Report highlights that secure access for remote and branch workers and high costs are the main connectivity challenges that regional organizations currently face

Riverbed® announced today the results of its ‘Middle East Network Transformation Survey’, which assessed the state of cloud and network technology advancement for enterprises in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Report, which was commissioned by Riverbed and conducted by IDC earlier this year, provides excellent insights into just how prepared enterprises have been to roll out their remote work strategies.

With government measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus still in effect in both countries, organizations have had to prioritize the IT investments that enable their employees to work from home. Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Zoom are all seeing a significant spike in adoption rates, given their ability to be rapidly deployed at scale. It is no surprise then that three quarters (75%) of respondents agree that cloud is ‘important’ to their organization’s network strategy. Riverbed’s survey reveals that 29% of organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia have already completed migration of workloads to the cloud. This process is currently ongoing for a further 31% while an additional 20% of organizations will execute such migrations within the next two years.

The transition of employees to remote working arrangements has also meant that organizations must now ensure seamless and secure access to applications and data across the Internet and home networks. With business-critical services now being delivered to employees working from home via the cloud, it is no surprise that 77% of respondents stated that it is ‘very important’ for them to optimize connections to SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365 to ensure consistently good performance at all times.

Highlighting that 71% of organizations believe cloud is crucial for their digital transformation, Mena Migally, Senior Director, MENA, at Riverbed said, “Current events are hugely impacting all of us on a global scale and organizations are under immense pressure to maintain business continuity while safeguarding the health and safety of their employees. For many, this has translated to the rapid roll-out of work-from-home policies whereby cloud has been instrumental. However, slow SaaS applications can reduce workforce productivity and significantly impact organizations’ ability to execute in highly demanding times.”

When queried on the key connectivity challenges they face, respondents identified secure access for remote and branch workers and high costs as their top two concerns. With large segments of the workforce now requiring access to corporate data and applications from personal devices and home networks, and the challenging economic environment, the impact of issues is likely to be aggravated.

Organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are therefore investing in upgrading their networks and currently over half (52%) are undergoing network transformation. Riverbed’s commission survey reveals the top three factors driving these transformation initiatives to be the need for greater security and compliance (54%), improved application performance (50%) and improved network monitoring and optimization (44%). In conducting these network upgrades, these businesses hope to improve operational efficiency (62%) and business productivity (52%).

“Given that our technology has the ability to greatly aid the success of these initiatives, we are keen to play our part in supporting regional customers,” said Migally. “Riverbed empowers IT teams with purpose-built solutions that facilitate fast, agile, secure delivery of SaaS applications to any user, anywhere, ensuring even the most remote and mobile employees stay productive as well as monitoring their organization’s network performance.”

Manish Ranjan, Program Manager for Software and Cloud, IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa, adds, “IDC is seeing increasing appetite for cloud adoption these days and Work From Home is expected to be a new normal across various organizations in the Middle East region. As organizations increasingly deploy and use mobility and productivity solutions on cloud (including IaaS/SaaS, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud solutions), greater bandwidth with lower latencies will be needed to access these applications. Business leaders need to focus on optimizing their network infrastructure, make it agile to improve application performance and network security. Organizations that optimize their network performance and provide stable network infrastructure to its users will be able to improve operational efficiency and enhance business productivity.”

Riverbed Network and Application Performance Platform

The Riverbed Network and Application Performance Platform enables organizations to maximize the visibility and performance of any network for any application. Riverbed’s Platform includes a powerful combination of four key solutions to ensure our customers reach the full potential of their technology investments. These include:

• WAN Optimization: Maximize network efficiency and expand network capacity with market-leading WAN optimization technology.

• Network Performance Monitoring: A unified performance monitoring solution that provides deep and broad visibility and analytics.

• Application Acceleration: Ensure the fastest, most reliable delivery of SaaS, cloud and on-premises applications to any user, regardless of location, including for remote and work from home employees.

• Software-Defined WAN: Modernize your network with a software-defined architecture that delivers cloud-ready agility and cost savings.

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), today announced that it has successfully hosted a ‘Virtual Partner Xchange 2020’ conference in mid-April. The webinar with the theme ‘Scale up with Nutanix’ exclusively catered to Nutanix partners across the Middle East and Turkey and was attended by over 330 channel executives from across the region. The two hour programme included partner awards being announced at the end.

Bassam Al Masri, Director of Channel, METI at Nutanix said, “As a result of the COVID-19 virus impact on businesses, we have had to come up with a novel way of connecting with our partners and reinvent our annual partner summit as a virtual event. By sharing our company’s vision and roadmap and providing insights into the latest innovations in our products and partner program, we believe we have set our channel partners up for success this year and beyond. We take this opportunity to congratulate all the partners that won awards, and thank them for their continued commitment to driving growth for our company.”

During the virtual event, executives from Nutanix delivered a number of sessions enlightening partners about how they could benefit from the technical and business advantages of the cloud offered by Nutanix, such as infrastructure-independent and automated app mobility, scalability, flexibility and elasticity. Insights were also provided on how partners can maximise their organisations’ profitability with the ‘enhanced’ Nutanix Channel Charter.

GBM, a Nutanix strategic Master Partner, presented a video case study involving a prestigious government agency that implemented a Nutanix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution for 2000+ users. This was based on Nutanix’s latest offer called FastTrack for VDI that supports companies anywhere in the world to quickly deploy a VDI solution and onboard thousands of remote employees in record time.

In order to keep the session fun and interactive, Nutanix organized a quiz with participants having a chance to be one of the three winners of exciting prizes. There was also a raffle draw.

The programme concluded with the partner awards. Below is the list of partners that were recognized for their excellence:

Innovation Partner of the Year – Fujisoft

Partner of the Year – PRO TECHnology

Partner Project of the Year – GBM

Top Nutanix Sales Professional of the Year – Berkan Kılıç (KoçSistem)

Top Nutanix Sales Engineer of the Year – Farhan Parkar (GBM)

Top Nutanix Champion of the Year – Khalid Mashayekh (Versos)

TOP MET Distributor of the Year – Redington

OEM Partner of the Year – Solutions by STC

Best Marketing Campaign Award – Rana Mustafa (GulfNet Solutions Company limited)

Top Nutanix Sales Professional of the Year – Serdar Ünsal (KoçSistem)

“We have ambitious plans. We will be introducing new initiatives that will enhance our partners’ capabilities and drive business for them. Despite the less than ideal market conditions, we are confident that we shall close out this year on a positive note,” concluded Bassam.

In a move that strengthens its ability to enable Middle East businesses to protect their data against breaches, insider threats and cyber-attacks, Help AG, the region’s leading cybersecurity solutions, services and consultancy provider, has entered into partnership with global cybersecurity leader, Forcepoint. While the agreement extends across Forcepoint’s entire product portfolio, Help AG will focus particularly on the vendor’s unique dynamic security protection offerings, Dynamic Data Protection, Dynamic Edge Protection and Dynamic User protection, offering these to enterprises in the UAE and KSA.

“Data is one of the most valuable assets for businesses and its protection is therefore a top priority. Middle East organisations are looking to safeguard their data, not just for compliance purposes, but also because of the potential impact breaches can have on business continuity and brand reputation,” explained Stephan Berner, CEO at Help AG. Research by the Ponemon Institute has shown that the impact of data breaches has been especially severe for Middle East organisations. The region reports the world’s highest average number of breached records, at 38,000 per incident, with the average cost of each data breach averaging at nearly $6 million. Both these figures are about 50% more than the global average.

“Forcepoint’s security solutions perfectly compliment the rest of our portfolio and their model has the benefit of supporting both cloud and on-premise deployment options. Furthermore, their open platform strategy facilitates seamless integration with other industry-leading solutions. We can therefore leverage their products to build comprehensive, multi-vendor solutions that protect the entire data life cycle for our clients, whether in the cloud or in private data centres,” said Berner.

Forcepoint offers next generation DLP, which overcomes the rigidity and hurdles of traditional DLP by reducing alert volumes, false positives and alarms to focus on what matters. Forcepoint is a 9-time leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise DLP and their solutions protect organizations from information leaks and data loss at the perimeter, inside the organization and in enterprise cloud apps, including Office 365, Box, and Salesforce.

The vendor’s DLP solution includes an analytics engine that identifies and ranks high-risk incidents, reducing false positives and enabling businesses to isolate problems faster.

Dynamic Data Protection employs behavioural analytics and machine learning in its  solution to examine and assess user behaviour. By understanding attributes like typical access patterns of users, this individualised, adaptive security protects enterprises against malicious user actions such as data exfiltration or unauthorized access to critical assets and systems.

“As business models evolve to meet the challenges of digital transformation, the way that organisations adapt their data protection strategies will prove critical. By moving to a human-centric approach which places the data, and the understanding of user behaviour at the centre of their design, organizations can proactively protect themselves,” said Gihan Kovacs, Senior Country Manager for UAE and Pakistan at Forcepoint. “Help AG has a proven track record in rapidly assessing and embracing best of breed technologies that solve key cybersecurity challenges. We are confident that with their expertise and support we will be ready to successfully engage with and serve a broader segment of Middle East enterprises.”

Help AG is now a Platinum Partner within the vendor’s Partner Program. In addition to offering consultancy and implementation services, the company will also become an Accredited Service Provider on behalf of Forcepoint.

NetApp introduces vision for enterprise-class data services for stateful, cloud-native applications with any Kubernetes distribution on any cloud

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leader in cloud data services, today introduced Project Astra, a vision for a software-defined platform that is currently in development with the Kubernetes community. Project Astra will deliver the industry’s most robust, easy-to-consume, enterprise-class storage and data services platform for Kubernetes that enables both application and data portability for stateful applications.

Although companies everywhere are rapidly adopting Kubernetes, many organizations lack reliable data and application services, and have difficulty making application data as portable as the applications themselves are in Kubernetes. Yet to meet the standards that CIOs expect, IT teams and site reliability engineers must find a way to store, govern, protect, and replicate the data for both stateless and stateful cloud-native applications with enterprise-class cloud storage and data services.

Project Astra is being purpose-built for and in collaboration with Kubernetes developers and operations managers to help bridge the fundamental gap that exists between the popularity of containers today, the capabilities and user experience they require, and their ability to deliver true, comprehensive portability. NetApp’s vision for Project Astra is to enable companies to work seamlessly with their choice of Kubernetes distribution, on any cloud.

Project Astra leverages the underlying technology delivered through NetApp’s public cloud partners and enhances it through Kubernetes-native integration of data services with applications.

NetApp is working with the Kubernetes community to further develop technology that advances the user experience and extends the promise of Kubernetes to data-rich workloads. Together, NetApp and the Kubernetes community are building a platform to help you:

• Discover applications with your Kubernetes of choice, whether on your premises or in any cloud

• Integrate and unify applications and data management

• Deliver NetApp’s expertise in data and Kubernetes both as a service and as built-in capabilities

• Extend the promise of portability for all workloads, including stateful, data-rich apps

“Project Astra represents the next major step in the evolution of storage and data services for Kubernetes,” said Anthony Lye, senior vice president and general manager of NetApp’s Cloud Data Services business unit. “We are making a decisive and long-term commitment to addressing the data challenges of Kubernetes, together with the communities and platforms that use it. Project Astra will provide a software-defined architecture and set of tools that can plug into any Kubernetes distribution and management environment.”

Project Astra builds on NetApp’s experience in enabling customers to manage petabytes of container data with NetApp® Trident and NetApp Kubernetes Services and adds a specific focus on the developers and operations managers who are innovating with containers today.

“As the first product manager for Kubernetes with Google back in 2014, I’m thrilled to be at NetApp as we continue to lead the effort to tackle the very real challenges that organizations are facing,” said Eric Han, vice president of product management for NetApp’s Cloud Data Services business unit. “I’ve been inspired by the potential of Kubernetes to transform IT services—and by the passion of the community that has helped to build Kubernetes to its prominence today. In a few short years, Kubernetes has become the de facto choice in orchestrating container environments. Yet there is still potential, and a need, to further evolve. With Project Astra, NetApp is delivering on the true promise of portability that professionals working with Kubernetes require today and is working in parallel with the community and our customers to make all data managed, protected, and portable, wherever it exists.”

Kubernetes developers and operations managers who are interested in participating can sign up here.

All it takes is one major event or natural disaster to disrupt the way businesses operate, which can ultimately negatively impact productivity and the bottom line. These events can often prevent us from working in our corporate offices, conducting business on the road and confining us to our homes. However, many of us are ingrained with the concept of traveling to a location to meet with clients, partners, industry associates or collaborate with fellow employees to “get business done” because, let’s face it, there really is no complete replacement for the face-to-face. But in today’s highly connected business world, staying connected doesn’t always require us to be in the same physical space to be engaged, present and productive.

One way organizations can help their workforce stay productive in the midst of travel restrictions is by providing your workforce with the same corporate access and digital experience they would receive while at the corporate offices. This starts with having a seamless and secure onramp into corporate resources. Tools such as remote access points paired with secure network access that follows you – no matter where you are – can keep you connected and help you remain competitive when time is money.

Technology really has come a long way and companies have created hardware and software solutions that extend the corporate employee experience to anywhere they choose to be productive. Employees today have a wealth of remote working options that they can employ when the need arises, such as remote access points or RAPs. RAPs come preconfigured, so any employee can simply plug in to any existing Internet connection and they’re ready to work as if they were inside the office. IT departments can securely extend the corporate enterprise network to every remote employee to easily overcome common issues, such as having to repeatedly login and authenticate in order to access applications, that make traditional remote networking painful.

Another benefit is that RAPs support centralized management of data, voice and video applications, including wired voice over IP desk phones, printers and other IoT devices. Since most employees don’t have a degree in IT, RAPs are simple for any employee to power up since they’re essentially plug-and-play.

No matter the reason behind an organization’s decision to implement a remote working protocol, the fact is that technology advancements are helping to bridge the digital and physical worlds. In other words, experiences that were once only thought possible through in-person interaction can now be had without physically being in the same room.

When combined with skyrocketing costs, associated productivity loss from travel, as well as the physical and mental fatigue that comes with navigating airports and juggling time zones, many organizations are re-thinking the possibilities around remote working simply because the technology is now capable of delivering an experience very similar to that of in-person interaction to the point where many of the benefits of the daily commute into the corporate offices and longer haul travel for business may no longer be worth it.

Joint solution to streamline database delivery and management, freeing IT teams to innovate

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, and Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced the launch of Wipro’s Digital Database Services (DDS) powered by Nutanix Era and Nutanix HCI software. This offering will enable enterprises to efficiently manage databases optimizing time and effort of IT teams.

As the data landscape shifts, businesses face constant pressure for innovation resulting in strain on the company’s IT departments. With legacy infrastructures, databases can be one of the components hindering time to value and linear scalability, preventing rapid scaling of operations such as transaction processing in which business can lose valuable transactions or insights that directly impact their revenue or decision-making capabilities. Wipro’s Digital Database Services (DDS), built on Nutanix solutions for Databases including Nutanix HCI software and Nutanix Era, allows enterprises and users to provision and manage databases just-in-time, without prior knowledge of hardware, database software and associated configurations. The result is accelerated application release time, allowing database administrators to focus on new innovation instead.

The DDS offering from Wipro, powered by Nutanix, empowers customers to consolidate their database workloads onto a shared infrastructure to manage database sprawl. It drives efficiency, agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability across the enterprise by automating and simplifying database administration. Additional benefits delivered by the joint solution include:

● Cost reduction: Reduction of acquisition and operating costs of database, consolidation and effective utilization of resources (control sprawl, better lifecycle management), better utilization of database administrators’ time by allowing them to focus on innovations and optimizations

● Rapid provisioning: Delivering of services in minutes as compared to days; business lines, database administrators, or non-IT users can consume services through a self-service portal, reducing overall time

● Innovative pricing: The as-a-service model makes cost predictable and easily dispersed to business units, ensuring service quality and customer satisfaction

● Reusability: The solution integrates with other third-party cloud management platform and orchestration tools to help reuse existing investment

● Supportability: Support for multiple database technologies and versions

● Automation: Enabling of greater efficiency and faster change delivery with better quality and predictability

Satish Yadavalli, Vice President, Cloud and Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited said, “Wipro’s joint offering with Nutanix brings agility, speed and flexibility for core and digital applications delivered as a service. Wipro’s Digital Database Services (DDS) powered by Nutanix HCI platform and Era delivers end-to-end services from transition, modernization, continuous deployment and automated lifecycle management operations of enterprise, open source and NoSql databases. Integrations are simplified as developers and application owners have access to a repository of customized services APIs. With this joint solution, we are confident of helping our joint customers optimize the Database resources and license cost.”

Bala Kuchibhotla, Vice President and General Manager, Nutanix Era and Business Critical Apps, Nutanix said, “Legacy database management is traditionally complex and requires massive amounts of resources from database administrators, taking away time they could be spending on more critical initiatives. With data volumes growing exponentially year-over-year, provisioning, protection, patching, performance and copy data management operations are becoming even more tedious and expensive. Our partnership with Wipro, will help develop the efficient and elegant Database-as-a-Service solutions for our customers to further our mission of enabling any organization to embrace the power of the cloud.”

Wipro DDS powered by Nutanix is available now. For more information, visit https://www.nutanix.com/partners/system-integrators/wipro