Integratorme nov2013

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Cover Feature - 14

Editorial

In the driving seat

U

sage of collaboration Technologies and Mobile workstyles are very much seeing increased prevalence. Companies including Avaya, Citrix, Polycom among others are driving this transition.

Availability of anytime communication from any device and anywhere is now very much a reality. There are some pioneering projects being deployed in the region that is redefineing connectivity.

One of the illustrative instances is the recently signed MOU between FVC and the Abu Dhabi based Ankabut ( the National Research and Education Network) to deploy a service provider grade, managed unified communications service. The service, based on the latest Real-Presence platform from Polycom and Microsoft Lync 2013, will initially enable up to 10,000 members from Ankabut and its partners, to reach and connect with anyone easily with a single click, from any platform.

Citrix has been at the forefront pushing the vision of enabling mobile workstyles. In the region, the adoption looks certain to rise as a spokesperson points out but there are also challenges in the corporate segment with some reluctance still evident to adopting cloud services in full throttle. In the consumer space, the challenges is different as the cloud services on offer from local telcos are still quite limited. It is however a matter of time and in a year or so, the adoption of cloud services as well as availability of apps across segments will definitely rise.

Avaya has driven its transformation over the past few years towards holding center stage in enabling business collaboration and communications with its software and services. Its recent agreement with DWTC to support the calendar of 100 events will entail deployment of a next-generation network virtualization solution, Fabric connect, that automates service provisioning, improves performance, and reduces outages.

These are some standout examples that inform us that high end pioneering deployments of Technology are now gathering pace in the UAE in particular. This bodes well for the channel at the end of the day.

R. Narayan Consulting Editor

Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Consulting Editor: R. Narayan Assistant Editor: David Ndichu Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

Content

Accelerating transformation

Avaya seems well poised to capitalize on the rapidly growing demand for real time and communication and collaborative infrastructure.

News In Detail - 10/11

Veeam Software Doubles Revenue Growth in Middle East Region Big Data Conference at GITEX TechKnow

Powering the data centre - 16

Vipin Sharma, VP, MEA, Tripp Lite discusses the company’s growth focus, chiefly data centre solutions

Pervasive video communication - 18

Gary Rider, President, Polycom EMEA discusses growth of video communciation

Enabling Mobile workstyles - 19

Noman Qadir, Director, Channels MEA at Citrix Systems discusses the Mobile workstyles vision that Citrix is executing

Winning with partners - 20

Ralf Haubrich, Vice President, Sophos CEEMEA discusses some of the key areas of focus for the security vendor

A pioneer of infrared cameras - 24

Jalaal Abu Hassan, Regional Sales Manager at FLIR Systems discusses the growing demand for infrared products

Point2Point

Big strides - 26

Shashikanth N, Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution talks about SAS Visual Analytics as well as trends in market

Feature

Grabbing momentum - 22

SNB Middle East is now picking up further pace in terms of its expansions as well as additions to solutions it offers.

Insight

A smart way to secure healthcare - 28 Ian Lowe at HID Global writes about how hospitals can combat threats to both their facilities and their data

Is UC just another App? - 30

Taj El Khayat, General Manager, EMEA, Riverbed offers his perspective on UC as an app

Regulars

News Bytes Eyetech Stats & Trends

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News Bytes

Hitachi Data Systems launches Private Cloud Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) announced new private cloud services and portfolio enhancements and showcased the new technologies at GITEX. The new private cloud offerings will help customers consolidate, virtualize, and automate to truly be self-service organizations. The newly-announced products include Hitachi self-service portal, Hitachi UCP Select on VMware vSphere for Cisco UCS reference architectures, Hitachi Services Framework and private cloud methodology, and new Hitachi Unified Storage encryption.

Aaron White, Hitachi Data Systems’ General Manager Middle East, notes how Hitachi Data Systems’ local success “is based on providing efficient, services-driven IT strategies that can help businesses in this fast-growing region affordably employ advanced IT technology.

Our Private Cloud solution is free of vendor lock-in, and it keeps pricing structures efficient, giving our customers the opportunity to pay for the IT services that they need, and avoid redundant hardware that they don’t.”

The private cloud solutions use an open architecture that includes a storage, compute and network infrastructure layer, APIs, open interfaces and protocols needed to work with management and orchestration frameworks. They also offer portals and global services required to build, deploy, and manage private clouds.

4 | November 2013

Aptec unveils new Cloud Services Strategy Through its value added distribution arm Aptec, Ingram Micro, a Fortune 100 company and the world’s largest wholesale technology distributor, announced at GITEX 2013 its leading cloud solution strategy, new cloud vendor portfolio and cloud website.

“We were pleased to participate in the largest technology event in the region and lead the way in the adoption of cloud computing practices. We aim to do this by educating and showcasing how value added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs) and solution providers (SPs) can monetize the cloud using innovative go-to-market strategies, solutions and services,” says Ali Baghdadi, President, Ingram Micro Middle East, Africa & Turkey region.

Throughout the event, Aptec – an Ingram Micro company exposed its unique cloud go-to-market strategy, while previewing and launching several new cloud services from leading technology vendors.

In addition, Aptec demonstrated its highly anticipated Cloud Website, an online platform where solution providers and resellers can obtain detailed product information, access marketing and sales collateral and get up to date on the new cloud business reality.

HP enhances partner program HP announced additional enhancements to its global PartnerOne program, making it easier and more predictable for partners to do business with HP – helping them to gain a competitive advantage and increase profitability.

The HP PartnerOne enhancements include new HP PartnerOne Specializations in key growth areas, new competitive rebates as part of the compensation model, the creation of role-based certifications, a consistent membership structure and an improved partner portal navigation experience.

These enhancements build upon the new membership branding and core compensation updates rolled out earlier this year, when HP announced that it will start paying rewards from first sales and unleashed partners` earning potential.

“HP understands that in order for our partners to grow their business and remain competitive we need to evolve how we work together,” said EyadShihabi, Managing Director, HP Middle East. “We’re making the PartnerOne program simpler, more profitable and more predictable with the addition of new specialization tracks, a predictable compensation model, a consistent membership structure as well as a streamlined certification process.”

News Bytes

Qatar to host ITU Telecom World 2014 event The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), announced that Qatar has been selected as host country for ITU Telecom World 2014, following a competitive selection process among bidding ITU Member States. The 2014 annual edition of ITU Telecom World will take place in Doha in December 2014, at the state-of-the-art Qatar National Convention Centre. The event will bring together influential global leaders in ICT from the public and private sectors for strategic debate, knowledge-sharing, innovation showcasing and networking at the highest level.

This year’s edition of ITU Telecom World will be held in Bangkok from 19-22 November 2013 on the theme of "Embracing Change in a Digital World". Key outcomes from critical debates to be held in Bangkok on understanding and benefiting from the current radical transformation of the ICT sector -and of the world's way of working, playing and living - will inform and set the stage for the discussions to be held in Doha in 2014.

6 | November 2013

eHostingDataFort Launches RemoteBack-up Services eHostingDataFort (eHDF), the region's leading managed IT services provider and a member of TECOM Investments, has announced the launch of new data storage services popularly known as 'Managed Remote Back-up services'.

The 'Remote Back-up' services offer an efficient and reliable system for daily back-up of critical information by maintaining two copies of such data - one locally at the customer's premises and the other at a remote location via a secured network. The Remote Back-up service also features a management console, 24x7 monitoring of backup processes, regular offsite tape backup, as well as monthly reporting that provides customers with an end-to-end managed back-up service.

The service has been introduced in response to the growing demand within the region for secure and reliable data back-up with the option to restore services at a minimal investment and a reduced Total Cost of Ownership.

Yasser Zeineldin, CEO, eHostingDataFort, said: "Data loss is becoming unacceptable as organizations are unable to retrieve lost information. There has been a significant increase in demand for back-up services over the last year, which prompted eHDF to fill the gap with our new service offering. The Remote Back-up service has been conceptualized to avoid data loss and further ensure protected and secure back-up."

GITEX paves way for innovative and prosperous ICT sector in the region GITEX Technology Week experienced another bumper year of launches, partnerships and strong exhibitor ROI, firmly positioning the event as one of the world’s leading ICT gatherings.The 33rd edition of GITEX Technology Week 2013, ran under the theme “Lets Create, Disrupt and Re-imagine Together” from October 20-24 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, with Dubai Internet City as Strategic Partner.

GITEX Technology Week 2013 began with His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, officially opening the event with the major announcement of the innovative Smart City project that would transform Dubai into one of the world’s leading “smart cities”.

More than 130,000 ICT professionals, from 150 countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, representing 80% of the world’s leading ICT brands, attended GITEX Technology Week.Further indicative of the event’s growing stature was a 26% increase in international visitors on last year. A total of 61 countries exhibited, including new countries including Belarus, Brazil, Finland, Kenya, Lithuania, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia and Ukraine. GITEX Technology Week 2013’s Official Country Partner is Serbia.

GITEX Technology Week 2013 featured a host of incisive, trend-setting conferences, including the Big Data Conference, Cloud Confex, and the Digital Strategies Forum. This was further augmented by the free-to-attend Smart Sessions, a powerful showcase for anyone with innovative solutions and insight.

News Bytes

Yealink Showcases Entry Level IP Phones at GITEX Yealink Network Technology, a leading provider of VoIP phone and IP communication solutions and the “Global Top3 SIP Phone Provider” announced the launch of SIP-T19P and SIP-T21P highperformance IP phones designed specifically to offer a range of advanced features to small-tomedium sized businesses (SMEs) and carriers.

Yealink’s SIP-T19P and SIPT21P are entry-level phones designed with Yealink’s tradition of combining style and quality with leading-edge technical innovation.

“Yealink is committed to delivering high quality and technologically advanced products to cater to the every growing requirement of the business and to facilitate hassle free communications. SIP-T19P and SIP-T21P are particularly crafted for small and medium businesses to offer them feature rich yet affordable communications,” said Ms Maggie Liu, EMEA Sales Manager of Yealink.

Commenting on the new IP Phones, MrRenjan George, Managing Director of DVCOM Technology, distributors of Yealink products said, “This is the third product launch by Yealink in a short span of 2-3 months. This is refection of their on-going efforts to offer technologically advanced products which can push the boundaries.”

8 | November 2013

Emerson aims to grow channel business with Mindware Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson will be launching its Innovation Partnership Program across the Middle East, starting with the UAE and in partnership with Mindware. The program will extend to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon.

The announcement builds on last year’s strategic alliance with regional distributor Mindware in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) which bolstered its capability to deliver world-class critical infrastructure products and solutions to the region’s fast-growing smallto-medium sized business market.

Peter Lambrecht, vice president sales IT and finance segment for Emerson Network Power in Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “The launch of the program in the region is a leap forward for Emerson and shows the commitment we have as a company for our partners in the Middle East.

“Working with Mindware also means that our partners can greatly benefit from world-class training, information and tools, enabling them to address key customer challenges while maximizing their revenue and opportunity potential. The implementation of the program across EMEA means that the Middle East will be one of the first regions to join Emerson Network Power’s strategic Innovation Partnership Program initiative.”

In the Middle East, Emerson Network Power and Mindware will run a number of promotions and initiatives to benefit the local reseller base.

A10 Networks appoints Regional Head A10 Networks, the technology leader in Application Networking, announced significant investment in the Middle East region including new sales, presales and support staff, offices and partnerships.

A10 appointed Glen Ogden as Regional Sales Director for the Middle East region. Glen has over 15 years combined experience in Application Delivery and Network Security, holding positions with F5, NetScaler, Cogneto, Nokia and Qualys. Glen holds a post-graduate degree in International Business from Hull University, United Kingdom.

NidalTaha continues in his role as Strategic Consultant for A10, helping drive the team that has been hired whilst aiding the search for additional candidates. Nidal has directly contributed to the fast success of A10’s Middle East operation with appointments of key Middle East channels and strategic account wins.

In the first three quarters of 2013, A10 has seen huge growth in the Middle East region and is looking to recruit additional positions for 2014 to help its dedicated team provide increased local sales and technical pre-sales. A10 also committed to have an Engineering Support Team based in KSA in addition to an indirect channel model across the region.

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16/04/2013 1:00:26 PM

News In Detail

Veeam Software Doubles Revenue Growth in Middle East Region

V

eeam Software announced record results for the second quarter of 2013 (Q2 13), continuing its history of accelerated growth of sales, partners and employees based on its Modern Data Protection solutions. Globally, total bookings revenue increased 100 percent in Q2 13 compared to the same period in 2012, and business in the Middle East region doubled over the same period.

In the United Arab Emirates, Veeam's Middle East regional headquarters, the company's revenue booking increased by 87 percent in Q2 13 compared to the same period in 2012, while in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, revenue booking grew by 100 percent in the same period.

“Looking at our two largest markets in the Middle East, Veeam grew its customer base in the UAE by 55 percent (year on year Q2 2012 compares to Q2 2013) and 45 percent in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the same period,” said CEO, RatmirTimashev. “The Middle East region represents tremendous potential for us.

Our office in Dubai grew rapidly from 1 to over 20 people since its inception in 2011. This is a direct link to the number of customers we are acquiring.”

To meet this demand, Veeam has expanded its business operation footprint by bolstering its presence in the UAE, and expanding its network and partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the remaining GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries, the Levant and Egypt.

“The GCC represents a success for us. The UAE, specifically, is a significant growth market, experiencing rapid economic growth and driving the technology with its forward looking, progressive vision. We are pleased to see our business grow throughout the region,”

10 | November 2013

added Timashev.

During GITEX, Veeam Software announced the immediate availability of Veeam Backup & Replication v7 in the Middle East region. Among an array of market-leading features, the solution introduces two disruptive innovations, Built-in WAN Acceleration and Backup from Storage Snapshots, taking Modern Data Protection to the next level and receiving excellent reviews from users.

These developments have paved the way for Veeam plans to roll out a new marketing and business development initiative across the region to acquire more marketshare within its major vertical focus groups, those being government institutions, media and broadcasting, healthcare, financial and oil and gas sectors and telecoms. Major announcements within these sectors are expected in the near future.

Gregg Petersen, Veeam’s Regional Sales Manager in the Middle East, believes that the backup, replication and virtualization sector is set continue its double digit growth. “We’ve seen tremendous growth over the past years and we now feel that enterprises across

sector in the region understand the criticality of protecting their data assets.”

Petersen has built a team of professionals to manage the region. Omar Akhtar was hired as regional channel responsible for developing and managing strategic channel partner relationships and overseeing technology alliances, while Hazem Hakam was hired to manage Veeam’s business in Saudi Arabica, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

The announcement was made at Veeam Software's VIP Media Reception held during GITEX Technology Week in Dubai. The event saw the region's main technology and business media attend, along with Veeam's major customers and partners.

Wave Tech Computers LLC P.O. Box: 3421, Sharjah, Toll Free 800WAVE-8009283 aten@wavetechgroup.com, www.wavetechgroup.com

News In Detail

Big Data

Conference meets success E

xperts at GITEX Technology Week’s first ever Big Data Conference agreed that the ability to intelligently understand and utilise Big Data will have a profound impact on innovation and competitiveness in the region. The packed Conference, supported by Diamond Sponsor Accenture, offered valuable insights on how Big Data increasingly becomes an unavoidable and compelling item at the top of the boardroom agenda.

The 33rd edition of GITEX Technology Week 2013, running under the theme “Lets Create, Disrupt and Re-imagine Together”, runs until October 24 at Dubai World Trade Centre.

Keynote speaker Volkmar Koch, Vice President and Partner at leading global management consulting firm Booz & Co, set the scene: “The sheer volume of structured and unstructured data driven by digitisation is calling for a host of new coping techniques, methods and analytics to effectively process and leverage.About 2.9 million emails are sent every second, 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute, and by the end of 2013 there will be more networked devices than people on earth. Data has now unavoidably become a topic in the boardroom, with senior executives increasingly understanding the value of data to transform their businesses and to enter into new value pools.”

Volkmar explained that there are

12 | November 2013

three key steps to embrace Big Data: understanding how a capability-driven data strategy can help drive business performance; finding a distinct owner within the organisation to accelerate data and analytics maturity; and adding new Big Data capabilities which typically include changes to the operating model, key processes and Information Technology and to identify, as well as nurture, the right talent.

“There is a pressing need to change cultures in an organisation to more data-driven decision making,” he added.

“Starting with a few specific opportunities to demonstrate the value of Big Data in pilots and attracting the right talent mix is key here.”

One of the conference’s many highlights was a memorable keynote address by the Rt. Hon. Francis Maude, Minister for the UK Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, who explained how Big Data had transformed the policy and work of his department.

In his role, Rt. Hon. Francis Maude has used big data for a wide variety of public sector efficiency and reforms, including helping to improve transparency and accountability of government, enhancing the efficiency of buying and managing government goods and services, and creating a digital and unified civil service.

There are strong indications that Big Data competency is likely to rapidly rise in the Middle East -- with the rate of

CIOs looking into investing in analytics and big data technologies growing more than tripling from only 12%in 2012 to more than 40%in 2013, according to intelligence firm IDC. .

Worldwide, IDC estimates that spending on Big Data technology and services will likely grow from USD3.2 billion in 2010 to USD16.9 billion in 2015, representing a CAGR of 40%, or about seven times that of the overall ICT market.

Conference speaker Ronald Raffensperger, CTO at Huawei, said:“Data volumes are growing at an exponential rate and increasingly this data is unstructured – everything from click streams to videos to pictures to social media feeds. Organisations today are starting to realise that this data can be an important revenue-producing asset and that the creative use of this information can provide a real competitive advantage One of the day’s key panellists, Paul Devlin,Director of Business Analytics & Database & Technology, SAP MENA, said, “We are in the midst of major technological, social and economic changes in the world, represented by the shift from the information age into the intelligent age. Business and organisations must now deal with a huge tsunami of data that is growing every day, and they must be prepared to access, manage and use it to stay innovative and competitive.”

Cover Feature | Avaya

In the driving seat Avaya seems well poised to capitalize on the rapidly growing demand for real time communication and collaborative infrastructure

A

vaya has of late inked several key agreements with large clients in the public and government sector in the region that further underlines its preeminence in the regional ICT industry. The Middle East has been over the past several years been one of its faster, if not the fastest growing markets for Avaya. On a recent visit to the UAE, Avaya’s CEO, Dr. Kevin Kennedy had meetings with customers and partners from across a wide range of vertical industries to discuss the dynamic market landscape, its growth potential, and customers’ attitudes towards new and emerging technologies.

“Our CEO’s visit was part of a regularl schedule to interact with the regional market and look at how we can enhance our Business further in the region. He recognizes the potential of the market here and used the opportunity to meet with the partners and discuss about our vision as well as speak with the team

14 | November 2013

about the roadmap,” says Nidal AbouLtaif, Vice President of Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India, Avaya.

It also contextualises how the UC vendor is aware that it is poised to further consolidate and be in the thick of action as the region rapidly adopts new collaborative and real time communications infrastructure. The impending smart city initiative in Dubai is also most certainly likely to accelerate these deployments and Avaya believes its customers will be well placed to adopt.

The fact that the momentum seems to be with the company is further endorsed by the fact that the company has been consistently placed in the leader’s quadrant by Gartner as far as Unified Communications and collaboration space is concerned.

“Our Technology is intelligent. It allows customers to utilize what they have without the need for rip and replace.

For instance, in view of the vision to turn Dubai into a smart city, I can assure you that 80% of our clients can easily plug into such a network or infrastructure without replacing much,” comments Nidal.

Like last year, Avaya had a strong showcase at GITEX including its innovations for collaboration, video, customer experience and networking. The company used the opportunity to focus on its contact center solutions designed specifically to support midsized contact centers, including Avaya Outbound Contact Express, which gives call centers the opportunity to deploy outbound dialing in less than 48 hours. Avaya also highlighted its newest upgrade to its flagship midmarket product, the Avaya IP Office 9.0.

IP Office 9.0 offers increased scalability, flexible deployment options, simplified management, and support for enterprise branch deployments, and delivers a seamless collaboration experience across voice, video, and mobility for up to 2000 users.

Recently, the company announced two big wins. It signed a ten year agreement with Abu Dhabi Airport. Abu Dhabi Airport will deploy Avaya solutions for IP telephony, video collaboration,

Nidal Abou-Ltaif, Vice President, META & India, Avaya

and contact center technology across its airports and organizations, designed to increase performance, reduce costs and accelerate the transformation of customer service experience. The agreement covers an initial requirement of 25,000 telephony extensions, which will increase as Abu Dhabi Airports grows, as well as consolidating the company’s communications infrastructure on Avaya Aura Avaya has also been chosen by Dubai World Trade Center (DWTC) to supply a next-generation network virtualization solution, bolstering agility, reliability, and access for DWTC’s extensive calendar of events covering over 100 mega exhibitions. The new technology, known as Fabric Connect and part of Avaya’s Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA), is a fully integrated, end-to-end network virtualization solution, and is based on an enhanced implementation of the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) standard. Fabric Connect automates service provisioning, improves performance, and reduces outages. This deployment promises interruption-free networking services to exhibitors.

Nidal says, “DWTC has over 100 expos each year and for each of these, they are required to provide seamless network and communication facilities for exhibitors.

We are working to provide them with these solutions throughout the venue that they can then remotely mange to assign access without reconfiguring, thereby giving uninterrupted access to networking services for their customers.”

Avaya is not holding back on its ambitions globally as well. At the forthcoming Winter Olympics in February 2014 in the Russian city of Sochi, Avaya would be the official network supplier.

The manufacturer is building arguably its most ambitious network ever which will be virtualized, multiservice, all-IP, fabric-enabled—and be able to support tens of thousands of device-toting Olympic employees, volunteers, athletes, media, and others while providing up to 54

terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth.

The network in Sochi will authenticate and manage access for all mobile users while ensuring that Wi-Fi speeds remain strong.

This demonstration of its Technology supremacy is evidence of the company’s growing assertiveness as a confident leader in its key domains.

“As a company, we embrace innovation to stay ahead. Virtualization is a positive course and we have embraced it. We have a division to handle it. As a UC and contact center solutions vendor, we are ahead on these Technology shifts. “ He adds, “Contact centres and IP Telephony have been traditionally our big business areas. Then we moved to UC, collaboration, real time collaboration.

Recently, we have been adding several applications in enterprise telephony including automated chat. We have added Avaya Outbound Contact Express, a turnkey solution for midsize contact centers. This will continue to be a focus area for us and we have around 70% market share in this region.”

Avaya has a strong partner program called iConnectfor the mid-market segment that includes targeted sales, marketing and technical training and support, speeds up the process of getting partners trained, certified and selling to customers in this segment. The program

was introduced first in the Middle East and then successfully taken to other markets.

He says, “We developed iConnect in this market and this has been taken up globally. This reveals our deep understanding of our partner requirements in the region” Avaya is also enabling partners to write applications and extend the solutions into different segments.

“We have released a project called Avaya Aura Collaboration Environment. We are the first to do this kind of an initiative in this space and have released it recently in the Middle East. “ Avaya Aura Collaboration Environment is a middleware run-time environment with a set of APIs for rapidly building applications and services that extend communications into every required business process. It spans UC and Contact Center. It provides a rapid application development environment for customers, partners, services and Avaya development.

In summary, Avaya is going full trhottle ahead to have a stronger say in the region’s fast growing adoption of the best of breed communications to facilitate access to information and services. It is all coming together well for Avaya at possibly the right time when deployments of collaborative communications are looking set for a giant leap.

November 2013 | 15

Vipin Sharma, Vice President, MEA, TrippLite

TechKnow | Tripp Lite

What is the outlook for Tripp lite in terms of growth and distribution?

Tripp Lite is growing across the region.

We have consolidated our distribution reach with three distributors. While Redington is our MEA distributor, we recently announced Mitsumi as our distributor in Africa as well as Metra as our MENA distributor. We do operate service centres in every country we focus on.

Is the data centre a growing focus for Tripp Lite?

We are growing our focus in the data centre space. Uptime is the major priority in datacentres and that is our focus. Data centre customers require 100 per cent availability and while most facilities do aim to provide efficient and reliable service, there is also a growing

16 | November 2013

Powering the data centre Tripp Lite is leading manufacturer of power protection and connectivity solutions and has steadily increased its focus on the fast growing data centre market as a supplier of several building blocks from power protection, connectivity to cooling solutions. Vipin Sharma, TrippLite’s VicePresident for Middle East and Africa (MEA) discusses the company’s growth focus

clamour in the industry to reduce cost and carbon footprint.Data centres in the UAE and the wider Middle East region have entered a critical juncture as the IT sector expands and companies seek ways to reduce overheads, while at the same time improving business operations.We provide different building blocks including power cooling, KVM solutions, Access products, racks etc. companies can grow their data centres with us.

Many in the industry agree that integrating high-efficiency UPS systems into the data centre infrastructure is essential in addressing these concerns.

Our UPS portfolio boasts up to 99 per cent line-mode efficiency and can significantly reduce a company’s carbon footprint by as much as 3,152 pounds, conserving around 2,352 kilowatt-hours

of electricity. Most of Tripp Lite’s UPS, racks and PDUs are modular, which can be configured and re-configured depending on the current business demand. As a result, it runs close to capacity, which is what most companies prefer because a UPS system runs at highest efficiency when it is near its maximum capacity Discuss some major wins for data centre solutions in the region?

When the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority wanted to design a new data centre, they bought UPS, PDUs and Access Management (DCIM component) solutions etc from us. Al Jazeera Networks is another of our prestigious clients as is Emaar. We have hospital in Qatar that have deployed our solutions as has the Oman oil company. Ministry

of Municipality, Ministry of Interior etc in KSA are among some of our several large clients for data centreproducts.

Do you see the solution Business to rise in terms of overall value?

Tripplite has entry level products for SMB, data centre focused products and retail products. The data centre part of the business has been growing 40% year on year in many of the markets that I am responsible for. We have been moving steadily towards solution focus.

In the next couple of years, this could be 70% of our overall business.

Distributors have also been in transition. They have been working with systems integrators, consultants etc and organizing events focused on these segments. The VAD model has thrived in the past 3-4 years or so. The distributors we work with are focusing on the VAD

Business also. In terms of our efforts, 60-70% now goes into increasing the Value Business.

The margins on entry level UPS products was anyways small. The more we focus on 10 and 20 kVA products, margins are been better for us and our channel. Growth has been in double digits for the past few years. However, our Business has done well and our partners have benefitted because now we are not focusing on just boxes. We provide many things around it including PDUs, racks, patch panels, fiber or copper structured cabling. The customer gets everything from us, a single vendor with warranty and this is our strength.

Has Tripp Lite travelled on the acquisition route to build the range of solutions?

We acquired a company Minicom for

building our KVM suite of solutions in 2012. A few years ago, we had bought Keyspan for connectivity solutions.

What have been the investments in moving strongly towards solutions selling?

We have gone through changes in terms of retraining our people to work around solutions and working with integrators. We opened a POC facility at the Redington office in Dubai as well as in Saudi. We have invested in pre-sales certifications courses that certify our channel partners on how to sell data centre solutions etc.

Has the growth been as anticipated this year?

This has been our best growth year to date. We are one of the highest growth territories worldwide for Tripplite.

November 2013  |  17

TechKnow | Polycom

offer those services to the customers. It is therefore an opportunity to get into the SME, SMB segments, which might not have been there otherwise.

Grey Rider, President, Polycom EMEA

Is the Cloud based services a sizeable segment?

We have a very wide range of products. Units or revenues are the two ways we could look at the size of a product line. As the Cloud is very topical, manufacturers need to have cloud offerings. As with most other manufacturers, the cloud services is quite a small percentage of the total Business as of now.

Are the free tools of video collaboration available a challenge?

We look at this as an opportunity. This means more people are exposed to the video experience at

Pervasive video communication Polycom is a global leader in open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C). Gary Rider who joined Polycom in 2010 as President, Polycom EMEA, leads Polycom's EMEA management team in developing and executing strategies and plans to drive aggressive revenue and market-share growth in the theatre. He discusses trends in the market.

How has Polycom kept pace with the changes including the BYOD phenomenon?

We are focused on this segment. We have to embrace the ways our customers do Business. We are driven by that. We are committed to anytime, anyplace any device communication. I am not sure there is another company adopting with the same

18  |  November 2013

passion.

How has the cloud impacted the Business?

The Cloud has opened ways for all those companies who weren’t willing to invest in a Capex model but are looking to do on an Opex model. That is why service providers are so important to us. Our objective is to enable our partners to

home or otherwise. Their expectations then go up and would want quality of service.

This will bring them to our Business class solutions at the workplace.

Are your solutions enabled on different mobile platforms?

Our Business is about enabling video calls. So we look at

enabling that on different devices. For instance in the recent MOU that our distributor signed with Ankabut, the objectives is to deploy a service provider grade, managed unified communications service, enabling users to connect, anywhere, anytime.

Do you offer vertical focused products?

Different industries use our solutions in specific ways.

What we have are horizontal solutions that can be applied in different verticals.It is partner driven. We provide the APIs. The value is brought in distributors and their partners in terms of what applications they further add.

Is the market growing?

Earlier, UC was based on a Capex model since it required rooms to set up the infrastructure among others. Now with the rise of communication through a mobile desktop, the scope of the market is widening and will continue to do so. Historically, enterprises have been the focus but increasingly, the video will be pervasive in the SMB as well. And with service providers coming up with a host of services, that is going to further open up this to consumers.

How do your solutions fit in a scenario where the customer already has some parts of the infrastructure deployed?

Polycom fits in well when there is already some infrastructure because it is open standards based. This is one of our differentiators. We provide investment protection as opposed to rip and replace.

What the Mobile workstyle strategy at Citirx?

The Mobile workstyle vision is about enabling what the consumer of IT services needs to work from anywhere, anytime from any device, securely accessing apps and data on any of the latest devices, as easily as they would in their own office without any compromise on security, compliance and experience. This is essentially the focus at Citrix. Citrix enables mobile workstyles through a comprehensive portfolio of cloud solutions that accelerate building, deploying and managing cloud services and IT infrastructure. We enable cloud service providers, local or global, to provide their services. With the stack of software we enable to not just manage those endpoint devices but bring the flexibility for better employee productivity or to individuals. Our products Citrix Receiver, CloudGateway, XenMobile MDM, XenDesktop, XenApp, XenMobile, ShareFile, GoToMeeting, GoToAssist and NetScaler all come together seamlessly to enable BYOD, MDM, Flex-Working,

Citrix has taken the lead in enabling mobile workstyles with an extensive portfolio of cloud solutions, helping deliver any type of app, to any type of device, over any type of network, while supporting new forms of social collaboration to connect people. Noman Qadir, Director, Channels (MEA) at Citrix discusses the Mobile workstyles vision that Citrix is executing.

Noman Qadir, Regional Manager, Channels, MENA, Turkey, Citrix Systems

TechKnow | Citrix

Enabling Mobile workstyles Business Continuity and Enterprise Mobility in general.

Discuss the adoption of mobile workstyles? What are the challenges?

There are two levels of adoption. In the region, adoption of mobility is at the enterprise level as well at the individual level. The individual needs services from the cloud service providers. They have adopted to mobility and are accessing service on their phones from the global players like Google or an Amazon.

Locally some of the Telcos have been providing cloud services but the focus was predominantly towards the corporate segment. Now they need to catch up with the need of individuals for better cloud services.

For corporates, it has been the other way around. They have everything in

place to support cloud services. For those corporates, who made the lead and adopted cloud services from us, they have seen huge benefits. We have customers who have over 1000 users hooked on to our services over the cloud and are among the beneficiaries of the mobile workstyle.

This is expected to boom in the next year.

What is the support from other vendors?

With the Technologies that we bring, we could have called ourselves a virtualization technology company or a Mobile technology company. However, as our CEO emphasizes, it is about how to make the Technology relevant for the end user to pursue a mobile workstyle. As a company, we are seeing support from other leaders in their domains like Cisco, IBM, HP, Wipro who are now moving their go to market strategies towards enabling mobile

workstyles. We are not alone in this inevitable move towards adopting mobile workstyles. We have seen support from our customers, partners and analysts.

We are an open platform company.

We are not a company that wants to control and manage everything ourselves.

We want to manage the end user experience. Citrix therefore partners with leading technology companies to deliver end-to-end virtualization solutions to organizations of any size. Through collaborative efforts, Citrix and its partners enable mobile workstyles and cloud services to users anywhere, any time and on any device. Our partners include Wipro, CSC, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco etc Healthcare, education, government, telcos are among the early adopters but we aren’t behind in any other vertical as well.

November 2013  |  19

TechKnow | Sophos

Ralf Haubrich, Vice President, Sophos CEEMEA

make a margin in distribution as well as make additional revenue through consulting and maintenance services.

Cloud security services is a growing segment but is still quite small. We are looking at this phenomenon region by region. However, the onpremises solutions continue to be the cash cows. Today, while the percentage of cloud based solutions is tiny, as a company we believe that everything could be cloud based in the next two years. Since this would entitle changes in cash flow as far as Businesses are concerned, this would take much more time to bring the change into the partner Business.

Do you see a significant threat landscape for Mac environment?

We have solutions for the Mac users. The threat scenario is the

Control.Sophos is positioned in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's 2013 ‘Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection’.

We are looking to enable more partners to implement solutions and provide consulting in this growing space.

Elaborate on your growth in UTM and endpoint security space?

We have a market share of roughly 7% in the UTM space.

We are growing much faster than the market and it is a huge a market. We are like number three in the space after Fortinet and Dell Sonicwall and we could be number two by next year. This is an attractive space because there is less of box moving elements in this Business and there is more of consulting and maintenance We are growing 20% in the endpoint security space. This is a highly competitive market but

Winning with partners Sophos offer partners a wide array of security solutions as well as a program that helps them grow their Business. Ralf Haubrich, Vice President, Sophos CEEMEA in a conversation with The Integrator discusses some of the key areas of focus.

Discuss your focus on the cloud We have an on-premises and a cloud roadmap for our products.

The first version of the Sophos Cloud gives Sophos partners and IT managers at enterprises of all sizes the ability to manage and maintain endpoint security to protect all users, regardless of physical location, via the cloudbased service.

All products will be in the cloud in the next two years.

We have a lot of development efforts in the cloud. However,

20 | November 2013

being a channel friendly company, we will sell only through the channel.

same for Macs as for Windows.

Nobody though talks much about it.

How can the partner make revenues in the cloud based model?

Sophos has a flexible and generous partner programme, providing partners with protection for deal registrations, attractive margins and joint lead generation initiatives.

A partner can host the cloud as a private cloud or a Partner can sell our services and

Is Mobile security a growing segment?

Mobile security solutions is a growing market and we have solutions for endpoint and MDM.Sophos Mobile Security for Android phones is offered for free in Google Play and can optionally integrate into the company’s flagship mobile device management and security solution, Sophos Mobile

we are able to grow at faster clip because of our broader range of security solutions that we can provide.

Do you focus on enterprise solutions?

20% of our Business volumes is coming from the enterprise space but our focus is on the mid-market segment. While we do cater to enterprise requirements that come through our partners, 80% of our Business comes from the 50-1500 user segment.

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Sinsha Sasi, Director Technical Services, SNB ME

Feature | SNB

In its fourth year of operations, SNB Middle East is now picking up further pace in terms of its expansions which include operations in Doha and Nairobi as well as additions to the range of solutions it offers.

Storage is one of the pivots in its Business model. SNB has built associations with some leading brands for SMB and enterprise solutions.

“We have enterprise level products from Nexsan (by Imation). We focus more on fulfilling the requirements of the surveillance market with Infortrend. Both these brands however have an entire suite of products including DAS, NAS, SAN and Unified storage. The difference is when it comes to highest capacities suiting the requirements for enterprise customers where Nexsan fits in,” says Sonia Sebastian, Business Unit Head- Security Surveillance at the distributor.

Irshaad Aboobacker, Business Development head of CCTV Surveillance Division at SNB adds, “We started off with Infortrend and there was a great interest from the surveillance segment. These products have been popular because of the stable performance they provide and they come at great prices.

SNB has been able to tap a large number of partners in the ELV segment

Grabbing momentum S

NB Middle East, one of the fast emerging value-distribution companies in the industry, made its maiden participation at GITEX this year and used the occasion to meet with several partners as well as prospective clients of its partners. GITEX was also an occasion for the company to flex its muscles as a company that is competing with distributors that have been around for a longer span of time. The company is now in its fourth year of operations and has made impressive strides in growing its channel Business by broadening the suite of products and solutions it offers to partners.

The value-added IT distributor specialises in storage and backup,

22 | November 2013

networking, CCTV surveillance and IT security solutions and currently partners with brands such as Nexsan (by Imation), Tandberg Data, Infortrend, Enterasys, Proxim Wireless, Allied Telesis, Mobotix, AxxonSoft, Retrospect and Seclore.

“We started with a single storage vendor. We now have gone to establish separate divisions for storage, networking, surveillance etc. Further there is a technical department to support these divisions that helps with presales stages of understanding customer requirements and design of solutions right through to post sales assistance. After implementations, we maintain SLAs related to SNB products,” says Sinsha Sasi, DirectorTechnical Services at SNB Middle East.

and is now recruiting more partner from the ICT segment. The distributor has seen a rising demand in surveillance solutions which is driving some of these potential partners towards SMB because of its focus on that segment with some smart solutions.

Sonia says, “We have tapped most ELV partners in the UAE. We have been providing them continuous support. Now there is a growing demand from ICT resellers for including security surveillance products as part of their portfolio because of the growing demand for such solutions.

We are witnessing this growth especially in markets like Qatar and we are able to offer different benefits to our partners including complementing products for

turnkey solutions along with pricing benefits and good technical support.”

Being a security surveillance focused distributor, the company keeps enough stocks to support reseller requirements in quick time. Technical support is a key criteria as well in this line of Business.

SNB with a current strength of 30 staff, has its offices in Dubai airport free zone including additional space to house its technical support services team. The company also has two warehouses to help manage requirements of partners in the UAE as well as in other markets.

The distributor has a regular schedule of training sessions and seminars for partners.

Sinsha adds, “Of the two offices in Dubai Airport Free Zone, we have kept aside one for Technical training and support. We also utilize it for POC purposes where solutions can be demonstrated.

We also provide on-site POCs.For RMA related issues, we try to resolve at our centre before escalating it to vendor only if there is a failure with the product, which is rare. We maintain enough stocks to reduce the hassles in getting immediate replacements as required on recommendation by our Technical team while in the background, we raise the issue with our vendors. “ Its growing competence in Technical support is now encouraging the company to spin off a separate entity that will offer Technical support to all channel. And while that is one of the new directions of growth, SNB has also been expanding its solutions offerings as well as territories it operates in. Recent expansions include setting up operations in Doha and Nairobi.

The VAD recently signed region-wide partnership agreements with broadband wireless vendor Proxim Wireless, wireless network infrastructure vendor Enterasys, and security software vendor Seclore Technologies.

Sonia says, “We have a resource based in Qatar and are looking at the possibility of having an office there in 2104. We will have an office in Saudi as

well as a tie-up with a local company. We have recruited a person to look after KSA. We have already commenced operations in Kenya and have a resource on ground.

Our operations in India are over two years old and is growing.”

The VAD is scouting to build new vendor associations and looking to sign up for products that will make it a more comprehensive end to end VAD. The VAD concedes there are some areas it is immediately looking to add new products.

Irshad says, “We are looking for more products. We have moved consciously towards solutions portfolio and will be looking at adding products where we feel there is a gap. For instance, we would look at adding Backup software.

In networking, we may look at adding an UTM appliance. At the end of the day, we are looking to provide an end to end portfolio for our partners so that it reduces their hassle. Providing reliable after sales support is of paramount support for us.”

While it is never too easy to make your mark as a new company, especially in the very competitive distribution space, SNB has proved it is indeed making inroads. The company claims to have registered strong growth in its Business year on year and looks optimistic to go from strength to strength.

Sonia comments, “We have grown over 100 % growth year on year since our start. We have found a great support from our partners and there is great word of mouth support from them in the market.

Our expansions strategies are working out well and we are hopeful we will maintain this growth next year as well.”

One of the implements it will look to use in strengthening its Business is a loyalty program for its partners across territories. This will help it have a stronger bond with partners but the program itself needs to structured and fine-tuned and the distributor is working towards this.

According to the distributor, its road shows and seminars in different markets have been well attended which reveals a strong rapport with the channel which has made

Sonia Sebastian Business Unit Head Security Surveillance SNB

the case of the loyalty program stronger.

Sinsha says “We have been reviewing the turnout at our events and participation at key events like GITEX. We have done events in other GCC countries including Qatar as well as an event recently in Nairobi in Kenya. Events have been well attended. Taking the success into view, we are convinced to implement a loyalty program which should be in place soon enough.

The company’s Marketing team is working on formulating this as well as fine-tuning technical aspects attached to this which include a format for proper monitoring of the program. SNB which had initially hoped to release the program to its partners in the middle of this year, now intends to do so at the soonest. Among several other initiatives, this reveals the distributor’s strong intent to consolidate on the gains made so far.

November 2013 | 23

TechKnow | FLIR Systems

Jalaal Abu Hassan, Regional Sales Manager, ME

A pioneer of infrared cameras

Discuss the company’s focus As pioneers in the commercial infrared camera industry, FLIR Systems has been supplying thermography and night vision equipment to science, industry, law enforcement and the military for over 50 years. We are one of the world leaders in the design, manufacture, and marketing of sensor systems that enhance perception and awareness for a wide variety of users in the commercial, industrial, and government markets, internationally as well as domestically. .

Please elaborate on the growing demand for such thermal imaging security products in the region across verticals?

Since 2009 when swine flu hit most of countries badly and

24 | November 2013

FLIR Systems is a leading manufacturer of innovative imaging systems that include infrared cameras, aerial broadcast cameras and machine vision systems.

Jalaal Abu Hassan, Regional Sales Manager-ME for Thermography products at FLIR Systems Middle East FZE speaks about the growing demand for infrared products

the thermography cameras approved how effective it is in detecting persons in the airport or public places who suffers high temperatures to cross check their medical situation and reduce infection from spreading to more people, the market of thermography fixed cameras had double digit growth year after a year. It is becoming now an essential requirement at airports, palaces from safety prospective.

Do you only provide cameras of different specs or do you provide an entire end to end portfolio for such security installations?

We have cameras with different specs based on the resolution, connectivity, mounting either fixed, handheld or PTZ.

Do you have a channel of integrators working with you? Does this include integrators that do a lot of ICT installations primarily or are they mostly from the physcial security domain?

We work through a network of distributors and system integrators who have the knowhow of integrating our products with most of platforms. Mostly the integrators would have a background of industrial safety or security.

Discuss your Middle East operations and growth in the region?

FLIR's Middle East office has been operating for more than 15 years handling and supporting Middle East customers. The Middle East business growth average

in the past five years especially for thermography applications has exceeded 30%.

What is your distribution strategy?

We have distributors in many countries and our distributors are listed on our website for each country. The total number of partners exceeds 30 distributors and system integrators.

Are your products mostly meant only for commercial sector deployments? Are there residential side deployments as well?

Yes they are mostly meant for commercial sector but we also have thermography products which address the residential inspection requirements.

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Shashikanth. N, Sales Manager, StorIT

Point2Point | StorIT

StorIT is a leading data storage specialist value added distributor in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Recently, it was appointed regional distributor for SAS in the Middle East and at GITEX, the distributor put the spotlight on its Big Data solutions featuring SAS Visual Analytics, a product it recently added to it portfolio. Shashikanth N, Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution in the following conversation discusses about SAS Visual Analytics as well as trends in market

Big strides Discuss the highlights of your participation at GITEX? Our key focus at GITEX this year was on our latest solutions for Cloud Computing, Big Data and Enterprise IT. We also showcased our turnkey solutions portfolio, which included products and services from partners such as EMC, Quantum, QLogic, Emulex, Aptare, Moonwalk, Mellanox and Supermicro. Apart from these, we introduced our cutting-edge Big Data solutions, which included SAS Visual Analytics. The response we received from our channel on this solution was fantastic.

Elaborate on your approach towards Big data opportunities in the market?

Big data is now moving mainstream forcing business leaders to adopt to social media, mobile devices,simulations,equipments

26  |  November 2013

&physical infrastructureall contributing to profitable growth of big data.We also see governance regulation,compliance requirements & reporting with need for greater transparency opening up new opportunities for big data & analytics.

StorIT, being a value added distributor, would like to tap this emerging Big Data market through our partner ecosystem.

Are the solutions from SAS vertical independent?

We have recently signed up SAS to distribute SAS Visual Analytics through our channel network. SAS Visual Analytics is a high-performance, in-memory solution designed to quickly explore large amounts of data. It provides a robust set of BI capabilities and approachable analytics, enabling different types of users to gain insights from any size of data through data

visualization and exploratory analysis with the option to deliver information to a wide variety of platforms including iPad and Android tablets.

SAS Visual Analytics brings together analytics, reporting and visualization in one simple-to-use product, where companies are able to use the speed of thought analysis and its capability to explore huge amounts of data to make quick business decisions. With SAS Visual Analytics, users can explore all data, execute analytic correlations on billions of rows of data in seconds and visually present results. It empowers users to uncover unexpected insights, find answers to complex problems, and quickly identify new and better courses of action.

The solution is vertical independent and will help organizations that need to explore large quantities of data for their business.

Which sectors do you believe are ready to deploy these solutions faster?

We see a big demand from Retail, Oil & Gas, BFSI and research and development sectors along with any vertical that is data intensive.

As you provide several solutions for data management and connectivity, are your resellers sourcing them as part of turnkey projects they deliver primarily?

Turnkey project sourcing which comprises of all the products as part of the solution stack has significantly grown over the years.However, we still continue to see partners sourcing individual point products for all upgrade opportunities.

Discuss growth in demand for data management solutions in region and your year on year growth?

Since we began our operations, we have seen significant demand for storage and data management solutions in the Middle East. Data protection management and storage have now become a necessity. With the increase in volumes of data, businesses have to invest in data management solutions and we see a big demand for this from the Oil & Gas, retail, BFSI and research and development sectors.

Insight | HID Global

Ian Lowe, senior enterprise solutions manager, Identity Assurance, HID Global writes about how hospitals can combat threats to both their facilities and their data via a single identity card.

Ian Lowe Senior Enterprise solutions Manager HID Global

I

ncreasingly, hospital security and IT departmentsare working together to design, implement and maintain robust secure access control policies and strategies. Of course, healthcare facilities must also contain costs, and minimise capital investments and operation expenses associated with deploying and managing access control systems. A single credential for physical network and online access is more effective.

Smart cards While tokens and other onetime-password (OTP) devices increase security, they can be time consuming when used

28 | November 2013

records they require – there’s nothing extra to remember or carry.

Smart cards can come in contact or contactless form, and can offer three levels of security: single, dual or threefactor authentication. With single-factor authentication, using only the card will give access to a system or open a door. Dual-factor authentication adds an extra level of security in the form of a PIN code. Three-factor authentication goes a step further, using a PIN and an extra security measure such as a biometric scan. Contactless smart cards are traditionally used for physical access control and are now being adopted for logical access control as well.

One area where this

contactless smart card technology seems like a no-brainer. However, some hospitals are still using the most basic form of secure access control: the magnetic stripe – or ‘mag-stripe’ – card, where magnetic data is stored on the back of the card.

While mag-stripe cards are cheap to produce, they can cost more in terms of maintenance. Magnetic stripe cards come in contact with the reader when inserted, and any debris that collects on the card ends up inside the reader and on its contact pins. They are also susceptible to magnetic interference and wear and tear: constant swiping through the card reader causes the stripe to deteriorate and eventually fail. This type of card is also very restricted

A smart way to secure healthcare repeatedly throughout the day and are one more thing that healthcare professionals need to remember to carry. An ID badge, on the other hand, is something that staff already carry and are comfortable using to verify their identity and gain access to the facilities and restricted areas they need to enter to do their job.Thanks to developments in smart card technologies, a doctor, nurse or administrator can use the same ID badge they have to get into restricted parts of the facility to access what they need from their PC or a shared workstation. They simply touch the badge to the reader and gain immediate access to the

technology can make a profound impact is infection control. Just think about the morning ward round. In just a few hours, a doctor could see as many as 20 patients on five different wards, accessing different areas of the hospital and different computer systems. With this many potential touch points, it’s easy to see how infection can be spread. Contactless smart cards – where the card is passed in front of a reader – are playing a key role in limiting this spread of infection. After all, if a card never touches the reader, it cannot spread germs.

With this many advantages, adopting

in terms of its data storage capacity compared to that of smart cards. However, their biggest disadvantage is that they are very easy to clone.

It’s fair to say that the cost of upgrading to contactless smart cards can be seen as a barrier to deployment for some hospitals.However, when you weigh the costs of contactless smart card technology against the benefits of a higher security, single-card solution for access control, it can offer outstanding value to the healthcare sector, saving time and money, protecting patients and staff, and safeguarding their personal data.

Is UC just another App? There are numerous conversations being had with the sector whether or not unified communications (UC) is just another set of enterprise apps managed like any other, or if it requires special handling and custom-tailored tools. Taj El Khayat, General Manager, EMEA, Riverbed offers his perspective on this debate Arguments for UC being just an application Many believe that UC is in fact a collection of applications that are integrated together to help you drive your business processes.

In the old days, IT was divided so that the phone people were in one silo and the data people were in another. Importantly, now that the tech infrastructure has converged, we should not make those arbitrary divisions anymore. That’s why UC has become just another application.

UC applications comprise software applications; a datacentre or cloud running standard operating systems like Linux or Windows; a network using standard equipment; and compute-equipped devices such as desktop phones, smartphones, or computers.

By any definition these are applications like any other and can therefore be managed by a standard applicationperformance management solution.

Arguments against UC being just an application UC is composed of applications but end-user expectations are different for UC applications, particularly in the realms of voice and video. That is, people

30 | November 2013

view an always-available dial tone as their right. If you pick up the phone and there’s no dial tone you’ll be very put off — much worse than when your email acts a little slow.

Suppose you’re ready for a big call at 9 a.m. but find the phone’s offline? Or what if teleconferencing is down for the board meeting? These are huge productivity issues.

Many UC apps, like voice and video, must operate in real time. A large number of moving parts must work together smoothly to orchestrate a successful communication or collaboration session. So higher end-user expectations and the real-time nature of some UC apps are two major reasons UC apps, especially real-time apps, require special treatment with specialised management tools.

Does UC require specialised management tools?

One of the major trends in IT over the last decade has been convergence, and by treating UC as “just another set of applications” we continue that trend of deploying common processes, tools, and staff across as much of the IT workload as is feasible. This makes IT’s life easier and reduces the need to invest in custom software and training

for a handful of non-standard applications.

While most application performance management (APM) implementations are not geared toward real-time UC applications, they can certainly benefit other UC components like desktop sharing, email, and IM/presence, providing deep visibility and analytics related to application performance and availability. For these applications IT will be able to characterise the end-user experience, analyse network and server performance, identify bottlenecks, and enjoy the multitude of additional information afforded by a typical APM solution.

Certainly some APM is better than none, but some professionals believe that a UC-aware APM solution has plenty of advantages to justify the investment. For example, configuration typos by administrators (a.k.a “fatfingering”) are a leading cause of UC malfunctions. Standard APM may not find these. But the automated UC testing built into a UC-aware APM package will pick it up, alerting IT before users ever notice a problem.

Then there’s serviceability.

Whereas standard APM tools can let you remote control a user’s desktop, only UC-aware APM lets you inspect and

Taj El Khayat, GM, EMEA, Riverbed

Insight | Riverbed

control devices like phones and teleconference hardware, greatly aiding IT’s long-distance debugging efforts.

Most importantly, UCaware APM understands how to work with real-time UC components like voice and video streaming, giving IT the same APM tools and end-toend quality monitoring it enjoys with more typical applications.

Customer centric UC needs Opinions and routes of use of UC are totally dependent on the individual customer and organisation. Much of this depends on how far along a given company is in converging its infrastructure and IT group, and how much it values keeping processes standard versus having full-visibility APM. The copper phone wire that largely led to the two-silo organisation is almost a thing of the past, so with phones and the like moving onto the network It is understandable that the impetus to see UC as just another set of applications.

But that doesn’t mean that UC applications can’t benefit from special management tools. I think it would really benefit organisations that make heavy use of APM and virtualised UC solutions to look into UC-aware APM as well.

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eyetech

Seagate Rackmount NAS

ATEN CCVSR: CONTROL CENTER VIDEO SESSION Overview:

Overview Alongside its presence at this year’s GITEX Technology Week, Seagate Technology—a worldwide leader in storage solutions—has announced a broadening of its enterprise storage portfolio with the release of its Seagate Business Storage rackmount NAS, delivering centralized backup, data protection and remote access to critical information for small and medium-sized business organizations (SMBs).

Available in 8-bay and 4-bay 1U rackmount form factors in capacities ranging from 4 to 32 terabytes, the new Seagate Business Storage 1U rackmounts provide the performance needed for businesses to support multiple simultaneous connections and enable everyone within an organization to easily backup and share files.

Key features: • Designed to backup all Windows and Mac computers within a network to a single centralized location, the new NAS solutions are compatible with backup software for Windows PCs and are also compatible with Apple’s Time Machine software for Mac OS X computers.

• Additionally, the NAS solutions feature the new Seagate NAS OS, which has been redesigned from the ground up to deliver superior performance along with an intuitive web-based dashboard for managing the server from the office or the road.

• Anywhere access is delivered seamlessly with the integrated Wuala cloud service and business-focused apps for PC Mac and smartphone and tablet.

• The innovative new design of the 8-bay rackmount features eight 3.5-inch Enterprise Capacity (formerly Constellation ES.3) drives that are hot-swappable for easy storage upgrades and maintenance. The system showcases an innovative fan design for effective cooling and simple serviceability.

32 | November 2013

The Control Center Video Session Recorder (CCVSR) is ATEN´s innovative software designed to securely record the video and operation of computers accessed through KVM over IP Switches. The software automatically records a video of the screen display and logs all key-strokes and mouse clicks when computers are accessed through KVM ports.

The CCVSR is a great tool for capturing evidence or tracing issues for immediate troubleshooting and faster problem resolution. The software can help monitor compliance control and auditing efficiently.

It quickly helps IT managers know what every remote KVM user, internal KVM user, or IT service contractor is doing on the servers, with full coverage of all actions; saved in a bulletproof system for future auditing.

Key features: • KVM session recording – automatically create complete recordings of a computer´s operations • Records a video of the screen display as well as ` logs the operations of keystrokes and mouse clicks • Supports recording on multiple KVM over IP Switches • Simultaneously records and plays the operation of multiple KVM ports • Support Archive Server - archive all recordings automatically NEW! • Recordings are saved to an indexed database for advanced searching.

• Search functions with keyword filters for retrieving video recordings.

RECORDER

FLIR A320

SAS Visual Analytics Overview

Overview: A320 thermal imagining camera streams radiometric image which has alarm based on the difference between actual temperature compared to the dynamic updated reference temperature. The alarm can be visualized by the isothermor connected and monitored through output, log, store image, file sending (ftp), email (SMTP), notification..etc. A320 can be used to identify people suffering high temperature in public areas such as airports so they can be checked out by the concern team. A320 has a video output power supply plug of 24/12 VDC, I/O terminal along with Ethernet output.

The FLIR A320 streams high sensitivity, 320x240 pixels images up to 8 Hz on its built in standard 100 Mb Ethernet interface. The camera works as an automatic control, monitoring and messaging system with connectivity options like Power over Ethernet, MPEG 4 video streaming and automatic file and e-mail messaging.

Key features: • IR resolution 320*240 • 6 automatic alarms.

• 30Hz image frequency.

• Thermal sensitivity <.05C •

Built-in “Automatic Temperature Compensator” (ATC) accounts for changes in ambient conditions,allowing for optimal use in hot or cold or changing environments

• “Color Alarming” makes it easy for operators to identify the “hot persons within a crowd” • Extremely accurate temperature measurement to ± 2° C or 2% of reading • Real-time measurement with Analog & MPEG-4 Digital Video Output • Plug & Play compatibility with third-party network video recording (NVR) packages

SAS Visual Analytics combines an easy-to-use, dynamic interface with powerful in-memory technology to enable all types of users to visually explore data, execute analytic correla¬tions on any size of data within minutes or seconds, understand what the data means, and deliver the results quickly wherever needed via Web reports and mobile devices.

SAS Visual Analytics provides a robustset of BI capabilities and approachableanalytics, enabling different typesof users to gain insights from any sizeof data through data visualization andexploratory analysis. You can quickly andeasily explore all of your data using adrag-and-drop interface, analyze data andshare results easily via Web reports andmobile devices. The solution helps youidentify patterns, trends and relationshipsin data that were not evident before.

SAS Visual Analytics supports data discoveryand exploration for users across yourorganization, from decision makers andanalysts to statisticians and data scientists.Designed for users of all skill levels,the solution provides an easy way for ITto protect and manage the integrity andsecurity of data, while enabling businessusers to explore their data and communicateresults via dashboards and KPIs.

Key features: • Analytics enables users of all skill levelsto conduct fast, thorough explorationson all available data – revealingmore options and prompting moreprecise decisions.

• SAS VisualAnalytics augments the data discoveryand exploration process by providingextremely fast results to enablebetter, more focused analysis.

•

A variety of users, including those with limited analytical skills, can quickly view and interact with reports and charts via the Web, Adobe PDF files and mobile devices, while IT maintains control of the underlying data and security.

•

With SAS Visual Analytics, IT can load and prepare data for multiple users in one instance. Users can then dynamically explore data, create reports and share information, all without constantly requiring IT support.

November 2013 | 33

Stats & Trends

Cloud-Based Security Services Market to Reach $2.1 Billion in 2013

T

he cloud-based security services market will be worth $2.1 billion in 2013, rising to $3.1 billion in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that growth in cloud-based security will remain strong, but revenue opportunities will vary.

"The cloud-based security market remains a viable one, offering providers many opportunities for expansion," said RuggeroContu, research director at Gartner. "Encryption will be a new area of growth, but it remains a complex activity. The strongest interest will be in encryption products from cloud security brokers, which are relatively easy to deploy and have options for on-premises encryption management."

Gartner predicts that the top three most sought-after cloud services moving forward will remain email security, web security services and identity and access management (IAM). However, in 2013 and 2014, the highest growth is forecast to occur in cloud-based tokenisation and encryption, security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability assessment and web application firewalls.

"Areas such as SIEM and IAM offer the biggest growth potential, although for SIEM this will be from a small base," said Kelly Kavanagh, principal research analyst at Gartner. "The benefits cloud security offers — particularly encryption — are making it an increasingly popular choice. However, trust concerns and regional variations mean that providers will have to assess each market opportunity carefully before deciding which to focus on."

Overall adoption of software as a service (SaaS) applications and other cloud-based services encourages organizations to adopt

cloud-based security controls. These are delivered either as standalone features or as part of an integrated SaaS package. Managed security services (MSS) are also driving adoption of cloud-based security services among enterprises. MSS delivery models are in turn being affected by demand for cloud-based security services, which is enabling security providers to become de facto MSS players.

"The benefits of deploying cloud-based security services are clear," said Mr Kavanagh. "Aside from the broad area of IAM, specific controls, such as encryption, are becoming vital to the adoption of cloud computing. They are further helping to generate interest in this particular form of security service delivery."

Gartner expects acceptance of, and reliance on, cloud-based security-as-aservice offerings to increase, based on organizations gaining more experience with SaaS and more consumer-grade technology being made available to corporate systems as a result of trends, such as bring your own device (BYOD).

Growth in MEA Security Appliance Market The MEA security appliance market recorded year-on-year growth in both customer revenue and shipments during the second quarter of 2013, according to IDC. Customer revenues were up 13.8% on Q2 2012 to total $83.52 million, while shipments increased 10.8% over the same period to reach 18,540 units.

Faysal Ayoubi, a research analyst at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, says that security will continue to be a priority across all technology segments for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs): "Security will be one of the most significant emerging segments of the IT sector over the next couple of years. With this in mind, vendors are offering efficient means to assure that threats are blocked at each level courtesy of their security products."

"The growth of the security appliances market is also heavily influenced by the evolution of new threats," Ayoubi continues. "Moreover, the increased adoption of virtualization

34 | November 2013

within the region's SMB segment has driven an increase in interest in security solutions that specifically target virtual environments."

Currently, large businesses in the region tend to adopt best-of-breed security appliances such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and content management features, whereas SMBs prefer to install unified solutions such as unified threat management (UTM), which accounted for around 45% of MEA end-user market revenue in Q2 2013.

In line with the current market trends toward converged networks and simplified IT architectures, demand for UTM solutions is expected to continue growing over the next five years. "The market's increasing inclination for UTM solutions means the uptake of standalone VPN devices and intrusion detection systems (IDS) is expected to remain at a minimal level over the coming years and will primarily be restricted to long-planned refresh cycles," adds Ayoubi.