As organizations address the pressing need to adapt workforce models for the ‘new normal’, almost all (95%) business leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia state that they are comfortable with the broad scale shift toward remote work. Whilst there’s been digital investment in the region during the last few years, according to the Riverbed Future of Work Global Survey 2020, over two-thirds (68%) of UAE and Saudi organizations were not completely prepared to support remote working when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“Businesses had already been accommodating more remote workers the past several years, but COVID-19 is accelerating this, and the office of the future will clearly look very different with a more flexible and hybrid workplace,” said Rich McBee, President and CEO of Riverbed. “This new study shows that business leaders are now much more comfortable with their teams working remote, however organizations must have the right technology in place to ensure greater productivity and a better remote experience as employees increasingly work from anywhere.”

Performance Issues Have Impacted Employees and the Business

Nearly all (97%) of the business leaders surveyed in the UAE and Saudi Arabia reported that technology performance issues impact the experience of their remote workers. The most common issues – all resolvable – include: frequent disconnects from corporate networks (43%), slow file downloads (41%), apps not working properly (40%), and long response times when loading apps (39%). When asked about the impact these issues have on the remote work experience of employees, business leaders report: increased technical disruptions or difficulties (44%), weaker employee performance and lack of productivity (41%), lack of clarity on strategic priorities (37%), and reduced direct services to customers or clients (37%).

Barriers to Success of a High Performing Remote Workforce

UAE and Saudi business leaders say the biggest barriers to success for ensuring the performance of a remote workforce are: training or manager support (43%), the need for software or technology to optimize or improve performance (40%), and the need for better visibility into network and application performance (37%).

“The last several months have given organizations a better understanding of the barriers to success for creating a high-impact remote workforce,” said Subbu Iyer, CMO at Riverbed. “It’s encouraging to see from the Future of Work survey and in conversations with our customers, that businesses and governments are planning to invest more in technology to boost remote work performance. Riverbed is fully focused on helping our customers maximize the performance and visibility of networks and applications, regardless of the physical location of where employees work.”

Remote and Flexible Workforces Expected to Increase Significantly

Despite challenges, more than one in five (22%) UAE and Saudi business leaders expect half or more of their employees to work remotely (full time or at least half time) after COVID-19. Additionally, on average, these business leaders expect 28% of employees to work remote after COVID-19. Globally, industries projecting the largest average percentage of their teams to work remote after COVID-19 are those less dependent on physical presence, including financial services (39% vs. 28% before the outbreak) and professional services (35% vs. 28%).

Business Leaders Investing In Technology for Remote Workforce Performance

To drive greater remote working performance, the large majority (79%) of UAE and Saudi business leaders plan to make additional technology investments – and 41% plan to make significant investments – in the next 12 months. These business leaders have already begun to identify their priority strategies and technologies to enhance remote work for their employees and their company. The top initiatives regional business decision makers plan to undertake in the next two years include:

• updating company-wide remote workplace strategies and policies (48%)
• deploying technology to automate remote network operations (47%)
• re-evaluating and/or re-architecting the IT environment (46%)
• gaining better visibility of network and application performance (45%)

Middle East business leaders expect to gain long-term benefits for their employees and bottom line as a result of increasing their remote workforce, including: better work-life balance (56)%; increases in employee retention (48%), savings from office space and related costs (48%); better use of technology 48%.

Work From Anywhere with Riverbed

Now more than ever, business leaders and IT teams are tasked with quickly scaling remote work models to maintain business continuity and employee productivity. Riverbed delivers solutions that maximize performance and visibility for networks and applications — regardless of location. Riverbed’s remote work performance solutions include Riverbed Client Accelerator and Riverbed SaaS Accelerator, and help organizations:

• Reduce bandwidth utilization by 99%
• Extend optimization to laptops for 33x faster application performance
• Accelerate enterprise SaaS applications, including Office 365, by up to 10x

Additionally, Riverbed’s market-leading Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) solutions diagnose and troubleshoot network performance and security issues, delivering: 100% visibility of every packet, every flow and all networked devices; 53% reduction in network and app blind spots; and a 67% reduction of lost user productivity. Together, Riverbed’s NPM and Client and SaaS Accelerator technologies offer the most complete network visibility  and performance solution for working remotely.

203 senior security and risk professionals reveal a missed opportunity to leverage DNS throughout the threat analysis and response cycle

As cyberattacks escalate, Infoblox Inc., the leader in Secure Cloud-Managed Network Services, and Forrester Consulting investigated how security and risk (S&R) teams are using their DNS investments. The 203 respondents to the Accelerate Threat Resolution with DNS study reveal they most often use DNS to detect and block threats early in the kill chain, identify compromised devices, and investigate and respond to malware.

The top findings, as detailed in this infographic, underscore DNS is an effective but under-utilized tool for threat hunting and resolution even as alert fatigue challenges security teams to scale:

• 94% of S&R leaders either use or consider DNS as a starting point for threat investigations but only 43% of security and risk leaders rely on DNS as a data source to complete their investigations.
• 66% of respondents use DNS to catch threats — from DNS tunneling/data exfiltration, domain generation algorithms (DGAs), and lookalike domain attacks — that other security tools miss but only 34% anticipate using internal DNS to stop malicious attacks at scale.
• 52% of leaders cite alert fatigue among teams and 51% report challenges dealing with threat triage; but only 58% of teams incorporate some automated processes for incident response.

“It’s good to see the vast majority of security and risk teams recognize DNS as a powerful threat hunting tool,” said Anthony James, Vice President of Product Marketing at Infoblox. “At the same time, most companies are leaving money on the table by under-using their DNS investments. With 56% of leaders looking to improve security ROI, DNS can help save the day by providing a single pane of visibility into threats across the network and the edges.”

“DNS can also help automate some of the more repetitive tasks in threat hunting, freeing up security teams who spend an average of 4 hours per incident investigation to address more complex problems,” continued James. “DNS is one of the most cost-effective ways that companies can fortify their security and risk frameworks and maximize their existing security investments.”

Register for the EMEA webinar taking place August 19 to hear Anthony James from Infoblox and guest speaker David Holmes, Senior Analyst from Forrester, discuss the study’s findings.

Forrester surveyed 203 security and risk leaders from companies that earned more than $1 billion in annual revenue in the financial services, health care, education, retail, and government sectors for this report. Respondents include all levels of decision-making, including C-level (48%), VP (11%), Director (34%), and Manager (7%) roles across companies.

By: Elaine Shuck, Solutions Marketing Manager, Global Hospitality Team, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

Connectivity expectations in the hospitality industry have accelerated from simply providing mobile connectivity to leveraging wireless and wired network capabilities to make experiences increasingly home-like, while simultaneously improving operations and profitability.

With a range of innovations to select from, we foresee that the following three technology trends will headline your IT to-do lists — regardless of your brand’s size or type.

Trend #1: Know Your Guests Better Than Ever Before

Delivering home-like experiences starts with knowing even more about your guests than before. This requires gathering and leveraging a range of data and analytics for both individuals and in the aggregate. To do so, hospitality providers are focusing on the following:

• Enable frictionless Wi-Fi access and enhance data collection. The first step to knowing your guests is ensuring they are on your network. By using a technology called Passpoint, your existing loyalty guests can transition automatically from their provider’s cellular network to your wireless network. Guests will enjoy the ease of connectivity and you’ll gain capabilities for immediately providing personalized offers. With data gathered at the point of entry, rather than after a guest initiates a connection, you gain new insights on traffic patterns, enabling you to position digital or other signage, offer related items or discounts, and tweak infrastructure as needed to deliver the best connectivity experience.
• Get personal by adopting a proven technology ecosystem. Truly personalizing guest experiences requires making sense of collected data quickly and responding accordingly. That’s why simply deploying a specific Wi-Fi solution is no longer enough. You need to also evaluate Wi-Fi solutions for offering proven technology ecosystem partnerships that help you turn your networking infrastructure into a powerful personalization platform.

For example, an ecosystem partner can automatically gather data from multiple sources, such as access points, people counters and POS systems, turn it into insights about how people behave, and enable you to engage with guests based on their preferences or the profile you’ve established.

Or, perhaps you’re a cruise line – where terrestrial backhauls are absent when your ships are at sea – and want to utilize location technology to offer guests app-based wayfinding or give your staff the ability to track equipment and luggage in real time. In this case, you need an ecosystem partner that tightly integrates location data from your Wi-Fi gear with a vessel’s on-premise positioning and proximity marketing platform rather than the typical cloud-based service.

Trend #2: Morph Your Wi-Fi Infrastructure into a Robust IoT Platform

Advanced Wi-Fi 6 solutions pack so much intelligence into each access point that industry leaders are now approaching their wireless infrastructure as an IoT platform, capable of enhancing guest experiences and operational efficiencies.

• Deploy one platform that speaks many languages. Investing in an innovative Wi-Fi 6 solution that supports several protocols, such as Bluetooth and Zigbee as well as Wi-Fi, eliminates the need to deploy a separate overlay network. The most comprehensive solutions offers access points with a USB port, allowing you to plug in a dongle if another protocol is needed. Multi-protocol capabilities can enable better integration with app-enabled services, like automatic door locks and environmental controls. As a result, guests experience a seamless journey that begins with selecting their desired room and personalizing their environment prior to arrival and then walking directly into a personalized space, just like at home.

Go greener with energy saving features. Another hallmark of a robust IoT platform is energy efficiency. Such solutions supply the capability for automatic power reduction, where access points put themselves to “sleep” when utilization subsides and “wake” when demand returns. This offers significant savings to anyone with large conference areas, dining rooms or any high-density location where traffic varies over time.

Boost staff safety and operational effectiveness. Improved operational effectiveness, including a staff that feels safer, also contributes to a home-like experience. That’s why hospitality IT departments are adopting location-enabled tools, such as panic buttons for hotel staff that can trigger a trace and report on an individual, even when he or she is on the move. For day-to-day effectiveness, these same solutions can also support trackers to help staff keep tabs on inventory, such as those often-elusive luggage carts, or even monitor a vendor’s staff members who are scattered throughout your property.

Significantly improve everyone’s physical security. In the wake of high-profile adverse events, your guests expect more advanced physical security systems. Established partnerships with leading IoT providers help ensure joint solutions are fully tested and interoperable, improving guest and associate safety from guest rooms to back-of-office. For instance, emergency response solutions can leverage your wireless IoT platform, giving first responders and security staff split-second situational awareness into an entire property. This includes locating and monitoring affected areas, viewing threat entry and exit points, time-stamping incident progress and conducting real-time communication between staff, responders, on-site contractors and guests.

Trend #3: Manage Infrastructure at Far-Flung Locations Centrally and Securely

At remote locations, where on-site IT staff is limited, it’s important for corporate IT departments to feel confident with network and application performance at such facilities, as poor guest experiences can damage loyalty and the brand. The maturing of software-defined branch networking gives you the option to centralize worldwide infrastructure deployments to enable secure, simplified branch connectivity at scale. New innovations include capabilities that support a Zero Trust security model at remote locations throughout your footprint and SD-WAN orchestration features that deliver unified SD-Branch management and secure connectivity for cloud workloads. Also, for those using a leading cloud platform provider, adopting an SD-Branch solution that offers proven cloud platform integration capabilities can maximize benefits.

Regardless of how you begin addressing the trends and strategies we’ve discussed, it’s critical for you to advance your experiences to match evolving guest expectations. Doing so also improves employee satisfaction and retention, making innovation a win-win for your bottom line.

By: Hesham Elsherif, Principal System Engineer at A10

Operators consider network complexity to be the greatest threat for the next three years, according to a research survey by 451 Research. At 61 percent of respondents, this ranks higher than competition from cloud providers or concerns about the pressure on service margins and lower operating costs.

Greatest Threat for the Next Three Years

• Network complexity 61%
• Competition from cloud service providers 49%
• Inability to adopt agile service delivery models 35%
• Regulatory constraints on spectrum 29%
• Inability to lower operating expenses 25%
• Increased pressure on service margins 25%

This concern was echoed by analyst, Patrick Donegan of HardenStance, from an interview with an A10 customer who pointed to complex and unwieldy manual operations as the primary security challenge for operators scaling out their networks with more 5G devices and elements. For example, “fat finger” errors by operations personnel can cause configuration issues and potential disruption when new devices are brought online. Manual application for security patches is also prone to error or inconsistent updating, leaving network devices vulnerable. With a variety of individuals implementing different configurations at different times along with the growing number of devices, it becomes difficult to compare configurations and patch updates to see if the correct one is in place. The automation of simple tasks and discrete but complex processes are the first steps to better consistency. Automation, even in small steps, can provide big rewards to operators in reducing costs and enabling faster, more secure rollouts of 5G use cases such as fixed wireless access (FWA).

Operators are caught between needing to automate and reduce costs while still managing older, multi-generational and hybrid technologies of 3G, 4G, 5G and fixed broadband. The automation of deployment, configuration, update and upgrade processes can substantially ease the pain of this transition and support operator goals of lower cost, stronger security and better customer experience.

Service providers operating both mobile and fixed networks, such as the one interviewed in the HardenStance brief, are focused on FWA with 5G to improve the volume and quality of their video services, to further enable the convergence of the mobile and fixed infrastructure and to reduce costs. This operator wants to provide consistent services for fixed broadband users, even when connecting via 5G FWA, and to extend broadband coverage to underserved areas such as rural populations.

Globally, the FWA market is surging worldwide with over 100 million households now using fixed wireless access. Overall, the mobile industry sees fixed wireless access with 5G and 4G as providing a cost-efficient way to connect underserved populations. Broadband deployment has been particularly slow in developing and underdeveloped countries where as many as 1 billion families are estimated to be without any fixed broadband access at all. The operators’ opportunity for fixed wireless access services (both 4G and 5G) is huge. 5G for fixed wireless access provides up to 100x more capacity than 4G and eliminates the need to deploy costly fixed wireline or fibre infrastructure, which requires digging trenches, laying cable and securing the right of way.

At A10 Networks we believe a comprehensive set of API scripts that allow operators to automate multiple tasks and simplify complex processes and meet network transition business goals. A10 approach is we only require no more than a handful of API calls to execute many changes, which may require a thousand API calls from other vendors. This greatly simplifies the management of ever-expanding network nodes. Furthermore, clustering functions and licensing options allow for the flexibility to increase capacity across different nodes, regardless of location and without service interruption in just 20 minutes.

The automation of seemingly simple tasks and processes and elastic scalability help optimise investment per site and enable operators to more easily build out mobile edge computing and to converge mobile and fixed technologies while ensuring a uniform subscriber experience.

Spot by NetApp establishes leadership in application-driven infrastructure

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leader in cloud data services, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Spot, a leader in compute management and cost optimization in the public clouds.

Spot by NetApp® delivers application-driven infrastructures (ADIs), cloud infrastructures that use analytics and machine learning to continuously adapt to the needs of applications, to help drive cloud resource optimization in real time, for both compute and storage. ADIs automatically deliver the availability, performance, and capacity that applications need at the lowest cost, accelerating the deployment and innovation of applications. ADIs help application teams shorten development lifecycles and run more applications in their choice of cloud. Customers can save up to 90% of their compute and storage infrastructure expenses, which typically make up 70% of total cloud spending, while maintaining SLAs and SLOs.

“Together, we are extending NetApp’s vision for helping customers unlock the best of cloud,” said Anthony Lye, senior vice president and general manager of NetApp’s Public Cloud Services business unit. “With Spot by NetApp, we will enable customers to get more out of their cloud investment to gain competitive advantage and accelerate their business success.”

“Cloud infrastructure gives application developers the ability to develop and deploy applications faster by providing resources almost instantly at any time,” said Amiram Shachar, CEO and cofounder of Spot. “We are excited to join NetApp in pursuit of the shared vision to help application owners embrace and take advantage of the full power of the cloud.”

Spot by NetApp offers a portfolio of compute and storage services that monitor and analyze the needs of applications and automatically optimize cloud resources to meet those needs. Customers will be able to:

• Make reliable and greater use of cloud excess compute capacity (aka spot instances) and save up to 90% of compute and storage costs, which typically make up 70% of cloud spend.
• Use compression, dedup and tiering technology to provide dramatic costs saving, up to 60% less than standard cloud storage
• Provide full value out of customers’ cloud reserved capacity
• Integrated, actionable approach to managing cloud spend
• Continuously monitor, analyze and predict applications’ resource needs.
• Proactively optimize cloud infrastructure to meet business and application demands.
• Automatically scale and adapt to deliver optimized capacity and performance.