F5 Networks has used GITEX to big up its cloud credentials this week, as it seeks to educate customers about the reality of doing business on the cloud.

According to Vincent Lavergne, Senior Pre Sales Manager, South EMEA, F5 hopes to explain to GITEX visitors that cloud computing is a reality, and many customers are turning to F5 in order to streamline

Tech Mahindra made a strategic announcement about signing an ICT partnership with Etisalat on the first day of GITEX Technology Week 2013, which is being held at Dubai World Trade Centre from today till October 24th.

Under the partnership, Tech Mahindra is providing around four to five offerings, which it is proposing via Etisalat, into the enterprise market segment. “This could be Etisalat’s customers such as banks,

governments, health care, oil and gas companies. We are providing not just security solutions but also managed services and devices, infrastructure, enterprise mobility; we will have several solutions that we will provide through this partnership,” says Girish Bhat, Telecom Business Head, Tech Mahindra ME

Present in all GCC countries, the company hopes to create awareness

Tech Mahindra partners with Etisalat

60 MinsShow dates: 20-24 October 2013, Dubai World Trade Centre | AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -6pm

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Strategic ICT Partner Technology Partners

F5 shifts focus to cloud computing

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Focus Softnet goes mobile at GITEX

Panasonic launches world’s first 20-inch tablet at GITEX

GITEX preview: Riverbed

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more power. We’re very hungry as users in terms of what we want. We want to consume applications, and we want them now, on our new mobile phones.”

Already, the F5 stand, located in the cloud-centred Hall 6 of DWTC, has seen plenty of customers asking about the network logistics of adopting cloud-based technologies. And many others, Lavergne said, have asked about the first step on that journey – network virtualisation.

That said, cloud will not be F5’s only focus for the remainder of GITEX 2013. While the company is unable to launch any new products - due to it being three days away from revealing a quarterly earnings report - the vendor is showcasing its current range of solutions, and meeting as many customers and partners as it can.

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Tech Mahindra... F5...through this partnership and is looking at this relationship as an engagement.  “We are setting up solution response center for Etisalat where some of the complex solution will get proposed to large enterprise via the telecom company. Etisalat already has many assets such as cloud services,  the idea is to take some of the service they already have and augment what is missing and bring that whole perspective together,” explains Bhat.  The company is looking at closing some more deals with Etisalat for the next quarter.

Tech Mahindra helps address telecom companies in the enterprise space, which is about these firms going to the market and trying to get a foothold in the large enterprises such as governments or banks.

Bhat adds, “We have been quite

successful as Tech Mahindra in addressing the enterprise vertical. We bring in that expertise to Etisalat. We have done it with other telecom companies worldwide. We know the pains and complexities some of these solutions really bring.  And telecom companies today need a System Integration partner like us to help build the story.” 

Today the company is looking at cloud, hosting and complex integration.  As telecos maintain strong relationships with the enterprises and provide connectivity and managed services to some of the firms, Tech Mahindra hopes to upscale that relationship to the next level.

At GITEX 2013, the company is displaying security solutions that are more focused on the financial segment.

their data centres for the transition to the cloud.

“There’s a lot of evolution in the way that customers are using us, and we want to demonstrate that this is a reality. A lot of customers are using us,” he told 60 Minutes.

Lavergne explained that F5’s interest in the cloud revolved around applications and application delivery. F5 can be thought of as the middleware platform between the clients and the application, he said, adding that the vendor saw cloud as a new way to deliver platforms and applications.

“We are a key component of this infrastructure. It’s not that we are shifting everything to the cloud – for us, cloud is an evolution of IT, and IT is becoming more of a service,” he said.

“The idea is to let IT evolve and to make it as a service. As a service, it means that users have

Focus Softnet goes mobile at GITEX

Veeam Software displays data protection solutions

Focus Softnet is using GITEX to showcase a host of mobile apps for its ERP and vertical solutions.

The mobile ERP apps launched at the show provide companies with business solution dashboards on mobile phones, Focus Softnet said.

According to the company’s CEO, Aly Hyder, Focus Softnet is pushing the mobile platform hard at GITEX this year. “Our focus this year will be on mobile apps in a big way. We have developed separate mobile apps for our ERP and vertical solutions including healthcare, property management, POS, Restaurant solutions etc.,”

Along with its mobile offerings, the vendor has also placed much focus on its flagship

Focus i solution this week. The company described the product as a “revolutionary” mid-tier ERP solution with fully integrated with business intelligence (BI) tools.

The company has also showcased Focus RT, an ERP solution designed to manage finances, supply chain payroll, point of sale and customer offices.

Other headline acts in Focus Softnet’s GITEX repertoire this week include Focus AIMS, an academic record management software solution for schools to automate processes, and Focus Mobile Point of Sale, a software solution that incorporates the functionality of a traditional POS workstation into a mobile device,

which helps businesses to serve customers, the company said.

Speaking about the vendor’s participation at GITEX in general, Hyder said that he expected a good response from customers and partners when they see the Focus Softnet’s offerings this week.

“GITEX is an ideal forum to meet with existing and potential customers and demonstrate the unique features our solutions and show them the benefits and cost savings of implementing our solutions. We want to highlight that our solutions are highly customisable and can be adapted to suit our customers’ business needs,” he added.

Focus Softnet is exhibiting at Stand D7-20 in Hall 7.

GITEX 2013 witnessed innovative data protection techniques from Veeam Software through its latest technology – Veeam Backup & Replication v7 with Built-in WAN Acceleration and Backup from Storage Snapshots.

“We need products that raise the level of protection in an era of powerful and complex threats,” Veeam’s President and CEO, Ratmir Timashev said. “More than 73,000 companies already rely on Veeam Backup & Replication, and in this

new version, we’re setting the highest standard for Modern Data Protection.”

The built-in WAN Acceleration and Backup from Storage Snapshots highlight market-leading features that take modern data protection to the next level. Optimised specifically for Veeam backups, built-in WAN Acceleration copies data to offsite locations up to 50x faster than a regular file copy. It also eliminates the need to purchase and deploy a general purpose WAN acceleration appliance or acquire additional

network bandwidth for offsite backups.

“Even many of the enterprise-focused legacy backup solutions don’t offer WAN acceleration embedded in their product,” said Rachel Dines, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. “Most organisations need to get copies of backups off site. The new feature Veeam announced makes that process much more efficient.”

Veeam Backup & Replication v7 also introduces seven other market-leading features and more than 75 additional new features/enhancements, including Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint, VMware vCloud Director Integration, Self-Service Recovery of VMs and Guest Files and Native Tape Support.

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Panasonic launches world’s first 20-inch tablet at GITEX

Panasonic has launched the world’s first 20-inch tablet with a 4K resolution at GITEX.

It has also taken the opportunity to showcase its Lamp-free professional projectors.

The Toughpad 4K – UT-MB5 tablet is the flagship product in Panasonic’s

new Ultra High Definition Toughpad range, and is four times stronger than an HD resolution of 3840 x 2560 pixels.

The tablet comes with an electronic touch pen, which is able to detect 2048 levels of pressure, ensuring greater accuracy.

Masao Motoki, Managing Director for marketing, Middle East and Africa, said: “This product will open new doors for our customers by delivering an immersive viewing experience. With this device, the region has literally moved into an era of the next dimension of 4K

resolution technology.” The device comes pre-installed with

Windows 8.1 Pro, and can be used as both a desktop PC and tablet. It has a 20-inch screen, 256 GB SSD and SD card slot, and USB 3.0.

Meanwhile, Panasonic’s lamp-free projectors combine LED and laser diodes, and have a life span of 20,000 hours.

The projectors come in four models, and Panasonic claim they are able to withstand consecutive use, with brightness decreasing to 75% after 10,000 hours of use.

They also include a 30x drive system that minimizes rainbow effects, and a high contrast ratio of over 10,000:1.

Yuichiro Suzuki, Senior Manager, Systems Solutions, Panasonic marketing Middle East and Africa said: “These next generation visual solutions are ideal for Middle Eastern homes, offices and large venues. Our projectors not only incorporate the latest technologies but are competitively priced as well.”

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GITEX preview: Riverbed

What is the main theme of your presence at GITEX this year?The main theme for Riverbed Technology at GITEX this year is ‘Storage Consolidation’. We chose this in order to send a strong message to our existing and potential partners and customers which is that all organisations, no matter how big or small, should tailor their data storage plans to fit their exact needs. This focus was sparked by our awareness and response to the growing amount of data passing

through an organisation every day. The data needs to be effectively managed and Riverbed® can deliver best-in-class storage consolidation solutions to customers in an increasingly demanding market.

Are you releasing/launching anything new at GITEX 2013? If so, what?Riverbed is constantly launching new products, solutions and additional functionalities to our existing portfolio. This year visitors to our booth

will be enlightened with the latest developments and enhancements to the products and solutions within our portfolio. Our main focus will be on showcasing our solutions spanning WAN optimization, storage delivery, application-aware network performance management, application performance management, application delivery controllers, web content optimization (WCO), and cloud data protection. Some of the Riverbed products are thoroughly explained below (question 7).

How is your company presenting itself at GITEX this year to differentiate it from competitors?This year, Riverbed is combining its traditional promotional stand, with a much more hands on and collaborative approach ensuring that the experience visitors get is effectively distinguished from its competition.

Workshops, partner-focused meetings and trainings, solution and product demos are some of the activities that we hope will engage our GITEX visitors.

In addition to this, FVC, our Value Added Distributor for the Middle East, is due to endorse the Riverbed products by showcasing their capabilities at their own stand at GITEX 2013, whilst showcasing the advantages of joining the Riverbed Partner Network.

What are the key trends influencing your approach to GITEX 2013 and the offerings you

are pushing? Riverbed have uncovered several key IT and technological developments which have somewhat swayed the approach afforded to GITEX this year.

If we refer to the evolution of the IT spending in the Middle East region, Gartner estimates a 7.7% rise for 2013 compared to 2012 and a 15.7% year-on-year growth for 2014. Clearly, the regional IT market is preparing for a boom.

Cloud, social media, mobile and information are set to equally impact IT organizations and technology providers in the Middle East in the near future, as the upward trend continues.

Consequently, telecom, devices, IT services and software represent most of the total IT spending forecast for this year, maintaining the trend from 2012, according to Gartner.

If we refer to the vertical markets that show most interest in IT investment over the next period, government, telecommunications and the financial sector are probably the most relevant.

In this respect, Riverbed is well aligned with what is clearly recognized as the main areas of market growth.

Riverbed Technology has noted several technology trends driving the global technology market and these are in tandem with similar trends in the Middle East and North Africa regions.

The ‘virtualization’ of data centers’ will increasingly move towards the edge of the organization. Virtualization technology has allowed

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Taj El Khayat, General Manager, MENA, Riverbed

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entities to generate multipurpose “branch office boxes,” removing any need for traditional remote servers. A higher level of benefit can be extracted from the most radical virtual deployments.

Alongside consolidation within a branch, advances in technology allow companies to form “stateless branch” offices. Reaching 11% consolidation of edge servers, applications and data into the data center enables the companies system to more effectively secure, manage and defend its resources.

With software-defined networking and software-defined data centers more enterprises can stage-manage how to construct up and coming data centers in order to quickly divide up their network and data centers as applicable. These revised centers are giving the user a very high level of flexibility and agility, not available with conventional networks and data centers.

Another key trend we are experiencing is an increase in the amount of mobile technology in organizations as compared to fixed access portals. The introduction of 802.11 Wi-Fi as well as wireless 4G networks and BYOD’s ensures that in the future, businesses will be operating completely wirelessly. Riverbed offerings at this year’s GITEX are specifically tailored to this very trend. Application acceleration, bandwidth optimization and disaster recovery are just a few in the mountain of new options up for grabs at this year’s event.

GITEX highlights