ACN - January 2013

Aligning business and IT strategies in the Middle East for 28 years

INDUSTRY REVIEW: GLOBAL IT LEADERS MAKING THE HEADLINESAn ITP Technology Publication January 2013 | Volume 26 Issue 1

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IT stra

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logy Publicatio

n

Virtualdeliversvalue

End user

FUTURE ROADMAPIT ANALYSTS’

2013 PREDICTIONS46

Security Adding physical solutions 58

STORAGE:TACKLING BIG DATA VOLUMES38

Project Round UpNew deals and ICT

project deliveries from around the region

Cyber Attacks Hacking tactics adapting

more quickly says Sophos

PLUS

Siddiqui Altaf, IT manager, Middle Eastern Region for

Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, on data centre virtualisation

Data centre virtualisation creates platform for growth for Hellmann Logistics40

Windows 8Does Microsoft’s

new OS create security risks?

CRM EVOLVESNEW CAPABILITIES

IN CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT

52

January 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 1

/CONTENTS

January 2013 VOLUME 26 ISSUE 01

Madhav Kurup, CEO Middle East and North Africa, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics.

Hellmann Worldwide

Logistics completes fi rst

phase of project to virtualise

its IT environment.

VIRTUALISINGTHE DATA CENTRE

40

40

/CONTENTS

2 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS January 2013

07 3825

THE FRONT

Nicolai Solling of

helpAG discusses the

pros and cons of security

for Microsoft’s new

Windows 8 OS.

SECURITY ON WINDOWS 8

37

IT analysts give their

predictions for the

technologies and trends

that will shape the

regional IT industry.

ANALYSTS PREDICT THE YEAR AHEAD

46 52 58

64

4612

52 40

58

/STARTThe latest news headlines and vital data from the local and international IT markets

/AFTER HOURSJohn Robert Pearson, Senior Project Manager for STME, on creating the company’s PMO.

/TRENDSTaking a look back at the industry leaders who madethe news in 2012.

/COMMENTIntelligent data management can help companies cope with big data, says CommVault.

Mobility, social media

and analytics are making

companies re-examine

the value of customer

relationship management.

CRM SYSTEMSGET SECOND WIND

Biometrics, IP

surveillance and access

controls taking their

place in the IT manager’s

security tool kit.

PHYSICAL SECURITY SOLUTIONS RISING

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STORAGE SURGE SMB STORAGE SOLUTIONS

OFFERING SOLID MARGINS (42)

YEAR IN REVIEW A LOOK AT EVENTS THAT SHAPED THE MARKET IN 2012 (36)

MARKET MOVERSHonouring women executives driving marketing strategies in the IT channel (26)

Building and delivering IT solutions for the Middle EastAn ITP Technology Publication

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Critical analysis for telecommunications executives

DECEMBER 2012

An ITP Technology Publication www.commsmea.com

Middle East telcos are taking an early lead with LTE but major challenges remain

FUTURE NETWORKSEricsson’s CTO on the latest

technology trends and

applicationsp30

SCALING 4G NETWORKS

SEEKING SATELLITESSatellite solutions that allow

companies to work from

anywherep25

PlusANALYSIS

OPINIONRESEARCHPRODUCTS

CLINIC

COMMENTNINE KEY TERMS

TO UNDERSTAND IN CLOUD DEALS

P10

DECEMBER 2012 VOLUME 18

ISSUE 12

DISASTER RECOVERY: A NECESSITY,

NOT A LUXURY P36

“People want a data centre facility immediately; they want to be able to move quickly.”James Coughlan P28

Experts unveil the top global trends and innovations in the data centre sphere

FROM ATM TO IP/ETHERNET: NETWORK

CONVERGENCE STRATEGY

P13

DATA CENTRE TRENDS FOR 2013

t 2


HUAWEI: ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CONTINUES TO BUILD MOMENTUMAn ITP Technology Publication November 2012 | Volume 25 Issue 11

AwardshonourregionalIT excellence

Arab Technology Awards

OFFICE SOLUTIONSEVOLVING POWEROF PRODUCTIVITY58

Project Managers Rising demand

for IT project professionals

52

CIO EXCLUSIVE:GLOBAL CIO TALKS

DELL ON DELL40

Hosting Growth VoiceTrust looks to

hosting for local ops

Governing ProgressPerformance solutions

for government manage strategic initiatives

PLUS

Ahmad Almulla, vice president of IT at Dubai

Aluminium, and winner of ACN’s CIO of the Year 2012

Arab TechnologyAwards recognise leaders in regional IT sector24

Cloud ConcernsSecurity holding back local cloud

computing adoption


WINDOWS 8: NEW DEVICES AIMING FOR ENTERPRISE ACCEPTANCEAn ITP Technology Publication December 2012 | Volume 25 Issue 12

Buildingcloudsuccess

End user

INTEL INNOVATESR&D INITIATIVESDRIVE BUSINESS

46

Outsourcing Managing

service providers

52

GREEN IT:GOING BEYOND POWER SAVING

58

Breaking the silos Dunia takes different

view of fi nancial services

Hyper-connected CRMContact centres build

bridges to the social media generation

PLUS

Dr Jassim Haji, director of information technology

for Gulf Air, talks about the benefi ts of the airline’s

private cloud

Gulf Air streamlines IT as private cloud project proves its value40

Inside ERP MythsSix common

misconceptions that harm ERP roll-outs

BIGDATA:GOING BIG WITHOUT SPENDING22


support broadband, transparency in mobile roam-ing. Let’s focus on those things that matter most and if there are other issues around the internet, let’s find an acceptable place discuss those. But let’s not pollute this conference, let’s not hijack this conference — we want to come out of this thing with success.”

In comments made at the conclusion of the event, Dr Hamadoun I Touré, secretary general of the ITU stated: “The new ITR treaty does not cover content issues and explicitly states in the first article that content-related issues are not covered by the treaty. Likewise, in the preamble of the new text signatory Member States undertake to renew their commitment and obligation to existing hu-man rights treaties.”

A12-day summit convened in Dubai by the International Telecommunica-tion Union (ITU) was intended to es-tablish a new international treaty for telecom regulations, but instead cul-minated in a bitter schism that largely pitted East against West over the is-sue of Internet governance.

Eighty-nine out of a possible 144 delegates within the UN-affiliated ITU’s 193 members signed up to the treaty, first adopted in 1988. Among those refusing to sign were the US and much of Europe, nations that expressed concerns over proposals to formally regulate the Internet through governmen-tal control. More government control of the Inter-net had also been opposed by technology compa-nies, particularly Google.

The treaty was originally intended to spell out international regulations that would allow seam-less telecom services across international bounda-ries and mainly covered financial issues such as co-operative tariffs. The new treaty comes into ef-fect in 2015, but is thought to herald little change in telco operations.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia were among those nations, led by Russia, who advocated stricter policing of cyberspace. They were joined by China and several African coun-tries, together signing Russian proposals that included calls for an end to the US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers› (ICANN) control over Internet naming and addressing. The pro-control group was also keen to control Web content and eliminate Internet anonymity.

However, the US, Australia and many European countries countered the move. In-deed, the US called on the ITU to focus on regulating the telecoms sector and not the internet. Speaking at the event, Terry Kramer, Ambassador, Department of State, USA, said that the US was “candidly disappointed” by the proposal co-signed by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and the UAE, which called for regulation that would allow countries to block access to websites and take control of allotting Internet addresses.

Kramer called for the conference to focus on issues directly related to telecoms, in-cluding the deployment of broadband infrastructure and international roaming. “Let’s all agree that advancing international telecoms services, advancing the networks that

ITU summit held in Dubai fails to get backing of West over web control proposals

No consensus at UAE telecom summitCOMMUNICATIONS

Kramer: The US opposed proposals to allow greater government control of the Internet.

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ages

/START


AMD cuts chip commitmentAMD scales back wafer purchase from GlobalFoundries

AMD cut the value of silicon

wafers that it committed to buy from GlobalFoundries in the fourth quarter of 2012, in light of weakening PC markets.

The company renegotiated its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with Abu-Dhabi owned GlobalFoundries, to purchase $115 million worth of wafers, down from the original agree-ment for $500 million. AMD had to make a termination payment to Globalfoundries of $320 mil-lion in relation to the deal.

The chip company does expect demand to recover however, committing to purchase $1.15 billion of wafers in fiscal 2013 and approxi-mately $250 million of wafers during the first quarter 2014.

AMD also said that as it standardizes

on 28-nanometer chip technology from GlobalFoundries, it will reduce R&D funding to the chip manufacturer.

Rory Read, president and chief executive officer, AMD said that the company was still committed to GlobalFoundries, but the deal would help AMD’s financial stability.

WD delivers SMB storage up to 16TBWestern Digital launches WD Sentinel DX4000 small office storage server, to give SMBs better control over their data

PRODUCT FOCUS

BUSINESSRead: the new agreement will strengthen

relations with Globalfoundries and help AMD get back on track fi nancially.

Setup within 30

minutes, has

backup and recov-

ery licences for up

to 25 client PCs

Available in configurations of up

to four 2TB or 3TB drives, for

total capacity of 4TB to 16TB

Connectivity

with two Gi-

gabit Ethernet

ports and two

USB 3.0 ports

WD Guardian

Services pro-

vide additional

support and

warranty op-

tions for small

business

customers

/START

9

December 3Dubai, UAE

Hamadoun Toure,

Secretary-General of

the UN International

Telecommunication

Union (ITU), speaks

ahead of the

World Conference

on International

Telecommunications

(WCIT-12) in Dubai.

The conference

convened to review

the International

Telecommunications

Regulations (ITRs),

which outline

governance of global

communications,

although disputes

between countries

meant little progress

was made.

THE BIGPICTURE

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/START


The targeted cyber attacks that hit the Middle East last year could be seen as the evolution of previous attacks such as Stuxnet, and an indicator of the increasing complexity of security threats, but the fact that an organisation of the scale of Aramco could be hit, was perhaps something that could not be predicted. The security industry is very much in the business of prediction however and in 2013,

the leading security companies are predicting more of the same, with politically-motivated threats, mobile malware and more sophisticated and consumerised attack kits all on the radar for this year.t Here’s a break down of the 2013 IT security predictions from three leading vendors.

SophosTrend Micro Kaspersky Lab

WORDCLOUD

Bahrain CIO Council launchedTechnology and Business Society launches CIO group

Bahrain’s Technology and Business Society (TBS) has an-

nounced the formation of a new Chief Infor-mation Officers (CIOs) Advisory Council.

The council will create a forum to dis-cuss technology, and will also work to devel-op standards, guidelines and best practices for different industries, as well as host ven-dor presentations of new technologies.

The council has currently formed a steering committee to develop a plan for how its operations will develop.

Esam Hadi, chairman of TBS said: “This initiative will help the IT industry to serve as a medium for the exchange of ideas be-tween members, and will enable members to discuss IT strategic issues of common inter-est, develop solutions, provide perspective and direction for the development of stand-ards, guidelines and best practices. It will also provide a discussion platform for CIOs to proactively collaborate and provide per-spective and direction for the development of the IT industry.”

BUSINESS

The CIO Advisory Council will be a

discussion platform for CIOs, says Hadi.

/START


Small-to-medium and midsized businesses that are struggling with out of date and unreli-able systems, need to

consider upgrades in order to manage the business risk as-sociated with these systems, according to research by IDC.

While larger organisations have the resources to address downtime issues, IDC says that for smaller companies, many of the risks caused by systems downtime can be mitigated by investment in more up-to-date hardware and software.

IDC suggests solutions to monitor and manage IT infra-structure, better security, and provisioning of proper backup solutions, can all have a signif-icant impact on the resilience of systems.

Although infrastructure in-vestment is a priority for most SMBs and midsized organisa-tions, (those with up to 1,000 employees), spending plans may well have been on hold exacerbating downtime risks.

Companies are facing down-time from outdated or poorly

managed infrastructure that throws up a number of differ-ent problems and consequenc-es namely system downtime, which means data and appli-cations are not available to end users or customers; network outages, that can halt business operations and in some cases suspend revenue-generating operations, as well as raise questions about the compa-ny’s reliability; and security breaches, that can compro-mise sensitive information and likewise damage the organisa-tion’s reputation.

The use of appropriate tech-nologies, including proactive monitoring of hardware com-ponents to single-pane-of-glass control consoles can cut administration costs. Combin-ing updated technology and IT best practices can reduce costs associated with downtime by 30% to 60% and reduce the amount of lost productivity by up to 80%. By adopting best practices and updating IT in-frastructure, companies can lower annual downtime by up to 85%.

SMBs and midsized organisation need to consider upgrades to new systems and management tools to cut outages

REDUCING DOWNTIME

Pain pointscausing downtimeOlder, unreliable systems & applications

Poor patch management

Inconsistent back up

Lack of network monitoring

Lack of single view of systems

No single sign-on

Backup not encrypted

Hardware at different software release levels

Inconsistent lifecycle management

AVERAGE ANNUALDOWNTIME HOURS DUE

TO NETWORK, SYSTEM, OR APPLICATION DOWNTIME BY MIDSIZED COMPANIES

16 20

/START


Sourc

e: IDC

$70,000ESTIMATED AVERAGE LOSS PER DOWNTIME HOUR

Sector ProductivityLoss / Hour

RevenueLoss / Hour

Average annual downtime hours

Financial $3.64 $9,997.50 3.57

Retail $2.58 $397.50 7.75

Healthcare $1.25 $157.50 21.70

Manufacturing $3.06 $59.93 8.01

Public Sector $0.85 $.00 9.41

Cost of downtime in different sectors

Hours per user per year spent on recovery

4Before investment

0.5After investment

60Before investment

6After investment

Hours per user per year spent on backup

Percentage reduction in downtime that can be gained from:

Use of Management

software tools

Upgrade servers,

storage etc.

Failover clustering for

inter apps

Standardisa-tion on single

desktop OS

Comprehen-sive PC

security

Thin clients/blades

Deploying multiple antivirus

65% 50% 43% 30%

28% 25% 15%

Investing in new technology and management tools cuts back and recovery times

/START


QUOTE OF THE MONTH“I take it off. It’s too annoying.”

ANTI-VIRUS PIONEER JOHN MCAFEE EXPLAINS WHY HE DOESN’T USE THE PRODUCT THAT STILL BEARS HIS NAME, WHILE TALKING TO THE FT, ON THE RUN IN BELIZE DURING DECEMBER. MCAFEE WAS WANTED FOR QUESTIONING OVER THE DEATH OF HIS NEIGHBOUR IN BELIZE, BUT ESCAPED TO THE US.

TICKER: AAPL

GLOBAL NEWS: Apple suffered

a 6% drop in share price on

5th December 2012, its largest

single-day drop in four years. Fi-

nancial markets see a number of

concerns with company, although

the stock is still up nearly $100

from start of 2012.

Analysts cited increasing

competition, particularly from

Android-devices, and questions

over whether the company is still

capable of innovation.

“This is not going to be a short-

term trend. This is a management

test, of how well they can perform

without Steve Jobs,” said Brian

Battle, director of trading at Per-

formance Trust Capital Partners.

LOCAL NEWS: iPhone 5 was

launched in select countries in

the Gulf region on 14th December,

along with local iTunes Stores.

Apple sees biggest one-daydrop in four years

KPIs

Apple

Oracle CloudWorldto kick off in DubaiGlobal tour to promote Oracle Cloud will launch in the UAE on 15th January

Oracle has an-nounced Ora-

cle CloudWorld, an event series where senior Oracle executives, customers, partners and industry thought leaders will share how they drive business transforma-tion using the Oracle Cloud.

Oracle CloudWorld will comprise a series of global events, with the show starting in the UAE this month.

“Oracle Cloud is the most comprehensive cloud in the world, being used each day by more than 25 million users and more than 10,000 organisations,” the company said.

The debut of Oracle Cloud-World follows closely on the heels of the expansion of the Oracle Cloud services portfolio at Oracle OpenWorld 2012.

Oracle president Mark Hurd will kick off Oracle CloudWorld on 15th January in Dubai. The tour will include events in sev-eral cities around the world, in-cluding London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, New York City, Singapore, Syd-ney and Tokyo.

Keynote sessions at the evenet will highlight Oracle’s strategy and roadmap for cloud and social. Subsequent tracks for line of business executives will focus on sales and marketing, customer service and support, HR and talent management, and finance and operations.

The events will also have

CLOUD

Oracle’s Mark Hurd will present a keynote at the Oracle CloudWorld event in Dubai. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

tracks for application develop-ers and DBAs focused on how to use the Oracle Database and Java Cloud Services. It will also high-light how organisations can best leverage social media to monitor, engage, and market to their cus-tomers. Oracle executives, along with customers and partners, will share ideas on how to drive business transformation and gain competitive advantage from technologies like cloud, social, and mobile to drive innovation across lines of business.

Each Oracle CloudWorld event will include customised local content, as well as multiple tracks, in-depth Q&A sessions, real-world case studies, and hands-on demos and exhibits.

DEC 3 DEC 10 DEC 17NOV 26

580

560

540

520

HP SoftwareCIO Speaker seriesAntonio Antonuccio, Injazat Data Systems

Read more at

/START


3 / SAUDI ARABIA

KSU controls network with

Procera’s PacketLogic

King Saud University (KSU) in Saudi

Arabia is deploying Procera Networks’

PacketLogic solutions for network traffic

management and user awareness.

KSU has over 100,000 students and

nearly 10,000 faculty members and has

seen network usage increase by over 50%

year-on-year recently.

The Procera solution allows KSU to

implement specific policies to manage

applications and control usage, prioritise

traffic and has improved network perfor-

mance and end user experience.

/START

Arabian Computer News brings you a regional roundup of recently announced and ongoing enterprise IT projects

PROJECTS

2 / QATAR

Qatar Airways connects

Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Qatar Airways has extended inflight con-

nectivity to its Boeing 787, using OnAir

solutions, the first such deployment for

the new Dreamliner.

The OnAir technology allowed passen-

gers to access the internet and use mo-

bile phones during the flight from Seattle

to Doha in November. Over 50 Internet

sessions took place during the flight,

using a total of 1,250MB of data, while

the mobile phone network was used by

nearly 75 phones, sending 340 text mes-

sages and 50MB of mobile data.

4 / UAE

Dubai Roads & Transport

Authority upgrades CRM

Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority

(RTA) has rolled out the second phase of

its CRM system.

The system, which has been deployed

by software provider LINK Development,

is intended to increase customer care and

communications channels.

The CRM system is based on Microsoft

Dynamics, which has been upgraded from

version 4 to CRM 2011. The upgrade will

give the RTA access to a number of new

modules, for marketing and campaign

management, and a Facebook app.

1 / EGYPT

Smart Glass selects Epicor

ERP to manage operations

Smart Glass, an architectural glass pro-

cessing company, has chosen Epicor ERP

to manage operations at its headquarters

and manufacturing plant.

The Egyptian company, which produces

high-quality engineered glass products

at its state-of-the-art facility, will deploy

Epicor ERP to manage the complete

manufacturing cycle, and provide analyti-

cal tools and insight to decision makers,

to help deliver on the company’s strategic

business objectives.

Global Business Solutions (GBS), an

Epicor VAR in Egypt, will be carrying out

the implementation.

/START


User: Emirates Airlines

Project: Knowledge Driven

Inflight Service (KIS), in-flight

communication/CRM solution

The product: KIS application,

Windows 8, HP ElitePad 900

The objective: Roll out of

Emirate’s KIS on Windows 8

for better performance.

What they said: “At Emir-

ates, we strive to deliver the

world’s best in-flight experi-

ence,” said Kevin Griffiths,

senior vice president, Cabin

Crew at Emirates. “To support

our crew, we have created

an application on Windows 8

that delivers a unique, per-

sonalised experience with the

necessary information for our

cabin crew to better serve the

needs of customers. The Win-

dows 8 platform running on

HP ElitePad 900 devices gave

us this option.”

/START

A regional enterprise project at a glance

DEPLOYMENT

7 / UAE

Omnix delivers infrastruc-

ture for Sharjah Co-op

Systems integrator Omnix International

is carrying out the deployment of 80 point

of sale terminals for the Sharjah Co-

operative Society (SCS).

The deployment is part of a multi-

million dirham IT project, begun in 2011,

to completely redesign SCS’ IT infrastruc-

ture. The project has already seen the

provision of a new data centre for SCS,

including virtualized blade servers and

storage, and an new ERP application to

improve management and better analysis

of customer data and trends.

8 / OMAN

Bank Muscat deploys POS

customer service terminals

Bank Muscat has deployed new point of

sale (POS) terminals from OMA Emir-

ates to provide its customers with new,

secure, value-added services.

The terminal solution, using custom-

ised solutions from payment terminal

specialist Ingenico, will work with differ-

ent types of cards including magstripe

and smart contact cards, and are capable

of running multiple applications to deliver

services such as loyalty, mobile prepaid,

instalment/loan option, and dynamic cur-

rency conversation, on one device.

5 / UAE

Itzza Pizza improves

efficiency with Openbravo

UAE pizza restaurant chain Itzza Pizza

has turned to Openbravo ERP solutions to

help it manage growth and efficiency.

The chain has rolled out Openbravo for

Retail solution at six outlets in the UAE,

gaining improvements in efficiency.

Itzza Pizza selected the Openbravo

solution because of its seamless integra-

tion with web POS, so that it can operate

on commodity Android devices, and the

flexibility and low cost of the open source

system. The system was implemented by

Openbravo partner, SC Soft – Dubai.

6 / UAE

Dubai Taxi Corp enhances

asset management

Dubai Taxi Corporation (DTC) has select-

ed DSI’s mobile application development

platform, dcLINK, and on-premise mobil-

ity applications for inventory and fixed

asset management, to track the status

and condition of fixed assets, ensuring

more accurate and effective enterprise

asset management.

The solution will be used on a mix of

handheld devices and fixed work stations

for workers to track more than 34,000

parts per day from receipt to repair in

real time.

The KIS is used by pursers to brief crew and to provide infl ight customer service support and feedback.

/START


The pace of cyber attacks and attack-

ers adaptability increased during 2012, according to security spe-cialists Sophos.

In the company’s Security Threat Report 2013, released at the end of last year, Sophos high-lights the fact that attackers are becoming quicker to respond to security research findings, and are leveraging zero-day exploits more effectively. Attackers are also creating more sophisticated malware and targeting attacks against a wider range of plat-forms and applications.

Writing in the report, Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO of Sophos, commented: “Modern malware is effective at attacking new plat-forms and we are seeing rapid

growth of malware targeting mo-bile devices. While malware for Android was just a lab example a few years ago, it has become a serious, and growing threat.”

The report highlights the threats from sophisticated mal-ware such as the Blackhole mal-ware toolkit, which has been made available on a commercial basis by hackers to launch redi-rect attacks.

Sophos also noted the emer-gence of creative social engineer-ing attacks on social networking platforms such as Facebook, the widespread delivery of Twit-ter direct messages (DMs) that link to malicious sites, and also the growing number of account takeovers on Pinterest.

The growth in mobility and BYOD was also creating a wider range of platforms that need to be secured, and there are also ongoing concerns about the se-curity of cloud service providers, according to the report.

Eschelbeck said that while these new threats are emerging rapidly, the security industry is also moving quickly to counter these threats. End-user organisa-tions are beginning to recognise the importance of layered de-fences, and many organisations have begun to address the secu-rity challenges of smartphones, tablets, and BYOD programs. Enterprises are more aware of the risks from platforms such as Java and Flash.

Blackhole accounts for nearly one third of redirect attacks

SECURITY WATCH

SECURITY

Pace of cyber attacks increases says SophosCyber attackers reacting more quickly to security research and zero-day exploits

Eschelbeck: Security risks emerged more rapidly in 2012.

The Blackhole Malware kit has been identified by

SophosLabs as one of the most pressing security

threats today. Blackhole is a complex software tool

that can be used on a malicious web server to sneak

a variable malware payload onto computers.

BLACKHOLE MALWARE REPRESENTS27% OF EXPLOIT SITES AND REDIRECTS

Sourc

e: So

phos

Labs

WHERE ARE BLACKHOLE EXPLOIT SITES BEING HOSTED?

FOUR STAGES OF BLACKHOLE EXECUTION

Exploit site (Blackhole): 0.7%

Drive-by redirect (Blackhole): 28.7%

Exploit site (not Blackhole): 1.8%

Payload: 7.5%

Drive-by redirect (not Blackhole): 58.5%

SEO: 1.1%

Fake antivirus: 0.4%

Other: 3.4%

Germany: 3.68%

China: 5.22%

Turkey: 5.74%

Italy: 5.75%

Chile: 10.77%

Russia: 17.88%

Other: 20.16%

1. Sending users to aBlackhole exploit siteAttackers hack into le-

gitimate websites and add

malicious content which that

generate links to the pages

on their Blackhole site.

2. Loading infected code from the landing pageThe exploit code records how

you arrived at the Blackhole

server, along with your OS,

browser, plugins and more.

3. Delivering the payloadPayloads are typically

polymorphic—they vary with

each new system that’s been

infected, and use encryp-

tion to avoid detection by

anti-virus.

4. Tracking, learningand improvingBlackhole keeps a record of

which exploits worked with

which system configuration,

to learn from attacks.

United States: 30.81%

/START


Financial institutions in the region are turning to risk man-

agement solutions to help them manage compliance with the new Basel III regula-tions, according to Moody’s Analytics.

The latest Basel regulations, which set global regulatory standards for bank’s capi-tal adequacy, stress testing and market li-quidity risk, begin implementation from the start of this year, and many banks in the re-gion are aiming for compliance with the new rules, said Wael Jadallah, director, Moody’s Analytics (DIFC).

“The biggest issue for banks is regulatory compliance. With the advent of Basel III — there’s still a lot of banks trying to come up to compliance with Basel II — the central banks are very much pushing for Basel III, which means the banks will have to become compliant, and that is the greatest area of fo-cus where we are able to assist,” he said.

Moody’s Analytics is offering a range of

FINANCE

Banks looking for solutions for Basel IIINew banking regulations driving demand for risk solutions says Moody’s Analytics

Jadallah: Financial institutions in the region have increased their use of risk management software and solutions.

software and services to the regional finance sector, including enterprise risk manage-ment for banks, loan risk management, and solutions to measure and report on the or-ganisation’s regulatory credit risk, an impor-tant aspect of Basel III compliance.

The uptake of new solutions is part of an increased acceptance of risk solutions in the region, Jadallah said. The company opened its local office in Dubai International Finan-cial Centre in 2008, and today has expanded to 15 people in the region, with growth driv-en by the increased awareness of the need for, and uptake of, risk solutions.

“We’ve seen across the board a massive increase in acceptance, visibility and adher-ence to risk, looking to having the right sys-tems and IT focus with the banks,” he said. “Over the last four years, while banks might be cutting budget overall, they are increas-ing their spend when it comes to risk man-agement and risk management IT systems.”

Five stages of business analytics readinessOrganisations are moving towards better analysis of their data, but are at different stages of the journey to getting the full benefits of analytics. The stage of adoption of analytics can be measured in five stages.

Analytically im-paired: Your or-ganisation is ‘flying blind,’ plagued by missing or poor-quality data and poorly integrated systems. The com-pany has some data and management interest in analytics

Localised analyt-ics: Your analytic efforts are isolated, opportunistic and function-specific. Your organisation collects transaction data efficiently but often lacks the right data for better deci-sion making.

Analytical aspira-tions: Your organi-sation has executive support for analyt-ics plus business intelligence tools and data marts, but most data remains unintegrated, non-standardised and inaccessible.

1 2 3Analytical compa-nies: Your organisa-tion begins to de-velop an enterprise wide analytics capa-bility as a priority, with high-quality data, an enterprise wide analytical plan and governance principles.

Analytical competi-tors: Your organi-sation is routinely reaping big benefits from its full-fledged, enterprise wide analytics archi-tecture, which is fully automated and integrated into processes.

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/START


The x86 server market in the Middle East and Africa (MEA)

saw a sharp year-on-year decline in Q3 2012, according to IDC.

The MEA x86 server market dropped 10.5% in volume, and 2% in value, combined to the same quarter last year.

IDC observed a similar trend in the GCC, with the regional x86 server market declining 9% in volume over the same period, although there was a 10% increase in revenue year-on-year. Qatar registered the highest rate of growth among these countries, increasing 88% in volume and 60% in value.

“Large deals were closed in Qatar’s educa-tion and banking sectors during Q3 2012 and these contributed significantly to the country›s strong growth,” said Zeeshan Gaya, research

BUSINESS

MEA x86 server market drops in Q3 2012x86 server shipments down 10.5% in volume in third quarter, says IDC

Gaya: Key projects drove shipment of x86

servers in the GCC, but the sector still declined.

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manager for servers and systems at IDC Mid-dle East, Africa, and Turkey. “Meanwhile, key projects in verticals such as oil and gas, gov-ernment, and telecommunications helped catalyse growth in the GCC region as a whole.”

Different countries showed varying results in terms of x86 shipments, with the UAE up 16% on the back of increased consumption in the telecommunications and government sectors; while Saudi Arabia dropped 45% due to delays to key projects and the shuffling of budgets in preparation for the new fiscal year. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia all saw a slow-down of 14% in volume due to political and social unrest, while South Africa slipped 16.1%.

The overall negative trend was observed across almost all form factors in the MEA re-gion during Q3 2012.

© 2012 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved.

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/TRENDS

It was an eventful year for the IT sector, with many of the majors undergoing significant changes. ACN takes a look at the industry leaders and events that made headlines in the past year.

2012 IN PICTURES

Still one of the most innovative and influential, not

to mention richest, technology companies in the

world, Apple had a year of mixed fortunes.

March saw the company’s first major product

launch since the death of company founder Steve

Jobs. Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage for the

launch of the third version of the iPad andd an up-

dated Apple TV, followed by the launch of iPhone 5

in September and the iPad Mini in October. While

the products were well received by the Apple

faithful, many commentators felt that the new

launches were not the big bangs of yesteryear,

with even company co-founder Steve Wozniak

suggesting Apple has lost its innovative edge.

Apple’s patent battle with Samsung finally came

to court in the US in August, with Apple being

awarded $1.05bn in damages, although the ruling

was appealed and Apple’s many other patent law-

suits continue to grind on in different jurisdictions

around the globe.

The company made a rare slip with the launch

of iOS6, in particular its new Apple Maps app that

replaced Google Maps. The flawed application

misplaced locations, didn’t display properly and

gave wrong directions, even leading to warnings

from Australian police not to use the app for fear

of getting sent to the wrong location of several

remote towns, and ending up lost in the Outback.

TIM COOKAPPLE CEO AT THE

LAUNCH OF IPHONE 5 IN SEPTEMBER

Apple losing its shine?US patent win over Samsung nets Apple $1bn, but Apple Maps’ flaws prove embarrassing

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/TRENDS

For HP, 2012 marked year zero in new CEO

Meg Whitman’s attempts to revive the for-

tunes of the PC giant. Whitman took over the

reins from Leo Apotheker the previous year,

but 2012 saw the first steps in the multi-year

turnaround plan, with variable results.

After confirming that HP is still committed

to the PC business, the company merged its

printer and PC units into the new Personal

Systems Group, which then launched 80 prod-

ucts in May. Across the various business units,

HP continued with product launches, notably

new Windows 8-based tablets, cloud technol-

ogy and services.

The revival plan was not all positive howev-

er, as the company announced 29,000 job cuts,

and financial performance was still problem-

atic. HP announced a write down of $8 billion

from its Services division during its fiscal third

quarter, a move that stemmed from its $13.9

billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, and then in

November took another charge of $8.8 billion

for the fourth quarter, after uncovering seri-

ous accounting irregularities in its Autonomy

business. HP said that more than $5 billion

of the charge related to these accounting

irregularities in Autonomy, which HP bought

for $10.2 billion in 2011. Overall the company

posted a loss of $12.7 billion for FY2012.

HP talks turnaroundStrategic plan to revive HP’s fortunes hit by EDS and Autonomy charges

MEG WHITMANPRESIDENT AND

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF HP

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/TRENDS


2012 was a big year for product

launches for Microsoft, as the

company released the latest

version of the Windows OS and

more. Windows 8, complete

with a new touch-screen ori-

ented user interface, which may

or may not still be called Metro,

was released with much fanfare

at the end of the year, followed

by Windows Phone 8.

The OS was met with com-

plaints that the tablet-style

interface was confusing to use

on a normal desktop, and initial

uptake has been slower than

that of Windows 7. Other nota-

ble launches included Windows

Server 2012, and, in a shock

move, Microsoft announced its

first PC hardware, the Sur-

face tablet. Reaction from PC

OEM partners was mixed, with

some suggesting that Surface

threatened their relationship

with Microsoft. Last year also

saw rebranding efforts, includ-

ing a new Windows logo and

the rebranding of Hotmail as

Outlook.com.

Last year also saw the

departure of 23-year Microsoft

veteran Steven Sinofsky, who

was president of Microsoft’s

Windows and Windows Live

business. Sinofsky, who was

seen as a possible future leader

of the company, left under

something of a cloud, with sug-

gestions that he had fallen out

with other department heads

and was trying to take control of

the Windows Phone division.

Microsoft year of launchesWindows 8, Windows Phone and first tablet hit market

STEVE BALLMERMICROSOFT CEOLAUNCHES THESURFACE TABLET PC

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/TRENDS


2012 also marked a landmark year for social media, or

at least a proof of its ubiquity among consumer users.

US president Barack Obama set a new record for Twit-

ter, after his Tweet announcing “Four more years” was

re-Tweeted 816,000 times. It was not the only record of

the presidential campaign, with the first US presiden-

tial debate generating ten million tweets, and another

record for number of Tweets per second, hitting 2,615

per second.

The 2012 London Olympic Games also set records, with

20 million hours of video streamed online, and 150 million

Tweets about the games sent throughout.

Further evidence of the importance of social media

came from the emergence of a number of cyber attacks

against popular services, including Facebook, Twitter

and even Pinterest.

Social media didn’t get everything its own way however.

In May, Facebook listed on the Nasdaq, with much hype,

and a share price of $38, which valued the company at over

$100 billion. Technical problems in trading, and market

skepticism, saw the stock drop almost immediately, reach-

ing a low of $17.55 by September. Facebook CEO Mark

Zuckerberg later described the share price as “disappoint-

ing... It’s not the first up and down that we ever had.”

Social media landmarksNew records for Twitter and others as social media continues to take hold

MARK ZUCKERBERGCEO OF FACEBOOK,STILL THE WORLD’SYOUNGEST BILLIONAIRE

TOSHIBA Z930 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 27.5x22.3.ai 1 12/20/12 12:56 PM

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/TRENDS


Among Middle East IT security professionals,

2012 will probably be remembered as a wa-

tershed year, with a number of attacks actively

targeting the region. Several advanced persis-

tent threats (APTs) were uncovered, including

Wiper, which destroyed data on systems at

Iranian oil facilities; Gauss spyware that moni-

tored transactions with Lebanese banks; and

Mahdi, another spyware targeted at Iran.

The most sophisticated malware uncovered

was the multi-part cyber espionage tool kit

known as Flame. The complexity of the spy-

ware and its ability to change methods, seek

specific targets and cover its tracks surprised

security researchers, with Kaspersky Lab

describing it as potentially “the most sophisti-

cated cyber weapon yet unleashed”.

In the most high profile incidents, Saudi Ar-

amco and Qatar’s RasGas were both hit by cy-

ber attacks at the end of August. Aramco was

forced to restore 30,000 workstations after the

Shamoon malware deleted their master boot

records. It is not known if the malware stole

data before destroying the systems. Khalid

Al-Falih, CEO of the oil company said that oil

production was not affected, and Aramco later

said that the attack did not involve insiders,

despite earlier reports to the contrary.

Security meltdownMiddle East targeted by wave of complex cyber attacks; Saudi Aramco takes hit

KHALID AL-FALIHPRESIDENT AND

CEO OF SAUDI ARAMCO

34 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS December 2012

/TRENDS/TRENDS


RIM not in a death spiralMobility leader suffers through lack of new products, banking on BlackBerry 10 launch

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion had a turbulent

year, with product delays exacerbating the company’s fi-

nancial worries, and chief executive Thorsten Heins even

going as far as denying that RIM is not in “a death spiral”

during a radio interview.

Heins took over leadership at RIM from company

founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January, as

the company saw market share slip and revenue decline

for the first time in nine years from its second quarter

results in June of the preceeding year.

The company launched a CORE project (Cost Optimisa-

tion and Resource Efficiency), in March, to reduce the

number of layers of management; streamline supply

chain and manufacturing, increase outsourcing and fo-

cus on sales and marketing to chase profitable business,

and also announced 5,000 job cuts as part of the plan. In

June RIM posted its first quarterly loss, of $518 million,

for seven years, and revenue was down 33% from the

previous quarter and 43% from the same quarter 2011.

The company’s share price improved towards the end

of the year, as RIM has announced the global launch

event for the new BlackBerry 10 operating systems and

smartphones that will take place on 30th January, but

analysts are still not convinced that the new launch and

an enterprise beta testing scheme for BlackBerry 10 will

be enough to turn around RIM’s fortunes.

THORSTEN HEINSRESEARCH IN MOTIONCEO PREVIEWSBLACKBERRY 10

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/EDITOR’S COMMENT


CEO Marc Benioff recently let slip that Emirates Airlines is adopting its Sales Cloud solution for its reps, and Microsoft is aggressively promoting its Office 365 solution in the Mid-dle East. Several of the telecoms operators are also looking to roll out public cloud services, so we may finally see public cloud make an impact.

As for the other parts of the platform, you only have to at-tend any local IT conference to see the amount of attendees that rely on tablets or smartphones – most conference ses-sions are practically lit up by the glow from dozens of mobile devices. Not all corporate applications have been made mo-bile-ready, but the software vendors are putting a lot of em-

phasis on pushing applications to mo-bile platforms, so mobility could be just an upgrade away, if the device manage-ment problem can be addressed.

Analytics and social are the sticking points at present. Analytics, or big data analytics, is a little bit hard to define. Data warehousing and basic business intelligence solutions are not uncom-mon, but it would be interesting to know how many companies are genu-inely leveraging this business insight to steer strategy. ‘Bigger’ big data solu-tions, like in-memory computing, are still at the pilot stage at best.

My impression of businesses go-ing ‘social’ in the region is that there’s

not much beyond Facebook pages and Twitter accounts at present. The huge popularity of Twitter in the Arab world means that any consumer-facing organisation needs to keep social media in mind, but it might not be so relevant to most. The idea of social business technologies for internal collabo-ration and so on is interesting, but I’d suggest minimal in the region — but I’d like to hear from any organisation that has been able to make this work.

Although the Middle East might still be putting all the parts of SMAC, or the Third Platform, into place, it still rep-resents a potent vision of how the IT landscape could shape up. It is going to be interesting to see how closely the indus-try follows the prediction.

Mark SuttonSenior Group Editor

On the path to the Third PlatformWelcome to the first issue of ACN for the New Year, I hope it is peaceful and prosperous for you all. In this issue, we’ve gathered together some of the predictions made by IT analyst com-panies for the coming year.

As usual, there is some consensus and some disagree-ment, on the technologies and trends that are going to shape the industry in future. One of the most interesting predictions came from IDC. The company has essentially de-scribed a vision for computing that pulls together four key areas of tech-nology - cloud, social, big data analyt-ics and mobile – into what it is calling the Third Platform. IDC predicts that 80-90% of all industry growth between now and 2020 will be driven by this Third Platform, and that there will be an “explosion” of new solutions based on it. The vision extends to emerging markets, which will see a rapid up-take of all the component pieces of the Third Platform.

The importance and interrelation between these technologies is not an entirely new idea. The ‘SMAC’ acronym — for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud — was in use at least by the middle of last year, but most commentators acknowledge that as a model, it is a coherent vision of how computing will develop.

At present however, it is perhaps premature to talk about a single ‘platform’ as the component parts of the model are at varying stages of adoption. Ranjit Rajan, IDC, research director, Software & Services, MEA region, told ACN that there was already interest in private cloud in the region, but with some of the major providers such as Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com increasing focus on the region, public cloud is likely to get more attention this year.

Will 2013 be the year that public cloud is accepted in the Middle East? Quite possibly. Private cloud is on the rise among larger organisations, but it would be interesting to know what proportion of local companies are only just starting down the path to virtualisation. The OTT cloud providers are gaining ground in the region — Salesforce.com


/COMMENT

Windows 8 security implicationsNicolai Solling, director of Technology Services, help AG, discusses

some of the possible security implications of Microsoft’s new operating

system, and what it might mean for corporate deployments.

Reaction to Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS, with its new look user interface, has been mixed, and although there is lit-tle expectation of immediate corporate uptake, the OS is still likely to appear in the workplace through employ-ees’ own devices. According to Nicolai Solling, director of Technology Services for help AG, the technical secu-rity of the operating system is a major improvement over past iterations of Windows.

“Windows 8 has done away with a lot of the technical lack of secu-rity that was part of the old Windows platforms,” Solling said. “Every single time we see Microsoft release a new version of software, what has been very good to see is that at the core of any new enhancements, there have been security enhancements.”

Solling points to technical enhancements in Windows 8 that should help address specific threats. The OS now has a dynamic mem-ory allocation feature to combat buffer overflow problems. Windows 8 also supports a new way of controlling the pre-boot environment, to make it harder for rootkits to hijack the PC during boot-up, and the Early Launch Anti-Malware feature allows anti-malware solutions to be the first non-Microsoft application to run on boot-up.

“We are not going to get into the situation where Windows 8, or any kind of operating system, is going to be bullet proof,” Solling commented. “There is a very big concern with Windows 8, in that the change in the graphical user interface is pretty dramatic.”

The change to the way Windows 8 looks and works, has potential to cause problems initiated by the user, he explained. There are some specific features that are less secure, such as IE10 running on Win-dows 8 not showing the web address bar, but the issue in general is about users lack of familiarity with the operating system.

“Users do not know the normal behaviour of this operating sys-tem. If you have a security event on the system, is it because the system is behaving in a different way because it is Windows 8, or is it because there is a malware running on my PC? It is about user awareness of how that specific OS works,” he said.

“If look at Norton 360 in the Metro GUI, it looks very, very differ-ent than it did in Windows 7. One of the things that people ask is ‘what is a good AV?’ My advice is ‘one that you know and are comfortable with’. If you do not understand the information it is giving you, you are going to end up being less secure. It is going to be a steep learning curve for a lot of users.”

Solling also sees a risk from pirate software containting malware, that users might install as they upgrade their applications: “In Win-dows 8, in order to utilise the whole Metro UI, you also have to up-

grade your Office packages and other applications to take advantage of this new user interface. That means that people need to re-invest in all of this software, and when people need to re-invest in software, there is a big window for software piracy. Every time there is a release of a major Microsoft product, we see this.”

There are other risks that arise from features such as close inte-gration of the OS with SkyDrive cloud storage, which creates a poten-tial security hole for enterprises. As an OS that is initially going to get uptake with consumers, Windows 8 also shares the same BYOD con-cerns as iOS or Android. Overall however, Solling expects the security benefits of Windows 8 will prove themselves.

“We are going to see a short term increase in risk, but in the longer term, think about the benefits that organisations will have of running one unified security policy across smartphones, laptops, tablets, serv-ers, everything — that is where we will see the real security benefits of Windows 8 in the future.”

Solling: Lack of user familiarity with Windows 8 is likelyto cause some security issues.

“THERE IS A VERY BIG CONCERN WITH WINDOWS 8, IN THAT THE CHANGE IN THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE IS PRETTY DRAMATIC.”

/COMMENT


Intelligent Data Management cuts Big Data chaosAllen Mitchell, Senior Technical Account Manager, MENA, CommVault

outlines how businesses can best tackle the challenges of managing large

volumes of data while ensuring that information remains accessible

One of the big topics around IT discussions these days is Big Data. In thinking about today›s data centre trends — the growth of unstructured data, the uni-versal adoption of virtualisation and increasing con-solidation — an interesting paradigm is developing. Big Data is something that can creep up on you and before you realise it, it can be causing huge expense and present new types of risks, complexity and cost.

What often starts as a project can become business critical and the bigger it is, the harder it is to keep it available or recover in an emergency. Most organisations distribute data over a number of systems and because it’s distributed, the true costs are hidden.

As organisations experience the Big Data phenomenon, they are faced with several challenges. Protection and disaster recov-ery can be staggeringly expensive. To mirror 1TB these days is relatively inexpensive, but to mirror 500TB on high-end disk for scientific analysis is cost prohibitive for all but those with very big purses. Even backup to relatively cheap media like tape can be expensive due to the sheer volumes involved. The other issue is time — while everything is faster today than it used to be, mov-ing even modest amounts of terabytes around can take a while, let alone tackling petabytes!

So how do companies deal with Big Data? Using storage re-source management (SRM) software is a good start. SRM reports present a consolidated view of all storage resources, including logical and physical components, providing unified tools to ana-lyse storage requirements and plan storage infrastructure for the

purposes of capacity management, content management, and his-torical data management across the entire enterprise.

Not only will this type of trending warn you that you’re head-ing down the Big Data path, but it can help drive archiving poli-cies for effective long term storage and keep costs under control. Big Data needs expert handling and getting the right help early on can make a big difference. So while it’s not easy to spot a problem before it becomes acute, doing so can save companies a lot of ex-pense and pain. Choosing the right technology is critical. Today’s legacy data management tools just aren’t up to the task.

According to a CommVault-sponsored CIO Market Pulse Sur-vey on data protection and management that polled 111 IT and business management professionals, 42% of respondents de-scribed their organisations’ data management processes as ‘out-dated’, and 31% called it ‘chaotic’. More than half stated that data searchability and the current level of automated data manage-ment is less than adequate.

Overall, those surveyed cited improving operational efficiency, the ability to access and analyse information and flexibility as the top business drivers for investing in data management solutions.

So what if you could reign in the wild growth of unstructured data in the Big Data era using fewer resources? Managing, pro-tecting and understanding the business value of the data you have can have a tangible impact on business agility and the bottom line.

The advent of Big Data is causing IT to rethink and possibly redesign architectures to accommodate business requirements as data volumes grow. The only way to accommodate such growth is

Mitchell: Many companies struggle to properly manage their data.

“MANAGING, PROTECTINGAND UNDERSTANDING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF THE DATA YOU HAVE CAN HAVE A TANGIBLE IMPACT ON BUSINESS AGILITY AND THE BOTTOM LINE.”


/COMMENT

to implement a modern approach to data management. Custom-ers need:• A highly scalable repository for unstructured data• Protection and archive from a single pass through the data• Storage tiering to lower costs

And it all needs to be done from a single management console with application-aware snapshots, replication, data deduplica-tion, encryption, and a range of other built-in features.

Studies estimate that multiple copies of files now require organisations to use and administer 2 to 50 times more storage than they actually need. Given the impact on the bottom line, or-

ganisations need to recognise that, far from being a niche tech-nology, deduplication needs to become standard practice and an integrated element in their overall IT strategy. Data deduplica-tion lets you significantly reduce the amount of disk you need for backup. Deduplication results in improved backup windows, faster restore and recovery, and reliable transfer of data for disas-ter recovery copies.

Every IT vendor out there is trying to stake its claim to be the de facto standard for managing Big Data environments. Vendors who have a unique approach that stands out from competition will have success in the world of Big Data.

“BIG DATA IS SOMETHING THAT CAN CREEP UP ON YOU AND BEFORE YOU REALISE IT, IT CAN BE CAUSING HUGE EXPENSE AND PRESENT NEW TYPES OF RISKS, COMPLEXITY AND COST.”

/HELLMANN WORLDWIDE LOGISTICS

40

August 2012 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 41



WHEN HELLMANN WORLDWIDE LOGISTICS NEEDED TO UPGRADE ITS LOCAL SERVER ENVIRONMENT, THE COMPANY DECIDED TO LAUNCH A PROJECT OF DATA CENTRE VIRTUALISATION, TO CREATE AN IT INFRASTRUCTURE THAT WOULD BOTH PROVIDE ENHANCED EFFICIENCY AND HELP THE COMPANY TO CONTINUE WITH RAPID REGIONAL EXPANSION

BY MARK SUTTON

Hellmann Worldwide

Logistics chose to virtualise its local

data centre, rather than just replace

its old servers and infrastructure,

says Altaf.

GETTINGVALUE FROM VIRTUAL



irtualisation is at the core of many of the advances made in ICT in recent years, bringing enhanced ef-ficiency to environments and ena-bling new models including cloud computing. The technology has taken off, with widespread adop-tion in many larger enterprises, al-though virtualisation has not been universally adopted. According to TechTarget, two-thirds of organisa-tions have virtualised 50% or less of their infrastructure. Roadblocks to virtualisation include lack of skills, confusion over tools for server availability and performance monitoring, managing storage and backup of virtual machines, and software licensing issues. Many

of these hurdles were faced by the Middle East operations of logistics provider Hellmann Worldwide Logistics when it looked to virtualise its data centre, but the company approached them as challenges to be overcome, rather than a reason not to go forward with modernising its infrastructure.

The logistics provider, which is headquartered in Germany with operations in 54 countries worldwide, began operations in the Middle East in 1999. With specialities in automotive and healthcare, both busy sectors for the region, Hellmann’s busi-ness in the Middle East has expanded rapidly. The company began with a user base of around 40 people, but has since grown from its local headquarters in Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone, to include 15 facilities in the region and an internal user base of over 130 users. The rapid growth experienced by the company over the past few years resulted in a burden on the IT infrastruc-ture, according to Siddiqui Altaf, IT manager for the Middle East Region for Hellmann.

“We had a massive challenge of how do we accommodate IT, and facilitate our users with IT services, using the existing infrastructure. We decided to start off on a project for server virtualisation,” he explained. “We had a discussion, and came up with two options — option A, if we just replace the existing environment, or option B, if we plan for the future — and go with server virtualisation in a high-end environment. After discus-sion with the management and my regional boss in Australia,

we concluded that, based on our expansion, we would go with option B.”

The company scoped out the project, and selected local systems integrator NewRAS as the partner for the project, based on the support and interactions with NewRAS’ technical team and management, its expertise in virtualisation and integrating multiple vendor environments, and through understanding of Hellmann’s business needs, including strict compliance require-ments for standards including ISO 90001 2008.

A number of options for the hardware and software were considered for the project, with the final choice made to deploy IBM blade servers in a BladeCenter H Chassis, with VMware virtualisation software and Veeam virtualisation backup and management software.

IBM hardware was selected, as it is Hellmann’s global stand-ard, which simplifies the operating environment and means that Hellmann’s global IT team is able to provide assistance with any support issues. IBM BladeCenter H Chassis was selected as it has support for SAN, and the project also includes virtualised SAN storage and an IBM tape backup library, part of the com-pany’s audit requirements.

“The reason we selected VMware is it is one of the best prod-ucts in the virtualisation environment that we have seen so far; and it is used in our global and regional offices,” Altaf said. “We

Kurup: Flexible IT solutions are essential for the company to be

able to roll out innovative new logistics services and to expand

into new territories.

“THERE WERE DEFINITELY CHALLENGES TO DEPLOY LOCAL AS WELL AS GLOBAL APPLICA-TIONS. WE HAD TO OVERCOME IT, WE FOUND OUT VARIOUS SOLUTIONS TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS AND MAKE IT WORK IN OUR ENVIRONMENT.”


43



HELLMANN WORLDWIDE LOGISTICS VIRTUALISATION PROJECT SOLUTIONSIBM BladeCenter H chassis

IBM blade servers

VMware virtualisation

VMware vCenter Operations Manager

Veeam virtualisation backup

IBM fibre SAN

IBM Tape Library

WhatsUp server monitoring

AnywhereUSB

went with VMware vCenter Operations Manager, which gave us entire visibility on how the systems run, what the capac-ity utilisation is, and lets us manage our virtual environments with various alerts and automation.”

The need for backup that would meet compliance standards, and how to manage that in a virtual environment was a particular challenge to Hellmann. Many of the audit points related to SAN usage and FTP ports. The company selected IBM fibre channel SAN storage and tape drive, to standardise with the rest of the organisation globally, and to get the performance benefits of fibre channel systems, but selected backup administration solutions from Veeam, over its global vendor Symantec. Altaf said that Veeam offered a wider function-ality, and provides more flexibility and automation to manage the virtual storage.

“We are a heavily audited company and NewRAS came at the right time and helped us design our virtualisation project and consolidate our storage making it fully redundant, and gave us a perfect solution for our data backup and replication,” he said.

As virtualisation was a new technology to the local IT team, Hellmann drew on NewRAS’ expertise, while Altaf and another member of the team qualified as VMware Certified Professionals (VCP) to ensure that they had proper product understanding and

awareness to optimise and utilise the technology in-house.Another area where Hellmann faced challenges was in shift-

ing applications to a virtualised environment. While the local infrastructure hosts applications such as local apps, file and print servers, mail servers, billing management systems and access con-trol, the company has a number of applications hosted at its global data centre, along with applications including a Kofax archiving application and WhatsUp server monitoring, that reside locally, but which are integrated with central applications.

“There were definitely challenges to deploy local as well as global applications,” Altaf said. “We had to overcome it, we found out various solutions to overcome the problems and make it work in our environment.”

One of the sticking points was that several local applications used licences hosted on USB dongles. Without physical connec-tivity to the virtual machine, these licences would not work. The


45

company was able to switch some licensing to a software-based model, while for other applications, a solution from Anywhere-USB was deployed to allow USB dongles to still be used.

With the first phase of the project completed, Hellmann has already realised a number of benefits from virtualisation. The physical server environment has been reduced from 30 servers down to the single chassis, providing more efficient power and cooling, reducing the physical footprint and simplifying adminis-tration. The project has enabled migration from Novell’s eDirec-tory to Microsoft Active Directory, and 80% of the points of audit have been eliminated, through following global security policies and standards while deploying the infrastructure.

The time to provision a new server has gone from four and a half weeks to just five minutes, which allows the IT organisation to be much more responsive to the end users and requests for resources, which is particularly important in providing special-ised logistics services, Altaf explained: “IT operationally is very important; it is a niche user organisation environment, the users are heavily dependent on IT for providing services to the custom-er — it is a very particular environment.”

Madhav Kurup, CEO for Middle East and North Africa at Hell-mann added that new infrastructure will help support the com-pany in its ongoing expansion into new territories in the region.

“In our business, IT and the investment in IT is becoming a critical part for the value differentiation that you bring to the customers, especially in the vertical specialisations we have that have helped us to grow, specifically in automotive and healthcare,” Kurup commented. “Creating customised IT solutions to support our operational processes is one of the key success factors behind our growth.”

“IN OUR BUSINESS, IT AND THE INVESTMENT IN IT IS BECOMING A CRITICAL PART FOR THE VALUE DIFFERENTIATION THAT YOU BRING TO THE CUSTOMERS.”

Altaf: Hellmann and NewRAS identifi ed a number of supplementary solutions that would assist them in making the virtualisation project workable.

The second phase of the project, one of the additional reasons for initiating virtualisation, is to move the local desktop environ-ment to a virtual basis. The IT team are aiming to eliminate pur-chases of fixed assets, and to that end, plan to roll out virtualised desktop solutions from Citrix for end users.

While Hellmann’s data centre virtualisation project faced many of the obstacles that currently dissuade companies from vir-tualisation, Altaf said that the project shows there are solutions to tackle those obstacles: “There are hurdles in every project, but we had to overcome them. Our planning, processes, and documenta-tion was done in great detail before we went into this project, to make sure that the outcome of this project was successful. It was tough at the start, but through hard work, we can enjoy the fruit of our labour.”

/2013 PREDICTIONS

46


/2013 PREDICTIONS


WITH NEW COMPUTING MODELS EMERGING THAT ENCOMPASS ALL ASPECTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS ASKS MIDDLE EAST IT ANALYSTS FOR THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY IN 2013

BY MARK SUTTON

The IT industry in the Middle East is

likely to see a lot more reliance on

cloud and services as companies

look to more cost effective models

of computing.

PREDICTING THE 2013 IT LANDSCAPE

“2012 SHOWED US THAT SO-CIAL MEDIA CAN NO LONGER BE IGNORED. ORGANISATIONS NEED TO BROADEN THEIR FOCUS FROM MAINSTREAM FORMS OF DATA COLLECTION TO INCLUDE NON-TRADITIONAL DATA TYPES.”

/2013 PREDICTIONS


he start of a new year traditionally brings with it thoughts on the direc-tion that the IT industry will take in the next twelve months, with the major analyst companies setting out their predictions on the trends and technolo-gies that will shape the development of the business, and drive strategies and spending for CIOs. As a unique market, with its own distinct challenges, the Middle East doesn’t always follow glob-al trends, so Arabian Computer News asked analysts based in the region for their predictions for 2013.

There are many areas of general agreement among the analyst com-munity for the trends that are likely to have the most impact. Four of the big drivers — cloud computing, social, big

data analytics and mobility — are identified by IDC as a holistic, interrelated set of technologies, that are coming together in what it describes as the ‘Third Platform’. The Third Platform is seen as a once-in-twenty-year-shift in computing, that IDC predicts will ac-count for 90% of all industry growth to 2020, with a major growth of new solutions based on the platform.

Mahapatra: Green IT, social and cloud

computing will be talked about a lot

in 2013, without signifi cant uptake.

Ranjit Rajan, research director, Software & Services, IDC MEA region said that while there is an increased interest and ap-petite in these four technology drivers in the Middle East, there is a varying degree of interest in each.

In cloud computing, Rajan expects 2013 to be the year that the region begins to take a much larger interest in public cloud, with development previously confined to private cloud projects. Global Over The Top (OTT) cloud providers such as Google, Salesforce and Microsoft are actively promoting their offerings in the region, and more and more large enterprises are seeing the application-as-a-service model as an attractive option to rapidly provision services such as email and productivity for branch offices, along with CRM, project management and HR management.

“There has been a lot of interest in private cloud, but not so much in public cloud services, but I think we are beginning to see a greater interest in public cloud and I think that [in 2013] we are going to see a lot more,” Rajan said.

The adoption of ‘social’ technology has similarly been one-sided, with little business adoption, he added: “Obviously there is a lot of activity on the consumer side around social networking and social media, but on the social business side, it is still early days. The use of social platforms internally within the organisation will be the key shift, I think we will see this probably within the next two years; I don’t see it happening immediately.”

Haritha Ramachandran, program manager, Information and


/2013 PREDICTIONS

Communication Technologies Practice, Frost & Sullivan, also sees social media having more of an impact in the region. She points to ‘Social’ as one of three ‘S’s, the other two being security and services, that will drive the market in 2013. Social media is of particular relevance to big data analytics as companies look to better analytics tools to make sense of the data available from non-traditional sources such as social media.

“2012 showed us that social media can no longer be ignored. Organisations need to broaden their focus from mainstream forms of data collection to include non-traditional data types. To verify and garner a 360-degree view of their customers, companies need to gather non-traditional data via social customer relationship management and other social media sources. In 2013, with more organisations looking at big data, solutions such as open source-based Hadoop Distributed File Systems [HDFS] and database ori-ented NoSQL are likely to show significant growth, as are business intelligence tools for analysing and presenting results,” she said.

“2013 is expected to be all about looking at big data with proper analytical tools and deriving the right answers from the mountain of data available. The results of these projects will begin to be felt in 2013, but the scale of data and amount of processing required will not see results hitting most businesses until 2014.”

Not every analyst expects social and cloud to make an impact in the region however. Biswajeet Mahapatra, research director for Gartner, believes that lack of confidence in social solutions, and their perception as not enterprise-relevant, along with lack of major cloud providers and overwhelming data protection and security concerns, will make both technologies non-starters for the region at present.

“Green IT, social, and cloud will be much talked about but very much less adopted. Out of these, private cloud adop-tion will be done in bits and patches in enterprises, but nothing beyond that. So-cial is a big no-no for business and cloud is looked at with suspicion — especially the public cloud. Security and lack of data protection and privacy laws will be the major reasons for very low to negligible adoption of cloud,” he said.

Osama Ghoul, managing partner, Devoteam, also sees resistance to cloud in the region: “Cloud and mobility stand to be the two domains that we expect to see on the CIO agenda. Having said that, during

Rajan: 2013 will be the year that public cloud

makes an impact in the region, with

emphasis on global players and telcos.

Social media can no longer be overlooked

by organisations that want to improve customer data, says

Ramachandran

GROWTH SECTORSIT expenditure in the region is likely to follow a familiar pattern in the region in 2013, according to Biswajeet Mahapatra of Gartner.

“Government is one of the largest IT spenders in this region and will continue to be. Globally, spending by local and federal governments is predicted to be flat, or we will see a minimal 1% increase in spending. However, that percentage will be much higher for this region as governments are in overdrive working to IT-enable services and provide welfare schemes. Governments in this region are also looking at developing models to help provide cheaper IT services to SMBs and single users to help them in their business and education. Hence, overall IT spending in the Middle East, as a percentage of Opex, will also be much higher than the global average of 3.3%.”

Other sectors that are predicted to see IT spending higher than global levels include construction, healthcare, manufacturing, utilities, energies, oil & gas and banking, Mahapatra said, as these sectors adopt the latest technologies, including virtualisation, consolidation, application integration, hardware refresh and best practice adoption.

“The most interesting aspect of this investment is that most of it, except for the hardware refresh, will be in the Grow area, which means there is going to be a lot of push for newer technology and best practices,” he said. “This is also based on the fact that economies in this region are by and large doing well, so they expect business to grow and they need to adopt newer technologies to help them serve business needs.”

/2013 PREDICTIONS


a survey that we did it was clear that more than 50% of CIOs are still skeptical with regards to adopting the cloud as a way of life, especially because the vendors have yet to clearly identify the real benefits of adopting this new technology in the context of the Middle East.”

Mahapatra expects to see organisations in the region continue to develop virtualisation projects, with realistic and cautious investments in virtualisation. Companies will virtualise non-core apps and develop proof-of-concept projects first. Data centre con-solidation, including storage, applications and infrastructure, will be one of the main areas for investment in 2013.

One trend that all of the analysts agree will have an impact in the region is the continuing influence of consumer technology in the workplace, although the trend is not without its challenges. Stephen Ardill, partner and lead for AT Kearney’s Strategic IT Practice in the Middle East, said that consumer consumption of technology is creating business end-users who demand better ac-cess, higher quality services, and a greater say over their comput-ing environment. They are also responsible for the proliferation of private devices in the workplace.

“Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) will come to the fore in 2013 as organisations struggle to contain the impact of consumer-led IT whilst reconciling the need for tighter security given some of the high-profile cyber-attacks that occurred in the region last year.

“2013 IS EXPECTED TO BE ALL ABOUT

LOOKING AT BIG DATA WITH PROPER ANALYTICAL TOOLS AND DERIVING THE

RIGHT ANSWERS FROM THE MOUNTAIN OF DATA AVAILABLE.”

Bring Your Own Device will bring

new challenges for security and data management this

year, says Ardill.

The other challenge to be addressed will be around personalisa-tion and the pressure to deliver more granular, segment-specific services in a cost-effective and repeatable manner,” he said.

Rajan also predicts that BYOD will create security issues for IT: “There will be significant challenges, particularly around secu-rity and mobile device management — it won’t be easy. IT depart-ments will be under a lot of pressure to allow BYOD from business, and IT is facing significant challenges on how to manage it.”

Ardill also expects that many companies will revisit their ERP deployments this year, driven by maturing solutions, and the need to ensure solutions are fit for ongoing regional expansion

“The focus going into 2013 will be on simplification and consolidation, with a rationalised ERP vendor base and a broader deployment of more standardised solution templates, enabling improved business integration and reporting and greater transpar-ency and comparability of enterprise information,” Ardill said.

Another area where the majority of analysts are in agreement, is the drive to extract value from existing solutions. With IT budg-ets still under pressure, IT departments are rationalising their solutions, and looking to gain maximum return on what they have, as well as looking to technologies such as cloud and virtualisation. According to Mahapatra, this pressure also means that compa-nies are looking to intelligent investment at the right price, which


/2013 PREDICTIONS

should lead to a marginal improvement in the best pricing.Ramachandran said that the drive to push value from IT solu-

tions will focus both on traditional cost reduction such as out-sourcing, and implementing new technology as well as streamlin-ing existing processes and systems. IT is also likely to be asked to help create new revenue, she said.

“IT’s role in providing revenue growth through innovation has often been downplayed in the region. In 2013 C-level executives are expected to be tasking their IT leaders to help provide new services and products, or come up with other areas of expanding revenue streams,” she said.

Ghoul also sees a shift in the agenda: “We are seeing new trends starting to appear in the market which are driven more by corporate CEOs , rather than by CIOs, in which the aim is to transform the business using IT. This is surely a new era for IT as the function of IT is changing from being a business enabler into becoming a business changer.”

Budget pressure will in part drive strong growth across the services sector in the region, while increasing market maturity and the emergence of larger players will see services including managed security, cloud, IT-as-a-service in various flavours, hosting for backup and recovery come to the fore. Frost & Sullivan predicts managed services to grow by 18.8% CAGR from 2011 to 2018. The leaders of the market are still emerging as global cloud players, local systems integrators and the local telcos all look to build strategic alliances to capture the market.

“It’s an area in which competition has been heating up, with local Telco players, global giants such as Google and Amazon, as well as system integrators, all targeting this segment,” Ardill commented. “To support business growth, larger organisations will also tap into hosted services that will allow them to trial new applications at a lower risk and cost.”

While these new services will take some of the load off of the region’s IT departments, the emergence of new technologies will add to the persistent problem of skills shortages among local organisations, IDC’s Rajan predicts.

“The skills challenge will continue. It has always been a big challenge in the Gulf, but I think the challenge will modify a bit, and it will worsen, with the requirements of the Third Platform,” he said. “The Third Platform technologies will require a different set of skills, and while IT departments will try and adopt these Third Platform technologies because of pressure from business, they will not be able to accelerate or rapidly deploy some of these technologies because of skills challenges.”

SECURITY PREDICTIONS“As a result of the high-profile security breaches over the past six to twelve months and before, security is no longer an IT discussion topic, security has been elevated to a C-level, even a boardroom topic,” said Ranjit Rajan of IDC. “The overall discussion will obviously move up a couple of gears, CEOs will start talking more about risk, business continuity, governance, and this is going to be critical, it is going to be a shift for security, and it is going to create tremendous opportunities for the security industry in terms of consulting and technology solutions.”

The BYOD trend is going to drive demand for mobile device management solutions, according to Haritha Ramachandran while convergence is also changing the security landscape: “Technology convergence is driving demand for advanced security intelligence. Security vendors are expected to focus on Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) and eXtensible Threat Management (XTM) that will feature added functionalities in one device. These new technologies and services are pushing IT leaders to adapt and integrate what they have with what is new, enabling enterprises to facilitate safer and more productive working environments for their employees.”

Big data will also have an influence on security. Shirley O’Sullivan, vice president of marketing for EMEA at Blue Coat Systems said security companies are looking to improve threat intelligence through greater analysis.

“Security and networking solutions all generate logs – significant amounts of information that tell you about user behaviours, traffic on the network and more. Mining this data to find discernible patterns in risky behaviour, threats and anomalies on the network as well as correlations between behaviour and risk will allow the industry to build new defences that can help users make safer default choices.”

Mobility and the proliferation of devices will create more emphasis on identity authentication and content-based security, as traditional security perimeters become obsolete, according to George Khouri, of CA MENA.

“Strongly authenticated identity is the new perimeter. This places emphasis on reducing risk at the authentication point, signalling the end of the password as we know it today. We will see more risk-based authentication coming into play based on the device, transaction, location and more. We will see industry move towards more intelligent methods of authentication such as pattern creation, image recognition, mobile phone-based authentication, audio and biometrics, and we will see more content-driven security based on what the data is, or how it’s classified, and that information, plus user identity and role, will be used to guide access rights,” he said.

“IT DEPARTMENTS WILL BE UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE TO ALLOW BYOD, AND IT IS FACING SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGES ON HOW TO MANAGE IT.”

52

/CRM SOLUTIONS


/CRM SOLUTIONS/CRM SOLUTIONS

THE MARKET FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) SOLUTIONS WAS CHILLED BY THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN, BUT COMPANIES ARE BEGINNING TO RETURN TO THE NEW GENERATION OF CRM SOLUTIONS AS THEY LOOK TO BUILD BETTER COMMUNICATIONS, AND BETTER UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR

BY KERI ALLAN

CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS EVOLVING

CRM applications are evolving to include

new channels of communications with customers,

such as social media, and much greater

depth and analyis of customer data.

/CRM SOLUTIONS


doption of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions in the Middle East continues to rise as businesses look for solutions that will ensure customer satisfaction whilst simultaneously cutting costs and increasing productivity.

“CRM software adoption in the Middle East has exceeded the 20% annual growth mark according to the Annual Middle East Call Centre/CRM Conference,” says Karim Tal-houk, Microsoft Business Solutions lead, Microsoft Gulf.

“[Plus] the Middle East contact centre market is currently witness-ing a 30% growth rate in the number of agent positions,” adds Mina Nagy, product manager, BSolutions.

Arnold Gutmann, practice lead CRM, Business Solutions, GBM highlights that CRM initiatives really started in the region around four to five years ago, and after a lull, interest is up again.

“The economic boom surprisingly slowed down CRM efforts and the following economic downturn has stopped them altogether due to a lack of readiness to invest in business software,” Gutmann comments. “The new confidence in the market has reignited the search for more efficient marketing, customer retention and growth strategies especially in the retail and services sectors. CRM is back — with a strong focus on business intel-ligence and analytics.”

Vendors are highlighting that uptake comes from across the board: both SMEs and larger organisations are noticing the possible return on investment (ROI) and benefits a CRM solution can offer.

“In my opinion, ROI for CRM applica-tions can potentially be easy to attain,” says Shaheen Haque, territory manager, Middle East and Turkey, Interactive Intelligence. “The potential areas that can lead to impressive ROI for CRM technolo-gies and provide business benefit include administration/operational efficiencies, better customer brand and product aware-

ness, improved business intelligence, increased customer satisfac-tion and loyalty, and improved sales conversion rates.”

Not only are vendors being approached by new companies, but businesses that introduced traditional systems a few years ago are returning as they’re now interested in investing in more powerful and capable CRM solutions.

Different trends are appearing, such as the move towards more mobile-enabled solutions.

CASE STUDY: COBONE AND SALESFORCE

Cobone, a company that provides daily deals across the Middle East, has a CRM solution from Salesforce. Lead developer Muhammad Minhaj Mehmood believes the company has benefited hugely from its implementation.

“Cobone is an extreme high growth company with double-digit growth month-on-month. We therefore have an enormous need for streamlining, automation of processes and live data for our decision-making,” he says. “For Cobone, the ROI of our CRM is enormous as this finally allowed us to do this effectively. We now have automated business processes and streamlined data flow and dashboards, along with reports providing insights about Cobone’s working.

“The result we have seen in our sales department is an increased ROI of 20% per employee within three months.”

Talhouk: CRM uptake is on the rise in the Middle East, while

solution capabilities continue to provide

new functionality.

Haque: CRM solutions can deliver

considerable business benefi ts across a range of different

operational areas.


/CRM SOLUTIONS

“A hot trend in the CRM industry revolves around mobile,” says Nagy. “With the fast-growing smartphone market, CRM has currently gone mobile and is easily accessible almost anywhere. This new trend is fast gaining ground as the need for easy access is fundamental to any executive.”

“Mobility has moved from being a nice-to-have feature to a necessity,” agrees Haque. “The use of smartphones, iPads, netbooks, tablets and other mobile devices will be used to support customer-facing workers like sales and relationship management employees. Most customers are demanding availability and interaction via this media. The CRM vendors are falling over themselves to provide apps for the popular OS brands. That being said, a cross-platform interface is also an important factor. Customers demand familiarity whether they are using a Mac, PC or tablet.”

Business intelligence is also a keyword right now.“As business intelligence is becoming a built-in function for

most applications, CRM is becoming more analytical with vendors putting more effort into providing analytical tools to help their customers in newer versions of CRM applications,” says Ali Hyder, CEO, Focus Softnet.

Then there’s cloud. Vendors have seen a significant shift, espe-cially from customers with a large install base, migrating to cloud-based CRM applications, as on-premises solutions run into mobility and scalability limitations.

“CRM is one of the first applications that has been accepted as a cloud application. Since most CRM users are on the move, compa-nies expect CRM to be available over the Internet,” notes Hyder.

“There’s no question that cloud-based CRM has taken off in the Middle East and is growing in momentum,” continues Haque. “Cloud CRM and the cloud application offerings from the major vendors such as Salesforce and Microsoft are, we believe, proving most popular.

“Cloud-based CRM applications are especially attractive to cus-tomer experience-focused businesses, be they commercial or public sector,” he adds.

Cloud is very much a growing area, however Salesforce partner NSI Technology is keen to highlight that there are still some issues to overcome.

“Regulation and data privacy laws within the region currently hinder significant uptake,” business development manager Michael Ovens notes.

Social media is also becoming an important part of any CRM solution. Vendors continue to include social connectivity in their so-lutions, allowing businesses to understand social trends and analyse

THE WEAKEST LINKS

Customer relationships are based on good customer experiences, therefore one bad experience can destroy any relationship you’ve built, leading to customer churn and a negative brand reputation. We asked vendors what the weakest links in the customer relationship process are so you can focus on what you need to strengthen.

For Salesforce partner NSI Technology, a weakness is creating unnecessary delays for customers.

“When a complaint is logged, being placed on hold for long periods of time [can be a problem],” says business development manager Michael Ovens. “[Plus] getting through to the wrong department and receiving little or no assistance on how to progress or who to talk to.”

Ali Hyder, CEO of Focus Softnet believes it’s important for top-level management to be fully behind a CRM implementation.

“Most of the CRM projects fail to get implemented or are partially implemented due to the lack of enforcement from the top management. Users, being the weakest link, resist CRM applications, unless they are pushed hard by their top management. Hence the number of enterprises using fully-fledged CRM in the region would remain low,” he notes.

“THE NEW CONFIDENCE IN THE MARKET HAS REIGNITED THE SEARCH FOR MORE EFFICIENT MARKETING, CUSTOMER RETENTION AND GROWTH STRATEGIES, ESPECIALLY IN THE RETAIL AND SERVICES SECTORS.”

their sales and marketing efforts across social media. Of course, in this day and age, organisations that ignore social media are in threat of alienating a huge number of prospects and customers.

“In order to be effective in 2013 and beyond, companies will seek to know more about their customers and use that insight to talk, engage and interact with them more often and more meaning-fully in existing and new innovative ways. For example, dynamic content, blogs and social networking,” Gutmann notes. “This requires CRM solutions to cater for quick and easy personalisa-tion and customisation without losing sight of proven international models and past local experiences.”

There are many different ways social media is being integrated into CRM solutions.

“Complaints and suggestions can be made through Facebook and fed through to Salesforce, with notifications and cases created. Marketing campaigns can also be orchestrated via social media,” highlights Ovens.

/CRM SOLUTIONS


Microsoft Dynamics has integrated solutions powered by Yammer and Skype into its CRM offering. “Using Yammer, users can collaborate with colleagues inside their organisation or with customers, partners and other stakeholders. Yammer fosters sim-pler information sharing around customers, business processes and key business documents - all through social networking capabili-ties. It also marks a significant step forward in providing customers with the ability to project CRM information, activities and insights across their organisation,” says Talhouk.

“Skype capabilities connected to Microsoft Dynamics CRM ad-dress an organisation’s need for direct interactions with customers and partners to drive new levels of productivity. With Skype, users can now initiate voice and video communications directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM, enabling businesses to open communi-cation channels and connect with individuals inside or outside of their organisation,” he adds.

Finally there’s integration. Key integrations to other business systems are critical in today’s business.

“CRM vendors are fostering relationships with ERP and contact centre vendors like Interactive Intelligence,” Haque notes. “Busi-nesses need to consider tight integration points, where it allows the different vendor offerings to operate seamlessly as a single business

CRM is becoming more analytical, with vendors putting more analytics tools into their product offerings, says Hyder.

solution rather than different technology islands,” he notes.“Like it or not, it is essential to integrate CRM with [all other

enterprise applications, such as ERP],” says Gutmann. “Only the hardly achieved concept of a 360° customer view as the core of all business processes within an organisation guarantees success and protects investments. New-generation CRM solutions cater for most common data touchpoints between these applications such as the master data record, financial customer data information, order/in-voice/complaints status, customer product portfolio, credit scoring, risk assessment and productivity/sales efficiency.

“As mentioned above, the ‘Datarati’ will win the race for market share, growth, customer satisfaction and profitability,” he contin-ues. “To be able to become one, all data sources need to be inte-grated and consolidated, and CRM is the place for that. Technically, integration via APIs, Web services, ready-made connectors etc. depends on the IT environment in place/targeted, but the challenge lies with the business process management and the ability to extract actionable meaningful information from the vast amount of data available,” he concludes.

“BUSINESSES NEED TO CONSIDER TIGHT INTEGRATION POINTS, WHERE IT ALLOWS THE DIFFERENT VENDOR OFFERINGS TO OPERATE SEAMLESSLY AS A SINGLE BUSINESS SOLUTION RATHER THAN AS DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGY ISLANDS.”

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58


/SECURITY


WHILE IT ORGANISATIONS ARE MORE COMMONLY CONCERNED WITH VIRTUAL DATA SECURITY, PHYSICAL SECURITY SOLUTIONS SUCH AS ACCESS CONTROL, BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION AND IP-BASED SURVEILLANCE ARE INCREASINGLY MOVING INTO THE IT DEPARTMENT’S DOMAIN

BY KERI ALLAN

Physical security solutions are

coming to fore as part of authentication

processes to reduce the issue

of poor practice by end users.

SECURITY SOLUTIONS GET PHYSICAL

/SECURITY


n this day and age we’re regularly reminded about our virtual security and keeping passwords secure etc., but it’s just as important not to overlook physical security, which can be as much, if not more, of a threat to busi-nesses.

Physical security solutions such as biometrics, access control and IP-based security are seeing a rise in uptake in the Middle East as leading companies in-crease their focus on security. There is a growing end user awareness of the ROI that security systems offer, and the region continues to see investment across a wide number of sectors including airports, logistics, government, oil and gas, and transport.

“There is growing demand for faster, more ac-curate and more user-friendly identification and verification technologies for a wide range of applica-tions, from border control and aviation security to law enforcement, healthcare, humanitarian aid and dis-aster relief,” says Joseph Pritikin, director of Product

Marketing, Identity Solutions, AOptix. “In the future, ecommerce and mobile banking will be enhanced by these technologies as well,” he adds.

Even so, some experts believe that many companies are still too laid back about physical security.

“On the whole our experience is that organisations in the Mid-dle East do not perceive physical security as a big risk – tending to rely on ‘traditional’ methods like security guards, which lags behind business in the West, and in fact around the world,” says Peter Chadra, chief executive and founder of DrPete Inc, an independent strategic technology advisor.

It cannot be denied, however, that the region is taking more of an interest in physical security solutions, and certain trends are appearing. For example an increasing number of companies are adopting IP-based solutions.

“The reasons are obvious: lowered costs, more responsive, better security,” notes Richard Jenkins, VP of Marketing, RF Code. “ Now, however, IP-based secu-rity is going one step further: it’s merging with other innovative technology solu-tions to provide a consolidated security

“THE PRIMARY REASONS BIO-METRIC SECURITY IS BECOMING MORE POPULAR GLOBALLY ARE INCREASING CONCERNS ABOUT THE STRENGTH OF NATIONAL SECURITY, AND INCREASINGOCCURRENCES OF IDENTITY-THEFT RELATED FRAUD.”

platform. This trend - converged security - brings together physi-cal and asset security to provide a unified approach to protecting a company and its physical assets.”

“Today we see a convergence between physical and network (IP) security to provide services that promote flexibility while keeping basic authentication principles in place. For example, to log onto a company intranet, users may need to do two-way factoring

Zaidi: Companies are adding physical security measures

to the their corporate networks to enhance security procedures.

IT and facilities management

departments need to collaborate on physical security,

says Coughlin.


/SECURITY

or biometric, retina or pin codes authentication. This eliminates the possibility of illegitimate access,” notes Asfar Zaidi, senior consult-ant, Security Solutions, Huawei Enterprise Middle East.

“As networks become more open the need to provide end us-ers with the flexibility to work at any time, any place and on any device while maintaining network security also increases. This can only be done through creating strong controls and a strong security framework for access authentication and authorisation,” he adds.

“The integration of biometric technology with security systems is on the increase, as more system administrators and data centre managers look to leverage off innovation within identification infra-structure in order to improve access control,” says James Coughlin, director of new business, Cannon Technologies Middle East.

“As data centre and facilities management (FM) departments continue to cross paths, the same trend is happening in the secu-rity market. To date, information security typically sits with the IT department and physical/traditional security sits with the FM or real estate departments. However, as physical and information technology security policies, technology and people converge, it is vital that FMs learn about the opportunities and challenges their individual organisation will face. The convergence of data and telecommunications over (IP)-based networks now brings FM and

Chadra: Organisations in the Middle East have tended to overlook technology solutions for security, prefering traditional solutions like guards.

NEW TECHNOLOGIESAs protection of IT assets rise on the security agenda, new physical security solutions are emerging. For example, RF Code’s Proximity Locator solution fully automates the correlation of people and events, correlating what moved, with who moved it.

“Such information helps to identify a limitless range of unauthorised activity, from who’s using what particular piece of equipment that someone else may need to determining the presence of unauthorised personnel in ‘off limit’ areas to discovering the presence of someone sneaking into a facility behind a ‘badged’ employee,” notes Richard Jenkins, VP of Marketing, RF Code.

According to Ian Lowe, senior enterprise solution manager, HID Identity Assurance, a new technology set to shape the market is embedding ID credentials within mobile devices: “This is blurring the lines between IT and physical access control,” he notes. “There are a number of industry initiatives to drive this forward, including TEE, Intel IPT and TPM that has gained a new lease of life with Windows 8.”

James Coughlin, Cannon Technologies Middle East says that Iris on the Move technology is emerging to provide fast and unobtrusive biometric verification: “Unlike other options that require people to stop or to position their eyes close to a camera, ‘Iris on the Move’ can verify an individual’s identity from a quick glance at the system from a comfortable distance.”

“Smart Mobile Identity, featuring multi-modial biometrics built on popular smartphone platforms will go to market in 2013 and start to gain adoption in markets such as law enforcement, border control and national ID management,” adds Joseph Pritikin, director of Product Marketing, Identity Solutions, AOptix.

IPv6 also has implications for physical security, says Peter Chadra of DrPete Inc: “Because IPv6 address scope is massive it can eliminate the requirement to NAT behind router addresses. This means that it becomes much easier to trace devices on the global Internet. This is important as we move towards an ‘Internet of things’.”

IT closer than ever and security forms a key element of this. “CCTV surveillance systems are a great example of this and

have been relying on transmission over IP networks for many years. The access control market has been slower to adopt this approach over the years, however, today’s access control systems are increasingly IP-based and as a result, are becoming more advanced, easier to integrate with existing systems and more cost-effective,” Coughlin adds.

“The primary reasons biometric security is becoming more popular globally are increasing concerns about the strength of na-tional security, and increasing occurrences of identity-theft related

/SECURITY


“THERE IS GROWING DEMAND FOR FASTER, MORE ACCURATE AND MORE USER-FRIENDLY IDENTIFICATION AND VERIFICA-TION TECHNOLOGIES FOR A WIDE RANGE OF APPLICATIONS.”

fraud. While North America and Europe have previously dominated the global biometric market, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa are emerging as viable, growing territories for biometrics.”

Integration and convergence seem to be key themes, for example there is a general movement of manufacturers, installers and end clients to the physical security information management (PSIM) model – having a single command and control interface to monitor and control information from various security subsys-tems including CCTV, access control, In-trusion etc. A PSIM system also provides information to operators to select the most optimum response to deal with any given situation.

“The above is in fact part of a larger emerging phenom-enon. The concept of a master system integrator (MSI) will gain significance over time,” says Venkat Raghavan, general manager, Al-Futtaim Technologies.

“The MSI will be capable not only of offering a solution that will encompass the complete range of low current and ICT systems, but also manage integration of various systems to enable seamless exchange of intelligence within the eco-system leading to empowered administration, secure community and unique user experience,” Raghavan adds.

But who are the customers? Businesses that offer e-services

look to be at the forefront of driving these technologies, as are companies that focus strongly on security solutions, such as the oil and gas industry. However experts are finding interest building across many verticals.

“Financial services, hi-tech, pharmaceuticals, government and healthcare remain the primary verticals deploying this type of technology for physical access control purposes,” notes Ian Lowe, senior enterprise solution manager, HID Identity Assurance.

“Biometric technologies are still primarily used at immigration and border control. There are some enterprises that use biometric readers for staff time and attendance systems as well as high secu-rity areas such as cash handling and storage areas with high value IT infrastructure such as server rooms,” highlights Raghavan.

“Hospitals and other areas where sanitisation is of primary importance have moved from the contact based keypad or finger-print readers to a non-contact based proximity palm vein based solutions,” he adds.

“Hotels, shopping malls and other large commercial properties with multiple control systems have moved to a more integrated approach for their security and control systems allowing for the operator to have a single interface to monitor and control the vari-ous sub-systems within that network.”

As criminals get wiser, it’s more important than ever for busi-nesses to put security high on the agenda and use the latest tech-nologies to secure their assets. From what the experts see and say, it’s clear that the region’s enterprises are rising to the challenge and are embracing the best physical security solutions available to them. And with new technologies continuing to hit the market, security looks set to be stronger than ever.

Biometric solutions are deployed in areas like border control, cash

handling and storage areas and server rooms,

says Raghavan.

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THIS MONTH: JOHN ROBERT PEARSONSENIOR PROJECT MANAGER, STME

Arabian Computer News delves below the corporate strategy to

understand what really makes the region’s IT leaders tick.

How did you end up in yourcurrent business role?I started in the IT industry with IBM as a customer engineer in 1977 in the UK, before progress-ing into large systems with IBM, both hardware and software. An opportunity arose in 1996 to move to Saudi Business Machines, where I was the account coordi-nator for large customers. I was based initially in Damman.

STME came along in 1999 and offered me a job as services man-ager in Riyadh, where I supported EMC storage and STK Tape Tech-nologies. I then moved to Kuwait in 2003 with STME, to become the services manager for Kuwait, where I stayed until 2007 when I moved to Qatar as service manager.

In 2008, STME asked me to move to Dubai as a project manager, and this year I was asked by the CEO to set up a Project Management Office for STME.

What is your management philosophy?I am a great believer in team work. It is crucial, especially in Project Management, where one single person cannot do it all alone and has to rely on his colleagues to work as a team to ensure a successful completion of the project at hand.

What was your first computer?It was a Sinclair ZX81 in 1981.

What is your greatest achievement?To gain the trust of the new CEO of STME, Ayman Al Bayaa, to have the confidence in asking me to set up the PMO for the company.

What is your biggest mistake?Everyone makes mistakes, some are small but on occasions they tend to become a bigger issue. The main thing is that you have to accept these mistakes and learn from them especially as an engineer where your mistakes can have a major impact on the customers systems.

What is your fondest memory of working in the IT industry in the Middle East?Being in the Middle East for the last sixteen years, I have seen major changes within the region. Not only seeing the growth in the industry, but also

within the working culture. The Middle East in general is such a multicultural re-gion, that it is interesting in understand-ing cultural differences and seeing them all working together.

What emerging technology do youthink will have the biggest impact on the market in 2012?Cloud technology, it is the global hot topic and it gives everyone the opportunity to access data from where ever they are.It is extremely cost effective and gives busi-nesses more flexibility in the services they offer their end users.

What’s the best way to deal with stress?Being a sports fan, I unwind watching football and golf.

GETTING PERSONAL

Nationality: BritishNumber of years in the industry: 35Favourite food: CurryHoliday destination: ThailandMusic:Music from 60’s, 70’s and 80’sDream car: JaguarGadget:Samsung S3 Piece of advice: Think of others!

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ACN - January 2013