Integratorme november2015

Explore the better way E

nterprise technology, regardless of market trends, must justify a purpose and value at the customer premise. Technology must not be pushed in the name of any big trend or a market buzz neither it should be implemented for the sake of change.

Rather the change should have the quest of getting better.

In today’s IT buying scenario, every resource spent on any sort of hardware, software or service has certain strong expectations. These expectations include contribution towards uplifting the organization closer to its goals and bring positive results for the users. These expectations are about achieving measurable results. This is common among large organizations, mid market and the SMB. The industry is experiencing a shift. This shift is not just a new technology trend but it is a new mindset towards technology buying. This changing mindset is revolving around few key parameters.

Among these parameters – simplifying the ICT infrastructure holds prominence. Today, The CIOs are keen on ICT investments which are inclined towards bringing simplicity of IT infrastructure and simplicity of business processes.

Another key parameter for ICT investments is driven by the urge of becoming future-ready. Scalable solutions are the need of the hour. This aspect covers several other elements into it, for example, flexibility, agility and cloud. Yes, cloud is gaining momentum because of the fact that it is scalable and agile for the organization where it is deployed.

Thirdly, comprehensive and robust security is another parameter of ICT investments. The IT security market is highly fragmented. Future-ready enterprises need end-to-end security that is simple, efficient, and connected.

Today’s system integrators and partner community must gear up towards these market signs. These are the streams where growth exists. But, all this can reflect great result for those partners who are well connected with their customers.

As far as, contemporary business conditions are concerned, SIs and VADs should explore the better way of doing business.

And the better way in today’s time is not about knowing the potential customers but it is all about knowing the potential of their customers.

Faiz Askari Senior Editor

ontents

Editorial

Cover Feature – 18

Combating the latest & the lethal

Security threats have evolved as Cyber criminals have advanced and became more dangerous. The cover feature is the showcase of this security market scenario and industry's preparedness to combat these lethel cyber attacks.

News In Detail - 10

Microsoft Gulf donates Dh 612,000 worth of software to EIPA TechKnow

Netcure set for accelerated growth - 12 The quest of Future-Readiness - 14 Big wave of video surveillance set to come - 16

Committed towards Quality of Service: Bulwark Technologies - 17 Point2Point

The next level growth from analyzing big data - 22 The trusted partner: Gulf IT - 23

Unitrends: Influencer of Cloud - 25 Smartly Equipped: GBM – 26

Committed for Sustainable Security: Value Mentor - 28 Eyetech

Netskope: Cloud Access Security Broker - 30 Regulars

News Bytes Stats & trends

Published by: JNS Media International MFZE Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Senior Editor: Faiz Askari Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

P.O Box 121075, Dubai UAE, Tel: +971-4-3705022 Fax: +971-4-3706639, website: www.VARonline.com Sales Inquiries: sales@var-mea.com All other Inquiries: info@var-mea.com | Editorial: editor@var-mea.com Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possible to get accurate information on published content in this handbook they cannot be held liable for any errors herein.

News Bytes

Al-Buhaira Insurance entrusted Value Mentor for getting NESA standard Al-Buhaira National Insurance Co. (ABNIC) and ValueMentor Panacea FZ LLC (ValueMentor) have announced that they have signed an agreement wherein ValueMentor will do the complete Risk Assessment for ABNIC to enable it to comply with NESA standards.

ABNIC has entrusted ValueMentor with the responsibility of making it compliant to the NESA standards. NESA Information Assurance standards by the National E-Security Authority of UAE requires organizations to implement information security practices.

ABNIC & ValueMentor are planning to achieve the objective using a prioritized approach covering Gap Analysis, Risk Assessment, Risk Treatment Plan, Policies and Procedures.

ValueMentor team will provide end-toend consultancy services and will work together with the ABNIC team in the selection of security controls that would mitigate the risks.

Mr. Mohammed AbuHayyah, IT Manager, of ABNIC said “Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of information at ABNIC is of paramount importance to us. NESA Information Assurance Standards provides the adequate framework for our achieving this. We are proud to be selected by NESA along with other six insurance companies to participate in achieving such a national vision and we expect a fruitful partnership with ValueMentor in this regard.”

“Al Buhaira National Insurance Company is a leading insurance company in the region. Helping them in implementing a risk based information security framework, which ensures the NESA Standards compliance is a great privilege for us. In addition to the consulting, we will work closely with ABNIC team to identify cost-effective solutions to address the risks,” said Binoy Koonammavu, CEO of ValueMentor.

4 | November 2015

Riverbed announces SteelFusion 4.2 with support for VMware vSphere 6 Riverbed Technology announced that Riverbed SteelFusion 4.2 will support VMware vSphere 6. The support for VMware vSphere in SteelFusion 4.2 builds upon the long-standing partnership between the two companies, delivering superior business agility, information security and application performance to mutual customers across their remote and branch office (ROBO) locations.

Riverbed SteelFusion is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that centralizes 100% of data and physical servers from remote sites into data centers without compromising local performance and availability of applications at ROBO locations. This enables IT to extend the security, resiliency and efficiency of infrastructure managed in centralized data centers out to every remote location where business is conducted – including regional offices, local stores, banks, manufacturing plants, hospitals, government centers, law firms and other locations – resulting in greater agility, less risk and reduced costs to the business. Today’s release follows the April SteelFusion 4.0 release, in which the hardware platforms were completely updated and redesigned to deliver increased performance and scalability for remote sites and regional hubs of all sizes.

“As a longtime VMware partner, our mutual customers can feel confident when a new version of vSphere is released,” said Taj ElKhayat, Regional Vice President, Middle East and Africa at Riverbed. “The latest release of Riverbed SteelFusion 4.2 with VMware vSphere 6 is a testament of our ongoing collaboration with VMware, as Riverbed pushes the boundaries of hyper-converged technology to the edge.”

Countdown begins for the Internet of Things World Forum 2015 in Dubai The countdown to the third edition of the Cisco sponsored Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) 2015 has started.

There isless than a month to go untilmore than 1500 government officials, heads of business, academia and researchers,from all over the world,descend on Dubai to discuss and share best practice on the dramatic transformations now gaining momentum across every global sector and creating a new world of opportunities made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Dubai IoTWF announced in January 2015, will be held at the Dubai World Trade Centre from December 6-8, 2015. The IoTWF 2015 aims to convene top thought leaders, implementers and creators across public sector, private business and education from throughout the Middle East as well as globally in one place at one time to collaborate, network, partner and build the industry's ecosystem together.

While commenting on this event, Rabih Dabboussi, General Manager, Cisco UAE said, “We are looking forward to hosting some of the world’s leading IoT experts and visionaries in Dubai in December at what promises to be the landmark IoT event of the year. Dubai, already one of the most technologically advanced cities, is rapidly transforming into becoming the smartest digital city in the world in line with the vison laid out by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, back in 2013. We are impressed by the sheer number of registrations and those who are showing a huge interest in attending the forum."

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News Bytes

Fortinet appoints Redington Value as distributor for Middle East Fortinet the global leader in highperformance cybersecurity solutions announced today that it has appointed Redington Value as its new value added distributor for the Middle East.

The strategic partnership is in line with Fortinet’s aggressive regional growth and expansion plans. This move means that Fortinet’s market leading security solutions will now be distributed by Redington Value, Exclusive Networks and Oxygen.

Redington Value will distribute Fortinet’s entire security solutions portfolio across the GCC, Saudi Arabia, Levant, Pakistan and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition, the distributor will provide customers with pre- and postsales services and support, training, consultancy, proof of concept facilities, and end user demand generation, as part of its value-added services offering.

Alain Penel, Regional Vice President- Middle East at Fortinet. said, “Redington’s wide regional presence, extensive reach and network of partners, coupled with its impressive track record is just what Fortinet needs to address the growing demand for advanced security solutions. The distributor has also demonstrated expertise and commitment to growing Fortinet’s market share."

6 | November 2015

Finesse and VCE join hands for converged infrastructure & cloud solutions

Finesse announced that it has partnered with VCE, the pioneer and worldwide leader in converged infrastructure. Under the agreement, Finesse will provide services expertise in consulting, gap analysis and suggesting the optimum infrastructure requirementsto meet the constantly increasing demand fromcustomers for converged infrastructure and cloud services based on Vblock Systems from VCE in the UAE. Finesse, a ‘Red Herring Global Top 100 System Integration company’ and winner of several accolades and awards provides technology solutions and services to banking, education, energy, healthcare, hospitality and retail segments.

Finesse helps its clients to optimize their business processes while reducing costs and assets. With proven experience and deep industry-specific expertise, Finesse Solutions and Services are exceptionally qualified to deliver innovation with measurable performance. Finesse brings together advanced technology, robust infrastructure, a large pool of talent and a proven global delivery model to provide a wide range of IT services to its clients cost-effectively and seamlessly. It believes in delivering tangible value through cloud-ready solutions, mobile devices and social media platforms.

Said Akar, regional director for Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle Eastat VCE, said: “We’re pleased to partner with Finesse, a key systems integrator in the UAE with a strong reputation for delivering innovative solutions. VCE integrates state-of-the-art compute, network and storage technologies from Cisco and EMC, as well as virtualization software from VMware to deliver a factory-integrated, pre-engineered, pre-configured, and validated platform. Finessewill leverage the entire Vblock® Systems portfolio to provide its customer with a simple, agile and effective way to deploy, operate and manage our industry-leading converged infrastructure solutions that facilitates business efficiency.”

Sunil Paul, Co-founder and COO of Finesse said, “We strongly believe that the data center provisioning market is quickly moving towards converged infrastructure to ensure efficiency through IT infrastructure transformation. Our partnership with VCE, the market leader in converged infrastructure, will support our endeavor to be trail blazers with our solutions and services for our clients. We look forward to working with VCE to deliver the best of services.”

Finesse was accepted as a VCE partner for its expertise in integrated systems management.

Finesse, a leading system integrator in the region based on client acquisition, 100 % Project delivery, awards and recognition, has a multi cultural environment with over 250 people representing 20+ nationalities. Finesse operates across 10 global locations and having over 150 enterprise clients around the world. It has won the ICT Integrator Champion Awards – 2015 as the ‘Software Solution Integrator of the year’ for the second year in a row adding to its bouquet of several international accolades. Finesse was also recently awarded as the 'Dubai Smart Government - Strategic Partner'.

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News Bytes

ManageEngine unveils Runtime Application Dependency The real-time IT management company – ManageEngine announced the availability of runtime application discovery and dependency mapping in Applications Manager, its application performance monitoring solution. Now, enterprises can rapidly visualize and understand application relationships in complex, dynamic environments by drastically trimming down the time and effort required for accurately mapping multi-tier applications to their underlying infrastructure components.

The company also announced that Applications Manager now offers comprehensive monitoring of Microsoft business applications such as Dynamics CRM, Lync 2013, BizTalk. The new features provide deep visibility into the health and performance of these applications, enabling IT administrators to trace down issues before they cause problems for end users.

Application maps are often the first step to visualizing complex IT environments. However, manually discovering and mapping the relationships between applications is a resource-intensive process that can take hours or even days. Also, the information mapped can quickly become outdated in dynamic environments, making it error prone, which requires additional effort to keep up to date.

"Applications Manager can now offer runtime dependency maps that provide actionable information in a very short span of time," said Sridhar Iyengar, vice president of product management at ManageEngine. "Unlike the maps created by competing products, these maps can be generated very quickly and do not require extensive effort or programming knowledge. These maps are updated dynamically as changes occur, enabling business teams to make better decisions."

Applications Manager automatically discovers the applications and servers in IT environments and maps the relationships between the different components. It provides a global view of all the discovered applications and shows the connections to their immediate next level of applications and services. Users can also easily add or delete relationships in these maps. These dependencies can be populated and maintained in a CMDB, which makes it easy to quickly capture an accurate and up-to-date map of the application relationships.

8 | November 2015

Dubai Smart Government signs MoU with MIT Connection Science Group

Dubai Smart Government Department (DSG) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with MIT Connection Science Group (MITCSG) and Analytics Center (AC) during SmartCon Dubai 2015, as part of a series of initiatives from DSG in conjunction with the ‘UAE Innovation Week’being held until 28th November, under the patronage of HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed, President of the UAE and launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

The MoU was signed at the Smartcon Dubai 2015, a prestigious conference being conducted by MITCSG and AC, which brings together the world’s leading thinkers and practitioners of Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Analytics at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel where Dubai Smart Government was proud to be the patron sponsor.

Commenting on the MoU, H.E. Ahmad Bin Humaidan, DSG Director General, said: “We are pleased to sign this MoU and collaborate with such distinguished partners as MITSCG & AC; so that together we can review Dubai Government’s strategy, objectives and challenges; and conduct joint academic research on big data, innovation in smart city living and IoT all with the objective of making Dubai the smartest, most innovative and happiest city in the world, in accordance with the desires of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.”

Bin Humaidan added: "Signing this MoU demonstrates our desire to work with world class and leading academics from MIT, to get deep insights into leveraging technology and human networks to design and implement tools to create a happy society to live in a smart city such as Dubai. The MoU will complement and contribute to our strategic mission which is to formulate and implement policies and initiatives for innovative and smart ICT usage contributing to economic welfare, social progress and global competitiveness of Dubai.”

Meanwhile, Prof. Alex Pentland, Faculty Director of MITCSG said: I look forward to collaborating with the Dubai Smart Government because together we have the possibility of creating a happier, more productive, and more creative city society by better understanding the social ties and relationships that make up the society, and then crafting ICT policies and architectures which build off of and leverage this social fabric.”

On his part, Caglar Gogus, Managing Director of Analytics Center and Co-Founder of the Smart Con Conference said, “We have been following the significant innovation drive in the UAE and vision of HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed, President of the UAE and HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, with great admiration. We believe that the Country's National Innovation Strategy will not only enable the government to be a world-leading example in innovative practices, but also further strengthen the country’s position as a hub of creativity and a magnet for the world's most progressive people.”

News In Detail

M

icrosoft has donated Dh 612,000 worth of software to the Emirates Intellectual Property Association (EIPA). The grant is intended to improve the utilization of Information Technology solutions and tools at the organization in order to help achieve its goals of promoting the use of genuine software and uphold all aspects of IP law including Trademarks, Patents, Designs and Copyright in the UAE. It is also part of Microsoft’s Software Donation Program to non-profit organizations (NGOs) in UAE aimed at enhancing their abilities to service the community.

The 314 Microsoft software products donated to EIPA come in various quantities and all include license information and instructions, download and installation guidelines, software assurance benefits and automatic upgrades.

“This donation comes at a time when we need to streamline our IT services to ensure quick and timely delivery of services to our community. I would like to thank Microsoft Gulf for this gesture and for their sustained engagement in community support programs.

At Emirates Intellectual Property Association, we strongly believe that broad digital inclusion and modern IT infrastructures are key elements in addressing current and future intellectual property protection management,” said Dr. Abdul Qudous Abdul Razzaq Al Obaidli, Chairman, EIPA Furthermore, the donated software will help EIPA enhance efficient collaboration

10 | November 2015

Microsoft Gulf donates Dh 612,000 worth of software to EIPA Microsoft software donation to help EIPA facilitate internal operational processes and streamline services in their aim to promote use of genuine software and solutions. with SharePoint and Exchange Servers, modernize their IT departments with the latest software and equip the organization to fuel staff productivity within EIPA. “At Microsoft, we believe that technology can go a long way in making real and lasting differences in people’s lives. The donation to EIPA underlines our commitment to support non-profit organizations that aim to combat software piracy and make an impact to the society. The software grant will enable EIPA to get to know our technology

better and use it to enhance the productivity levels of its operational processes and thereby positively influence the social work they carry out in the country to raise the necessary awareness of ethical standards “said Jawad Al Redha, Public Sector Manager, Microsoft Gulf The Software Donation Program is a global initiative

by Microsoft that provides over 60,000 non-profit organizations around the world. Through this program, non-profit organizations are empowered to, operate more effectively, enhancing their

services to the community. The program has already provided more than $3.9 billion worth of software to non-profits around the world since its establishment in 1998.

To date, this partnership has supported 22 non-profit organizations across the UAE by providing access to the latest Microsoft technology that enhances their abilities to service the community. The software portfolio available to these non-profits includes Microsoft’s latest productivity solutions such as Windows Client, Office, SQL Server, and SharePoint Server.

TechKnow | Netcure

Jeff Ogden, Managing Director of Netcure Middle East in an exclusive interaction with the Integrator magazine discussed trends such as hyper convergence, cloud computing and the need of simplifying the datacenter environment. Jeff emphasized on cutting edge technologies that are getting

Jeff Ogden Managing Director Netcure ME

widely accepted by the industry.

What are the key priorities for Netcure?

Netcure have several priorities for 2015 and going into 2016.

Firstly we continue to bring innovative solutions to our customers that add value and reduce risks. For example we have recently partnered with RISKIQ to help customers track their digital assets, mobile apps, website malware etc outside of their data centre. We integrate this with the customers SIEM to add a complete view of their internal and external risks status. Secondly we continue to enhance our portfolio of Managed Services through following our group acquisition with Ehosting Data Fort who have been providing managed services and hosting in the region for well over 10 years.

Our focus in 2016 will ensure we combine our offerings for customers who want security solutions delivered along with management and monitoring.

Which are the key industry verticals that Netcure is targeting?

Netcure participate in most market verticals although we are targeting the Oil and Gas, transportation, utilities and

12 | November 2015

Netcure set for accelerated growth organizations that participate in providing critical infrastructure to the UAE, Qatar and Oman.

Our solutions definitely support all sectors but we believe vertical focus brings additional benefit for customers so we will continue to look for solutions that meet particular vertical requirements. For example we have been working with DeepSecure over the last 12 months to help address the issue of connecting Process Control networks to IT networks to allow the secure flow of data to the business. We have enhanced the DeepSecure DIODE technologies to meet specific Middle East issues in the Oil and Gas sector and are seeing these solutions grow.

Market trends such as hyper convergence are becoming strong in the region. How is Netcure preparing itself for this market trend?

Hyper convergence is primarily

designed to simplify the data centre and enable cloud.

Whilst hyper convergence will definitely drive down operational costs and simplify management it does introduce other risk vectors for customers.

In the past separating or physically segmenting hardware and networks was the best way to stop propagation of security threats. Convergence of the hardware can result in customers having multiple applications of different levels of importance or criticality on the same physical hardware.

For Netcure it is important that we understand these issues and that we work with vendors and customers to provide the optimal solutions. Our Managed Services will address these challenges by looking at security in the virtualization layer, the storage/backup layers as well as all of the security aspects of virtualization, network, application and users.

According to you what are the key parameters for ensuring security in the Hyper converged environment?

Hyper converged environments can weaken the security posture of an organisation. For example we see far more instances of IT being provisioned and not managed. In the Physical world we had servers that were managed assets and whilst we sometimes forgot to decommission them the threat vector was small. In the virtual world servers are provisioned daily for testing and often left in service. We see this a lot when 3rd parties are developing web applications for customers and if they are not managed they become part of the “attack surface”.

How is identity management as a subject evolving in this market?

Identity management has been a low priority for most

organizations in the Middle East region until recently.

With increasingly mobile work forces, subcontractors and users accessing company resources from different devices and locations the need Identity management has grown to validate a individuals identity and provide the necessary access to services. Identity Management has also become a Security governance topic recently as this is a growing risk for organisations so executive support is growing to deploy systems that can control access to company resources. We are working with DELL on Identity Management and Governance solutions as we feel their solution is easy to deploy and ultimately scalable. We expect a big growth in this area in 2016.

What expectations you have from next two years of the

Middle East market?

Whilst the oil price is on everybody’s minds Cyber Security remains a high priority for all of our customers and we expect this to continue. The region has invested heavily in Cyber Security technology and we expect customers to be looking for optimal “Security Operations” solutions to see value from the technology.

With our groups acquisition of Ehosting Data Fort last year we are perfectly positioned to deliver all types of security services for our customers.

We are already managing security for 90+ customers in our datacenter and delivering services from Vulnerability Management, Patch Management and Security Monitoring. Customers in the Middle East want piece of mind when it comes to

managing risks and Netcure see accelerated growth in these solutions over the next 2 years.

Which are the Middle East & African countries that are showing great action in your business?

Netcure is part of the MDS group the largest IT group in the UAE and beyond. This gives us great reach across the entire Middle East and Levant regions and we deliver services across the regions however UAE, Oman and Qatar remain our focus.

Please highlight some of the flagship offerings from Netcure?

We decided from an early stage that we would not become a technology supermarket so we have focused on our relationships

with a few key vendors and core technologies.

We have great experience in the core security technologies from Data Loss prevention, Hardening, SIEM, technologies, next generation firewalls and IAM from DELL. We believe that security is requires a comprehensive risk based approach. In 2016 you will see our Managed Security Service taking priority.

Existing services including Vulnerability management, Patch Management, DDOS and Managed Security technology will be combined with our new offerings including advanced security monitoring and security analytics. Our customers can rest assured that they will have access to a complete set of solutions coming on line in 2016.

November 2015 | 13

TechKnow | Dell

What are the key trends you witness in today’s ICT market?

Technology has made it’s mark as a critical driver in various areas of business. Be it bringing positive business results, optimizing operational efficiency or innovating for a better customer service, technology has important role to play. Business and technology leaders look to make responsible technology investments whilst ensuring their businesses are FutureReady.

Shams Hasan Enterprise Product Manager, ME Dell

How do you look at the issue of growing complexity of ICT environment and IT manager’s urge to simplify their respective networks?

With the growth of data, devices and various computing layers, complexity has also emerged as a challenge. Most IT managers focus most of their valuable time in easing out the complexity in their business environment. In simpler and straight words, complexity is antithetical to FutureReady and the objectives of information technology. It inhibits your ability to make changes, to introduce new capabilities and to pursue business opportunities; it actually reduces productivity.

Organizations with too much complexity are literally unable to evolve and cannot adopt new technologies, like cloud, mobile, or big data. They stagnate.

Secondly, IT managers also want peace of mind from their work pressures. This means that they expect more redundant solutions which are easy to manage. Thirdly and most importantly, technology solutions with all the above mentioned features must come in a cost effective package.

These are some of the key demands that we often come across from customers and as a technology organization we aim to deliver the best as per the customers’ expectations.

What are the key expectations of today’s IT managers, which they expect from technology companies like Dell?

Today, we are witnessing great inclination towards consolidation of IT infrastructure and resources.

Channels are an important entity for dell’s business in the Middle East. How do you foresee Dell’s channel evolution?

Channel partners are most important entity in our business. The way our products and solutions are efficient for

14 | November 2015

The Future-Ready organization is in the limelight, today. These organizations are committed to long-term thinking and take a disciplined approach to IT decision-making. The end result is not just an IT architecture that’s built for change, but an agile business that’s ready for anything.

As a technology provider, Dell has a wide focus towards the Future-Ready architecture. In an interesting interaction with the Integrator Magazine, Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Middle East at Dell unleashed some really worthy points that needs to be considered in the quest of FutureReady IT Infrastructure.

The quest of FutureReadiness end customers, we also strive towards making the business process more channel friendly.

The Middle East market is consolidating, so as the distributors network. However, since we have consolidated the Middle East region, the market outreach for our distributors have also increased. As a market demand, we have witnessed that there is strong requirement of end to end solution for the customer.

For this, we encourage our partners to enrich their service offerings, product portfolio and most importantly their team’s skillset to deliver the end to end solution at the customer level.

Dell solutions are designed from the beginning to be FutureReady. They’re based on open standards, and they’re modular and easily scalable to give your

organization the flexibility and agility it needs to capitalize on every opportunity - even the ones that don’t exist yet.

One of the flagship offering from Dell towards ‘future-readiness’ of ICT infrastructure is Dell PowerEdge 13th Generation Servers. Please share some more details on this.

Dell has comprehensive portfolio in this direction.

The newest additions to this portfolio are -- Dell PowerEdge 13th generation servers. This range of servers is targeted towards small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and helps them in preparing for future growth with the introduction of four new entry-level servers that provide greater performance, flexibility and efficiency.

TechKnow | NetApp

Data consumption is growing bigger and bigger, so as avenues to serve the customers. However, the phenomena of Big Data have become really interesting when people have started talking about efficient big data analytics. In a candid conversation with the Integrator Magazine’s Faiz Askari, Graham Porter, MENA Channel Sales Manager, NetApp explained Graham Porter MENA Channel Sales Manager NetApp

some potential trends for this market and emphasized precisely on the emergence of video surveillance technologies.

Big wave of video surveillance set to come What are the major opportunities you foresee in the Middle East region?

Surveillance is becoming a major driving trend in this market. We witness great action in the area of physical security. Installation of CCTVs is rapidly growing and we observe that there is huge scope of ICT infrastructure development in the Middle East and GCC region. The most critical part of all this, is the fact that Government is giving well articulated focus towards an agile vigilance.

There are well defined data retention guidelines and policies are getting set up. Hence, surveillance data has to get stored and managed carefully as per the recommended guidelines.

16 | November 2015

What are the technology based trends you witness in this domain?

Video surveillance is a major trend. Within this, face recognition and analytics are two important areas of business activity. Video surveillance data leads to some fine examples of big data analysis. Public service centric government departments such as administration, police, municipal corporations and so on are betting big on these surveillance technologies.

On what key opportunities that NetApp is working for it’s business grwoth from ME region?

Volume of data is exponentially growing. This

is a world-wide phenomena and very relevant for Middle East region as well. Along with the growth of data consumption, broadcasting of data is another major area where a lot is happening and a lot can be done. As stated earlier, surveillance infrastructure in the Middle east region is fast catching up, it will become a great opportunity for the industry.

Apart from this, Fiber Attached Storage (FAS) is also an important area for NetApp’s focus these days.

Please share some of your experiences from this year’s Gitex. What are the major attractions from NetApp? GITEX is always an ideal platform for NetApp to

showcase our latest data management solutions.

This year’s show was really great. We have witnessed great participation and great response from the market.

Our product showcasing in this Gitex have helped our potential customers to understand the redefined way of how regional organizations can adopt their data storage strategies.

Further to the above, brand awareness have been developed in a great way and partner and customer education around our new product range have been a great experience. Through our stand, customers who visited us have experienced how to leverage Data Fabric to liberate their data for better business outcomes.

TechKnow | Bulwark Technologies Bulwark Technologies is an established name in the ICT distribution domain in the Middle East Region. How is the journey so far?

Bulwark Technologies started operations in 1999 in Dubai.

Business started gaining pace from the year 2000 onwards.

We aimed at introducing best in class technologies to the Middle East region and help our customers to experience the best. We established a dynamic network of resellers, system integrators and value-added distributor that have the capabilities of delivering innovative and latest technology solutions at the end customers’ level. We worked on our business network and achieved great results for our customers.

In an interaction with the Integrator magazine, Jose Thomas, Managing Director of Bulwark Technologies shared an overview on his organization’s core expertise and trends in the ICT market of Middle East region.

Jose Thomas Managing Director Bulwark Technologies

Committed towards Quality of Service: Bulwark Technologies Please unleash Bulwark’s key focus towards product and service offering portfolio?

We represent more than twenty leading brands in the area of IT security, Communications, reporting, analytics and helpdesk. Over a period of more than a decade, Bulwark Technologies has established an excellent track record in delivering excellent customer service in the Middle East region. The wide product portfolio includes everything an enterprise requires to secure their data.

The solutions are focused on IT Security, Reporting, Unified Communications, Helpdesk and Analytics.

What is the main driver for Bulwark’s success in the

region?

As a business policy, we remain focused and committed towards representing technologically advanced principal companies to the Middle East market. We also selected region’s best channel partners and system integrators in order to deliver the right solution to the end customers.

In addition to the above mentioned point, we have qualified engineers, trained and certified by the principal companies. Skill and technical expertise are two important elements for our industry, hence we have a serious focus towards trainings and certification. Our expertise in delivering our job is one of the major drivers for our business.

Our certified team takes the

load off from the customer’s environment which eventually allows the customer to focus on their core business objectives and we take care of entire IT infrastructure.

Does bulwark takes care of after sales support as well?

How do you engage with your customers?

Bulwark Technologies provides a comprehensive set of support options that will match customer’s expectations. Yes, we take care of presales as well as after sales support for the products and solutions we distribute by ensuring the reseller channels are trained properly and updated with latest product information to achieve that. We believe that continuity of support services

and product updates are very important elements in justification of the investment and business continuity.

According to you what are the key opportunities from the market for Bulwark Technologies?

We consider that information security is a big area for business. We have in-depth solutions for network and data security. In addition to this, Internet of Things is also important and emerging trend for the industry as machineto-machine communication has become very significant and crucial for the industry.

Accordingly, the role of system integrators will become far more challenging in the area of Internet of things.

November 2015 | 17

Cover Feature | Network Security enterprises of all sizes, thus it is time for a new approach to IT security solutions.

While giving a perspective on changing mindset of cybercriminals, Ray Kafity, VP of META FireEye commented, “In order to understand the status of cyber threats we must understand how the Cyber criminals are changing their mindset. The conventional cyber attack strategies have now changed and the cyber attacks have become more dangerous as the attackers have adopted newer techniques for cyber attacks.”

The Zero Day Attack Syndrome

Combating the latest & the lethal Security threats have evolved as Cyber criminals have advanced and became more dangerous. The cover feature is the showcase of this security market scenario and industry's preparedness to combat these lethel cyber attacks.

D

ependency on ICT has grown big. The phenomena of hyper convergence have led to the challenge of complexity.

But ICT security threats have remained the biggest challenge for technocrats.

Security threats to our networks have become more lethal because cyber criminals of today are using latest tricks and updated mechanism for security breach.

Malware, insider threats, and ransomware – the ways in which cybercriminals can attack a company’s network and exploit vulnerabilities are vast. But some attack factors are bigger risks than others, and some have the potential to wreak more havoc than others.

While giving a perspective towards today’s market scenrio, Harish Chib,

18 | November 2015

Vice President Middle East & Africa for Sophos said, “We understand that cyber criminals are graduating from one level to another. In order to deal with the latest threats Sophos has taken big step towards next-generation security. Organizations of every size know they need endpoint security and network security – they are two foundational pillars of any IT security strategy. But for too long, these two product segments simply didn’t communicate with each other – they were independent and isolated silos, which limited their effectiveness and their manageability.”

Communication between its IT security solutions for endpoint and corporate network is very crucial. The world of IT security has become even more complex and more difficult to manage for

“A zero-day vulnerability, at its core, is a flaw. It is an unknown exploit in the wild that exposes vulnerability in software or hardware which can create complicated problems well before anyone realizes something is wrong. In fact, a zero-day exploit leaves no opportunity for detection at first,” informed Ray of FireEye The latest Zero-Day attacks and evasive malware represent the biggest and latest security threats with social engineering attacks and insider threats following behind.

Commenting on the latest security trends and new techniques used by the hackers, Saeed Agha General Manager of Palo Alto Networks said, “A Palo Alto Networks survey at Ignite 2015, our annual gathering of cybersecurity top influencers and professionals, uncovered the cybersecurity pain points and specific risks which feature among the top concerns. In the age of ‘Internet of Things’, prevention is the only viable path forward.

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe that our prevention-based approach to securing enterprise networks ought to be applied to every industry that deals in Internetenabled products and devices.”

In addition Agha also added, “When every organisation starts to think of their business, taking in to consideration the potential IoT, and breach prevention, this might look like a bigger challenge, but eventually this approach will provide far more value.”

Commenting on the latest Zero Day Attacks, Shahnawaz Sheikh, Distribution Channel Director META, Eastern Europe of D Software stated, “Zero Day Attacks

have been there since many years but have risen in the last year or so, this year we saw many cases of Zero Day Attacks, especially the espionage attack campaigns targeting Government websites or watering hole attacks targeting the legitimate websites where millions of users visit regularly. By targeting those selected few legitimate sites, their aim is to infect malware in millions of users.

In many cases the application vendors are responding timely to prevent the attacks on any possible vulnerabilities that exists. The better approach towards the safeguarding from zero day attacks is to protect your networks, cloud and applications with multilayered security or to patch the fix timely or to unplug some troubled plug-ins or applications.”

Sharing their perspective on this issue, Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services at Help AG said, “We are also seeing a shift in mentality. Typically whenever we would talk about network security there was an obvious focus on the corporate network and attached devices such as PCs and servers. However the explosion of smartphones and the increasing usage of cloud-based services have meant that malware is now more frequent on these types of platforms.

Due to the growth of processing power and bandwidth, these devices will also become more and more interesting for the attackers and, for instance, botnets and DDOS attacks. This too has cause the industry to revaluate its approach and extend protection beyond traditional security measures.”

Effect of Latest Security threats in the Middle East Region Middle East customers are always trying to adopt latest trends, leaving legacy solutions behind. Trends like cloud and data center virtualization, BYOD and mobility, SDN and cyberthreats are top of mind everywhere we go. None of those trends can be successfully adopted without a mature security strategy in place. Agha of Palo Alto Networks said, “Our goal is to enable region businesses to effectively run their business, maintain complete visibility and control of their network, and confidently pursue new technologies. Most

importantly, Palo Alto Networks will help protect business from the most basic to sophisticated cyberattacks — known and unknown.”

A lack of a proactive security strategy puts a business or government in reactive mode, firefighting but incapable of intelligence, analysis and prevention of cyberattacks. The costs of such an approach are high, for example, expensive incident response teams, but does not enable the prevention of data restoration of valuable data after an attack.

“We urge organizations and government entities to invest in security technology that offers both detection and prevention, as well as actionable intelligence that

Saeed Agha General Manager Palo Alto Networks

"In the age of ‘Internet of Things’, prevention is the only viable path forward. Moreover, industry's preventionbased approach ought to be applied to every industry that deals in Internet-enabled products and devices. The ability to address unknown threats in an automated, integrated and preventive way is now paramount." goes beyond a “data dump” and identifies which alerts to prioritize and next steps to take.” Agha of Palo Alto also added, “It is worth mentioning that the new malware count is in the tens of thousands every day. The ability to address unknown threats in an automated, integrated and preventive way across all the enterprise is now paramount. In other words, being able to stop the worst from happening, whether it’s a known or unknown threat and in whichever form it takes, across the whole enterprise regardless of device type, content type or location is the biggest challenge for organizations here. Our enterprise security platform enables this.”

“The Middle East region has very high density of computing devices. Internet is getting consumed at smartphones, PCs and Tablets. Hence the Zero-Day vulnerability

cannot be ruled out. In last two years, we have witnessed 29 Zero-day attacks.

The threat levels are serious, and positive news is that FireEye have developed a security from these Zero-Day attacks,” Ray of FireEye said.

The Next Generation UTM Console Commenting on the evolution of Network security through UTMs, Help AG’s Nicolai expressed his views by adding, “One of the greatest evolutions in the market, which actually spun off a whole new technical term, was the introduction of the Palo Alto Networks product line, which changed the way we consider UTM services, or the services that UTM solutions should deliver. The traffic flow controllers in these devices make decisions November 2015 | 19

Cover Feature | Network Security

Ray Kafity Vice President, META FireEye

based on the application and then apply the advanced security features in parallel instead of in a sequential manner as was the case with the pure-breed UTM devices.

This approach means that performancewhich has traditionally been a major concern with UTM devices- does not suffer when applying the security features.”

Today most of the industry is trying to copy this approach to packet processing in order to be at par with this market leader in innovative technology.

Shahnawaz of D Software further added while explaining about market evolution of UTM console, he added, “It’s been years now, the UTM market has evolved to be a mature market with technology awareness and adoption across the various segments of the market, however the difference between awareness and adoption in various different countries of Middle East could be marginal between each other. With the growing concern on security threats in some sectors like Banking/Finance, Oil and Gas, Government, these segment of the customers are strengthening their defense and investing to build a secure business environment.”

In addition to this, Shahnawaz also explained key drivers of Next Generation Firewalls, he said. “The Next generation Firewalls are providing multiple layers of protection unifying into one single solution to combat and mitigate threats of various type. As this unified approach

20 | November 2015

Harish Chib Vice President, MEA Sophos

helps organizations minimize or eliminate any excess cost and management burden, this helps them in defining right ROI with comprehensive security that minimal TCO.” One of the primary drivers for the adoption of UTM is consolidation. As security needs have become more and more complex, there is a requirement to consolidate some security features applied at the network level. Nicolai further said, “This consolidation is performed not just in order to optimise cost, but quite interestingly the consolidation of services actually enhances visibility into threats without correlating events from multiple devices.”

Harish of Sophos also informed about his organization’s preparedness towards next generation security offering. He said, “We know that the market is evolving hence our latest version of its UTM hardware series has an up to date versions of Sophos Cloud, Enduser Protection Bundles, SafeGuard, Sophos Mobile Control, Sophos Email Appliance and Sophos Web Appliance. We also have Cyberoam’s futureready network security with its wide range of Next-Generation Firewalls and UTMs. These solutions are offering comprehensive solution to the corporate user of all size.”

UTM and NGFW solution offer a very strong value proposition to customers while still guaranteeing a very robust security model. With ROI being the prime focus of many CIOs and IT decision makers in the region, this makes for a very

Shahnawaz Sheikh Distribution Channel Director, META D Software

strong business case that is causing the market space for these solutions to grow.

Furthermore, because of the evolution of the threat landscape, It would not be very wrong to say that the classic firewall platforms are almost obsolete today.

Chasing the Next level security The next level of network security is about collaboration and integration.

While unleashing Palo Alto’s plans to combat the latest security threats, Saeed Agha also informed, “Palo Alto Networks is working with some of the most demanding industries to ensure their data and critical infrastructure remains safe from targeted cyber attacks. These organizations have learned firsthand the power of a next-generation security platform when it comes to safely enabling the use of all applications, maintaining complete visibility and control, and confidently pursuing new business ventures, while protecting the organization from the latest cyber threats. Our natively integrated platform brings network, cloud and endpoint security into a common architecture, with complete visibility and control, so your organization can detect and prevent attacks. This next-generation enterprise platform streamlines day-to-day operations and boosts security efficacy, and the one-of-a-kind, multi-layered defense model prevents threats at each stage of the attack lifecycle.”

Point2Point | HP

Gautham Raj Director, Server & Storage Business HP

Standardization and consolidation of IT infrastructure, free-flow of information access and enabling faster and redundant communication between employees are some of the priorities of today’s IT managers.

Discussing these customer priorities, market trends and much more, Gautham Raj, Director of Server and Storage Business at HP shared an overview of his understanding on the evolving Middle East market. He also emphasized on HP’s commitment towards the Middle East market.

The next level growth from analyzing big data How is the market evolving?

You have participated in region’s biggest IT Show, what are your observations from the market?

The overall computing market is growing in the Middle East and we are witnessing huge action in terms of ICT infrastructure development these days. This year’s Gitex have shown great enthusiasm from the customers. We have showcased great innovative technologies which have received amazing response from the market.

What are the key trends you are observing in today’s market?

Big data and virtualization

22 | November 2015

are two major trends that are continuing to influence the customers. Over last few years industry have seen exponential growth of data and a dynamic growth of computing devices. This growth had happened in both areas enterprise and home segment. We have seen enterprises are delivering their corporate data on personal devices and consumers are accessing, personal as well as corporate data as per their own needs. All of this makes it more exciting for technology provider like HP, which facilitates all this information flow dynamic at the consumer level.

Another trend which has

been getting great momentum is an offshoot of the huge data growth, that is business Intelligence (BI). Corporate organizations are spending their resources in analyzing the data, understanding the consumer behavior and overall market trend from their own perspective.

HP as an organization is keeping a close eye on such market trends and actively bringing cutting edge products which allow ICT customers to participate in the evolution of technology landscape.

How is Cloud computing evolving in the region?

Private cloud is catching up in a speedy manner. Organizations

are adopting private cloud based applications as they consider it very user friendly.

HP is the market leader in the private cloud space. We enjoy a great prominence in the market because of our existing customers’ experience with the HP’s cloud based solutions.

What is HP’s Channel strategy for the Middle East region?

HP is a channel driven organization. We have three tier channel structure. We work with distributors, VARs and SIs. Moreover, we also have specialized partners who enjoys specific capabilities for any specific industry segment.

What level of engagements does HP have with partners?

We are committed towards partner’s growth. We invest in training and certifications for the partners in order to enable them in putting across right form of solution for the customers. We train partners and their teams so that they help the customers to remove the complexity of business environment. It is very important for the partners to become Hyper convergence has also influenced the market in a major way. What are your views on this and how is HP looking at convergence as a trend?

Hyper convergence is a major driver for next level technology area. HP has a well defined approach towards this. We have robust products around this trend. For example, HP’s One View is an appealing product for software defined data centers. Similarly, there is a comprehensive product portfolio which goes in the hyper converged environment.

Point2Point | Gulf IT

What are the key trends that you are witnessing in today’s market?

Cloud Adaptation towards sales force , office365, application hosting on Azure , SAAS application audit, cloud data security, database audit and protection, SD WAN, and hybrid WAN and reducing cost are some major trends that we witness in the market.

What are the drivers for GulfIT’s business?

Our comprehensive market penetration across the GCC region is one of the key attractions for us. Over a period of time, we have managed to achieve the status of trusted partners of our customers across the region. Gulf IT has also been associated with Gartner Leader vendors like Imperva and Silverpeak. Our experienced and certified consultants delivers best in class support to our partners and customers. We also have strong support from our investors which ensures good cash flow in the company.

Lastly we consider that healthy competition is driving us heavily in the market.

Government is becoming proactive towards IT adoption. How do you experience this thrust from the market?

Federal databases, file servers, and Web applications are a critical and indispensable part of the Government's IT infrastructure and operations.

Federal organizations depend on Data Security solutions to discover, classify, and protect sensitive data, manage access rights and mitigate risks of data centric attacks aimed at applications, files and databases. Imperva’s SecureSphere establishes

a repeatable data risk management process and provides a fast and cost effective route to regulatory compliance.

• Data Breach Prevention: Real-time protection against hackers and malicious insiders targeting sensitive data • Regulatory Compliance: Fast and cost-effective route to compliance with full visibility into data usage, vulnerabilities and access rights • Data Risk Management: Continuous and repeatable process for identifying and mitigating data risk GulfIT is one of the leading beneficiaries in current trend and we are inline of Federal requirements.

Which are the key industry verticals that your organization is targeting?

GulfIT being a trusted VAD, often chooses to specialize in one or more vertical markets in the channel, allowing us to target potential new clients and increase account penetration with a richer set of products and services -leading to increased revenue and a more successful business. Currently we are serving, BFSI, Federal and Govt enterprises in GCC through our business partners.

Gulf IT has a strong focus towards Data-center centric security solutions. What are the key trends in this space?

Traditional security is no longer enough. Perimeters may be your first line of defense, but they are also the most porous.

And endpoint security cannot defend against intentional or unintentional malicious actions by internal users.

That’s where we come in with Imperva. Imperva protects cloud applications,

Ganesan Muthiah Founder GulfIT

The Trusted Partner: Gulf IT Ganesan Muthiah founder of Gulf IT highlighted some key points about his organizations and overall industry trends that are getting witnessed. websites, files, SharePoint systems, critical databases, and Big Data repositories from cyberattacks, theft, and fraud.

Imperva technology provides visibility into data access and uses sophisticated client classification and user tracking that can detect unauthorized users and malicious web bots.

Imperva employ a research team – the Application Defense Center – comprised of some of the world’s leading experts in data and application security to root out new attack methods and stop them before they reach end user. So whether your critical information is onpremises or in the cloud, in your application, or a SaaS

app, you can feel 100 percent confident, will protect your data where it resides and how it’s accessed.

What are your observations on ensuring security of complex IT environment?

One of the biggest challenges facing enterprise customers is the ability to identify threats from within. The rise of ” insider” threats, including targeted attacks from current and ex-employees, system misconfigurations and unintentional errors resulting from a culture of trust rather than trust/verify, often result in the most damaging compromises.

November 2015 | 23

Point2Point | Unitrends Cloud is a major area of focus for Unitrends. Please share an overview on this?

Yes, cloud is one of our key business focuses for us, cloud based solutions are an important pillar of Unitrends’ overall business. We offer robust solutions portfolio delivered through cloud based solutions. As an example, Unitrends have cloud enabled all-in-one physical and virtual appliances that protect physical and virtual environments, as well as our Disaster Recovery solutions. One of our major offerings is Unitrends Cloud Backup solution portfolio.

How is cloud adoption happening in the region?

Cloud is gaining great momentum. Be it data protection, business continuity, backup or recovery, cloud solutions are gaining popularity among various fields. Disaster recovery is one of the fast growing areas in the region.

Micheal Orange Regional Manager, MEA Unitrends

Unitrends: Influencer of Cloud Cloud adoption is surging towards the next level.

Organizations like Unitrends are participating actively in the cloud revolution. In a conversation with the Integrator Magazine, Michael Orange, Regional Manager – Middle-East & Africa of Unitrends have highlighted some key market trends towards cloud solutions and Unitrends’ market commitment for the Middle East region.

24 | November 2015

What level of importance do you give to Middle East market in Unitrends’ overall business?

The Middle East is a very important market for Unitrends and we are making significant investments in this region. Over the last few years we have achieved considerable growth in Europe and are now looking to grow the business in the MEA region as well. This year’s we plan to showcase our best-ofbreed technologies and educate the market regarding cutting technologies in our domain and also make the market aware about our leadership in Data Protection, Back up and Disaster Recovery solutions.

What is Unitrends' go-tomarket strategy?

We are 100% channel driven

company. We work with partners who understand the market and who also holds strong grip on the customer’s requirements and IT environment. We have two tier channel structure. Channel partners have been a guiding force for Unitrends’ growth in the region. Apart from strengthening our existing partnerships, reaching out to new customers and partners is also high on our agenda.

Please elaborate your focus towards SMB vertical.

SMBs are one of the prime focuses for Unitrends. We understand the pain points of this sector. Complexity of IT infrastructure management is a major issue for IT managers.

SMBs want less complexity in their IT environment and they always look for efficient solutions. We at Unitrends always strive for offering such solutions which are user friendly and easy to manage. In addition to the above mentioned points, we also ensure cost effectiveness of the solution that we offer to our customer.

What are the main drivers for Unitrends’ business?

At Unitrends we strive hard to bring value to the customer. This value is delivered through the quality of solution and service that we offer to the customer.

In addition, we emphasize on the overall customer experience while dealing with us. I feel that these core company policies are drivers for our business.

Additionally, our ability to provide cost effective solution along with the capability of ease of management are two major drivers of our business growth in the region.

AWS Marketplace Array Networks Makes Virtual Application Delivery Controller Available in AWS Marketplace Array Networks Inc. announces the immediate availability of its virtual application delivery controllers (ADCs) in Amazon Web Services Marketplace (AWS Marketplace), an online software store that streamlines the procurement process for customers looking to find, buy, and immediately start using software and services that run on AWS. As cloud and virtualization continues to expand its footprint within the business landscape, ensuring performance and availability for these new deployment models has become increasingly important. In addition, enterprises and service providers deploying on the cloud are faced with issues in making applications securely available to a growing base of end users. Array’s vAPV virtual ADC for AWS provides guaranteed performance and availability for business-critical applications running on AWS. As noted by the research firm Gartner, “New application architectures are changing network traffic patterns, taking ADC devices out of the data flow, and forcing infrastructure architects to rethink their application delivery strategy to include cloud-based services. ” Cloud environments add an extra dimension when it comes to application deployment, offering greater flexibility for adding new users and capacity and rolling out new services.

Because the Array vAPV virtual ADC runs natively on AWS, all that is required for activation is a license purchased from Array (BYOL) via AWS Marketplace.

For enterprises migrating to the cloud, they can purchase all of the storage, server and networking they need on the AWS Cloud and scale as demand for their products and services grows using Array’s vAPV ADCs. And for those that have deployed Array ADCs in their own data centers, it is now an option to burst to AWS and have an identical application delivery solution on the cloud for back-up capacity.

APV

v

About Array Networks Array Networks is a global leader in application delivery networking with over 5,000 worldwide customer deployments.

Powered by award-winning SpeedCore software, Array solutions are recognized by leading enterprise, service provider and public sector organizations for unmatched performance and total value of ownership.

TALK TO OUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY !

Srinivas Vege

+971-50-3466098 svege@arraynetworks.net

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+971-55-3113729 siva.raju@comguard.net

TechKnow | GBM

Hani Nofal Vice President, Intelligent Network Solution GBM

Founded and operating in the Middle East region since 1990, Gulf Business Machines (GBM) is a leading name as a provider of IT solutions.

Since inception, GBM has strong business partnership with IBM, as well as Cisco Systems in order to complete the portfolio of technology solution offerings.

In an exclusive interaction with the Integrator magazine, Hani Nofal, Vice President Intelligent Network Solution at GBM unleashed trends that are influencing the market as well business priorities for GBM.

visionary approach towards ensuring public safety, quality of life by delivering best in class public services. We learn a lot for them and honestly speaking, we get great motivation by knowing the level of commitment and willingness by the government departments. Our experience is very good in this area.

Since, H.H. Sheikh Mohammad Al Maqtoum himself have clarity on what is needed for the betterment of the country and whole region. Because of the fact that His Highness himself a visionary leader, the government departments find it really motivating to think out of the box and bring innovative solutions.

Smart City projects for GBM holds great prominence, please share your views around the same.

Yes, Smart City project is very close to GBM. We have developed all the necessary capabilities for smart city planning and execution. We understand the criticalities of technologies that are required in the smart city projects. Our

Smartly Equipped: GBM According to you, what are the major trends in the ICT industry of Middle East region?

Trends such as Internet of Things are set to transform the industry and overall outlook towards technology usage.

We are going to experience innovative ways of consuming services with an interesting blend of technology. IoT will bring technology much more closer to each one of us. The blend will be so strong at the same time so simple that it will become difficult to differentiate technology component from our day to day lives.

What are the main priorities ahead of GBM in today’s business?

Our business priorities are driven by the phenomena of IoT and Software defined Networking. These two areas are becoming hot in the Middle East region. We have made some significant

26 | November 2015

efforts and investments in this direction.

We represent two global giants in the space of IoT - Cisco Systems and IBM. These two global brands hold great products and services around IoT, big data analytics and much more. As a business priority we also look at Big Data analytics. This area has great relevance for our business in the Middle East region.

have certified team of professionals who understands the cutting edge IoT based solutions and how these solutions can be implemented.

The increasing influence of the ‘Smart City’ ecosystem will require complex IT systems to support it, and GBM and IBM has been working closely to develop and deploy effective, related technologies over recent years.

GBM has a strong focus towards government business. How is your experience in working with the Government departments?

Yes, we work very closely with the Government departments. We have witnessed that local government departments in the region are very much committed towards bringing innovative technologies for better governance. As an example we all know that Government of Dubai has a

Which are key industry verticals that GBM is focused on?

GBM has over 1,200 industry experts who are working across a broad range of market sectors, such as e-Governance, Banking and Finance, Telecommunications, Retail and Oil & Gas. We have offices and support within every country that it operates, GBM is now present in the UAE (Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah), Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, as well as in Pakistan.

Point2Point | Value Mentor

Committed for Sustainable Security: Value Mentor In an interaction with the Integrator magazine, Binoy Koonammavu, Principal Consultant, Value Mentor explained the evolving trends of the ICT security market and also emphasized on how his organization is geared up towards these market trends.

What are the key market trends that you are witnessing in today’s enterprise ICT domain?

Today’s enterprises are concerned about how they can increase productivity, reduce the cost of compliance, make the most out of the new age social services yet ensure profitability. However, these are regularly challenged by cyber criminals. Addressing this gap and provide sustainable confidence is a major trend happening in today’s enterprise IT. We are seeing a number of start-ups and large business groups stepping into the cyber security market place.

work with a number of clients in the Compliance Consulting and Security Assessments space. NESA Consulting is a major driver in the recent days along with the PCI DSS compliance services.

As a security assessment company, we engage through our partners to provide penetration testing and application security assessment services.

Another service which is in high demand is the Security Monitoring solution, which is deployed over the cloud / on premise and monitored through our SOC. This provides a high value addition to our clients.

What are the drivers for Value Mentor’s business?

ValueMentor is a consulting and services company. We

Security landscape has become highly fragile and hackers are day by day adopting newer techniques.

28 | November 2015

Binoy Koonammavu Principal Consultant Value Mentor

How challenging it becomes for ValueMentor to ensure security of your client’s data?

Information Security is always a challenge, cyber criminals are always on lookout for information assets that has a value.

Our approach is always to address the security using a “Defence in Depth” approach.

This allows us to ensure adequate security for our clients.

Which are the key industry verticals that Value Mentor is targeting?

Majority of our clients are in the Banking and Financial verticals.

Additionally, we have clients from the government, retail, e-commerce and manufacturing.

For Penetration testing, Application Security assessments and Mobile App Security assessments, we have clients across all verticals.

How is the concept of security audit is advancing in this region?

The recent Cyber-attacks that had affected large organizations in the west were an eye-opener for many businesses in this region. Until last year, most of the SME sector businesses were accepting the risk of a cyber attack. However, today, it is changing and we see a large participation of SME clients along with the large businesses taking security audits as a key measure to identify the strength of their IT infrastructure.

What are the "The recent Cyber-attacks that had affected large key parameters Which are the of selecting best Middle East& organizations in the west were an eye-opener for many level security African countries businesses in this region. Until last year, most of the standards? that are showing SME sector businesses were accepting the risk of a Our approach is great interest in cyber attack. However, today, it is changing." always to assist your business? the clients to select We are highly active security controls in the GCC markets complex as the end users play indicates that we would be adequate to protect the risks except Saudi Arabia. We work a top player in the security a critical part in it. Complex they face. A Risk Assessment with a number of clients in consulting and services space technology environment will is the best way to identify the North African region. We within the GCC. Today, we have result in complex IT Security what controls are required are in search for partners 15 active partners across the architecture. However, when and how far it should be through whom we can offer the region and we would like to see services. it goes to the end users, it implemented. ISO 27001 is our active partners grow to 50 should be simple enough so a good framework for any in the next two years. Today, that they don’t have to spend organization to start with.

Please highlight some of the we have limited presence in much time understanding the flagship expertise of Value Saudi Arabia where we are security responsibilities and What are your observations Mentor? adding partners to offer our respond to security incidents. on ensuring security of Our top 3 services are (a) PCI services.

Currently we are complex IT environment?

Compliance & Audits (b) ISO retained by 100+ medium to What expectations you have IT environments can be 27001 & NESA Compliance large customers and expects from next two years in the complex, as it is managed by (c) Application & Mobile App this to become 500+ in the next Security Assessments and Middle East market? the IT professionals. However, 2 years.

Our current growth rate information security cannot be Penetration Testing.

November 2015 | 29

eyetech

Netskope: Cloud Access Security Broker

Synology DiskStation DS716+ Overview: Synology Inc. announced the release of DS716+, an encryption-oriented, scalable, 2-bay NAS server powered by a quad-core CPU and Btrfs file system. DS716+ is aimed at SMB in need of a reliable, high-efficient storage and application server.

Coming with 2GB of RAM, two Gigabit LAN ports, and a quad-core 1.6GHz CPU, able to clock up to 2.08GHz and AES-NI encryption support, DS716+ delivers spectacular performance with encrypted files, with transfer speed up to 218Mb/s reading and 141Mb/s writing. In addition, it allows enthusiast users to perform on the fly H.264 4K to 1080p video transcoding.

Overview: Netskope is the leading cloud access security broker (CASB). The Netskope Active Platform provides discovery, deep visibility and granular control of sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud apps. With Netskope, IT can direct usage, protect sensitive data, and ensure compliance in real-time, on any device, including native apps on mobile devices and whether on-premises or remote. We have the broadest range of deployment options in the market.

Netskope helps organisations to navigate the path towards safe cloud enablement through the three key stages of Find, Understand and Secure and enables the business to move fast, with confidence. Netskope is the only CASB vendor whose solution is built from the ground-up to provide all the must-have requirements for successful cloud security.

Key features:

Key features: • Netskope enables organisations to find and quantify risk and threats for all of the cloud apps in their environment, whether they are sanctioned or not, and rate them for enterprise-readiness using our Cloud Confidence Index.

• Netskope provides surgical visibility and control of

all sanctioned apps and Shadow IT being used in the organisation,with activity and data-level usage details.

• With Netskope an organisation can set sophisticated, granular policies in real-time instead of abasic allow vs. block approach.

• Policies can be contextual and account for identity,

location, activity, and content.

• Netskope has the most advanced cloud DLP in the

market. The differentiating feature is that it is “noise- cancelling” because our advanced cloud DLP capabilities such as 3,000+ data identifiers • Netskope is the only CASB vendor with customers using every deployment architecture offered in the market today, including log-based discovery.

• DS716+ runs DiskStation Manager (DSM), the most advanced and intuitive operating system for NAS devices.

30 | November 2015

• Designed with effortless hard drive installation and a focus on system reliability, DS716+ comes with tool-less drive bay design, hot-swappable support, and dual Gigabit LAN ports with failover support to ensure continual service.

• It features three USB 3.0 ports for higher data transmission and one eSATA port as an extensive external backup option.

• Users can also enable Btrfs, a modern file system designed to address the needs of a higher fault tolerance, better management, and advanced data protection by enabling point-in-time snapshot and restore, built-in data integrity check, metadata mirroring, or quotas for shared folders.

• Wide range of applications from backup to network management, DS716+ provides all essential business services and increased productivity at work.

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Norden’s Public Address System: NVS Sound Redefined

A10 Thunder Convergent Firewall Overview: A10 Networks announced the A10 Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW); a standalone security product that leverages the ACOS Harmony platform with cuttingedge innovations. By combining application networking with a data center firewall, A10 Networks expects that Thunder CFW will help organizations to optimize protection for their servers at scale.

Key features: • High-performance Secure Web Gateway with integrated explicit proxy, URL filtering and SSL Insight. It enables security policy enforcement for client outbound HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

Overview:

• High-performance data center firewall (DCFW)

Norden Communication UK Ltd, a leading manufacturer

with integrated network denial-of-service (DoS)

of Structured Cabling Solution, Fire Alarm, Control Cables

protection and Server Load Balancing (SLB).

and Accessories catering to a wide spectrum of industries

• High-performance Gi/SGi firewall with integrated

- Telecommunication, Building, Industrial and Utilities

network DoS and Carrier Grade NAT (CGN).

has scheduled to launch NVS (Norden Voice System) a

• The Gi/SGi firewall protects the mobility

Public Address System. Norden’s continued research and

infrastructure with advanced policy enforcement.

product development has brought up technologies and

• High-performance IPSec site-to-site VPN helps

products that are ideal for the modern world public address

enterprises to secure application traffic between

requirements. NVS has a wide range of products made

sites and it enables global enterprises to use public

with state-of –the –art technology featuring various sizes,

networks to transport application traffic securely.

applications and design.

• aGalaxy Centralized Management System support

Key features:

configuration, reporting and troubleshooting for

• The range includes Ceiling Speakers, Mixer and Power

Thunder CFW.

for Thunder CFW provides device management,

Amplifier, Handheld and Paging Microphone.

• The solution also comes along with Column

Loudspeakers, Wall Mount Loudspeakers, Fireproof Ceiling Loudspeakers, Coaxial Ceiling Loudspeakers, Landscape Garden Loudspeakers, Audio Source, Evacuation System and Audio Matrix and Paging Controller.

• NVS is with state-of-the-art Digital Signal Processing

technologies Public Address System to International standards.

32 | November 2015

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AXIS F34 Surveillance System It comes with everything needed for a highly discreet, four camera system. But that’s not all. Everything from cameras to storage and video management is fully integrated for optimal installation and use. And with an end-to-end solution from Axis, you can be sure to utilize the latest technologies. Get quality and efficiency to your video surveillance – all-in-one.

For all features and to see the solution in action, visit www.axis.com/f34-system

Stats & Trends

GCC external storage market declines 16% in Q2 2015

T

he GCC external storage market suffered a yearon-year decline of 16.11 per cent in the second quarter of 2015 to total $77 million (Dh282.6 million), according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

The research firm attributed the decline to the unstable socioeconomic and political conditions that are currently affecting the region, while also noting that the market's terabyte capacity increased 11.4 per cent over the same period.

The ongoing oil crisis – combined with subsequent IT budget cuts and the traditional Ramadan slowdown – saw the major markets of Saudi

34 | November 2015

Arabia and the UAE post year-on-year declines in their external storage revenues of 10.6 per cent and 15.6 per cent, respectively, in Q2 2015.

However, IDC expects deals in the government, financial and oil and gas sectors to go ahead as the oil prices stabilize.

Kuwait and Oman posted respective year-on-year declines of 6.9 per cent and 15.6 per cent in Q2 2015, while Bahrain and Qatar suffered more substantial reverses of 40.74 per cent and 32.04 per cent, respectively.

"The slowdown seen in these markets is being influenced by a number of different factors that have

resulted in weaker consumer and enterprise sentiment and cuts in government spending," says Amro Alkhatib, a research analyst for systems and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East and Africa.

"These include currency fluctuations due to falling oil prices, the lifting of international sanctions on Iran, and the ongoing crisis in Yemen."

EMC continues to dominate the GCC storage market with 55.2 per cent share, followed

by HP with 14.4 per cent. IBM increased its share quarter on quarter to total 6.9 per cent for Q2 2015. The likes of NetApp, Huawei, Dell, and DDN, among others, also saw increases in

their shares quarter on quarter (reaching a combined 23.5 per cent) due to the introduction of new flash technologies and hybrid solutions.

From a protocol perspective, fiber channel registered an expected decline of 10.4 per cent year on year in Q2 2015. iSCSI observed a substantial drop of 61.18 per cent over the same period due to project delays across the region's telecommunications, government, and finance sectors. NAS, on the other hand, showed healthy growth of 2.24 per cent, courtesy of a number of major IT upgrades and maintenance projects taking place.

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