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busting the U C myth
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Contents ISSUE 239 | december 2011
ANALYSIS 6 Sustainability is a mindset
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Speakers at the Sustainable ICT 2011 conference discussed the need for more education and the hand of the law to make ‘green’ IT solutions a more widely accepted part of enterprise investments.
The Green Champions 2011
38
We bring you all the inspirational path-breaking winners of the inaugural Green Champion Awards across both vendor and end-user categories.
Busting the UC myth
FVC, Polycom and CNME came together with a group of CIOs to discuss the many benefits unified communications solutions can bring to enterprises, eliminating a series of myths along the way.
Aiming for the enterprise
Huawei Technologies wants to be the number one choice for enterprises, especially in emerging markets, very soon, and is using its solutions internally to set an example. However, what they need to make a mark is decentralisation and a strong channel community.
Technology for a new year
Gartner reveals its top predictions for IT organisations and users for 2012 and beyond.
A walk in the clouds
Aparna Shivpuri Arya reports on the discussions at the Citrix Synergy Summit in Spain last month, and gives us an in depth look at the company’s plans for the future.
Round-up
As organisations in the region prep their strategies for another tough year, Pallavi Sharma speaks to regional vendors to discuss technologies they feel will help businesses stay competitive.
FEATURE 44 A good partner
50
Systems integrators form a critical link in the chain that leads solutions to become effective business tools within enterprises. As the skills base in the region improves, it is upto enterprises to choose and work with the best in the game, Sathya Mithra Ashok writes.
Smooth sailing
CNME speaks to experts in the regional transport and logistics industry to find out what investments it makes to counter unique challenges.
HOW TO 56 Lock down your wireless network
58
We bring you a quick round-up of IT industry news.
The future awaits
We bring you the best ways to lock down your wireless network and protect it against threats.
Boot your PC faster
It is the age-old question. Here’s how you can reduce the time it takes to boot your PC from 69 seconds to 47 seconds.
PRODUCTS 60 CNME gets down in the dirt with the latest gizmos and gadgets, and
Case study 30 Deal’s on
delivers the verdict.
Pallavi Sharma speaks to the technology chief at Cobone.com to figure out what makes the group buying site tick.
LAST WORD 62 A look at what major events await you, what we’re reading, and a
www.cnmeonline.com
sneak peek at the contents of the next issue of CNME. december 2011
Computer News Middle East
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EDITORIAL
A new ‘fen do’ CNME
Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: sathya@cpidubai.com Twitter: @computernewsme Facebook: www.facebook.com/ computernewsme
Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood
It is not every day that you go to China. Earlier this month, I was invited by networking and communications vendor, Huawei Technologies, to visit their headquarters in Shenzhen and I wasn’t one to say no. Truth be told this was not my first visit; I had been to Huawei’s headquarters back in 2007. However, four years can bring about a lot of changes, and you really feel them when the company has only recently officially launched its enterprise business and is still building a solutions portfolio for the business group. (Read more about that and its larger ambitions starting page 14). There is a lot you can learn from different cultures and the Chinese one is a treasure-trove. But the words of wisdom that I carried home with me this time can be summed up in the Chinese term ‘fen do’. As described by Dr Zhu, professor at Huawei Univeristy (an on-campus school run by the company for its employees and partners), ‘fen do’ brings together dedication to a goal, hard work to back up that dedication, aim towards and achievement of performance, and the attainment of success by creating customer value. Fen do is convincing; fen do with attitude is irresistible. And that’s what you will be seeing in the new CNME. Yes, come January 2012 we have a brand-new CNME for you. The new CNME brings together the well-established, highly respected industry expertise and knowledge of the last 20 years, with a forward-looking design that integrates content and trends from all areas of ICT in order to become the one-stop magazine for insight, analysis and information related to the ICT industry in the Middle East. The new CNME will feature seven comprehensive sections within its pages – Solutions World, Network World, Security Advisor, Storage Advisor, Integration Advisor, Telecoms World and Careers Advisor. By doing so, the new CNME will evolve beyond its legacy of the last few years, to become a true regional title and address the transformational technologies and processes of today and the future. This in turn will establish the new-age magazine as the go-to-source for growing enterprises to make decisions on everything related to their ICT investments and management, and for vendors and service providers to understand the challenges that they need to solve for enabling market development in the future. The changes in the magazine will be reflected in our highly successful online platform (www.cnmeonline.com), and you will see the integrated face across all our regional events for 2012 as well. (You will be able to see the whole calendar of these events on our website very soon.) The new CNME is fen do with attitude – and it is set to become the path-breaking ICT magazine of the region come January. New year, new beginnings. And with the new CNME, we are certainly taking that to heart. I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t wait for 2012. Happy ‘fen do’ New Year everyone. To get your own copy of the new CNME, or to know more about it, write to sathya@cpidubai.com.
Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409126 Editorial Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok sathya@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409111 Sub-Editor Pallavi Sharma pallavi@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409103 ADVERTISING Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409131 Commercial Director Karl Hougaard karl@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409136 Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409147
Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409104 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409108
DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by
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DEAL’S ON
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SYSTEM INTEGRATORS
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BUSTING THE UC MYTH
© Copyright 2011 CPI All rights reserved While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.
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events Sustainable ICT 2011
Sustainability is a mindset Speakers at the Sustainable ICT 2011 conference discussed the need for more education and the hand of the law to make ‘green’ IT solutions a more widely accepted part of enterprise investments.
G
reen ICT is a great goal to work towards, but to make it a reality among a larger set of the enterprise community, there needs to be more awareness and more jurisdictional support. “There are a lot of green IT solutions available in the market. However, the truth is that there are very few independent assessments of how green a solution actually is. Most vendors claim that their systems are 50% greener, but there is no test to confirm this in comparison with other similar solutions. The onus of actually making sure whether a particular infrastructure or other solution actually consumes less power lies with the end-user,” said Dr Fabrice Saffre, chief researcher at the Etisalat BT Innovation Centre (EBTIC). 6
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december 2011
“Companies have to understand the objective of why they are going green before they choose any solutions in the market. Often here the idea of ROI and higher cost efficiencies does not even come into the picture. The situation that actually make companies look for greener solutions is either the unavailability of power or the lack of adequate power and the lack of space itself,” said Oussama Bachour, systems engineering manager at Juniper Networks MEA. Philip Hughes, CEO of Akhdar FVCO added, “The capex to opex model for arriving at better benefits is not prevalent here. Companies here look at point solutions for specific problems, and do not look at the holistic nature or at the overall opex model for better benefits.” www.cnmeonline.com
Dr Fabrice Saffre, chief researcher at the Etisalat BT Innovation Centre (EBTIC).
Even when companies are convinced enough to invest in green, most of them choose the solutions that they cant go wrong with – brands and vendors that make the most noise in other words. After all, nobody gets fired using IBM, opined the panellists. The very same mindset prevails when choosing management software. “Enterprises go for the solutions that are the buzzword of the week. Besides most of them do not pay consistent attention to managing their solutions, so that they pay out on a regular basis and remain to their green word,” said Hughes. “Design is one of the most important elements when setting up a green data centre. An enterprise should put in extra effort to ensure that they get right data centre
Oussama Bachour, systems engineering manager at Juniper Networks MEA.
Jaiwanth Kumar, senior project manager for IT infrastructure and services at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Dubai
Philip Hughes, CEO of Akhdar FVCO
Vaibhav U Bhatt, infrastructure service manager at DHL Express UAE
design at the first go. When they do that, the management elements become much easier,” stated Jaiwanth Kumar, senior project manager for IT infrastructure and services at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Dubai. Kumar also said that it is important for an end-user to choose the systems integrator or partner in the right fashion. According to him,
sharing strategy with the right partner can help organisations choose and profit better from their green investments. Vaibhav U Bhatt, infrastructure service manager at DHL Express UAE, a company that has benefitted by putting in place a green printing management solution, spoke about the need to change overall mindset within
Companies have to understand the objective of going green before they choose any solutions in the market. Often here the idea of ROI and higher cost efficiencies does not even come into the picture. The situation that actually make companies look for greener solutions is either the unavailability of power or the lack of adequate power, and the lack of space itself.”
www.cnmeonline.com
an organisation in order to ensure that any solution works, not just for the IT team, but Phillip Roy, director of Greenplum in the ME across the entire personnel base. “We used extensive internal marketing when we implemented the new print management system. We sent out mailers, and weekly information notices, among other methods, in order to familiarise people with the new solution and its advantages. This is essential in order help people withinofficer an at Ali to Gooyabadi, chief strategy Altisthe Distribution organisation get more familiar with entire concept of greener solutions and how they can bring overall benefits,” said Bhatt. Overall, the panellists agreed that awareness among organisations on the entire lifecycle management of ICT that is necessary to go green, and the application of suitable regulations in order to highlight the benefits and encourage the adoption of sustainable ICT solutions were necessary to promote usage among Middle East enterprises. “Awarness within orgnaisations has to be top-driven. There needs to be senior management who understand the multiple issues and work on getting the message through. At RTA, we work to make our company and the society as a whole a better place. This is why we have many green initiatives, apart from the data centre, like a Paperless Day,” said Kumar. “Education is absolutely necessary. Education to understand that not everybody who consumes the same amount of energy leaves the same carbon footprint; that energy in the Middle East is not really cheap and that it will grow more expensive in the coming years; that green is not point-solutions but a holistic view that considers how each piece of equipment is going to be disposed of at the end of its lifecycle. All that is necessary to get green accepted across a larger audience in the region,” concluded Hughes. december 2011
Computer News Middle East
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Events Sustainable ICT 2011
The inaugural Green Champion Awards ceremony highlighted the trend-setting work done by vendors and end-users in adopting green ideology and practices for themselves, and in the work they have done to encourage their peers to take up greener cudgels as well.
END-USER CATEGORIES GREEN CHAMPION – DATA CENTRE
They say that green is a mindset and this company has taken green seriously enough to implement it not only within its organisational functioning but also in its external interactions with its customers and the general public. It has an entire Green IT initiative, where they track, monitor and try to control all aspects of IT functioning – from the end-user device to the data centre. Within the data centre the company has been working to reduce energy consumption. They have consistently monitored data centre practices and by linking practices not only to the environment, but the ultimate bottomline and the savings they enjoy in cutting cost of operations.
WINNER: Roads and Transport Authority, Dubai 8
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GREEN CHAMPION – DESKTOP/PRINTING This company was established in 1996 by Federal Cabinet Decree to regulate Civil Aviation and provide designated aviation services with emphasis on safety and security and to strengthen the aviation industry within the UAE and its upper airspace. Over time, this company has used the web and the Internet across the UAE in order to help its base of users get the most of the services it has to offer in the most ecologically relevant manner. It has enabled the better use of the large number of end-user devices that exist in the market today, and continues to do groundbreaking work within its organisation.
WINNER: General Civil Aviation Authority, UAE.
GREEN CHAMPION – INNOVATION This particular governmental agency is committed to protecting and managing biodiversity, providing a clean environment and promoting sustainable development in the capital city of the Emirates. They were awardes for the commitment they have shown in bringing environmentally-conscious functioning within their organisation. This particular organisation continues to use innovative methods to spread awareness of the need for ecologically-oriented decision-making among all team members in the organisation. While they work to develop and implement an effective environmental regulatory and policy framework for Abu Dhabi, this firm has also implemented policies inhouse to ensure that power is saved at every point and that members of the organization work as a whole to achieve greater environmental consciousness.
WINNER: Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi
GREEN CHAMPION – OPERATIONS
There was no doubt from the beginning that this organisation would take home the trophy. They have virtualised 50% of their servers and target 80% by 2012. They have gone live with a print management solution that ensures a saving of upto 75% on personal printers, with expected opex cost of consumables to go down by 55% and paper consumption of printers are also expected to decline by 20%.
WINNER: Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) www.cnmeonline.com
december 2011
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events Sustainable ICT 2011
GREEN CHAMPION – E-WASTE CONSCIOUSNESS This was a tough choice simply because there are not many organisations in the UAE or anywhere in the region that take e-waste disposal and recycling seriously. This organisation stood out as one of the few that had done extensive work with vendors in the region in order to responsibly manage end-of-lifecycle IT and electronics equipment.
WINNER: Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority
VENDOR CATEGORIES GREEN CHAMPION - HARDWARE This company has been working on producing more solutions that consume less power and operate more efficiently within enterprise data centres – one of the biggest power hungry establishments within IT – for many years now.
WINNER: Dell
GREEN CHAMPION – MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
The company won for its commitment to developing practices and products that help protect the environment. The company’s sustainability-related solutions cover an unmatched breadth and depth of capability and it continues to invest in and innovate in the space.
WINNER: Oracle 10
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GREEN CHAMPION – INNOVATION IBM recently launched a web-based lighting management system, which is said to be the first regional product for energy management for outdoor lighting devices using state of the art electronics design, wireless technologies and web tools. The software is employed to save 15%-35% of the consumed energy which helps to achieve a green environment by reducing the CO2 emission. More importantly the solutions are designed into taking account the peculiarities of the region in order to provide better efficiency.
WINNER: IBM
GREEN CHAMPION – E-WASTE DISPOSAL/RECYCLING
This is a dedicated company offering recovery or reclaim and e-scrap management services in the Middle East. A public private partnership with the UAE Ministry of Environment and Water it possesses all the necessary technology, resources and infrastructure to help companies, NGOs and public sector entities fulfill their corporate environmental responsibility. This company has launched national e-waste campaigns in Qatar with QTel, Bahrain with Zain, Kuwait with Wataniya, Afghanistan with Roshan, and is discussions in KSA, Egypt, and Oman for the same. IT has also signed similar contracts with Etisalat for the same campaigns in 18 countries.
WINNER: EnviroServe
GREEN CHAMPION – MARKET EDUCATION
This award went to the vendor that has been working extensively in the region to spread a green ideology and encourage the general adoption of solutions and best practices for ecologically sensible decisions across the IT sphere – covering everything from the initial procurement phase right down to the disposal of every investment in the best way possible.
WINNER: HP www.cnmeonline.com
december 2011
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ANALYSIS Month in view
Busting the UC myth FVC and Polycom worked with CNME to bring together a group of CIOs to discuss the myths that surround unified communications (UC) solutions and to elaborate on the benefits that enterprises can derive from the investment.
K S Parag, MD at FVC
U
nified communications is no old technology. But it certainly suffers from misconceptions and many an enterprise still struggles to give the set of solutions proper shape in their minds. Recently, FVC and Polycom, the global communications major, conducted a CIO roundtable in Abu Dhabi in order to bust the myths that surround the set of solutions. “There are several myths that surround UC. The first is that it is more expensive
than traditional communication systems, the second is that it is less secure than more conventional options. Then there is the myth that enterprises lose their existing investments in voice systems when they implement UC, that only a few people in the organisation will benefit from the features of a UC system and that it does not make longterm economic sense in the Middle East. We are here to bust these myths and establish the benefits of these set of technologies without a doubt,” said K S Parag, MD at FVC at the start of the roundtable. He proceeded to elaborate on the several advantages that enterprises – especially ones that have a distributed network – have to gain from a UC solution. Daniel Schmierer, regional VP MEA at Polycom elaborated on the integrated nature of the UC solution provided by the vendor, and gave extended information on the different situations on which such a solution can prove more useful to enterprises than the one-point usage of collaboration apps inhouse or on the internet. End-users who had gathered at the event raised several concerns on unified communications solutions, including the problem with bandwidth consumption and the upfront capex that is necessary to make these solutions possible. “The truth is that organisations don’t need that much more bandwidth to use a
The truth is that organisations don’t need that much more bandwidth to use a perfectly viable UC solution. In fact, even if the organisation was to go in for a fullfledged telepresence solution, they would not need much more bandwidth than a 512KB line – probably one that they are already using.”
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Daniel Schmierer, regional VP MEA at Polycom
perfectly viable UC solution. In fact, even if the organisation was to go in for a fullfledged telepresence solution, they would not need much more bandwidth than a 512KB line – probably one that they are already using. Now, I am not saying that such a line would be enough if you are involved in highly mobile environments, where objects are constantly moving. But that is certainly enough for normal meeting situations where everybody remains static. In fact, Polycom solution has been proven to consume 50% less bandwidth than its competitors,” expalined Schmierer at the session. He pointed out that this was especially beneficial in a market where all other telepresence providers needed an MPLS line with 4MB connectivity to produce close to the same effect for customers. The capex element was addressed by Parag in his answer. “Yes, there is an
End-users gather at the Immersive Telepresence room at Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi for a demo of Polycom’s telepresence.
investment necessary to make the solution possible. However, FVC can work with the customer to understand his requirements in a more complete fashion and advice him on what elements of UC he needs to invest in immediately, and which elements he can put on hold for another year’s budget. We can even try and help them in turning some of these capex costs into opex elements to make life easier for the IT team and the CFO of the organisation,” he said. CIOs gathered at the event also expressed their desire to see more truly unified communications solutions from vendors – solutions that proved to be agnostic and gave them a single platform to do all the collaboration necessary. Parag responded stressing that Polycom worked with other vendor solutions like Microsoft Lync and, while agreeing that vendors should work to create end-to-end communications solutions, pointed out that this might not come true for some time and what we are likely to see is increasing partnership between vendors of different parts of the solution to ensure that a UC
system works in a seamless manner within an enterprise. “There are multiple challenges that end-users still seem to face with unified communications. This is especially true
Dharmendar Parmar, GM for marketing at FVC addresses the gathered CIOs at the roundtable
www.cnmeonline.com
of markets like the Middle East, where the telecom scenario is a little different from more developed markets. However, we see increasing interest in this set of technologies, especially among smaller and growing organisations, and we believe it is only a matter of time when it is more widely accepted and adopted,” Parag added. Schmierer added that Polycom was working to make this adoption scale easier for customers by providing even UC-as-aservice and using technologies like the cloud in order to make it easier for organisations to implement and start using the various features of a full-fledged UC solution. The roundtable ended with the Polycom and FVC team demonstrating the efficiency of the vendor’s telepresence solution. They first did this by creating a video conferencing link between the FVC office in Dubai and the venue of the roundtable in Abu Dhabi through an iPad. End-users were then taken to the complete immersive telepresence experience – in a room specially made for the same – at the same venue as the roundtable. december 2011
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ANALYSIS Huawei headquarters visit
Aiming for the enterprise Huawei Technologies wants to be the number one choice for enterprises, especially in emerging markets, and is using its solutions internally to set an example. However, what they need to make a mark might be decentralisation and a strong channel community.
H
uawei Technologies, the leading networking solutions vendor from China, expects the enterprise division of the business to contribute 20% of overall revenues by 2015. According to David He, president of marketing for the enterprise business group, the enterprise division, which was officially launched by the company earlier this, is expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the next few years. “We want to be the number one provider of end-to-end ICT solutions connected to the data centre and the network, especially in emerging markets like the Middle East, by 2015. And we want to do that by staying true to Huawei principles. We don’t want be to just another global provider, we want to be Huawei,” says He, with pride. According to He, much of the growth that the firm is targeting in the enterprise segment will be enabled by expanding its current presence in countries around the world. It will capitalise on its current telecom-focused sales establishment in 140 countries, build enterprise teams, and also create and enable a channel partner base in order to reach more potential customers in the public and private sectors. “In the enterprise segment, we see a lot of interest from varied verticals, like education and healthcare. This is especially true for developed markets like North America and Europe. In developing markets, we see a lot more ICT investment being made by public sector and government bodies. In tune with that, we see more potential interest in our enterprise solutions coming from this particular sector 14
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David He, president of marketing for enterprise business group at Huawei Technologies
in these markets. This is true for the Middle East region as well,” says He. The company prides itself on its strong R&D base. More than 50,000 of its 120,000 staff strength is focused on R&D and it re-invests 10% of global revenues back into product development every year. According to He, the R&D process is driven by constant feedback from customers across the global in a system that is referred to internally as integrated product development. “In this system, we translate the market terms of the customer into technical language, and keep the customer informed about when they can expect the launch of the product with the relevant updates. While this is an extremely mature process for our telecoms arm, the process will work slightly differently for the enterprise www.cnmeonline.com
business. With the new division, we expect to collect fresh feedback from our customers directly, but we also expect our global and local partners to help us in not only collecting these thoughts from customers but to help us integrate this into future versions of products as well,” says He. As the company finalises on its acquisition of Symantec’s stake in the Huawei-Symantec joint venture, He assures that there will be more security and storageoriented solutions coming out of that side of the business next year. “We already have products from the joint venture which are functioning as integrated elements with our current solution sets, including in our cloud solution. We will continue to innovate in that area and launch more solution sets meant for enterprises in the coming months,” added He. Huawei also wants to put forth its success with its inhouse use of its new solutions – especially the desktop cloud solution - as it works to convince customers about its ability to step beyond networking and communications, into the sphere of entire data centres – right from building them to managing them. (Read box for more details.) However, the highly centralised and strongly controlled Chinese company has its work cut out for it as it steps beyond the telecoms segment and attempts to convince global enterprises. Apart from the strong solutions that it is planning to launch in the new year, it requires a well-thought out marketing plan and a reliable channel partner strategy in order to reach the goals it has set itself.
A cloud desktop
Apart from this, the high power consumption, the shorter life cycle and the higher failure rate of the systems had Huawei consider the cloud desktop solution to replace all desktops used by largely stationery employees across the organisation. In Huawei Technologies’ new R&D centre in Shanghai, “The implementation was split between two 8000 staff work on improving the company’s products phases. The first phase covers all the offices of the and solutions across its entire range of offerings. Shanghai R&D research centre and supports 10,000 “The technologies that these personnel work employees. This is complete now. on include everything from our telecom offering to “The features of the desktop solution include the more recent enterprise focused offerings. They three logical security areas (red, yellow and green) also work on our platform of cloud solutions, where defined according to employee types, local disk-free we provide our customers cloud-based data centre thin client (TC) with digital certification of access – everything from virtualised servers to storage and authentication, SSL-encrypted transmission that security, right down to a cloud-oriented desktop ensures system security, and multiple access solution,” says He Li Yang. president of solutions authentication modes for unified authentication on Huawei enterprise global markets. the desktop cloud platform. There is also high-speed In the interest of eating its own dogfood, achieving internet, resource management and scheduling across higher efficiencies for its large workforce, and to prove multiple data centres. Besides this there is office use at to customers as its own best case study, Huawei has daytime and integrated testing at night to utilise existing been using its cloud desktop solution across the R&D resources to the maximum potential,” says Yang. centre at Shanghai. According to the company, it has already achievd “In the traditional desktop environment, data was multiple benefits from the desktop cloud solution. stored on the hard drive of each PC. It was fragile and “After the desktop cloud deployment, data is no could easily be attacked by the latest virus or Trojan. longer stored separately on each PC, but uniformly on Due to its instability, the system was prone to a variety servers in cloud data centre. Information is separated of software and hardware failures and even system from PCs, which fundamentally ensures information crashes. In addition, the data loss caused by device security. In addition, multiple security mechanisms, failures was difficult to restore,” says Yang. including thin client (TC) access authentication and He continues, “Huawei had to spend astonishing transmission encryption, further ensure the security additional costs in information security issues. To and reliability of the desktop cloud system. A desktop prevent a series of information security breaches, cloud data centre is able to automatically manage Huawei bought a large amount of information security and control resources. It automatically controls the management software every year, installed a special resource load during the day to ensure physical server security lock on each PC, and appointed full-time load balancing, and shuts down unnecessary physical Huawei in Desktop Cloud Success Story employees to manage and maintain security locks. servers based on virtual machine resource status Each person maintained an average of 1200 PCs, at night to save energy. Maintenance-free TCs have which cost about RMB 4.78 million per year. In addition, simple hardware and software structures and do not the labor costs wasted in waiting for unlocking reached The following table lists the effectiveness of the cloud computing data center, which reflects Huawei's benefits from the have local storage. In the desktop cloud environment, Shanghai research center desktop cloud. RMB 5.65 million per year.”
Initial investment Electricity Power consumption CPU usage Hardware deployment time Maintenance efficiency
Traditional Data Center TRADITIONAL DATA CENTRE
Cloud Computing Data cloud computing data centre Center
Effectiveness Effectiveness
100 servers +10,000 PCs
390 servers + 10,000 TCs
40% CapEx saving
78 MW
22 MW
71% less
< 5%
> 60%
12-fold
> 3 months
< 1 week
92% less
< 100 nodes/person
> 1000 nodes/person
10-fold
each IT employee can manage more than 1,000 virtual desktops, 10 times more than that under the traditional PC office environment. As such, Huawei’s IT system management and maintenance cost is greatly reduced,” says Yang. In the desktop cloud environment, all services and applications are running in the data centre; therefore, the application reliability reaches a carrierclass of 99.999%, which is much higher than the that of the traditional PC environment. The total power consumption of a TC and an LCD is about 70 W, over 50% lower than the 200 W power consumption of a PC. Employees can remotely access desktops at any time on different devices in the office or laboratory, on the move, or at home. Since the data and desktops are uniformly running in the data centre, users can uninterruptedly run applications when seamlessly changing office locations. “In the desktop cloud environment, all resources are stored in the data centre, achieving centralised control and flexible scheduling of resources. It takes only several minutes to adjust the performance of a user’s desktop. Rapid resource provisioning and on-demand use become a reality. Centralised resource sharing also improves resource utilisation. The average CPU usage of a PC is less than 5%, while in the desktop cloud environment, the CPU usage of the cloud data centre is about 60%. This improves the overall resource utilisation, which is equivalent to the reduction of the total hardware resources, thereby achieving energy conservation and emission reduction, and also reducing the hardware costs of Huawei,” says Yang. With all the benefits it has obtained, the company is already working on phase two of the desktop cloud solution, where the project is taken to cover all overseas research centres and service departments of Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen, and will support 60,000 employees. This is currently under construction.
Conclusion: www.cnmeonline.com As a high-tech multinational corporation, Huawei has an increasing number of employees geographically dispersed worldwide. The traditional office desktop system has brought many risks and challenges to the internal management of Huawei and caused high management costs. As such, Huawei has developed and put into use a desktop cloud system within the company to resolve the long-troubled problems, protect Huawei's intellectual asset security, and reduce internal management costs. The desktop cloud system has brought great benefits for Huawei
december 2011
Computer News Middle East
15
ANALYSIS Predictions
the lack of control can only be countered through coordinative activities. The IT organisation of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT.” Gartner’s top predictions for 2012 include:
Technology for a new year Gartner has revealed its top predictions for IT organisations and users for 2012 and beyond, and they herald changes in control for IT organisations as budgets, technologies and costs become more fluid and distributed.
G
artner’s top predictions for 2012 and beyond showcase the trends and events that will radically change the nature of business today and in years to come. “The continued trends toward consumerisation and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others,” said Daryl Plummer, managing VP and Gartner fellow. “As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organisations have watched shift over the last few years. As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled. While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside.” 16
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Gartner analysts said that going into 2012 there is an increase in the amount of information available to organisations, but it’s a challenge for them to understand it. Given the shifts in control of systems that IT organisations are facing, the loss of ability to guarantee consistency and effectiveness of data will leave many struggling to prevent their organisations from missing key opportunities. Without regulatory help on the horizon, each business needs to decide for itself how to handle the introduction of big data. “Any organisation which wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities,” Plummer said. “They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that www.cnmeonline.com
By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalise up to 15% of top outsourcing players’ revenue. Industrialised low-cost IT services (ILCS) is an emerging market force that will alter the common perceptions of pricing and value of IT services. In the next three to five years, this new model will reset the value proposition of IT. Low-cost cloud services will cause the cannibalisation of current and potential outsourcing revenue. Similar to what happened with the adoption of offshore delivery, it will be incumbent upon vendors to invest in and adopt a new cloud-based, industrialised services strategy either directly or indirectly, internally or externally. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.
In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014. Vendors in the consumer social network space are competing with each other at a rate and pace that are unusually aggressive, even in the technology market. The net result is a large crop of vendors with overlapping features competing for a finite audience. In the enterprise market, many small independent social networking vendors are struggling to reach critical mass at a time when market consolidation is starting, and megavendors, such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google and VMware, have made substantial efforts to penetrate the enterprise social networking market. While substantial excitement will be raised by private firms going public, valuations of smaller independent vendors will diminish as recognition sets in that the opportunities for market differentiation and fast growth has eroded.
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ANALYSIS Predictions
By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client. While the rise in popularity of mobile devices and the growing comfort with browser use for enterprise applications preordains a richer mix of email clients and access mechanisms, the pace of change over the next four years will be breathtaking. Email system vendors are also likely to build mobile clients for a diverse set of devices for the same reason. Market opportunities for mobile device management platform vendors will soar. Increased pressure will be on those suppliers to accommodate an increasing portfolio of collaboration services, including instant messaging, Web conferencing, social networking in addition to shared workspaces.
By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service. While enterprises are evaluating the potential cloud benefits in terms of management simplicity, economies of scale and workforce optimisation, it is equally critical that they carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks. Inspectors’ certifications will eventually become a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing. At year-end 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud. With the current global economy facing financial pressure, organisations are
Any organisation which wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities. They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that the lack of control can only be combated through coordinative activities. The IT organisation of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT.” By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1. Smartphones and tablets represent more than 90% of the new net growth in device adoption for the coming four years, and increasing application platform capability across all classes of mobile phones is spurring a new frontier of innovation, particularly where mobile capabilities can be integrated with location, presence and social information to enhance the usefulness. Gartner estimates that app development projects targeting PCs to be on par with mobile development. Future adoption will triple from 4th quarter 2010 to 1st quater 2014, and will result in the vast majority of client-side applications being mobile only or mobile first for these devices. 18
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compelled to reduce operational costs and streamline their efficiency. Responding to this imperative, it is estimated that more than 20% of organisations have already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture that is a combined deployment of their on-premises solution with a private or public cloud provider in 2011.
By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organisations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget. Next generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need technology to be contextualised for them by an IT department. These people are demanding control over the IT expenditure required to evolve the organisation within the confines of www.cnmeonline.com
their roles and responsibilities. CIOs will see some of their current budget simply reallocated to other areas of the business.
Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities. As IT delivery methods meet the demand for the use of cloud services and employee-owned devices, new software vulnerabilities will be introduced, and innovative attack paths will be developed by financially motivated attackers. The combination of new vulnerabilities and more targeted attacks will lead to continued growth in bottom-line financial impact because of successful cyber attacks.
By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge. While cloud operators can make strategic decisions about locations, tax subsidies are no long-term answer to managing costs, and investments in renewable-energy sources remain costly. Some cloud data centre operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators — driven by competitive pressures and a “me too” approach. Through 2015, more than 85% of Fortune 500 organisations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage. Current trends in smart devices and growing Internet connectivity are creating significant increases in the volume of data available, but the complexity, variety and velocity with which it is delivered combine to amplify the problem substantially beyond the simple issues of volume implied by the popular term “big data.” Collecting and analysing the data is not enough — it must be presented in a timely fashion so that decisions are made as a direct consequence that have a material impact on the productivity, profitability or efficiency of the organisation. Most organisations are ill prepared to address both the technical and management challenges posed by big data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively exploit this trend for competitive advantage.
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ANALYSIS month in view
A walk in the clouds The Citrix Synergy Summit, which took place last month, gave an insight into the company’s latest solutions, and an opportunity to get an in-depth understanding of its future plans and ambitions. Aparna Shivpuri Arya writes.
T
he start of Citrix’s Synergy Summit 2011 yesterday in Barcelona, Spain, saw Mark Templeton, CEO of the company, introduce the audience to a range of new products and applications during his keynote address. Most of the announcements expanded and added to Citrix’s strategy of promoting the bringyour-own-technology (BYOD) methodolody within enterprises. “The IT industry is besieged with consumerisation and a demand for more mobility and an integrated platform which allows us to access the same information from different devices. Citrix is addressing this with the launch of CloudGateway, the industry’s first unified service broker that aggregates, controls and delivers Windows, web, SaaS and mobile apps to any user on any device. We are also introducing today the Netscaler SDX that allows consolidating all delivery services whether web or Windows-based,” said Templeton. Templeton used VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) to define consumerisation. As the current world scenario presents these four elements, companies like Citrix have to build solutions that help address and minimise the effects of these factors. Templeton also talked about a new “Citrix HDX Ready System-on-Chip (SoC)” initiative, designed to enable an entirely new generation of devices to deliver highdefinition virtual apps and desktops. The company stated that the new chip will be produced by Texas Instruments and put into commercial devices by NComputing as well as other partners to be named. He said that the reference design Citrix has come up with for the chip could be implemented in a variety of devices including zero-client boxes the size of cigarette packages, monitors, keyboards and cable TV set-top boxes. According to Templaton, the chip would offer hardware assistance optimized for virtual 20
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december 2011
Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix Systems
desktops to make optimal use of bandwidth and to boost performance. Announcing the decision to acquire Apps-DNA and expanding on the recent partnership with Cisco, Templeton announced that the company would add data sharing to its GoToMeeting collaboration service. Technology for the new feature comes from its ShareFile technology. This includes what Citrix calls Follow-me Data Fabric, in which the service enables a range of devices, including mobile devices, to search, share, sync, send, encrypt and remote-wipe data. The company also announced the addition of WAN optimisation to its CloudBridge gear that connects data centres to cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service networks. So when data centres tap public clouds for more computing resources, the traffic between them and the cloud is optimised to use less bandwidth and be more responsive. “Clouds are built to deliver applications. It is all about going mobile and connecting every kind of device and every kind of application. The future is about these clouds providing such productivity, agility and flexibility that it helps people, business and IT deal with this world of uncertainty, this VUCA world,” concluded CEO Templeton. www.cnmeonline.com
Citrix’s cloud way On the sidelines of the conference, Derek Slayton, senior director of product marketing at the cloud platform group in Citrix Systems, took time to state the differences between cloud and virtualisation, and expanded on the difference based on the architecture that both models function on. “Virtualisation is a stepping stone to cloud solutions. Citrix can and does have detailed discussions with enterprises on whether they want to and how they can move to the cloud in a seamless, non-disruptive fashion. The kind of cloud that would work for an enterprise entirely depends on the scale of the particular organisation and what they would like to work at with the cloud. If they are going to run an internal cloud that is highly scalable, then they would want an economic model that is going to work for them, and can continue to invest in server virtualisation management” said Slayton. He said that most enterprises can benefit with the twin elements of CloudStack and CloudPortal. While the latter deals with business management technology, the former is concerned with cloud building technology. However, he warns, that even with all the capabilities that the two solutions bring to the table, there is yet a lot of work that is demanded from the customer’s end and Citrix’s end in order to make every deployment work in the short and long terms. Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at the company said, “It’s very easy to say what organisations are doing wrong with virtualisation – they are ignoring it. Citrix sees many organisations rolling out big virtualisation projects and running it without any security and the main reason for that is that it is easy for companies to set up these virtualisation environments without any IT involvement, so IT lifecycles are bypassed.” He added, “Cloud is a very complex architecture and needs IT support. The right thing to do is to realise that virtualisation is different, just putting a firewall will not help, so same security technologies won’t work.”
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ROUND-UP month in view
Zain signs $650m deal with Ericsson In one of the largest deals of its kind in the Middle East, Zain, one of Iraq’s more prominent mobile telecommunications providers has signed a US$650 million five-year network outsourcing agreement with Ericsson, a provider of telecommunications technology and services and its local partner SIM (Service in Motion). Under this agreement, Ericsson will optimise, modernse and manage IT operations and Zain’s mobile network in Iraq that currently includes more than 3,700 sites across the country, the company said. This is a significant deal for Zain as the agreement is expected to enhance the company’s competitiveness in the Iraqi market. The deal with Ericsson will enable Zain to increase its focus on its core customer facing business activities such as managing its customer relationships and to offer a shorter time-to-market for offering new services and technologies, representatives of the agreement said. In addition to which, experts said that the arrangement with Ericsson has the objective of improving network efficiency, reducing
operating costs and optimising Zain’s investment in Iraq. Nabeel Bin Salamah, Zain Group CEO said that “Through this agreement, Zain in Iraq will be better positioned to support the evolution and growth of the Iraqi telecommunication industry. Zain Group’s investment in Iraq since the launch of commercial services in 2003 and the
subsequent development of the country’s largest mobile network has exceeded US$4.5 billion and we will do our utmost in ensuring that all Iraqis receive the urgently-needed quality mobile telecommunication services they deserve.” Emad Makiya, CEO of Zain Iraq, confident that the outsourcing agreement will have many benefits for the company and its customers, added, “Choosing Ericsson, which has well over 15 years’ experience in managing outsourced networks in partnership with SIM to help operate our network in Iraq, fits perfectly within our business objectives of improving efficiency and the quality of our networks and operations. As a result, we will be in a stronger position to dedicate resources and assets to our core business operations, continuing to improve customer support, developing and launching new products, services and mobile applications, and delivering on the Zain brand promise of ‘A wonderful world’.” Following its recent expansion to northern Kurdistan, Zain plans to invest in its network infrastructure in the coming years to increase its network coverage in the country.
Smartphone users in KSA prefer Arabic applications A new Arab Advisors Group’s survey of cellular users in Saudi Arabia revealed insightful details on the smartphones adoption and usage patterns in the Kingdom. The survey report, “Saudi Smartphone Survey 2011” was released on November 3, 2011 and provides the results of a major comprehensive survey of cellular users in the Kingdom. The survey covered general cellular usage habits; smartphone adoption and usage habits; smartphone awareness, cellular handsets’ brands and models in addition to tablets availability among respondents, representatives said. The survey revealed that 47% of the respondents who use applications in Saudi Arabia prefer to use them in the Arabic 22
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december 2011
language compared to 8.2% in each of Jordan and the UAE. Arab Advisors Group projects the Smartphone applications combined annual revenues in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan to grow from US$ 44 million in 2011 to US$ 210 million in 2015. The survey revealed that iOS (iPhone) topped the list with 40% share of smartphones operating systems (calculated based on handsets’ brands). Blackberry ranked second at 38%, according to the survey. “The survey revealed that 57% and 52% of iPhone and Blackberry users, respectively, use applications through their smartphones, while 44% of Symbian smartphone users use applications,” said Jawad J. Abbassi, founder and GM of Arab www.cnmeonline.com
Advisors Group. Over 300 delegates will discuss and deliberate the ongoing trends in the regional smartphone ecosystem at Arab Advisors’ Smart Handheld Summit which will be held on December 5 and 6, 2011 in Dubai. “The Smart Handheld Summit comes in the context of booming Smartphone markets in the region and enhanced interest in the applications and content space. The summit is supported by Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Qualcomm, AppsArabia, Microsoft, nPario, Teletimes International, Comm., ITP CommsMEA, MediaME, TelecomWatch, FTTH Council, UBA, The Market Buzz, MediaStow, DMTV and Tech Tech.
ROUND-UP month in view
BA hires Xerox to cut 25% off digital print costs British Airways is partnering with Xerox to cut “up to a quarter” of the cost of its mail and digital print operations as part of a wider document management plan to improve process efficiency. BA, which already uses Xerox for other services, has signed a five-year enterprise print services contract with Xerox. Mark McCarthy, procurement executive at British Airways, said, “With Xerox focused on printing and streamlining our document processes, we can use our energy and time to focus on giving British Airways customers an improved service.” To manage more than 1 million items processed through British Airways’ mailhandling operation at London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports, Xerox has partnered with MITIE Business Services to create a mail and distribution services hub in Uxbridge, about six miles from Heathrow Airport. The 32 staff at the dedicated facility will carry out full security screening of all inbound mail items and associated courier deliveries. Before this deal BA had employed Pitney Bowes to manage its mail. The next phase of the project will be to migrate the airline’s mail processing to
a digital platform that feeds directly into its internal workflow systems, introducing further efficiencies, said Xerox. Before this deal, Xerox already provided BA with printed materials such as technical publications, in-flight services and training manuals, as well as payroll printing. These operations, which produce around 26 million documents per year, will also be run from the new Uxbridge facility. BA has not disclosed exactly how much it will save from the new contract or the value of the five-year deal.
Inefficient document management means western European businesses are effectively losing billions of pounds of potential profits because of “wasted time”, according to a report earlier this year. Research conducted by Coleman Parkes on behalf of Ricoh suggested that employees across Europe responsible for managing business critical document processes spend around 362 million hours of their time per year on the function. This equates to a rough overall business cost of 147 billion (£133 billion), Coleman Parkes said.
Huawei buys out Symantec in joint venture Huawei Technologies will buy out the rest of a joint venture with Symantec for US$530 million, the companies announced last month. The venture, based in Hong Kong, was formed in 2008 to integrate Symantec storage and security software into appliances built with Huawei’s telecommunications equipment expertise. Symantec owns 49% of Huawei Symantec Technologies, while Huawei holds 51%. “After the sale, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012, Symantec will receive royalties from Huawei for seven years for the technologies it contributes to the appliances. Symantec will still maintain its own business in China, which includes two research and development centres, and 24
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its own appliance business,” said Enrique Salem, Symantec’s CEO. “The few Symantec employees who worked for the joint venture itself will move to other parts of Symantec,” he said. Huawei Symantec Technologies entered the U.S. market late last year with the Oceanspace S2600 and N8300 storage platforms and the Secospace USG2000, a network gateway including switching, routing and security features. Following the press release, Huawei said it would continue to invest in the venture. “The companies held extensive discussions and decided it would be best to consolidate the venture under one owner,” Salem said. www.cnmeonline.com
“If we were going to continue to grow that business and be more competitive in the global market, it would have required us to continue to increase our investments and Huawei to increase their investments,” Salem said. “Instead, it was in Symantec’s best interest to invest in other areas of its business, such as mobile and cloud computing, he said. There also were issues on which the partners saw differently,” he added. Symantec made money on its original investment of $150 million in the venture. But in the six months ended September 30, 2011, the company reported a tax benefit from losses by the venture, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
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ROUND-UP month in view
Turkey’s largest ISP chooses EMC TTNET, Turkey’s largest Internet service provider, is automating several business processes across multiple departments using EMC Documentum xCP, an integrated platform for building dynamic business solutions and an action engine for Big Data. This was announced recently by EMC representatives at the company’s annual Information Intelligence Group’s global user conference. “EMC is pleased to deliver solutions to meet TTNET’s extensive requirements for new levels of automation and productivity. We see companies deploying Documentum xCP in a few key areas, then rapidly expand the footprint to reap additional value. It’s a strategy that has proven successful,” said Rohit Ghai, VP and GM, Content and Case Management Group, EMC Information Intelligence Group According to TTNET, with more than 6 million subscribers, it provides high technology broadband services to customers
in 81 provinces across Turkey. The company deployed a solution based on EMC Captiva, an intelligent information capture application, for correspondence management with customers and external parties, it was reported. According to EMC, the next phase of the implementation enabled TTNET to automate five internal business processes with
Documentum xCP, improving decision making, raising customer service levels and increasing productivity across internal departments including, legal, human resources, contracts management, sales, accounting and purchasing. TTNET’s EMC solution combines enterprise content management (ECM), business process management (BPM), and intelligent capture; the solution also enabled the company’s SAP users to access content stored in the Documentum repository. “In short order, we found immediate value in deploying EMC’s solutions across our enterprise, and continue to identify processes to automate. EMC Documentum xCP is a powerful solution for helping us to transform our business. EMC’s Services organisation partnered with our team from the business analysis phase, solution design, development, go-live, training and support to deliver the variety of projects on time,” said Olgay Tas, IT director, TTNET.
Private sector needs to take a proactive approach to security: aeCERT At a roundtable organised by the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and UBM, the audience had an opportunity to discuss the subject of Cyber security in a mobile work force with members of UAE Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT), security managers from prominent organisations in the region and representatives of McAfee. Experts at the roundtable predicted that security threats associated with mobile operating systems will continue to increase in 2012, as more organisation continue to give in to the culture of mobility to increase communications and productivity. Meshal A Bin Hussain, manager operations, aeCERT pointed out, “It’s interesting to note that with an increasing mobile workforce across the region, organisations need to pay careful attention to threats associated with the loss or misuse of information stored on an employee’s mobile 26
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device in addition to monitoring the external environment .” Mohammed Sabah, executive director information security & network services, Dubai Holding recommended. The company must invest in building awareness about security amongst its employees – new or old; this must be followed up with a stringent information security policy.” “It is imperative that organisations make it clear to all the employees, regardless of seniority or job description that the rules stated within the policy are applicable to all as is disciplinary action. Once this has been made clear, the company must enforce the policy right down to the tee. Experts gathered at the roundtable agreed that although the region has so far been lacking in its understanding and awareness of cyber security, the situation is fast changing as more organisations begin to learn from the mistakes of so many others in the past year. www.cnmeonline.com
Tariq Al Hawi, director, aeCert said, “One of the primary concerns we have is that private sector organisations are less prone to disclose the advent of a security breach than their public sector peers, they often come forward and report an attack only once the damage is done. When they do report an attack they are not as comfortable to share details associated with their network and infrastructure in addition to which these organisations don’t often disclose numbers which limits the ability for regional law enforcement agencies to conduct thorough forensics and investigation.” Professionals believe that this surge in the adoption of security solutions in the region is in part driven by the aggressive adoption of stringent security policies and measures by the private sector. “The private sector realises now, that the threats associated with cyber crime are very real having seen the likes of companies like Sony, Citibank etc,” concluded Hussain.
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The small-office-oriented Canon ImageClass MF8080Cw color laser multifunction printer looks expensive, but it’s available for just $450.
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Dealâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Pallavi Sharma speaks to the technology chief at Cobone.com to figure out what makes the group buying site tick.
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I
f you live in the Middle East and are constantly on the lookout for a good bargain, chances are, you’ve heard of Cobone.com, a group buying venture from Jabbar Internet Group, the set of regional internet companies that emerged after Yahoo! acquired Maktoob in 2009. Based in Dubai, Cobone combines the power of the Internet and group purchasing to give online shoppers in the Middle East access to some of the best hospitality, beauty, fitness and other service deals with savings that start at 50%. Cobone is marked by its funky fresh spirit and its innovative use of the Internet medium to interact and build relationships with an audience of retailers, suppliers and customers, much larger than most organisations can imagine. It is no surprise then that IT is considered of strategic impotance and task of making the right investments to sustain growth and enable expansion largely falls to the company’s chief technology and operations officer, Greg Hucker and his technology team. Hucker says that the IT team at Cobone.com includes six members and is
Security first
“Security is obviously a critical part of the business and ensuring our customer and partner data is safe and in compliance with regulatory requirements is essential to building and maintaining trust in the site,” says Hucker. The following are some of the key security investments Cobone.com has made to ensure that the site and customer information therein remains secure: • Web infrastructure hosted out of a secured Rackspace data centre based on a support contract that guarantees round-theclock borderless availability, with redundancy across all hardware levels.
“I would say reaching that balance between the cultural requirements of supporting Arabic & English for our consumers and partners is the most unique requirement. In-house we have a great family that understands how technology can help them in their daily business and overall strategic needs.” simply called the ‘technology team’ and comprises both the development family (affectionately called the code monkeys) and the operations team. “The internal IT infrastructure at Cobone is fairly basic. We have a high grade Cat6 backbone that drives an Avaya VoIP telephony and contact centre. Our core systems are hosted externally in a highly secure and redundant data centre environment,” he says. “At Cobone we always try to develop any application layer with as much scalability and flexibility as possible, so we never have to forklift out code segments or whole projects. We own our own back end deal application, which we developed from • Distributed Denail of Service (DDoS) through Prolexic, a cloud on demand service, who count leading clients in e-commerce, payment processing, travel/hospitality and gaming within their ranks • Cobone utilises the local payment gateway providers- Network International in conjunction with Emirates NBD bank. “We do not store credit card or personal information on our web site itself so we trust our local partners to comply and exceed international standards,” he adds. • Cobone.com also has a small fraud and payments team that works in close connection with the company’s payment providers and local authorities in major cities across the region. “We’ve even assisted taking down a criminal circle in Egypt preying on a number of online sites in the region,” Hucker says.
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scratch, and can quickly deploy changes or create integration API’s. The technology we implement is much like our organisationagile and dynamic,” says Hucker. Hucker believes that through its IT investments Cobone is not only capable of carving a niche in the market through the dedicated use of social media channels to interact with prospective clients but is also able to use these investments to enhance operational efficiency. “Our IT investments look to leverage trends like mobility, social networking and the cloud to provision maximum visibility across all our operations for all the stakeholders involved in the business and to ultimately add value to each of their investments,” says Hucker. Working together
Hucker says that the technology team pays careful attention to the ability of any platform to enable flexibility and scale in keeping with the broader culture at Cobone, but this isn’t always the easiest of tasks. “Being able to deliver scalability and sustain a competitive edge while maintaining room for creativity is sometimes a little bit of hit and miss. This is why at Cobone we encourage a culture of collaboration and decentralisation, encouraging individual success when stressing on the success of any project. We also ensure that all major projects are headed by an executive sponsor to make sure that buy-in is achieved across all levels. This adds confidence and a level of seriousness to the project,” he says. december 2011
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case study Cobone.com
The tech team assigns a project manager who is responsible for deliverables, assigning roles and responsibilities and load balancing across specific members or the entire team. The equal distribution of roles and responsibilities across team members often results in working over-time and therefore, Cobone extends its tech team the option to work flexible hours and entitles them to incentives and rewards to ensure they stay committed, engaged and motivated. At the software layer, the company subscribes to an open source ticketing solution for IT requests -Mantis Bug Tracker (MantisBT). Jobs are logged through this hosted portal and the team is assigned tasks based on a weekly review of the business priorities, according to him. Hucker believes that choosing the right strategic partner is perhaps the most critical element for project success. “We select partners that understand our business model and can adapt their own teams to match our requirements. We prefer to utilise local vendors and developers where possible because at times having access to the local support is the most imperative need. International vendors in some cases might have a skillset that cannot be found locally and we’ve managed to include them in our procurement process where necessary,” he says. 32
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In the bag Being an online business, today, necessitates the need to invest in IT beyond the efficient use of the Internet. “With the number of online shopping and group purchase options available today strategy and beating the competition are the senior management’s first priority; a goal that they know will not be possible without developing the right platforms to bring the customer closer and providing them with customised deals to suit their needs and wants,” he says. So how does he convince his senior management to make these investments? Easy. Hucker, a co-founder of the company and executive representative of both the technology and operations teams, is a member of the board and is therefore favourably positioned to pitch the right technology to the business. With that kind of support, Cobone continues to leverage key trends in the region and implement innovative IT solutions in house that allow them to reach farther and faster to their audience. For starters Cobone recently launched a mobile technology project that, they believe, is the first home grown Arabic and English group buying application in the region “Developed by the internal team in collaboration with Turkish mobile www.cnmeonline.com
application developer – Mobilike, the mobile technology is the only one of it’s kind in the world that supports Arabic in the daily deal vertical,” says Hucker. According to him, while the internal team provided the mobile API’s, methods and design specifications, Mobilike provided the technology platform, skills and resources to develop the turnkey project. “The application has been developed to allow customers to stay connected to Cobone. com and capitalise on every deal, regardless of location or device. It’s about developing alternative methods of communication with our audience and understanding how they want to interact with us,” he points out. The application is a fully featured and integrated platform that uses API calls to provide real time data and the ability to purchase directly in the customer’s currency of choice. The mobile application is available on the iTunes store for iPhone and iPod, and will soon be followed by an app for the iPad, as well as Android and Blackberry devices. “We have also recently launched the mobile site m.cobone.com for basic devices. Additionally, an HTML5 version with all the bells and whistles is under development. The mobile application project took all of four months and I expect that the first phase encompassing apps for the entire range of iOS devices will be completed before the end 2011,” adds Hucker.
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case study Cobone.com
He adds that, “As with any mobile application the technology will evolve as we innovate within our verticals. I see more phases being rolled out this year, one that will cover apps for popular BlackBerry and Android devices in the market in order to cover the entire span of customers in the region across the multiple platforms that they use,” he adds. Bagging the deal
Apart from taking steps to reach out to the customer, one of the core objectives of the Cobone team is to understand its customers better. It is for this reason that the team has invested in a social CRM or what they call the ‘social consumer trending’ project. A project developed by the technology team in tandem with a UK social enhancement company called Techlightenment, the project builds on the power of Facebook to help the company gain a better understanding of its customers interests and likes. The project uses the core of Facebook Connect to grant Cobone.com access to user information as defined within their own security settings and then creates a new enhanced social connect platform, according to Hucker. “The cool technology really comes in when we integrate these analytical dashboards and widgets with the purchasing and preference data from our own deal application layer. We can then target
messages based on feeds, comments and likes (pre and post sale) and even rank users on these metrics including their purchasing activity. We can see who has engaged, converted and interacted with our brand and the value of the transactions across generations of social activity. The platform is a full two way push and pull interface that also centralises the sales contact process, sales pipeline and the reporting dashboard” Hucker explains. Hucker proudly adds, “The team constructed the APIs to facilitate the necessary calls to the application layers to extract the required data across the social media platforms and we expect that it will be rolled out in early 2012.” Keeping in tune with the innovative nature of its functioning, Cobone has also been indulging in the cloud. “At this point in time, Cobone is about to make an investment in a best of breed international cloud based CRM product. The project is to be managed and delivered by a local service provider from Dubai. The solution will be utilised to address four main operational functions within the business, namely partnership management, deal management, customer service and sales,” Hucker says. He adds, “Our discovery and selection phase has taken about two months and the prospective partners have completed customised demonstrations with real Cobone.com data across the four core areas in an attempt to show their differentiation
Being able to deliver scalability and sustain a competitive edge while maintaining room for creativity is sometimes a little bit of hit and miss. This is why at Cobone we encourage a culture of collaboration and decentralisation, encouraging individual success when stressing on the success of any project. We also ensure that all major projects are headed by an executive sponsor to make sure that buy-in is achieved across all levels. This adds confidence and a level of seriousness to the project.”
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and strengths. It is also envisioned that a full two-way API will be created to facilitate the requirements, with a joint effort between the technology team and the third party vendor to deliver the goals. The total length of the project is forecasted to take another two months dependant on budgetary approval and project mobilisation from both the resource groups.” According to Hucker, the multi-country layout of the cloud suits the organisation’s borderless way of operations. “Being a cloud application, our business is not hindered or restricted in anyway based on physical investments in hardware or local infrastructure and this frees up internal resources for other projects.” Destined deals
As Cobone continues to grow, Huckers says that the technology team will continue to look for innovative ways to convert the investment in customer acquisition into tangible business value. He points out that the organisation will continue to better the investments it has already made across the mobile, social CRM as well as the cloud arena while looking for platforms that further enhance Cobone’s ability to cater to the demands of a rapidly expanding organisation. “The mobile space will get smarter and more innovative as we look at ways to engage our customers across locations via their preferred devices and serve them content that’s relevant and applicable. Enabling the team to better access and understand data to close sales leads and opportunities will also be on the forefront of the project list. We will continue to look at ways of reducing our overheads in hardware and infrastructure by focusing on cloud technologies and softwareas-a-service,” he says. With everybody expecting 2012 to be a tougher economic year than those past, Cobone can look forward to a whole new segment of shoppers on the hunt for a good bargain. And with an IT team like the one it has, its customers can be assured they are more likely to find them the first time around.
by 2015 That is equivalent to 18 million Libraries of Congress
7.9 Zettabytes
This amount is expected to hit
of digitised data
462 TB
Together the entire Library of Congress holds
According to the Library of Congress website, the Library has 208 Terabytes of digitized assets including books, manuscripts, photographs, sheet music, maps etc in addition to a web archive comprising 254Terabytes of information assets.
THE CASE Mobile
82%
37%
other sources, such as books and print materials
of US Online Adults follow a retailer via Facebook, Twitter or a blog
42%
of users have purchased something online via a Facebook link
28%
of consumers access customer in-store reviews via social networks on their mobile devices
47%
There are more than 800 million people on Facebook and 200 million people on Twitter
According to Social Commerce, more and more individuals are using social networks to interact with their brands of choice and more business is being done via these channels.
PC
72.9
2.9 375 20 24 50 700 1.3
Exabytes of data shared between mobile internet users products ordered on amazon per second
billion minutes spent on Facebook every month
million tweets per day
Petabytes of data processed by Google everyday
hours worth of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute
Megabytes of data consumed by households each day
million emails sent every second
Numbers by Cisco, comScore, MapReduce, Radicati Group, Twitter, YouTube in July, 2011
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast and Methodoly, June 2011, a Plethora of Internet enabled devices are contributing to this data deluge, the global Compound Annual Growth Rate for devices from 2010-2015 is:
26%
THE CONTENT
THE REASON
Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no denying that enterprises today, are experiencing an unprecedented growth in data volumes. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a look at some of the factors fuelling this explosion and the future in store.
Retail industry
Savings from using data $108 billion $165 billion $47 billion $9 billion $5 billion
A 10% increase in usability of data translates to $2.01billion revenue increase annually A 10% increase in accessibility to data = $65.67 million additional net income per year
According to Sybase IQ, a 10% increase in the usability and accessibility to data through investments in data analytics means a significant boost in sales and productivity.
Big data has the potential to cut operating costs by nearly 50% across all sectors of manufacturing
Manufacturing industry
Could achieve up to 60% increase in operating margins from big data
Division R&D Clinical Accounting Public Health New business model
Healthcare industry
McKinsay Global Institute Analysis cites points out the savings industries could make across various business departments if they utilised the data in a proactive manner:
THE GAPS
The biggest challenge is the lack of skilled personnel needed to mine, manage and read big data to create structure that enable value creation for decision making and business operations.
Talent
To make the most comprehensive data available companies will need to rely on third party data sources to integrate external sources with their own. According to McKinsay, currently not many markets allow for this kind of transfer and sharing.
Data sharing and access
Inferior and legacy technologies prevent data integration across many sectors. Managing data efficiently adds to storage and technology costs.
Technology
Since data can be easily copied, securing intellectual property is a serious consideration for policy makers.
Data Security
THE CHALLENGE
increase in volume of data moving through data centres
x10
increase in information managed by enterprise data centres
x50
increase in the number of physical and virtual servers
x10
Even as IT costs are dropping, capex is rising, by 2015 resource growth will expand by :
By 2015: nearly 3 billion people will be online â&#x20AC;&#x201C; IDC Extracting Value from Chaos, June 2011
THE FUTURE
TECH FOCUS IT in 2012
The future awaits As organisations in the region prep their strategies for another tough year, Pallavi Sharma speaks to regional vendors to discuss the technologies they feel will help businesses stay in the game in a challenging external environment.
Cloud in 2012 A majority of the experts interviewed for this feature said that in 2012, cloud technologies would finally surface in all their entirety, with the Middle East already witnessing an explosion of virtualised IT infrastructure to facilitate the adoption of cloud computing. Adrian Pickering, area VP, Juniper Networks, MEA says, “Server virtualisation, new application architectures, and storage consolidation have evolved the data centre, but networks have lagged behind. The result is complex, costly and inefficient data centre networks that are yet not cloud-ready. “Learning from best practices in 2011, organisations in the region are now researching the best ways to offload IT services to cloud providers in order to enjoy significant benefits such as savings in energy and storage costs, scalable infrastructures that enable quick adaptability to external changes,” he adds. 38
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“According to a recent IDC survey of the Middle East, 32% of the organisations surveyed are currently using or planning to use some form of cloud. Within the GCC, Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear more progressive with regards to cloud, with 34% and 33% of organisations, respectively, considering cloud. Of the one-third of organisations interested in cloud, the majority show a preference for Paul Hammond, GM, Infor, Middle East private cloud. With private cloud solutions, companies know where their data is stored, maybe even down to the hardware and software details,” says Sachim Bhardwaj, head of marketing and business development at eHDF.
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“Cloud should have a real impact in areas such as software-asa-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and these cloud categories will enable IT to create value through a combination of cost reduction, speed to market, agility and ability to integrate business processes seamlessly with partners and suppliers. CIOs need to seriously consider the innumerable long term advantages of investing in the cloud when working out budgets for 2012,” says George DeBono, GM, Middle East and Africa at Red Hat.
Mobility in 2012 CIOs today realise that they are increasingly living, playing and working in a digital world where people have no alternatives but to become more digital. According to senior IT executives, it is this digitisation that will drive the adoption of mobility and social media in the year to come. “Today’s consumer isn’t just satisfied by an ‘always on’ enterprise. They now expect their providers to be available anytime, anywhere and interactive. After all, it’s the consumer who is going to drive recovery, and organisations that grab their mindshare today are the ones that are going to benefit the most from the recovery,” says Deepak Narian, manager, systems engineers, VMware, MENA. Experts point out, that the demographics in the region also dictate the explosive use of mobile devices and social media platforms to interact and enable real time information sharing. “The second TNS Global Digital Life research, surveyed 72000 customers across 60 countries. Their research found that 32% of the population in the MENA region, access the internet for social
As we look back at 2011, the to-do list and choices for CIOs got longer and more complex. The pace of change is adding a level of uncertainty that doesn’t make any specific path clear. Knowing this, as most of us do, is not particularly helpful. But that’s not the point to focus on: the enlightened CIO must help go after the most valuable projects and be a trusted adviser to those who commit dollars to organisational goals.”
networking, emails, planning and organising and sharing multimedia content using a multitude of mobile devices,” says Steve HamiltonClark, CEO at TNS MENA. According to Hamilton-Clark, the availability of multimedia content and intuitive applications that enable real time information exchange at rapidly falling costs to the customer will only drive the adoption of mobile devices further. “Social media solutions, such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are already being integrated with business applications such as CRM. Not only do these platforms give organisations access to a much wider audience than was previously possible but it also enables businesses to interact with their customers and share information unhindered by conventional barriers,” says Shaheen Haque, territory manager, Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence.
Data-analytics and management in 2012 “CIOs at large enterprises have been focusing for years on cost-cutting due to the recession, but now company boards are pushing organisations to find new ways to grow business. These companies want to gain efficiencies as well as differentiate themselves in the market. Therefore, technology heads today must focus on being more strategic and adding value by enabling innovation,” says George DeBono, General Manager, Bhardwaj. Middle East & Africa, Red Hat “Decision makers need to evaluate and assess a number of elements to justify every investment- technology or otherwise. They need to analyse resource availability, long term cost of operations, the cost of maintenance, executive commitment and prospective customer segments, approximate turnover and revenue. Hence they must make sure that they have the right information to properly define and measure each of these elements,” says Colin Summers, regional director at CommVault Systems. This is why experts are certain that 2012 will be a year of massive investments in data analytics, data management and storage solutions. “The statistics available today allow companies to run simulations or models in order to predict the future outcomes and business areas, rather than just to review historical data and interactions. In addition to this, enterprises today also have access to large amounts of unstructured data from multiple social sources such as customer links to company social sites on Facebook and Twitter. They can now identify customer behaviour and evaluate the impact, quality or effectiveness of the social relationship between the company and the customer,” says Haque.
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TECH FOCUS IT in 2012
Summers says, “It’s the same story we are all storing and copying two to three times or even ten times on data, and in so many different forms, than we were a few years ago. CIOs realise that this increase is neither stopping nor slowing down and the most likely scenario is that this scale of growth will continue to increase and not decrease.” As organisations look to harness new sources of data in a bid to gain a significant competitive advantage, the ability to make real time intelligent decisions, while automating data management and simplifying data storage at competitive costs, will gain increasing importance and demand a larger share of IT budgets.
IT service provision 2012
According to the survey, the three questions that an enterprise must answer before deploying the model are: Does the organisation have sufficient budget to maintain IT operations reliably? Is the IT budget flexible or is it consumed by fixed costs? Does the IT budget contain sufficient funds to research and experiment with new technologies? Experts believe that in 2012, the task of helping organisations cope with yet another year of shrinking margins and decreasing budgets for growth and expansion will fall on already hard pressed IT teams and divisions. Technology chargeback models may be just what the doctor ordered to effectively free up budgets and make competitive technology investments.
Recommendations for 2012
At the Infrastructure Strategies 2011 event, Ossama El Samadani, director of storage services for Dell MEA recommended, “More IT organisations within enterprises have to turn themselves into service providers, ensure a service catalogue and start charging internal business units for utilising IT services,” he added. El Samadani also discussed at length about CIOs in the region who manage to work on a zero budget because of the implementation of a charge back model across their IT infrastructure, wherein they are paid by the business units based on the efficiency of app delivery. The use of chargeback models across organisations varies by institutional control, that is to say, the ability to implement a successful model varies based on centralised or decentralised budget models.
In most cases 90% to 95% of all IT budgets typically go to maintaining what systems are in place today, which leaves very little for investment in solutions that can help organisations move more aggressively into their future. CIOs really need to find ways of freeing up existing spend to allow for this innovation exploration and deployment.”
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ROI-the holy grail “Decision makers must consciously evaluate the actual budget associated with a project and the scope to expand based on the project’s potential ROI. It really is the acid test. Hence in order to get to the ROI, both the supplier and vendor need to invest in serious research and the acid test is to get to the real, i.e. assign dollar value to costs (e.g. operational savings must have a dollar value: everything should be and can be broken down into manageable numbers). Without the research and getting access to the costs, it really is impossible to get to the ROI, and therefore impossible to make an informed decision,” says Summers.
Visionary project filter “Executives must distinguish between development and operational projects. They must create a business case for the intended project, its alignment with the companies’ strategic objectives, project size (small, medium, and large) and high-level project information (sponsorship, scope, objectives, timelines etc.). The filter should ensure departments come up with adequate details associated with the project such as the need for a contact centre, and the time it would take to build and deploy the centre. Executives must stress the fact that without the sufficient details the project will be actively discouraged,” advices Haque.
Productivity in the plan DeBono says that when settling on an IT project, decision makers must focus on setting realistic goals, standardising IT roles and deployment timeframes and promote TCO. “Look at long term cost of operation, training, maintenance and evaluate impact of the project on the organisation. Executives should look at technologies that do not involve huge up-front costs – whether they are acquisition or licensing. A growing view and one that is taking hold is that subscriptions are much better for business than licenses,” adds DeBono.
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TECH FOCUS IT in 2012
DeBono cites a recent survey conducted by IDC commissioned by Red Hat. The findings of this survey showed that products that offer efficiency and productivity improvements for IT staff generally end up with competitive and often lower TCO metrics when all costs are considered. “This is an important factor because in most cases 90% to 95% of all IT budgets typically go to maintaining what systems are in place today, which leaves very little for investment in solutions that can help organisations move more aggressively into their future. CIOs really need to find ways of freeing up existing spend to allow for this innovation, exploration and deployment,” he explains.
Smaller portions Experts recommend that organisations should consider splitting mega-projects into smaller chunks, and focusing on gaining ROI out of each of these smaller investments. When they do this, they can strengthen their strategy with smaller investments, and ensure that they use each project’s return for the next project and so on, until they achieve the goals of the mega-project – probably within the same time frame, but with much less spend involved in it.
Vendor commitments for 2012 Be it launching local cloud services, introducing innovative pay-as-yougo models, comprehensive data centre and data storage services or IT security solutions, vendors in the region are showing signs of optimism. Most vendors in 2012 are working towards investing in their channel partners through training and other support services to ensure that their customers leverage best practices and implementations. 42
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Interactive Intelligence has applied the on-demand delivery model to various communication services including contact centre automation. This utility-like model for communications is referred to as Communications as a Service (CaaS). According to Haque, the company has also established localised support and services function to meet the demands and requirements of their regional customer base, in addition to investing in a regional mobile training system that will allow the company to easily perform remote on-site training, and provide proof of concept capabilities to customers. According to Paul Hammond, GM, Infor, the Infor Partner Network (IPN) programme will provide extensive support in the form of local resources, marketing and training, and provide channel partners with the tools, resources and financial incentives to help them rapidly grow a profitable and sustainable business around Infor products. In addition to the recent launch of it’s managed exchange integrated with Microsoft Lync to provision enhanced communication and collaboration eHDF has also launched remote managed security services. eHDF will soon launch it’s own managed private cloud solutions for medium to large enterprises, looking at enhanced and dynamic utilisation of existing infrastructure or applications in terms of scalability, elasticity and faster time to market by the end of the year. “Also we have plans to launch a Lite Public cloud version for companies operating in the SMB space,” says Bhardwaj. 2012, although expected to reflect turbulent economic and political conditions of years past, will no doubt be an exciting year for vendors and customers across the region. Industry experts believe that 2012 will witness significant IT investments from SMBs and start ups. Start ups, in particular, are expected to show keen interest in on demand services and technology due to the degree of uncertainty associated with starting a business in a fiercely competitive yet economically crunched market.
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tech focus Systems integrators
A good partner System integrators form a critical link in the chain that leads solutions to become effective business tools within enterprises. As the skills base in the region improves, it is upto enterprises to choose and work with the best in the game. Sathya Mithra Ashok explores how.
I
t is difficult to exaggerate the importance of system integrators (SIs) to the Middle East ICT market. They serve as the valuable link between vendors and end-users, and become the critical glue necessary for making every deployment work in the long term. “The ‘raison d’etre’ of a SI is all about the integration. In today’s IT market there
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are very few products which are installed and implemented on a ‘stand alone’ basis. Most products of course have to connect to, work, communicate with each other as well as other elements of the organisation’s infrastructure. Hence the SI has to solve and manage the integration between multiple and diverse products and technologies. Quite simply www.cnmeonline.com
without effective integration, you have an ineffective solution. And the customer will not reap the ROI,” says Colin Summers, regional director at CommVault. Shaheen Haque, territory manager for the Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence agrees, saying, “The system integration function is commonly described as the capability to bring together the
various components of a subsystem into one system and ensuring that the subsystems work together as an independent system. Most companies have a mix of systems, each performing a unique set of functions. Sometimes these systems are designed to serve only the needs of either one region,
one office, or one department. The problems arise in a siloed IT infrastructure where multiple systems cannot work together due to a lack of standardisation. There is no commonality that interconnects these disparate systems so they can act as one. This is where integration comes into play.” The critical nature of SIs to a project’s success often rests on the technical abilities of their personnel and the familiarity of the team with standards and best practices that can be applied across enterprises. “SIs are key to a project’s successful and timely implementation and as such it is important that SIs have the highest degree of technical capabilities and are conversant with the vendor’s products. This requires regular training and skills upgradation. Some SIs are able to give customers support and services that cost less than if the vendor were to offer it, which certainly adds value,” points out Hassan Hamadani, marketing and business development manager for emerging markets at Brocade. Haque adds, “A SI’s expertise is critical to the success of all projects that they take on-board. They need to manage not just the technology aspect but also the political and organisational aspects of the project. The end-users are typically reliant on the SI’s and their expertise or perceived expertise to complete their vision of end solution.” While there are lot of SIs in the region, and many that work with vendors and
I do believe that one of the key challenges for all SIs in the Middle East is staff retention and staff development. Every SI will openly share his concerns about making investments in training and certification, and then losing the trained resource. The make-up of the large expatriate work force in the local IT community Middle East market does contribute to this challenge.” www.cnmeonline.com
Colin Summers, regional director at CommVault
end-users, not all of them are at the same expertise level and not all of them are trained to the same extent as well. Summers points out, “The level of expertise varies greatly, there are so many variables, depending upon the technology, the country and the company itself. I do believe that one of the key challenges for all SIs in the Middle East is staff retention and staff development. Every SI will openly share his concerns about making investments in training and certification, and then losing the trained resource. The make-up of the large expatriate work force in the local IT community Middle East market does contribute to this challenge. Compared to other markets with a larger proportion of home grown talent, there is a much higher incidence of short term attrition and turnover particularly in the SI channels.” HelpAG presents a more dire aspect of the situation when Stephen Berner, MD of the company states, “Most of the companies pretend to be professional and have the right level of expertise, but in the end it is all about cheating the customer by not providing december 2011
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tech focus Systems integrators
quality resources and the right technical execution. There is a massive demand for qualified system integrators in the region today, but by far not enough supply. Worst thing is that big chunk of system integrators abuse this situation by promising the customer something they cannot deliver.”
Choosing right “SIs are an extension of the vendor and as such the SI’s quality of work and level of competence is reflective of the vendor’s capabilities. So choosing the right SI is critical with a view to building a long term relationship. Level of proven concepts and ability to execute, financial stability and resilience, customer references and level of relationships with its vendors are some of the key things vendors should look at when qualifying SIs,” says Hamadani. Berner says, “The selection should be based on success criteria, which has to be according to technical, commercial and organisational aspects. By having this success criteria, they should have a clearly defined evaluation form with a set threshold, and companies that fall below that should not be considered for delivering strategic or even commodity projects. The customer will end up paying a lot more than budgeted as a result of a poor decision in this regard. Success of any project is based on sticking to the time schedule – every single day that the project is not delivered on time, should be seen as an additional cost to the customer and will also impact other projects that maybe delayed as a result.
Summers adds, “The customer should have a simple check list or score card, where he can apply a value to the relevant factors, which he or she deems relevant. This removes the temptation of going for the cheapest cost, and in many ways, this plays in parallel with striving to define the ROI. The SI’s capabilities, skills in conjunction with the commercial offering is a key part of the ROI process.” He continues, “The customer should check for references and speak to other customers directly. It does not take long to find out and get access to other customers, so my advice is to invest in time and speak to or visit other organisations, who have already had some experience of both the vendor and the SI. It’s not just about trying to expose problems, but the learning experience of the project implementation could really help and be applied to new customers and projects.” “The concept of system integration refers first to the integration of the interdependent functions within the same company. The SI chosen should have an extensive integration experience of various functional technologies and this would be crucial for the success of any integration project. Furthermore the SI needs to take responsibility for quality collaboration among different departments, technology sponsors which is very important for the success of a project. Second, SIs need to consider their relationships with other specialists SIs to come and handle specialised aspects of the project,” says Haque. Apart from choosing right, an enterprise will also have to take efforts to manage
Hassan Hamadani, marketing and business development manager for emerging markets at Brocade
the relationship to get the most out of the strategic partnership. Summers provides some tips,” The customer must ensure that he invests in experienced project management. This really is a pre-requisite and most important the customer must invest in an experienced project management resource. This means you cannot allocate the role of a project manager to any technical resource. Understanding the technical virtues of a product is not what project management is about: the real skill is defining the steps and criteria and timelines from project start to finish and and in making sure that the suppliers and the internal resource are executing as per plan. Hence there must be Source: Gartner blogs
BY THE NUMBERS
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2014
40%
90%
cloud services brokerages (CSBs) will have grown from dozens to hundreds of providers
of integration projects, involving A2A, B2B and cloud services will be implemented with one IT solution by 2014
of integration-as-a-service functionality is consumed directly by IT users or IT services providers as a stand-alone solution for traditional e-commerce or cloud integration requirements
Computer News Middle East
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www.cnmeonline.com
50%
of integration-as-a-service will be consumed as an embedded feature of other IT offerings by 2015
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tech focus Systems integrators
a well defined and detailed plan: Who Does What, Where, How and When? The project manager has to develop and get acceptance of the plan and the real challenge is ensuring that the plan is executed on. Hence it really does require true ‘management’ expertise.” Says Berner, “Progress should be monitored by having a project plan and a proper methodology in place. This means that the initiative is subject to constant monitoring of resources and accomplishments. Any upcoming problems should be identified early on. The end customer should have the overall overview of the initiative and technical resources at any point of time. As Help AG we will be the primary interface between the end customer, the technical resources with regards to any questions related to a project as such. Before we start any kind of initiative there needs to be a clearly defined objective. We truly believe there has to be a phased approach. Our phased approached is called “SPIEC”: start - planning – implementation execution - closing.” Enterprises should also invest time and energy to ensure that the partnership grows from strength to strength, and that – in the long term – it provides the organisation exactly what it wants – a trustworthy, strategic partner. On the other side Apart from customers, vendors also need to work to ensure that their link with their partners – the face of the vendor in many parts of the region – remains strong. “Vendors struggle to find strong SIs who are loyal to them as competition gets
Shaheen Haque, territory manager for the Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence
fierce in a tough economic time. As such, it is important to work smart by “keeping partners close but building a relationship with customers as well”. This is often challenging as SIs see this as a threat. It is important to allay the SI’s concerns by assuring them that customers feel more comfortable knowing that they have direct access to the vendor which is a win-win for all,” says Brocade’s Hamadani. Haque adds, “As a software vendor, we are called upon by various customers wanting us to work with their SI or SI’s on projects. The main driver for us in all instances is that the customer perceived requirements are met, whether the customer calls us or the SI calls us. The
Most of the companies pretend to be professional and have the right level of expertise, but in the end it is all about cheating the customer by not providing quality resources and the right technical execution. There is a massive demand for qualified system integrators in the region today, but by far not enough supply.”
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challenge we have include ensuring the SI partner is trained sufficiently so that they have the latest knowledge of our technology and are self-sufficient and confident in presenting and deploying our solutions into end-user organisations.” He continues, “The SI partner needs to invest in a team of people from sales, pre-sales, services and support if they are to be successful in deploying and supporting end-user call centre related projects. The SI also must have the diverse technology expertise in other complimentary areas that a customer may require integration in, such as customer relationship management(CRM) systems and speech technology solutions, all of which typically form part of end-user customers shopping list for a solution.” Vendors agree that there are several ways in which the SI ecosystem in the region can and should improve in the coming years. “The key skill set which I strongly recommend is project management. The ability to manage complex and large projects is lacking in the regions, however it’s also a skill which both the SI and the Enterprise customer needs to recognise and need to value. The customer has to appreciate the value of the project management skill set, the reality is that this is not recognised by enough organisations to-date,” says Summers. “It can be improved by mastering the simplicity and following the quality assurance and customer satisfaction. Everybody likes to talk about big success without being able to implement the basics. Only if you can understand and customise the basics you will have that big success,” says Berner. They also agree that the improvement will come over time, that change being a constant in the region, the evolution of SIs will continue to happen in parallel to the widening nature of customer requirements and the fickle nature of budgets. And while that process because a reality, it remains the customer’s preroragative to ensure that he gets the best out of every partner or SI that they work for in the Middle East.
vertical focus Transport and logistics
Smooth sailing The transport and logistics industry in the region is making technology investments that span the entire length and breadth of the enterprise. Pallavi Sharma speaks to industry experts to find how roles have changed and how deployment challenges are addressed at these organisations. 50
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he trade and export industry, one of the bastions of the global economy,is heavily dependent on an exceptionally robust transport and logistics sector. The Middle East in particular, has established itself as a trade hub leading to a boom in the operations of the transport and logistics sector in the region. For the second part of the interview, please Over the lastissue few of years this industry read the September 2011 CNME. has had to cope with the demands of globalisation, an economic recession and ever increasing competition and regulation.
According to experts, it is during this period, that organisations in this region have turned to information technology and associated solutions to help them develop and organise strategic, efficient global logistics networks that focus on integrating the previously disconnected elements of product sourcing, production and distribution. “Nowadays, there is more focus on doing more with less and a real shift towards adopting lean practices in IT. There is also a drive to transform capex to opex to provide more flexibility and scale in order to meet business peaks and troughs,” says Praveen Sashi, head of IT at DHL Express. Alexander de Oliveira, director of ICT and group projects at Transguard Group adds, “The sector in the region has also been impacted by the issuance of the Strata Law by authorities in 2007, which has resulted in increased competition and price sensitivity. These factors have forced companies to look for improvements in operational efficiencies through investments in industry specific systems such as computer aided facilities management (CAFM) and freight management. Today, even the market in the region is more mature and customers look at organisations that comply with industry requirements as those that can promise the best services.” In a sort of natural progression, both the role of IT and the role of the CIOs within these organisations have witnessed a significant shift over the last few years. “Technology is no longer just needed to enable the delivery of the shipment. Today,
the industry uses every tool in the book to source the right products, track shipments and warehousing details, and provision efficient distribution and delivery. Customers demand and expect information transparency and visibility right from procurement up until delivery, and none of this would be possible without investments in the right software and systems,” adds Sashi.
have to synchronise our information with the movement of the package across our network (more than 228 countries in which we operate, some of them with multiple customs authorities),” he adds. Oliviera looks at IT from a different perspective. According to him, IT is part of an organisation’s long term strategy, bringing together all the disparate elements of a
The sector in the region has also been impacted by the issuance of the Strata Law by authorities in 2007, which has resulted in increased competition and price sensitivity. These factors have forced companies to look for improvements in operational efficiencies through investments in industry specific systems such as computer aided facilities management (CAFM) and freight management.” Sashi says that the need to invest in the right technology platforms has been especially felt in the air transport industry. “The air express industry is perhaps one of the most heavily regulated areas of business and this adds a degree of complexity to the management of supply chains. Often times, this sector needs industry specific solutions, like automobiles or generators; other times it is the customer that asks for certain demands to be met in the case of fragile goods or urgent delivery,” Sashi says. “The process of customs clearance is another challenging area from an automation perspective. For example, we
trade exchange like the shipper, the receiver, the shipping agent, the customs or import authority, the warehousing officials and the distributions agency. Rebecca Braverman, senior director global market development of consumer productsß, retail and distribution at QlikTech says it is the CIOs who ultimately have to make the right investments to establish a scalable and secure infrastructure across all levels of the organisation. Keep in mind that the CIO has to cater not only to the requirements of the organisation, but also to a rapidly growing tech-savvy workforce that uses a host of Source: Softlink Logistic Systems, 2010
BY THE NUMBERS
500 logistics companies surveyed in India
43%
of respondents said that improving operational efficiency is key motivating factor
25%
said that improving customer service as the most important factor
11% 46% 33%
considered improving data quality the most important.
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perceive lack of skilled personnel as biggest barrier to IT adoption
december 2011
perceived change management as biggest barrier
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vertical focus Transport and logistics
The story for IT in transport and logistics is only just beginning and there is still a long way to go.
independent devices to access the internet at remote locations. The workforce now expects headquarters to provide them flexibility of using these same devices to access and work on enterprise information. Making headway “Today, there is a clear understanding that to survive and thrive in the tougher competitive environment organisations need to focus on making the right investments to enhance the existing IT infrastructure. All of this has resulted in an increased IT budget over the last few years,” says de Oliviera. He adds that the Transguard Group’s IT strategy is based on the foundation of working with the right strategic partners. “Finding strong technology partners whose
experience and network we can leverage to our advantage is of utmost importance. This not only significantly shortens RFP processes but also simplifies the process of knowledge transfer because the partner knows our organisation, the culture, the people and operations,” he says. “When we evaluate any IT project, it must meet one of three criteria- make money, save money or reduce a risk. Currently we are putting a lot of effort on projects that will improve operational efficiency or are related to business continuity,” adds de Oliviera. When working out an IT project, de Oliviera and his team prefer options that allow for the organisation to leverage the capabilities of cloud technology. “Our first option is for all new solutions to be either SaaS solution or a hosted solution. We are
On our infrastructure front, we’ve fully virtualised our servers and 70% of our desktops, significantly reducing the costs associated with energy, storage and support in the organisation.”
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also working on moving existing in-house solutions to the Cloud,” he says. According to de Oliveira, some of the Transguard Group’s recent IT deployments include Oracle’s human capital management system, supply chain management and financials applications, a call centre upgrade, and cloud-based email solution. In addition to this, the company has also embarked on a paperless office initiative and uses applications like CAFM systems, supported by the latest web technologies and handheld devices that allow field staff to be connected to the head office systems in real time. Sashi says that in a bid to sustain the organisation’s ability to grow and compete, DHL Express UAE has made a concentrated effort to align its IT strategy and underlying investments to its overall business strategy. As a result of which, in recent years the company has focused on investing in processes, tools and employee development. Sashi, unwilling to reveal any vendor names, says DHL Express has made investments in the domain of business applications such as CAFM, infrastructure and e-commerce. “On our infrastructure
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vertical focus Transport and logistics
front, we’ve fully virtualised our servers and 70% of our desktops, significantly reducing the costs associated with energy, storage and support,” he says. “We have implemented ISO20000, the international IT standard that demonstrates excellence in IT management. This is because we believe this is key to delivering great service quality. We have placed immense emphasis in updating our IT infrastructure to support service improvements and our continuous business growth. For example, recent migration of international telecoms to VGE (Vodafone) MPLS cloud was a step towards this direction. We were also the first to pilot and successfully implement desktop virtualisation and rollout managed print services company wide.” At CNME’s recent Sustainable ICT Conference 2011, Vaibhav U Bhatt, infrastructure services manager at DHL Express UAE shared the details of the company’s recent managed print service program with the audience. According to Bhatt, the team not only devised a policy to engage the entire organisation in their bid to green but also made sure that they enforced the policy. As a result of these policies decision makers were able to define, measure and improve service levels for print, copier and scanner services. Following the enforcement of the programme, DHL Express USE reduced their carbon footprint by 60%, electricity and power consumption by 42% and wastage of paper by 25%. Bhatt announced at the event, that following the success of the program in the UAE, the initiative is now a work-inprogress across several other countries that DHL has a presence in. So what are the challenges associated with these deployments? Sashi says that since technology is primarily managed by the IT guys, who understand the need for an implementation and it’s impact on existing operations, the formidable challenges normally lie with dealing with the business end of the plate. “The initial challenge is proving the ROI for stakeholders buy-in and this is closely followed by managing resistance to change. I believe that‘time to market is another critical 54
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factor in the logistics industry, especially when responding to immediate requirements stipulated by customers, industry or even regulatory bodies,” he says. “The technology initiatives within an organisation must be seen by business users as one that compliments the overall strategy. For example, we always insist on conducting a pilot when considering new technology deployments - this provides an opportunity to evaluate the pros and cons of technology initiatives within the business, minimise risks and gain stakeholder confidence before making any capital commitment,” he says. According to de Oliviera, he and his team dealt with the daunting task of change management by simply making the users feel involved right from the procurement stage till go live, through meetings and regular training sessions.
improve workflows and significantly improve customer service. However, there is still room for more effort from the vendor’s end. “There are a lot of good practices in the market. Yet in general there has been an increase in ‘hype’ because vendors and service providers tend to ignore what is realistically possible and go about promising the world. Especially when it comes to cloud computing technologies, a lot of the true potential of this technology cannot be achieved without the right provisions in terms of infrastructure and regulations. I think vendors need to be honest in their approach and manage expectations in a more realistic and uniform way,” says Sashi. Industry experts also say that vendors need to do more to help address the lack in local support and availability of skilled personnel. With a qualified and reliable
Technology is no longer just needed to enable the delivery of the shipment. Today, the industry uses every tool in the book to source the right products, track shipments and warehousing details, and provision efficient distribution and delivery. Customers demand and expect information transparency and visibility right from procurement up until delivery, and none of this would be possible without investments in the right software and systems.” “Business users always find it easier to cope with change when they see business or personal value in the deployment. So we try and communicate the advantages of the technology investment to their job responsibilities, time management and overall growth. Also, we make sure the implementation is done in phases, so as to give the users the time to understand the extent of the deployment and how it will change operations on a day-to-day basis,” de Oliviera adds.
Journey ahead Transports and logistics organisations in the region continue to do commendable work to www.cnmeonline.com
pool of resources available in the region locally, there is no doubt that at least part of the fears associated with complex IT deployments could be addressed, to expedite the growth of this industry and the underlying IT sector even further. As Sashi and de Oliviera both conclude, “2012 will no doubt see more innovation from organisations and vendors, as businesses look to make investments that help them cope with ever increasing competition and stringent regulations that are only recently have begun generating interest in the Middle East.” The story for IT in transport and logistics is only just beginning and there is still a long way to go.
How to Wireless security
Lock down your wireless network We bring you the best ways to lock down your wireless network and protect it against threats.
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f you operate a wireless network for your home or business, it’s important to ward it against opportunistic hackers seeking to steal your data or hijack your Wi-Fi for their own nefarious purposes. To get started, you’ll need to log in to your router’s administrative console by typing the router’s IP address into your Web browser’s address bar. Most routers use a common address like 192.168.1.1, though alternatives like 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.2.1 are also common. Check the manual that came with your router 56
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to determine the correct IP address; if you’ve lost your manual, you can usually find the appropriate IP address on the manufacturer’s website.
Change your passwords The first step in securing your network is simple: change your passwords! Default router passwords like “admin” are seductively simple to remember, but that means they’re equally simple for a hacker to guess; there’s even a public database containing default login credentials for more than 450 networking equipment vendors. www.cnmeonline.com
While no password is foolproof, you can build a better password by combining numbers and letters into a complex and unique string. Remember to change both your Wi-Fi password (the string guests type in to access your network) as well as your router administrator password (the one you enter to log into the administration console—these two may sometimes be the same). We suggest that you change your passwords to something completely unique—no pet names—then write them down on a piece of paper and tape it to your router for safekeeping.
Change your SSID A name, known as a Service Set ID (or SSID). The simple act of changng that name discourages serial hackers from targeting you, because wireless networks with default names like “linksys” are more likely to lack custom passwords or encryption, making them a tempting target for opportunistic hackers. Don’t bother disabling SSID broadcasting; you might be able to ward off casual Wi-Fi leechers that way, but any hacker with a wireless spectrum scanner can still find your SSID by listening in as your devices communicate with your router.
Enable WPA2 encryption If possible, you should always encrypt your network traffic using WPA2 encryption, which offers better security than the older WEP and WPA technologies. If you have to choose between multiple versions of WPA2— like WPA2 Personal or WPA2 Enterprise—always pick the setting most appropriate for your network. Unless you’re setting up a large-scale business network with a RADIUS server, you’ll want to stick with WPA2 Personal encryption.
Enable MAC filtering Every device that accesses the Internet has a Media Access Control (MAC) address, which is a unique identifier composed of six pairs of alphanumeric characters. You can limit your network to only accept specific devices by turning on MAC filtering, which is also a great tip for optimising your wireless network. To determine the MAC address of any Windows PC, open a command prompt by selecting Run from the Start Menu, typing cmd and hitting Enter (Windows 7 users can just type cmd in the Start Menu search box). Next, type ipconfig /all at the command prompt and press Enter to bring up your IP settings. If you’re using Mac OS X, open System Preferences and Click Network. From there, Select “Wi-Fi” from the list in the left-hand column (“Airport” in Snow Leopard or earlier), then click “Advanced...” in the lower left, then look for the “Airport ID” or “Wi-Fi ID”. If you need to find the MAC address of a more limited device like a printer or smartphone, check
manage how many devices can connect to your Wi-Fi network at any given time by limiting the number of IP addresses your router can assign to devices on your network. Tally how many WiFi-capable devices you have in your home, then find the DHCP settings page in your router administrator console and update the number of “client leases” available to the number of devices you own, plus one for guests. Reset your router and you’re good to go. Block WAN requests Finally, make sure to enable the “Block WAN Requests” option to conceal your network from other Internet users. With this feature enabled your router will not respond to IP requests by remote users, preventing them from gleaning potentially useful information about your network. Experts point put that the ‘WAN’ is basically the Internet at large, and you want to block random people out there from initiating a conversation with your router. Once you’ve taken these steps to secure your wireless network,
The first step in securing your network is simple: change your passwords! Default router passwords like “admin” are seductively simple to remember, but that means they’re equally simple for a hacker to guess; there’s even a public database containing default login credentials for more than 450 networking equipment vendors. While no password is foolproof, you can build a better password by combining numbers and letters into a complex and unique string. the manual to determine where that data is listed. Thankfully, most modern routers will display a list of devices connected to your network along with their MAC address in the administrator console to make it easier to identify your devices. If in doubt, refer to your router’s documentation for specific instructions. Limit DHCP leases to your devices Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (or DHCP) makes it easy for your network to www.cnmeonline.com
lock it down for good by disabling remote administration privileges through the administrator console. That forces anyone looking to modify your network settings to plug a PC directly into the wireless router, making it nearly impossible for hackers to mess with your settings and hijack your network. Update your passwords every six months or so, use intrusion software like NetStumbler to periodically test your networks for fresh vulnerabilities and enjoy your new-found peace of mind. december 2011
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How to Personal computer
Boot your PC faster It is the age-old question – how do you get your trusty personal computer to boot faster. Here’s how you can reduce the time from 69 seconds to 47 seconds.
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he easiest way to get a PC to boot faster is to upgrade to a solid-state drive RAID array. However, not everyone is willing to spend $700 on PC storage, so we decided to find out how much one could speed up a PC’s boot time without spending a dime. After several hours of tweaking and testing, we managed to reduce the boot time of a PC from 69 seconds to 47 seconds. Here’s how. Disabling extraneous services Before proceeding further, you need to measure the system’s pretweak boot time. One way to do this is to create a text file containing the text “Stop the Stopwatch.” Drop this into the Windows startup applications folder in C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. This allows you to time the boot process with a stopwatch and know when to stop the watch. The boot process isn’t completely finished at this point, but the system will be in a usable state. First, We looked at the startup services that opened when my system booted. You can check the list for your PC by running msconfig, a built-in Windows utility. Click the Start menu, type Run, press Enter, and then type msconfig in the Run box. Click the Services tab. Then click the checkbox next to ‘Hide all Microsoft services. In addition to, disabling
all services mentioned there in, we also disabled six Microsoft Windows Services from starting on booth: • Windows Media Center receiver • Windows Media Center Scheduler service • Microsoft Office Groove Audit Service • Microsoft Office Diagnostic Service • Smart Card Removal Policy • Smart Card
Since we don’t use Windows Media Center on our system, disabling the first item on the list was an easy decision. And these
You might expect changing the boot timeout not to have much impact, since all it does is specify how long Windows may display an automatic menu, such as the Startup Repair menu. But it turns out that changing the boot timeout does affect boot performance.” 58
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changes only scratch the surface. Another item that you might disable on startup is Remote Login. The right choices depend on your needs.
Disabling startup applications Msconfig’s Startup tab lists applications that start on bootup. Most of the listed startup applets are at least occasionally useful, but none are essential from the get-go. We can manually check for Adobe updates, let QuickTime and Acrobat start a tiny bit slower when we need them, and so on. So we just unchecked all of the applets on the Startup list.
System BIOS tweaks The Asus P6T6 Deluxe motherboard on our test system has two ethernet connectors, but we need only one of them. The motherboard is also set up to check the optical drive to see whether it contains a bootable CD or DVD—and only after that, to try to boot off the hard drive. And finally, since we don’t use my external and secondary SATA controller, we don’t need a BIOS check for the Marvell discrete SATA controller. Armed with this knowledge, we entered my PC’s BIOS during startup, and performed three quick operations: disabling the second ethernet port, setting up the system to boot from the hard drive first, and disabling the discrete SATA controller. Changing boot timeout You might expect changing the boot timeout not to have much impact, since all it does is specify how long Windows may display an automatic menu, such as the Startup Repair menu. But it turns out that changing the boot timeout does affect boot performance. The default boot timeout setting on my test PC was 30 seconds; but 10 seconds should give users sufficient time to respond to any menus that Windows may present. Final thoughts You can dig deeper into each step of the process we’ve outlined here to reduce boot times further. But with a modest amount of effort, the boot time on my fairly typical system dropped from 69 seconds to 47 seconds, a reduction of more than 30%.
Products Mobility
Pure Google, pure delight
I
n the world of Android, we see a lot of new phones – and inevitably, some of them are destined to be forgotten. Samsung’s new Galaxy Nexus is not one of those devices. The Galaxy Nexus, soon to be available in the Middle East, is an exceptional phone, arguably the finest Android handset to date. It’s the first device to run Google’s just released Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich, and will serve as the flagship phone for the platform. The Nexus name means Google had a close hand in developing the device, and that level of involvement certainly shows. First things first: The Galaxy Nexus is no small gadget, but despite that the phone does not feel the least bit bulky – the phone is sleek, thin and light. It’s worth noting that the LTE version will differ somewhat in its dimensions. Size aside, the Galaxy Nexus has a look reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy S II phone. The Nexus has more rounded edges and a contoured display, but those distinctions aside, the phones could almost be brothers. Like the Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus has a textured back, which reveals itself to be a
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surprisingly thin piece of plastic when you pull it off to access the battery compartment. The phone features a 720p (1280 x 720) screen based on Samsung’s new HD Super AMOLED technology, which ̶ despite early concerns from some Android enthusiasts, is every bit as impressive as the Super AMOLED Plus technology used in previous Galaxy models. The phone’s display is like a feast for your eyes: Colours are rich and brilliant, and images and text are crisp and clear, with no detectable pixelation or jagged edges. One thing immediately noticeable with the Galaxy Nexus is its lack of physical navigation buttons. The phone is essentially one giant, smooth surface — a uniform and uninterrupted slate. It’s a striking effect. The Galaxy Nexus does have a couple of buttons along its sides: a volume rocker on the left, about a third of the way down, and a power switch on the right, roughly an inch from the top.
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In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy Nexus features Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n. It also supports Near Field Communication, or NFC, which enables you to swap information with another compatible device simply by touching the two phones together. The Nexus has all the other standard stuff as well, including an accelerometer, barometer, compass, gyroscope, light sensor and proximity sensor. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus runs a TI OMAP4460 1.2GHz dual-core processor along with a full gigabyte of RAM. Translated into real-world terms, the phone is ridiculously fast: swiping between home screens is snappy as can be, with no stuttering or delays. Apps load instantly when their icons are touched, system animations and transitions execute flawlessly and even resource-intensive programs like graphical games deliver peak performance with nary a blip or hesitation. Web browsing is satisfyingly speedy, too, whether you have one tab open or 10, and even heavy-duty system-wide multitasking can’t manage to slow this thing down. The phone’s processing power deserves some of the credit, but I suspect a good portion also belongs to the improvements made in Ice Cream Sandwich and the tightknit hardware-software integration that comes along with Google’s involvement on the development level. The Galaxy Nexus will be available with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage. In what may be the device’s most glaring weakness, the Nexus does not have an SD card slot — meaning you can’t add any external storage. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, LED flash and 1080p highdefinition video recording capabilities. Google’s Nexus line is meant to set the bar for what an Android phone should be, and the new Galaxy Nexus does not disappoint. VERDICT: Aye (this is the Android phone to beat!!)
A light Portege
A
t just 2.4 pounds, the Toshiba Portege Z835 is the lightest of the first wave of Ultrabooks. You can immediately feel the difference when you pick up this. The Portege Z835 configuration we tested, ‘‘feather light’ features a Core i3 2367M, running at a paltry 1.4GHz with no Turbo Mode. The system has 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid state drive, though it’s not a particularly fast one. The result is a disappointing WorldBench score of 79; lower than we’ve seen from any other
Ultrabook so far. Forget about modern gaming, as this laptop doesn’t break 30 frames per second even at low resolutions with low quality settings. Toshiba offers other configurations, up to a Core i7 2677M with 6GB of RAM, but that escalates the price to almost $1500, and you still get just a 128GB SSD. Lacklustre hardware specs don’t necessarily mean the system is a pain to use. Even a mediocre SSD is pretty snappy compared to rotating hard drives, so boot up times and resume times from sleep or www.cnmeonline.com
hibernate modes are nice and fast, and most everyday programs launch quickly. If you’re just interested in some basic web browsing and document editing, the system is certainly snappy enough. Media playback is another matter. The processor is capable of keeping up with most hi-def video playback, though the quality isn’t quite top-notch. A bigger problem is the display, which is sub-par. The 1366 by 768 panel is not especially bright, and the apparent contrast is poor. Where many Ultrabooks have put a backlit keyboard on the chopping block, Toshiba manages to keep the backlight. The touchpad is smaller than many others, in part because Toshiba gives up some space at the bottom for a pair of physical buttons instead of using a larger buttonless touchpad. The feel is pretty good, though not nearly as smooth as the glass-coated touchpads on the first Lenovo and Asus Ultrabooks. The expected multi-touch gestures are supported, like pinch-to-zoom and twofinger scrolling, though they weren’t all enabled by default. There are a couple other nice features worth mentioning. An “Eco Mode” button near the power button reduced power consumption by dimming the display, turning off the keyboard backlight, and switching to a more conservative power profile. Next to that is a button to active remote screen projection via Intel’s WiDi, which is built-in. The Toshiba Portege Z835 is an interesting proposition. It’s noticeably lighter than other Ultrabooks and the Macbook Air, features a surprisingly good array of ports and a backlit keyboard, and doesn’t skimp out on the SSD. On the other hand, the performance of the Core i3 processor isn’t up to the level of its contemporaries, the display quality is mediocre. This is certainly an easier laptop to recommend than the Acer Ultrabook (the other sub-$1000 option), but not quite as likeable as the Asus Zenbook UX31E or Lenovo IdeaPad U300s. VERDICT: Aye (but understand your needs well)
december 2011
Computer News Middle East
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Last word
Next issue
Security Advisor IP surveillance
January 2012
Solutions World
Social networking and collaboration tools As social networking goes in strength in the Middle East, we explore the relevance of this largely consumer trend in enterprises across the region. CNME helps understand whether the modern collaboration tools of today, including the elements of social networking, make sense of growing enterprises and presents what they should take into consideration when using them organisation-wide.
Storage Advisor
Explaining big data Big data – it was all the rage of 2011, along with cloud computing. As we start a new year – a year predicted to be one belonging to data – CNME sets out to understand the nature of big data and present to enterprises the principles and products that can help them make better sense of the growing spectre of data deluge.
It is an age-old story, but one that still remains unpoliced in many organisations. In this article, CNME looks into what is new in the world of surveillance and also tries to understand how enterprises that use these systems can capitalise on their investments better – for now and the future.
Integration Advisor
New services to watch for Managed services providers in the region are constantly adding to their systems and solutions in order to improve their offerings to customers. To choose wisely, organisations need to know what these services are and how they can evaluate them better. CNME gives you the latest.
Network World
WAN optimisation As bandwidth continues to consume a large amount of the operational expenses associated with networks, companies continue to be interested in WAN optimisation solutions and what they can do for them. In this month’s Network World section, we look
Book One may not expect that organisations can gain a competitive edge through sustainability, but this author shows how companies have done just that. He says that creating truly sustainable processes can accelerate overall business performance. Lowitt has developed a model that incorporates five management practices, including top- and bottom-line improvement approaches, governance structures, and value chain activity adjustments. The Future of Value: How Sustainability Creates Value Through Competitive Differentiation (Wiley)
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Computer News Middle East
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Metro Ethernet
The brand new Telecoms World section in CNME looks into the fascinating area of metro Ethernets – the solutions that make them possible, the necessity for them and the future of such networks in regional cities.
Careers
The jobs of 2012 What are the highest-paying jobs out there? What IT jobs are set to be of high demand this year? What skills are employers looking for and is there enough of them out there? In this first edition of this section CNME looks at the jobs that will dominate recruitment discussions in 2012 and how universities and students can prepare themselves better to grab these jobs.
CIO 50 Forum and Awards 2012
Users Not Customers
By Eric Lowitt
Telecoms World
Events
What we’re reading The Future of Value
into the new-age of these solutions and how vendors (with their products) intend to solve the issues faced by enterprise customers.
By Aaron Shapiro
Book While most businesses are trying to get closer to their customers, Shapiro says you should first cozy up to users. Same thing, no? Shapiro’s strategic shift makes the distinction that although many users are customers, users are really the key influencers. They create perceptions and share critiques about brands, thereby affecting how customers act. With stories from Mint.com and Best Buy, Shapiro outlines how to realign your business and refine the user experience. Users not customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business (Portfolio Penguin)
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24th January 2012 Dubai (Venue to be confirmed)
Online
For the latest in news, analysis, features, case studies, and blog articles on trends and issues in the ICT industry across the globe and in the Middle East, please visit www. computernewsme.com
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