Value Plus Magazine - October GITEX Issue

the
®
Redington Value is a value added distributor for the following brands in parts of Middle East & Africa:

For more information or to place an order on DELLEMC,
please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com

OCTOBER 2016 / The Value Plus / 3
For more information please write to sales.value@redingtonmea.com
the
CONTENTS
C
ompanies who in-
novate faster are the
ones who lead in-
dustries and define
standards. Apple,
Google, Amazon, Uber are just
some names who have created
markets by focusing on Innova-
tion. Innovation is not just for
products or offerings, innova-
tion is a culture which is driv-
en by the people who work at
these firms.
As innovation changes the way
business is done, transforma-
tion is not just limited to tech-
nologies or business processes,
it touches the main core of any
business, the people. Manage-
ments across the globe have
to realize that as they upgrade
their infrastructure, they need
to upgrade their staff as well to
increase their yield.
At Redington we buy into
this philosophy completely. I
believe that people with in-
novative mindset, with new
thoughts and ideas provide
the company a cutting edge to
get ahead of the competition.
With this in mind, the concept
of employee enablement and
improvement is weaved into
Redington work culture. The
development cycle has to be
a continuous one because the
journey of transformation is a
never ending one.
The IT landscape in Middle
East and Africa is changing
rapidly. Disruptive technolo-
gies such as Cloud, Internet
of Things, Big Data are now
no longer buzzwords and
are quickly becoming game
changers. The challenge that
rests with existing technol-
ogy players is to embrace this
change and act accordingly.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
RajShankar
ManagingDirector, RedingtonGulf
CIRCULATED BY
Companies with passion and
innovation in their staff will
always leap ahead.
At Redington we have never
been more firm in our belief
about our enablement strat-
egies and we look forward
to riding this wave along
with our partners.
21
Hyperconvergence:
The future of data
centers
24
Securing
SharePoint
deployments
43
18
Ransomware on the rise
Smart cities: Security
areas CIOs should watch

4 / The Value Plus / OCTOBER 2016
CATALYZING TRANSFORMATION
CATALYZING
TRANSFORMATION
Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value
Distribution is pushing the competitive envelope in
solutions, innovation and guiding channel partners to
speed up their transformation in the market.

L
ast year, Redington Value
celebrated its 10th anniversary
milestone. How has business
been for your company in the last
12 months?
Yes, the last 12 months have
been a mixed bag, in the first six months the
business was very bullish whereas in the
last six months the market has tightened up.
In certain areas, we have had a challenge
with respect to forex especially in Africa and
the Saudi Arabia market has been a bit soft in
the last three months, but overall Redington
Value continues to grow and we have had
very impressive results come through in the
last 12 months.
Redington Value recently moved into new
office premises. What was the motivation
for this move and how has it benefited your
vendor and reseller partners?
We decided to move into new premises
primarily to cater to our partners and
enable them to get their end customers to
come to our premises so that they could
showcase the solutions that we are building.
From that point of view, having moved to
a central location just opposite to the trade
centre, has had a fantastic impact both on our
vendors and our reseller partners. We also
went out to make a very modern open office
with excellent facilities for training and we
are building a world class solutions centre.
All these things have been received extremely
positively by both our vendors and reseller
partners and we see far more customer walk-
ins today than what we used to enjoy before.
The IT channel market in the Middle East
has made several big shifts to adapt to new
technologies. How do you know when to move
in a different direction in the value business?
We primarily get to know when to move
in a different direction from our channel
partners. Being close to our partners, we try to
understand the challenges that they are facing
and that is the earliest indication that we get
in terms of how to move. Apart from that, we
have a core think tank which is always keeping
itself updated on a global level in terms of
what are the changes that are happening
and primarily it is our vendor partners, the
channel and our own understanding of where
the industry is evolving and moving which
helps us to move in the right direction.
HowhasRedingtonValuemanagedtonavigate
these market shifts over the last decade given
the rapid pace at which things are evolving in
the IT Industry?
Redington Value has managed to navigate
these market shifts primarily because of its
people. We have got a broad range of talent
having an excellent depth in understanding
the technology landscape and they keep
themselves very abreast of what changes
are happening in the market and having an
open and very entrepreneurial culture in
the company is enabling the people to put
their hands-up and allows the company to
“ITHINKTHESINGLEBIGGESTTRANSITIONTHATCHANNELPARTNERS
NEED TO MAKE IS TO GET AWAY FROM SELLING PRODUCTS. THEY
NEED TO EMBRACE THE FACT THAT A LOT OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS
GOING TO MOVE TO THE CLOUD AND THEY NEED TO START LEARNING
TO SELL BEYOND THE IT PLAYERS THAT THEY ARE USED TO.”
make these changes. The second thing is that
we are extremely close to both our channel
partners and vendor partners, and since we
are the most important go to market for many
of these vendors, they also expect us to make
these changes so that we can be cutting edge
and can keep changing and evolving along
with the IT industry.
With the rapid pace of transformation and
transitions happening in the IT Industry in
the Middle East and Africa today, how is
Redington Value accelerating transformation
in the channel?
I think, I would like to put this into two or
three buckets. Fundamentally, what we are
doing is, we are enabling our own people.
We are spending a lot of money in building a
world class solutions centre and helping our
people to build solutions around it. First, they
need to get themselves enabled so that they
can help the process of transformation. The
second bucket is that we are putting a lot of
emphasis in enabling our marketing team
to be able to create as many touch points as
possible with the channel. Various routes
to market are being explored through our
marketing team be it on-line, off-line tools,
which we are making available so that we are
able to create as many touch points as possible.
The third thing is our heavy investment on

training. We are today conducting many
training camps, enablement camps, boot
camps and certification training. There are
multiple ways in which we are helping the
channel keep itself abreast and keep itself
transforming in the process. I think the first
step is to enable your own people who will
then enable the channel and by investing
in all the three areas we are helping the
transformation of the channel.
The big bets have been placed on the game-
changers – cloud, mobility, converged
infrastructure, virtualisation, IoT, security,
social, analytics and big data. How is
Redington Value guiding partners to embrace
these tech trends to ensure they don’t lag
behind?
If you look at all these game changers that
you mentioned - cloud, mobility, IoT and
converged infrastructure, big data and
analytics, the core for all of this is the ability
of channel partners to consult. The focus
is not on selling products, rather on selling
solutions and before you sell a solution you
need to understand what the underlying
business problem is and you should be in
a position to consult for the same. In order
to help our channel partners in this entire
arena, we are strengthening on top of all that
we do and are pleased to announce Uniplum,
our consultancy arm. Uniplum specialises in
all the leading ground breaking technologies
such as cloud, IoT, big data and will help
our channel partners provide consultancy
services to their end customers in order
to help them embrace these disruptive
technologies. With this pure consulting
practice, which is available in our indirect
model, we will ensure that our partners keep
up with the continuously evolving industry
and are able to compete with the big players
in the market and this is going to be one of
our most important new offering to the
channel.
HowinvolvedisRedingtonValuewithchannel
partner training and how does that fit into
your strategy of catalysing transformation?
Channel partner training is a core around
which everything else is built, for example
on Saturdays we are hosting the open source
build a test environment and take them
through it. I have met partners who have
given me great feedback that this is one of
a kind and the first time that somebody is
attemptingtohelptheminthetransformation
journey, so being a catalyst in transformation
of the channel and its enablement is really at
the core of what we do at Redington Value
Distribution.
What’s the biggest transition that channel
partners should be undertaking in the Middle
East and Africa market?
I think the single biggest transition that
channel partners need to be make is to
get away from selling products. They
need to embrace the fact that a lot of the
infrastructure is going to move to the cloud
and they need to start learning to sell beyond
theITplayersthattheyareusedto.Theyneed
to sell based on business outcomes and start
becoming far more solutions oriented than
what they are today. If they continue to focus
only on selling products and only selling the
value of what the product can do then it is
going to be a challenge. This transformation
from being very product-centric to becoming
solutions-centric and from addressing only
the IT administrators to actually addressing
the business is the transformation that they
need to undergo.
LOOKING AHEAD
Even though there are market challenges
with dipping prices of oil and therefore
constrained budgets, I still believe that
the market is transforming and there
are a lot of opportunities on software,
security, converged and hyper-converged
systems, cloud, IoT, big data and for
those who are willing to invest and are
willing to transform, I see many and very
exciting opportunities going forward.
community along with Red Hat, which is a
key initiative. This has no direct monetising
opportunity, but we are doing much more in
terms of how we enable channel partners,
how we train them and how we upgrade
them and then how does this whole thing
dovetail into the theme of being a catalyst
for transformation? Red Vault, which is a
very serious investment and it’s going to be
one of its kind in this entire industry. We are
going to have every possible main stream
converged infrastructure on display, hyper
convergedinfrastructureondisplay,aprivate
cloud built and solutions on how to secure
these environments. A visit to our office
offers a chance to look at all these different
technologies, see the whole environment,
and partners can bring their customers,

DELLEMC
Simplifying the distributed enterprise with
DellEMC Hyper Converged appliance - VXRail.
CONVERGED
INFRASTRUCTURE

DELLEMC
D
istributed enterprises usually have
a central IT staff that creates the
overall business network architec-
ture for the enterprise, and many
remote offices that are essential to
running the business, normally with no on-
site technical staff. However, the infrastruc-
ture and data at these distributed locations is
mission critical. Important activities in dis-
tributed enterprises are warehousing and dis-
tribution facilities, manufacturing sites pro-
ducing the company’s core products, mobile
or remote life-saving environments like health
clinics. While not on site, support responsibili-
ties for these offices usually continue to fall to
the central IT staff. According to Enterprise
Strategy Group (ESG) in their 2015 research
report Remote Office/Branch Office Technol-
ogy Trends, 72% of organisations intend to
increase spending on remote office IT infra-
structure in order to address those key issues.
In addition to the above concerns, footprint
becomes an issue as the remote locations are
not set up like a data centre with dedicated
space, power, and cooling for multiple serv-
ers running multiple applications. This means
they are much more sensitive to server sprawl.
While some organisations may look to the
cloud to reduce server sprawl and centralise
operations, in many cases that is not feasible.
This is because offices either are in remote lo-
cations with limited Internet service or have
minimal WAN bandwidth and redundancy
available, so issues such as latency and avail-
ability could become limiting factors.
DELLEMC Hyper Converged appliance are
ideal for consolidating multiple applications in
a remote location onto a single, high-perfor-
mance, and high-availability platform that is
easy to deploy and manage.
Create IT certainty
Designed exclusively by Dell EMC and VM-
ware, the VxRail appliances integrate com-
pute, storage, virtualisation, and management
software from Dell EMC and VMware. They
are the optimal endpoint hyper-converged
infrastructure appliances (HCIA) for the dis-
tributed enterprise. As an integral solution in
the DELLEMC converged infrastructure port-
folio, VxRail Appliances can be managed with
VMware Management and Orchestration
tools or DELLEMC Vision Intelligent Opera-
tions, enabling IT to manage the distributed
solution from the same management console
as they manage their data centre infrastruc-
ture.
The VxRail Appliance enables customers to
consolidate multiple remote office applications
onto a single appliance. VxRail is the only
HCI appliance that offers kernel layer inte-
gration between VMware Virtual SAN and the
vSphere hypervisor, delivering unique perfor-
mance advantages and operational efficiency
by eliminating many data path bottlenecks.
Simple deployment enables customers to be up
and running in 15 minutes; all other configura-
tion can be done remotely.
Available all-flash models accelerate perfor-
mance and feature enterprise data efficiency
services, including deduplication, compres-
sion, and erasure coding, which increase
effective capacity.
In addition, the VxRail Appliance is the
only HCI appliance on the market offering
Quality of Service (QoS) functionality that
eliminates “noisy neighbours.” This function-
ality creates certainty that multiple applica-
tions can be hosted on the same appliance or
in the same cluster without worrying about
performance impacts.
Moderniseyourremoteinfrastructure
VxRail Appliances feature industry-
leading data protection software from
VMware and Dell EMC along with full
redundancy built-in.
Enterprise class resiliency and availability is
assured so users can be certain of application
uptime. Backups can be run locally at the re-
mote office or over the WAN to core data cen-
tres for central management.
VxRail Appliances provides maximum
configuration flexibility, allowing custom-
ers to tailor the size of the appliance to each
remote office. Single node scaling, storage ca-
pacity expansion delivers linear, pay-as-you-
grow scalability to match business and user
demand, and vSphere license independence
further enhances flexibility. This granular,
linear, non-disruptive scaling allows custom-
ers to start as small with as few as 40 VMs or
up to 200 VMs or 550 VDTs in a single appli-
ance, for a maximum deployment of 3200 VMs
or more than 9,500 VDTs in a fully populated
VxRail cluster.
VXRAIL APPLIANCES ADVANTAGES
• All-flash or hybrid appliances allow you to
tailor compute and capacity deployment
for each remote location
• Simple, automated set-up reduces
IT staff burden
• VMware vSphere license flexibility enable
you to determine the level of functionality
you want in the hypervisor while
saving money
• Application uptime, automation, and
policy management ensured through high
availability VMware Virtual SAN and other
off-the-shelf VMware software
• Linear and granular scalability from as few
as 10 to up to 200 virtual machines per
appliance. Single node scaling up to 64
nodes enables you to grow at your pace
and support business requirements
• One-click, non-disruptive patches and
upgrades
• Only HCI appliance offering QoS to
confidently run other applications on VDI
platform
• Included End to end data protection, fea-
turing RecoverPoint for VMs and VMware
Data Protection ensure data is protected
locally or back to the central office
• Part of a complete portfolio of converged
core and edge solutions
• Management and visibility across the
distributed enterprise with DELLEMC
Vision software, as well as centralised
vCentre Server
AVAILABILITY AND SUPPORT
• Benefit from availability and reliability
features for VxRail Appliances, such as
• 24/7 global support for all hardware and
software on the appliance
• Remote “heartbeat” monitoring, diag-
nostic, and repair with proactive fault
detection
• High-availability system design with
maximum component redundancy
• Automated operational and disaster-
recovery orchestration for VMs, including
local and remote hypervisor-based repli-
cation and continuous data protection for
per-VM recovery to any point in time
• World-class support from Dell EMC’s
single-point-of-accountability philosophy

DELL
Dell’s broadest four-socket server portfolio includes four rack
and blade options to support customers’ evolving workload
requirements with flexibility and modularity
ENHANCE ENTERPRISE
APPS PERFORMANCE
T
echnology powerhouse Dell Tech-
nologies, recently announced per-
formance and capability updates
to its PowerEdge 13th generation
four-socket server portfolio, en-
gineered for enterprise customers with large
scale server deployments to solutions re-
quirements for remote and branch offices.
Designed to optimise performance for big
data and real-time analytics and dense virtu-
alisation deployments the updated PowerEdge
servers enable the flexibility, scalability and
manageability of customers’ demand for the
future-ready enterprise.
“Customers today are looking for high-
ly virtualised data centres that can eas-
ily manage evolving workloads; this cou-
pled with a growing demand for big data
analytics will drive the growth of the four-
socket server market,” said Ashley Gora-
khpurwalla, General Manager and Vice
President, Dell Server Solutions. “Dell’s
customer-inspired four-socket servers are
designed to offer world-class performance
that accelerate core enterprise application
performance while increasing density and
workload consolidation.”
“The Intel Xeon processors E7-8800 v4
family offers industry leading performance,
new hardware enhanced security capabili-
ties, a broad range of advanced reliability
features and leading per-socket memory ca-
pacity,” said Lisa Spelman, Vice President
and General Manager of Intel Xeon Products
and Data Centre Marketing Group.
Spelman pointed out that these serv-
ers tackle the most data-demanding mis-
sion critical workloads and enable custom-
ers to gain rapid actionable insights from
massive data sets.
Milan Khurana, CHRO, Prestige Con-
structions, said: “While looking for a suit-
able infrastructure partner for ERP solu-
tions on SAP HANA, we decided to engage
with Dell to understand their offerings
as a market leader in the space. We were
impressed by the flexibility and ease of
deployment of Dell’s server, storage and
networking architecture.”
Khurana added that the company’s re-
quirement was holistic and it needed a com-
pact, flexible and scalable SAP infrastruc-
ture coupled with a solution provider known

DELL
“DESIGNED TO OPTIMISE PERFORMANCE FOR BIG DATA AND REAL-TIME ANALYTICS AND DENSE VIRTUALISATION
DEPLOYMENTS,THEUPDATEDPOWEREDGESERVERSENABLETHEFLEXIBILITY,SCALABILITYANDMANAGEABILITY
OFCUSTOMERS’DEMANDFORTHEFUTURE-READYENTERPRISE.INADDITION,THEPOWEREDGER930WITHMSFT
SQL SERVER 2016, AS WELL AS ITS BUILT-IN HIGH PERFORMING DATA WAREHOUSE, HAVE PROCESSING POWER
REQUIREDFORVIRTUALISATIONANDMEMORY-INTENSIVEAPPLICATIONWORKLOADSFORDATABASE.”
for “service excellence”. “We chose Dell as
our preferred infrastructure partner and we
are confident that we made the right deci-
sion,” Khurana said.
Intensive workload optimisation
To drive faster business results with the Dell
PowerEdge R930, the power and unique
hardware-enhanced capabilities of the new
Intel Xeon processor E7-8800 v4 family like
Intel Run Sure Technology, the server helps
customers quickly deploy database inten-
sive applications, easily scale up and better
manage infrastructure and mission-critical
workload delivery.
The PowerEdge R930 enables custom-
ers with industry-leading in-memory da-
tabase performance. In addition, the Dell
PowerEdge R930 with Intel Xeon E7-
8890 V4 processors recently set three new
world-record benchmarks.
The first, a world-record result on the
standard benchmark for the SAP HANA
platform, SAP BW advanced mixed load
(BW-AML) with 2 billion records. This
new record is a 24.77% improvement over
the previous 4-socket world record, which
was set by the Dell PowerEdge R930 with
E7v3 processors .
The second world-record result on the
standard benchmark for SAP HANA plat-
form, is the SAP BW advanced mixed load
(BW-AML) with 4 billion records. This new
world record is a 23.06% improvement over
the previous 4-socket world record, which
was set by the Dell PowerEdge R930 with
E7v3 processors
Lastly, the world record result on the SAP
sales and distribution (SD) standard applica-
tion benchmark. This new world record is a
33.09% increase over the previous 4-socket
world record, which was set by the Dell Pow-
erEdge R930 with E7v3 processors.
Optimised data base performance
The PowerEdge R930 with MSFT SQL Serv-
er 2016, as well as its built-in high perform-
ing data warehouse, have processing power
required for virtualisation and memory-in-
tensive application workloads for database.
PowerEdge R930 with the Dell Compellent
SC9000 All Flash Array, MS SQL Server
2016 data-warehousing and Emulex’s lat-
est fiber channel 16G Gen 6 delivered 99.4%
greater storage throughput and 44% faster
IOPs than the legacy Emulex 8G Gen 5 fiber
channel solution.
Greater flexibility and scalability with the
new Dell PowerEdge R830
PowerEdge R830 is a foundational four-
socket rack server designed for database ap-
plications, scale-out virtualisation and VDI
environments. With a 2U rack server form
factor it is ideal for mainstream and mid-
market customers standardised on a rack
form factor. The Dell PowerEdge four-socket
server portfolio is now the company’s most
comprehensive with the addition of the Pow-
erEdge R830 featuring Intel Xeon processor
E5-4600 v4 product family.
With four processors and up to 48 DIMMS
the PowerEdge R830 provides:
• An optimum combination of scal-
ability, flexibility and density for both
scale-out virtualisation deployments
as well as VDI deployments
• A great balance across compute, mem-
ory and overall cost for customers run-
ning computational or transactional
Microsoft SQL or Oracle databases
standardized on rack form factors
This four-socket extension of the Intel
Xeon processor E5 family gives customers
more options and greater flexibility for scal-
ing their infrastructure and growing busi-
ness in a hardware-enhanced security envi-
ronment.
Dell PowerEdge modular four-
socket servers
Dell’s four-socket server portfolio is engi-
neered to provide customers with platform
choice to best support their data centre den-
sity, scalability, manageability and flexibility
needs. In addition to the PowerEdge R930
and R830 rack servers, Dell is updating its
PowerEdge FX2 and PowerEdge M1000e
converged platforms with the PowerEdge
FC830 and the PowerEdge M830 blade serv-
ers featuring the Intel Xeon processor E5-
4600 v4 family.
The PowerEdge FC830 is a full-width,
four-socket compute node for the Power-
Edge FX architecture that helps organisa-
tions quickly configure complete workloads
using modular building blocks of IT resourc-
es. This converged platform provides twice
the four-socket density of any solution in the
industry, making it ideal for Oracle RAC or
dense four-socket deployments.
Gorakhpurwallasayscustomerstodayarelookingforhighly
virtualiseddatacentres.

For more information or to place an order on DELL,

VMWARE
VMware announces the
extension of its hybrid cloud
strategy with new cross-cloud
architecture.
V
irtualization solutions vendor
VMware Inc, has announced
the extension of its hybrid cloud
strategy with the new VMware
Cross-Cloud Architecture, ena-
bling customers to run, manage, connect and
secure their applications across clouds and
devices in a common operating environment.
In support of the company’s cloud strategy,
VMware has also announced the
VMware Cloud Foundation, a uni-
fied SDDC platform that makes it easy
for customers to manage and run their
SDDC clouds. In addition, the com-
pany outlined its technology preview
of Cross-Cloud services to show how
customers can manage, govern, and se-
cure applications running in private and
public clouds, including AWS, Azure
and IBM Cloud
YEAR OF HYPER
CONVERGENGE
AND CROSS-CLOUD
ARCHITECTURE “Customers are increasingly relying on
multiple public and private clouds to run
their applications, but are daunted by the
challenge of managing and securing ap-
plications across diverse cloud platforms,”
said Raghu Raghuram, Executive Vice
President and General Manager, Software-
Defined Data Center Division, VMware.
“When customers combine a best-in-class
private cloud with leading public clouds, all
enabled by VMware, they have the strong-
est, most flexible hybrid cloud strategy.
VMware is delivering cloud freedom and

VMWARE
control by providing a common operating
environment for all clouds with our unique
Cross-Cloud Architecture.”
As the most complete and capable hybrid
cloud architecture, the Cross-Cloud Ar-
chitecture enables consistent deployment
models, security policies, visibility, and
governance for all applications, running
on-premises and off-premises, regardless
of the underlying cloud, hardware platform
or hypervisor. VMware’s Cross-Cloud Ar-
chitecture builds on its leading private and
hybrid cloud capabilities by offering cus-
tomers the freedom to innovate in multiple
clouds, and is delivered through VMware
Cloud Foundation, a new set of Cross-
Cloud Services which VMware is develop-
ing and the VMware vRealize cloud man-
agement platform.
Unified SDDC platform
VMware Cloud Foundation delivers the
next-generation hyper-converged infra-
structure for building private clouds that
for the first time combines VMware’s
highly scalable hyper-converged software
(VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual
SAN) with the world’s leading network
virtualization platform, VMware NSX.
VMware SDDC Manager, a core compo-
nent of VMware Cloud Foundation, helps
customers and service providers automate
the deployment and management of VM-
ware cloud software. SDDC Manager helps
to build and maintain the entire VMware
cloud software stack, freeing cloud admin-
istrators from the complex and tedious task
of installing, configuring, managing and
updating their cloud infrastructure, mak-
ing it possible to build a complete cloud in
a matter of hours. The result is that cus-
tomers can gain a 6-8x reduction in time to
deploy cloud infrastructure, and save 30 to
40% on TCO.
For the first time, VMware Cloud Foun-
dation offers a new “as-a-service” option
that delivers the full power of the SDDC
in a hybrid cloud environment. IBM is the
first VMware vCloud Air Network partner
delivering new offerings based on VMware
Cloud Foundation with its VMware Cloud
Foundation on IBM Cloud offering. VM-
ware Cloud Foundation will be available on
additional public clouds, including vCloud
Air, in the future.
The year of HCI
Now, five years after VMware defined the
vision of the software-defined data center,
storage infrastructure has reached a tip-
ping point. “I’ve been saying that this is
the year of hyper-converged infrastruc-
ture,” said Yanbing Li, Senior Vice Presi-
dent and General Manager for storage
and availability at VMware. “Last year,
many of our customers were in early adop-
ter mode, but today VMware Virtual SAN
6.2 is enterprise-ready. We have scores of
customer proof points where customers
are using the product for large-scale, busi-
ness-critical deployment. This is the year
HCI reaches the inflection point and goes
into mainstream adoption. We are looking
to VMworld as a great opportunity to have
many customers share why they’ve adopt-
ed Virtual SAN and the kinds of success
they’ve realised.”
Embracing Virtual SAN
VMware customers such as HolidayCheck
are proving the massive efficiency that can be
gained from HCI. HolidayCheck leverages rat-
ings and comments to help sightseers—up to
25 million per month—find the best flights, ho-
tels, cars, and vacation rentals for their travel
needs. As the company’s site grew, its over-
loaded storage system began to slow response
times for users.
HolidayCheck turned to VMware Virtual
SAN for a hyper-converged storage solution.
The new Virtual SAN delivered much bet-
ter performance, faster and more reliable
“LAST YEAR, MANY OF OUR CUSTOMERS WERE IN EARLY ADOPTER MODE,
BUT TODAY VMWARE VIRTUAL SAN 6.2 IS ENTERPRISE-READY. WE HAVE
SCORES OF CUSTOMER PROOF POINTS WHERE CUSTOMERS ARE USING
THE PRODUCT FOR LARGE-SCALE, BUSINESS-CRITICAL DEPLOYMENT.
THIS IS THE YEAR HCI REACHES THE INFLECTION POINT AND GOES INTO
MAINSTREAMADOPTION.”
data processing, and a sustained increase in
internal managed services. In addition, be-
cause a live migration was easily performed
within the existing infrastructure, Holi-
dayCheck realised a 35% savings compared
to previous levels.
“Customers want a partner in their digital
transformation,” said Li. “We continually ask
ourselves: How can we make it simpler for
them? They are already dealing with com-
plexity in their line of business. There’s desire
for simplicity and automation in the market.
Many IT staffs are dealing with lower levels
of funding. How can we enable them to do
more with less?”
While customers such as Holiday-
Check trust Virtual SAN as a foun-
dational technology to run the most
important part of their businesses, other cus-
tomers,suchasiGovTechnologies,turntoHCI
for efficiency gains.
iGov builds rugged computing solutions
designed for use in war zones and other dif-
ficult environments. The company received
an order from a government customer for a
customised, portable tactical network. This
meant shrinking down hardware that weighed
620 pounds and took up 48,000 cubic inches to
a new system that was 170 pounds and 6,900
cubic inches. iGov reduced the footprint,
largely, by incorporating Virtual SAN, but the
unexpected improvement in performance
left them stunned.
“We consistently hear three things from
customers: They want solutions that are much
easier, they want a better value proposition,
and they want what they buy today to be fu-
ture-proof,” added Li.
VMware’s HCI business is growing rap-
idly due to high demand, Li explained. From
June 2014 to June 2016, the Virtual SAN cus-
tomer base grew by a factor of 10—from 500
to 5,000 customers—and is now deployed by
40% of Fortune 1,000 companies and across
all major industries.
Lipointedoutthatbusinessesofalltypesare
showing increasing trust in the solution, too,
with more than 60% running business-critical
applications on Virtual SAN. Li noted that 20
of the 25 largest finance companies—an indus-
try known for requiring high performance,
high availability, and low risk—have now de-
ployed HCI powered by Virtual SAN.

For more information or to place an order on VMware,

CISCO
Whether you plan to deploy a
private or hybrid cloud, Cisco
Unified Computing System
(UCS) gives you the agility
to move your infrastructure
forward.
E
very day, businesses perform a
delicate balancing act: working to
outperform competitors with IT
resources that often are unrespon-
sive and unmanageable.
Those limitations result in incremental
improvements rather than real innovation.
That’s why many organisations use Cisco
UCS to build the cloud solutions that can
move their businesses forward. Whether
you need a private or hybrid-cloud, Cisco
UCS provides the best foundation for your
deployment. You can tap into the resourc-
es you need while improving IT response
times and business agility.
Cisco UCS: built for cloud deploy-
ments
As you turn to cloud computing to enhance
business agility, your infrastructure must be
easy to integrate, automate, and orchestrate.
Whether your company needs to offer self-
service, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS),
platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or software-
as-a-service (SaaS) capabilities, the flexibil-
ity of Cisco UCS can help you meet your IT
and business goals.
Integration for greater flexibility
Many IT departments have large sets of
hardware and software components—and
spend a lot of time integrating them into a
workable solution. Unlike other solutions
that simply overlay software, Cisco UCS is
an integrated system that takes the guess-
work out of deploying cloud infrastructure.
The system integrates industry-standard,
x86-architecture Intel Xeon blade and
rack servers with networking, storage, and
intelligent management resources in a self-
aware and self-integrating system. This
design delivers greater computing density,
virtualisation and network simplicity in a
smaller, more cost-effective footprint that
helps make your cloud infrastructure and
business more agile.
All components are connected through
a unified fabric that delivers high-perfor-
mance data and storage networking to sim-
plify deployment, help ensure the quality of
the user experience, and reduce operating
costs. Integrated network services provide
high-speed connectivity and high availabil-
ity, accelerate application performance, and
reduce the security risks associated with
multitenant environments.
Resource pooling for infrastructure
agility and efficiency
IT managers and cloud providers recognise
that users expect continuous operation, so
IT can’t take a long time to add new serv-
ers or repurpose idle ones. Cisco UCS lets
you move from technology silos to a holistic
approach that transforms your data centre
infrastructure into pools of resources that
can be easily allocated and repurposed.
Your applications can run more efficiently
within, between, and beyond your data cen-
tre boundaries—and your IT department
can evolve to an IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS)
model to accelerate service delivery and
increase revenue.
Unlike other solutions, Cisco UCS imple-
ments templates and pools at the physical
layer. Servers can be classified into resource
pools based on a variety of criteria, from
physical attributes (such as processor, mem-
ory, or disk capacity) to chassis location.
AGILE PLATFORM FOR
CLOUD DEPLOYMENT

CISCO
Even universally unique identifiers
(UUIDs), MAC addresses, and worldwide
names (WWNs) can be pooled and used as
needed. These capabilities help automate
provisioning by identifying servers that can
be configured to assume a role, such as web,
database, or virtual desktop infrastructure
server. Your IT staff can set up the system to
automatically assign resources to pools and
provision them based on their pool assign-
ment, whether you are deploying blade or
rack servers, or both. Because server config-
urations can be replicated easily, your staff
can deploy and scale your cloud infrastruc-
ture and repurpose servers with ease.
As a result, your business gets the re-
sources it needs when it needs it—and your
IT staff doesn’t have to stay up all night to
reconfigure solutions.
A stateless approach so IT and
business can adapt
Organisations that move to the cloud recog-
nise that flexibility matters—and that cloud
infrastructure should let you easily allocate
and use resources on a moment’s notice.
That means that your cloud infrastructure
shouldn’t be rigidly defined and configured.
Cisco UCS uses a stateless, programmable
approach to give you exceptional flexibility
for determining how, when, and where your
resources are deployed and used.
Cisco UCS abstracts server identity, per-
sonality, and I/O connectivity from the hard-
ware, enabling these characteristics to be ap-
plied on demand. These abstractions, called
service profiles, allow every aspect of a serv-
er’s configuration—from firmware revisions
and BIOS settings to network profiles—to be
assigned through the system’s open, docu-
mented, standards-based XML API or the
Cisco UCS Manager GUI.
Service profiles allow you to treat your
server resources as raw computing capacity
that can be allocated and reallocated among
application workloads. This approach sup-
ports a more dynamic and efficient use of
server capacity regardless of whether server
virtualisation is being used. Because this
intelligent system knows how objects fit
together and can apply service profiles in a
consistent manner, you can have confidence
that the right equipment is provisioned for
the workload it is going to support.
Automate and orchestrate at the level
that’s right for your business
Traditional management approaches make
your IT environment difficult to use and
scale. That’s because the approach of leaving
management to an afterthought results in in-
complete solutions that fail to deliver unified
infrastructure management. Cisco breaks
down these barriers so you can simplify,
deploy, and maintain your physical, virtual,
and cloud platforms with better visibility
and control.
Better management for better busi-
ness advantage
Whatever management level you choose,
your IT staff can easily virtualise, automate,
and secure your Cisco UCS deployments and
achieve cloud scale for dynamic business ap-
plications. Your IT staff can tap into cloud
resources so your data centre can handle
spikes in demand. This increased flexibility
means that you can scale your infrastructure
and workloads up or out, or both, across pri-
vate and public resources to deliver new and
innovative services in shorter time frames,
support a growing user community, and in-
crease workload mobility.
Embedded model-based management
No matter which cloud orchestration and
automation software you use, you need in-
frastructure that supports those activities.
With Cisco UCS, you can use programmatic
infrastructure at whatever level your organi-
sation needs, from scripts to fully automated
capabilities.
Cisco UCS is programmed through a sin-
gle, embedded, model-based management
interface to accelerate the deployment and
performance of physical, virtualised, and
cloud-computing environments. An exten-
sive XML API with a software development
kit (SDK) that includes an emulator facili-
tates custom development to achieve new
levels of system visibility and control. With
the Cisco UCS XML API, your IT depart-
ment can easily tap into your private and hy-
brid cloud resources and manage your entire
system with scripts you customise for your
unique cloud deployment.
Integration with cloud management
platforms
If you already use a cloud management plat-
form, you can protect your software invest-
ments and take advantage of a cloud based
on Cisco technology. With the Cisco UCS
XML API, you can plug into cloud manage-
ment platforms from a wide range of ven-
dors, including Cisco Intelligent Automa-
tion for Cloud, Microsoft System Centre,
and VMware vRealise Automation. As a
result, your administrators can use famil-
iar management models and take advantage
of built-in automation and intelligence to
gain outstanding visibility into, and con-
trol over, your private, public, and hybrid
cloud environments.
Full automation and orchestration
You can also fully automate your cloud envi-
ronment with solutions like Cisco
UCS Director. This powerful software uni-
fies and automates end-to-end infrastructure
management processes by abstracting the
complexity of individual devices, hypervi-
sors, and virtual machines and by automating
management processes through a unified and
easy-to-use set of tools and interfaces. Auto-
mation, orchestration, and lifecycle manage-
ment capabilities simplify deployment and
enable your IT staff to easily operationally in-
tegrate your bare-metal and cloud infrastruc-
ture resources to address complex, time-
consuming, manual, and compartmentalised
processes. Because multivendor infrastruc-
ture is a deployment reality, a self-service web
interface abstracts the complexity of devices,
hypervisors, and virtual machines so you can
stand up infrastructure within minutes and
get the most from your cloud deployments.
“UNLIKE OTHER SOLUTIONS, CISCO UCS IMPLEMENTS TEMPLATES AND
POOLS AT THE PHYSICAL LAYER. SERVERS CAN BE CLASSIFIED INTO
RESOURCE POOLS BASED ON A VARIETY OF CRITERIA, FROM PHYSICAL
ATTRIBUTES (SUCH AS PROCESSOR, MEMORY, OR DISK CAPACITY) TO
CHASSISLOCATION.”

IT Agility Delivered:
Cisco Unified
Computing System
For more information or to place an order on Cisco,

FORTINET
Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet, discusses security for smart cities and
what threat CIOs should lookout for?
C
ar navigation systems that can
predict where and when traffic
jams might occur, by siphoning
data from sensors in roads and
other vehicles. Cameras that can
spot litter in public places and call in the
cleaning crew. Self-adjusting street lamps.
These are just a few of the scenarios that
could become commonplace as smart cit-
ies take hold over the next few years.
Driven by rising urbanisation and fueled
by technologies such as the Internet of
Things (IoT) and data analytics, smart cit-
ies are on the cusp of explosive growth.
Glasgow, Barcelona, Nice, New York City,
London and Singapore have already em-
barked on the trek. The smart city tech-
nology market could be worth US$27.5
billion annually by 2023, according
to Navigant Research.
Smart city initiatives are driven by pub-
lic sector initiatives. However, they will
have a big impact on businesses. CIOs will
have to learn how to tap on the new con-
nected city infrastructure for their busi-
ness. Smart city technologies like IoT and
data analytics are expected to drive inno-
vative business ideas in the future.
But the new wave of smart city services
and technologies are also expected to cre-
ate new security vulnerabilities. Here are
FIVE areas CIOs should watch out for.
1. A further fragmentation of IT
The last few years saw a rapid proliferation
of cloud services and mobile device adop-
tion in the workplace. The trend has trans-
formed business productivity. But it has also
wrecked the tight-fisted control that CIOs
SMART CITIES: FIVE
SECURITY AREAS CIOS
SHOULD WATCH

FORTINET
used to be able to exert on their IT systems.
CIOs now have to grapple with the idea of
employees using unsanctioned cloud servic-
es via unsecured phones to hook up to corpo-
rate servers and accessing sensitive business
data. The expected explosion of IoT devices −
researchers estimate that by 2020, the num-
ber of active wireless connected devices will
exceed 40 billion worldwide − will result in
a further fragmentation of IT in businesses.
Instead of fighting the losing battle of try-
ing to lock down devices and services, CIOs
should look at protecting the data. Look for
IoT devices that offer device-to-device en-
cryption. Consider implementing − as well
as bolstering − comprehensive encryption
schemes to protect data in networks, cloud
services and endpoint devices.
2. Device vulnerabilities
In the past year, security researchers have
exposed holes in Wi-Fi-enabled Barbie dolls,
Jeep Cherokee cars, fitness trackers and
other new-fangled connected devices. Forti-
net’s FortiGuard Labs already see IoT based
attacks on the radar and happening in real
time around the world. This shows the risks
that are coming as toys, wearables, cars and
power grids get attached to sensors that are
linked to a common network and the Web.
IoT will bring forth a larger surface attack.
Hackers will eye IoT devices as a launching
pad for ‘land-and-expand’ attacks. One sce-
nario: hackers take advantage of vulnerabili-
ties in connected consumer devices to get a
foothold within the corporate networks and
hardware to which they connect.
So how do CIOs protect against the risks
of connected devices and their own IoT
implementations? Short of physically sepa-
rating such devices from all other network
systems, they can consider deploying net-
work-based protection schemes. Internal
segmentation firewalls, or ISFWs, for in-
stance, can mitigate the proliferation of
threats inside the business network. They
also need to employ an IoT network secu-
rity solution which is capable of mitigating
exploits against this growing and vulnerable
attack surface. IoT vendors need to harden
their products and develop proper product
security (PSIRT) teams.
3. IoT gateways can be exploited
In a typical IoT deployment, the major-
ity of connected devices will be always con-
nected and always on. Unlike mobile phones
and laptops, such devices are likely to go
through only a one-time authentication pro-
cess across multiple sessions. This will make
them attractive to hackers looking to infil-
trate into company networks, as it allows
easy control and sniffing of traffic. Shoring
up the security of the gateways that connect
IoT devices is therefore a must. CIOs should
map out where these gateways are and where
they are linked to − they can reside internally
or externally, and even be connected to IoT
device manufacturers. There must also be a
sound plan for updating security patches on
these gateways, as well as the IoT devices.
4. Big data, more risks
If there is a constant in smart city deploy-
ments, it is that more data will be generated,
processed and stored. Connected devices
will generate huge data repositories. Busi-
nesses that adopt big data systems will see an
even larger data deluge. Unfortunately, such
data will also become attractive targets for
corporate hackers. To protect huge amounts
of data with large inflows and outflows, the
bandwidth capabilities of security applianc-
es will come to the fore. And when dealing
with data analytics, it often isn’t just a sin-
gle data set, but multiple repositories of data
that may be combined and analyzed together
by different groups of people. For instance,
a pharmaceutical company’s research ef-
forts may be open to employees, contractors
and interns. This means individual access
and auditing rights.
5. A new can of worms
New worms designed to attach to IoT de-
vices will emerge − and they could wreck
more havoc given the extended reach of the
new converged networks. Conficker is an
example of a worm that spread on PC’s in
2008 and is still persistent and prevalent in
2016. Likewise, worms and viruses that can
propagate from device to device can be ex-
pected to emerge – particularly with mobile
and the Android operating system. Embed-
ded worms will spread by leveraging and
exploiting vulnerabilities in the growing IoT
and mobile attack surface. The largest botnet
FortiGuard labs has witnessed is in the range
of 15 million PC’s. Thanks to the internet of
things, this can easily reach in excess of 50
million if the spread of IoT worms is not
properly mitigated. Patch management, and
network based security inspection – particu-
larly intrusion prevention systems or IPS –
that can block IoT worms is a must.
“IF THERE IS A CONSTANT IN SMART CITY DEPLOYMENTS, IT IS THAT
MORE DATA WILL BE GENERATED, PROCESSED AND STORED. CONNECTED
DEVICES WILL GENERATE HUGE DATA REPOSITORIES. BUSINESSES THAT
ADOPT BIG DATA SYSTEMS WILL SEE AN EVEN LARGER DATA DELUGE.
UNFORTUNATELY, SUCH DATA WILL ALSO BECOME ATTRACTIVE TARGETS
FOR CORPORATE HACKERS. TO PROTECT HUGE AMOUNTS OF DATA WITH
LARGE INFLOWS AND OUTFLOWS, THE BANDWIDTH CAPABILITIES OF
SECURITYAPPLIANCESWILLCOMETOTHEFORE.”
AlainPenelsaysCIOsnowhavetograpplewiththeideaof
staffusingunsanctionedcloudservices.

SECURE YOUR
WEAKEST LINK
SECURE WIRELESS. NO COMPROMISE.
BYOD and IoT are bringing more and more unsecured devices
onto the network, causing greater complexity — and eroding
security at the network edge. Fortunately, Fortinet provides complete
protection with the industry’s most extensive wireless access
solution with integrated security.
Visit www.fortinet.com for more details.
Copyright © 2016 Fortinet, Inc. All rights reserved. Fortinet®
, FortiGate®
, FortiCare®
and FortiGuard®
, and certain other marks are registered
trademarks of Fortinet, Inc., and other Fortinet names herein may also be registered and/or common law trademarks of Fortinet.
Security Without Compromise
For more information or to place an order on Fortinet,

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
(HPE) has announced the
expansion of Hyper Converged
380 partner offerings.
O
rganisations of all sizes are
looking to run more agile, ef-
ficient and scalable IT infra-
structures, and Hyper Con-
vergence—which leverages a
software-based architecture that closely
integrates computing, virtualisation, stor-
age and networking resources.
HPE is investing heavily in hyper con-
vergence because it provides a much sim-
pler form of IT infrastructure that many
see as the future for data centers. In fact,
many companies are asking for hyper
convergence now (it’s the fastest grow-
ing segment in the data center), which is
why the company is packaging this ap-
pliance with additional partner branded
services, making it more appealing for the
channel community to help deliver these
solutions to customers.
To that end, HPE is recently announced
an expansion of its Hyper Converged 380
offerings for channel partners. These
rapid bundles consist of hardware, sup-
port and startup services that are all tied
together, providing customers with the
ability to order customised virtualisation,
cloud and VDI workloads all in five clicks
or less.
HPE’s thousands of channel partners
around the world gain because they get an
easier and more profitable way to deploy
these Hyper Convergence solutions.
As part of the announcement, made at
the 2016 Global Partner Conference in
Boston, HPE is introducing expanded
resources specifically designed to help
channel partners accelerate their growth.
The Partner Ready programme is ex-
panding to deliver additional resources
to partners, including the integration of
competencies designed to help partners
capture additional market share, a new
Partner Ready Networking Programme,
a revamped Partner Ready Service Pro-
vider Programme, and an updated suite of
ready-made partner marketing resources.
A win-win-win for partners, custom-
ers, and HPE
Partners will be able to use their own brands
on the HPE products or have them co-brand-
ed. Either way, the solutions are 100% backed
by HPE. Through these latest announce-
ments, HPE is enabling its channel partners
to become the public face to the customer,
the primary contacts that have expertise in
HPE technology and also understand the spe-
cific needs of the companies they serve.
HPE entered the Hyper Converged sys-
tems market about a year ago because it
viewed this as the key to increased efficiency
and high performance in the data center.
The way the company sees it, everyone
gains from these latest moves from HPE.
HPE’s thousands of channel partners around
the world gain because they get an easier
and more profitable way to deploy these Hy-
per Convergence solutions. The company is
expanding the partners’ ability to deliver
these appliances to their customers and
at the same time become trusted advisors
to their clients.
The customers gain because they can
more quickly and effectively implement
these solutions and reap the benefits, such
as reduced costs, simplifying IT operations
and faster time to market. They can count
on the channel partner to help not only with
the initial deployment, but also with ongo-
ing support during the lifecycle of the solu-
tion. They get a “higher touch” experience
because the partner is working closely with
them to ensure a smooth transition to the
new IT environment.
HYPER CONVERGENCE:
THE FUTURE OF DATA
CENTERS

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE
And HPE gains because the most quali-
fied partners in the world are bringing
these solutions quickly to the market, and
helping to increase customer satisfaction by
enabling companies of all sizes to transform
their IT infrastructures in the most efficient
ways possible.
HPE released its Hyper Converged offer-
ing in the market over a year ago because
it viewed this as the key to increased effi-
ciency and improve performance in the data
centre. The bigger part of the opportunity is
still up for grabs, many analysts continue to
report that 51% of the market is still undecid-
ed on which vendor to select, but the major-
ity will select a tier one vendor to invest in.
It’s time to engage the vast channel commu-
nity – a community that knows how to ad-
dress the individual needs of customers and
one that can benefit in big ways from these
technology advances.
Multiplechoicepointsforflexibility
• The HPE Hyper Converged 380 is based
on the highly configurable HPE Pro-
Liant DL380 Gen9 Server combined with
VMware vSphere, for increased stor-
age, network, compute and graphics op-
tions, significantly improving flexibility
in deployment.
• Simplifyplanningandbudgetingprocesses
by purchasing what you need, when you
needit.Startsmallwitha2-nodeappliance
and grow in single node increments up to
16 nodes.
• Non-disruptive upgrades applications re-
main online during maintenance events
(adding nodes, updating software or firm-
ware) for best in class availability.
• Make adjustments to storage, compute and
network capacity to meet your business
needs. As you grow, simply order identical-
ly configured nodes and know your expan-
sion will occur automatically at power up.
• Optimised for I/O, memory, stor-
age or general-purpose workloads to
fine-tune performance.
• Perform virtual machine management
and live hardware firmware updates from
an integrated console, providing a simple-
to-use user interface utilizing the HPE
OneView user experience.
• Integrated replication for disaster recov-
ery—HC 380 includes integrated replica-
tion to simplify management with simple
failover and failback. The HC 380 comes
with a Site Recovery Adapter that inte-
grates the remote copy feature with VM-
ware Site Recovery Manager.
Virtualisation, VDI and Cloud Opti-
mizedworkloadoptions
Allhardwareandsoftwarecomponentsarepre-
installed and pre-integrated by HPE. Unique
to the HPE Hyper Converged Systems family,
quicker system set-up using HPE OneView In-
stantOn software and the new HPE OneView
User Experience (UX) interface, enables faster
time to value. After the initial installation, IT
generalists can manage their physical and
virtualized environment with the new HPE
OneView User Experience (UX).
• For general purpose virtualisation,
choose the HPE Hyper Converged 380
base virtualisation platform with VM-
ware vSphere, HPE StoreVirtual VSA,
and HPE OneView InstantOn. This fully
verified, pre-integrated system gets you
up and running in hours with the confi-
dence you need.
• Select the VDI/Client Virtualization con-
figuration with VMware Horizon View
and the base virtualisation platform. In-
cludes accelerated graphics options for
fully-provisioned, persistent and non-
persistent desktops.
• For Cloud applications choose a fully
verified and integrated cloud solution
including the base virtualisation plat-
form VMware vSphere, HPE CloudSys-
tem, HPE manageability software, and
external storage.
HyperConverged
As your customer’s business continues to grow
and evolve, they will need an IT environment
thatcansupportadiversesetofapplicationwork-
loads, while delivering greater performance,
capacity, and cost efficiency. The HPE Hyper
Converged 380 meets all these needs and more.
Choose the 2-, 3- or 4-node Hyper Converged
380 for compute-intensive applications such as
SQL database consolidation or for capacity-de-
manding applications like client virtualization.
The HC 380 combines the powerful and world’s
best-selling ProLiant DL380 Server platform
with robust HPE StoreVirtual data services into
one building block to simplify the delivery of in-
tegrated virtualized servers. The HPE Hyper
Converged 380 is delivered as a fully integrated
system, which includes storage, server, graphics
and virtualisation, fully tested and supported.
HPE Hyper Converged 380 can allow you cus-
tomerstostartsmallandscalequicklyasneeded.
HPEHyperConverged380issimpletoorder,fast
toinstallandeasytoexpand.
Furthermore, through comprehensive in-
frastructure lifecycle management, proactive
advice and 24 x 7 solution monitoring, HPE’s
team of experts can help you maximize your
customer’s workload uptime and avoid problems
beforetheyoccur.
HPE is distributed in the Middle East and Africa
marketbyRedingtonValueDistribution.
“THE HC 380 COMBINES THE POWERFUL AND WORLD’S BEST-SELLING
PROLIANT DL380 SERVER PLATFORM WITH ROBUST HPE STOREVIRTUAL
DATA SERVICES INTO ONE BUILDING BLOCK TO SIMPLIFY THE DELIVERY
OF INTEGRATED VIRTUALIZED SERVERS. THE HPE HYPER CONVERGED
380 IS DELIVERED AS A FULLY INTEGRATED SYSTEM, WHICH INCLUDES
STORAGE, SERVER, GRAPHICS AND VIRTUALISATION, FULLY TESTED AND
SUPPORTED.”
HPEhasintroducedexpandedresourcestohelppartners
acceleratetheirgrowth.

For more information or to place an order on Hewlett Packard Enterprise,

BARRACUDA
Microsoft Azure provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which enables organisations to host
virtual machines on the Azure infrastructure, paying only for actual resources used. The Barracuda
web application firewall helps to secure SharePoint deployments.
SECURING
SHAREPOINT
DEPLOYMENTS IN
MICROSOFT AZURE

BARRACUDA
“ADDING THE BARRACUDA NG FIREWALL TO AN AZURE
SHAREPOINT DEPLOYMENT PROVIDES SECURE AND
PERFORMANT CONNECTIVITY TO THE CLOUD. WITH
BARRACUDA’S NG FIREWALL ADVANCED VPN TECH-
NOLOGY, MASSIVE WAN OPTIMISATION FEATURES AND
COMPREHENSIVEREPORTINGCAPABILITIESFINDTHEIR
WAYINTOTHEPUBLICCLOUD.”
M
icrosoft Azure SharePoint
2013’s architecture typically
requires deploying a set of
servers in a dedicated server
farm topology. Having an on-
premises environment is not always easy
and requires considerable CPU, RAM, stor-
age, and servers. Microsoft Azure offers a
perfect way to host highly scalable develop-
ment and/or testing environments, labs, and
production farms.
Microsoft Azure opens up new opportu-
nities to quickly deploy SharePoint server
farms and reduce the total cost of owner-
ship by removing infrastructure related
costs. Microsoft Azure makes cloud deploy-
ment increasingly attractive for companies
with limited IT budgets by the ability to
scale up and down based on load while only
paying for what is used.
The importance of application secu-
rity in the cloud
Businesses increasingly opt to relocate ap-
plications to the cloud to reap the benefits of
agility, efficiency and cost-effective deliv-
ery of services. On the other hand, moving
applications out from behind the corporate
firewall creates concerns about control and
undermines confidence. The accessibil-
ity that makes cloud-based applications
appealing to users also makes applications
more vulnerable to hackers, who may use
them as gateways into corporate networks.
A single unsecured web application can
cause significant danger of data loss and
system compromise.
Building confidence in the security of the
cloud is an important step in encouraging
the adoption of this scalable platform. Mi-
crosoft and Barracuda partner to provide
a security solution for cloud-hosted, web-
based applications. The Barracuda Web
Application Firewall for Microsoft Azure
deters attempts to penetrate networks and
offers organisations a secure, highly reli-
able defence against threats, with no need
to learn, configure, and manage complex
technology.
What the Barracuda firewall adds to
the SharePoint-Azure solution
The Barracuda Web Application Firewall
offers comprehensive OWASP Top 10 pro-
tection. It prevents common attacks includ-
ing SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XXS)
and session tampering, XML-based attacks,
brute-force attacks, malware uploads, and
more. The Barracuda Energize Updates
subscription guarantees that the Barracuda
Web Application Firewall receives the lat-
est policy, security and attack definitions
automatically. The Barracuda Web Applica-
tion Firewall also provides strong, identity-
based, authentication, and access control
that ensures security by restricting Share-
Point access to authorised users. Finally, the
Barracuda Web Application Firewall offers
configurable levels of Logging, Monitoring
and Reporting. This way, an administrator
is always on top and knows what is going on.
sits between the Internet and the web serv-
ers hosted in Microsoft Azure and scans
inbound traffic to block attacks before they
reach the servers and inspects outbound
traffic to prevent data leakage.
The Barracuda web application fire-
wall
“Autoscaling”, one of the key benefits of the
Microsoft Azure platform, enables applica-
tions to rapidly scale in the cloud as demand
changes. This ensures that the application
remains responsive at all times by adding
additional instances.
A DDoS attack that is neither identi-
fied nor blocked could have a massive
impact on the cost of the Microsoft Az-
ure Infrastructure, depending on the
settings of “Autoscaling”. By using Bar-
racuda’s IP Reputation Database, Barra-
cuda Blacklist, Heuristic Fingerprinting,
and more, the Barracuda Web Applica-
tion Firewall provides superior protection
against DDoS attacks.
Additional Barracuda offerings for
Microsoft Azure
Barracuda Networks also offers an indus-
try-leading next generation firewall - the
Barracuda NG Firewall - which provides
advanced network security, connectivity,
visibility, and management of the public
cloud.
Adding the Barracuda NG Firewall to an
Azure SharePoint deployment provides se-
cure and performant connectivity to the
cloud. With Barracuda’s NG Firewall ad-
vanced VPN technology, massive WAN op-
timisation features and comprehensive re-
porting capabilities find their way into the
public cloud. The reporting capabilities in-
clude a tightly integrated Revision Control
System, real-time monitoring and logging,
and creating high-level reports including
suggestions on how to improve an organisa-
tion’s application usage policy.
Having state-of-the-art failover and link
handling capabilities as an essential part
of the Barracuda NG Firewall guarantees
business continuity.
The Barracuda Web Application Fire-
wall is an integrated, proven and highly
scalable security solution on Microsoft Az-
ure, offering comprehensive protection for
web applications and for confidential data
hosted in the cloud. This solution ensures
that web applications have the same high
levels of protection afforded by in-house
data centers.
for Microsoft Azure is secure, affordable,
and easy to use. It combines web application
security, access control, and optimisation in
a single package that is easy and intuitive to
set up and administer.

sales@barracuda.com | +97 144 534 664 | barracuda.com
For more information or to place an order on Barracuda,

GIGAMON
Treavor Dearing, EMEA marketing director at Gigamon, talks about the rising risks in commercial
environments as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to growth with more and more, hackers
targeting critical infrastructure with the potential to disrupt operations and cause physical
damage.
THE RISING RISKS
TO ICS AND SCADA
ENVIRONMENTS

GIGAMON
A
s the industrial Internet of Things
(IoT) continues to grow, tradition-
ally isolated industrial control sys-
tems are being connected to busi-
ness networks. But when a system’s
cybersecurity has, up till now, been reliant
upon physical isolation from possible attack
vectors, how can you enjoy the convenience of
connectivity without introducing potentially
catastrophic vulnerabilities?
What do a German steel mill, a Ukrainian
power grid, and an American dam have in com-
mon? Whatsoundslikeitshouldbethestartofa
joke is in fact anything but... alongside the tradi-
tional data and dollars, hackers are increasingly
targeting exactly this type of critical infrastruc-
ture, disrupting operations and even causing
physical damage.
According to the ‘2015 Dell Security An-
nual Threat Report’, worldwide SCADA at-
tacks increased from 91,676 incidents in Janu-
ary 2012 to 163,228 in January 2013 to 675,186
in January 2014! As per Ponemon Institute’s
2014 study, ‘Critical Infrastructure: Secu-
rity Preparedness and Maturity’, 67 percent
of companies surveyed had suffered at least
one cyber attack on their ICS/SCADA sys-
tems in that past year, and 78 percent said they
were expecting a successful attack within
the next two years.
So what’s causing this dramatic upsurge? In
most cases, it’s the move to connect an increas-
ing number of industrial control systems to the
Internet. For companies on the lookout for ways
to gain a competitive edge by doing more with
less, it’s impossible to ignore the promises of the
industrial Internet of Things (IoT): improved
efficiency, increased productivity, lowered
costs, enhanced automation, and even superior
safety. But, as with most things in life, having it
all is tough to achieve, and IIoT is no exception
– alongside the undeniable positives of Internet
access lie the inevitable vulnerabilities intro-
ducedintoanewlyconnectedITinfrastructure.
Old systems,newvulnerabilities
Compared to a regular IT network, traf-
fic in industrial control environments is ex-
ceedingly low and, for the most part, the
technology has been in place for 10+ years
– more often than not it was never devel-
oped with Internet connectivity in mind, let
alone cybersecurity. Systems were physi-
cally isolated and security measures revolved
around policy, air-gapping, and preventing
outside exposure.
By definition, an air-gapped system is neither
connected to the Internet nor any other unse-
cured networks. While many experts still rec-
ommend maintaining air gaps, there’s consider-
able debate over whether this advice is feasible
– in today’s almost universally-connected envi-
ronment, can business and control networks re-
ally remain separate… and should they?
Because even air-gapped systems are vulner-
able; infected USB flash drives, malicious insid-
ers,carelessorcompromisedusersarejustsome
waysanisolatednetworkcanbeattacked.Hack-
ersusedspear-phishingtoinfiltratetheGerman
steel mill and prevent a blast furnace from shut-
ting down. Google dorking gave alleged Iranian
hackersaccesstotheNewYorkdamcontrolsys-
tem and, had a certain sluice valve not been dis-
connectedformaintenance,itmighthavemeant
flood gates opening.
Air-gapped or not, it’s probably wise
to assume perimeters can be breached,
and to establish additional defenses based
on that assumption.
Bringit home
Theindustrialsectorisrepletewithgeograph-
ically dispersed and remote facilities, most of
which lack dedicated IT/IoT resources and
security expertise or, worse (at least from a
security perspective), are lights-out, locked-
down, and without any personnel on hand.
To reach them involves time, man-power, and
expense—none of which is good, especially
during an emergency.
Unfortunately, centralised administration
can be difficult when designated monitoring
networks are isolated and unavailable. Com-
panies could arm every substation with dedi-
cated advanced detection tools, but that be-
comes increasingly expensive as you add sites
–whatifyouhavetoprotect50,100,even1,000
remote locations? Compounding the cost con-
cernistheknowledgethatsuchextrememeas-
ures are probably not necessary: from a data
traffic standpoint, if you only have 10 megs
of traffic, a box capable of processing a gig is
expensive overkill!
A more practical approach would be to
route traffic back to a central processor
for inspection.
NERC CIP provides a framework of se-
curity controls that is very flexible and open
to multi-method approaches. For example,
while one company may satisfy a control by
monitoring packet data, another may do so
via the correlation of log data, and yet anoth-
er by simply reducing exposure through air
gaps and segmentation.
For companies interested in extending
the capabilities of advanced cybersecurity
tools at the centralised production environ-
ment out to substations, implementing an
out-of-band transport network to gain vis-
ibility into both packet data and syslog traffic
can be enormously beneficial. A great way to
achieve this - while maintaining segmenta-
tion of the ICS network - is to insert a passive
network TAP between a local syslog server
and reporting endpoints, isolate the syslog
traffic via an IP filter, and tunnel it back via
an out-of-band network to a central monitor-
ing location. (Like NSA Chief Hacker Rob
Joyce said, out-of-band network TAPS are a
nightmare to hack!)
Centralisation is the ideal way to maintain
“air-gappedness” while enabling one-way
monitoring that can’t be used as a potential
attack vector – but that can offer greater in-
telligence on how a system might be targeted,
while helping to detect and respond to a host
of threats, immediately and remotely.
“FOR COMPANIES INTERESTED IN EXTENDING THE CAPABILITIES OF AD-
VANCED CYBERSECURITY TOOLS AT THE CENTRALISED PRODUCTION EN-
VIRONMENT OUT TO SUBSTATIONS, IMPLEMENTING AN OUT-OF-BAND
TRANSPORT NETWORK TO GAIN VISIBILITY INTO BOTH PACKET DATA AND
SYSLOG TRAFFIC CAN BE ENORMOUSLY BENEFICIAL. A GREAT WAY TO
ACHIEVE THIS - WHILE MAINTAINING SEGMENTATION OF THE ICS NET-
WORK-ISTOINSERTAPASSIVENETWORKTAPBETWEENALOCALSYSLOG
SERVERANDREPORTINGENDPOINTS.”

For more information or to place an order on Gigamon,

TRIPP LITE
Tripp Lite, a global manufacturer of IT infrastructure and connectivity products, provide
completelyintegratedinfrastructuresolutionsfromasinglesourceandiscommittedtoproviding
personalisedsupportforcustomersofallsizestoensurethattheirindividualneedsaremet.
T
ripp Lite’s full range of products
includes UPS systems, PDUs,
racks, cooling, KVMs and console
servers, cables and connectivity
solutions. The manufacturer of-
fers a variety of features and benefits in
each category, meaning its solutions can
fit into any application or budget.
Alexander Khalaev, Tripp Lite’s Vice
President of Sales – MENA, CIS and
Baltics, said: “Thanks to the breadth
and variety of our product portfolio
and the expertise of our sales staff, we
can work one-on-one with our custom-
ers to put together individualised in-
frastructure solutions that meet their
specific requirements.”
Khalaev added: “Whether a client’s
needs are technical, budgetary or busi-
ness-related, we will do whatever we can
to make sure those needs are met, and that
includes designing custom products.”
Resolving global supply chain
challenges
For example, a major international cloud
services platform and web services provid-
er chose Tripp Lite because the manufac-
turer was the only vendor who could meet
their global supply chain and inventory
needs. By relying on its strategic interna-
tional distribution centres and leveraging
its partner networks, Tripp Lite has been
able to readily supply the web services pro-
PERSONALISED IT
INFRASTRUCTURE
SOLUTIONS

TRIPP LITE
vider with thousands of 42U rack enclo-
sures on an annual basis that are used in
the customer’s hundreds of data centres all
over the world.
Tripp Lite was also able to help protect
the uptime of the same customer’s web ser-
vices with a customised Automatic Trans-
fer Switch (ATS) design. In this case, the
manufacturer took an existing ATS design
from its standard product catalogue and
enhanced the features in order to meet
the customer’s rigorous requirements.
The resulting ATS solution that Tripp
Lite custom-built is now a key component
in the web services provider’s infrastruc-
ture, as it prevents downtime by sup-
porting the electrical infrastructure and
providing redundancy.
Tripp Lite’s excellence as a solutions
provider was recently recognised when the
manufacturer was named to CRN’s 2016
Data Center 100 list. “Building and main-
taining an efficient, reliable data centre is
a monumental task, requiring a wide range
of technologies, including a combination of
hardware and software that provides just
the right fit,” said Robert Faletra, CEO,
The Channel Company. “Vendors who can
deliver this breadth and depth of materi-
als and services are an invaluable resource
to today’s solution providers, and we are
pleased to present the best of those compa-
nies in the 2016 Data Center 100 list.”
Keelin Wyman, Tripp Lite Executive
Vice President, commented: “Our inclusion
on the list validates Tripp Lite’s commit-
ment to offer solution providers an impres-
sive breadth of products for the data centre,
including UPS systems, PDUs, enclosures,
cooling and connectivity products, all
from a single source.”
Innovative solutions designed to
solve unique problems
Tripp Lite goes to great lengths to help its
customers meet their needs, having gone
so far as to develop new solutions that
weren’t previously available in the market-
place. Khalaev affirmed that: “Our business
model revolves around solving our clients’
problems and if nothing in our portfolio of
over 3,500 products meets their require-
ments, we can build a brand-new solution to
satisfy their needs.”
In one case, a well-known online social
networking service came to Tripp Lite look-
ing for a way to provide ATS redundancy
for its high-capacity racks. The customer’s
capacity required 3-phase power, but no
3-phase ATS solution available on the market
was able to meet their requirements because
their transfer times were too slow. Tripp Lite
presented the challenge to its engineers and
they developed a completely new 3-phase
ATS solution that reduced the transfer time
bytwothirds,easilymeetingthesocialmedia
provider’s requirement.
Khalaev said the breakthrough design,
which combines a 3-phase rack ATS and
a vertical PDU, also streamlined the cus-
tomer’s installation, resulting in significant
savings in hardware costs per each rack.
These innovative 3-phase ATS solutions
are providing redundant power to the so-
cial networking platform’s data centres all
over the world, and thanks to their suc-
cess, they have also been made available to
the public as part of Tripp Lite’s standard
product catalogue.
Specialised applications
While Tripp Lite is able to provide complete,
high-quality infrastructure solutions for re-
liable data centres, the manufacturer’s reach
extends far beyond the traditional data cen-
tre environment.
Khalaev added that: “Our solutions have
been used in to support critical applications
in every industry – our products are protect-
ing MRI equipment in hospitals, the electri-
cal infrastructure of toll roads, and every-
thing in between.”
One particularly industry where Tripp
Lite has had success in the Middle East is air
travel. Reliable server backup is essential for
airlines, because any sort of outage could dis-
rupt booking, billing and even flight manage-
ment, causing huge headaches for customers
and significant financial losses for the com-
pany. Both Qatar Airways in Muscat, Oman
and Air Arabia in Sharjah, UAE depend on
Tripp Lite 3-phase UPS systems to protect
their critical systems and keep their busi-
nesses running smoothly. Each airline has
installed two 80 kVA UPS systems, which
provide uninterruptible battery backup and
redundant power to servers that require
100% availability.
Banking is another area where any down-
time could have disastrous consequences,
and where reliable infrastructure is a must.
Qatar Islamic Bank relies on Tripp Lite to
back up their server and storage systems
both in their head office and at the branch
level. QIB has installed Tripp Lite’s sin-
gle and 3-phase UPS systems throughout
the organization, and each branch is con-
nected and centrally managed through the
use of SNMP/WEB cards, which are in-
stalled in every UPS. One of the features
that drove the bank to choose Tripp Lite
was the fact that their power manage-
ment software is compatible with multiple
operating systems.
Tripp Lite is dedicated to providing the
same level of service to all its customers, no
matter the size or the complexity of the in-
stallation. “We are fortunate enough to have
worked on some fascinating projects, and we
have seen our solutions used in very unique
applications across different industries. But
what they all have in common is our com-
mitment to the satisfaction of our custom-
ers,” Khalaev remarked. “Taking all of this
into consideration, imagine what Tripp Lite
could do for your business.”
“OUR BUSINESS MODEL REVOLVES AROUND SOLVING OUR CLIENTS’
PROBLEMSANDIFNOTHINGINOURPORTFOLIOOFOVER3,500PRODUCTS
MEETS THEIR REQUIREMENTS, WE CAN BUILD A BRAND-NEW SOLUTION
TO SATISFY THEIR NEEDS. IN ONE CASE, A WELL-KNOWN ONLINE
SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICE CAME TO TRIPP LITE LOOKING FOR A WAY
TO PROVIDE ATS REDUNDANCY FOR ITS HIGH-CAPACITY RACKS. THE
CUSTOMER’S CAPACITY REQUIRED 3-PHASE POWER, BUT NO 3-PHASE
ATS SOLUTION WAS AVAILABLE. TRIPP LITE PRESENTED THE CHALLENGE
TO ITS ENGINEERS AND THEY DEVELOPED A COMPLETELY NEW 3-PHASE
ATSSOLUTION.”

CLIENT TRIPP LITE
SIZE 20.5x27.5 cm
MIAMI STUDIO DESIGN
DESIGN BYDESIGN BY
Core Elements. Simple Integration.
Reliable Infrastructure
Solutions for Every IT
Environment
PROTECT
availability applications.
POWER
HOUSE
COOL
solutions for precise server room
CONTROL
console servers enable local
CONNECT
panels available in a variety of
For more information or to place an order on Tripp Lite,

CHECK POINT
New Check Point research reveals enterprises are battling nine times more unknown malware,
while their employees are downloading new malware every four seconds. According to the
company, the impact is in 80% of businesses that were surveyed, with hackers preferring email
and social engineering to deliver threats.
PHISHING ATTACKS
CONTINUE TO RISE

CHECK POINT
C
heck Point Software Technolo-
gies Ltd, recently published find-
ings from two research projects,
the ‘Check Point 2016 Security
Report’ and ‘Exploits at the End-
point: SANS 2016 Threat Landscape Study’,
revealing critical challenges and key rec-
ommendations for IT leaders, as businesses
continue to build-up protections against
evolving cyber threats.
In the company’s fourth annual Se-
curity Report, Check Point research-
ers analysed the activity of more than
31,000 Check Point gateways world-
wide, revealing details on what enter-
prises are encountering in known and
unknown malware, attack trends, and
the impact of more mobile devices in
the enterprise. Additionally, research-
ers were able to measure the impact suc-
cessful breaches have had on organisa-
tions, and the added expenses that go
beyond remediation costs.
In the recent SANS 2016 Threat Land-
scape Study, conducted in partnership
with security education and research
group SANS Institute, researchers sur-
veyed more than 300 IT and security
professionals across the globe to un-
cover the threats organisations encoun-
ter in the real world; when and how
they become incidents; which types
of threats had the biggest impact; and
the greatest challenges enterprises
face in protecting themselves.
“With billions of new connections
formed every minute, the world is more
globally linked than ever. Innovations
like cloud, mobility and IoT are changing
the way we deploy, the way we consume,
and the way we secure technology,” said
Amnon Bar-Lev, President, Check Point.
“More and more malware is being put
into our ecosystem that traditional secu-
rity techniques are powerless to prevent.
Given this, staying a leader requires be-
ing one step ahead of things you cannot
see, know or control – and preventing at-
tacks before they happen.”
Both the Check Point Security Re-
port and SANS 2016 Threat Landscape
Study present a comprehensive view
of the entire threat landscape – from
the network to the endpoint – offering
key findings including:
Unknown malware continues its ex-
ponential and evolutionary growth. Re-
searchers found a 9x increase in the amount
of unknown malware plaguing businesses.
This was fueled by the employees, who
downloaded a new unknown malware eve-
ry four seconds. In total, there were nearly
12 million new malware variants discov-
ered every month, with more new mal-
ware discovered in the past two years than
the previous decade.
Security is lagging behind the speedy,
on-the-go mobile device. With smart-
phones and tablets accounting for 60%
of digital media time spent, businesses’
mobile devices present both an access
curse and a business productivity bless-
ing. While employees do not want to be
the cause of a company network breach,
1-in-5 will cause one through either mo-
bile malware or malicious WiFi.
Endpoints represent the starting
points for most threats. Among the
businesses surveyed, endpoints were
the most common cause of breaches
and the most critical component in cy-
ber defenses, with attackers leverag-
ing email in 75 percent of cases. Also,
39% of endpoint attacks bypassed the
network gateway firewalls, and rou-
tine operations uncovered 85% of
threats after they had already gotten
inside the enterprise.
Both reports conclude forward-look-
ing security starts with having a best-of-
breed architecture in order to address
the current and future complexities of
securing IT. Researchers found a com-
mon theme of advanced threat pre-
vention, mobile device protection and
segmenting a network all critical com-
ponents for the modern enterprise.
“SECURITYISLAGGINGBEHINDTHESPEEDY,ON-THE-GOMOBILE
DEVICE. WITH SMARTPHONES AND TABLETS ACCOUNTING FOR
60% OF DIGITAL MEDIA TIME SPENT, BUSINESSES’ MOBILE
DEVICES PRESENT BOTH AN ACCESS CURSE AND A BUSINESS
PRODUCTIVITYBLESSING.WHILEEMPLOYEESDONOTWANTTO
BE THE CAUSE OF A COMPANY NETWORK BREACH, 1-IN-5 WILL
CAUSEONETHROUGHEITHERMOBILEMALWAREORMALICIOUS
WIFI.”

2015-2016
BDS earns
2013-2016
For more information or to place an order on Check Point,

For more information or to place an order on Vision Solutions,
.com

AMAZON WEB SERVICES
Dr Werner Vogels, CTO of
Amazon.com, talks about IT
trends that have impacted the
industry in 2016 and the move
to serverless computing.
T
echnology and software is becom-
ing integrated into every aspect
of our personal and business lives
and every year this integration
gets deeper and deeper. Given the
pervasiveness of technology in our lives it is
hard to cover all the trends that are impact-
ing us but in this article I will focus on a few
we are seeing have an immediate effect on
our customers around the world and what we
can expect to see in the coming year. These
trends are focused on simplification and how
it is becoming easier for businesses to build
highly effective applications that are secure
and reliable and deliver great scalability and
performance at the lowest possible cost.
Making application building simpler
Despite the promise of technology simplify-
ing our lives, over time, some applications
have become rather complex. This is despite
the visionary work by systems researcher
John Gall who wrote decades ago that, ‘ap-
plications built as a complex system almost
never work.’ Complex systems that do work
are invariably constructed as simple sys-
tems at first and then extended over time
to include more complexity. It is easier to
build simple system that is secure and reli-
able and extend it than start with a complex
system where there are too many variations
to control. As this is the case we are seeing
a big trend emerge where people are seeking
to simplify their applications, infrastruc-
tures and technological systems. In the next
few years we can expect to see the quest for
building simpler systems to take off. The rea-
son for this is customers can get their hands
on number of new components delivered
as cloud services:
Simplifying service creation:
Microservices
In traditional service oriented architectures
services are often rather course-grained. For
example a customer management service
may hold all functionality related to opera-
tions on customer data. However, many of
the functions of this service do not overlap
in terms of scalability and availability. A
customer login function, which is accessed
frequently, has radically different scaling
requirement than a customer address book
service which is only needed when shipping
products. To simplify these types of mono-
lithic systems we are seeing a trend emerge
where applications are being broken down
into their component parts.
Deconstructing services and software sys-
tems into the smallest building blocks possi-
ble is a trend that is becoming hot in software
development. The small services are often
dubbed microservices and are supported by
management components such as those de-
livered by Docker. This makes applications
more flexible and also changes the software
development process. Patching the larger
systems with software updates is no longer
needed but instead delivering a new version
of the microservice to replace the previous
version is what is required.
Cloud computing providers are delivering
container management environments that
make it easy to create and manage micros-
ervices environments triggering an accelera-
tion of this architectural trend. In 2016, and
beyond, we can expect this to become stand-
ard practice for all new applications.
Simplifying compute: Serverless
architectures
One of the biggest revolutions we have seen
in the technology world in the last few years
is the rise of serverless computing. This has
been largely triggered by the launch of AWS
Lambda that no longer requires a server
(physical or virtual) to run application
code. This tremendously simplifies applica-
tion development as architects only need
to think about business logic and no long-
er need to worry about managing fleets of
servers to run their software. This makes it
easier to achieve the security and reliability
to protect their business and their custom-
ers. After all, no server is easier to manage
than no server.
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
IN 2016 AND BEYOND

AMAZON WEB SERVICES
We are already seeing complete busi-
nesses being built that don’t use a single
server. A good example is Teletext.io. This
is a Dutch start-up that has come up with
an innovative Content Management System
technology that allows the text of webpages
to be managed and deployed by the writer of
the text, rather than the programmer. Tak-
ing a serverless approach allows Teletext
to quickly and easily launch a service that
is helpful to business all over the world and
also gives them a scalable solution with an
almost infinite peak capacity.
Teletext.io is just one example of the many
organisations we are seeing build their ap-
plications and businesses without any serv-
ers. I think this trend is going to explode
in the coming years.
Simplifying integration: APIs for
everything
The days where systems were built out of
software pieces that were under total con-
trol of the developer are long gone. Modern
development is a matter of connecting many
different services together some from cloud
providers, such as managed databases or
analytics services, others from the 3rd par-
ty cloud ecosystem such as Stripe for mobile
payments or Twillio for telephony services.
To be able to connect and consume these
services they need to have an Application
Programming Interface or API.
The great thing about APIs is they can
be consumed internally as well as exter-
nally. We see not only new software getting
APIs but also legacy software components
like the system-of-records being wrapped
with APIs such that new product innova-
tions can access the legacy systems. Unique
functionality can also be made avail-
able to partners or customers to consume
these services, creating new collaboration
and revenue models.
A good example is The Guardian newspa-
per in the UK. The Guardian, through their
API served on AWS, has created a platform
for constructing applications that have ac-
cess to the company’s award winning jour-
nalism – giving access to over 1.7 million
pieces of content dating back to 1999. The
cloud is an ideal platform for building APIs
on as it allows you to deal with API traffic in
a scalable, low cost manner, while most of
your partners are likely to run in the same
cloud and experience very low latencies to
your functionality and data.
APIs are giving organisations of all sizes
the ability to create entire ecosystems of
development that is allowing their core
business to grow into unexpected direc-
tions. This is bringing their data and func-
tionality in front of many more users, and
creating partners who are passionate about
helping them improve their service. In 2016
and beyond we expect every customer fac-
ing service in all companies to have its own
API and I for one am excited to see the
innovation that results.
Simplifying security: Cloud security
Looking to the future, I truly believe we will
see a general acceptance that ‘organisations
are more secure in the cloud than in their
own data centres.’ We are already starting
to see this happen where enterprises are mi-
grating their critical business processes to
the cloud to get immediate benefits from the
latest innovations in operational security
and the fine-grain security tools to protect
their individual applications. By offloading
the management and improvement of the
infrastructure security to a cloud provider
it is simplifying security for organisations
of all sizes.
Surprisingly for some, one of the first places
we have seen this trend has come from the fi-
nancial services space. At the AWS re:Invent
customer conference Rob Alexander, Chief
Information Officer for banking and credit
card giant Capital One said: “The financial
service industry attracts some of the worst
cyber criminals. We work closely with AWS
to develop a security model, which we be-
lieve enables us to operate more securely in
the public cloud than we can in our own data
centers.” As a result Capital One is now us-
ing AWS to reduce its data centers from eight
to three by 2018 and the bank is using or ex-
perimenting with nearly every AWS service
to develop, test, build, and run its most critical
workloads, including its new flagship mobile-
banking application. As more organisations in
security conscious industries such as Financial
Services, utilities, transport and Public Sec-
tor move to the cloud I believe this will be the
year that the cloud becomes mainstream and
is accepted as the place to store your content
if you want to keep it safe and strengthen and
simplify your security.
It is still day one
I am only scratching the surface of what is pos-
sible and what we will see appear in technol-
ogy in the coming year. With the rise of sim-
plification we will continue to see more trends
emerge, Simplifying Predictions, Simplifying
Connected Devices, Simplifying Real Time
and many, many more ways that technology
will continue to become more ingrained in our
day to day lives and change how we live and
how we interact with the world around us.
“ONE OF THE BIGGEST REVOLUTIONS WE HAVE SEEN IN THE TECHNOLOGY
WORLDINTHELASTFEWYEARSISTHERISEOFSERVERLESSCOMPUTING.
THIS HAS BEEN LARGELY TRIGGERED BY THE LAUNCH OF AWS LAMBDA
THAT NO LONGER REQUIRES A SERVER (PHYSICAL OR VIRTUAL) TO RUN
APPLICATION CODE. THIS TREMENDOUSLY SIMPLIFIES APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT AS ARCHITECTS ONLY NEED TO THINK ABOUT BUSINESS
LOGIC AND NO LONGER NEED TO WORRY ABOUT MANAGING FLEETS OF
SERVERSTORUNTHEIRSOFTWARE.”
DrVogelssaysinfuture,organisationswillacceptthatthe
cloudismoresecurethantheirowndatacentres.

For more information or to place an order on Amazon Web Services,

PIVOT 3
Pivot3’s Hyper Converged technology provides a roadmap to the future in the Middle East
ROADMAP FOR HYPER
CONVERGENCE

Value Plus Magazine - October GITEX Issue

Value Plus Magazine - October GITEX Issue

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Value Plus Magazine - October GITEX Issue