The advent of cloud, scale and hosted pay-as-you-grow services are finally upon us! The two major cloud providers, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have put down large investments and opened datacentres in the Middle East. 

In June this year, Microsoft brought online two United Arab Emirates (UAE) regions – in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, enabling government agencies and businesses to comply with local regulations, by providing data residency in the UAE for its Azure and Office 365 services. A little over a month later at the end of July, AWS announced the expansion of its global footprint with the opening of the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region. The announcement stated that ‘developers, start-ups, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations can start using the new AWS Middle East Region to run applications and serve end-users across the Middle East.’

We are facing exciting times ahead with the launch of these public cloud providers in the Middle East, which will undoubtedly provide an impetus for regional companies to better integrate cloud into their strategies. Organizations will be more comfortable with consuming these services now that data sovereignty and security issues, which have been the main stumbling blocks in the past, are no longer a concern. We are facing exiting times with the advent of all these public providers. 

Do these announcements sound the death knell for traditional hardware solution providers? No doubt analysts will be keeping a close eye on hardware sales in the next two to five years. I recently returned from Las Vegas where there was a large Public Cloud provider conference of over 60,000 delegates and I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised at the content and mindset of providers, customers and partners. One thing is clear – we are at an infliction point in IT. Any CXO returning from this event would have many questions about their IT services and I suppose their first priority would be to halt all procurement. Why would you want to incur huge costs to own and maintain your own datacentre, besides the operational and security challenges that go with it? The advantages of public cloud services have been well documented. But the answer is not that simple. As both, public and private cloud continue to mature in the region, many companies will opt for both, leveraging multiple clouds to satisfy their diverse enterprise computing needs. Multi-cloud combines on-premise operations with services and applications running on multiple cloud providers, which enables organizations to capture the benefits of each platform while mitigating their downsides.

In this heterogeneous environment, the main challenge now is managing the distributed data between all the clouds and centralising this management to ensure visibility regardless of where the data is residing. 

The 2019 Veeam Cloud Data Management reportsurveyed over 1,500 business leaders globally andfound that organizations are on a journey to become a more intelligent business, meaning they are leveraging technologies such as Cloud Data Management and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a real-time view of the collective business and the ability to act intelligently on that insight. Amongst the businesses on this journey, the study highlights four common components globally:

1. Cloud: Cloud Data Management is a key component of delivering Intelligent Data Management. Three-quarters of companies report using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms. Many are utilizing the cloud for their backup and recovery services, with 51% using Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and 44% using disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS). It is evident that leaders are recognizing the advantages of a multi-cloud and hybrid-based approach, citing cost, reliability, flexibility and data security of the cloud as their main reasons for choosing it. 

• Capabilities: Organizations must enhance their capabilities, to ensure employees can draw on data insights and use new technologies as they are deployed, with 9 out of 10 businesses viewing upskilling employees’ digital skills as vital to their digital success.

• Culture: Creating a culture that is adaptable and receptive to new technologies so that people can evolve with the organization is essential, with more than two-thirds of respondents believing that company culture needs to become more open and accepting to digital technologies.

• Confidence: Organizations must create a sense of confidence in the business’ digital capabilities, built on a strong data foundation. Presently, only a quarter of respondents report total confidence in their capability to meet their digital challenges. 

What is clear from the 2019 Veeam Cloud Data Management Report, as well as the entry of the major global public cloud service providers in the region, is that the time for action is now. This starts with a strong digital foundation, which ensures that data is backed up and always available. With this in place, organizations can confidently deploy new digital initiatives, leveraging the business value and competitive advantage for today and into the future, and harness the potential of Cloud Data Management. 

Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business, is launching a series of initiatives designed to support channel partners and significantly increase their ability to pursue new revenue streams. The global information capture firm is expanding its Developer Program to accelerate innovation within its new Smart Connected Scanning category. Alaris is opening a new dedicated partner portal that provides resellers with easy access to a wide range of training resources, sales support tools and marketing assets. And it is enhancing its Managed Capture Services offering.

The Alaris Developer Program gives Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), System Integrators (SIs), Value Added Resellers (VARs) and third-party developers access to Alaris’ technical toolkits including market-leading application program interfaces (APIs) that they can use to jointly create new and innovative customer solutions. The program supports the demand for increased connectivity, the ability to elevate traditional push scanning to enterprise-scale efficiency and enable scanning directly into line-of-business processes. Through this collaborative developer ecosystem, partners can also help their customers realize the full potential of the Alaris INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution to automate workflows by seamlessly connecting document capture to existing business systems and the cloud.

“By making it easy for partners to access our APIs, they can custom-develop integrations that work with their customers’ business processes to deliver automated, easy to manage workflows,” said Don Lofstrom, President & General Manager, Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business. “The program will also extend the value and reach of our solutions, empowering partners to secure new recurring revenue by transforming legacy, transaction-based hardware sales into a simple to deploy, subscription-based offering.”

New Partner Portal
Partnering with Alaris helps resellers find new ways to expand their offerings and reach into new sources of profitable revenue. With the launch of its new partner portal, Alaris is making partnership easier, offering resellers its full support across the entire sales cycle, empowering them to grow their business and earn more with Alaris.

As part of its commitment to help resellers win new business, Alaris will enable partners to build a pipeline with qualified leads secured from Alaris-led demand generation programs.

The mobile-responsive portal which is accessible via single sign-on enables partners to register new sales opportunities and automate sales cycle activities, saving time and streamlining processes. In addition, the portal offers easy access to a range of sales enablement tools such as market research, competitive intelligence and ‘why-to-buy’ tools; co-branded collateral, as well as assets and support for marketing activities.

Partners also benefit from access to Alaris’ learning management system where they will find a wealth of sales and technical training courses. The company has introduced a number of selling and partnership incentives, benefits and rebates that increase in line with the resellers’ business commitment to Alaris.

Expanding Alaris Services
Alaris has built on its heritage and expertise in enabling customers to transform data into a powerful competitive advantage, by enhancing its Managed Capture Services (MCS) proposition. Partners looking to deliver added customer value, deepen customer relationships and expand their business opportunities can now leverage the value of the Alaris’ repair and maintenance and professional service offerings. With the new Alaris Scanner Management Platform, Alaris and its partners can directly monitor scanner operational data, deliver usage reports and manage multi-variate alerts for its customers’ scanners.

With the Alaris Scanner Management Tool, Alaris and its partners can provide customers with an understanding of total imaging costs and usage to enhance efficiency and effectiveness and drive tangible savings for customers. Alaris also provides an alternative for customers that enjoy savings, visibility and consumable management afforded by Managed Print Service (MPS) providers as well as the use of centralized PC management solutions. The Alaris Scanner Management Agent expands these offerings by allowing scanners from Alaris to be seamlessly integrated into device management solutions for smarter reporting and management.

“With a requirement to reduce costs, organizations are buying into managed and as-a-service options across their IT infrastructures. Our enhanced MCS offering gives us ‘permission to play’ more actively in the managed services space,” Lofstrom said. “This model will help partners to get closer to customers, increase the value of what is delivered and build a more sustainable business based on recurring revenue streams.”

New CX Series Switches with Cloud-Native Operating System Integrate Closed-Loop Automation and Analytics to Simplify the Operator Experience

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that it is changing the rules of networkingwith the introduction of switching and software innovations designed to address the unique needs of today’s modern enterprise campus, branch and data center. The Aruba CX Switching Portfolionow includes the Aruba CX 6300 Series fixed configuration and CX 6400 Series modular access, aggregation and core switches, while delivering the latest advancements in the AOS-CX operating system. This gives network operators one simple, end-to-end switching platform to dramatically improve business outcomes today and into the future. 

Aruba is the first company to offer a single switching platform that runs on a modern network operating system – AOS-CX– from the enterprise edge to the core to the data center. This unique, cloud-native platform is further optimized by Aruba’s powerful Network Analytics Engine (NAE), which utilizes embedded analytics and automation to simplify management, accelerate troubleshooting of application performance issues and remediate common network problems.  

“AI-powered automation must be at the heart of a modern, edge-to-cloud architecture and, in order to be truly useful, it requires an intelligent infrastructure as the foundation,” said Keerti Melkote, president and founder at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “We believe that AI is the key to analyzing data, providing actionable insights, and automation at scale to optimize network operators’ ability to quickly troubleshoot, remediate and proactively resolve some of IT’s most pressing challenges. Our vision for the future is a cloud-native architecture that delivers true business agility and new digital experiences, and today’s introduction is an important step in that direction.” 

Today’s enterprises cannot remain competitive by relying on greater performance and increased bandwidth alone. The modern enterprise requires an advanced architecture that is self-validating and self-tuning through closed-loop automation to intelligently support mission-critical applications, circumvent new security attack vectors, and deliver the agility that today’s enterprises require. Until now, network operators have had to contend with inflexible, disparate architectures especially when managing branch offices, enterprise campuses and data centers. These architectures require manual processes across multiple operating systems, resulting in fragmented operating models, networks incapable of modern functions and a plethora of unstructured data that isn’t actionable. 

Gartner states, “As update speed increases, it is no longer viable to manually plan for and deploy tens, hundreds or thousands of network changes each time an application change occurs. Making these changes manually is not only impractical, but is likely to result in significant errors.”^[1]Manual processes can significantly hinder an organization’s ability to move quickly, innovate and thrive in a competitive marketplace. Moreover, many of these hurdles can be overcome with a cloud-native infrastructure. According to Gartner, a “cloud-native infrastructure exhibits the following characteristics:  

• Modularity – It provides abstractions for independent packaging of services (such as containers or serverless functions).
• Programmability – It supports provisioning and management via declarative APIs and policies.
• Elasticity – Resources can be scaled up and down dynamically in an automated and policy-driven manner using orchestrators.
• Resiliency – Services are loosely coupled units that are independent and fault-tolerant.^[2]”

Modern enterprises need an edge-to-cloud network running on a common platform to benefit from automation and increased operational efficiency, freeing up network operators to focus on business-critical activities. 

One OS. One ASIC Architecture. One Operating Model.

Stemmingfrom the breakthrough innovation and success of itsCX 8400 Seriescore switches running the AOS-CX operating system – as evidenced by significant momentum with winning new core customers– Aruba is addressing these challenges with a modern switching portfolio that delivers a single operating model from the enterprise campus and branch access layer to the data center, greatly simplifying network operations. The new platforms in the Aruba CX Switching Portfolio incorporate the key elements of a modern networking infrastructure and include:

• Aruba CX 6300 and CX 6400 Series switches featuring Aruba’s 7^thGeneration ASIC architecture: The Aruba CX 6300 Seriesis a family of stackable switches that offers flexible growth via a 10-member virtual switching framework (VSF) and provides built-in 10/25/50 gigabit uplinks to meet the bandwidth needs of today and the future. The Aruba CX 6400 Seriesmodular switches offer both a 5-slot chassis and a 10-slot chassis with a non-blocking fabric that scales from Gigabit POE access to 100G core, allowing customers to standardize on one platform across the enterprise, including hybrid use cases. 
• AOS-CX 10.4: The new version ofAOS-CX introduces rich access features to the OS while extending CX differentiators to the access layer of the network. These include Aruba Dynamic Segmentationto provide secure, unified policy across wired and wireless down to every user and IoT device, Ethernet VPN (EVPN) over VxLAN for simplified and secure connectivity from enterprises to data centers, and Virtual Switching Extension (VSX) live upgrades for no downtime during maintenance cycles.
• Aruba NetEdit 2.0 with Network Analytics Engine (NAE): The significantly enhanced version of Aruba’s NetEditsoftwarenow integrates with Aruba’s NAE. This advancement enablescentralized visualization of network health leveraging NAE distributed analytics across every switch in the network to reduce troubleshooting cycles from days to minutes. New automation capabilities simplify common tasks such as implementing configuration changes or initial system set-up which can now be completed via the CX Mobile app.

 A10 Networks(NYSE: ATEN), today announced a value added distributor partnership agreement with Redington Gulf across United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Redington will promote A10 Networks’ entire portfolio of leading solutions including service provider network security to support IoT in the age of 5G, multi-cloud management, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) with Zero-day Automated Protection (ZAP), carrier-grade networking (CGN) and application visibility and analytics. 

Ehab Halablab, Regional Channel Manager – MENA at A10 Networks said, “As our company continues to increase focus and investment in the Middle East region, we require strong channel support to grow our share of the enterprise market. We believe that Redington, with its vast channel network, can help us to recruit new reseller partners into our Affinity Partner program. We will also rely on their sales and marketing expertise and technical training services to promote the A10 Networks brand and increase our partners’ knoweldge of our company’s technologies.”

“Redington has a strong portfolio of security vendors that provide solutions like SIEM, IPS, DLP, packet broker and forensics, that complement those of A10 Networks. This plays well for both our companies and provides growth opportunities. We look forward to growing our footprint in the region through this new partnership.”

With the addition of A10 Networks, Redington can now build and offer partners and customers a robust, end-to-end solution, integrating complementary solutions from various vendors in the company’s portfolio. It also gives Redington the opportunity of revisiting existing customer accounts and using A10 Networks’ solutions to cross-sell/up-sell. 

Redington will be investing into a ‘train your trainer’ scheme, which involves a dedicated employee getting trained by the vendor. The distributor will then act as an Authorized Training Centre (ATC) and build scheduled technical workshops to deliver high level technical training and updates to resellers and partners, including certification programs. 

“5G and Multi-cloud environments are two of today’s biggest trends that will transform the market. 5G and multi-cloud environments require the most automated and reliable security solutions to ensure that business-critical applications are protected and always available. A10 Networks has proven market leading technologies in these areas, and as such, the vendor is an invaluable addition to our portfolio. We are excited to be able to offer the company’s security solutions to our partners and customers across the region,” concludes Sayantan Dev, Senior Vice President at Redington Gulf. 

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced that it is among the top three vendors in worldwide market share for SD-WAN equipment by revenue in Gartner’s Q2 2019 report titled, “Market Share: Enterprise Network Equipment by Market Segment, Worldwide, 2Q19.”According to Gartner, total worldwide SD-WAN equipment revenue in 2Q19 was $417M, up 30% quarter-over-quarter.In 2Q19, Fortinet’s SD-WAN revenue is reported to have grown 234% quarter-over-quarterto $46M. This represents the third highest revenue market share at 11.1%.

“Cybersecurity has become a top-of-mind strategic business issue for enterprises deploying WAN edge solutions,” says John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet. “We’re hearing from an increasing number of customers who are concerned about the security risks associated with SD-WAN exposing branch offices to the Internet. We believe our growing market share validates the need for Fortinet’s unique Security-Driven Networking approach, which tightly integrates security and SD-WAN functionality into a single offering. Fortinet is committed to SD-WAN innovation; just this year we released the industry’s first SoC4 ASIC specifically designed to increase SD-WAN performance and security. Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilitiesas well as the ability to extend SD-WAN to the access layer via SD-Branch. Because we deliver our SD-WAN solution in-built into every FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall, customers benefit from some of the industry’s best threat protection and threat detection capabilities, fully integrated with one of the top SD-WAN solutions on the market.”

The iconic toy chain is undergoing a digital transformation in the KSA backed by Capillary Technologies as a strategic partner

Capillary Technologies, a leader in omnichannel engagement solutions along with its partner Naizak AlElm have become a key technology enabler for ToysRUs in Saudi Arabia by providing the popular chain of toy stores with its AI based Instore solution. ToysRUs will benefit from Capillary’s retail marketing solution to accurately identify in-store walk- in’s and derive rich insights about customer behaviour and buying patterns to help plan store operations efficiently. 

According to research from Euromonitor International, Saudi Arabia’s retail market is expected to grow at 12.3% to be worth US$119 billion by 2023. Having recently established its regional entity ‘Capillary Arabia’ in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia is the fastest-growing market for Capillary in the region. With this latest partnership with ToysRUs, Capillary aims to further consolidate its presence in the country. 

Offline retail in Saudi Arabia continues to contribute about 95% to the total spend. Consumers still prefer to visit brick-and-mortar stores to experience and feel the product before a purchase. Keeping customers at the center of attention, ToysRUs wanted to build an offline clickstream of data, similar to what ecommerce does, to support the company’s mission to provide an exceptional retail experience to customers.

ToysRUs deployed Capillary’s VisitorMetrix which not only enables it to analyze historical store traffic patterns to determine staffing requirements through power hours, but also gives immediate responsive data to changes, including studying the impact of promotional campaigns. ToysRUs uses this information to strategize their operations and marketing campaigns to look deeper at their performance and pull the right levers for improved productivity.

“While our ecommerce business is growing, we did not want to lose focus on the offline stores. Combining the instore consumer behaviour with the transactional data will give us a complete 360 degree view of our customers and will help us personalise our offerings and services,” said Mr. Mansour Al-Akeel, Managing Director and CEO at ToysRUs.

Capillary’s President and General Manager for META, Nitin Kaushal said, “Saudi Arabia is one of our key markets in the region and we are pleased to partner with ToysRUs and be involved in their digital journey. We will soon be launching VisitorSense to help retailers capture more in-store data. It will provide brands with demographics and fashion profiles of store visitors to better understand their buying habits, patterns and preferences. We look forward to establishing a long-term partnership with ToysRUs and help elevate their customer experience.”

Capillary has also partnered with Naizak in Jeddah to leverage its rich and localised expertise in the market to design localised loyalty solutions for homegrown brands.