June 14

UNIFY TOBE PARTNER OF CHOICEUnify builds on the transformation of its brand, logo and visual identity by changing its approach to the market and product strategy to deliver more suitable and meaningful solutions to partners and customers. /42

SYMANTEC UNVEILS TWO NEW ATP OFFERINGS / 22

W W W . E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

PA G E S 5 6V O L U M E 0 1 | I S S U E 1 1J U N E 2 0 1 4

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EATON: “INNOVATING IN A GREEN WAY” /30

HP WORLD 2014 FOCUSSED ON FUTURE OF ENTERPRISES /16

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PA G E S 5 6V O L U M E 0 1 | I S S U E 1 1J U N E 2 0 1 4

INDIAECM062014

ANTIVIRUS IS DEAD OR NOTIn today’s dynamic world, the need to have IT solutions and products

structured and tailored around an enterprise’s need is gaining paramount importance. /24

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EDITORIAL

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Federation: In the new era IT

Evolution is the name of the game. During the early time of IT industry, the major technology vendors created their proprietary architecture allowing no space for the customers to pick and choose. So the customers moved from proprietary architecture vendors to the open standards architecture vendors in order to make the solutions affordable and keeping monopoly at the bay. Therefore the citadel of proprietary met with self-destruction towards the end of 90s and most of the vendors opened their source code to make it inter operable with each other and

compatible with open standards solutions. So from competitive environment the market moved to a complementary best of the breed environment. The customers wanted the best of the breed solutions from various vendors making a balance between affordability and technology excellence. But today the traditional IT market has made a paradigm shift. From the mainframe computing to client server computing, the industry is expecting the 3rd platform of IT, where the computing power lies with the data centre at the back end. The enterprises are implementing virtualization, cloud computing at the back end and mobility at the front end for their workers. They are taking intelligence from social media and implementing Big Data to analyse their structured and unstructured data for better outcome of their business.

IT assets are no more called as PC, server, router, witch or firewall, etc. it has assumed a new name – Infrastructure. Today, every large company is trying ride the wave of infrastructure. In this situation, the top IT infrastructure vendors who were partners in previous year are becoming competition to each other although they are quite open to sell individual products in isolation but honestly they prefer customers to buy the entire solution from them. However, specialization still remains at the tier -2 levels as they are not able to scale due to various reasons but their aspiration certainly is to have a great portfolio. Therefore what they are creating a federation in order to counter each other’s competition. Either the federation is coming from the front of the vendors or from the front of the partner ecosystem. Increasingly the Value Added Distributors are becoming catalyst of technology federations. They are pick-ing complementary brands and offering it to the channel partners. Channel partners in turn are able to offer more agile and scalable IT infrastructure benefits to the customers. Today, the role of the partners are changing from being the traditional resellers to become solution providers, which encompassess more consulting discussing and less reselling discus-sion. ë

MEA

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2014V O L U M E 0 1

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W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

INNOVATIONS /48

A10 NETWORKS – THUNDER

6630The rapid growth

of data center traffic from mobile, cloud, big data and

web is creating demand for higher 40GbE/100GbE

networking infrastructure

solutions.

CORPORATE STORYLeading the Transformation /36The third platform of IT appears to influence the entire IT industry quite thick and fast forcing all the technology providers to rethink about their strategy.

EDITORIAL :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 05

CHANNEL STREET ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 08

SURVEILLANCE ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 23

PARTNER STREET ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 29

POWER SOLUTIONS ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 30

NETWORKING ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 32

GUEST TALK :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 47, 50

COVER STORY

MY VIEWS /34“Our Channel Partners Contribute up to 90%

of Our Turnover”TAJ EL-KHAYAT,

MANAGING DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY,

NORTH, WEST, AND CENTRAL AFRICA, RIVERBED

MY VIEWS /39

“We will Keep Investing in TEEAM Region”MOHAMMED AMIN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, TURKEY, EASTERN EUROPE AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST

MY VIEWS /46

“We Plug Technology Gaps in our Product

Portfolio”POURNAMI NAIR

(NAMI), MANAGER - STRATEGIC ALLIANCE & QUALITY ASSURANCE,

COMGUARD

ANTIVIRUS IS DEAD OR NOT

In today’s dynamic world, the need to have IT solutions and products

structured and tailored around an enterprise’s need is gaining paramount importance. /24

CONTENTS

06 JU NE 2014

MEA

Contents.indd 6 04/06/14 10:28 am

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Advts.indd 1 04/06/14 8:54 am

Lenovo’s EMEA Revenue Sur-passes its China PC revenueLenovo Group has announced results for its fourth fiscal quarter and full-year ended March 31, 2014. With record full-year revenue of US$38.7 billion, an increase of 14 percent year-over-year, a record full-year pre-tax income of US$1.01 billion, up 27 percent year-over-year and record full year earnings of US$817 million, up 29 percent, Lenovo had a truly outstanding year.

Lenovo expanded its number one position in PCs, adding 2.1 points of market share to post a record 17.7 percent total share for the full-year, representing five percent year-over-year growth, compared to an overall industry decline of 8 percent during this same period. Even while China’s PC market slowed, Lenovo’s operating profit in China PC improved by 1 percentage point. Asia Pacific had record share of almost 15 percent, while improving profitability. For the first time, Lenovo’s

EMEA revenue surpassed its China PC revenue in the quarter, while in the US, Lenovo surpassed Apple to take the number three position in PC shipments in the fourth quarter.

When combining Tablets and PCs together to form the “PC + Tablet” category, Lenovo sold a record 64 million devices, up nearly 18 percent year over year, outpacing this market by more than 13 percentage points. Lenovo posted record total device volume of 114 million, up 37 percent year over year. This was the 4th quarter in a row that Lenovo sold more tablets and smartphones than PCs.

“The record sales and profits that we delivered last year prove that Lenovo can grow and deliver its commitments, no matter the market condi-tions,” said Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo Chairman and CEO.

INFOBLOX STRENGTHENS ITS RESOURCESInfoblox is expanding in the Middle East by strengthening its manage-ment, sales, marketing and technical support teams. The company has appointed Cherif Sleiman to lead the region from Infoblox’s in Dubai.

Mr. Sleiman has more than 20 years of sales, technical and business experi-ence with some of the world’s leading networking and telecommunications technology companies. He has held key executive roles, including chief operating officer and chief technology officer at Core Communications, a software and IT services company focused on cloud-based business services and web and mobile apps. He spent more than six years at Cisco in various leadership positions, the last being senior director, leading the enterprise business for Middle East and Africa.

DST PARTICIPATES IN THE OPEN COM-PUTE PROJECTData Science Technologies (DST) is supporting the Open Compute Project hosted by OCP in association with IDC CEMA as a partner of the event. Boby Joseph, CEO at DST will be presenting on behalf of the company at the niche event to be held at the Burj Al Arab, Dubai on May 19th, 2014.

“We are proud to be a partner of the Dubai edition of the Open Com-pute Project, a project established by Facebook with the goal of building one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. We are happy to present DST’s ventures in OCP,” says Boby Joseph, CEO, DST.

YUANQING YANG, LENOVO CHAIRMAN AND CEO

08 JU NE 2014

MEA

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Channel Street.indd 8 04/06/14 10:32 am

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GENIUS COMPUTER BAGGED TWO AWARDSGenius Computer Technology (GCT), one of the region’s leading distribution companies and solution providers in the field of IT peripherals, and networking, has won two awards at this year’s Middle East Retail Academy (MERA) 2014 Awards: Retail Distributor of the Year and PC Accessories: Retail Vendor of the Year on behalf of Genius.

Genius won in the PC Accessories Retail vendor category of with 43% of the votes in a line-up that included Belkin, Logitech, Microsoft, and Targus. GCT Distribution won the Retail Distributor of the year with 33% winning votes ahead of Grand Stores, ITE, Redington Lifestyle, and Trigon.

Milad Jabbour, CEO at GCT, said, “We are delighted with this recognition from our retail partners and owe them a big ‘thank you’ for the continued success and growth of our business in the region. We take this opportunity to firmly commit ourselves to creating more revenue generating opportunities for adding value to their business.”

Logicom Expands Operations in Kuwait and Qatar

In a move to help organisations understand Soft-ware-defined networkingis (SDN), the impact that SDN will have on their ICT operations, and the protocols and network architectures required to define their future network vision, Dimen-sion Data today launched its Software-defined Networking Development Model. SDN an emerging architectural approach to network-ing, where network functionality and services are made available in software, and where the network becomes programmable. This combina-tion ensures that the network, a critical ICT asset supporting the majority of business processes and communications, becomes far more flexible in its ability to support business objectives.

Rob Lopez, Dimension Data’s Group Executive –Networking, says,“Software-defined networking is not just a trend, but an important shift that will drive significant changes in how networks are built and operated – and ultimately the entire networking industry. Enterprises are searching for more cost-effective and agile ways of ensuring that their networks keep up with the rapid changes in ICT, and IDC predicts that SDN revenues will reach USD 3.7 billion in the next two years.” “As an organisation with a 31-year history of designing, architecting, deploying, maintaining, and supporting network solutions and infrastructure,Dimension Data is excited about SDN.” he added

Logicom is expanding its local operations in Kuwait and Qatar, in order to accommodate the growing demands in the region.

The office in Kuwait is located in the Hawally Business District, while the warehouse is based in the Ardiya area of Kuwait City.In Qatar, the new office will be located in Doha City, Al Mansoura, with a warehouse in the Doha Industrial Area. This is a strategic expansion for Logicom, as it will enable the company to facilitate quicker and

more efficient deliveries to the local market, thus boosting its business and customer breadthin the two regions.

With the establishment of local in-country operations, Logicom is set to become more competitive in its offerings, and willbetter serve its local customer base with run rate stock and in country opera-tions. This will allow Logicom to consolidate much of its current Middle East operations, and create additional regional hubs from which it will service its partners and customers.

Sajith Raj, General Manager of Logicom Dubai, “Logicom is taking

its next strategic steps in Kuwait and Qatar in order to expand the company’s multinational presence in the Gulf region. This is part of our continuous efforts to better serve our partners, and meet all our stakeholders’ expectations, in any way and from any location we can. Leveraging on our international expertise and an expanded local presence in these countries, we look forward to providing even more opportunities for prospective vendors and partners in the region.”

AVAYA APPOINTS PROLOGIX AS VAD FOR QATARAvaya has signed up Prologix as a new VAD for Qatari.

Avaya enjoys a strong channel partner-ship with Prologix, and extending this relationship into Qatar will ensure wider coverage in this rapidly evolving market. Focused sales and technical service teams will address growing customer needs in Video, Collaboration, and Networking for medium sized businesses.

Avaya is further developing its existing strong presence in Qatar, which includes thousands of heritage customers of all sizes across a variety of industry verticals. Existing Avaya customers in Qatar can look forward to having a dedicated Avaya partner focused on their evolving needs, and Prologix has committed some of its best talent to serving the new market. They have developed a combined go-to-market strategy, allowing continuous and direct access to technical support and expert training from the Avaya team.

“We believe Prologix is well-equipped to manage and address our customers’ needs, and to drive adoption of Avaya’s industry-leading solutions in businesses” said, FadiMoubarak – Channel Director, Global Growth Markets, Avaya.

Dimension Data Launches SDN Develop-ment Model

SAJITH RAJ, GENERAL MANAGER OF LOGICOM DUBAI

CHANNEL STREET

10 JU NE 2014

MEA


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Advts.indd 7 04/06/14 8:56 am

Alpha Data named “Outstanding Citrix Solution Advisor - 2013”Alpha Data, the UAE’s largest systems integrator, has announced that it has been named ‘Outstand-ing Citrix Solution Advisor - 2013’ for the Middle East by Citrix. The company was recognized for excellence in sales and technical performance of Citrix mobile workspaces technologies. Alpha Data also officially became a Gold Citrix® Solu-tion Advisor for the region.

As a Gold Citrix® Solution Advisor, Alpha Data is certified to have a high level of expertise and commitment to Citrix technologies.

“The commitment of Citrix to superior products and robust solutions aligns well with our own corporate focus on delivering excep-tional integrated systems. It is an honor to be recognized for our successful efforts to support cutting-edge Citrix products and platforms and

MOBILY MOVES ITS NETWORK TO THE CLOUD

Mobily Saudi Arabia has deployed virtualized radio access network (RAN) software from Alcatel-Lucent’s Network Function Virtualization (NFV) portfolio.

Mobily is deploying Alcatel-Lucent’s 9771 Wireless Cloud Element Radio Network Control-ler (WCE RNC) to improve service performance, reliability, scale and operational efficiency. The Saudi telecom market is one of the most competitive in the Middle East, with more than 51 million mobile subscribers in a country that has a population of 27.3 million.

Mobily is the first service provider globally to deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s virtual RAN software using the lightRadio 9771 Wireless Cloud Element Radio Network Controller (WCE RNC).

Alcatel-Lucent’s WCE RNC is part of the recently announced suite of Virtualized network functions. The NFV portfolio combines the company’s networking technical acumen with its cloud capabilities to help guide customers through the complex virtualization journey without compromising operational performance and integrity.

Running virtual radio network control functions over open, carrier-grade platforms provides considerable advantages over traditional approaches greatly facilitates advanced RNC require-ments for geo-redundancy, near zero downtime maintenance and software upgrades, load balancing, and dynamic reconfiguration.

UAE LOOKS TO STRENGTHEN ECONOMIC TIES WITH CHINA Opportunities to strengthen economic ties between the United Arab Emirates and China, were the focus of talks during a two-day visit to China by UAE minister of state H.E Dr. Sultan Al Jaber.

The visit is expected to lay the ground work for increased economic activity between the UAE and China which is growing

at more than 14 per cent annually. Discussions explored opportunities for collaboration and investment across sectors of mutual interest, including energy, infrastructure and technology.

During the visit, H.E. Dr Al Jaber met with senior Chinese govern-ment officials, including the Vice Foreign Minister of China, H.E.

Zhang Yesui. Dr. Al Jaber also met with Zheng

Zhijie, the vice chairman of the China Development Bank (CBD), and CEO of the China Develop-ment Bank Capital, Fan Haibin. CBD is primarily responsible for raising capital to fund large Chinese infrastructure projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam and Shanghai

International Airport.Trade between the UAE and

China topped AED 169.67 billion (US $46.23 billion) in 2013, compared to AED 148.27 billion (US $40.4 billion) in 2012. With 4,200 Chinese companies registered in the UAE, the Emirates are the largest Middle East market for Chinese products.

PURE STORAGE APPOINTS GOBAL AS MASTER DISIE Global Distribution FZE has signed a Master Distribution Agreement with Pure Storage and will now distribute the Pure Storage FlashArray enter-prise storage solution to its resellers in the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Ideal for high performance data centers, the all-flash array from Pure Storage is 10x faster and 10x more space and power efficient for less than the cost of mechanical disk per gigabyte stored.

Mario M. Veljovic, VP Solutions MENA at Global Distribution, com-mented, “Our Vision is to introduce cutting edge technologies and solu-tions to our Resellers and enable them to offer high performance enterprise solutions to their customers across all industry verticals. We are very proud we partner with Pure Storage to make flash storage available to our Resellers in the Region.”

“Global Distribution FZE is a standout Solutions Distributor with extensive experience and an excellent reputation in Channel Development and Enablement,” said Steven Rose, Vice President, EMEA, Pure Storage “We are delighted that they have signed with us and become part of our network of valued partners. Strong partners like Global Distribu-tion FZE help us achieve our mission to make flash storage the storage medium of choice for IT environ-ments of all sizes. Together, we will expand the footprint of flash in the data center and enable customers across industries.”

AMAR SINGH, DIVISION MANAGER - ENTERPRISE COMPUTING SYSTEMS, ALPHA DATA

include them in the systems we deploy for our valued clients. We look forward to more projects that incorporate Citrix mobile workspaces tech-nologies to achieve high levels of performance and productivity,” said Amar Singh, Division Manager - Enterprise Computing Systems, Alpha Data.

CHANNEL STREET

12 JU NE 2014

MEA


Advts.indd 4 04/06/14 8:55 am

SECONDS6

NEC Projectors Earn DCI ComplianceNEC Display Solutions Europe has announced

that both its NC1100L and NC1040L projectors have earned Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) compliance, making them the world’s first laser projectors to do so.

This certification is proof of NEC’s ability to innovate while still maintaining the standards that ensure quality, interoperability, security and compatibility required in the digital cinema industry. NEC is the first to market with not one, but two DCI-compliant laser projectors, the press release announced.

Ian Gobey, General Manager for Middle East & Africa at NEC Display Solutions said, “The Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) sets the standard for digital cinema projectors while laser

projectors offer high reliability, dramatically lower running costs and long life operation, as well as a rich colour gamut, high resolution and performance. This combination delivers the quality and performance viewers expect from a modern digital cinema.”

The NC1100L is also the world’s first compact Digital Cinema projector using blue Laser Light Source, and is the ideal 2K digital cinema solution suitable for screens up to 11m or small projection booths at the highest quality and affordable price. On the other hand, the NC1040L offers a 4K resolution and the world’s widest colour gamut to deliver unequalled image quality for the most discernible cinemagoers. It is designed for screens up to 10m.

AUTODESK TO LAUNCH 3D PRINTER

Autodesk has announced two contributions that

are expected to help make things better for 3D

printing. The company has revealed the release

of a new open software platform for 3D printing

called ‘Spark,’ which will make it more reliable yet

simpler to print 3D models and easier to control

how that model is actually printed. Complement-

ing the launch of the new platform, Autodesk will

also be releasing its first 3D printer to serve as

a reference implementation for ‘Spark’—dem-

onstrating the power and potential of this new

platform and set a new benchmark for the 3D

printing user experience.

WD UNVEILED THE NEW WD TV

WD unveiled the new WD TV – Personal Edition,

in the UAE. The WD TV Personal Edition is an

easy to use Wi-Fi enabled media player that

plays virtually any media file stored on USB and

network storage devices or any computer on the

home network.

“Consumers have increasingly large libraries of

disparate personal content types on a variety of

storage devices, from portable USB to network

attached storage and personal computers,”

explains Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD

Content Solutions Business and worldwide sales.

KRONOS CROSSES $1 BILLION

Kronos Incorporated has surpassed $1 billion in

annual revenue. Breaking the $1 billion threshold

comes weeks after Blackstone and GIC invested

in Kronos alongside original investors Hellman &

Friedman and JMI Equity in a transaction which

valued the company at $4.5 billion.

Said Ahmed ElShrif, director, Kronos Middle

East. “With our amazing 3,800 plus employees;

diverse customer base; and the significant

investments we are making in the cloud, vertical

market expertise, global expansion, and our

award-winning products, our future has never

been brighter.”

ZOTAC LAUNCHES ZBOX EN760 PCS

FOR GAMERS

ZOTAC launches ZBOX EN760 series mini-PC to

address the PC gamers. The new ZOTAC ZBOX

EN760 series combines the phenomenal visuals

of a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M graphics proces-

sor with the outstanding processing power of a

4th Generation Intel Core i5 processor to create a

mini-PC capable of stunning 1080p gaming.

“It’s the perfect time for a high-end gaming

mini-PC,” says Carsten Berger, senior director,

ZOTAC International.

“Application infrastructure and middleware projects are becoming the

cornerstone of the digital business.”FABRIZIO BISCOTTI,

RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GARTNER.

IN PUBLIC

IDC NAMED INFOBLOX AS MARKET LEADER IN DDIInfoblox is declared the market leader in enterprise-grade DDI—the abbreviation for DNS, DHCP, and IP address management solutions—in a new report from IDC titled “Worldwide DDI Market Update”.

IDC, a leading provider of global IT research and advice, found that Infoblox market share in DDI jumped to 50 percent in 2013 from 40 percent in 2011. The other three major vendors—those with DDI revenues greater than $10 million—all declined in market share from 2011 to 2013. “In organizations with tens of thousands of IP addresses, the need for a system to control and track changes and centralize record keeping is a primary reason for investing in DDI solutions,” says the IDC report.

QUICK HEAL OPENS NEW OFFICES IN AFRICA AND UAE

Quick Heal Technologies has announced the opening of its two new branches in Africa and Middle East. Quick Heal started its first direct global operations in Japan and the new branches are opened to further enhance the global presence.

In Africa, Quick Heal has opened a new office in Kenya, while in Middle East Quick Heal opened its office in the city of Dubai. The new offices are opened to service and enhance relationships with the large network of direct partners and customers in these regions. Many reforms are introduced in African and Middle Eastern countries to liberalize their economy.

Kailash Katkar- Founder and CEO, Quick Heal, said, “With over 20 years of operations in India, today Quick Heal has broad investment plans focused on opening new branches and facilities across the globe and formulating marketing programs to support the business . The expansion will strengthen our presence globally and reach the organizations which understand the role of technol-ogy in transforming businesses and driving innovation”.

KAILASH KATKAR- FOUNDER AND CEO, QUICK HEAL

CHANNEL STREET

14 JU NE 2014

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HP World 2014 held at Hotel Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai saw the presence of the customers who attended interactive sessions and participated in specialized training, and networked with peers and HP executives.

HP World 2014 focused on the shift in the Middle East technology market including Big Data, Cloud, Mobility and Security that have added new challenges for CIOs to meet client, partner and employee expectations, while aligning IT

and enterprise goals. These shifts require a New Style of IT that offers deep integration of solutions to help organizations achieve simplicity, agility, speed and lower costs.

“HP World is the one-stop Middle East event which enables organizations to understand how to accelerate their transition to a New Style of IT,” said Eyad Shihabi, managing director, HP Middle East “The event shows how HP continues to convert our deep culture of inno-vation into game-changing solutions and services that help organizations and consumers embrace this new era of computing.”

“We are delighted to have Ahmad Bin Byat, CEO of Dubai Holding,

deliver a keynote on Dubai’s vision for the new century, including the emirate’s smart government initiatives, and fostering innovation at all levels of government. Dubai Holding actively supports Dubai’s efforts to remain a forward thinking hub of evolution and innovation.”

The New Style of IT, which HP sees as a transformational shift bridging the consumer and enterprise experience, has almost unprecedented reach and impact in the Middle East.

EIAST SIGNS MOU WITH DUBAI MUNICIPALITYThe Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) has signed an MoU with Dubai Municipality to facilitate knowledge transfer, sharing of data and practical experiences, and developing human resources in the areas of space science, remote sensing applications, space com-munications, and navigation systems using global satellites. The MoU was signed by Eng. Abdullah Moham-med Rafi, Deputy General Manager of Engineering & Planning, Dubai Municipality and Salem Humaid Al Marri, Assistant Director General for Scientific and Technical Affairs, EIAST.

H.E. Yousuf Al Shaibani, Direc-tor General, EIAST, stressed the importance of building cooperation with Dubai Municipality, meeting the highest scientific and technical competence standards. This is in sup-port of the UAE’s vision to transform itself into a major hub for satellite manufacturing. He emphasized EIAST’s commitment to prioritize the future needs of Dubai Municipality in terms of developing engineering designs for satellites such as satellite images applications to contribute to the efforts of achieving comprehen-sive and sustainable development.

Genesys Reiterated Commit-ted to Channel PartnersRecently hosted its first Genesys Middle East Partner Days 2014, Genesys highlighted its strat-egy and best practices that generate opportunities for channel partners to garner future growth.

The two-day event brought together over 50 business leaders and decision makers and business representing key Genesys Channel Partners from across the Middle East region, together with senior executives from Genesys to highlight the company’s strategic direction and roadmap for the year ahead. At the event, Channel Partners had a closer look at various solutions and platforms from Genesys designed to help enterprises create competitive advantage, reduce customer churn and drive customer service strategies.

Senior executives from Genesys also took

this opportunity to share with the audience, its on-going focus on channel development and innovation directed towards helping Channel Partners identify and leverage unique business opportunities in the regional contact center market while thanking them for their consistent support and dedication to the brand

“Our partners are at the core of our business strategy and successes, representing the strength of Genesys solutions across the vast Middle East market. It is through their commitment and diligence that customers have come to recognize Genesys as a trusted brand that offers compre-hensive customer experience and contact center solutions,” said Mohamed Afifi, MD, Genesys, Middle East.

ARAB WORLD TO HAVE 197 MILLION INTERNET USERS BY 2017

The number of Internet users in the Arab World is expected to reach 197 million by 2017, a penetration of over 51 per cent from 32 per cent in 2012, according to the first ever Arab Knowledge Economy Report 2014. The Report is a joint study done by Madar Research & Development and Orient Planet.

The Arab Knowledge Economy Report 2014 focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the region’s economy along with the opportunities and risks associated with it. The statistics and other valuable information featured in the report could act as an essential guide for government planners, economists as well as local, regional and global business communities in the move to acquire, create, disseminate and use knowledge more effectively for greater economic and social development.

HP World 2014 Focussed on Future of Enterprises

DELEGATES AT HP WORLD 2014

CHANNEL STREET

16 JU NE 2014

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Every1min a host accessesa malicious website

Every 3mins a botcommunicates with its command and control center

Every 9mins a high-riskapplication is used

Every10mins known malware is downloaded

Every 27mins unknown malware is downloaded

Every 49mins sensitive data is sent outside the organization

Every 24h a host is infected with a bot

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H

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10 mins

9 mins

3 mins

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Advts.indd 5 04/06/14 8:55 am

WEB CLIPS

TOSHIBA LAUNCHES THE KIRA

Toshiba Gulf FZE launches the KIRA, a

13.3-inch touchscreen Ultrabook that combines

elegant design, meticulous craftsmanship and

unparalleled performance. Designed for users

who demand a premium computing experience,

the ultra-portable KIRA is now available in the

market. Powered by the 4th Generation Intel Core

i7 Quad Core processor and running on Windows

8.1 Pro, the KIRA with its 8GB of memory delivers

speed on demand and consistent performance. It

has 256GB of SSD storage and an SD card port

that allows for extra space whenever required.

AOC LAUNCHES 28” ULTRA HD

MONITOR

AOC launches a 28” (71.1 cm) monitor with the

stunningly high Ultra HD resolution of 3840 x

2160 pixels at a 60 Hz refresh rate. Equipped

with DisplayPort, HDMI (MHL) and USB 3.0

connectors, the sophisticated display also comes

with full ergonomics to meet the high standards

of professionals and demanding home users

alike – at a surprisingly low price.

Ultra HD: CAD/CAM professionals, architects,

engineers and power users at home – all will

benefit from the finely detailed pictures delivered

by the u2868Pqu’s latest TN panel technology.

SAUDI OPPORTUNITIES TO INVESTORS

SAGIA and Euromoney hosted an event for inves-

tors in London aiming at attracting international

investment into the Kingdom’s economy by

leading international businesses.

Saudi represents the UK’s largest market

in the Middle East and among the top 20 UK

export markets globally, with £7.5bn in exports of

goods and services in 2012, and overall bilateral

trade worth an estimated £15bn per year. The

UK has excellent potential to play a role in

bringing international expertise to Saudi as the

Kingdom makes extensive investments in order

to transform the economy.

CLOUD SEAT TO GROW 67%

Interactive Intelligence has reported a 67 percent

compound annual growth rate (2010-2013) of its

Communications as a Service offering, topping

20,000 seats.

Interactive Intelligence CaaS is a set of cloud-

based contact center, unified communications

and business process automation services for

organizations of all sizes.

Eaton Launches RE Series IT RacksEaton has launched the RE Series IT racks as part of its IT infrastructure solution offering. These highly-featured affordable racks are designed for network closet and small server room applica-tions, and build on Eaton’s popular existing range of racks for small, medium and large data centres. In a market segment that is traditionally light on features, the RE racks offer a rich set of features including casters, grounding kit, step-less positioning rails, U markings and quick release lockable sides as standard.

“The new RE Series IT racks have been designed specifically with value added resellers and system integrators in mind,” said Steven Wechter, product manager, Eaton, EMEA. “When added to Eaton’s existing RP series, we now have

products that will suit every need. The RE series addresses small, value-oriented applications, while the RP series delivers a high-performance enclosure system for all application sizes.”

Available in 27U and 42U heights, and 800mm and 1000mm depths, the cabinets can fit into confined spaces or can accommodate large amounts of IT equipment and cabling. The RE series is also available with glass or high flow perforated doors and can include a full range of airflow management and cable management accessories.

Eaton’s electrical business is a global leader. Eaton is positioned through its global solutions to answer today’s most critical electrical power management challenges.

MOVEMENTSNUMBER GAME

HID Global appoints AN-DREW LINTELL as Director of Sales, Identity Assur-ance, EMEA for HID Global reporting to Harm Rad-staak, Managing Director, EMEA.

Brocade announced the hiring of networking and open-source veteran CO-LIN DIXON to the position of Principal Engineer.

Sophos has appointed BRYAN BARNEY as senior vice president and general manager of the Sophos Network Security Group, and KARL-HEINZ WARUM as regional vice president of sales for Germany, North-ern and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.

1.4%growth happened in Worldwide Server Shipments Market in the First Quarter of 2014. billion: GARTNER, INC.

A10 NETWORKS WINS TECHED AWARDSA10 Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) product line won two prestigious Best of TechEd 2014 awards: one in the Breakthrough Technology category and the “Attendees’ Pick: Microsoft Partner” award. Penton’s Best of TechEd awards, co-sponsored by Microsoft and Windows IT Pro, recognize Microsoft partners that offer innovative products and services for the industry. Winners were announced at the Microsoft TechEd North America 2014 conference in Houston, Texas.

“Winning these awards highlights A10’s focus on providing innovative application network-ing solutions that resonate with customers,” said Jason Matlof, vice president of worldwide marketing at A10 Networks. “We were honored to win two awards at TechEd last year, and especially thank the Microsoft IT community for choosing A10 products as the Attendees’ Pick for the second year running.”

CHANNEL STREET

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I.T. SECURITY IS A CRITICAL STRATEGIC IMPERATIVEAttack sophistication and cost is increasing. New vulnerabilities are exposed daily.

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Conference: 9 am – 5:45 pmTIMINGS

Huawei Core Partners Convention 2014 Kicks off in DubaiLeading telecom system integrators have gathered this week to identify emerging oppor-tunities within the Middle East’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector at the annual Huawei Middle East Core Partners Convention 2014 held in Dubai, UAE.

Some of the key advancements outlined at the forum included planning the next wave of 4G & 5G mobile broadband networks, the progression of national broadband policies in the Middle East, and what new information technologies are set to be introduced in the region to deliver on govern-ments’ plans for more intelligent and connected Smart City initiatives. The event was attended by 90 leading ICT suppliers and approximately 170 partners from across the Middle East.

This year’s Convention featured a series of high-level keynotes hosted by regional and global Huawei executives including Mr. Xia Chaojie, Vice President of Huawei Middle East Delivery &

VEEAM ENABLES ALWAYS ON BUSINESSVeeam Software announced Veeam Availability Suite, a solution that ensures all applications and data are accessible whenever and wherever they are needed. In this way, Veeam is pioneer-ing a new solution category that does what legacy data protection and backup systems could never do: enable the Always-On Business.

“The modern business cycle is no longer confined to five days a week, eight hours a day,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam. “IT organizations must make applications and data available to all stakeholders every minute of every day. This is the era of the Always-On Business. Veeam Availability Suite provides a new enabling technology that transforms the Always-On Business from a mere dream for most organizations into a reality.”

VISION SOLUTIONS HOSTS PARTNER CONFERENCE’Vision Solutions, a leading provider of replication, availability and disaster recovery software and services, has recently hosted its Growth Markets Partner Conference in Dubai.

The conference which took place at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel between the 4th and 6th of May 2014, hosted senior executives, distributors and partners from the Middle East, Africa, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia and Eastern Europe. The conference, which was sponsored by SWIIFT/Fineksus, presented Vision Solu-

tions’ roadmap and new technolo-gies to their partners and vendors in their growth markets in addition to presentations by IBM, SWIFT Partner/Fineksus and Microsoft.

“We are delighted with the success of this year’s conference and look forward to further strengthening our relationship and presence in the region” said

Mike Khattab, Vice President of Sales, Growth Markets. “At Vision Solutions we are committed to our growth markets, especially the Middle East, where we are seeing an increase in demand and investment in data sharing, disaster recovery and cloud protection as companies are expanding. It is our priority that we show our partners that the variety of solutions we offer can meet their demands by being at the forefront of technological advancements in the industry.”

FUJITSU EMPHA-SISED ITS COMMIT-MENT TO THE ME MAEA MARKET

Fujitsu hosted its 6th partner conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from 20 to 22 May. Almost 300 experts from 47 countries in the EMEA region attended the event held under this year’s theme “Document and Digitise: Free Knowledge”. PFU executives offered strategic updates and an overview of Fujitsu’s document scanner business. Representatives of various industries such as finance and construction gave valuable insights into user scenarios. Eleven channel partners were awarded with special prizes in several categories.

Fujitsu invited distributors, independent software vendors (ISV), resellers, business users and manufac-turers to provide a detailed view of the latest trends and market opportunities in the document capture market. The conference focused on transforming documents into useful sources of infor-mation by integrating them in electronic workflows to release the knowledge they contain.

By holding ICC 2014 in Abu Dhabi, Fujitsu emphasised its commitment to the Middle East market and supported new business opportunities of channel partners from all countries.

ICT LEADERS MEET AT HUAWEI CPC 2014 CONVENTION

Service, and Mr. Pan En, Vice President of Huawei Middle East, on the anticipated demands from individuals and businesses for ICT connectivity in the year ahead. The speakers also recapped Huawei 2013 achievements and 2014 goals, including updates to Huawei’s global policy for cooperation in developing the Middle East.

MIKE KHATTAB, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES, GROWTH MARKETS & TEAM

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FVC to Distribute BarcoAt a special corporate launch held in Dubai Fes-tival City, , FVC, Barco’s authorised value added distributor (VAD) in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA), announced the expansion of its distribution agreement to include its range of state-of-the art business projectors for presenta-tions, meetings and trainings in the workplace. The special features of this range include excellent performance, high brightness and ultimate reli-ability that can fit well in the business landscape.

Last year, FVC signed a distribution agree-ment with Barco for its ClickShare wireless presentation and collaboration system. “We are very excited to expand our visual collaboration solutions with this additional range products from Barco which offer an innovative visual technology for business needs in this region,” said K.S. Parag, Managing Director at FVC.

FVC offers unparalleled portfolio of distribu-tion services and unwavering commitment to

its customers. “We want to leverage the latest technologies and innovations for our customers. The newest products of Barco will give them [customers] a wide array of options to choose from,” added Parag.

Barco’s Corporate AV portfolio includes an extensive range of single-chip and three-chip DLP business projectors – with brightness levels from 5,000 up to 10,000 lumens, and a broad range of resolutions from XGA to WQXGA. The projectors are designed specifically to foster smarter collaboration in the workplace.

“Combined with ClickShare—which is also available through FVC—these projectors create an unmatched solution that significantly enhances the user experience,” commented Eric Brouwers, regional director for the Middle East and Africa at Barco. “In short, by expanding our existing partnership with FVC, we are able to offer our MENA customers ultimate value.”

SYMANTEC UNVEILS TWO NEW ATP OFFERINGSSymantec has announced an entirely new approach to advanced threat protection (ATP), unveiling a roadmap of integrated solutions that demonstrates the security innovation power that only it can deliver to help customers solve their most complex problems. This approach is fueled by two new offerings, Symantec Managed Secu-rity Services -Advanced Threat Protection and Symantec Advanced Threat Protection Solution.

“To successfully defend against the types of

targeted attacks we’re seeing today, you need to expand the focus from prevention to detec-tion and response,” said Brian Dye, senior vice president of Symantec Information Security. “Network security alone isn’t going to solve the problem. Adversaries are targeting all control points from the gateway to email to the endpoint. Organizations need security across these control points working together, with incident response capabilities and global information intelligence,

to beat the bad guys. Symantec is bringing that powerful arsenal to market.”

Available in June of 2014, the next piece in Symantec’s ATP approach is Symantec Managed Security Services -Advanced Threat Protection (MSS-ATP), a managed service that significantly reduces the time it takes to detect, prioritize and respond to security incidents by producing integration between its endpoint security and third-party network security vendors’ products.

VMWARE UNVEILS NEW LOG MAN-AGEMENT PRODUCTAdvancing intelligent cloud operations through new analytics capabilities, VMware has unveiled VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0, VMware’s automated log manage-ment and analytics product for the mobile-cloud era. The new release of VMware vCenter Log Insight introduces machine-learning technology in conjunction with significantly improved query and data collection performance that will help customers speed problem resolution and further automate IT operations across physical, virtual and hybrid cloud environments.

“IT organizations continue to be overwhelmed with massive amounts of unstructured log data generated by their virtual and hybrid cloud envi-ronments,” said Ramin Sayar, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware. “With VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0, we’re doubling-down on our unique predictive analytics-based approach to log management. VMware vSphere customers, including general IT operations, security, applications and DevOps teams will be able leverage the power of VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 to analyze machine data for actionable insight to prevent system downtime.”

Today, VMware vCenter Log Insight helps customers to identify IT issues 25 percent faster, speed resolu-tion times by 50 percent, and reduce log analysis time by up to 80 percent.

BT LAUNCHES NEW CAMPAIGN AND OFFERS

BT launched a global campaign and new offers designed to encourage large organisations to use technology more creatively for stunning business outcomes. Recognising the changing role of CIOs - and in tune with influential industry analyst views - BT Global Services will engage with leading global companies and government organisations all around the world to offer innova-tions addressing four key customer requirements: delivering a great performance, realising possibilities in the cloud, working in harmony and performing anywhere.

BT is launching a range of offers focused on its IP Connect service, bringing coherence to hybrid networks and addressing issues such as availability, performance, economics and security. The first offers launched include application-aware network performance monitoring as standard for larger global network contracts and trials for 100 Mbps internet access as part of IP Connect Global for enterprise customers.

To help CIOs orchestrate their cloud resources, BT has just launched ExpressRoute with IP Connect, allowing customers to bypass the public internet when connecting to the Micro-soft Azure. BT is also launching a special trial offer for its Cloud Compute customers with connectivity to the BT cloud. BT is launching a number of offers that bring the latest unified communications services to its customers at very competitive conditions.

CHANNEL STREET

22 JU NE 2014

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D-LINK

Due to rising security concerns across the globe, the video sur-veillance market has witnessed an increase in demand as well as technological innovations.

According to an IHS report, the overall market for video equipment will grow by more than 12 percent in 2014. The fastest-growing product segments within that market will be fixed-dome and 180-/360-deg. network cameras. The transi-tion from analog CCTV to IP video surveillance is happening on a fast pace. “Nowadays more and more users are moving towards IP based solutions, which help them to have common centralized networks for surveillance and their existing IP networks. The migration to IP based surveillance network relieves the IT administrators from the hassle to maintain two different networks both in terms of hardware and software. It also helps with future expan-sion,” comments Sakkeer Hussain K, Sales & Marketing Manager, D-Link.Equipped with video analytics, IP Video Surveil-lance offers many performance and cost-effective advantages over the analog one. “Today, consum-ers are looking for products addressing their diverse needs with view to different surveillance situations and targeted areas. Accordingly, we carry IP camera models which cater to these needs. We offer Pan/Tilt/Zoom, Dome, Fixed, Fish Eye, and Fast Dome cameras,” informs Hussain.

The surveillance needs vary depending on the environment, hence D-Link’s products offer standard features like Full HD, IR, WDR, PIR,

P-Iris, Color Night Vision, Motion Detection, Alerts, Continuous and Scheduled Patrolling on PTZ Cameras, Optical and Digital Zoom. “Additionally we carry video management software to manage the IP surveillance networks, both embedded along with the NVR as well as standalone,” he adds.

Security is no longer a vertical-driven need. It’s a major concern today and all sectors are investing the security infrastructure. Hussain says that the fastest growing verticals in almost all countries across the Middle East & Africa are Education, Hospitality, Healthcare, Government and Banking. “The Middle East market for video surveillance equipment will grow tremendously and the region is forecasted to continue to grow strongly. When compared to other regional markets, the Middle East represents a significant growth opportunity for manufacturers of video surveillance equipment due to the emerging nature of the market,” says Hussain.

The increased concern for security has also increased the scope of VaaS. D-Link offers video management software for local and remote monitoring of IP surveillance networks. In addi-tion to this D-Link offers mydlink services that help remote monitoring on IP cameras anywhere anytime. “The video surveillance market has been experiencing significant growth across the globe for the past few years due to rising concerns for security and safety. This has resulted into an increased demand for technically advanced surveillance systems, thereby, creating huge growth opportunities for CCTV manufacturers, operators and distributors,” adds Hussain. The

Transition of Surveillance The surveillance market is rapidly moving from analog to IP video surveillance offering. It not only offers scalability but also ease of manageability and remote monitoring.

SAKKEER HUSSAIN K,SALES & MARKETING MANAGER, D-LINK

“The migration to IP based surveillance network relieves the IT administrators from the hassle to maintain two different networks.”

company has system integration partners across the MEA region dedicated and focused on the IP surveillance segment. “We also offer regular training and updates to our partners on new product offerings, technology enhancements which help them to compete and cater to market needs,” says Hussain.

FINALLY..The pace at what technology is booming, the end customer demands are proportionally increasing at the same time. Accordingly, D-Link regularly keeps on enhancing its product range which keeps it in line with the competition and market needs. “In terms of opportunities, as security has become a prime concern, they will keep on increasing with view to the verticals. Our local presence, trainings and the fact that we are offer-ing end-to-end solutions help our customers to achieve their targets. The analog CCTV cameras currently dominate the global CCTV market, but the scenario will change soon with network IP emerging as the leading technology,” concludes Hussain. ë

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SURVEILLANCE

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Antivirus has come a long way since the time of its inception. It is defined as the software to detect, prevent and remove malware. The basic function

may have remained same but the term ‘malware’ has drastically changed. The recent statement by Symantec that antivirus is dead has stirred the industry. The reactions are mixed, some agree and some don’t.

ROLE AND RELEVANCEOver the period of time, the security landscape has evolved in leaps and bounds. Thousands of new threats get discovered daily. In such a scenario, antivirus alone cannot be the sole protector. “Anti-virus is a reactive technology that deals with detection of issues after they have arisen, and as such it certainly plays a role in securing devices. However, anti-virus cannot stand alone as an “only line of defence.” To protect systems and devices, corporations need to take a pro-active approach to security, and protect their infrastructure from being breached in the first place. They also need to control and classify the corporate data that employees can access from

their corporate and private devices,” says Morten Stengaard, CTO, Secunia.

“Antivirus is still the most common first level of defense when it comes to dealing with worms and viruses, however as people have correctly noted the classic approach to detecting viruses has been challenged by modern malware, where one of the common features amongst these threats is to bypass or be able to trick existing antivirus solutions,” Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services at Help AG.

Antivirus alone may not be effective but when combined with other layers of protection, it definitely forms an important aspect. “Desktop-wise, Antivirus is a legacy term, actually. All security companies have ‘Security Suites’ rather than Anti-virus. In the context of Fortinet UTM appliances, which is what I know the most, Antivirus is one of the protection layers, along with IPS, Web-filtering, Antispam, Sandboxing, Anti-Botnet, etc. Most threats are not going to be addressed just by one of these layers. The goal for engineers and analysts tuning those layers is to tackle threats from several angles, for maximum resilience and proactivity,” comments Guillaume Lovet, Senior Manager of Fortinet’s EMEA Threat

Response Team. “With the explosion of more devices, having

security on the endpoint that includes Anti-Virus has never been so important,” says Raj Samani, EMEA Chief Technology Officer, McAfee.

IS CALLING IT DEAD AN EXAGGERATION?The statement by Symantec surely addresses the fact that vendors need to deploy other mecha-nisms to fight cyber attacks. The industry has mixed reactions on the statement. Some feel that it is because Symantec has new technology lined up and some feel it is surely an exaggeration. “In a way it is and yet it is not, if one looks at just AV protection to protect against multi dimensional sophisticated attacks, then he is dead, so I guess the relevance of AV as a standalone solution is as good as dead,” says Anand Choudha, MD, Spec-trami. Costin Raiu, Director of Global Research & Analysis Team Kaspersky Lab adds a different angle to it. He says, “It has happened before and, no doubt, will happen again. Usually, such “big” announcements are used when an IT security company wants to announce a “new” technology arriving. Another vendor has been using the same

n W O R D S : M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

Antivirus is no doubt important but how much relevance it has in today’s threat ridden era is a question to be pondered on.

Dead or Alive?

ANTI-VIRUS

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Cover story.indd 24 04/06/14 10:36 am

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approach since back in 2008 to announce their cloud security platform, and even then it wasn’t something really new.”

Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO Sophos com-ments, “When we are speaking of anti-virus as endpoint protection, it is far from being dead. Next gen endpoint is an essential part of the security system of the future, and we are investing heavily in it. While the advancement in endpoint security is good, every IT security person knows it is not enough, and especially that they need to add layers of defence at the network level too – next generation firewalls, secure web gateways, and so on. There are still going to be modern threats (‘APTs’) and hackers that get past all these defences, and of course these cause big concerns for IT people everywhere.”

Stengaard feels that it is an exaggeration but it brings home the point: Do not rely on anti-virus exclusively, look to other technologies to protect your assets. “From my point of view, antivirus will still be one component of end point security and I am sure, developer will keep on enhancing capabilities of antivirus program. Also, as far as Operating systems are vulnerable, antivirus will

software. Traditional signature-based antivirus is reactive,” says Pradeesh VS, General Manager at ESET Middle East. Instead of trying to keep up with them, ESET offers ThreatSense- an advanced engine that stays a few steps ahead. It is a sophisticated, well-balanced system of advanced heuristics and malware signatures, providing the best detection without compro-mising speed.

ThreatSense’s Advanced Heuristics engine enables detection of malware not specified in the signature database. It proactively decodes and analyzes executable code in a protected virtual environment in order to identify increasingly sophisticated malicious behavior, characteristic of today’s evolving threats.

ANAND CHOUDHA, MD, SPECTRAMI

“In a way it is and yet it is not, if one looks at just AV protection to protect against multi dimensional sophisticated attacks, then he is dead, so I guess the relevance of AV as a standalone solu-tion is as good as dead.”

RAJ SAMANI, EMEA CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MCAFEE

“With the explosion of more devices, having security on the endpoint that includes Anti-Virus has never been so important.”

GERHARD ESCHELBECK, CTO SOPHOS

“When we are speaking of anti-virus as endpoint protection, it is far from being dead. Next gen endpoint is an essential part of the security system of the future, and we are investing heavily in it.”

OVER THE PERIOD OF TIME, THE SECURITY LANDSCAPE HAS EVOLVED IN LEAPS AND BOUNDS. THOUSANDS OF NEW THREATS GET DISCOVERED DAILY.

be integral part of any system and will not be dead,” says Ashish Modi, Technical Manager, emt Distribution.

INNOVATIONSAs a result of new and advanced threats and to counter them, vendors are constantly evolving their products and technologies.”We expect that threats to the endpoint will only increase in number and variety. End points must be prepared to protect against a combination of zero-day attacks, viruses, trojans, worms, botnet attacks, rootkits, adware, spam, and social engineering attacks. The zero-day attack, viruses, worms, and spyware are constantly evolving as malware writers attempt to circumvent security

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Eschelbeck points out five key characteristics of what he calls the Next-Generation Endpoint:• Context-aware security – endpoint agents

that communicate with network security to make

more intelligent security decisions• Advanced threat protection agents working

together as a system to detect, block any remedi-ate compromised systems and APTs

• User-based security policies protecting users on all their devices from desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, servers, and networks• Corporate data encrypted in-transit, across

PRADEESH VS, GENERAL MAN-AGER, ESET MIDDLE EAST

“End points must be pre-pared to protect against a combination of zero-day attacks, viruses, trojans, worms, botnet attacks, rootkits, adware, spam, and social engineering attacks.”

GUILLAUME LOVET, SENIOR MANAGER, FORTINET EMEA THREAT RESPONSE TEAM

“For maximum coverage, resilience, and proactiv-ity, our UTM appliances use several layers of pro-tection to tackle threats.”

ASHISH MODI, TECHNICAL MANAGER, EMT DISTRIBUTION

“From my point of view, antivirus will still be one component of end point security and I am sure, developer will keep on enhancing capabilities of antivirus program.”

EXCERPTS FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL: “Antivirus “is dead,” says Brian Dye, Symantec’s senior vice president for infor-mation security. “We don’t think of antivirus as a moneymaker in any way.”Antivirus products aim to prevent hackers from getting into a computer. But hackers often get in anyway these days. Dye said that modern antivirus soft-ware only stops around 45 per cent of attack on computer systems and lets the rest through as. That’s a bit embarrassing for the firm’s Norton team, who are

still advertising the software as “secure and reliable,” rather than “works less than half the time.”Rather than fighting to keep the bad guys out, new technologies from an array of companies assume hackers get in so aim to spot them and minimize the damage.The company has no plans to abandon Norton but will find revenue growth in its new product lines, he says. “If customers are shifting from protect to detect and respond, the growth is going to come from detect and respond,” Mr. Dye says.

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ANTIVIRUS ALONE MAY NOT BE EFFECTIVE BUT WHEN COMBINED WITH OTHER LAYERS OF PROTECTION, IT DEFINITELY FORMS AN IMPORTANT ASPECT.

NICOLAI SOLLING, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, HELP AG

“Antivirus is still the most common first level of defense when it comes to dealing with worms and viruses.”

COSTIN RAIU, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL RESEARCH & ANALYSIS TEAM KASPERSKY LAB

“Usually, such “big” announcements are used when an IT security com-pany wants to announce a “new” technology arriving.”

MORTEN STENGAARD, CTO, SECUNIA

“Anti-virus cannot stand alone as an “only line of defence.”

all devices, and including the ability to make a compromised system unreadable• Simple, user-based cloud management,

with alerting, event collection, and proactive remediation

McAfee has one such approach of Advanced Threat Detection. This new technology identifies sophisticated, hard-to-detect threats by running suspected malware in a “sandbox,” analyzing its behavior and assessing the potential impact the malware may have on an endpoint and a network.

“For maximum coverage, resilience, and proactivity, our UTM appliances use several layers of protection to tackle threats. Typically, a malware piece going through a FortiGate will be checked against heuristic rules, unpacked, emu-lated, compared to a database of smart patterns, compared to a cloud-database of checksums, sent to a sandbox, while the IP it originates from will be checked against reputation databases; eventually, if it goes through, the external IP addresses it connects to, and the protocol used to “talk” to those servers will both be scrutinized and checked against databases of known danger-ous addresses and “malware phoning home” protocol,” says Lovet.

FUTUREIt is clear that antivirus alone is not sufficient but it has its own role to play. Raiu puts it perfectly in his words. He says, “Traditional signature-scan antivirus as the sole method of protection has been dead for many years. It has been replaced by a much more sophisticated bundle of products and technologies, which combine heuristics, sandbox analyzers, cloud reputation and white listing technologies to protect the user. Looking forward, the future of antivirus has actually become the future of IT security. It lies with a multi-layered approach to security, combined with best practices and education.”“Anti-Virus will evolve to handle more

sophisticated attacks, however it would be hard to believe that an Anti-Virus would be used on its own. If you dissect what an AV is, it is the ability

to detect a malicious file based on a signature. The main benefit with this approach is that it can be done extremely fast in Hardware and Software. The biggest challenge is that unless you know what you are looking for and have a signature you are blind to the threat. Due to this we will see AV vendors investing a lot of effort in making sure that the window of infection where there is no signature is minimized, either through cloud, behaviour based analysis on the client or other new technologies,” says Solling.

FINALLYWhatever may be the motive of Symantec to make a strong statement like antivirus is dead, it has surely brought attention to the relevance of antivirus in times when security is the prime con-cern for businesses and home users as well. ë

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We add value to the business of our vendors and we have a long standing relationship with the vendors. We are financially strong and have the strongest coverage. We have the highest certification from vendors and direct relationship with them. That’s why we have a better engage-ment with the customer from commercial and technical point of view,” says Esber.

The customers of MDS include majority of oil companies. The focus is on enterprise business and not SMB.

FINALLY…Esber accepts that the reselling part is coming down and data centre and software business is coming up. The revenue of MDS Gulf is USD 750 mn. “Half of this is reselling or hardware business. Software business is going up and hardware business is shrinking because of virtualization and cloud,” he adds.

As informed, MDS has been enjoying a com-bined average growth ratio of almost 15% from last five years. “As a company which is committed to the Gulf market, we are expanding year after year to offer our customers better services and better solutions,” concludes Esber. ë

Midis (MDS) Group, an IT group of companies was founded in 1981 and became one of the first IT companies to be established in the UAE.

MDS is not only a System Integrator but has a lot in its portfolio. It is into Software Solutions, Data Centre infrastructure and site preparation, cloud infrastructure solutions, and managed services. “We also resell hardware from different vendors. We are active in all IT fields and sectors,” says Sami Abi Esber, President, Board Member, Midis Group.

In the Gulf region, the company is present in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait. MDS works with vendors like HP, EMC, Microsoft, Avaya, Oracle, Lenovo, Dell, IBM etc.

As it is known, the IT industry is witnessing a shift towards solutions and services from hardware. MDS is prepared for this next wave of technology. The company has consolidated its data centre and cloud credentials by launching Cloud Centre of Excellence in the UAE. “Here you can come and experience what is cloud, how it will work and everything you want to deploy as services it can be deployed here in our data centre. You can try it before taking any decision. It is a converged system, which is now available in one rack and has provision for any services from networking, infrastructure, and database,” explains Esber.

By working with so many vendors, MDS is not tied to one single brand. It delivers end-to-end solutions and integrating the best of the products to offer the best solution. “We are providing infrastructure solutions to all cloud providers.

We are not offering XaaS but we are helping our customers to offer private cloud or public cloud. Our role is not to be the cloud service provider; our role is to enable our customers to be that. This is the difference,” elaborates Esber.

MDS is also well-positioned to provide security and mobility solutions. There is a separate entity within MDS group that focused on security. It is called Netcure and is specialized in providing security for data center infrastruc-ture and different types of IT security. BYOD is gaining traction so MDS offers manageability of devices along with security.

Esber says that there are a lot of reasons why MDS is the most reliable partner in the country. One of them is the naming of MDS by IDC as the topmost IT service provider in the UAE from last nine years without interruption. “We are in the business since 1981. So many companies came and disappeared. MDS is here and growing.

MIDIS

Widening it ApproachThe IT industry is shifting from products to solutions but Midis Group was already prepared to face the challenge.

n B Y : M A N A L I M I S R A ( M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M )

SAMI ABI ESBERPRESIDENT, BOARD MEMBER, MIDIS GROUP

“Our role is not to be the cloud service provider; our role is to enable our customers to be that. This is the difference.”

TOP 5 IT SERVICE PROVIDERS IN

THE UAE

62.2%OTHERS

37.8%TOP 5

1

23 4

5

MDA UAE

Injazat Data Systems

Wipro Gulf Business Machines

Emitac

PARTNER STREET

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EATON

Innovating in a Green WayThe carbon emissions from IT infrastructure areincreasing.There is a need for initiatives that areeco-friendly and Eaton is well on the track.

n B Y : M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Few years ago, Gartner had estimated that carbon emissions from ICT infrastructure account to approximately 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The numbers

are equivalent to that of aviation industry. With growing need of environmental sustainability, it is evident that businesses need to use efficient IT infrastructure.

Eaton is a power management company and helps organizations with energy-efficient solutions. “The carbon emission from IT infrastructure is same as aviation industry and it’s a big issue. Estimates say that by 2020, 20% of the consumed power is going to come from IT infrastructure. That’s a huge number. So, we are making sure that whatever we do, we do that in the most efficient way. We are a power management company and how do we do that as efficiently as possible with minimum impact on the environment is our role. It goes for all the products we have. We get the benefit, people like the message, they like the way we do things. We are successful because we do the right things in the right way,” says Frank Ackland, General Manager, Middle East, Eaton.

The GreenDataNet is led by Eaton. The motive of the project is to enable energy monitoring and optimization of IT, power, cooling and storage at three levels: servers and racks, individual data centers and networks of data centers.

Eaton believes that what makes the difference is the way you actually use the technology in the development of your products. Innovation is the huge factor for Eaton. “Today, we are among the top 100 innovators in the world. We take this

very seriously. For instance, our UPS products have the smallest footprint, highest efficiency, reliability, and resilience. These are not buzz words but the key words. The evidence is in the customers which is a huge database,” comments Rahul Sikka, Segment Head- Critical Power, Middle East, Eaton.

EATON IN MIDDLE EAST:Ackland tells that Eaton in the Middle East is a story about growth. “We have a fantastic legacy and that legacy is based on a series of brands. A lot of people in the region know Eaton by the brand. One of the things that the leadership expected over the course of last 18 months is that we need to be far bigger in the ME,” adds Ackland.

Eaton has a great ambition to grow in the market. To achieve the same, Eaton made some of the changes. First one was to move to the facility in Dubai where the company has invested USD 7mn to build this. Eaton is looking Sto cover GCC countries from this head office. The company has 19 different sales offices around region. “When we think about our business, we need to focus on three specific things. One is around commercial and infrastructure. There is a massive opportunity for our products in that space,” adds Ackland. The second is on energy to think about distribution utility, Oil & Gas, and power generation. “The third is around IT infrastructure and data centre. That’s how we have built our organization to really focus on these three areas,” he says.

THE SUCCESS MANTRA:Ackland informs that Eaton is a power manage-ment company and is pretty clear in its focus

RAHUL SIKKASEGMENT HEAD- CRITICAL POWER,

MIDDLE EAST, EATON

“Today, we are among the top 100 innovators in the world. We take this very

seriously. For instance, our UPS products have the

smallest footprint, highest efficiency, reliability, and

resilience.”

but has to be really good in its space. The second strength is the breadth of its portfolio. Over a year ago, Eaton acquired Cooper Industries which Ack-land terms a massive acquisition. “That really gave us really strong breadth in terms of the solutions. We are getting strong feedback from the market. We want to establish ourselves as the benchmark in terms of ease to do business with,” he says.

Eaton believes that it has to be different than its competitors. “We look at how we can create solutions that differentiate. When we look specifically at IT infrastructure market, then the amount we have invested in innovation is huge. If we take example of security, we need to have really strong hardware and software platform,” says Ackland.

Eaton has been in the hardware space for more than 50 years and has been developing software in this space for more than 20 years. This gives Eaton the credibility. “We understand what you need to have for security of data. We come up with really fantastic programmes with big customers. Facebook is a massive success

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FRANK ACKLANDGENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST,

EATON

“We are a power management company

and how do we do that as efficiently as possible with minimum impact on the environment is our role.”

story for us. The work we did with Facebook to improve their efficiency. It’s just an example from where we are pushing the envelope from an innovation perspective. We have got the right balance of really strong support, great innova-tion, new products coming out and inclusive collaborative way of working with our channels, that gets us the success,” he adds.

Sikka informs that Eaton is closely associated with every single OS developer in the world. “We are the no 1 partner for VMware, the strongest in the virtualization space. We integrate within the OS. We are able to integrate seamlessly and that’s why we are so different from the others. We are able to cap power being used within a Cisco server.” Eaton has launched its own Intelligent Power On Demand (POD). So, today for VSPEX solutions, Eaton can provide with an entire integrated package. Eaton counts it a huge plus for the company. “We are at the cutting edge and at the forefront of technology. Anywhere you go, there is an Eaton device touching your life in one way or the other,” adds Sikka.

LOCALIZING THE PRODUCTS:Eaton believes that the localization of products is important to capture the market. Hence, the company invests massively in R&D. “We have 25 different product lines and for some products we have got localized R&D facilities. The people working here look into the modifications required in the product needed specifically for the market. We need to see what customers are look-ing for and how can we get that into our R&D cycle. We get the new products out and test it into the market. We are the biggest supplier in the North America, to be the biggest supplier there means we are doing things right including GTM, channel coverage, and technology differentiation,” adds Ackland.

Eaton has got two factories, one in Saudi Arabia and one in Dubai. It has a massive distribution centre in Dubai as well.

CHANNEL ECOSYSTEM:Over 70 % of Eaton’s business goes through channel and rest directly through SI. Eaton makes sure that when it works with channels, it has really simple organization, very clear coverage who does what, what is expected from channels, what it is going to do to support them, how does the company give them a winning position in terms of helping in technology , promotions, technical support etc. “Channel partners are invaluable to us. As we grow, there is ample opportunity to work with other partners in the region and build out that network. Channel is an extended arm of our organization. We invest a lot in innovation. We want to make sure that we are positioning Eaton by extension of partners with great products. So, it is very important for us as a company that we work very inclusively with partners,” elaborates Ackland.

Eaton is building its portfolio as it is building on its next generation. Ackland believes that the company needs to have the voice of the customer inside its innovation process and that big voice comes from its channels. When Eaton signs up with the channel, it is really clear about its expectations and what it needs to provide to them to be successful. There is continuous dialog between the two to make sure the company is meeting the expectations of the market. “It is competitive world, but it is also a differentiated world. One of our ambitions as we grow is to become benchmark in various different aspects of business. One of those is channel partners, we have channel partners to have great experience in working with Eaton,” says Ackland.

He asserts that investing in an Eaton product, can give you a return in 3-5 years which is a big thing. That’s what investors want to know. “This

is where we work with our partners who tell that story and help around the specification. It requires training and very strong channel man-agement,” he adds. Eaton believes that the more its channel is going to be successful, the more it will be successful.

POWERADVANTAGE PARTNER PROGRAMEaton has launched globally, PowerAdvantage Partner Program which is a partner program that clearly recognizes and differentiates between partners and rewards them for their loyalty and support to Eaton. “The buzz word is clarity, we know what they are going to deliver, they know what they are going to expect from us. We are thankful to our competitors who haven’t really done that well, so there is a lot of dissatisfaction in the channel. The channel partner creates the opportunity and then the vendor steps in and goes direct, does it so many times that it becomes nauseating,” says Sikka.

The program is clearly segmented like new entrants coming and joining Eaton v/s people who have stayed with us for a certain period of time. There are benefits outlined for each one of them. Eaton has its own online training portal which is a certified process. Sikka believes that out of the seven modules that are currently available, if a partner does three, he has shown sufficient diligence to be the PowerAdvantage Partner. The target is that within the first year, he would have completed all the seven. “We are constantly adding new modules, one of these is around virtualization, very little is known about the impact of power in virtualization. So, when our channel partner goes in front of the customer tomorrow, talking about virtualization, he knows what exactly happens and what needs to be con-veyed to a virtual operating system when there is a power event. So, all this clarity is passed on through the training modules. A partner can do it any number of times, ranks, scores and eventually certifies you,” explains Sikka.

Ackland says that the key point is transparency. “We work on opportunities together and make win-win arrangement,” he adds.

FINALLY…Eaton believes that there is a huge potential in the market and it endeavours to be different in its products which are eco-friendly to the optimum level. “Agility is the key driver today. You have to be an agile company, you should be able to understand what’s going on, react and predict and put that in to your business operating system and that’s what we did. We live and breathe this every single day,” Ackland concludes. ë

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RUCKUS

Seamless Wi-Fi ConnectivityFor the Smart City initiative to transform Dubai, Ruckus is all set with its innovations.

n W O R D S : M A N A L I M I S R A ( M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M )

Recently, as a part of Dubai Govern-ment Initiative 2021, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed announced Smart City project for Dubai. The city is pushing the technology to

benefit the residents. “The Smart City initiative is a visionary move from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed to deploy this whole concept. Everything today is driven by mobile devices and part of it is providing the citizens of the country ability to connect on a platform where they have access to government services, the reach to information, when they want it and when there is necessity,” comments Nader Baghdadi, MENA Regional Director, Ruckus.

There are times when there is connectiv-ity problem of internet on your phone and it inhibits the access of information. The Smart City initiative has been in the stages and tenders are submitted. Many vendors have come up and signed partnerships with the government. “The Smart City initiative is combining GSM, 3G 4G, back phone, wireless which can be indoor to outdoor access points or can be from broadband services. The idea for them is to complement each other and work hand in hand and that gives you the ability to be connected all the time,” he adds.

The ecosystem in a network involves a lot of components. You will always have applica-tions, you will always have data access layers, you will always have security, now Ruckus has introduced location based services. It’s a very

strong collaboration mechanism between the different entities involved in making this happen. “So, service providers and vendors like us contribute relatively small component if you take the whole picture. There are a lot of applications involved from security perspective or access to information. However, the Wi-Fi component will be the biggest driver to facilitate this. You can have all the applications you want. It’s pointless if you don’t have the medium to transport all the applications. The availability of wireless as a platform is one of the essential components we have,” he says.

Baghdadi says that the carriers will provide the platform, vendors will give the technology and application and all this has to be put that together to be controlled from a centralized location and someone will have to own this. “I think this is why when Sheikh Mohammad said that he wants this whole city to get Smart Wi-Fi initiative that that means every service, every entity on a public sector will have to own a piece of land and remember that component. So, it’s collaboration,” he explains.

Ruckus has added an interesting feature of location based services which is a part of the tech-nology that the company has. All the people who walk in with the devices with Wi-Fi switched on, Ruckus can actually track all those devices and resell that information or analytics behind that to the retailers. “They can push their offers to their devices accordingly. But at the same time there

is a security element too. You can track children and you can find where they are. This provides a comfort zone to people who are in that premise,” comments Baghdadi.

Baghdadi asserts that Ruckus is the expert in RF and it is the technology that makes its APs stand apart in the competition. “From a vendor point of view as Ruckus, we play the war when it comes to Wi-Fi, so we have all the technology that does the indoor and outdoor APs as well as the controllers that manage the app and the security behind it. We provide the Wi-Fi access and this is where our involvement in technology is. The design, the structure, the elements behind our products, nobody can copy us. Nearly two-thirds of our dollar value goes into R&D,” he adds.

As far as the partner strategy is concerned, Ruckus has a very strong relationship with its partners because its model as a company is channel distribution. It operates through partners and doesn’t sell directly. It works aggressively with top System Integrators and enables them. “We do a lot of training, enabling session with them. The other advantage we have with them is that we don’t have too many partners, we have very select partners. In projects of this scale, we are always involved with the partner from the first one. The partners give exams and are certified. Ruckus doesn’t deliver the project, it delivers the technology. Baghdadi explains that the partners are the representatives to take the solutions to the market. He elaborates with an example. “We

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NADER BAGHDADIMENA REGIONAL DIRECTOR, RUCKUS.

“We have lost some deals but we have won many deals based on technology and price positioning. We are not perfect we are just trying to capture whatever we can in the market. But our technology has made us successful in the main domains.”

are not perfect we are just trying to capture what-ever we can in the market. But our technology has made us successful in the main domains. We don’t show the Power Point presentations but we have the POC, the customer can try it and take it. We try to keep the conversation short. This has been very successful to us,” he adds.

Enterprise market is the biggest market for Ruckus. It covers hospitality, education, and healthcare. “Hospitality is one of our strongest domains and we have managed to get all competition out in this space. This is one of our strongest assets. We don’t follow a reference design like our competition, we have a propri-etary design,” he says.

FINALLY..Ruckus has recently introduced the newer technology .11ac which will be wave one which uses the stronger version of ‘M’. Wave two will be available by 2015 which will use only 5 Gigahertz. “We developed large controller which is specifi-cally made for the carrier environment. Today our enterprise controllers can manage from 6 APs to 1000. We are going to introduce Smart Cell Gateway, one device that can manage up to 10,000 APs,” he informs.

“In this region, 2010-13, we have had over 200% growth. We are very aggressive and success-ful in the ME,” he concludes. ë

have partners who come and say we want Ruckus in so and so positions. Carriers may say that we are going to top 3-4 vendors and ask for a tender. Vendors respond and the carriers will select the best one from the technology, cost and delivery perspective. Those vendors will be contacted through partners or System integrators. The ownership of this will always come from the entities of the government,” he adds.

He says that all the partners can deliver such projects. The initial relationship is always between Ruckus and the customer and then the company passes on the torch to System Integra-tors who carry on the journey.

Most of the times on the hardware, Ruckus has demo kits for the partners. “The partners invest in demo kits because it shows the loyalty and also

they need them for a lot more customer visit and they need to get trained on it. We have well over 400 partners in the region. The channel contribu-tion has been very successful,” he adds.

Post-sales is all done by the partner or SI. There are different levels. If the partner at Level 1 gets stuck, it gets passed on to the distributor at Level 2. From that point onward the technical resources are always involved. Then the escalation mechanism happens from the presales engineers to our technical resource. As far as pricing factor is concerned, Baghdadi says that Ruckus tries to position as much as it can on the technology side at the beginning. “We show the value behind it. We are competitive to our competition. We have lost some deals but we have won many deals based on technology and price positioning. We

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WITH THE TECHNOLOGY MOVING FROM PHYSICAL SERVERS OR DATA

CENTRES TO VIRTUAL SERVERS OR DATACENTRE OR EVEN CLOUD, THE

APPLICATION DELIVERY WITH APPROPRIATE SECURITY BECOMES A COMPLEX

TASK. BUT THE VENDORS LIKE RIVERBED MAKE IT SEAMLESS AND GOOD

EXPERIENCE FOR THE USERS. TAJ EL-KHAYAT, MANAGING DIRECTOR, MIDDLE

EAST, TURKEY, NORTH, WEST, AND CENTRAL AFRICA, RIVERBED IS SPEAKING

TO ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA ABOUT THEIR STRATEGY. EXCERPTS…

“Our Channel Partners Contribute up to 90% of Our Turnover”

TAJ EL-KHAYATMANAGING DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY, NORTH, WEST, AND CENTRAL AFRICA, RIVERBED

What are the technologies evolutions influencing the ICT market in this region? The Middle Eastern and African markets are beginning to realize the benefits of moving to full-scale virtualization. They are shifting from reacting to changes to being proactive in seeking to embrace mega trends and ultimately towards Software-Defined ‘Everything’ or classified as IT-as-a-Service.

Riverbed Technology being the leader in the Application Delivery space, how does it position in this region? Due to our close interaction with our customers and channel partners, we have been fortunate enough to identify the business problems and requirements and develop the right solutions.

There is a high demand on our Application

34 JU NE 2014

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Q&A-Riverbed.indd 34 04/06/14 10:41 am

Delivery Controllers (ADC) solution, SteelApp™, which was formerly known as Stingray. It is actually the best product in the market today that is able to provide visibility and control of traffic to and from applications, enabling fast, reliable, and secure application delivery to users anywhere from the cloud or datacenter.

Today, it’s the top virtual application delivery controller (ADC) for scalable, secure, and elastic delivery of enterprise, cloud, and e-commerce applications. We are seeing a lot of interest from the regional market but expect more as busi-nesses are realizing the importance of ADCs in terms of acting as intelligent load balancing and traffic management tools.

How relevant is mobility and cloud market for Riverbed as the applications does not usually sit on the devices? With increasing virtualization, cloud initiatives and enterprise mobility, companies will face challenges to maintain a business that is running fast and smoothly. Storage capacity is one of the main challenges facing enterprises today. To help companies embrace IT innovation, including adopting or considering adopting cloud storage, and becoming Transformers by capitalizing on their investments and maximizing profits,

What is your go to market strategy?Currently, we have been working on re-shaping the go-to-market strategy especially since the company has moved from being a mono-product company to a complete platform with the Riverbed Application Performance Platform which focuses mainly on application acceleration. As a result, our channel and distribution strategy is also being re-defined.

By end of fiscal year 2013, the region was clearly capable of absorbing more investments from our side. Also, we are now more committed to transforming the business by not only focusing on investing in sales but also investing in channel people and pre-sales consultants to work with partners and their customers in this highly competitive business environment.

The main aspects of our to-go-market strategy are the below:• Streamlining teamwork so we can get even

closer to our customer base• Solidifying our channel organisation so that

Riverbed can work closely with partners • Moving from a distribution strategy of

having only one distributor to having multiple distributors in the Middle East and Africa region in order to leverage local expertise

• Dividing the region into five different clus-ters namely, 1) Turkey, 2) KSA, 3) North, West, and Central Africa with mainly Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt, 4) North Gulf which includes Dubai, Qatar, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and 5) South Gulf which includes Abu Dhabi, Oman, Kuwait and Yemen.• Employing the best talent and hiring

regional sales manager with territory sales managers. We have also introduced a pre-sales consultants team and a support services team to liaise closely with our partners • Focusing our channel strategy to better serve

the needs and demands of the different regionsThe country modelling is in line with our

go-to-market strategy and is very helpful in managing the business as opposed to having our team managing opportunities wherever they may arise. From a channel strategy perspective, we can

now refer to three markets:• Focus markets where we work with hand-

selected system integrators and build our strategic partnerships and business planning. • Here, our strategy remains to go deeper with

fewer partners.• Growth markets where we rely on the chan-

nel organization and distributors to build the Tier 2 channel until these markets move to the focus market status.• Developing markets where we currently

outsource the work to the distributors who will develop our channel on our behalf.

In addition, Riverbed has a very solid channel strategy worldwide supported by a highly enforceable partner program that is aimed to transfer knowledge to partners through trainings and enablement tracks. Since we are a channel-centric organization our revenue streams are generated from our close ties with our partners. Hence, we are highly concerned about improv-

ing their profitability and have implemented the Market Development Fund (MDF) Program so they can request funds for certain marketing activities. Also, the enhanced partner programme rewards partners for their investments with

funds, free trainings and promotion across partnership levels.

I have also diversified my channel organisa-tion, which includes a Head of Channels followed by Partner Account Managers under him who will be responsible for managing partner relations and ensuring that we add value to the overall business. In the region, Riverbed is very much focused on investing more in the channel organisation and pre-sales consultants instead of sales.

How do you focus on the marketing activities?Riverbed is investing considerably in innovations and upgrades to its existing solutions in order to provide its customers with the best solutions on the market. Therefore, Riverbed’s marketing activities are primarily focused on communicat-ing its uniqueness on the market through direct and indirect channels, owned, earned and paid media channels and major industry events. For example, we put a lot of focus on GITEX

which is one of the most important events for us. In addition, I have added to my team a Senior Marketing Manager for METNA who will be responsible for managing the market-

ing activities and increasing our presence in important events and liaising with our partners to leverage our knowledge and transfer it to end-customers.

Riverbed also invests in quarterly joint marketing activities including advertising, events, seminars, direct mail and email based customer communications in order to maintain a steady flow of opportunities and leads for the partner.

What kind of growth are you expecting this year? Since Riverbed is a public listed company we are compelled not to provide such predictions related to growth and market share.

We are progressing in the right direction towards executing our strategy and expanding to capture the US$11 billion application perfor-mance infrastructure market worldwide. ë

“THE MIDDLE EASTERN AND AFRICAN MARKETS ARE BEGINNING TO REALIZE THE BENEFITS OF MOVING TO FULL-SCALE VIRTUALIZATION.”

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EMC

Leading the Transformation The third platform of IT appears to influence the entire IT industry quite thick and fast forcing all the technology providers to rethink about their strategy. EMC being one of the leaders in the infrastructure solutions market is seen as the catalyst of the change. Therefore, EMC chose its annual event - EMC World 2014, Las Vegas, to demonstrate the complete package that it offers to make migration easy and seamless.

n W O R D S : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A ( S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M )

The global IT industry is undergoing a huge transformation. The pattern of usage of IT by the customers has breached the perceived boundaries. The enterprises are no more rigid

about their rules and regulations in offering devices to access. The information workers are more than willing to work remotely using their own devices. Enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud solutions to get rid of cost and complexity. Business intelligence is accumulated from the social applications. Big Data is playing a major role in the business outcome of the organization.

So the new platforms which are so called third platform of IT are going to influence the enterprises in terms of their investment and business outcome. Today, most of the leading IT infrastructure providers converging at a point while addressing the third platform of IT - mobility, cloud, big data, social media etc. Companies like CISCO, IBM, Dell, HP, EMC, etc. are showing their preparedness to address this mega trend.

Therefore, in the recently held EMC World 2014 -“Redefine” in Las Vegas, EMC opened up its strategy by expositing its Federation members including EMC II, VMware and Pivotal. Along

with that, the company also introduced its latest acquisition - Menlo Park-based - DSSD, which is the developer of the innovative new rack-scale flash storage architecture for I/O-intensive in-memory databases and Big Data workloads like SAP HANA and Hadoop.

Attend by approximately 14,000 people all across the world, this event was also an indication of EMC changings it’s positioning from a storage company to an infrastructure solution provider having completely aligned with software defined strategy with major focus on cloud storage, Big Data, Mobility and social applications.

In his the opening remarks, Joe Tucci, Chair-man and CEO, EMC Corporation, emphasized on the influence of Data deluge, which is being emanated from four things – Cloud Computing, Big Data, Mobile Devices and Social Media. He said, “2010 was first exabyte shipped year, 2011 had first exabyte shipped quarter, 2013 had first exabyte shipped month. In 2013, there were 28 million IT professionals but by 2020, there would be 36 million IT professionals globally. Today, each IT professional deals with 230 GB of data each but by 2020, it will be increased to 1.2 PB/IT pro – so while 25% employee increase will happen, there will be a 5x increase of data.

As per him EMC’s Federation strategy involv-

ing Pivotal, VMware, EMC is a direct response to this crazy transformation and in order to achieve the excellence the company spends 10% of its revenue on acquisitions and 12% on internal R&D.

David I. Goulden, CEO, EMC II said, “IT is redefined by third platform. Third platform is about accessing data using mobile devices, using Big Data, source is from the cloud computing.”

In order to justify its strategy, the company also had major announcements including EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS), hybrid cloud innovations, ViPR 2.0 and new Business Partner Program.

EMC ECS Appliance (formerly known as “Project Nile”) is a breakthrough hyperscale cloud storage infrastructure that redefines the economic benefits of cloud storage for service providers and customers of any size, in any industry.

EMC ECS Appliance delivers the ease-of-use and agility of a public cloud with the control and security of a private cloud — offering between 9%-28% lower TCO in object storage implementations than public clouds from Amazon and Google. The ECS Appliance allows customers to add hyperscale cloud capabilities to existing private and hybrid cloud environments,

David I. Goulden, CEO, EMC Information Infrastructure unveiling EMC’s XtremIO $1Million Guarantee offer

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seamless. Plus, ECS will be much cost effective compared to other public cloud providers including Amazon and Google.

EMC’s second wave of innovations is to enable the blended benefits of a public and private cloud, delivering customers with the ease-of use, agility, security and control of a hybrid cloud. Under this initiative the company announced some key initiatives. The first one is EMC Hybrid Cloud Solution, which is to deliver faster application provisioning and deployment, greater business agility, and increased levels of IT automation. Second one is the new EMC Supplier Exchange public cloud SaaS solution, which is engineered to help customers securely streamline the management of transmittals and contract deliverables, accelerating time to financial milestones. Designed for the Energy and Engineering industry, EMC Supplier Exchange delivers an innovative approach to structured collaboration with all the advantages of Pivotal CF, the leading enterprise PaaS powered by Cloud Foundry. The other one is EMC Syncplicity, which enables the business users to access and edit their SharePoint files using the Syncplicity app on their mobile device, increasing workforce productivity via anytime, anywhere collaboration with a single, gold-

and Design services for the ECS Appliance. The services will help customers identify which of their current application workloads will drive the greatest business return with the ECS Appliance, and will architect and design a system configura-tion to drive maximum impact and value within their environment. The services will be available with the general release of the ECS Appliance in the second quarter of 2014.

Goulden added, “EMC ECS Appliance can be leveraged to enable businesses to non-dis-ruptively migrate over time from 2nd genera-tion client-server platforms to a hybrid cloud computing (3rd platform) infrastructure.”

As per him EMC strategy closely aligns with the feedback they have received from their clients of their desire to exploit the efficiencies of cloud storage while maintaining the security and control that private data center computing provides.

Jeremy Burton, President, Products and Marketing, EMC, said that businesses can follow EMC’s model and reinvest the savings realized through technologies like virtualization, to start investing in 3rd platform hybrid cloud infrastructure. ECS can bridge the gap between the 2nd platform and the 3rd platform making the business cloud transformation relatively

delivering ease-of-use through self-service capabilities, fully automated provisioning and data services for next-generation applications. The data driven by use of next-generation applications over mobile devices creates multiple challenges for service providers and customers: it should be accessible, secure and analytic-ready, and the storage infrastructure must be able to handle explosive growth. The ECS Appliance is a modular, scale-out solution developed to provide industry-leading density per rack unit, with up to 2.9 Petabytes in a single rack. It can be clustered to achieve Exabyte scale — a require-ment for the 3rd Platform of IT.

Customers who choose to store their data in a public cloud environment often perceive immediate benefits in terms of ease-of-use and ability to scale; however, they may incur other risks such as system outages and the costs of moving their data in and out of the public cloud environment. In many instances they can also run into compliance issues as they may not know where their data is stored, if or how it is backed up, and whether it is being accessed by unauthorized users. The EMC ECS Appliance provides a solution that eliminates these trade-offs inherent within the public cloud.

EMC is also introducing new Architecture

Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO, EMC Corporation giving key note address

Core Team of DSSD at the event

Jeremy Burton, President, Products and Marketing, EMC in action

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standard mobile interface. Syncplicity also added StorageVault Authentication to better protect shared files. Finally, EMC InfoArchive, which is now generally available, delivering a unified archive that preserves the value of enterprise information. Based on open standards, InfoAr-chive ingests unstructured content, structured data and hybrid records at the same time.

Goulden, Maintains, “The hybrid cloud is compelling because it allows customers to run applications easily and cost-effectively inside or outside of their data centers. It also mitigates the control and security tradeoffs they face with a public cloud. EMC hybrid cloud innovations – and our strategy – are designed to deliver service providers and customers not only the control and security of a private cloud, but also the ease-of use, agility and efficiencies they require as they continue to redefine their IT.”

Announced at the event, EMC ViPR 2.0 builds a bridge to the 3rd Platform by enabling custom-ers to manage both existing and new storage infrastructures in a consistent, fully automated way. ViPR also plugs into higher-level manage-ment and orchestration tools from VMware, OpenStack and Microsoft so storage can be a part of broader data center workflows.

The value of EMC’s ViPR Software Defined Storage Platform is that it separates the Control Plane (which is the ability to centrally manage various storage array functions including discovery, provisioning and reporting through ViPR Controller) from the Data Plane (which are advanced data services that run on top of storage arrays through ViPR Data Services delivering, for example, object capabilities to file-based platforms or block capabilities to commodity platforms). By decoupling the Control Plane

from the Data Plane, ViPR simplifies manage-ment of intelligent arrays while leveraging their underlying intelligence in a fully automated way that is based on policy.

In the event also EMC Corporation offered EMC’s XtremIO $1Million Guarantee valid until September 30, 2014. Under this offer the company announced One million dollars for the first customer of its XtremIO all-flash array customers’ baser who can prove their XtremIO system’s inline data services have switched off, been throttled back or defaulted to a “system garbage collection” state.

Said David Goulden, CEO of EMC Informa-tion Infrastructure, “We’re offering this guarantee because we believe we’re the only flash provider who can deliver on the promise of being inline all of the time.”

In order to support these initiatives, EMC also announced the new global Business Partner Program (BPP) providing EMC partners with a common, unified framework. The new BPP brings together all previous EMC partner programs to create a simple, predictable and profitable experience for each partner. Designed in concert with partners, the BPP offers more flexibility and choice as well as greater access to solutions and services to enable partners to play a leading role in both the 2nd Platform and emerging 3rd Platform of IT, characterized by the mega trends of social, mobile, cloud and Big Data.

Under the BPP partners can choose the tracks that best fit their strategic objectives. The BPP tracks include: EMC resell, distribution, cloud service provider, system integrator and outsourcer as well as the RSA SecurWorld program. Partners in multiple tracks can use

dollars earned and training credits in one track across other tracks for maximum flexibility, to lower costs and to invest in new lines of business with EMC.

For those partners qualified in VMware, Pivotal, RSA and VCE programs, EMC offers cross-program training credits to significantly reduce the partner’s investments in sales or technical certifications. EMC will also offer qualifying partners additional incentives for reselling solutions built using a combination of EMC, VMware, Pivotal and VCE technology.

For the first time ever, EMC is offering qualified partners expanded access to resell and deliver an enhanced portfolio of Consulting Services that leverage industry leading method-ologies, best practices, and resources. Partners will also be eligible for greater performance incentives that recognize and reward partners for excellence in service sales.

In addition to that, EMC is also announced the new Partner Solution Innovation Center for Global Alliance partners. The center, located in Bangalore India, will feature subject matter experts working with Global Alliance partners to validate and create unique, industry focused solutions featuring technology from EMC’s federated businesses. These solutions will help meet the needs of our customers and enable the development of new market opportunities.

FINALLY…As EMC has taken strategic steps to drive the changes, it will have sure impact in all the regions and geographies. The partners who are associated with EMC should have to watch out for it and be ready to adapt to the strategy of the company. ë

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instead of taking step 1st to 4th one after another the customers are jumping from 1st to 4th step to catch the rest of the world. It means they are adopting leading edge technologies. IDC says that we are undisputed leader from market share point of view with up to 60% of market share in some countries.

How countries like Qatar, Egypt and Saudi are performing for you?Qatar is one of the fastest growing countries within GCC along with other countries. We have grown more than 200% for last three years. We have got a big office there and we organize our regional meets there. There is a huge surveillance project coming up there where EMC is one of the trusted partners. We will continue investing in this country.

Similarly, we will also continue investing in Egypt. We have our centre of excellence there with 800 engineers. As per IDC we have got 64% market share. We have huge success there in Banking and Finance sectors, Telecom sector, government, etc.

And, Saudi is one of the largest markets for us. I honestly see a lot of change in the mentality of the Saudi market in adopting technologies. We have got more than 56% market share in Saudi. We see a lot of traction in big data application in Saudi because companies like Aramco and Sabic generate a lot of data. Plus, it is only government which invest 25% of their budget in health care and education. I think Saudi is changing dramatically in last two years.

How do you see the evolution of your partners in this region?I see partners in my region are extension of EMC – be it technical, sales, etc. We will continue investing in partners. We are announcing our new partner programme which will be imple-mented on 1st January 2015. I am announcing this from today for everybody to digest. For the first time we will have one partner programme for the entire federation including RSA. There will be three levels i.e. silver, gold and platinum. It will offer a lot of incentives for the partners. More than the incentives, we have a plan to redefine and transform our large partners with us because this industry has gone through a lot of waves of transformation. And the partners who would not be transformed in next three years and will be left behind I do think they will be in the map. And, to my surprise partners have started to believe that and they are coming to us and asking for how they can transform and add more value to their companies from software and solution point of view. ë

What is your feedback about this event?I am very excited about what is happening. It sounds like product launch or technology launch but I really believe that we re-launched EMC. Our best year was 2013 when we have grown high double digit. I am also very happy that our region is leading in significant number in terms of revenue growth in Q1 2014 for EMC. When our competition share price is dropping our share price is growing.

What about EMC’s growth in this

region – TEEAM? Some people level TEEAM region as emerging market but I disagree with them as we have got mature countries, high-growth countries and emerging countries. Most of our revenue comes from Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.

We will do some strategic investment in this region in terms of technical resources and offices. We will continue to go to our customers. I believe we can change the game in our region because the beauty of our region is that some of the infra-structures are not mature. But what is happening

AT THE SIDE LINES OF EMC WORLD 2014 CONFERENCE, LAS VEGAS

ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA HAD A CHANGE TO INTERACT WITH MOHAMMED

AMIN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, TURKEY, EASTERN EUROPE AFRICA AND

MIDDLE EAST IN ORDER TO KNOW ABOUT THE REGION SPECIFIC STRATEGY.

EXCERPTS.

“We will Keep Investing in TEEAM Region”

MOHAMMED AMIN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, TURKEY, EASTERN EUROPE AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST

MY VIEWS

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EMC

Gearing up to address Mega TrendsAs the industry is shifting towards 3rd platform, EMC has revamped its partner program and product strategy to stay ahead of the curve.

n W O R D S : M A N A L I M I S R A ( M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M )

Over the period of time, EMC as a company has come a long way. As the IT industry is incorporating its 3rd platform comprising cloud, mobile,

social and Big Data so is the company. At EMC World 2014, EMC unveiled new products, solu-tions and strategy aligned with the 3rd platform.

THE NEW PARTNER PROGRAM:Partners, an integral part of business, have got an all-new program. “We just redefined our partner program. Last year, we announced the retirement of Velocity program. We have announced the introduction of EMC Business Partner Program

(BPP). The biggest reason for that was because we knew we have to partner a little differently especially when we are focusing on the big solutions,” says David Abelow, Senior Director of the Business Partner Program. Abelow who has joined EMC recently is the architect of the new partner program. He informs that EMC took feedback from partners on their needs for cloud, security and Big Data. They needed flexibility and trace, not all of them wanted to go into cloud, Big Data and security. They wanted to focus on technologies like the old days. Many of them wanted to focus on solutions. “We made sure that these all are a part of our partner design. We want to play in those spaces more than we ever did before,” he adds.

EMC wants to help the partners make that transition into third platform and everything it has done in this new program design is to build those capabilities. Abelow has observed that from all these years, the lines are blurring between the types of partners. “They are no longer blurred, they are gone and all of our partners are doing a little of everything. I think the way EMC partner program has ultimately evolved, we stop worrying what a partner calls himself. We worry about what they do and the sales margin,” he adds. Abelow who has recently joined EMC is the architect of the new partner program. EMC has built the program keeping in mind that if the program can accommodate the different business models that the partners have, then the program will succeed.

EMC has differentiated itself by following a unique approach in making the program flexible for partners. “We asked our partner what they need for cloud, security and Big Data. Ultimately the partners told that they needed three things: They needed flexibility and trace, not all of them wanted to go into cloud, Big Data and security they wanted to focus on technologies like the old days. Many of them wanted to focus on solu-tions. We made sure that is a part of our partner design. Our partners themselves are evolving. We want to help them to continue to succeed where they are today,” says Abelow.

Within the program, EMC has different tracks for distributors, resellers and integrators. “As the technology evolves it makes it easier to align and support partners within a partner program when you can tell that they are not going to be put in any one bucket but we will let them participate however it makes sense to them,” explains Abelow.

EMC has made huge investments with this new program. With its cloud service providers, it has doubled its marketing funds for them to help them sell their solutions. It has also doubled the number of people focusing on marketing. “We have a three and half times of sales representa-tives than we had a year ago. We are increasing the investment, people, and it is more crucial than ever,” he adds.

When EMC designed the program, it went out to different regions and talked to the partners. The needs vary according to region. “In APAC region, they want to focus on technologies, they are less mature. In Canada and US, they are ready for the big solutions. So, the program is structured around that level of choice. We are not forcing our partners. They can focus on technology, solutions and the program supports those partners worldwide,” he says. For EMC, it is the recognition of the fact that one size doesn’t

DAVID ABELOWSENIOR DIRECTOR OF THE BUSINESS PARTNER PROGRAM

“We now we are in the new world, we know we have to plan for this the third platform. We know it is going to change as soon as ever so we try to build a program in such a framework that could adapt for at least in next ten years.”

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out of their data and investment. ECS enables better data services and cheaper than a Google or Amazon,” explains Barry Ader, VP of product marketing, Enterprise and Mid-range Systems.

EMC also launched ViPR 2.0 that enables customers implementing next-generation applications and Big Data analytics to explore new approaches to their storage infrastructure. EMC was known as a storage company but it has now evolved with respect to its strategy and products. “As time progressed, we had to develop different solutions, the best for every use case. Till 1999, EMC was about Symmetrix. When we acquired Data General, it was the change in strategy and the point of time when we started moving from high enterprise to down mid range storage. It was great as it was about where the market opportunity was for us. We needed to grow and it has only continued to grow from last 15 years,” says Eder.

Today, a lot of new data is being created and EMC is helping to manage that data whether it be first, second or third platform data. The use case will depend on the solution. To address the needs of the data, EMC also announced the acquisition of DSSD, the developer of an innova-tive new rack-scale flash storage architecture for I/O-intensive in-memory databases and Big Data workloads like SAP HANA and Hadoop.

On the shift from products to services, Eder comments that EMC sees a lot of momentum around service providers that doesn’t mean all the data is moving to the service providers. “It may be in some countries that it is moving faster than others but we still see a lot of data centres, a lot of customers are looking to manage their own data. We have announced an entry level storage array VNXe3200. In this case we are talking about a solution which starts at a list price of less than 12,000 USD. It is very affordable and simple to use for SMB,” he adds.

The strategy was around to simplify the storage administration and simply how you manage the storage but at the same time deliver more value and functionality. “Some of the companies are moving to service providers in a hyrbrid cloud environment. They like to keep some data on-premise and some off-premise. We are working with many service providers in many different countries and channel partners to ensure that the data that is being managed off-premise is reliable and affordable,” he adds.

It’s not just about EMC solutions off-premise, it’s also about delivering software value. Another announcement that EMC made was Project Liberty. “It is a solution that we are working on to deliver the core value of VNX as a software as a solution,” Eder concludes. ë

common structure but we have adjusted the requirements accordingly knowing that these countries are in different phases and have differ-ent needs,” he elaborates

Abelow says that whatever EMC brings to the market, it makes sure that its partners have the tools and capabilities to succeed. “We are not pushing them but helping, enabling, encourag-ing them in the new area which is unique to us,” he adds.

BPP is entirely a new program. The earlier program, Velocity, focused mostly on resellers while this program focuses on all of the partners. “It was product focused now we have the ability to help our partners focus on products, solu-tions, or cross federation solutions,” he adds.

“We now we are in the new world, we know we have to plan for this the third platform. We know it is going to change as soon as ever so we try to build a program in such a framework that could adapt for at least in next ten years,” Abelow concludes.

PRODUCT AND SOLUTIONS:Apart from revamping its partner program, EMC also launched new products and solutions for greater agility in this new wave of IT. EMC announced the EMC Hybrid Cloud solution, redefining how IT organizations can get the most value from private and public clouds. The company also unveiled new EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) Appliance. “With ECS you can deploy the storage environment which is cost effective. It is 23-28% cheaper than Amazon or Google. What we are seeing that customers are leveraging their assets for a little bit longer than they use to. So, buying a VNX or VMAX is no longer a three year investment, it’s a 4-5 year investment so they are gaining more value

fit all and it is a challenge to build the program that can bring all needs in one single program. “I think this is the key thing that helps us in the emerging countries and mature countries. The core design principal came from talking to partners around the world,” he says.

There are different levels like silver, gold, and platinum. There is a revenue and technical selling requirement at each level. It also considers the capabilities around implementation because its services also now not just software. “It’s the same set of requirements but we may want eight set of people with these requirements in the US, it would be six in EMEA. We have kept the

BARRY ADERVP OF PRODUCT MARKETING, ENTERPRISE AND MID-RANGE SYSTEMS

“When we acquired Data General, it was the change in strategy and the point of time when we started moving from high enterprise to down mid-range storage. It was great as it was about where the market opportunity was for us.”

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ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATIONS

Unify to be Part-ner of ChoiceUnify builds on the transformation of its brand, logo and visual identity by changing its approach to the market and product strategy to deliver more suitable and meaningful solutions to partners and customers.

n W O R D S : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A < S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

Shortly after changing its name from Siemens Enterprise Communications to Unify, the company decided to organize an international partner conference

to take stock of their partners’ feedback related to their new direction and they chose Dubai,

Middle East as the destination. Jon Pritchard, EVP, Worldwide Channels,

Unify, said, “The first thought behind organiz-ing this event in Middle East was that it is an attractive location but more than that we wanted to go to a region which is clearly showing signs of economic growth. The theme of the partner

Why did you choose Dubai?Dubai is clearly one of the most vibrant, dynamic and culturally diverse places on earth … the per-fect setting for a new and vibrant brand like Unify to have our International Partner Conference!

What was the objective of the event?The objective of the event was to share and showcase to our partner community our strong commitment to a Channel centric model and to meet our new executive leadership team. But also for the Unify team to hear first-hand from our partners how we can help them grow their business with Unify, what we do well and where we need to focus to do better. We outlined our plans to transform Unify and described how partners will play a leading role in that strategy’s

“It’s an exciting time for Unify and our partners.”

OLIVER OBITAYOVICE PRESIDENT MARKETING & SOLUTIONS EMEA/APAC.

conference was “You Grow with Unify”. So we wanted to pick a location which reflected that.”

Plus, the company wanted the partners to see the growth opportunity of Unify in the region and it turned out to be a fantastic event during which the company received a lot of positive feedback from the partners.

The principle take-away of the event was that Unify wanted to be a 100% partner centric and software-centric company by making Project Ansible available later this year.

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JON PRITCHARDEVP, WORLDWIDE CHANNELS, UNIFY

“We are putting the industry and our competitors on notice that we are absolutely serious about positioning Unify as the partner of choice for the communications and collaboration industry.”

Jon maintained, “We are putting the industry and our competitors on notice that we are absolutely serious about positioning Unify as the partner of choice for the communications and collaboration industry.”

Jon added, “We are not only strengthening our channel, we are completely reworking our strategy, business model and programs to have a channel-first sales approach. The foundation of a channel business is the product and at Unify, we have an outstanding portfolio that we will continually develop – including an expanded OpenScape Business line and OpenScape Enterprise Express. The incremental opportunity for Project Ansible is huge for the channel and

success. These messages resonated very well with partners, who have been looking for signs of Unify’s increased commitment to the channel. We also gave partners a closer look at Project Ansible, a new user experience that will define the new standard for simplicity and capability of unified communications solutions, and we outlined how it can be a component of their business and marketing strategy going forward.

What was the event agenda? The theme of the event was “Grow with Unify” and the discussions, presentations, workshops and roundtables all supported this theme. We started with an informal welcome evening at the illustrious JW Marriott Marquis Hotel. On our first conference day, our leadership team kicked it off on stage and outlined their

roles within Unify and what goals they have for the company’s future, announcing our shift towards a more channel-centric business model, with indirect business at its core. This was followed up by SVP Global Channels, Marc Aghili, reinforcing the changes mentioned by the executives and providing Unify’s next steps on the way to achieving them. Oliver Obitayo, VP Marketing & Solutions EMEA/APAC, then took the stage, detailing the marketing and enablement approach along the so called “Demand & Sales Cycle” to, very simply put, do successfully more business. Our portfolio experts then took the audience through deep-dives of our solutions for small-medium businesses and large enterprises – always including Q&A sessions, to make sure we listen and not just talk. We even had a small

exhibition area, which was greatly frequented during an extended lunch break, showcasing some of our most successful solutions and platforms. After a captivating live demo of our upcoming technology-flagship product, Project Ansible, the conference day was wrapped up with a panel Q and A session. The evening was reserved for networking and some relaxation in the desert, treating our guests with a great “Arabic” night in a Bedouin camp.

Are you happy the way the event went off?The conference was a perfect vehicle for us to introduce new partner resources that drive new business and new support services that streamline how we do business. It’s an exciting time for Unify and our partners.

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How many partners were invited and joined the event?The event hosted 172 representatives from 129 Unify partner companies who traveled from 32 different countries. Over 80% of them were CEOs, Managing Directors or key decision makers. It was a great representation, and we are very proud of this.

What were the discussion points in the conference?In addition to outlining our new Go to Market strategy, we discussed changes to our partner program, enhancements to our partner portal, and marketing and sales resources to help partners drive business growth. These workshops not only helped partners better understand the technology and deployment strategies, but also how to market and deploy these solutions effectively. We further had a separate workshop track on Marketing to discuss how to successfully communicate and engage with end-customers effectively, and how to best collaborate to drive lead generation and pipeline. In addition to soliciting partners’ feedback throughout the

“We plan to continue to invest in the channel and we are committed to helping our partners grow their business.”

MARC AGHILISENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INDIRECT CHANNELS.

we will work in partnership with our channel to ensure a rewarding sales model.”

In support of its channel strategy, the company announced plans to enhance the Go Forward! partner program to make it even more attractive for partners.

A partner recruitment drive was also kicked off at the event with a call out for new partners from across all geographies to meet with Unify and sign on. The goal is to complement the company’s existing partners with partners looking to quickly adopt a SaaS model with Project Ansible.

Project Ansible offers completely new and innovative software designed to extend beyond the promises of traditional UC supporting recognized industry megatrends like bring your own device (BYOD), the impact of millennials in the workforce, the requirements of mobility and the rise of the Anywhere Worker. It will also empower teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations across virtually any communica-tions channel or device resulting in dramatically improved team productivity.

Plus, the company highlighted the OpenScape business portfolio and introduced the OpenScape Business X1 appliance — an all-in-one solution that brings the benefits of a professional voice and unified communications (UC) solution to SMBs,

regardless of the company size or telephony infra-structure. Also, the event highlighted Unify’s full portfolio of services offerings, including managed services, professional services, maintenance and support and security solutions.

Jon added, “The partners’ feedback was posi-tive about our products’ road map and overall market strategy. I believe that there is some work to be done in terms of rebranding in the region although the partners are happy about our products and our programmes, and we have been able to communicate our message that we are a more partner-centric organization.”

Asked about Middle East market opportunity, Jon added, “We are excited about the Middle East market. When all around the world the economy is suffering, Middle East as a market seems to have been a very buoyant opportunity for us. This is an area where we will focus our efforts.” “I think historically, as an organization, we try to be everything to everybody in every country but due to challenges from local economies, we need to make sure that we are focussing on the economy or region which offers the best return to us. Equally, the market is very receptive of our products and solutions. In terms of UC, the Middle East is very strong, the hospitality market is very strong, and the local government sector

is also very strong. So there are a lot of reasons why our value proposition and product portfolio is very aligned with that region. I personally met some of our partners during our conference and was moved by their optimism and confidence about our products and solutions,” he added.

While the hospitality and local government sector are key markets for Unify, the company also has some key products for finance and healthcare market, which were showcased at its partner conference in Dubai for the benefit of their partners.

As far as other verticals are concerned including retail SMB, the company leaves that to its partners to address. Jon says, “Local partners can bring huge value to our solutions for vertical markets because they are experts in those markets. We welcome the opportunity to work with them to come up with their own solutions. We have to leverage the channel and experience the relationship in the channel. We are looking at how we can make our software licensing model even more flexible to meet the changing needs of the market place. We are also looking at how we can scale up OpenScape for a higher number of users in a large number of projects.”

From the conversation with Jon, Ansible is a key component in Unify’s market strategy. “We

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conference and taking questions from partners that they asked live via email or Twitter, we conducted an executive round table during which our senior management team answered questions directly from partners. All-in-all very intense, informative, engaging and vibrant 2 days here in Dubai.

Whether the partners were from Unify ecosystem universe or from competition as well? Or there were some partners who were completely new to UC and collaboration?Partners were a blend of traditional Unify part-ners who are solution providers selling systems to SMBs (small – medium businesses) and large enterprises. We also hosted some of our newer partners who handle more software, services and cloud-based solutions and these partners are very interested in the future of unified com-munications as more of a solution in the cloud as opposed to a hardware system that is installed on customer premise.

What was the feedback from the

partners?The feedback from partners was extremely positive. They valued tremendously the commit-ment, channel drive and “early signs” of change of direction, even during the previous executive management set-up, when Marc Aghili and Oliver Obitayo pushed the restart button in growth areas like the Middle East over a year ago, initiating also this International Partner Confer-ence series. Now with Jon Pritchard on board, Marc and Oliver can take it to the next level. Partners commented further, that they were re-energized when we announced our new name, brand and vision last fall and looked forward to the next phase of our transformation. They were excited to meet the new senior management team and felt the team’s commitment to the channel combined with their deep experience of successful sales channel and partnership development was a win-win for Unify and its partners. And, throughout the conference, the feedback was unanimous that they are all very encouraged by the changes we outlined, many of which were in response to their requests, as well as the commitments we made related to

resources and support designed to drive their business. They are also very excited about the opportunity to offer their customers a new way to work with Project Ansible, on schedule to be available this fall.

Are you happy the way the event went off?This event was the most successful partner event that our company has ever conducted and as said, Dubai was the perfect venue. The great partner participation was a clear testa-ment of their commitment and trust in Unify, as well as in our innovative technologies and our team.

We plan to continue to invest in the channel and we are committed to helping our partners grow their business. The candid feedback and open exchange of ideas from our partners provided us with valuable insights as we strive to become the partner of choice for the com-munications and collaboration industry. This opportunity to directly engage with our partners has fundamentally shaped the future direction of our partner program.

PROJECT ANSIBLE OFFERS COMPLETELY NEW AND INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE DESIGNED TO EXTEND BEYOND THE PROMISES OF TRADITIONAL UC.

are working on leveraging the more intuitive user experience of Ansible as the model for how our products and software look and how our technologies work together, he added.

Today, Ansible is in the pre-beta stage and the company is expecting to launch it during the end of this year.

Unify really wants to become the partners’ choice for communications and collaboration solutions. Jon added, “The biggest thing for me is the relationship. I think we can do a better job of projecting the long term business value of part-nering with Unify so that partners can commit to us and invest in our solutions for a long term benefit. That is where we want to step up and make necessary changes in our programme so partners really understand the strength of our value proposition so that we can go on this journey together.”

Unify will launch its new partner programme during October, which will be completely refreshed taking care of the partners’ benefits. The company wants to work extensively with its existing channel partners and align with new partners as well.

Unify does not want to focus on the size of its channel to cover any particular geography; our objective is to have quality partners. Jon says, “We obviously want geographic coverage but we have to make sure that we address the vertical market opportunities with a set of quality partners, who can be our extended sales force. We welcome conversation with any new partners who would like to come and talk to us on these lines.”

The company is also looking at its distribution landscape and figuring out the key countries in the region where it will have some key distributors to represent the company although

its existing partners are doing a good job. This is a decision which is under review right now.

The good thing is that although Unify’s programmes will come from its global office, they will be localised on a consistent basis. There will also be local touch and feel to the solutions in order to target local demands.

Jon added, “We will be investing in the Middle East with additional resources driven by the success of the countries. Our goal is to put the right resources in the country that will deliver the best results. We are working on understand-ing: where we are today in the region, the potential of the market, our share of the market, our distribution landscape, and our partner’s landscape, to determine what new partners and resources we need to support those countries and those regions. This will help us in making all the necessary changes to our programme while localizing it.”

FINALLY…With all the necessary changes to its approach to the market, Unify is expecting a double digit growth in the Middle East region. And the company is anticipating that, during the next two years, they will experience massive growth in market share in the region. ë

COVER STORY

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retention and loyalty, which makes it the main-stay of a long term relationship. It’s no different with ComGuard, and that’s precisely why our CEO, Mr. Ajay Singh Chauhan, decided to have this devoted team to take care of our alliances – both vendors and channels.

What all fall under this? What all parameters do you evaluate while looking at the quality of the solutions?Quality in my role does not essentially relate to the typical quality control facet since we do not manufacture or design any particular product. It is concomitant to the offerings that we have as a value added distributor. Being an extended arm of the vendors we represent in the region, we need to keep up a delicate balance act on various aspects including seamless processes, flexibility in pricing and credit options, ease of logistics and timely pre-sales and post-sales support. Being a feedback oriented cohort to our partners, we welcome any inputs from them which will enable us to improve upon our practices and retain a good working relationship with our alliances.

What is your product / Alliance road map?We are looking at plugging technology gaps within the Group’s product portfolio. This year we will be primarily focused on GRC (Governance, Risk, Compliance) Solutions, Mobile Device Management, Cloud based security solutions, Storage Backup & Recovery, amongst others.

What are your plans for next five years?I absolutely love what I am doing at the moment and am as yet getting my footing right in my new profile. My priority would be to echo my loyalty to the company and propel the Group to the next level in the forthcoming 5 years. Having said that, on a personal note, I would like to train and certify myself in the field of quality assurance and analysis, since I personally believe that constantly evaluating and refining methods within a busi-ness to serve its customers, is the essence of any that excels. So yes, 5 years from now I hope to be at the helm of Spectrum Group’s diligent quality enterprise!

How do you align your strategy with the strategy of the company as far as alliances are concerned?The core idea of both approaches is to optimize the technology and channel portfolio within the group, and actively drive various parallel teams to deliver on this purpose. ë

What is your role in the organization?I am part of a new team that has been ordained in Jan’ 2014 to the Spectrum Group, called the Strategic Alliance & Quality Assurance (SAQA) team. Primarily responsible to keep vendors and channel partners happy working with Spectrum / ComGuard, my key role is to ensure matters are on course, alliances get what they have been assured and if something is not going the way

it should, we warrant it gets back on track. In addition, we plug technology gaps in our product portfolio and work in tandem with the sales & product teams to enable and empower the chan-nel partners within the group, thus safeguarding the “value add” element.

How relevant is quality control to Comguard?In any business, Quality is critical to customer

COMGUARD IS ONE OF THE LEADING VADS IN THE GULF REGION. THE REASON

OF IT BEING SO SUCCESSFUL IN THE MARKET IS BECAUSE OF ITS FOCUS

ON QUALITY WHILE CHOOSING ANY PRODUCT OR VENDOR ENGAGEMENTS.

ENTERPRISE CHANNELS SPOKE TO POURNAMI NAIR (NAMI), MANAGER -

STRATEGIC ALLIANCE & QUALITY ASSURANCE, COMGUARD, TO KNOW MORE

ABOUT HER STRATEGY. EXCERPTS.

“We Plug Technology Gaps in our Product Portfolio”

POURNAMI NAIR (NAMI), MANAGER - STRATEGIC ALLIANCE & QUALITY ASSURANCE, COMGUARD

MY VIEWS

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Adapting to Change in a Virtual WorldThe mountain of data now residing on mobile devices however is forcing companies to rethink how they securely capture, store and retrieve data in order to derive more value from it - whilst remaining compliant.

DATA MANAGEMENT

n W O R D S : ALLEN MITCHELL , S E N I O R T E C H N I C A L A C C O U N T

M A N A G E R , M E N A AT C O M M VA U LT S Y S T E M S

n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

It should come as no surprise that the biggest technological impacts on IT departments in 2013 were Mobile and Big Data. Both issues also domi-nated conversations in the storage arena last year and with employees now increasingly working remotely, it’s highly likely that 2014 will see more and more organisations struggling to manage large volumes of data. Equally challenging will be providing secure access to, and protection of, potentially sensitive but undoubtedly valuable information generated on a growing number of mobile devices.

There is a lot of reliance on cloud services like Box and Dropbox to gather and share informa-tion across an organisation which itself presents a number of IT headaches for companies. Trying to make a consumer product work for the enterprise inevitably means that mobile management remains outside the IT department’s awareness and control, and as such valuable corporate data is left unprotected. From another perspective, it’s essentially “lost” to all employees across the organisation for the purposes of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

So while the emphasis in 2013 may have been on creating modern data management strategies, the priority for 2014 now has to be the synchro-nisation of files and preparation for automated retention methods to reduce the risk of data loss.

The biggest single benefit of automated and continuous file and folder synchronisation is that it makes data fluid, not siloed. IT needs to regain sight and control of all remote offices, and mobile devices, and to be able to provide a backup

service that reaches all areas of the network in an instant. This is perhaps the only way after all to ensure that IT has the latest version of every user’s files at any given time. Just as important in this data focused age is the delivery of self-service access to protected files and email 24x7. Fast restore times and intuitive, role-based search capabilities are now expected by users - across all enterprise data – as standard in order to simplify search and e-Discovery. Submitting a ticket and waiting for IT support is no longer acceptable. Any delay in access only increases the likelihood that employees will return to the high risk, consumer file sharing tools and ad-hoc cloud backup services.

It’s also important to note at this time however that enterprises are becoming more and more comfortable with the security and scale of public cloud resources from big providers. Rather than burden their networks, they are instead opting to use this solution when using a heavy application like SharePoint, Oracle or SAP. This potentially means that we are likely to see private cloud growth coming from industries like finance and healthcare where there are significant compliance or security issues, and where there is a need to know that data hosted onsite is treated as mission critical.

Organizations are beginning to investigate the benefits of integrating their data management solutions with cloud platforms, enabling them to seamlessly move data from an on-premises data centre to ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ from leading cloud providers. The challenge

is to harness automated, content-indexed data collection, protection, access and retrieval from a central console with low cost-cloud storage for data archiving.

Whilst it may be true to say that this approach is best suited to long-term archiving where data is not expected to be restored frequently, and where it can be stored in de-duplicated form to minimise long term capacity growth, integrating data management with cloud platforms does provide organisations with a much need degree of certainty about their ability to carry out com-plex eDiscovery requirements. Content-indexing combined with policy-based, integrated alerting, tracking, and data verification of data copies in the cloud is proving to be the best way to ensure that secondary or tertiary data can be retrieved from long term storage successfully. In essence, this means that newer de-duplicated backups can be prioritised for storage on higher performing, more immediately retrievable disk and that companies can tier storage costs according to the SLA profile of the data/application/service.

Enterprises clearly need to re-think traditional data protection techniques. Companies need to be able to move unused VMs to cost-effective storage, with the ability to instantly recover them for increased utilisation, efficiency and savings. If organisations don’t tackle these issues, they risk paying more and more in the long term to store data that is never going to be used again, as well as struggling to regain control of the sprawl - placing an even greater burden on the already stretched network. ë

GUEST TALK

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Emerson Network Power’s next-generation UPS, the Trinergy Cube, is designed to meet the needs of enterprise-class data centres, offering unparalleled flexibility and scalability to evolve with today’s ever-demanding business trends. With high power density cores, optimised efficiency at partial load conditions and hot scalability, it delivers adaptability currently unavailable anywhere else in the market. Five years on from the launch of the original ground-breaking Trinergy solution, Emerson Network Power has worked closely with customers to develop another innovative industry-leading UPS, going beyond the power revolution and enabling customers to stay ahead of business demands for availability, capacity and high efficiency.

This UPS can reach up to 3 MW in a single static UPS, enabling extraordinary capacity levels previously only achieved by rotary UPS solutions. The extreme high-power density within the single unit ensures that data centre managers can make the best use of available floor space, overcoming space constraints and ever-rising real estate costs, as well as optimising TCO. Its design is extremely flexible, as Trinergy Cube is scalable up to 20 MW in a parallel system. It can be easily configured in L-shape or back-to-back to suit the layout of a wide range of installation spaces. Trinergy Cube’s scalable and flexible design combines additional features including average operational efficiency of 98.5 per cent, and up to 99.5 per cent maximum efficiency.

The rapid growth of data center traffic from mobile, cloud, big data and web is creating demand for higher 40GbE/100GbE networking infrastructure solutions. To meet performance needs, A10 Networks has introduced the Thunder 6630 Application Delivery Controller (ADC) with flexible 10GbE/100GbE interface options and throughput of 150Gbps. Thunder 6630 is based on A10’s innovative Advanced Core

Operating System (ACOS) software. The ACOS platform is an application networking software architecture optimized for 64-bit multi-core pro-cessor systems. In order to maximize the capabilities of these increasingly dense multi-core CPUs, ACOS implements a proprietary shared memory architecture that scales more efficiently than conventional memory management architectures, like inter-processor communica-

tions (IPC). This shared memory architecture enables A10 products to utilize these increasingly common multi-core CPUs efficiently and scale performance with increasing CPU cores, enabling ACOS-based products to process two to five times more web transactions in certain head to head product comparisons per unit of computing and memory resources, power, rack space or list price.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Industry’s First 100 Gigabit Ethernet ADC for Layer 4-7 Services. n Maintains performance leadership in the fixed Layer 4-7 networking appliance category n Leverages the same data center efficient designs as other ACOS-based appliances consuming less power, cooling and rack space, which are critically important metrics for large data center operators.nApplication availability for customer satisfaction: Enables web and key infrastructure servers to scale seamlessly to meet customer demand and ensure business continuity to maximize revenue and user satisfaction.nApplication acceleration for efficient operations: Provides fast and responsive service to customers for competitive advantage and reduced infrastructure requirements for both application delivery and critical services, driving down CAPEX and OPEX.

A10 Networks – Thunder 6630

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT [email protected]

EMERSON NETWORK POWER TRINERGY CUBE

KEY CAPABILITIESn Comes with Emerson Network Power’s LIFE remote diagnostic and preventive monitoring service. n It is scalable up to 20 MW in a parallel system. n It can reach up to 3 MW in a single static UPS.

INNOVATIONS

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Studies show that the majority of employees still use desk-phones on a regular basis for quality interactions

The a new range of Premium DeskPhones from Enterprise division of Alcatel-Lucent signifies the evolution of the desk-phone, providing high quality audio and desirable, practical features giving employees a superior communications experience. Available with IP or digital technologies, the new Premium Desk-Phones come with several ergonomic enhancements enabling users to easily access enterprise communications through a modern and elegant device, use superb quality wideband audio through the handset or hands-free mode and leverage the optimized technology and always on, advanced connectivity.

Flexibility with integrated Bluetooth technology, along with a set of accessories including handsets and headsets, makes the new phones ideal for today’s business environment. The deskphones also offer future proof, secured capabilities such as IPV6 ready and embedded software encryption, all of which facilitate the user’s daily business tasks.

The adjustable and robust foot stands means the Premium Deskphones adapt to being used throughout the business, whether on a desk, in a meeting room, on a reception desk or even wall mounted.

Panasonic KX-NS500 is a next generation unified communication server for the UAE market. This single PBX can be used as a stand-alone or as a networked system using multiple PBXs. The KX-NS500 is perfect for meeting the market requirements for a full customer delivery system, while serving as an ideal business solutions tool.

Featuring a built-in advanced application and collaboration server, the KX-NS500 presents an excellent integrated unified messaging, fax, Interactive Voice Response, CRM, contact centre, mobility and call recording applications providing powerful customer service delivery and business solutions. While optimizing business communications with an excellent and extensive choice of fixed and wireless terminals, headsets and soft-phones, the range of new UT-SIP telephony terminals, enhance personal communica-tions through excellent HD quality audio – facilitating single and multi-site organizational requirements.

A single KX-NS500 unit supports 18 users and is easily expand-able with software customization enabling up to 258 users to serve large and dynamic organizations. It is a very scalable and cost-effective solution. It has a built in server Communication Assistant (CA) productivity software which is a highly intuitive PC based application suite that blends simple point and click telephony.

The KX-NS500 features both proprietary IP terminals as well as standard IP (SIP) terminals that are ideal for optimizing business communications with an excellent and extensive choice of fixed and wireless terminals, headsets and soft-phones.

Alcatel-Lucent Deskphone

Panasonic KX-NS500

KEY CAPABILITIESn With three models - the 8068 Premium DeskPhone, the 8038 Premium DeskPhone, and the 8028 Premium DeskPhone – the deskphones offer rich IP communication, embed two Gigabit Ethernet Energy Efficient ports, one of which supports power over Ethernet. n The integrated alphabetic keyboard, backlit display, dedicated function keys and user-friendly navigator enable users to reach out faster to contacts and efficiently control communications.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Offers excellent HD quality audio as well. n The local and remote mobility is fully enabled with site independent DECT portability and GSM Smartphone integration with Panasonic NS500, n The KX-NS500 Desktop SIP Conference terminal provides a conference solution in multiple locations, with a high quality audio conferencing system. n It includes an advanced call routing function for small to medium size call centers.n The solutions can be expanded to suit more sophisticated call centers with Panasonic third party CTI application vendors.

INNOVATIONS

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AV is dead – Patch Management and Data Control is part of the solutionBrian Dye of Symantec just recently declared antivirus “dead”, estimating that antivirus now catches just 45% of cyber-attacks, according to the WSJ.

SECURITY

n W O R D S : MORTEN STENGAARD , S E C U N I A C T O

n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

I couldn’t agree more– and it is good to have an unequivocal statement from a major stakeholder in the industry, identifying a serious problem for businesses and private users alike. What they need next is an understanding of how to make up for the shortcomings of antivirus, firewalls and other traditional technologies.

At Secunia, we have, for years, been urging both private users and businesses to take a proactive approach to security, rather than a reactive approach, which traditional security technologies such as antivirus (AV) represent. What we mean by that is that, while AV and the various behavioral malware detection technologies that have evolved over the past years focus on identifying malware already on your PC, they only detect and alert you to what has already made it on to your computer. And then you have to chase it down and deal with it.

A proactive approach, on the other hand, ensures that malware doesn’t get on to your system in the first place.

By exploiting software vulnerabilities in IT infrastructures, hackers are able to gain access to systems, compromise security and steal data, so if you can patch the vulnerabilities, and prevent hackers gaining access in the first place, you won’t need to chase ‘ghosts’ throughout your machines to eliminate the threat they then pose.

To be clear, antivirus is not completely super-fluous. But it is not enough – a fact which we have been arguing for years.

DATA CONTROL AND DATA CLASSIFICATIONWhile patch management and vulnerability management are certainly important aspects of security, these are not the combined solution to end all your security issues. Another important security measure is data control and, with it, data classification.

When it comes to data handling, to me a proactive approach to security means ensuring that the least amount of data is available on as few devices as possible, so that when – not if – a security breach happens, you expose as little information as possible to the attackers.

Essentially, businesses need to control their data better than they do today, cultivate security best practice awareness within the organization, and have a realistic approach to how employees go about their jobs and their lives.

DATA CONTROLEmployees are bringing their own devices to work, and are interchangeably using private and corporate devices for private and corporate activities. While the benefits are many to both employers and employees, BYOD policies repre-sent a double-edged sword: there are substantial security concerns involved in this merge of the private and the professional spheres.

You cannot keep employees from bringing and using their own devices in this day and age, if you want them to perform. Therefore, organizations need to formulate, introduce and uphold clear security policies in order to control their data.

DATA CLASSIFICATIONIn order to exercise data control – i.e. what programs and data users have access to from their various devices – businesses need to exercise ongoing risk assessment of their data.

Data needs to be continuously classified into categories, with clearly specified criteria regard-ing who can access it and from which devices. When do employees need access to their emails? And what are the consequences if the device is compromised? When do they need access to customer data? And what are the consequences if malicious people gain access to said data?

It is up to the individual organization to make these judgment calls. And once the data has been classified, to decide how access should be limited.

THE TOP-LEVEL DEFINITIONS COULD BE:

Business-critical data/informationNo access from any private devices.Not publically available data/informationSome access from certain private devices.Publically available data/informationAccess from private devices.You can make you own classifications and

controls, but there is no question that endpoint security – or lack of it – is a major issue and a big threat to corporate security. And vulnerable software on these endpoints is a popular attack vector with hackers.

So you need to secure those endpoints – with AV, firewalls, patch management, vulnerability intelligence, user awareness and data control. ë

GUEST TALK

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Advts.indd 6 04/06/14 8:56 am

Copyright © Unify GmbH & Co. KG, 2014

Formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications

We unify.You thrive.In this hyper-connected, always-on world, today’s anywhere workers are demanding more from the devices and enterprise apps they use to connect and collaborate.

We say, give in to their demands.

unify.com/thrive

UNI-3746 ME Thrive Print Ad.indd 1 2/11/2014 2:49 PMAdvts.indd 9 04/06/14 8:56 am

June 14

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