cost us money sometimes, although the customer benefits in both scenarios. We are a trusted advisor, and for us the customer comes first – no compromise.

We are committed to excellence, we seek perfection in our day-to-day dealings with customers, vendors and competition.

We inspire transformation in the ICT space as well as in the IoT and artificial intelligence space.

Can you give us examples of how your technologies or services have been used to enable innovation in organisations in the Middle East?

SEnergy is a home-grown application that operates in the energy space. With SEnergy organisations won’t waste money on excessive energy spending.

Excessive consumption of energy can be the result of many things: lack of knowledge; carelessness; defects; maintenance inefficiency; and many other factors.

We are an early adopter of technology and this has given us success, and cost us money sometimes, although the customer benefits in both scenarios. We are a trusted advisor, and for us the customer comes first – no compromise.

When you have eyes and ears watching and listening to your biggest energyconsuming devices, you will know how you are operating and how far you are from the ideal spending pattern.

As well as monitoring, the system can analyse, suggest findings and take decisions through a service module.

This is among our most important offerings and it wouldn’t have possible without the accessibility of the cloud.

Also, in 2019 we’ve built some of the most advanced datacentres in UAE, with a cooling capacity double the highest existing capacity in the UAE. And the execution was completed in a record time (a matter of months) and we are operating them with practically zero escalations since the first one was delivered in early 2019.

Looking ahead to 2020, what are your plans in terms of new market opportunities?

I believe the business opportunities around Expo 2020 Dubai can be split into pre, during and post 2020 and they are all of equal importance to us.

Currently the need for builders, buildings and services has translated into an unprecedented demand in the contracting business as well as in the demand for manpower. This is directly linked to a growth in the country’s economy and infrastructure.

This will lead to a growing demand for hospitality, transport and media in

2020, during the event. And with more than 80 percent of the site being retained post event, according to the Expo 2020 announcement, the area should become a new concentration point with unique offerings that will offer potential for business in different forms, including foreign investment.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

Like every year, this year GITEX is for us a place where we will show our latest solutions and connect with customers and vendors.

Talking about new market trends, innovative solutions and sharing success stories is something we always do at GITEX. What we hope to achieve differently this year is to measure, with Expo 2020 on the horizon, the impact on technology and services.

Startups are always my favourite place to spend time. Although many of the ideas won’t translate into commercial products, meeting with the people behind the ideas is always something precious and exciting and we learn more when we become part of someone else’s dream in changing the world.

Since GITEX started 1981 (back then it was called GITE, and MacWorld was launched at the show in 1988), this event has demonstrated technology’s future possibilities.

In 2019 at GITEX, we might have the biggest measurable impact ever in a very short time, with Expo 2020 very near.

A multi-layered approach to cybersecurity ESET Middle East offers offers human expertise as well as highly sophisticated cybersecurity software. Dimitris Raekos, the company’s Middle East general manager, describes how the company’s solutions deal with the evolving threat landscape.

Dimitris Raekos, general manager, ESET Middle East Give us a brief overview of your company.

ESET is the number one cybersecurity company in the European Union. It has been operating for more than 30 years and has 13 research and development centres.

ESET takes a multi-layered approach with its software, which includes machine learning technology and has an incredibly low number of false positives.

It also offers human expertise on top of the technology.

As the number of cyber-attacks carries on increasing, ESET solutions continue to be lightweight but powerful.

ESET Middle East has operated for the past 15 years and has a head office in Dubai Internet City. The regional team focuses on sales, marketing and technical support activities.

The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in

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the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud security?

Cloud is not something new and has made things simpler for small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises, but it has also prompted many discussions.

No system is perfectly secure and this applies to the cloud too, as there is no magic behind it. Some companies will improve security upon migrating to the cloud, while some others might become complacent, thinking that they do not have cybersecurity responsibilities.

Any organisation, before migrating to the cloud fully or partially, needs to consider the benefits of it and any complications that it might bring, especially in relation to current and future regulations.

Companies should also evaluate the service provider and read the terms and conditions. Furthermore, access to cloud resources needs to be addressed and data should be encrypted.

Last, but very important, backup needs to be tested even if it is offered by the provider.

ESET offers its solutions for management and protection via extensions and VMs via all the well-known cloud providers entering the Middle East.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

There are many trends out there, but if we would like to avoid buzz words and exclude terms like AI, blockchain and others, we can point to the following three.

Data protection will be a major issue for small and large companies, either because they have been forced to consider it by regulations, or because they have suffered data breaches.

Cloud service providers with data centres in the Middle East will create

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Any organisation, before migrating to cloud fully or partially, needs to consider the benefits of it and any complications that it might bring, especially in relation to current and future regulations. the next wave of migrations to the cloud as decision makers will feel more secure making the migration.

Faster networks like 5G will bring benefits, but also will increase the number of IoT devices and consequently the risks related to them for both individuals and companies.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? Last year we did a soft launch of our endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution as it was mainly available in certain EU countries.

This year we are officially introducing ESET Enterprise Inspector. This is primarily targeted at customers who need to increase their ability to detect and respond to incidents in their network, and to fight with advanced attacks and advanced persistent threats that try to evade detection by the endpoint security solution.

In addition, we are introducing new management consoles for cloud and on-premise management that, among much else, will include a full disk encryption option.

Can you highlight any major regional customers that you have on-boarded over the last 12 months? How are they using your technologies and services to protect their business security?

ESET’s research and development has highlighted a lot of advanced

persistent threat (APT) and cyberespionage groups and has produced a lot of articles and whitepapers related to their activities, which impact on organisations in the Middle East.

A few months ago a crucial enterprise organisation in the Middle East that cannot be disclosed replaced its existing solution with ESET’s endpoint and mail server protection.

During installation our software detected suspicious activity in the network and within a few hours we had been informed by one of our research and development offices that the network had been compromised for a long period by a cyber-espionage group that was intercepting all email communication and even had remote access to all the endpoints.

ESET Dynamic Threat Defense, which is a cloud sandbox powered by machine learning algorithms, could have prevented or limited this attack in a timely manner. Also, an EDR solution such as ESET Enterprise Inspector could have alerted the responsible people and provided the ability to trace the source of infection and to deal with it.

Many times, companies neglect, or do not have the budget, to take appropriate measures and this can cause major financial and political problems.

It is very important to mention that whatever technologies are in place, human expertise is paramount and this is what ESET offers apart from its security products.

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Creating a security fabric for the Gulf Businesses large and small in the Middle East face growing cybersecurity threats.

Alain Penel, regional vice president at Fortinet, describes how organisations in this region are staying safe thanks to the Fortinet Security Fabric.

Alain Penel, regional vice-president, Fortinet

Data security is one of the majors concerns for companies. How can your organisation help companies have a robust cybersecurity strategy?

An integrated security framework allows all security components to see other devices, shares and correlates information between them, and facilitates a coordinated threat response. It needs to be woven into and across every aspect of the evolving network to enable things like unified policy creation, centralised orchestration and consistent enforcement.

This approach allows organisations to extend visibility deep into their infrastructure to see every device, track every application and workflow and more importantly, see and secure all data.

It also supports an organisation’s efforts to demonstrate compliance with data privacy and protection requirements.

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The Fortinet Security Fabric is the vision and architecture to achieve these objectives.

A recent study by IDC forecasts that between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will reach $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

Digital technologies are fundamentally transforming economic and business processes in every corner of the global economy.

To define digital transformation in economic terms, it means the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes to how businesses operate and how they deliver value to customers.

While businesses have employed computing technology since the early 1950s, the role of technology has changed from supporting business processes (accounting, data processing,

communications, product design and the like) to becoming an essential element of a business’s strategy and customer value proposition.

Businesses in industry segments such as financial services, industrial products, automotive, oil and gas, transportation, food and medical services now understand that unless they can enrich their revenue-generation processes with digital technology value, they risk not just falling behind more digitally savvy competitors, but also becoming irrelevant to the marketplace as a whole.

Can you give us examples of how your organisation’s technologies or services are enabling innovation in the Middle East?

Organisations from across multiple verticals rely on the solutions that make up the Fortinet Security Fabric to reduce and manage the attack surface.

The Fortinet Security Fabric offers broad visibility, stops advanced threats through

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its integrated AI-driven breach prevention, and reduces complexity through automated operations and orchestration.

Abu Dhabi Municipality, for example, has deployed Fortinet’s NGFW to secure its network at the headquarters and 45 branch operations.

Oman Data Park is another customer who has deployed Fortinet secure SDWAN to enhance its managed security service offering to customers.

The leading telecommunications provider du has also deployed Fortinet Security Fabric solutions as the foundation of its Cloud Unified Threat Management (UTM) managed security services, designed for enterprise broadband premium and professional customers, as well as small and medium-sized organisations.

What challenges do organisations in the Middle East face when it comes to security?

Organisations in the region are dealing with a number of challenges. The attack

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The Fortinet Security Fabric offers broad visibility, it stops advanced threats through its integrated AIdriven breach prevention, and it reduces complexity through automated operations and orchestration.

surface is getting wider and wider due to new technologies that are available every day, while chief information security officers (CISOs) are managing escalating threats with limited resources and are, additionally, facing skills shortages.

Fortinet helps organisations address these challenges with the Fortinet Security Fabric, while we strive to close the skills gap from a grassroots level with the Fortinet Network Security Academy programme, which provides industryrecognised training and certification to students around the world, and with the Fortinet Network Security Expert (NSE) certification programme.

This programme is composed of eight levels, and offers courses, exams and hands-on practical sessions to technical professionals looking to grow their business with the advanced security skills they need to stay a step ahead of resourceful cyber criminals.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

GITEX allows us to connect with existing and new customers and partners, while showcasing our industry-leading solutions to a wider audience.

Over the years, GITEX has evolved into a global event for companies present in the region, and we look forward to being a stage for innovative technologies across the IT spectrum.

We are participating this year to highlight the importance of securing edge networks and to showcase our secure SD-WAN, SD-Branch, operational technology (OT) and cloud security solutions. We will emphasise how the Fortinet Security Fabric delivers broad, integrated, and automated protection across an organisation’s entire digital attack surface from IoT to the edge, network core and multi-clouds.

GITEX INNOVATIONS 2019

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Spearheading the spread of artificial intelligence Gareth Hansford, Gulf Software Distribution’s general manager, thinks 2019 is going to be remembered as the year of artificial intelligence. He explains how the technology is causing waves in multiple industries.

Gareth Hansford, general manager, Gulf Software Distribution

What have been the most exciting developments in the Middle East’s technology landscape over the past 12 months?

If 2018 is remembered as the year of blockchain, then we believe 2019 will be most famous for artificial intelligence (AI), noticeably with many more tangible results.

As well as seeing cybersecurity go beyond the SOC, we’ve now got Amazon Web Services with a data centre in the region and IBM has incorporated Red Hat, and in doing so has updated its open source strategy while cleverly leaving Red Hat as an independent unit to continue to thrive.

In 2017 the UAE announced a strategy to become a world leader in AI by 2031 and according to Forbes, already 62 percent of Middle East

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Executives believe AI is emerging rapidly in their industry and 71 percent believe that AI will have the greatest positive impact on the Middle East of any technology or trend.

How have your technologies or services been used to enable innovation in organisations in the Middle East?

Focussing on AI, as we said, there are many examples where it has been incorporated into solutions to enhance performance, improve accuracy or increase service levels for users.

One reason why it’s been successful so quickly is the incorporation of AI into an existing application, rather than starting from scratch.

That often means a faster turnaround of idea to execution, as generally the customer or solution provider has the necessary data and merely needs to add the AI component.

With IBM, for example, this can often be done via an API call into a Watson service (an IBM-developed questionanswering computer service) to tap in to the vast base of knowledge and skills needed to provide the AI feedback.

This has resulted in: AI in healthcare – providing a broader range of comparatives on patient notes than one doctor or hospital could ever produce.

AI in the courts – automated analysis of hearing submissions to provide a judgment based on precedence and the law.

AI in schools – creating a virtual personalised teaching programme to support the varied learning requirements of each student.

AI in customer service – further enhancing scheduling programs to

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In 2020 we expect to extend the implementations of AI with automation, particularly with respect to highvolume process organisations such as banking, insurance, government and healthcare. dynamically allocate field engineers to service calls most efficiently, improving satisfaction.

Looking ahead to 2020, what are your plans in terms of new market opportunities?

In 2020 we expect to extend the implementations of AI with automation, particularly with respect to highvolume process organisations such as banking, insurance, government and healthcare.

When they combine these two technologies, then the capacity and flexibility of process automation, and the decision-making capabilities of AI, should make every interaction instantaneous, eliminating delays and further enhancing customer service.

A recent study by IDC shows that between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will touch $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

The technology shifts described above will require a complete transformation of the way many companies work.

For larger enterprises it’s a chance for the IT department to take a lead once more in delivering value to their organisation’s lines of business through propositions using these tools. This helps them to become disruptive in their industry.

For many though it will be down to the partner who is delivering the solution to come up with these innovative changes and deliver them to the customers.

Either way, this is a cycle that eventually all businesses will go through and within a few short years it will be the norm, something without which it will be hard to compete in any industry.

For example we could expect that large “lower-skilled” call-centre environments will be replaced by far smaller, higher-skilled exceptionhandling units in a business delivering zero process delays and the highest possible levels of customer satisfaction.

What differentiates your company for your competitors?

GSD is focused on helping our partners to grow their businesses. Our success depends on their success so we work with the business leaders of our partners to ensure they understand these new technologies available and build plans, skills and solutions to keep them ahead in the market.

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Helping companies in the Gulf to succeed in digital transformation Gulf IT Network Distribution offers products from partners in fields such as cybersecurity, information management and network solutions. Ganesan Muthiah, the company’s founder and CEO, describes how his company helps its customers to navigate the digital landscape.

Ganesan Muthiah, founder and CEO, Gulf IT Network Distribution Give us a brief overview of your company.

Gulf IT Network Distribution is a Gulfbased value-added distributor specialised in cybersecurity, information management and network solutions.

Established in 2011 by Abdul Rahaman Mohamad and me, we have more than nine years of channel and distribution experience with sales resources in the Gulf region and the Levant.

We offer a diverse portfolio of security and network technologies through our resellers, delivering innovative solutions and products for cloud and data centre security, advanced threat detection, data security, converting big data into security intelligence and identity governance practice.

For our reseller channel partners, we provides the technology expertise and support required to bring products to market.

As a leader in launching emerging products, we deliver highly responsive service levels and invest heavily in training and development to provide our partners with the expertise and support they need to grow their business.

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We also offer them a complete portfolio of fully customisable services, including product and technical training, customer service, and credit and vendor programmes.

Gulf IT is partnering with the worldclass vendors such as Imperva, SailPoint, BeyondTrust, miniOrange, NNT, Cyberbit, Corelight, FCASE, Array Networks, Silver Peak, Infovista, Niagara Networks and so on.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? We are launching lawful interception products by Nubewell, Cyberbit a SOAR, SCADA and cyber range platform, application visibility by Infovista, Corelight for actionable data analysis, forensics, and real-time response, and Advanced Packet Broker by Niagara Networks at this year’s GITEX. What are the challenges organisations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey?

Based on first-hand experience, here are the top challenges to digital

transformation that many customers are facing in Middle East. If you are facing any of these challenges, the list below may, if nothing else, give you comfort that you are not alone: – Organisational resistance to change – Lack of a clear vision for a digital customer journey.

– Ineffective gathering and leveraging of customer data.

– Inflexible technology stack and development processes.

How do your solutions help organisations to address these challenges?

Gulf IT addresses the Middle East digital transformation security and compliance journey with our vendors: – Imperva: Imperva pioneers datacentre security solutions by securing critical and sensitive data from external attacks with web application firewalls (WAF) and from internal attacks with database security solutions.

– SailPoint: SailPoint is an identity governance platform that gives

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– Cyberbit: SOC 3D is the first security automation and orchestration (SOAR) platform combining automation, orchestration and big-data-powered investigation into a single and comprehensive incident response platform that triples SOC efficiency, provides unprecedented visibility and reduces timeto-respond by 90 percent.

– FCASE: FCASE offers fraud orchestration and management for financial Institutions. Today’s financial services industry is facing challenges from financial fraud and cybercrime, with cybercriminals developing many innovative ways of operating. FCASE automates the CRM data, transactions and fraud alerts, offering orchestration and giving visibility to the CEO and the CFO.

organisations of all sizes the power to create an identity-enabled enterprise by combining data, devices and applications. Its identity governance solutions are industry leading.

Organisations can gain visibility and can control access to all resources (Who currently has access? Who Should have access? How is access being used?) across their complex hybrid IT environment.

– BeyondTrust: BeyondTrust enables organisations to gain visibility and control over all privileged accounts, users and access by defending against threats related to stolen credentials, misused

privileges and unwanted remote access, while empowering end users.

– miniOrange: miniOrange provides an array of user authentication solution that enhance the security for user’s access with single sign-on (SSO) and two-factor authentication (2FA).

– NNT: NNT File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) has been awarded the CIS benchmark. NNT is the number one competitor of Tripwire and has been replacing Tripwire with many customers around the world. NNT’s solutions offer ease of deployment and management, as well as alignment with security and compliance standards.

As a leader in launching emerging products, we deliver highly responsive service levels and invest heavily in training and development to provide our partners with the expertise and support they need to grow their business. @tahawultech www.tahawultech.com

What does innovation mean to your organisation?

For businesses like ours, this could mean implementing new ideas, creating dynamic product offerings or improving our existing services, increasing efficiency, reaching new customers, and ultimately increasing profits. This can increase the likelihood of the business succeeding.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

Apart from data-centric security and governance/compliance issues, industrial cybersecurity and IoT security are major trends in our market.

Automation systems are being heavily implemented in this region, but IoT security may not be taken account of, so there is a need for a framework for IoT security in this region and we are doing our initial research to get into this segment.

We also see industrial cybersecurity products for Pipeline SCADA or Electrical SCADA, or in metro networks, as having a huge market moving forward.

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Using AI to transform the security industry The security products and solutions provider Hikvision sees major changes for the security industry thanks to artificial intelligence. Alan Zeng, the company’s aftersales director for the UAE, discusses the transformation that is taking place.

Alan Zeng, UAE after-sales director, Hikvision Give us a brief overview of your company.

Hikvision is a world-leading provider of security products and solutions.

Featuring an extensive and highly skilled research and development workforce, Hikvision manufactures a full suite of comprehensive products and solutions for a broad range of vertical markets.

In addition to the security industry, Hikvision extends its reach to smart home technology, industrial automation and automotive electronics to achieve its longterm vision.

Hikvision products also provide powerful business intelligence for end users, which can enable more efficient operations and greater commercial success.

Committed to the utmost quality and safety of its products, Hikvision encourages partners to take advantage of the many cybersecurity resources that we offer, including the Hikvision Cybersecurity Centre.

What differentiates your company for your competitors?

In the CCTV industry, all manufactures are performing well. Each has its own advantages, so this business is still undergoing rapid development.

We have focused on video technology, and we provide security products and

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solutions. Initially, we focused on monitoring and then gradually extended to areas such as automatic driving and industrial automation.

In the era of mobile Internet, we developed EZVIZ, a sub-brand of Hikvision, which offers security intelligence for households, individuals and small enterprises.

We need to be close to the customer and to understand their needs so that we can provide products that perform better and are of higher quality, more competitively priced and delivered rapidly.

The customer is always our priority.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

Nowadays CCTV is no longer used only for security. For example, you might need a camera to watch over your pets when you are not at home. A retail manager might need, for example, employee attendance data to help in business management.

That is what we have seen – a lot of opportunities, but also challenges from the market.

One of the biggest trends in this market is artificial intelligence. The revolution of big data has already begun.

In terms of CCTV, you might need to find the five seconds of useful video evidence from a 24-hour recording among hundreds or thousands of cameras.

Using the traditional method, you might need to hire dozens of people to watch all the video to get the clip.

However, by utilising AI, all the data will be structured, which can help you to search according to the specific features of objects captured on video, such as a person’s gender identity, physical attributes and the colours of the clothes that he or she is wearing. This helps to easily and quickly find the target individual.

The revolution is just starting. We need

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One of the biggest trends in this market is artificial intelligence. The revolution of big data has already begun. In terms of CCTV, you might need to find the five seconds of useful video evidence from a 24-hour recording among hundreds or thousands of cameras. to explore what more AI can bring to this industry, and also to work with customers to keep on improving our products.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? The most important products that we are releasing this year are: – Sira-approved ANPR: In July this year, Hikvision’s ANPR product was approved

by Sira. We are the third company overall and the first Chinese company to have obtained this approval. The conditions and regulations for the approval require that the products cover the whole of the GCC region’s car number plates with more than 98 percent recognition accuracy. This opens up a new market for Hikvision.

– Fusion server: We have already released a series of high-performance intelligent-analysis servers for public security. However, there is market demand

for a lighter and more flexible solution for midsize projects with facial recognition and other related requirements. So we are offering the Fusion Intelligent server, which is an all-in-one server that combines an analysis server with big data and storage.

It provides functions like list alarm, facepicture comparison, search by picture, human appearance frequency search and one person one archive.

– ColorVu: View in colour, even in darkness – this is what the ColorVu series products can bring. For example, if you describe the first person you saw today, for sure the description will include information such as that he was wearing a blue suit and black shoes This shows that the colour is a key element of a description. Losing colour means losing core information.

– Interactive Tablet: The 86-inch Interactive Tablet integrates the functions of computers, projectors, interactive whiteboards, sound boxes, cameras, HDTVs, advertising machines and so on.

The device integrates technologies like 4K display, infrared touch, humanmachine interaction, multi-media information processing and network transmission, and provides users with various features such as writing, annotating, multi-screen sharing and remote video call.

What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019?

Our main long-term goal is to survive and thrive in the market. Huge technological changes can cause fluctuations in the performance of parts of the enterprise.

We have been changing ourselves and our products all the time, from the compressed card provider to becoming involved in digital hard disk recorders (DVRs), cameras and other business development.

We never stop moving forward.

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Using digital technology to transform the world Huawei is showcasing the benefits of a connected world in areas ranging from education to healthcare. Hani ELKukhun, the company’s vice president strategy for the Middle East, describes the transformations that are coming.

Hani ELKukhun, vice president, strategy, Middle East, Huawei 5G has been branded as this year’s game-changing technology. What impact do you think 5G will have on organisations in the Middle East?

GITEX comes at a critical point as largescale 5G network launches are now imminent. 5G will have an impact on every aspect of society from businesses and government to individuals.

The biggest technical perks of 5G are greater connectivity speeds and lower latency, and the value of that to society is enormous.

Today, that means powering new applications in areas like virtual reality, cloud gaming and robotics, and bringing endless use cases to nearly every vertical industry.

5G will also open up collaborative and remote workspaces like never before. It will create more efficiency and productivity, too, as being tied to a desk becomes a thing of the past. For organisations that operate remote equipment – such as air traffic control centres, emergency services

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with monitoring cameras, big industry, and so on – 5G will again power smarter solutions with greater connectivity.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

At GITEX, we will showcase end-to-end ICT solutions that contribute to building a fully connected, intelligent world.

Artificial intelligence and 5G will play a major role in this transformation. They are the most significant technologies that are reshaping our society today. This advanced intelligence will be felt across every touchpoint of the digital economy.

We hope to demonstrate the benefits of that connected society, and how together with our partners and customers, we are bringing digital to people, homes and organisations across the region.

What are the challenges organisations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey?

On a global scale, there are two major

factors that impede digital transformation: lack of understanding, and limited budget.

Smaller companies tend to have an advantage when it comes to digital transformation, as they have fewer resources to convert. While they may not have the budget to hire a digital strategist or a CIO who can lead the transformation, they can rely on partners to provide advice and customised solutions.

Larger organisations face different challenges. Many have appointed CIOs who are devising and leading digital transformation efforts successfully.

However, overhauling operations for companies that have hundreds if not thousands of employees can be a massive endeavour. That requires considerable time, training, and investment.

That being said, I think many organisations in the Middle East have moved quickly to capture the value of digital. Take AI as one example. Those of us in the ICT industry have been championing the benefits of AI for some time now, and

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connectivity, unleashing innovation to propel a new wave of economic growth.

This economic value will be bolstered even further by the roll-out of 5G broadband. Enabling more people, things and devices connected with high speed and low-latency bandwidth than ever before, 5G will facilitate the kind of realtime data sharing and analysis at the heart of AI applications.

many organisations in the Middle East now realise these benefits and are embracing the AI movement as a real game changer.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in, besides 5G? In the Middle East, governments are strongly pursuing digital transformation in their pursuit of economic diversification.

That confidence comes as the world’s economy has started to benefit from this historic technology pivot.

As we digitise and connect more things, AI is becoming a new generalpurpose technology, and perhaps the most significant trend impacting the market today.

We can see this in Huawei’s latest Global Connectivity Index. We have found that industries are embedding AI in key enabling technologies – broadband, datacentres, cloud, big data and IoT – to turn connectivity into intelligent

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Those of us in the ICT industry have been championing the benefits of AI for some time now, and many organisations in the Middle East now realise these benefits and are embracing the AI movement as a real game changer.

A recent study by IDC shows that, between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will touch $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

Businesses and governments will continue to invest heavily in digital transformation in the coming years. There is a growing realisation that digital strategies must be adopted now in order for organisations and public institutions to survive in an increasingly connected world.

As more organisations adapt to these changes, Huawei believes that digital inclusion must be a priority. Digital inclusion means using technology to promote inclusive development and leaving no person, home or organisation behind. Our philosophy is that technology shouldn’t sit in an ivory tower. Instead, it should benefit all humanity.

In practical terms, that means using digital technology to give more people easy access to better healthcare resources.

It means using technology to give the disadvantaged equal access to education and enrich education resources.

Eliminating development gaps for various sectors can also be achieved by ensuring equal access to digital resources. Moreover, we can use innovative technologies to more efficiently protect and conserve environmental ecosystems.

It is all part of building a fully connected, intelligent world.

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Pressing ahead with new initiatives during an exciting time As the technology landscape continues to change, Injazat - A Mubadala Company is looking to further exploit areas such as IoT and artificial intelligence. Mohamed Al Qubaisi, the company’s chief technology officer, describes what is happening.

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Mohamed Al Qubaisi, chief technology officer, Injazat - A Mubadala Company

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Can you give us examples of how Injazat’s technologies or services have been used to enable innovation in organisations in the Middle East?

Innovative solutions that solve industryspecific challenges, that’s our focus. We have had a great deal of success with Malaffi (the Abu Dhabi health information exchange), Hassantuk (a UAE Civil Defence initiative to monitor and verify fire and life safety alarms) and the Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019, and we have new exciting initiatives in IoT and AI for oil and gas and the public sector.

We take clients on a journey attuned to their needs and focused on outcomes. We foster talented students by linking with universities and start-ups to develop new innovative products.

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Gartner predicts that by 2021, 80 percent of all emerging technologies will rely on artificial intelligence. How do you think AI will affect these technologies?

Natural language interaction is AI’s lowhanging fruit. Many organisations have already adopted new customer channels through chat bots. The real value is the data insights from these interactions with customers. They can now be captured, analysed and new business value extracted from them.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

Emerging technologies are already transforming the IT market.

We’re seeing a need to develop subscription-based products and services.

Tech service providers of the future are becoming true business partners and we expect to see a move towards business-driven service models and a shift from service-level agreements (SLAs) to outcome-based services. Agile-based delivery is a must now.

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Tech service providers of the future are becoming true business partners and we expect to see a move towards business-driven service models and a shift from service-level agreements (SLAs) to outcome-based services.

Many organisation are already transforming their legacy applications to container-based micro-services on the cloud.

We are also seeing a lot of demand for automation and expect more adoption of robotic process automation.

It’s an exciting time for Injazat in the market.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

Injazat is changing rapidly. GITEX is a good opportunity to engage with customers and show them the new value we have created to support their success.

Looking ahead to 2020, what are your plans in terms of new market opportunities?

We are excited by the launch of our Agile Factory. We’ve been listening to our clients and some of the challenges on their digital journeys. The Agile Factory will be central to their transformation by delivering and managing digital solutions quickly and continuously.

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A unified approach In a detailed conversation, Husni Hammoud, general manager, Ivanti Middle East, discusses how the IT software firm’s holistic offerings on data management and security will enable regional customers’ digital transformation Husni Hammoud, general manager, Ivanti Middle East

Can you please share some of some of your recent highlights?

Over the last few months, we have deployed significant updates into our portfolio of cloud solutions and have introduced improvements to our automation and security features. We have also successfully consolidated a number of our solutions to ensure that we deliver comprehensive solutions that are tailored to the needs of both our enterprise and SMB customers.

We have also strengthened both our global and local teams and onboarded new members across our operations in the US and the Middle East.

As for our channel ecosystem, we have onboarded major partners and systems integrators to help us achieve our growth objectives in the region.

In addition, before the year ends, we aim to announce new IT packages and platforms for our customers in

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the SMB space to make sure that they remain competitive in their digital transformation agendas.

Data has been branded as the new oil in today’s digital economy and its growth has been faster than ever before. How has this impacted your organisation?

Data is indeed the new oil of the digital economy. Last year, we saw public and private sector organisations increase their focus on regulating the way data is being used, stored and accessed. We have seen the enactment of stricter privacy laws including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

These developments have driven organisations to look more closely into how they manage and protect their data. Subsequently, it also pushed security vendors to develop more

innovative tools and solutions that will enable enterprises to be compliant.

Ivanti is a major player in this space.

With offerings ranging from identity and access management, endpoint security and patch management among others, we provide organisations with a holistic platform to protect and monitor their data. We also offer workspace management solutions to enable enterprises to effectively and efficiently manage within their IT infrastructure.

We have integrated security across all our management solutions and to help end-users prevent any hacking and ransomware or mitigate any risks of data loss.

At Ivanti, we always find the right balance between delivering our customers’ IT needs and optimising user experiences. We aim to deliver a unified IT infrastructure while boosting productivity and increasing security.

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Nowadays data security is one of the majors concerns for organisations.

How can your organisation help companies have a strong security strategy?

We believe that an effective security strategy is something you can’t build with one stone, instead, it’s a wall that’s made up of multiple technologies.

This is why, over the recent past, we have done a lot of consolidations to make sure that we provide our customers with a full-fledged security infrastructure that will help them minimise the risks.

A recent study by IDC shows that between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will touch $7.5 trillion. How can organisations adapt to these changes?

As I have mentioned previously, data

will play a major role in the evolution of multiple technologies in the market.

That’s why we will see organisations adopting tools and solutions from data analysis, to machine learning, AI and blockchain, which are all focused on minimising the use of legacy systems and augmenting data transactions. At the core of it all is security, so we can expect organisations strengthening their investments in cybersecurity to adapt and stay resilient in the digital economy.

Last but not least, organisations will also need to look closely into the human factor of digital transformation. They should focus their investments into developing talents and equipping them the new technical skillsets that will help them leverage advanced technologies.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

Over the past couple of years, we

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We believe that an effective security strategy is something you can’t build with one stone, instead, it’s a wall that’s made up of multiple technologies. have done a lot of acquisitions as well as integration within our offerings.

We can now say that we have a fully mature platform that our partners and end-users can leverage to transform their business more effectively and efficiently.

At GITEX, we will showcase how our solutions around security, end-user management, IT management, and process and workflow management among others can help them eliminate any complexities within their IT infrastructure. We will highlight how we can provide them with a holistic solution that’s cost-effective and easy to deploy.

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Taking advantage of digital transformation Lenovo DCG is looking to ensure that organisations in the region grasp the opportunities offered by the cloud and the Internet of Things. The company’s Middle East regional director, Richard Wilcox, describes the exciting times ahead.

Richard Wilcox, regional director, Lenovo DCG Middle East

A recent study by IDC forecasts that between 2018 and 2022, spending on digital transformation will reach $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

As organisations in the Middle East increasingly recognise the added value that is provided by IoT, we are seeing increased adoption by customers and organisations across different sectors.

Simultaneously, as these organisations develop their IoT infrastructures, governments in the region are increasingly supporting the momentum, ultimately creating an ecosystem where IoT can unlock economic growth for the region.

With cloud and IoT growing in popularity, organisations need to virtualise their data centre infrastructure for efficiency and cost reduction.

This includes the use of less physical hardware, reducing the amount of heat generated. This all leads to a host of complexities disappearing.

Through virtualisation, cloud architectures create a wider array of options for end-users and offer the ability to divide the data based on usage requirements, presenting a more dynamic framework than traditional applications.

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@tahawultech

Smarter technology for all Visit us at Gitex Technology Week 2019 Dubai World Trade Centre Hall 7, Stand H7-B30

#LenovoDataCenter #LenovoGitex2019

Lenovo 2019. All rights reserved. Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks of Lenovo. Intel, the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel

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Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as property of others.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? In line with our ‘Smarter Technology for All’ strategy, a series of new solutions will be showcased at GITEX Technology Week 2019, representing a number of verticals that Lenovo DCG is spearheading in the market.

These solutions respond to the current and unprecedented appetite for new technologies that meet the demands of customers to harness the potential of data, cloud computing and machine learning.

Of the various solutions on display this year, we will be showcasing innovations in blockchain and AI in the data centre, software-defined data centre solutions, HPC, edge and IoT computing and many more. In addition, we will be showcasing for the first time our innovative Lenovo Financial Services, which provide a range of commercial payment solutions for the sale, procurement and consumption of any IT-related products and services. This service was launched in order to help increase the efficiency of acquisition, deployment, upgrading and disposal of IT-related products designed to protect the region’s environment.

The cloud ecosystem in the Middle East is changing rapidly, with many hyperscalers opening data centres in the region. What is your organisation’s approach to cloud?

As more business-critical applications are deployed, the lack of centralised management and visibility can easily dilute the benefits when services are not available to customers, partners and/or employees.

This is where the cloud comes in, utilising edge computing and IoT for efficiency.

For data collected from remote sensors, smartphones, tablets and machines, edge and IoT capabilities enhance the ability to do analysis in real time, ensuring the outcomes are immediately actionable for personnel at the site.

Today’s businesses are tasked with doing more with less, and at Lenovo

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DCG, we pride ourselves on offering cloud solutions with added efficiency that not only put more computing power in the hands of users at lower relative cost, but also save energy and free organisations up to allocate valuable resources toward additional functionality.

Our goal at Lenovo DCG is to help provide end-users this next level of accessibility.

The innovations taking shape at Lenovo and in our industry are paving the way for efficiency across a myriad of value-chains.

Can you highlight any major regional customers you have on-boarded over the last 12 months? How are they using your technologies and services to grow their business?

Lenovo has won some significant opportunities over the last 12 months, including some major telecommunications customers and regional government wins.

For example, some governments have leveraged our HPC offerings as the

The launch of our new edge computing range will allow our customers to extend the power of their data centre capabilities right to the edge; allowing them to deliver applications to their end-users in an efficient and scalable way.

worldwide leader and number one in high-performance computing and cloud services. A number of other customers from the financial services sector have also successfully deployed Lenovo data centre solutions to empower their businesses.

Lenovo is helping to transform productivity and collaboration by helping people to work smarter through innovative emerging technologies.

This year we announced a series of new products, partnerships and solutions for business customers that reflect the company’s ongoing intelligent and digital transformation strategy. The strategy demonstrates Lenovo’s unique business perspective on how to build end-to-end solutions with smart features that transform businesses and improve the user experience.

What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019?

Our strategy is to continue to invest in digital transformation across the Middle East. What this means is that we look holistically at all industries and identify a course of action that would assist public and private-sector organisations with the growth of data that is processed and generated at the edge.

Our hardware, software, infrastructure and solutions are powering the way you as a consumer experience all these industries’ products and services.

Furthermore, we are also proud to be leading the way with real, game-changing IoT offerings. The launch of our new edge computing range will allow our customers to extend the power of their data centre capabilities right to the edge; allowing them to deliver applications to their endusers in an efficient and scalable way.

Overall, we are focusing on leading and enabling intelligent transformation. To do this, we’re developing technologies to make individuals’ lives better, move industries forward, and open up the opportunities presented by the intelligence revolution.

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Empowering direct action through intelligence Reveille Software serves organisations in the Gulf using enterprise content management systems. Bob Howatt, Reveille’s vice president of sales, describes the benefits that his company’s solutions can bring.

Bob Howatt, vice president of sales, Reveille Software

Give us a brief overview of your company and what your role is as a Gulf Software Distribution vendor.

Reveille Software provides performance and security management for complex business applications using enterprise content management (ECM) systems from IBM, Microsoft, OpenText and other leading ECM providers.

Our company was born out of an internal IT project at one of the largest banks in the United States. There was no product that existed specifically in those environments, so we identified a gap in the market.

We took hold of the management environment, both for the capture part of the ECM and for the repository part.

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The product worked so well that the bank started selling the software as a separate internal activity. When there was a merger, they didn’t want to have any software in their portfolio.

We had some investors and they took control of the company and we’ve been an independent software company since 2007.

As a partner of Gulf Software Distribution (GSD), Reveille is looking to provide consumers of ECM applications with the systems management capabilities they need to ensure superior performance and security of these mission-critical business applications in the Gulf region.

GSD’s partner network works with hundreds of organisations throughout the Gulf region who utilise these complex ECM environments to run their strategic business applications.

What are the challenges organisations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey?

The challenges facing organisations in the Gulf region are the same as those facing organisations throughout the rest of the world.

These are keeping up with the rate of change in using existing technologies with emerging technologies to

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As a partner of Gulf Software Distribution, Reveille is looking to provide consumers of enterprise content management applications with the systems management capabilities they need to ensure superior performance and security. provide newer, faster and better ways to utilise information.

Since the majority of new data is “unstructured� data, the use of ECM technologies is growing. The need to manage and secure this explosive growth has become a priority for chief information officers as they try to meet the demands of the business.

Reveille gives hundreds of customers unparalleled visibility into their content services. These organisations immediately gain deep insight into performance, security, adoption and compliance. We empower direct action, driven by intelligence, to create smooth and incident-free operation.

Leaping beyond generalpurpose monitoring to a new level of active insight, Reveille creates transparency into customer experience, user behaviour and sustainable operations.

Using Reveille results in a healthy content stack, adopted apps, hardened security through behavioural profiling, simplified audit, and transparent multi-tenant usage, trending and planning.

What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019?

Our goals for the remainder of 2019 are to continue to educate the GSD

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network of partners and to introduce this purpose-built agentless solution to the user community in the Gulf region.

What do you hope to achieve at GITEX Technology Week 2019?

Our goal for GITEX Technology Week 2019 is to develop awareness in the Gulf region that a real management solution is available to help the computing community manage their strategic ECM-based application environment. It is a solution that provides the system insight that organisations need to ensure performance and security.

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Constant innovation in the ID industry ScreenCheck, which offers multiple ID solutions, aims to constantly innovate.

Faisal Mohamed, the company’s CEO, talks about the multiple new products that the company is launching at this year’s GITEX. Faisal Mohamed, CEO, ScreenCheck

Are you launching or announcing any new products and services at this year’s GITEX? We are launching three new solutions this year at GITEX: – Edikio Guest is a printing solution from Evolis to design and print various display tags for the hospitality sector, including buffet tags, key tags and display tags. It is an innovative and progressive solution in the marketplace.

– VAMS is a digital visitor management solution for organisations. It lets organisations register visitors, issue their badges, and monitor and control their movement at the premises. It allows registration of the visitors within short time, verification of their identification documents and verification of the blacklist before it issues the visitor badges.

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@tahawultech

– Bene Asset is one of the most advanced radio-frequency identification (RFID) based asset tracking solutions in the marketplace with connectivity to Internet of Things (IoT) platforms.

Why is GITEX such an important platform for your company to connect with the Middle East’s technology industry?

GITEX is the most prominent platform in the Middle East today where industry professionals across several domains in information technology gather, interact, experience and have a lasting conversation.

As we cover the entire region of the Middle East and Africa, there isn’t any other platform that comes even close to what we experience at GITEX, so the event is of prime importance to us.

What have been the most exciting developments in the Middle East’s technology landscape over the past 12 months?

We have seen huge developments in identification, biometrics and RFID distribution, especially when the distribution business is in a transitional phase from the traditional

box distribution to a solution-based distribution model.

Of late, manufacturers have started introducing a variety of solutions that make partners propose and implement faster. So far, I believe, this has been a challenging and exciting development.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

Digital transformation and connectivity are the main trends in our industry.

With the introduction of 5G in the region, IoT, the fourth industrial revolution, digitisation and other similar technologies will gain momentum.

At ScreenCheck, we believe in continuous innovation to cater to varied kinds of threats.

How are you innovating to ensure that your offerings are future-proof?

Innovation is in our DNA. ScreenCheck has been amongst the first to introduce many ID cards and biometric-based solutions in the marketplace, and we are continuously investing in research and development to make our products and solutions future ready.

Our innovations are not limited to the products that we offer; we are also

Innovation is in our DNA. ScreenCheck has been amongst the first to introduce many ID cards and biometric-based solutions in the marketplace, and we are continuously investing in research and development to make our products and solutions future ready.

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continuously identifying new ways of doing business. Innovation is the key that keeps us up to date.

Why is security important in enabling digital transformation in the region?

Our society has become increasingly security conscious. With everything from roads to homes, hospitals, banks and schools, the need for security has increased dramatically.

Who would appreciate a breach in security? People are adapting to new technology to protect themselves and to increase the efficiency of what they do. This is an important parameter that boosts digital transformation in the region.

How are you enabling your distributor and channel partners to optimise the opportunities in the digital economy?

We ensure that our channel partners are updated with the latest trends and technological advancements in the region.

Technological changes are fast-paced and innovations are even faster. We assist our channel partners in providing innovative solutions to maximise opportunities in the digital economy.

What technologies should partners focus on to stay profitable in a digital era?

Various RFID-based solutions are in high demand and the need for these has drastically increased over time.

The focus should also be on IoT and artificial intelligence-enabled product lines. These solutions have to be upgraded over time.

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6 Want to find out more about a new approach to managing your data?

Come and talk to us at GITEX 2019, Stand #E20, Hall 7, DWTC, Dubai, UAE

Dealing with the challenges of data proliferation Veritas helps organisations to manage the myriad of complexities linked to the rapid growth of data. Damian Wilk, the company’s Middle East senior regional director, describes how the company’s solutions can help.

Damian Wilk, senior regional director, Middle East, Veritas

Data has been branded as the new oil in today’s digital economy and its growth has been faster than ever before. How has this impacted your organisation?

Data is growing at scale and this presents both a wealth of opportunities and challenges for companies. While data provides opportunities to drive innovation and better customer experience through intelligent and actionable insights, managing exponential data growth also creates IT complexities that all organisations struggle with, especially as organisations don’t often have a clear data hygiene strategy. This results in a growth of dark data.

These include how to store this data efficiently, how to ensure all data is protected so that an organisation can defend against cyberattacks and ransomware.

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Other challenges include complying with new data regulations, because organisations don’t know what data they have. There is also the issue of how to make data available to meet business service-level agreements (SLAs).

What makes it more complex is that data no longer resides in one location but sprawls across multiple highly virtualised platforms, and it has to move around, making it very difficult to manage.

Veritas is the original data management company and, with more and more companies realising the true value of their data, we help many of the world’s largest and most important organisations manage what matters to them the most. These include highly available apps, ensuring that data always protected and can be recovered at scale, and insights that drive operational efficiency and regulatory compliance. All these, and our no hardware

agenda, have never been more relevant than they are today.

A recent study by IDC shows that between 2018 and 2022, IT-related spending on digital transformation will touch $7.5 trillion. How will organisations adapt to these changes?

Technology leaders are under pressure to do more with less and to drive IT investment towards business outcomes like bringing new products to market faster and creating unique customer experiences.

Most organisations operate in highly complex and diverse IT environments, combining legacy and new platforms while gradually adopting the cloud.

What they’re telling Veritas is that they need a platform approach and want to standardise on a single data management layer that provides protection and availability regardless of the infrastructure choices they make.

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Technology leaders are under pressure to do more with less and to drive IT investment towards business outcomes like bringing new products to market faster and creating unique customer experiences.

What are the challenges organisations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey?

The Middle East is in the midst of unprecedented digital transformation; it is an exciting time that brings with it both tremendous opportunity and challenges.

With the UAE being home to the first Microsoft cloud datacentre region in the Middle East, and organisations increasingly moving towards cloudbased services as part of their digital journey, the need for visibility and improved data control is set to continue gathering pace.

Can you give us examples of how your organisation’s technologies or services have been used to enable innovation in organisations in the Middle East?

A few years ago we released our first Databerg report, a study that

highlighted that only 12 percent of data stored by UAE organisations is critical to their business.

The vast majority of data is either obsolete or completely dark. It creates financial exposure and potential risk of losing sensitive information.

We work with our customers to tackle this problem by providing them visibility into their data across all platforms so that it can be analysed and classified.

Once we have visibility, the next step is to build a business policy and integrated workflows.

This could be for business reasons like reducing cost or complying with data privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

A recent assessment we ran for one of our customers showed that more than 70 percent of files have not been accessed for over a year.

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Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? In addition to launching the results of our 2019 UAE Databerg study, we will be showcasing our new Enterprise Data Services Platform to address today’s challenges around data growth and fragmentation, data availability and data insight.

Modernisation is really about choice and Veritas’s platform supports over 500 data sources, 150 storage targets, 60 cloud providers and every deployment model.

Veritas recently acquired APTARE, the industry’s only vendor-independent data and IT analytics platform.

We will be demonstrating how the APTARE platform helps organisations to identify risks to their business data, such as unprotected data, stretched storage resources and compliance breaches.

Last but not least, we are also very excited to launch VBar for the first time.

Located at the Veritas stand, we will offer customers and prospects the opportunity to meet with one of our many subject matter experts to learn about the new ways to manage data complexity.

Visitors can also join one of our many “Meet the Expert” sessions – with the option to pre-book their attendance in advance.

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Transforming the digital experience for customers WebNMS offers IoT software for enterprise and industrial customers. Karen Ravindranath, WebNMS director, explains how a new partnership has helped the company to expand its Industrial IoT solutions.

Karen Ravindranath, director, WebNMS Give us a brief overview of your company.

WebNMS is the Internet of Things (IoT) division of Zoho Corporation, headquartered in Chennai in India.

WWebNMS offers full-stack IoT software aimed at transforming the digital experience for customers.

The platform offers edge-to-cloud connectivity, core processing and analytics, dynamic data visualisation and enterprise business application connectivity.

With WebNMS IoT, you can manage industrial operations, run factory automation, automate business operations, manage asset health, optimise energy consumption, optimise transportation and remotely secure and control your business environment.

The IoT platform is integrated with multiple capabilities like industrial IoT, energy management, asset management and fleet management, integrated into a single unit making it the most “ready-todeploy” platform available in the market.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? This year WebNMS has grown bigger with the introduction of Industrial IoT (IIoT) capabilities.

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@tahawultech

We have partnered with one of the leading global industrial communication device manufacturers, HMS Networks, which has enabled us to provide top-notch IIoT solutions for various industries.

WebNMS will be showcasing a detailed walk through and demo of its IIoT solutions at booth B2 in hall eight of Dubai World Trade Centre. Visitors can drop in at the booth to get insights on how to manage, measure and optimise industrial operations with WebNMS’s IIoT solutions.

Additionally, WebNMS has strengthened its fleet and logistics management solutions with custom, curated enhancements including rolebased web and mobile applications, multidriver support and automated dispatch to offer customers an end-to-end fleet and logistics experience.

Can you give us examples of how your technologies or services have been used to enable innovation in organisations in the Middle East?

WebNMS offers numerous urban and secure smart city solutions.

In association with one of the leading engineering service providers, Imtac LLC, we have successfully deployed a largescale smart lighting solution for Muscat Municipality.

The municipality was facing the operational challenge of managing a large city lighting infrastructure spread across a vast geographical region.

WebNMS’s smart lighting solution was able to connect and on-board those lights on to a single platform, to get periodic data, perform analytics and provide automation.

The IoT application deployed orchestrated the area’s entire lighting system, keeping operations in perfect harmony.

What differentiates your company from your competitors?

The IoT market is crowded with multiple players from different stacks of the enterprise solution architecture.

However, most practical solutions can be achieved only through harmonious orchestration of all the layers of the architecture, that is the IoT devices, sensors, connectivity, software platform, analytics and hosting infrastructure.

The major factor that differentiates WebNMS from the rest of the players in the market is the software platform’s ability to serve as the fulcrum for the various components of the architecture and achieve harmonious orchestration of data across the enterprise operations

With WebNMS IoT, you can manage industrial operations, run factory automation, automate business operations, manage asset health, optimise energy consumption, optimise transportation and remotely secure and control your business environment.

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along with rich analytics and insights.

What challenges do organisations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey?

The Middle East is transitioning from a traditional petrol and oil economy to a manufacturing and technology-driven economy.

However, in order to achieve a fully fledged transformation, technology adoption should be carried out on a topdown basis.

Business influencers and top-level decision-makers should fully embrace disruptive technology like IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the like in order to elevate the current enterprise ecosystem.

According to a recent IDC report, the Middle East and Africa will witness IoT investment worth $17.6 billion by 2023.

This implies that IoT solutions are already being used in various enterprises across the Middle East and there is immense opportunity for traditional IT channel and service industries to take hold of the changes in the market in order to create new revenue streams and offer value-added services to their customers.

However, there is a gap in the skill sets required for modern and futuristic technology platforms.

WebNMS aims to bridge this gap and give impetus to systems integrators (SIs), technology channel players and operations service providers with a powerful IoT platform, focused partner training and a collaborative solution ecosystem.

It fosters a strong partnership network of device manufacturers, connectivity providers and regional implementation vendors to give an end-to-end and scalable IoT experience for customers.

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@tahawultech

By 2021, 50% of large enterprises will use an integrated risk management (IRM) solution set to provide better decision making capabilities.

Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 28 – 29 October 2019 | Dubai, UAE gartner.com/me/security

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At the forefront of the data revolution As data continues to be generated in ever-increasing amounts, Western Digital is helping organisations to make best use of it. Khwaja Saifuddin, the company’s Middle East senior sales director, describes the trends.

Khwaja Saifuddin, senior sales director, Western Digital, Middle East What differentiates your company for your competitors?

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. We drive the innovation needed to help the world capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data.

On your phone, in the cloud, across organisations – everywhere data lives, we’re there to drive the innovation necessary for the best results today and tomorrow.

It is about new devices, new systems, new solutions and world-class data infrastructure, all optimised and tuned to create the right conditions for data to realise its full potential.

As a leader in data centre infrastructure, we accept the responsibility to empower people and systems that depend on data.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? As consumers generate more content than ever, Western Digital is creating and delivering innovative solutions to help them capture, share and manage it all.

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At GITEX Trade Week 2019, we will be showcasing our latest offerings.

These range from SanDisk’s all-new 1Tb microSD card, the WD Black P10 gaming drive and WD’s innovative portfolio of internal SSDs, all the way to WD Purple’s broad storage portfolio for security and surveillance, and Western Digital’s Ultrastar data-centre drives.

What have been the most exciting developments in the Middle East’s technology landscape over the last 12 months?

Even as new technologies are developed, innovation around the application of existing technology is rapidly changing how organisations operate. Leaps in computing capacity, data capture and connectivity are accelerating this change.

There hasn’t been one single trending technology in 2019, but a bunch of technologies have instead made their presence felt. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, Internet of Things, blockchain and automation have been the key hot topics for quite some time now.

An important one for Western Digital Corporation is IoT, which is one of the technologies that is set to expand continuously.

Understanding and working with different types of data in the IoT ecosystem, where data can be cultivated, is the bread and butter of Western Digital.

As always, Western Digital provides pristine and high-endurance IoT solutions in a myriad of commercial industries, which allows for the management of data and work functions in a long-lasting way.

Moreover, we are seeing the evolution of edge data centres and

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At Western Digital, we will continue our drive towards developing industry-leading solutions that create an environment where the flow of information leads to smarter decisions, breakthrough discoveries and deeper connections. software-defined data centres with the introduction of 5G and concepts like mobile edge computing.

The primary driver of edge data centres, and the need to reduce latency to support a range of applications from autonomous vehicles to artificial intelligence to deep learning to robotic surgery, have made a profound impact on the progression of the data-centre market. Western Digital is at the forefront to address its needs through its diverse product portfolio.

What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019?

The volume and complexity of data will only increase. This explosion of data brings with it unprecedented opportunities.

Customers are looking for storage solutions that unlock the value of data.

Storage technology needs to be geared towards enabling business leaders to make better, more informed and smarter decisions that are backed not just by data but by insights.

At Western Digital, we will continue our drive towards developing industry-leading solutions that create an environment where the flow of information leads to smarter decisions, breakthrough discoveries and deeper connections.

What are the challenges organisations in the Middle East face in their digital-transformation journey?

In this digital era, companies across all industries need to embrace new technologies and business methods to stay relevant and ahead of their competition, which means improving their customer interactions and experiences, and therefore unlocking their business models.

Commenting on our region specifically, and according to McKinsey, many businesses are interested in digitisation, but only a few of them have moved aggressively enough.

According to the report by McKinsey, 82 percent of the region’s population already own smartphones.

Surprisingly enough, the progress on digital transformation among companies has been limited. Some of the most obvious challenges fall under companies’ reluctance to change, and instead sticking to their comfort zones.

Other factors include the absence of a clear digital-transformation strategy and vision, and the lack of technical skill sets.

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Expanding fast to serve telcos worldwide Since ZephyrTel launched early last year, the company has grown rapidly, in part thanks to acquisitions. The company’s senior vice president for customer success, Buddie Ceronie, describes the company’s latest initiatives.

Buddie Ceronie, senior vice president, customer success, ZephyrTel Give us a brief overview of your company and what your role is as a GSD vendor.

ZephyrTel serves the telecommunications industry worldwide with software products for retail, infrastructure, mobile, cloud enablement and customer experience.

We launched in early 2018 and have scaled up rapidly through the acquisition of eight companies to date, achieving revenues exceeding $70 million.

We have installations in more than 50 countries around the world, delivering solutions to 330 of the leading global telecommunications operators, including many familiar names within the GSD regions.

In April 2019, we signed a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bring our customer service, billing and charging solutions to the public cloud, helping telcos to accelerate their business transformation to the cloud.

Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? We will be featuring key enhancements to two of our established products, Mobilogy Now and PeerApp, which are widely adopted by many of the leading telcos across the GSD regions.

– Mobilogy Now: Already recognised

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All-in-one mobile lifecycle management solution now includes:

Ultrafast Content Transfer

With the launch of Ultrafast Content Transfer, we’ve made content transfer between phones even faster, with typical speeds of up to 1GB per minute, providing in-store customers with a complete replica of their phones in minutes, shortening wait times and improving customer satisfaction.

We’re also offering an upgrade to MobilogyNow All-inclusive, so you can benefit from the full suite of mobile device lifecycle services to meet your in-store needs:

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as the market-leading cross-platform, all-in-one mobile life-cycle management solution, ZephyrTel has now launched Mobilogy Now Ultrafast Content Transfer, making content transfer between phones even faster, achieving typical speeds of up to 1GB per minute. This enables mobile operators and retailers to provide in-store customers with a complete replica of their phones in minutes, shortening wait times and improving customer satisfaction.

Mobilogy Now also introduces the option of software only and comes in two platform formats: Mobilogy Now Tablet and Mobilogy Now Software. Both options offer the full suite of mobile device lifecycle services, including Ultrafast Content Transfer, Diagnostics and AppLoader, with cloud-based analytics and licencing hosted on AWS. In addition, ZephyrTel is currently offering existing customers an upgrade to Mobilogy Now All-Inclusive, so they can benefit from the full suite of mobile device life-cycle services to meet their in-store needs.

– PeerApp: The phenomenal growth of digital content and insatiable demand from consumers is fundamentally changing viewing habits. Network congestion negatively impacts customer experience, brand perception and loyalty.

PeerApp moves popular content data closer to users by accelerating and virtually localising content delivery. Data served from the caching system is made available locally, enabling delivery at much higher speeds and maintaining a high quality of experience.

Subscribers want to watch live events as they happen, without any disruption.

When a large-scale live event is aired, a huge number of users begin downloading live-streaming content. PeerApp automatically identifies popular live streams and delivers them locally from the network edge.

Our existing PeerApp customers are already making significant savings on their

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In addition to significant total cost of ownership savings, transformation to the cloud can drive incremental revenues gained by reinvesting the cost savings in creating new business models, gaining competitive advantage through digital innovation and bringing services to market faster.

IP bandwidth costs, as well as radically improving network performance. In order to maximise the benefit our customers receive, we are launching PeerApp SaveShare.

PeerApp SaveShare is charged as a proportion of the total IP bandwidth costs PeerApp saves. So the more our customers use PeerApp, the more bandwidth costs they save and the network experience their customers receive is better.

What are the biggest trends that will transform the market you’re operating in?

Telcos are under ever-increasing pressure to reduce service costs, differentiate their services and improve customer experience.

They also need to invest heavily in new technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). This drives the imperative for business transformation to the cloud.

In addition to significant total cost of ownership savings, transformation to the cloud can drive incremental revenues gained by reinvesting the cost savings in creating new business models, gaining competitive advantage through digital innovation and bringing services to market faster.

In addition, by leveraging customer data using technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics, telcos can get closer to their customers, improving customer experience, reducing churn and increasing revenues.

Predictive analytics have the ability to process vast amounts of real-time and historic data from multiple sources, such as the network, call centre interactions, social media and various internal systems, delivering actionable customer experience statistics. Analytics can examine what time of day users make calls, how many SMS messages they send, how much data they consume and which apps they use most.

AWS have already taken on much of this challenge and provide their analytics technology stacks as ready-to-use platforms.

ZephyrTel’s Innovation Hub in Dubai is working with AWS in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space.

We’re developing our first suite of predictive analytics applications built on AWS, which is very exciting for telcos needing to address major challenges such as customer churn, by enabling sophisticated customer segmentation and dynamic personalised rate plans.

ZephyrTel is fully committed to delivering a full end-to-end telco operations support system and business support system (OSS/BSS) cloud native application stack, made available on AWS. We are continuously extending our cloud solution portfolio and partnering with carriers on their journey of business transformation to the cloud, a vision we call CloudForward.

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