Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, announced today a new report sponsored by Nutanix and compiled by The Economist Intelligence Unit entitled ‘Accelerating urban intelligence: People, business and the cities of tomorrow’, which explores expectations of citizens and businesses for smart-city development in some of the world’s major urban centres. While globally smart cities have the common goal of improving urban living, what this looks like in action varies from place to place.

 

The study analyzes survey data from over 7,700 residents and business executives in 19 large cities around the world, including Dubai, UAE to reveal how their priorities differ and align.

 

Responses differ from city to city, but overall the study finds that citizens want smart city initiatives to make public services more affordable while businesses want them to be more efficient and reliable. Nearly as important for both groups, however, is that smart initiatives produce greener, cleaner environments in which to live and work. Many individual demands of respondents—such as more renewable energy options, cleaner air and water, more efficient waste recovery and smarter energy tariffing—all contribute to more liveable environments for citizens and workers alike.

 

The key findings of the study are:

 

• Priorities differ between developed and emerging-world cities. Developing smart-city solutions to ease the blights of unemployment, crime, poor sanitation and rubbish accumulation are especially high priorities in Johannesburg, Mumbai and São Paulo. Respondents from developed-world cities place stronger emphasis on improving transport efficiency, reducing road congestion and making services more affordable.
• Big dreams for big tech. Wariness of large technology firms may be on the rise due to negative media coverage about privacy scandals, disruptions to jobs and other factors, but most respondents want their cities to be involved in smartcity initiatives. Citizens expect they will create job opportunities, and executives hope they will spur innovation and create new market opportunities.
• Inevitable trade-offs to urban intelligence—particularly involving data—should not deter its development. Over two-thirds (70%) of business respondents say the ability to access open government data is vital to their business. Nearly as many executives (69%) say they are willing to share more data to secure the benefits of smart cities. Most citizens, too, are ready to share data with their governments if it means smarter public services. Some seem ready to compromise on privacy as well: two-thirds (66%) believe facial recognition technology will do more good than harm when used to fight crime.
• Some smart-city expectations will be tough to meet. Citizens’ hopes for job creation and those of executives for new business opportunities will be difficult for smart-city programmes to fulfil, according to experts interviewed for the study. Transport and other services may be more efficient and cleaner, but not always cheaper. City officials must try to manage expectations for what smart initiatives can deliver.

 

It is interesting to note the Dubai findings of the study below:

• Top ways cities can improve their development of smart initiatives – Citizens of Dubai emphasise keeping smart-city initiatives within budget while businesses want public authorities to plan for the long term and also ensure new smart city services are easy to use
• Improving Affordability – Improving the ability of energy and water utilities to vary pricing according to usage is the top expectation of citizens when it comes to smart city programmes
• The Green Imperative – One of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for all people to have “access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy”. This need is felt especially keenly in emerging-world cities such as Dubai
• Most-desired benefits – When probed on the most-desired benefits from smart-city initiatives, residents of Dubai emphasize creation of employment opportunities.
• Fighting crime – Asked how smart-city initiatives should create a healthier and safer environment, residents of Dubai are more accepting of facial recognition technology as a means of fighting crime than those in, say, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Copenhagen.
• Attitudes towards big tech – Whether it’s smart-city projects that create employment opportunities, improve the innovation environment or create business opportunities for local firms, citizens and business executives in Dubai are more likely than those in more developed cities (especially San Francisco) to view the involvement of large technology companies as a high priority.

 

While the technologies that underpin many existing or planned urban projects are hardly exotic territory for most people, they need to address the fundamental problems of everyday urban life. When asked to choose from a menu of technologies most integral to their town’s smart-city initiatives, the vast majority select 5G mobile, artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT. The same is true of business respondents, many of whom also point to data analytics and cloud computing.

 

Aaron White, Regional Sales Director, Middle East at Nutanix says, “Adoption of technologies such as IoT and AI play a critical role in creating a ‘Smart City’. IoT based solutions enable innovative use cases to enlighten smart cities and seamlessly integrate various city management systems. We are proud to be at the technological forefront of making smart cities smarter through Nutanix Xi IoT – a software-based solution that delivers AI-driven processing at the edge, simplifies operations and powers real time business insights. Nutanix is committed to helping cities modernize their datacentres and edge infrastructure, so IT can shift its focus from maintenance and operations to driving innovation.”

Eufy Security’s Smart Wireless Security Cameras have gained popularity with their innovative, smart and easy to use security features. Adding on to their portfolio, eufy Security by Anker has newly introduced its Indoor Cam 2K and Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt.

Its unique Artificial Intelligence easily detects Pets & Human and gives instant motion activity alerts to show movements in your home and helps detect unusual activity. The indoor security of your house can thus be stepped up as both cameras helps you get notified of what your cheeky children or playful pets are up to, in picture perfect 2K clarity plus it helps keep intruders at bay.

Faraz Mehdi, Regional Sales Head at Anker Innovations MEA said, “Our reliable indoor home security systems, the Indoor Cam 2K and Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt helps keep an eye on your pets and children while you are at work, on your elderly relatives living remotely and your home even at night when intruders can be a threat to the safety and security of loved ones.”

The indoor cam can recognise the known humans, pets and also define specific areas of your house and motion detection alerts can be customised accordingly on your phone. The Indoor cameras are triggered by movement by unknown faces or pets/children’s movements in no go zone areas and users receive an alert instantly.

The activities are instantly recorded and the video is viewable in real time, even at night in low light settings. The indoor Cam is also very useful for new parents as it doubles up as baby monitor and recognises and instantly gives baby crying alerts on your phone.

With eufy Cam Pan & Tilt, when a movement is detected, the camera will automatically pan and tilt 360^o to follow the actions and record the entire movement with the instant alert.

The real time response with two-way audio communication feature on the camera allows you to speak directly to anyone who is detected in the designated area, keeps the kids disciplined during study time and helps confront intruders. The Camera also allows you to pre-record your instructions and messages to be relayed as audio when any motion activity of your pets and children are detected in the defined no go zones so that even if you miss to see the alert instantly. The camera takes care of giving instructions to your pets and humans through the pre-recorded audio.

Both cameras work with voice control and are compatible with Apple Homekit, Google Home Assistant and Alexa. You can know more about this product through videos on Anker MEA Youtube Channel.

By: Claude Schuck, Regional Manager, Middle East at Veeam

 

Over the last few months, we’ve seen many organizations in the Middle East have arranged for employees to work from home. Living in the golden age of Digital Transformation means that we are connected at all times. Consequently, the workplace today has evolved significantly to allow individuals to communicate seamlessly and connect from anywhere through mobile devices, digital tools, cloud services and many more. But what does this mean for organizations and the protection of its data?

With many employees working from home, businesses can expect a huge spike of personal file storing coming in from external sources. This is the perfect opportunity for malicious malware to make their way into servers, potentially corrupting a network of data.

According to a recent news report in The National newspaper, the UAE has been revealed as the leading target of cybercriminals in the region, accounting for more than half of the examples of malicious online and theme-driven behavior detected in the Gulf. Trend Micro, an international cybersecurity and defense firm, said it had detected 1,541 attacks in the UAE in the past months, including 775 malware threats, 621 email spam attacks and 145 URL attacks during March. Across the GCC countries, the figure was 3,067 over the same period.

Here are some of the necessary steps businesses should be taking to protect their data and IT architecture:

3 layers in the circle of defense

Businesses need to be aware of how they manage data between cloud and consider tools that will give them an advantage. Today, businesses are continuously backing up and replicating applications and we can only expect this to increase over the next few years as others learn the significance of data that are easily recoverable.

They need to understand the different roles that are needed for consideration when optimizing their systems for backup and replication. This can be easily summed up into the 3 layers of defense in data protection.

• Perimeter: Firstly, businesses must consider the situation at hand – in this instance, it is remote working or working from home. Protection must be made available for employees to be able to access the cloud and in turn, ensure that these data can be backed up.
• Mid: Next, businesses need to note that with an increase in the number of people working from home, measures must be put in place so that the systems are still able to run smoothly and efficiently. To counter this, it is highly recommended that servers be optimized for different groups of networks to tap into.
• Base: It goes without saying that having more people accessing the servers from an external network will also result in an increase in the number of personal files coming in. Businesses need to ensure that they are able to mitigate any malware that might make its way through.

 Data backup and protection

There are many unforeseen circumstances that businesses need to prepare for. Therefore, it is important for them be highly adaptable. Having data that is easily accessible is part of the solution to be ready for remote working. Over the next few years, businesses can expect to see an increase in the number of tools that can allow them to continuously back up their data and perform recovery in a matter of minutes. With these tools, they will be insured with more than just backed up data – they will also have access to insights that will allow them to make informed decisions in their digital transformation journey.

Apart from that, it is also important for businesses to protect their data – as seen with the recent increase of data breach. Cloud Data Management is expected to see an increase in mobility and portability over the next few years. With added security measures, businesses will have access to data easily outside of their workplace with a peace of mind.

Prevention of cyberattacks

One of the essential steps businesses need to take is to minimize administrative access to platforms and servers and increasing rules of operation. Not everyone needs to be able to access all the systems in place.

It is also vital for organizations to educate their employees – often, ransomware finds its way through a system because of an individual’s mistake. It is important for businesses to remind employees on best practices, especially in times when telecommuting is an option for everyone. They need to understand that being connected to a network outside of the company’s system exposes the servers to potential malware.

To sum it all up, businesses in the Middle East need to always prepare ahead for any disruption that might have an impact in the way they work. Especially in an era where remote working is a step forward, organizations need to ensure that their systems are ready and fully protected so that their employees can remain efficient and productive.

By: Mohammad Jamal Tabbara, Senior Solutions Architect, Infoblox

 

Enterprises are growing more dispersed and borderless. Essential talent, branch offices, facilities and partners can be located anywhere in the world—and they need rapid and secure access to critical apps and data to keep business running smoothly. What’s more, with aggressive initiatives around SaaS, IoT, SD-WAN and IPv6, smart organizations are moving to the cloud to accelerate workflows and better support users and sites wherever they happen to be.

Yet the shift to leverage public, private and hybrid cloud networking across the borderless enterprise is becoming more challenging. In a cloud-first world, the nexus of activity is no longer in your data center; it’s at the network edge. The hub and spoke way of networking cannot keep up with the soaring demand for direct-to-cloud access at the edge.

Your organization wants to embrace the cloud and all its benefits—yet you need a simpler, more reliable way to manage your network, devices, apps and services across all locations. How can you solve networking challenges at the edge with fewer enterprise resources and still replicate on-prem experiences for your end users?

Enter cloud-managed DDI (DNS DHCP and IPAM). By moving the management plane for DDI from the appliance to the cloud, it enables you to centrally manage your borderless enterprise—and with far greater elasticity, reliability, security and automation than traditional on-premises DDI solutions provide. In addition to optimizing network access and performance across all your locations, cloud-managed DDI is also a key enabler of your digital transformation as an organization, and it will accelerate your migration to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) networking.

The following 5 edge networking scenarios will demonstrate how cloud-managed DDI can solve many key challenges for your borderless network.

1. Centralizing Control of the Edge

Cloud-managed DDI offers a bridge that allows organizations to integrate core network services, bringing DNS, DHCP and IPAM together on a unified platform. By replacing siloed on-prem DNS and DHCP controllers with cloud-native technology, organizations can take a huge step toward digital transformation through integrated DDI services they can centrally manage in the cloud across all locations, ensuring better branch performance, faster access to cloud-based applications and higher availability.

2. Increasing Agility at the Edge

For some borderless enterprises, fully-featured, enterprise-grade DDI services are not needed in all of its branches or remote sites. For example, an organization may already have a DNS service that meets all its needs in every location, but it wants to deploy only DHCP or IP address management services in small regional offices. Similarly, it may wish to expand DDI capabilities in some branches but not others.

Just as common, especially for enterprises that are undergoing digital transformation, it’s important to have the flexibility to roll out DDI capabilities incrementally. They may wish to upgrade DHCP in the near term while keeping their current IP address management solution. They need a DDI solution that protects them from over-provisioning services in remote sites that may go unused for some time yet.

Cloud-based DDI provides the flexibility and agility for enterprises to achieve the right size DDI implementation for every location.

3. Simplifying Application Access at the Edge

For the borderless enterprise, with growing numbers of remote workers and branch locations, simple, reliable access to mission-critical applications at the network edge is paramount. This requires organizations to move away from traditional MPLS architectures. Backhauling network traffic through the data center creates severe latency and bottlenecks for end users in branch offices and remote sites, preventing them from moving at the speed of business.

Modernizing with more agile cloud access to applications like Microsoft Office 365 requires a different infrastructure. One where DDI services can be delivered and managed centrally via the cloud and where traffic from remote locations can connect directly to the closest local PoPs in the cloud without the backhaul bottleneck.

4. Boosting Survivability at the Edge

When your business depends on connecting vital manufacturing facilities to global supply chain partners and remote offices, the term mission-critical takes on a whole new meaning. Add to that IoT devices that have to communicate 24/7 and reliability, redundancy and survivability become essential.

Application latency is not the only downside to traditional backhauling of DNS and DHCP through a headquarters data center. If the link to headquarters goes down, because of a power outage or natural disaster, remote locations are not able to reach the central data center for DNS and DHCP resolution. As a result, they lose access to the Internet and cloud-based apps. To ensure always-on networking for all locations, remote and branch offices need the ability to maintain DDI services locally.

5. Scaling at the Edge

Many high-growth companies today were born in the cloud and their business is 100% cloud-based. Which means no centralized data center—all apps and services are managed and delivered in the cloud. So when it comes to managing the growth of branch offices and remote locations, it’s challenging to find a solution that is 100% cloud-ready. Typically, core DDI services like DHCP are managed by hardware routers or servers located at each site. A large enterprise may have hundreds of these throughout its borderless operations. These on-premises devices are often resource-intensive, error prone, cumbersome and hard to scale. In addition, they provide no easy way to monitor and manage multiple locations.

For cloud-born businesses, cloud-managed DDI makes it simple to eliminate resource-heavy physical appliances in branch and remote offices. Instead, lightweight devices or virtual appliances can be deployed in all locations, which enables DDI to be centrally managed in the cloud across all sites.

In every one of these core benefit and success spotlight scenarios, there is a common denominator: traditional networking architecture is no longer effective for managing the explosion of workflow at the edge.

Eid Al-Adha is a special occasion and a perfect time to celebrate with loved ones as well as express your appreciation for them with Eid gifts. Anker Innovations team has curated a unique and functional gadget must have list to suit different tastes and styles for this joyous occasion.

 

Soundcore Life Q20

Hear songs in the way they are meant to be heard with Anker Soundcore Life Q20 Bluetooth Headphones. The wireless Over Ear Headphones are perfect for travel and work as it features custom 40 mm dynamic drivers to reproduce sound with extraordinary clarity, Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling, Hi-Res Audio and Deep Bass for a heightened listening experience.

Compatible with smartphones, tablets, laptop computers and more, Life Q20 offers up to 40 hours of non-stop playtime in wireless active noise cancellation mode and a single charge can play over 600 songs.

For optimal noise cancellation, memory foam earcups gently mold around your ears, while the headband’s rotating joints automatically adjust the earcups to fit the shape of your head. Life Q20’s built-in microphone allows convenient hands-free calls, enhances voice pick-up to ensures you sound crystal clear.

Soundcore Life Q20 comes with a travel pouch to conveniently store the headphones, a 3.5 mm AUX cable to keep the music playing when you’re low on battery and a Micro USB cable plus a user Manual and 18-Month Warranty.

Eufy Security Indoor Cam 2K and Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt

Anker’s eufy Indoor Cam 2K and Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt helps keep an eye on your pets and children while you are at work, on your elderly relatives living remotely and your home even at night when intruders can be a threat to the safety and security of loved ones. The indoor Cam is also very useful for new parents as it doubles up as baby monitor and recognises & instantly gives baby crying alerts on your phone.

It helps detect unusual activity and records movements in picture perfect 2K clarity. The Indoor cameras are triggered by movement by unknown faces or pets/children’s movements in no go zone areas and users receive an alert instantly.

With eufy Cam Pan & Tilt, when a movement is detected, the camera will automatically pan and tilt 360^o to follow the actions and record the entire movement while it gives you the instant alert and allows a two-way audio communication.

Both cameras work with voice control and are compatible with Apple Homekit, Google Home Assistant and Alexa. You can know more about this product through videos on Anker MEA Youtube Channel.

HomeVac S11 Go

Suitable for delicate surfaces, eufy HomeVac S11 Go comes equipped with a 120AW suction power, detachable battery and a 2-in-1 crevice tool to deep clean carpets to hard floors.

The innovative technological features in the eufy HomeVac S11 Go include a washable high-efficiency filter that ensures minimal maintenance and improved performance plus the device can be detached to empty the dustbin in seconds. Increased efficiency also includes dust-tight containment for reduced air pollution.

The eufy HomeVac S11 Go’s long crevice tool can be used to suck up crumbs and dirt in any corner or hard-to-reach areas and the advanced 5-tier filtration system safeguards and maximizes the motor performance.

The long-lasting detachable battery offers up to 40 minutes of cleaning time and the max-mode provides 8 minutes of fierce and focused cleaning when tackling the deepest dust and debris. With eufy HomeVac S11 Go, whether an impossibly tight space or a delicate surface, or the AC vent grill at a height there is an attachment suitable for any cleaning scenario. Available on Amazon.ae.

Nebula Apollo Pocket Projector

Nebula Apollo Smart Pocket Projector is a new generation pocket cinema in a compact, mobile and soda-can size design. Hosting capabilities such as Google Assistant, remarkable clarity with Sharp 200 ANSI lumen image and improved audio, it is the perfect entertainment device to enjoy together with family.

Nebula Apollo is perfect for dads who want to enjoy their favorite match or TV shows through streaming apps on the go on a bigger screen powered by Android 7.1 which brings great content to you, so you spend less time browsing and more time watching movies with loved ones.

Nebula Apollo provides 4-hours of video playtime with single full charge and offers big 360^o sound with a 6W speaker. Nebula Apollo offers an advanced entertainment experience, anytime, anywhere with your loved ones.

Anker Power Box

Make sure your loved ones never run out of charge on their phone with Anker Power Box. This Power Box contains three flagship products from Anke:

1) PowerCore 10400mAh Power Bank, a high capacity Power Bank that offers up to 3 times charging for Flagship Phones and comes with optimized output for Multiple Device Charging.

2) Powerport+1 Charger, equipped with PowerIQ Technology and Multiprotect Safety System, along with a micro USB cable, is travel ready with Quick Charge 3.0.

3) Powerline II 3-in-1 Charging Cable, the extremely durable and MFi Certified charging cable with 3-in-1 Connectors i.e. Lightning, Micro and C-Type and is Universally Compatible with every phone that uses these one of the three charging connectors. Available in Jumbo Electronics and EMAX.