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Contents

R. NarayanManaging Editor

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.

Published by: JNS Media International MFZEP.O. Box: 121075, Montana Building 404, Zabeel Road, Near GPO, Karama, Dubai-UAETel: 04-3705022 Fax: 04-3706639

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Editorial

Founder & CEO: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. NarayanEditor: David NdichuArt Director: Faiz Ahmed Sr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Sales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

2014 will be undoubtedly be a year wherein the transformations to a new world order in terms of Technology

adoption would go a further level up. There is no going back and therefore the channel needs to gear up for a more focused assault on the opportunities that beckon them in the areas of Virtualisation, the cloud, BYOD, Big Data Analytics, SDN (software defined networks) etc.

It is easy to know why these trends will only pick further pace from hereon. While most of them might have seemed like vaporware not too long ago, we understand better with each passing day, the relevance of the Technologies that back these buzzwords.

Big data analytics will get to play a more decisive role in influencing the go to market strategies of manufacturers and services companies as they derive better actionable insights from more mature Technology tools. The Internet of Things (IoT) is now a reality and will be a trend to watch in 2014. IoT which essentially is about having sensors in things that gather data and relay them over the internet to a data collection point, will have a significant role to play in the Big Data analytics scheme of things.

The role of agile networks are seen to be decisive in extracting performance and do away with bottlenecks that Businesses can ill-afford in a very competitive landscape, whichever industry they belong to. However SDN deployments are likely to rise only at a modest rate this year. As some analysts suggest, we may have to wait until next year to see a widespread adoption of SDN with 2014 likely to be the year of early adopters.

This is an era of technology crossovers, perhaps similar in some way to the early years of the 20th century when the introduction of several new technologies or facilities from the Airplane to the Telephone significantly changed the way of life. The year is going to be a testing phase for the channel to keep pace with the changes that will require them to develop expertise in new areas. 2014 would be the year that channel companies are called upon to reimagine their go to market methodologies.

Further into the future

Cover feature - 18

Disruptive growth The disruptive dominance of cloud, BYOD, Big Data etc are irreversible and are defining the future

News in detail - 11

Dell and Red Hat to Co-Engineer OpenStack Private Cloud Solutions

Point2Point

Committed to its pursuit - 12Mushtaq Khot, Business Unit Head- VBG at Metra discusses the Milestones achieved and the road ahead

Pursuing a sizable opportunity - 13MadhurKripal, AVP Sales, Tech Mahindra explains about the new partnership with Etisalat

All the right moves - 24EMT is looking to benefit as local businesses increasingly go virtual and into the cloud, says Mohammad Mobasseri

Feature - 16

On the safe sideAs Safenet celebrates its 30 years in the IT security business, the company has feet firmly planted in the today’s IT market

TechKnow

Winning the war - 14Ralf Haubrich, VP CEEMEA, Sophos discusses how Sophos is equipped to deal with the demand for security solutions

In acceleration mode - 15D-Link is looking for faster growth as Sakeer Hussain, Sales and Marketing Manager at D-Link Middle East discusses

Defining trends - 22Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Dell Middle East discusses key trends in Technology and Dell’s approach.

Tried and tested - 26Mark Reeves, Senior VP at Entrust, discusses how the company can secure online engagements

Insight

Smart Government means going beyond mobile - 28

The ‘Uncertainty Index’ - 30

Regulars

News BytesEyetechStats & Trends

4  |  January 2014 

News Bytes

ITQAN has become an SAP channel partner authorized to resell the SAP Business All-in-One (BAiO) solutions to midsize companies in the MENA region.

SAP BAiO is a comprehensive, proven solution with preconfigured, industry-specific business processes to enable predictable and affordable implementations. Optimized for midsize companies, SAP BAiO has the flexibility to adapt and extend as a business evolves and grows.

SAP recently introduced the successful release of 52 country-localized SAP BAiO Baseline solutions on the latest HANA-enabled Enhancement release of SAP ERP, which is part of the latest SAP Business Suite. In addition to this large-scale availability of new country baselines, as series of industry extensions (i.e., Chemicals, Discrete Manufacturing) are now also available.

With its designation as an authorized SAP channel partner, ITQAN now provides a complete solution that encompasses all facets required for successful implementation, including SAP BAiO software licensing, implementation services, training and documentation, staffing and optimization and support.

ITQAN Becomes SAP Partner

Tripp Lite has signed Metra Computer Group to sell and support the vendor’s portfolio of SMB and Enterprise solutions through more than 5,000 channel partners across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Vipin Sharma, Tripp Lite’s Vice-President for Middle East and Africa (MEA), said: “Metra has an established reputation in the regional ICT industry, a factor that makes them an ideal partner for us to widen our business reach and develop our channel presence in emerging growth markets like Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”

Sharma added that Metra will act as TrippLite’s value-added distributor (VAD) and stocking wholesaler, offering a dynamic reseller base that covers all market segments from retail and SMB to corporate and enterprise. Through Metra, TrippLite aims to make its wide array of highly efficient, reliable and eco-friendly UPS, PDUs, KVM and Console Server switches, surge suppressors, rack enclosures, cooling and cables available to All IT and ICT users in the region.

“By partnering with Metra, we expect our sales performance and reach to grow markedly in the UAE and across the GCC and MENA,” he added.

Polycom announced that Peter A. Leav has joined the company as President and Chief Executive Officer. He also will serve as a Director on Polycom’s Board of Directors.

Leav succeeds interim CEO Kevin Parker, who will continue serving as Chairman of the Board of Polycom, and will work closely with Leav on a transition plan that continues Polycom’s focus on innovation, operational excellence and profitability.

“Peter’s strong background in operations, general management and sales, spanning a successful 20+ year career in communications, technology and services and his energy and passion are strong assets to take Polycom to the next level,” said Parker. “We are delighted to have Peter come on board to lead Polycom into the future. His experience leading a global organization and his proven track record of driving revenue and shareholder value made Peter the natural choice.”

Leav assumed the role on Monday, Dec. 2, 2013, and will be based out of the company’s global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

“Polycom is a proven innovator and leading provider of secure, interoperable collaboration solutions to enterprises, from voice to video to content sharing,” Leav said. “The future opportunity is unlimited as most organizations across the world are just beginning to discover the amazing benefits Polycom collaboration solutions can bring to them. Providing the industry’s best end-to-end customer experience, while improving operating margin and driving long-term shareholder value, will be top priorities for me and for our Company. I am very excited to work with our team as we enhance our strategy, drive results and continue our innovation leadership in this evolving industry.”

Tripp Lite chooses Metra as Middle East distributor

Polycom gets new CEO

StorIT

CONVERGED STORAGE ARCHITECTURE-your path to the Cloud

Harnessing the value of information

A u t h o r i z e d M i d d l e E a s t Va l u e A d d e d D i s t r i b u to r

StorIT Distribution fzco P.O.Box 17417 Jebel Ali FreeZone Dubai, United Arab EmiratesTel: +971 4 881 9690 | Fax: +971 4 887 1637 | Email: info@storit.ae | www.storit.ae

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6  |  January 2014 

News Bytes

Comguard successfully hosted a Cyber Security roadshow in Doha, Qatar. The event was held in association with Ixia, SafeNet, and WildPackets, at Radisson Blue Hotel, in Doha, Qatar.

Ajay Singh Chauhan, Chief Executive Officer at Comguard, said, “Even more recently, cyberspace has become a platform for political activism with web sites being defaced and defamed in direct retaliation against governments. The region was the first to experience 'cyber-warfare' with Stuxnet and versions of Flamer impacting the energy sector. Hence, we organized the Cyber Security@Crossroads event in Doha, Qatar, to reiterate that such security threats are not to be taken lightly.”

Comguard’s Cyber Security@Crossroads event acted as a platform for Enterprise customers and C-level executives, solution providers, and leading experts, to discuss about the challenges and opportunities brought about by the latest technology developments in security. At the event, subject matter experts from Comguard, Ixia, SafeNet and WildPackets were able to discuss first-hand, about new technologies and approaches.

Westcon Group has achieved MEA “Commercial Distributor Partner of the Year 2013” by Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation. The annual awards, made at Juniper’s recent Middle East & Africa (MEA) regional partner summit in Dubai, U.A.E., recognize partners who have made the most notable contribution to their customers and have expanded their business value with Juniper throughout 2013.

Westcon ME received its award on December 4th during Juniper’s regional partner summit, an annual event designed to bring together key distribution and reseller partners to review best practices and discuss Juniper’s

strategic plans and objectives for the coming year. Partners attended this year’s event from Egypt, Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Oman, South Africa, Qatar, U.A.E. All attending partners work with Juniper Networks within the Juniper Partner Advantage program.

“Westcon is especially honored to receive this award in response to our proven Westcon Way Recruit, Enable & Grow model, specifically designed to elevate mid-market partners. In 2013 many of our customers have focused on creating a holistic, effective security stance across their network from data center to mobile user to protect mission-critical applications. Combining Westcon’s local experience with Juniper’s innovative portfolio, we have been able to deliver highly-effective solutions to meet business needs,” said Steve Lockie, Managing Director MEA, Westcon Group.

Comguard Focuses on Cyber Security in Doha

Westcon awarded by Juniper Networks

Shifra, a UAE-based value added distributor has signed a distribution deal with Corero Network Security, a leading provider of First Line of Defense solutions for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and cyber threat protection. The deal will see Shifra extend its portfolio of security solutions in the region.

The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, (TRA), recently reported that the number of attacks has grown rapidly in the past three years, from 8,400 in 2010 to 530,000 in the first quarter of this year. Companies in the UAE are looking to invest and implement counter measure products and services to block cyberattacks.

Ahmad Elkhatib, Managing Partner at Shifra said he looked forward to the relationship with Corero describing it as “beneficial for the region”.

“The rise in cyber incidents shows just how far the threats have escalated and the Middle East is no exception. A new wave of sophisticated cyber-attacks exists in the region and it has the potential to cripple petrochemical, finance and oil and gas companies,” said Elkhatib. “We have partnered with Corero to offer a range of security solutions within this market because we know threats that orgnisations face are real and serious.”

Shifra ties up with Corero Network Security

8  |  January 2014 

News Bytes

NetApp announced that IDC ranked NetApp as having the number-one storage solution shipped in 2012 for public cloud infrastructure from the perspective of external system capacity. The ranking was conducted as part of IDC's biannual Storage User Demand Study , which analyzes current and future deployments of enterprise storage systems for particular data uses.

By harnessing the versatility and efficiency of the Data ONTAP operating system, NetApp delivers a universal data platform, enabling dynamic data portability and extensive customer choice across a blend of private and public cloud resources.

“As our survey indicated, end users adopt and will continue to adopt variety of cloud storage services to optimize and expand their storage environments,” says Natalya Yezhkova, research director, IDC. “Participation in building cloud infrastructures is an essential opportunity for storage system suppliers but it also requires innovation in product and solution designs to satisfy service provider needs, which are very different from traditional storage architectures.”

NetApp continues to provide an extensive array of customer choices for hybrid cloud operations and supports all major cloud operating environments. NetApp currently has more than 175 cloud service providers delivering more than 300 cloud services built on Data ONTAP.

NetApp leads in Storage for Public Cloud Fortinet announced the appointment of Antoine Hakim

as its new Channel Accounts Manager for the Middle East region. Based in Dubai, Antoine Hakim is responsible for driving channel development across GCC countries, Levant and Jordan. In his new role, he will drive also channel marketing activities in the region, reporting directly to Alain Penel, Regional Vice President for the Middle East region.

Hakim’s appointment supports Fortinet’s ambitious expansion plan for growing revenue and market share in the Middle East region by strengthening its channel network across all countries.

“I’m very excited about being now part of Fortinet, a leading security vendor in UAE and in the broader Middle East region and a solid company that has, since 2005, enjoyed an impressive growth. I’m excited to join a strong and ambitious team and my top priorities will be to define channel strategies to pursue our expansion, while strengthening our relationships with strategic partners.” said Antoine Hakim.

Before joining Fortinet as Channel Accounts Manager for the Middle East region, Antoine Hakim spent more than 10 years in the IT industry and acquired a strong experience in channel management and distribution, working in organizations like Mindware as Juniper Unit Manager, Citrix as sales manager and most recently, Secureway as Fortinet dedicated Channel Manager.

Fortinet Appoints Antoine Hakim as Channel Accounts Manager

Red Hat has announced the general availability of OpenShift Enterprise 2, the latest version of its on-premise private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering. With OpenShift Enterprise 2, customers can increase the velocity, efficiency and scalability of their IT service delivery, drive faster development of new applications and business services and reduce time-to-market. With enhanced features including datacenter infrastructure integration, an advanced administration console, support for even more programming languages, and new collaboration capabilities and expanded global availability, a wider range of developers can achieve the benefits of private PaaS technology for their cloud deployments.

Ashesh Badani, general manager, Cloud and OpenShift, Red Hat said, ““PaaS represents the fastest growing segment of cloud computing , and Red Hat offers the industry’s only full suite of open source PaaS solutions for both public and private PaaS. OpenShift Enterprise 2 extends this leadership and delivers what users want – an application-driven enterprise – by making PaaS even easier to consume.”

OpenShift Enterprise, introduced in November 2012, is a critical component of Red Hat’s vision for the open hybrid cloud.

Red Hat advances PaaS platform capabilities

10  |  January 2014 

News Bytes

Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled new software defined networking (SDN) technologies for the OmniSwitch Ethernet LAN portfolio of its Enterprise division that will help companies meet the increasing demands of employees and customers to use the applications they want, when and where they want to use them.

Enterprises IT departments are burdened with the adoption of newer technologies to meet demands of their customers, and are looking for ways to provide on demand flexibility and capacity without an increase in operational overhead. To help overcome these challenges, Alcatel-Lucent is expanding its Application Fluent Network vision to help enterprises build SDN-based solutions in an affordable manner. These additional SDN capabilities, featuring automation and provisioning, support practical use cases which solve real world issues in the enterprise, making SDN the foundation for a new and improved user experience.

OpenFlow support and OpenStack integration are available now on the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch product via a free software upgrade or at no additional charge when a new system is purchased. “These capabilities ensure that OmniSwitch solutions are open and will work seamlessly with the company’s partner ecosystem and industry SDN leaders’ solutions,” said Stephane Robineau, GM and VP, Enterprise Networks business, Alcatel-Lucent.

Alcatel-Lucent broadens SDN capabilities

StarLink has been designated by Venafi as its Strategic Distributor for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. StarLink will sell Venafi products and solutions through its Channel Partners across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa to its enterprise and government customers.

"For too long organizations have blindly trusted keys and certificates and have little visibility into their threat risk exposure," said Gregory Webb, Venafi Vice President of Marketing. "Malicious actors have taken note of this blind trust, and use it nefariously against organizations who have no ability to detect anomalies or to respond to attacks on trust. The results are clear: terabytes of

valuable information and IP are being pilfered from them before the compromise is even detected. We are excited to partner with StarLink to help organizations in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa respond to and remediate these trust-based attacks,” he added.

AvinashAdvani, Director Business Strategy, StarLink said “The millions of dollars companies spend on perimeter-based security solutions every year are unfortunately not solving the problem of compromised keys and certificates, which provide cyber-criminals unfettered trusted access and status. With Venafi, we can now empower enterprises across the regions we cover to reduce the risk of malicious attacks on trust with complete visibility into key and certificate inventories and end-to-end automation of security and control processes.”

StarLink Partners with Venafi

2X Software has appointed EMT Distribution as its partner in the Middle East.After making a successful debut at this year GITEX, the company has been able to generate lot of traction in the market and now with support of its distributor EMT, 2X intends to increase its engagement with the region.

Nikolaos Makris, CEO at 2X Software, said, “We are excited to be part of this growing region. We will also be working closely with EMT to expand our channel foot print across the region and run several campaigns to acquire maximum number of reseller and partners under our banner. We are certain that with our technology, channel partners will be able to drive more margins and better return of investment for their time and effort.”

The market for virtual desktop and application delivery, remote access and cloud computing solutions is gaining currency in the region and 2X Software is ideally placed to service this market, bringing significant commercial benefits to businesses that are considering implementing virtual desktops, application delivery, and using the cloud.

EMT Distribution is authorised to distribute 2X products across the region including countries like Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

2X Software signs up EMT as distributor

  January 2014  |  11

News In Detail

Dell and Red Hat, announced the companies will jointly engineer

enterprise-grade, private cloud solutions based on OpenStack to help customers move to and deploy highly-scalable cloud computing models. As part of the expanded relationship, Dell becomes the first company to OEM Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The co-engineered solution will be built on Dell infrastructure and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The solution will be delivered by a Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform practice within Dell Cloud Services.

Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat said, “Our collaboration with Dell keeps getting better and the announcement to co-engineer OpenStack solutions marks a significant milestone for both companies and customers. Just as we successfully collaborated with Dell to establish Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an enterprise industry standard, we’re now extending our collaboration to help establish Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform as the standard for open private cloud in the enterprise. Dell and Red Hat are committed to jointly developing and delivering enterprise-grade OpenStack offerings to help customers pursue private cloud today, and advanced computing models in the future.”

Dell and Red Hat have partnered for more than 14 years to bring global customers value by collaborating on Red Hat solutions across Dell’s enterprise offerings. Dell is the first to OEM Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. With the current announcement, Dell and Red Hat are strengthening their longstanding collaboration and commitment to help businesses confidently embrace open

source-based cloud computing models. With this development, customers worldwide will not only benefit from the co-engineered solutions, but the companies combined cloud expertise, enterprise innovation, and dedicated support and portfolio of services.

Marius Haas, Chief Commercial Officer and President, Enterprise Solutions, Dell

"Dell has been a long-time advocate and participant in the open source and OpenStack communities, pushing the charter of an open alternative to proprietary, enterprise computing systems. Our agreement to co-engineer OpenStack solutions with Red Hat takes our commitment a step further in helping customers obtain and deploy OpenStack solutions for an enterprise-grade, private cloud infrastructure to meet their evolving business needs. We will extend our work with Red Hat to apply our combined experience in commercializing open source for the benefit of our mutual customers as well as the open-source community on its development of networking, storage and compute capabilities."

Dell and Red Hat will also jointly contribute code to the OpenStack community and collaborate on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 4, currently in beta, which integrates OpenStack Havana, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. In addition, Dell plans to work closely with Red Hat on several future-state projects including:• OpenStack Networking (Neutron) to enable Software-Defined Networking and Networking-as-a-Service between interface devices such as virtual network interface cards, and• OpenStack Telemetry (Ceilometer) to provide OpenStack resource

instrumentation, which can help support service monitoring and customer billing systems.

Dell is also joining the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network as an Alliance Partner, the highest tier of program membership. The Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network connects both business and technical resources to third-party technology companies who are aligning with Red Hat’s OpenStack product offerings.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform combines the power of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Red Hat’s OpenStack cloud platform to deliver an enterprise-grade, scalable and secure foundation for building a private cloud. The alliance with Red Hat complements Dell’s cloud strategy of offering customers open, flexible and scalable technology to build, use and control cloud infrastructures.

Dell and Red Hat toCo-Engineer OpenStackPrivate Cloud Solutions

Paul CormierPresident, Product & Technology

Red Hat

12  |  January 2014 

Discuss the gains that have been achieved on the course of the journey so far for the value team at Metra?We now have a much better understanding of the market, vendors and partners. We continue to focus on the 4 pillars- Virtualization, networking security, compute and storage as well Disaster Recovery. We have tried making inroads in virtualization but are not there yet. We have tried reaching out to the two strong vendors in that segment, both VMware and Microsoft but that could not culminate into partnerships for various reasons including the fact that they may already have an entrenched distribution in place.

How do you intend to strengthen your case in the virtualization space?We have started partnering with HP. Working with HP will surely give us some reach into the virtualization market because of the solutions they provide. We will build on this and we look to strengthen that portfolio.

Do you see yourself placed in a much stronger position vis-à-vis last year in terms of the solution provide in critical segments as the Brands that you work with?We have BitDefender across the region, IBM for Saudi, Aruba for the region, HP for the Gulf, Tripplite for the region, Iomega for the Gulf, Autodesk etc.

We are working strongly with Aruba on the networking side. Now with HP Networking also included in our portfolio, we will have a greater opportunity to address more partners and in terms of a wider portfolio. We are now seeing greater acceptance in terms of the value we provide to customers.

We started working with Tripplite in the compute segment and Iomega in the storage space. We were able to make strong gains and now would be in a better position to succeed with the brands that we take up because of the better understanding our team has.

The initial vision was to be to provide solutions around the four pillars. Most of the customers have similar requirements. We are getting there steadily. Networking and security have shown strong results but we would like to improve our reach in the Virtualization segment and when that happens, we will have a stronger rate of growth.

What other value-add propositions are you building into your deliverables to your partners?We have built a POC facility and that should be formally announced soon in the early part of the year.This should be a significant addition to building our value proposition for our partners. We are doing enablement programs very regularly with Tripplite, Aruba, Autodesk for our partners. We are planning out roadshows, two per quarter spread across the region to stay engaged with our partners right through the year.

Committed to its pursuit

Metra is steadily building a stronger portfolio in its value Business and is committed to its vision of having solutions around the four pillars of its focus. Mushtaq Khot, Business Unit Head- VBG at Metra discusses the Milestones achieved and the road ahead

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take to their customers.

Elaborate on the Application Trust CenterWe showcased the Application Trust center at GITEX. If you look at security today for a Bank or any enterprise, etc, they are mostly focused on perimeter security but not so much on Application security itself. A lot of customers may buy the applications first and then think of security later. What we are telling them is that they can think of the application security layer even as they are building up applications.

The Application Trust center enables the enterprise customer to form a security and governance layer that can inform the CIO about what Applications in IT landscape are safe. There is a dashboard that clearly informs the CIO about the vulnerabilities that need to be addressed at the Application level. This Application Trust Control is being hosted with Etisalat white-labelled and Etisalat will then sell it into the market space.

Discuss ICT opportunities in the large

enterprise or government accounts Today, large government entities would want to outsource their applications which are varied. Telecom operators have typically stayed away from this space. Etisalat wants to address this space. This is where an experience ICT integrator like Tech Mahindra can come in and augment their capabilities. We can take over the IT assets of the customer and run it for them on their behalf.

We will address these requirements as they come up from enterprise customers of Etisalat. We will additionally address the demand part also.

You reach out to customers outside this partnership as well. Is this a conflict?This is another channel and therefore there is no conflict. If you look at typical large enterprise entities and Banks, they will trust an operator like Etisalat and it therefore becomes easier to access these customers and win their trust. They have not addressed this space end to end earlier and now they want to do this. We are investing significantly to make this a success.

Tech Mahindra Ltd is a specialist provider of connected solutions to the connected world and enabling future digital enterprises. Its Global Test Factory has achieved TMMi Level 5 capability and the company recently entered into a partnership with Etisalat in the region to target the enterprise segment. Madhur Kripal, Associate Vice President - Sales at Tech Mahindra of Tech Mahindra explains how the company is working to make this partnership succeed

Pursuing asizableopportunity

You have entered into a partnership with Etisalat. Please discuss the focus?Etisalat has been a large customer for us in some markets including Egypt and India. Tech Mahindra has expertise and experience in helping the Telcos in addressing the enterprise spac and we have worked with the likes of British Telecom. We are focusing on Managed services, enterprise security, IT outsourcing etc. We are focusing on the three growth areas in our partnership. Do telecom operators have specific advantages when offering ICT services?Telcos have established relationships with enterprise customers for voice. However, voice revenues globally are declining and data revenues are the key. Telecom operators are therefore looking for alternative revenues streams. They are now offering ICT services to their enterprise customers who are already buying the voice services from them. Telecom operators already are trusted names and it would be easier for them. They would need systems integrators who can build these solutions which they can

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Are companies now taking adequate steps to protect themselves against cyber espionage?Our lab data seems to indicate that botnet based attacks are on the rise along with increasingly more complex malware and viruses that are aimed at spyware and similar access obtaining methods. Cyber Espionage has shocked and scared many companies that their data is being collected and used in unauthorized ways. The threat of Cyberwar and Espionage are rising concerns for CSO and CIOs. This is fueling the demand for encryption software and as well as the need for a confirmation of no built in backdoors in the software. Overall,

there is a demand for implementation of secure computing.

How was the growth in the past year?Sophos has seen phenomenal growth in the region over the past year. In fact, we have seen high double digit growth in the region and that continues through relevant security products built in Germany and Europe. Our partner commitment, trainings and ofcourse our staff are key to this amazing growth.Further, we have as always focused on delivering secure solutions, honestly.

What would be the major shifts in the

Sophos continues to consolidate its suite of solutions to tackle the rising cyber threats and recently announced Sophos Cloud, a cloud-based service for endpoint protection as well as the latest version of Sophos Mobile Control for mobile device management (MDM).Ralf Haubrich, Vice President CEEMEA, Sophos discusses threats on the security landscape and how Sophos along with its partners is equipped to deal with the demand for security solutions

industry that will reflect in actual IT deployments in the region as well?There is a need for more transparency, trust and stability when it comes to deployed solutions. Encryption software, mobile security and UTMs are in high demand together with built-in and easier endpoint security that are our strengths in terms of security knowhow and tradition.

Do you reckon security will continue to be a key consideration for cloud deployments in the region this year? The Cloud continues to stay relevant, especially for the SMB market. Secure clouds and build in security is a key point in any implementation. Encryption of data is also another, combined with easy management and configuration.

What are the likely challenges that the channel in general needs to take in stride?The channel needs to focus on business value security solutions that are transparent for everyday users. They need to focus on training to maintain high levels of security

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Winning the warknowledge as well as emphasize on what customers really need and quickly implement those.

Is there adequate opportunity for smaller partners?Ideally, there is opportunity for both larger and smaller companies as every economy needs a healthy mix of startup and more mature companies. Some of the larger companies are struggling with their size, identity and strategy whereas smaller companies can react faster to opportunities and trends but may not however have the cash reserves that bigger companies do to fulfil them.

  January 2014  |  15

Is the telco segment a focus area for D-Link?The telco business is one of our focus areas. We have partnered with major Telco operators in the region. We are one of the major suppliers for the CPE (customer premises equipment) devices in the region.

How is the cloud router series faring?mydlink Cloud Services allow you to effortlessly Access, View, Share, and Control your D-Link network devices – anytime, anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Routers, cameras, and network storage devices all can be reached instantly using computer or mobile devices like iOS and Android devices.

This is a personal cloud offering and when we launched it, awareness

among consumers wasn’t high since it was something very new to the market. Now the awareness is rising and there a rising demand because of the ease of use.

IP cameras for instance can deployed in three simple steps. You need a cloud router and internet connection as well in addition to the camera. A single user account can access multiple cloud devices registered in the same user account any part of the world.

Have partnerships been one of the key aspects to your success?We have long standing partnerships with our distributors and resellers. We are quite committed to our partners. We regularly reward our partners for the good work they do.

D-Link Middle east has been among the strongest performing networking brands in the soho segment of the region and has a growing stake in the SMB space as well. With a strong channel in place, the company is looking for faster growth. Sakeer Hussain, Sales and Marketing Manager at D-Link Middle east discusses some of the key highlights

In acceleration modeDiscuss your focus on the SMB BusinessWe have been in the SMB segment for some years now. The passive networking Business also complements our focus in the SMB. We have a dedicated team for the SMB – including pre-sales, Technical support, POC facility etc. We offer extended warranty for some product lines and have SLAs with several clients for immediate replacements when required.

Discuss your growth areas IP security and wireless access are booming segments for us. There is significant demand from the education and hospitality sectors for access points and IP security. IP Telephony Business is a growing Business as well for us, especially in solutions for the SMB segment. We have many of our SI partners focusing on this business.

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On the safe sideFew IT companies have a 30 year history

behind them. Fewer still in IT security. For Safenet, three decades of evolution has seen security move from the fringes to the very heart of IT with cloud and big data the providing unique challenges and opportunities for this very resilient of tech

companies.Safenet started by proving solutions

for securing networks and although a lot has changed since then, there’s still a lot of relevance for securing these connections. Nonetheless, Safenet has put a lot of focus in data centre solutions

As Safenet celebrates its 30 years in the IT security business, the company has feet firmly planted in the today’s IT market as changes bring newtechnologies hardly imagined three decades ago.

in recent years whether in virtualized or cloud environments. “We have developed a unique suite of solutions that go beyond the security perimeter to secure the data itself within those data centres regardless of what type of IT environment the data may reside” says Sebastian Pavie, Regional Sales Director, MEA for Safenet.

2013 was a transformational year for IT security as Big Data and Cloud took root. Nobody is today discussing or challenging the concept of Big data and the cloud, says Miguel. It’s already been accepted and the discussion is now clients want to implement cloud and big data policies. “There’s no doubt about the need for cloud, and in a multi-tenant environment, we can provide safety and security-not only the CSO, but also the CEO and CFO can see that the company’s assets are protected,” said Miguel.

Managing complex security tools is the bane of many CSOs, taking valuable time from monitoring and analysing threats. To unburden these frustrated admins, Safenet’s strategy is to provide a single point for all the cryptographic necessities of the company-a single point of delivery and a single point of control, explains Miguel Brajos, VP, Sales, Southern EMEA & MEA. “Our whole portfolio is getting unified and we have made certain steps already towards that by launching the Crypto Command Centre. This tool provides elastic cryptography capabilities of the HSMs by controlling the banks of HSMs and the capacity to use crypto services across the company and across departments and applications,” said Miguel.

And with authenticationbeing increasingly delivered as a SaaS, Safenet has the same approach of having a key management appliance on site to maintainthe ownership but with

Feature | Safenet

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thecapability to encrypt and manage the encryption in the cloud, adds Miguel.

Cloud computing adoption is now going on a lot faster after a subdued start in the region and now fast catching up with the rest of the developed world. Cloud exposes more data to potential hackers and necessitating data protection and cloud security solutions. The region is also leading the globe in adoption of smartphones with more than 60% penetration in countries like the UAE and KSA. This naturally translates into more sensitive data being accessed through those devices which typically needs a lot of security at the back end to secure that data, Sebastian says. “In addition, the device itself needs to be secured to authenticate the user and ensure that regardless of the device he is using, he is who says he is, so the admin can only give access to that sensitive data to the right people,” Sebastian adds.

Safenet is the security company with one of the broadest portfolios and can effectively address everything from authentication, to line encryption, storage encryption, HSMs, key generation, key management, etc. according to Miguel. “We can supply these virtual-centric cryptographic capabilities and security plus the management of these tools and access control together,” Miguel adds.

The number of cyber-attacksin the region has grown significantly especially in the data that has been exposed and made public with a lot of prominent companiessuffering major data breaches. Interestingly these organizations are typically the ones that have invested a lot in security and yet theygot breached.

Obviously, this is just a tip of the iceberg because there are many more that got exposed and we don’t know about. This development, according to Sebastian, has really put on the top ofthe agenda the need for this ultimate line of defence, encryption. “Encryption goes beyond perimeter security to securing the breach so that if a breach happens, anincreasingly common occurrence, then you have another layer of security,” Sebastian explained.

Safenet will embed security with the data itself so that if a customer does get breached, they are protected and the integrity of the organization preserved. The potential external hacker or inside malicious user obtains only meaningless and useless data, adds Sebastian.

Consumers have come to expect secure connections by default and it’s the challenging task of firms like Safenet to ensure our digital interactions are safe, secure and seamless. Oblivious to all but the most tech savvy of us, Safenet solutions are to be found everywhere. Safenet, as one of the leading global firms for issuing authorization of credit cards, has its certificates in many of the debit and credit cards we carry. The company also provides authentication for many enterprises and government bodies on premise or in the cloud. You will find Safenet increasingly securing services for government, enterprises and even for the consumer, says Miguel.

Adoption of e-government initiativesin the region is also heating up. One of

this is the recent deployment of smart national ID cards in several countries in the GCC with a lot of

them powered in the back end by Safenet, according to Sebastian. Withthese types of smart ID cards, the data that goes into the chip is created, signed and encrypted by Safenet modules. “So all these initiatives are taking thedemand for data protection to the next level and these are very exciting times for Safenet,” Sebastian said.

There are now numerous devices, applications and services that need to be secured. Regardless, organizations need to maintain the ownership of the data and the control of the platform; if you encrypt it, you own it and only you can decrypt it, Miguel explains. Organizations can control their keys and are able to find out who is using what data, allowing them to secure the infrastructure at multiple levels. “We supply industrial grade security services and cryptography level utility to our customers,” adds Miguel. Such is the trust, Miguel says, a major bank in Turkey evenmentions they are Safenet-protected as they market their e-banking services to their customers.

At the end of the day, all customers need is confidence and trust that their online lives are not compromised. To feel safe and to be secure are two different things, says Miguel. “What we provide our customers is security and the feeling of safety because they trust our solutions-we provide both. Crypto works; it protects you. The problem is that they are not used across the board but if more people cypher data, we will all be safer. So if data is breached, you might not be secure, but still you are safe,” Miguel concludes.

Safenet, as one of the leading global firms for issuing authorization of credit cards, has its certificates in many

of the debit and credit cards we carry. The company also provides authentication for many enterprises and

government bodies on premise or in the cloud.

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18  |  January 2014 

Mobility, social, cloud and Big Data. These disruptive trends are already established but the extent would be more decisive this year.

He adds, “70% of CIOs see mobile as the most disruptive technology over next decade and by the end of 2013 alone, a third of all new application development targeted a mobile form factor. Social is of course a key trend and social networking is now expected not only to follow people, but also appliances, devices and products; it is estimated that 57% of enterprises will be invested in enterprise social this year. From a Cloud perspective, Cloud services will fuel business and economic transformation across all MENA countries, delivering cost-effective, flexible access to enterprise-class ICT and accelerate associated business benefits of information access, storage, new ways of working and ROI. On the Data front, spending on Big Data is expected to increase from $10 billion in 2013 to $20 billion 2016.”

The SMB is a key sector in the region, with new starts-up ventures as well as many of the earlier start-ups now well into a phase of consolidation. These companies

are poised to leverage adoption of new technologies that can optimize costs of operations as well as productivity.

Fadi Moubarak, Channel & Mid-Market Director MEA, India & Turkey, Avaya mentions that while some of the top trends facing organizations in the region are the adoption of cloud and virtualization, mobility, and BYOD, he sees Video technology as a trend factor in 2014.

He says, “Companies throughout the region and the world are embracing video solutions to hold international meetings and events as well as managing customer service issues more effectively. Avaya, which offers all of these solutions, is therefore a provider of choice for companies of every size throughout the region.”

Avaya is witnessing the highest potential uptake in medium-sized enterprises. This is for two reasons as Fadi points out.

He says, “They have the most to gain from the benefits that new technology can offer, and in many ways they are the most flexible when it comes to adopting technologies like these. Medium-sized

The disruptive influences of Cloud computing, BYOD, Big Data etc are reimagining the future

While the global markets are expected to get a shade better this year, the

growth in the Technology industry are being led by technologies like Big Data, SDN, Cloud apps, BYOD, Virtualisation, IoT etc. Conventional Technologies will take the backseat on this drive into the future.

The Middle East, counted among the emerging markets, although much smaller in size than Europe or the US, are expected to contribute to the recovery through some significant rebound. The mood is especially upbeat in key GCC countries, driven by government led initiatives as well as growing private sector entrepreneurship and sizeable investments.

“Reports have already suggested that the ICT industry is predicted to experience healthy growth in 2014, with IT spend in the region on the rise. Additionally, the IT industry across the region has also been experiencing a ‘disruption and transformation’ because of four megatrends that we see dominating in the near future: Mobility, Social, Cloud and Data,” says Goksel Topbas, Server & Tools Business Group Lead at Microsoft.

The megatrends he refers to are

Cover Feature | Industry Outlook

Disruptive growth

  January 2014  |  19

enterprises are often very active in the marketplace, using dynamic, mobile, and highly-engaged employees to grow the business, which makes them prime beneficiaries of efficient cost-reduction communications strategies. They are also in need of robust interaction between their customers, suppliers, and offices – on a more uncompromising timeframe than are many larger enterprises. We find these businesses to be dramatically benefitting from UC, especially Video Conferencing.”

Over the past few years, Information Security has become an integral consideration for customers and companies. This is only getting only more defined as security threats keep proliferating. Gregg Petersen, Veeam’s Regional Sales Manager in the Middle East mentions security as a growth area along with Disaster Recovery and the Cloud.

He says, “The number one priority of majority of customers is security. Recently there have been several security issues that have raised awareness around security risks. At the moment Disaster Recovery (DR) is achieving more attention. Companies realize now that there are DR solutions out there that are not expensive and they can achieve this without investing in more and more IT skills. Finally the cloud journey will continue with server virtualization gaining momentum. Customers have realized major savings and much better SLA’s with server virtualization and therefore are making this a high priority.”

According to him, the region is moving along very nicely with continued investment in virtualization, security, big data, DR and backup and recovery. More customers are finally adopting a dual vendor strategy for backup and recovery. 2013 was arguably a year of significant growth for Veeam in the region and the company expects 2014 to be no different. customers realized the value in adopting a dual vendor approach for virtual and physical.

Peterson adds, “Customers are finally realizing that virtualization and physical

server environment are very different and need to be treated as such. It is a disruptive way of thinking but something all our customers see the value in.”

Andrew Calthorpe, CEO, Condo Protego, a leading systems integrator in the region also observes in his forecast for the year that there is a growing demand and awareness of disaster recovery solutions.

He says, “In 2013, we saw increasing numbers of Middle Eastern SMEs start to take on serious disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) solutions. Expect 2014 to continue this trend in a much bigger way.”

The strategic importance of the network is continuing to grow. However, there’s also a perception that the network is increasingly becoming a bottleneck to keep pace with growing expectations of performance.

According to Dimension Data’s CTO, Ettienne Reinecke's forecast,“Given recent advances in data centre automation and virtualisation, the tables have turned. Networks are now under pressure to keep pace. The good news is that we’re at the dawn of a revolution in the world of networking, spearheaded by the rise of software-defined networking (SDN). SDN delivers high levels of abstraction and allows networks’ data and control panes to be decoupled. Services are no longer embedded in monolithic switches and routers ... and in the future it’s possible that a large percentage of network services will be software-invoked.”

Cloud adoptionGartner predicts the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to experience one of the highest global growth rates for public cloud services, increasing from 2012 to 2013 by 24.5% to USD 462.3 million. The UAE’s cloud market in particular is expected to see an annual compound growth of 43.7% until 2016, according to a recent report from analyst firm IDC.

“The region’s relatively slow cloud

uptake may have afforded a certain degree of breathing space, but even the briefest glance at the horizon suggests it is going to get very cloudy, very quickly in the coming years,” says Calthorpe.

“Cloud computing in MENA will take on a number of forms be they public, private or hybrid applications. Adoption must be carefully planned and implemented. Cloud computing can be powerfully augmented with existing infrastructure and embraced as appropriate. It shouldn’t be seen as a drastic, scary change - it should be a gradual and seamless evolution to greater efficiency, flexibility and cost-savings,” he adds.

While it is understood that the cloud comes with various benefits to end users as it works on an Opex model with no upfront costs and reduced complexities with easier setup and scalability, Fazi rues

Goksel TopbasServer & Tolls Business Group Lead

Microsoft

20  |  January 2014 

the fact that the end user awareness is on the lower side when it comes to benefits of cloud computing which is impacting adoption rates.

He comments, “Customer awareness with the cloud benefits is still on the lower end, and more market education is definitely needed which happens to be the responsibility of Service providers. I believe service providers should more actively promote cloud benefits and contribute more to increase market awareness to ensure the message is received and understood by their customers. This will increase cloud adoption.”

The Public cloud is seeing significant adoption. According to IDC research, over 70% of CIOs will embrace a cloud-first strategy in 2016.

Goksel says, “The cloud’s power can fundamentally change the way in which Businesses operate and compete. It will certainly impact the market and we see it as a complete game changer, and the hype is translating into increasing uptake of services across the region. IDC has even predicted that global spending on public cloud services will approach US$100 billion in 2016.”

There are roadblocks when it comes to cloud deployments according to a report from 451 Research. While IT roadblocks have reduced, the non-IT roadblocks have increased. There are a number of challenges and these mostly revolve

around people, processes, budgets, time, politics, security challenges, contractual agreements and change management issues. Regulatory and compliance issues, particularly specific to a cloud environment are among the bottlenecks to widespread cloud computing deployments.

Goksel adds, “Like any new technology, some areas of uncertainty around the cloud and especially public cloud remain. We see that the technology industry, users of cloud services, and governments must agree on certain core cloud privacy practices that span across industries and are harmonized across borders. Such agreements will provide greater clarity and predictability for individuals, customers, and cloud providers.”

Prospects for the SI channelThe SI channel is today confronted with a challenging scenario of staying apace with faster technology changes and expectancies of clients. On the other hand, there is a great opportunity to take a significant leap by building expertise in key domains that are already identified and are expected to continue growth.

“System Integrators and the channel at large is also experiencing the transformation that the entire IT industry is going through, influenced by the four mega trends. Mobility, Cloud, Social and Big Data proliferation are trends that the channel will need to address through

technology innovation,“says Goksel.He adds, “The industry is constantly

evolving and I believe there is a place for start-ups and smaller system integrators in today’s industry. Their ability to land larger projects however depends on their individual capabilities.”

The channel need to differentiate and work on demand generation as well. Those who are able to do so will find new customers rather than wait for the customers to find them.

“Their main challenge will be in differentiation. Too many SI’s and resellers are simply “order takers”. Whilst the customer will see a financial benefit to this, they will fail to see any additional benefit from this approach. There are definitely a few really good SI’s in the local market now that seem to be moving to a more consultative and service based approach and I am sure these companies will reap the benefits of this approach, " says Peterson.

As the bigger guns among the systems integration channel would be relying on long standing rapport with the companies they have been servicing, for continued Business, they are most likely to find success. Newer and smaller integrators will have to create new approaches that can convince customers of the benefits they bring to the table and that will take some doing.

“Again there is definitely an opportunity for a start-up or smaller SI to

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make an impact on the market as long as they can differentiate themselves. Becoming another fish in the “order taking” pond will not lead to much success because locally the larger SI’s already have those long built relationships which will help them to continue to dominate. So unless the smaller companies can create major benefits, it will remain a challenge to be successful,” opines Peterson.

Avaya would like it that more integrators focusing in the Unified Communication space enhance their understanding of the Business processes of customers. Avaya offers both enterprise-class and SME-adapted solutions for deployment throughout the Middle East, Africa and Turkey interesting partners companies of all sizes, according to Fadi.

He adds, “This region in particular requires open standards-based solutions that meet changing customer demands for collaboration and mobility while still keeping costs low. Avaya’s partners have already made strides in the right investments as far as resources are concerned. One key area for development would be in the ability to have resources that are specialized in specific vertical industry knowledge and understanding how unified communications can enhance the business processes of their customers.”

Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Director, Turkey, Emerging Africa & Middle East, EMCEMC predicts that like last year, 2014 will continue to see changes in the roles and responsibilities of channel businesses.

He comments, “Service Integrators will become resellers; resellers will become service providers; and end users will in many cases become service providers for their own stakeholders in addition to becoming service providers for other companies as well.This change will accelerate further due to the entrance of significant players to the storage channel, such as Google and Amazon who are proving disruptive to the channel by

offering businesses scalable pure-play public cloud services that promise to meet end-user demand for IT services which can deliver more for less money. Many resellers and vendors will need to change their business models in order to remain viable in the face of this competition. “

He adds further, “It is not yet possible to say just how fast channel transformation will take place in 2014 due to one key variable: how much of total IT workloads will stay on premises versus off premises structuring the consumption model and what the channel must sell. This variable will create a great deal of uncertainty in the year ahead. “

It is anticipated that some resellers may stay with a more traditional model and limit themselves to selling on premises, private cloud infrastructures whereas some resellers will mix on premises infrastructure on premises sales with some ‘as a service’, off premises propositions. Others,opines Havier, will migrate completely to become service providers.

Setting the paceLooking at the overall prospects of growth in several significant areas, the industry is poised to see a year of substantial growth. Driven by initiatives like expo 2020 in Dubai and the 2022 FIFA World cup in Qatar, there will be rising investments into the region. Companies will like to keep the pace of growth and consolidate in these economies that have an upbeat outlook.

“We expect to continue our aggressive growth plans this year, both in human resources and financially. We grew over 260% year-on-year for the second consecutive year and we are now over 25 people in the Middle East and SAARC region. We are also very proud of the fact that we gained in excess of 450 new customers just in the Middle East in 2013 and would expect that growth to be exceed this year with our larger team, “ says Peterson.

Avaya’s Fadi is upbeat as well for the year ahead. He reckons this could be

a breakthrough year for Avaya to press ahead the advantage in a burgeoning mid-market.

Fadi says, “Avaya is now fully equipped with a number of innovative solutions and technology to enhance their portfolio and provide its partners and customers with the best solutions in the region. The Time is now for Avaya to deliver to a market that can no longer afford to wait for solutions that will provide greater ROI and Customers satisfaction.With Avaya’s latest solutions in Video, UC, and Networking as well as the introduction of products and services to a massive Midmarket we believe that this is Avaya’s year to provide a complete end to end solution.”

2014 will be a testing year for companies that can’t keep pace with the disruptive phase with the emergence of new Technologies coming further into prominence. It would be a year when the transition towards a braver and newer world will take further effect. Vendors and integrators need to figure out quite quickly which would be their focus areas for the year and pursue them single mindedly to stay in contention.

Gregg PetersenRegional Sales Manager

Veeam, Middle East

22  |  January 2014 

Meanwhile enterprises and SMBs range within a diverse set of positions and stages in terms of technology challenges, priorities, and business strategies. Some of the broadest concerns and consequent priorities that we see in today’s Middle East market are in the areas of storage, convergence, and security.

Please elaborate on these key trends that you identify in storage, convergence and securityStorage offerings have undergone through rapid technological advances brought about largely due to the explosive growth of created data and the value of data around the world. While this is a priority globally, IT leaders in the Middle East

understand the need to be even more dynamic – to catch-up with the global position and be equipped with best-in-class solutions that are ready for the growth strategies of their businesses and the region. Companies which were originally at the forefront of embracing storage technologies are having to now revisit their strategies whereas SMBs that have the advantage of looking at a fresh approach are disadvantaged by a lack of experience and access to in-house technical skills.

As businesses in the region plan for growth and expansions, technology leaders are asked to step out of the operations role and partner with the business strategically. Mandates on what IT leaders need to be able to do with technology grows deeper in the data centre, and climbs higher in the demands on services and solutions. IT leaders are looking for strategies that go beyond the technology and also slash the burden of management, and offer peace of mind. We are seeing increased interest

and plans for the adoption of converged infrastructure solutions that lower operating costs, speed up deployments, and drive simplicity.

As the region recoups from recent exposés in security and data privacy, security is at the forefront in the minds of IT and business leaders. It is a huge priority and concern and we expect a lot more focus on IT infrastructure and solutions that offer businesses visibility into security throughout the enterprise. We expect mobility security in particular to be a major concern for businesses this year as more and more companies offer flexible and remote working practices and embrace trends such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Choose Your Own

Dell is keeping pace with the key trends that are in the company’s perspective defining and shaping the future of the industry. Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Dell Middle East discusses these key trends and Dell’s approach.

Defining trendsWhat do you reckon would be the broad priorities and concerns in terms of spends on IT infrastructure build-up by customers in enterprise to SMB segments?It is important to appreciate the diversity of business interests and positions in our region when looking at broad priorities. The Middle East is going through an unprecedented time in history – from growth spurts in certain countries, to historical changes in others. A lot of the positive developments and directions are supported by the most senior leaders who recognize the important role technology has in enabling, maintaining and developing the economy and realizing the long-term visions of the region.

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Device (CYOD).

What’s Dell’s regional outlook for the year?In terms of the regional outlook and trends, it is an exciting time for Dell, our customers, and our partners. An un-matched ability to provide end-to-end solutions from infrastructure to services offer customers a single partner in Dell that can provide expertise for the most complex of requirements; in simple and agile solutions, ensuring the speed that keeps businessesone step ahead of tomorrow.

In terms of actual IT deployments in the region, what could be expected to unfold?We discussed some high-level trends earlier – storage; the need for a converged infrastructure; and security – which will cause major shifts in the industry as well as the way IT departments plan for, manage, and implement technology. All of this means today’s IT leaders will have a significant impact on their business.

With the fast-moving pace in the technology sector and around the mentioned themes, businesses would be wise to focus on ensuring their IT strategies take the long-term into perspective – in particular in terms of flexibility, balance between performance and cost, and partnerships that remove the complexity in engagements.

Will cloud deployments rise significantly?Cloud computing offers tremendous untapped opportunities for Middle Eastern enterprises which arelooking to achieveagility and best-of-breed business practices.As the region recoups from recent exposés in security and data privacy, IT leaders and managers are scrutinizing cloud computing opportunities

with a more prudent eye. This will not dislodge the interest the region has in the opportunities in the cloud, but the market can expect an interlude as customers reassess their strategies. In public clouds in the Middle East there are really three mega trends influencing adoption: trust; government regulations; and user adoption. However, as customers and regional service providers develop better understanding of information in the cloud, private cloudsare becoming more mainstream. How was the past year was in terms of growth?2013 was a good year for the region with a few of the GCC nationsreally stepping out into the limelight in terms of technology and innovation. Even more interesting is that this didn’t just come about from sectors that are technology-abundant or technology-reliant or where technology plays a key role, but in sectors where technology might have been up until recently considered a cost centre. Globally IT budgets are currently under the microscope, while in the Middle East business leaders are showing a prudent understanding of the importance of IT towards the success of their businesses.

What challenges can the systems integration channel possibly face?Integrators are very important to Dell in the Middle East. I think success for this channel depends on four things: focusing on a niche area, keeping it fresh, building a brand and long-term customer relationships – and they are of course all interrelated. There are really two ways to grow a business: one is to try

and do it all and hope something sticks – a “shotgun approach”; the other is a much more surgical, purposeful, and strategic approach where you pick

a niche, you solve it, execute it really well, create a brand around it, build relationships, and you grow and develop off that platform. The latter is definitely more successful and takes a more long-term view. While this may be obvious advice it is a dictum that cannot be taken for granted or reminded enough, especially when one is in the business of services. One of the challenges for systems integrators is that growth has been rapid and there has been lots of opportunity; sometimes when that happens there is a temptation to try and expand into other areas prematurely. You see an integrator that specialises in networking, for example, suddenly start doing ERP. That is a challenge that a lot of companies in the systems integration channel will face and they need to be wary of the dangers of mission creep.

Will there be ample opportunities for smaller integrators?The region is growing rapidly and the market contains a range of customers which include small start-ups and large organisations that are already established and growing. Each of these prospective customers has a very different set of needs so it is unlikely that large integrators will automatically dominate because those smaller businesses are not going to need the same kind of support as the larger-sized companies. The region has also gained new priorities and in terms of the trends I mentioned earlier – storage, convergence,and security – there are niche opportunities within all of those for smaller integrators or start-up integrators to actually take a piece of the pie.

"Integrators are very important to Dell in the Middle East. I think success for this channel depends on four things: focusing on a niche area, keeping it fresh, building a brand and long-term customer

relationships – and they are of course all interrelated."

24  |  January 2014 

for high end technology. A few of leading

names in the business of value added

distribution have exited the market

leaving the space in recent years leaving

the space for other VADs. We believe that

for the next five years or so, the market

will provide ample opportunities for VADs

to capitalize and grow at a decent pace.

What would you say are EMT’s

particular strengths with regard to your

product portfolio?

We are trying to focus on three key

areas-Security, virtualization and cloud.

We have on board a range of solutions

that are best-of-breed in their domains.

An example is Secunia which is one

of the best solutions in vulnerability

intelligence in the world; or 2X, a leading

global private cloud solution provider with

strengths in such areas such as application

acceleration and so on. So we are

targeting IT managers, IT administrators

and then running education campaigns

to educate them on the benefits of the

cloud, secure remote access and so on.

Our current business matrix is about

20-25% cloud and virtualization security

solutions with the rest the more traditional

security products. Within five years, we

are expecting 10-20% growth in our cloud

and virtualization business every year.

With an expansive range of products

and solutions, how does EMT tie all the

technology together?

Our range of solutions complement each

other; for instance anyone in need of

end point security we would recommend

our partner Kaspersky. But anyone using

EMT is looking to benefit as

local businesses increasingly

go virtual and into the

cloud, thanks to a leading

solutions base. Mohammad

Mobasseri, CEO, explains.

All the right movesEMT is a fairly new entrant into the

local distribution scene. Discuss the

potential in the region as well as your

agenda in this first year of operations.

EMT began operations in Australia

15 years ago and now has offices in

Asia, Europe and now the Middle East.

Before we began Middle East and Africa

operations, the company was engaged

with the region through other global

offices. In other words, we’ve been

in this market albeit indirectly. Now

with the launch of direct operations,we

expect business to be more concrete and

stronger.

There many countries in the region

that have yet to reach the level of

maturity in technology, while some other

countries are sitting on a huge potential,

which will keep on fueling the demand

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endpoint security

is still vulnerable

to other threats

and that’s why

a company like

Secunia can come in to complete the

equation. After a vulnerability assessment,

these companies will still require to

access their applications from the cloud,

and for that we have 2X. Then if they

need to back up their information, Altaro

would come into the picture both for

virtualized and networking environments.

Then you have InfoWatch for data leakage

prevention and so on. So we are able to

provide a basket of solutions that work

seamlessly together.

How has cloud computing impacted

the distribution business? What are the

services that distributors run on the

cloud based model to its channel?

This region is still at a nascent stage

with respect to the adoption of cloud

and demand is very less compare to

other countries in Europe or US. However

even in countries where cloud has

been adopted and continues to stay

in high demand, it is being sold via

distribution network and their main role

is to aggregate. This region is witnessing

a momentum building up especially

in services like, Mails, Mail security,

Vulnerability Assessments and few more

are being served to customers.

Discuss some channel initiatives in

2013 and how you look to develop the

same in 2014

In 2013, the focus was on infrastructure,

partner channel development and

completing our solutions. This year, our

objective is to penetrate all the markets

that we are currently covering. Of

importance here is that Virtualization and

cloud are still very young in the region.

There are some companies invested in

this but many are still not aware what

cloud means. Our plan is to educate

people on the virtues of cloud and

virtualization. We have noticed that SMBs

are more open to virtualization due to

reasons such as cost and management but

enterprise is still reluctant. To overcome

this challenge, we are now very focused

on private cloud computing as this puts

cloud resources under the control of the

cautiousorganization.

With that in mind, discuss your go-to

market strategy to make sure your

2014 objectives come to fruition

We have divided our business into reseller

segments-we have resellers focused on

banking, others on oil and gas and we

differentiate our partners that way. We

do generate some business ourselves in a

program we call Business Matchmaking.

The aim of the program is to give the right

business to the right people.

Our channel program is simple

but effective. There are a lot of

channel programs from vendors and

distributorswith a lot of standards and

terms& conditions.

What we have

done different is

actually talking

to resellers and

partners about their challenges. We seek

to know about their engagement with a

certain distributor’spartner program based

on what they liked or didn’t about it.Then

we are able to create an ideal channel

partnership platform based on knowledge.

This January, we are trying to launch a

new partner program which includes

whatever our resellers require most.

It is a challenge to keep differentiating

in terms of services you provide the

channel. Discuss as a VAD how you

are managing to constantly beat the

challenge?

AT EMT, we have a core committee within

our group of companies responsible for

these challenges and every month this

committee propose some ideas for each

region based on survey and studies from

different countries and competitors.

Discuss how you engage your vendor

partners in helping them reach their

own business objectives

Our Europe office is helping vendors do

more of vendor management than mere

distribution. A lot of vendors worldwide

rely on us because we have different

offices in different regions and are aware

the different market conditions in these

diverse locales. In addition, we are

engaged in training, technical support,

presales activity and more for our vendors.

"SMBs are more open to virtualization due toreasons such as cost and management but enterprise is still reluctant. To overcome this challenge, we are

now very focused on private cloud computing as this puts cloud resources under the control of the

cautiousorganization."

26  |  January 2014 

Our increasingly digital

lives in the MEA are

menaced by a relentless

and vast cybercrime

underbelly. Mark Reeves,

Senior VP, International

Sales at Entrust, discusses

how the company can

help us all be that much

more secure in our online

engagements.

Tried and tested

Mar

k R

eeve

s, S

enio

r VP,

Inte

rnat

iona

l Sal

es, E

ntru

st

You recently opened an office in the UAE. Why is it important for Entrust to have a physical presence in the region?Entrust has been doing a significant amount of business in the Middle East and Africa so it was only logical to set up our physical presence here and support our regional partners. Next up is a plan to bring in a channel manager that will help identify a new set of partners to bring to the fold.

Our channel strategy revolves around finding a limited set of partners that will give us plenty of mindshare and in return we provide them with a business environment where they can make money. These partners tend to be resellers rather than distributors because we want to be close to what is actually going on the ground. The process starts with finding the right partners-usually around two in each country-with the right skills set and who we work closely with. We tend to be

very involved at the end-user level with our partners because our solutions tend to be relatively complex and high value. Our current focus is around government and the financial sector and these typically tend to be large deals.

As opposed to some of your competitors who provide an end to end solution around physical as well as logical access, you are a much more focused vendor. DiscussTrue. We are much more focused around logical access to corporate resources.Being dedicated to core security as opposed to a 360 degree solutions provider means we are able to bring best-of-breed solutions to market.

Nonetheless, we recently launched our IdentityGuard range, which is a platform around authentication that can integrate with physical access systems. This is a process we have been doing just for the

last year, bringing convergence which should translate to cost savings for our customers.

Discuss some key projects in the region Entrust has been engaged in?We collaborate with other players in the security industry as the security solutions provider in many regional ID card deployments. An example is the national ID project for Afghanistan which we got last year for 15million citizens providing the full-blown solution from enrolment to personalization. The company that won the contract brought in a consortium encompassing the best of breed of solution providers. Inthe South African national ID project, we were selected as part of a consortium to embed our security solutions on the country’s smart IDs as well. In addition, a lot of countries in the region have, or are in the process of, deploying e-government services.

TechKnow | Entrust

  January 2014  |  27

Examples of these are KSA and the UAE. How is Entrust placed in competing against some formidable competitors as well as a challenging security scenario?We are a relatively late entrant into the authentication space but we have a solution built around a Platform approach. A banking customer will for instance take our product for internal use and deploy that for their employees first. If and when they want to scale out the solution to their suppliers or customers, they can simply run the solution on the same platform. We give them access to up to 16 types of authentication with the capabilities tocross-mix them. For consumers you could opt for a grid card; for internal employees, a smartcard with numerous options in between. Customers like that approach, especially in finance where banks don’t typically treat all their customers as equals. Using the same Platform approach, these banks can give their higher value customers a much higher level of authentication than other

customers and our product allows them to do that. The advantage for them is that they do not need to go out and buy a five-point solution that offers them the whole landscape of looking after their customers as well as internal users.

Customers will be put off if there are too many hoops they have to jump when making their transactions. How do you make sure there are not too many security layers?Many of the options we have are very transparent across all customers. So we give our customers flexible options that they can use to track and monitor online transactions and not impact users at all. Challenges are stepped up based on what the customers are doing. In an online banking platform, the site will require a simple question and answer page when a customer logs on. If they require doing a transaction, then they will encounter a grid and finally higher level of authentication for high value transactions.

As smartphones increasingly become the go-to corporate device, discus some of your solutions in the mobile device management arenaThe best way to approach MDM is to add a digital certificate onto the phone especially if you are going to start managing those devices at a corporate level. We partner with the likes of Watchguard who, when deploying their MDM solutions, will come to us for certificates which we can deploy that over the air. Once the device is certifiably secure, it can be leveraged for additional security purposes. When a customer is engaged in an online transaction, we can send a message to their phone to confirming if the transaction is authorized by them which they can approve through the message. This application is separate from their online transaction and if they report it as fraud we can stop it immediately. By separating those two-the transaction from the authorization- the process becomes that much secure.

28  |  January 2014 

magical to the ears, but what all is needed to ease lives of so many people?

Commendable work has been done by Dubai Government in line with the vision. Most of it revolves around delivering services through mobile devices. Every day we see government organizations launching mobile applications. But is it enough to provide services through mobile? Maybe yes, maybe no! Let us talk a bit about Customer Experience (CX) to understand this further.

Customer Experience has 3 levels-1. Functional - Do you have

what customers need?2. Accessible - How easy it is to do business with you?3. Emotional - How do customers feel when they do business with you?– This is the differentiator, attribute which differentiates “Good companies” from “Great companies”, “Good governments” from “Great governments”.

Providing services through mobile, is about increasing accessibility for some customers, addition of one more channel. I am not sure if it has the power of easing lives to a huge extent. We at Finesse believe that Dubai Government needs to take a more holistic

approach of “Customer Experience Management (CXM)” to achieve the “Vision”.

Customer Experience Management (CXM) is actively managing the experiences delivered to customers at various touch-points. It starts by mapping a customer’s journey with the organization. In the case of Dubai government, there are various customers like Citizens, Residents, Visitors and Businesses.

As an example, on next page is a brief of a Visitors journey with Dubai. (Diagram shows very few touch-points for illustration only)

Once the journey is mapped, key touch-points are

identified. Detailed Customer Experience Strategy is then designed for these touch-points. It involves defining the exact experience, which the Government wishes to deliver to people. CX Strategy is extremely important to ensure consistent experiences. Once the experience is defined, work needs to be done backwards on people, process and technology to deliver the experience. CXM would help Dubai Government to create advocacy and further establish Dubai among businesses and investors. Technologies for Smart TransformationDubai Government needs to look at various technologies

With Expo 2020 on the cards, Dubai rolled out Smart Government initiative. But what exactly is Smart Government?Arti Gupta, the Chief Learing Officer of Finesse (www.finessedirect.com ) who also heads the Customer Experience practice for them explains

Smart Government goes beyond mobile..!

Smart Government is the ability of a government

to "Understand" the said/unsaid needs of its Customers (Citizens/Residents/Visitors); "design" solutions to address those needs; and "deliver" the solution effectively.

Vision of Dubai Smart Government (DSG) reads as below:

“Ease the lives of people and businesses interacting with the government and contribute to establishing Dubai as a leading economic hub.”

I would give a 10 on 10 for this Vision as it talks of adding value to its Customers (people and businesses). It sounds

Insight | Finesse

Arti GuptaChief Learning Officer

Finesse

  January 2014  |  29

as well, to deliver the “transformational experience”. 1. Crowd sourcing Crowdsourcing has immense potential. It has been proved time and again, starting from Goldcorp challenge and cleanup of Gulf of Alaska 20 years after Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince of Sound.

Government in US is using crowdsourcing in intelligent ways. two examples are as below:• US navy created an online gaming portal mmowgli. Players are attacked by pirates in the game. The strategies players use to escape the pirates are assessed by the navy. Learning from these strategies are used to tackle the Somali pirate problem.• US revenue department crowd sourced ideas to use taxpayer’s money more effectively. They got more than 40,000 responses and the topideas were implemented.

Crowdsourcing by Governments helps in finding out-of-the-box solutions to situations, as well as in creating connected citizens.

Dubai Government can crowdsource ideas to solve traffic woes, water logging in rains, address issues of illegal workforce, maintain law and order to name a few.

2. Big Data• Use of Big data in President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has resulted in further traction for Big Data. It is absolutely amazing to see how data was sliced to understand human behaviour. Data crunchers noticed that

George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West Coast females ages 40 to 49. The women were far and away the single demographic group most likely to hand over cash, for a chance to dine in Hollywood with Clooney. They used this insight to collect millions of dollars. • Using Big data, Mayor of New York revolutionised the inspection of buildings. More than 450,000 buildings in New York city were old and prone to fire. The Mayor's office resorted to big data. Various factors like sub-tenancy, crowding in building, timeliness of bill-payments by landlords, reporting of rodents/pests, latest brick-work etc. were studied. A list of 1500 buildings was prepared. When Firemen visited these buildings, they had to order evacuation in 70% of them. The hit rate improved considerable from 17% earlier. This resulted in pre-empting a disaster.• The CDC studies big data every year to decide the concoction of flu vaccine for a particular year.Apart from using big data to address routine challenges,

Dubai government should look at using big data for Expo 2020. One way is to understand delegate behaviour from Expo 2015 - Their demographics, likes for each demographics, things they liked/not-liked, things they wished for in the expo. With all these insights, the experience for Expo 2020 can be actively designed to wow the delegated and create advocacy for Dubai.

3. Internet of ThingsSensors are attached to things and these sensors can transmit information. In coming years, having sensors in things would transform everything. Imagine an infrastructure that can sense, collect data and transmit data to a source.Currently it has been used in some interesting ways world over-• Tweeting bus tops in Norway - Kolumbus bus stops in Norway have QR codes. On scanning the code, travellers get the details of buses and routes. They can share their experiences, their stories, and whatever they share is tweeted world over.• Tagging rubbish in Seattle

- 3000 pieces of rubbish were tagged in Seattle to understand waste management. Several insights were observed as a result. It was found that a printer cartridge travelled more than 6000 miles to reach a location to disposed in an environment friendly way. The travel completely negated the effort to dispose it. There is a need for municipalities to look at ways to dispose hazardous waste much closer. When such data is shared with people, it can lead to change in behaviour and adoption of green methods by citizens.• Lamp posts in Birmingham - Weather department has attached sensors to lamp posts in Birmingham. These sensors capture weather information and transmit it to weather department, enabling them to forecast local weather.I cannot wait to see how Citizen experience would transform when whole city infrastructure would have sensors. I could foresee traffic density on my route and plan accordingly. Governments would be able to monitor security, health, infrastructure, and almost anything. Technology has immense capabilities; governments just need to resist using them haphazardly. Need of the day is to "define experience desired" and then look at the technologies that can deliver that experience.UAE is ideally placed to be the first country to look at the people’s experience in this way and use “technology” in line with the strategy. Categorization of services as per customer journey on dubai.ae is a step in that direction.

30  |  January 2014 

organization’s security posture could lead to making sub-optimal decisions about a security strategy. It also makes it difficult to communicate the business case for investing in the necessary expertise and technologies.

Based on responses to 12 survey questions, Ponemon created an “Uncertainty Index” or score that measures where the highest uncertainty exists. The index ranges from 10 (greatest uncertainty) to one (no uncertainty).

So what canSMBs learn from this index?• With a score of 5.9, U.S. organizations have the highest uncertainty index, followed closely by the

UK (5.0). Organizations in Asia-Pacific scored 4.8, while SMBs in Germany seem to have the best understanding of their security risks with an uncertainty score of 3.8.• Smaller organizations have the most uncertainty. Companies with fewer than 100 employees have an uncertainty score of 6.5.• Surprisingly, an organization’s leadership team has the most uncertainty. According to the study, the higher the position, the more removed an individual could be in understanding the organization’s risk and strategy. Executive/VP titles have an uncertainty score of 6.9 and directors have a score of 6.8.

• Retailing; education and research; and entertainment and media have the highest level of uncertainty while uncertainty drops significantly for organizations in the financial services and technology sectors. It is possible that the high degree of certainty in the financial sector can be attributed to the need to comply with data security regulations.

Uncertainty creates risk and based on the findings, the study identified seven consequences of an uncertain security strategy:

Cyber attacks go undetected -A significant number of respondents (33 percent) are unsure if their

Michael Goedeker, Director Pre Sales ESG, CEEMEA, Sophos writes about the risk that SMB organisations court when they do not have a clear security strategy in place

The ‘Uncertainty Index’

The potential business impact of cyber attacks and data

loss, along with high-profile data breaches experienced by organizations like LexisNexis and Evernote, seems to have done little to convince small and mid-sizebusinesses (SMBs) that they should be making cyber security a priority.

Recently, the Ponemon Institute and Sophos released a study: Risk of an Uncertain Security Strategy, which reveals that security is not a key priority for many SMBs because management and IT functions areuncertain about their organization’s security strategy and the threats they face.

Uncertainty about how these issues impact an

Insight | Sophos

Micheal GoedekerDirector Pre Sales ESG

Sophos, CEEMEA

  January 2014  |  31

organization experienced a cyber attack in the last 12 months.

Data breach root causes are unknown - While 51 percent of respondents say their organization has had a data breach, 44 percent cannot identify the root cause.

Intelligence to stop exploits is not actionable - Because of the lack of knowledge about the frequency and magnitude of cyber attacks, there appears to be a lack of actionable intelligence. Thirty-three percent say lack of in-house expertise prevents a fully effective IT security posture and 5 percent cite no understanding how to protect against cyber attacks.

Cyber security is not a priority -Forty-four percent of respondents report IT security is not a priority. As evidence, 42 percent say their budget is not adequate for achieving an effective security posture. Compounding the problem, only 26 percent of respondents say their IT staff has sufficient expertise. On average, organizations have three employees who are fully dedicated to IT security.

Weak business case for investing in cyber security -Respondents in more senior positions have the most uncertainty about the threats to their organizations. According to the findings, 58 percent of

respondents say management does not see cyber attacks as a significant risk.

Mobile and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) security ambiguity -Fifty percent of respondents say mobile devices diminish an organization’s security posture. However, 58 percent report these concerns are not stopping the adoption of tablets and smart phones within their organization. The survey also reveals that BYOD is a concern. Forty-five percent say BYOD diminishes an organization’s security effectiveness.

Financial impact of cyber crime is unknown - Respondents estimate that the cost of disruption to normal operations is much higher than the cost of damages or theft of IT assets and infrastructure. And 29 percent cannot estimate the cost of damage or theft of IT assets and 22 percent do not know that it costs the organization

due to disruption.

RecommendationsSo what should SMBs be doing to better protect themselves from the threat of cyber attacks?:• Organizations need to concentrate resources on monitoring their security situation in order to make intelligent decisions. While assessing where they stand on the security continuum, organizations need to focus on monitoring, reporting and proactively detecting threats.• Establish mobile and BYOD security best practices. Carefully plan and implement a mobile strategy so that it doesn't have an impact on the overall security posture.

• Organizations should look for ways to bridge the gap created by a shortage of information security professionals. Consider ways to free-up time for in-house

resources, including a move to cloud technologies, security consulting and easy-to-manage solutions. • Measure the cost of cyber attacks, including lost productivity caused by downtime. Work with senior management to make cyber security a priority and invest in solutions that restore normal business activity more quickly for a high return on investment. • Organizations in all sectors are regularly breached and regulations are often simply the beginning of properly securing a network. Consider consolidated security management to gain a more accurate picture of threats that will help focus on problem areas.

"While assessing where they stand onthe security continuum, organizations

need to focus on monitoring, reporting and proactively detecting threats."

From the Ponemon Institute© White Paper (Sponsored by Sophos)

Who determines IT security priorities?

32  |  January 2014 

eyetech

AXIS Q6042-E PTZ Dome Network Camera

Fujitsu fi-65F A6 counter top scanner

Overview:The fi-65F is a new model of the market proven Fujitsu A6 flatbed scanner concept designed to scan identification documents. With a dedicated scan button and USB bus power support, the fi-65F supports fast and streamlined operation that allows for high-speed scanning. The scanner is ready for work within a second and needs just one second to scan a black and white document at 300 dpi, helping to quickly and accurately capture information in busy environments such as airport, security and hotel receptions. The fi-65F comes bundled with PaperStream Capture and PaperStream IP image enhancement and processing driver software, the most advanced image processing technology for the fi Series document scanners.

Key features:

• Compact A6 flatbed design suitable for front counter scanning of items such as passports, driving licences, Identification cards and more

• Verify personal identity accurately and speedily – perfect for capturing small documents

• Convenient power on/off button and USB power via high speed USB 2.0 interface

• Mono, greyscale and colour document scanning (1–2 seconds per A6 page)

• Can be used with or without cover for easier operation

• Automatic deskew and cropping of scanned documents, even with open lid

• Rapid, high quality scan of A6 documents with automatic correction

• Features quick start up, front-side scan button and USB bus power support to enhance flexibility

• Powerful PaperStream software to boost efficiency

• Ready for use in less than a second, the flatbed scanner is able to digitise a black and white A6- sized document at 300 dpi in 1 second and a colour document in 1.7 seconds.

Overview

AXIS Q6042-E is an advanced, outdoor-ready PTZ dome

offering Extended D1 resolution, 36x optical zoom, and

fast and precise pan/tilt performance for wide area

coverage and great detail when zooming in. It is ideal

for city surveillance, airports, train stations, harbors and

stadiums. AXIS Q6042-E has a built-in memory card slot

for local storage of recordings. The camera is powered

by High Power over Ethernet using the supplied High

PoEmidspan.

Key features:

• Extended D1 resolution and 36x optical zoom

• Outdoor-ready and Arctic Temperature Control

• Vandal-resistant and shock detection

• Electronic image stabilization

• High Power over Ethernet

• Extended D1 resolution and 36x optical zoom

• Outdoor-ready and Arctic Temperature Control

• Vandal-resistant and shock detection

• Electronic image stabilization

• High Power over Ethernet

  January 2014  |  33

OverviewReaffirming its commitment to keeping deskworkers

healthy, MMD, the leading technology company and

brand license partner for Philips Monitors, announces

the release of the new 24-inch ErgoSensor display

to complement line-up of office displays designed

for wellbeing at work."ErgoSensor", which is

embedded in the monitor to sense and measure the

user's behaviour. ErgoSensor advises users on how

to sit in an ergonomic position at theircomputer with

a corrective feedback on optimal viewing distance,

ergonomic neckangle and a time break advice. It

also saves upto 80% energy consumption if user is

notpresent on the seat by powering off themonitor.

Philips ErgoSensor monitorA10 Thunder TPS Series

Key features:

• The Thunder TPS product line is built upon A10’s

Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) platform,

which delivers up to 155Gbps of throughput, thereby

helping enterprise and service provider customers

address the increasing scale of DDoS attacks.

• Broad multi-vector attack detection capabilities are

designed to secure customers’ networks against

a variety of attack types, while support for multiple

deployment modes provides the flexibility needed to

integrate with various customer network designs.

• With DDoS mitigation capacity ranging from 38

Gbps to 155Gbps (and up to 1.2 Tbps in a cluster)

throughput, Thunder TPS is designed to provide

protection against large attacks.

• Each Thunder TPS model is equipped with high-

performance FPGA-based Flexible Traffic Acceleration

(FTA) technology to detect and mitigate over 30

common attack vectors rapidly in hardware, without

degrading the performance of the core system general

purpose CPUs.

• More complex application layer (L7) attacks (HTTP,

SSL, DNS etc.) are processed and detected by the

latest Intel Xeon CPUs, so performance scaling is

maintained by distributing multi-vector detection and

mitigation functions across optimal system resources.

• Thunder TPS is architected with an open design,

which allows it to be readily deployed into a variety

of existing network architectures and integrated with

third-party attack detection systems.

Overview:

A10 Networks has announced the A10 Thunder TPS Series, designed to provide high-performance, network-wide protection against a variety of volumetric, protocol, resource and more sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and improve service availability for critical Internet infrastructures and public-facing websites.

Key features: • ErgoSensor for a healthier way of working

• Neck posture detection and corrective advice

• Optimal viewing distance measurement and advice

• Time-break reminder

• AMVA LED for wide-view super-high contrast, vivid images

• DisplayPort offers audio and video over a single, long cable

• SmartImage presets for easy optimised image settings

• Zero power consumption with 0 watt hard switch

• 65% post-consumer recycled plastics with TCO Edge

34  |  January 2014 

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2014, a 3.1 percent increase from 2013 spending of $3.7

trillion, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. In 2013, the market experienced flat growth, growing 0.4 percent year over year.

Spending on devices (including PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones and tablets) contracted 1.2 percent in 2013, but it will grow 4.3 percent in 2014. Gartner analysts said convergence of the PC, ultramobiles (including tablets) and mobile phone segments, as well as erosion of margins, will take place as differentiation will soon be based primarily on price instead of devices' orientation to specific tasks.

Enterprise software spending growth continues to be the strongest throughout the forecast period. The 2014 annual growth rate is expected to grow 6.8 percent. Customer relationship management and supply chain management (SCM) experienced a period of strong growth.

“Investment is coming from exploiting analytics to make B2C processes more efficient and improve customer marketing efforts. Investment will also be aligned to B2B analytics, particularly in the SCM space, where annual spending is expected to grow 10.6 percent in 2014,” said Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner. “The focus is on enhancing the customer experience throughout the presales, sales and post sales processes.”

The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is the leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognize market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies rather than guesswork.

Last quarter, Gartner's forecast for 2014 IT spending growth in U.S. dollars was 3.6 percent, a 0.5 percentage points higher than the current forecast.

"A downward revision of the 2014 forecast growth in

Stats & Trends

spending for telecom services — a segment that accounts for more than 40 percent of total IT spending — from 1.9 percent to 1.2 percent is the main reason behind this overall IT spending growth reduction," said Gordon. "A number of factors are involved, including the faster-than-expected growth of wireless-only households, declining voice rates in China and a more frugal usage pattern among European customers. The latter coincides in Western Europe with a breakout of fierce price competition among communications service providers."

The data center systems spending growth outlook for 2014 has been cut from 2.9 percent in our previous forecast to 2.6 percent. This is mainly due to a reduction in the forecast for external controller-based storage and enterprise communications applications. These segments represent 32 percent of total data center system end-user spending.

Gartner has slightly revised downward the IT services compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2017. The largest contributor to this revision comes from reductions in IT outsourcing — specifically, in colocation, hosting and data center outsourcing growth rates. "We are seeing CIOs increasingly reconsidering data center build-out and instead planning faster-than-expected moves to cloud computing. Despite these small reductions, we continue to anticipate consistent four to five percent annual growth through 2017," said Mr. Gordon.

Building on the momentum gained last year, smartphones will continue to account for the majority of NFC shipments

in 2013 as volumes jump by 129%. However, importantly for the future of NFC, this trend is set to decline from 2014 onwards as attach rates in other categories, including computing products, peripherals and speakers, digital cameras and printers, domestic appliances and automotive, increase more rapidly. Consequently, smartphones will decline from a peak of 80% of all NFC device shipments this year to less than 60% in 2017 as these other product categories see greater adoption of NFC.

IT Spending to Reach $3.8 Trillion in 2014

An addition to ABI Research’s NFC Market Data is a new analysis by smartphone tier as well as by the different mobile, consumer electronics, and non-consumer device categories. This segregates the market by high-, mid- and low-tier smartphones featuring NFC. Currently the greatest level of adoption is in the mid-tier category, where approaching half of smartphones are NFC-enabled. This is to be expected as the high-tier smartphone category is heavily influenced by Apple, which remains the notable exception for NFC adoption.

Smartphones Accounting for 4 out of 5 NFC Devices

2013 2013 2014 2014 Spending Growth (%) Spending Growth (%)

Devices 669 -1.2 697 4.3

Data Center Systems 140 -0.3 143 2.6

Enterprise Software 300 5.2 320 6.8

IT Services 922 1.8 963 4.5

Telecom Services 1,633 -0.5 1,653 1.2

Overall IT 3,663 0.4 3,777 3.1

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (January 2014)

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