FVC Signs Strategic Partnership with Virsec to Deliver Advanced Cybersecurity Solutions in the Middle East

FVC, a leading value-added distributor in the Middle East and Africa, today signed a strategic partnership with  Virsec, a cybersecurity company delivering a radically new approach to protect organizations against advanced cyberattacks. The partnership will enable FVC to distribute Virsec’s cybersecurity solutions throughout the Middle East region.

Responding to a sharp increase in cyberattacks targeting businesses, Virsec has validated its patented Trusted Execution™ technology with FVC’s partners and customers to provide unprecedented protection against advanced cyberattacks. High-profile attacks such as WannaCry, NotPetya, Black Energy, Industroyer, and others have used advanced hacking techniques and memory exploits to hijack control, cause disruption, shut down critical business applications or worse. These techniques bypass conventional network security tools and have been considered “indefensible” by many security experts.

“Cybersecurity is a top concern for our customers today as hackers are evading conventional security defenses,” said K.S. Parag, Managing Director, FVC. “Virsec provides effective runtime application memory protection against fileless and memory-based exploits, helping our customers eliminate these dangerous attacks. Through this strategic partnership we have strengthened our IT security portfolio to provide our partners and customers with a complete suite of complementing security solutions required to protect their businesses and critical assets.”

Virsec is the only security vendor that protects processes and memory in real-time. The solution maps acceptable application execution, and instantly detects deviations caused by attacks. This deterministic process takes the guesswork out of cybersecurity by detecting and blocking application attacks within milliseconds, with precise forensics at every step. Analyst firm Gartner has stated that memory protection should be considered “mandatory” and has recognized Virsec for its unique technology.

“It’s time to rethink how we approach security as hackers are using increasingly sophisticated attacks to expose holes in an organization’s infrastructure,”said Bobby Gupta, Managing Director for International Business at Virsec.“These attacks affect all industries from critical infrastructure, government and defense, to financial services, healthcare, telecom, retail, and more. Our philosophy is simple – rather than eternally chasing elusive threats, we need to eliminate the guesswork in cybersecurity and stop attacks at the application, in real-time.” 

Alaris Demonstrates Commitment to Middle East Channel by Hosting Partner Conference in Dubai

Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business,successfully hosted its Middle East Partner Conference October 2nd– 3rd, 2019 in Dubai. 70 partners from 20 countries across the region attended the event, which was held aboard the historic Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) floating hotel and retired ocean liner. 

Executives from Alaris delivered a number of informative sessions including an overview of the company, latest insights into the future of information capture and management, the latest hardware, software and service solutions and how these could help grow revenues and profitability for partners’ businesses. One of the highlights of the event was an interactive session focusing on the value of the Alaris partner program and latest updates including the launch of a new partner portal – a one stop location for sales, marketing, competitive and training materials and other valuable resources that will help partners grow their businesses. A sales master class on generating more demand and new customers leveraging the power of social media saw strong interest from partners. 

There was a dedicated session on the Alaris network scanning portfolio with a focus on the recently launched Alaris INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solutionand the Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus Scannerthat automate business processes by seamlessly connecting document capture to existing business systems and the cloud. The conference also included a ‘Solutions Expo’ where partners were given a demo of the unique capabilities and features of the company’s software portfolio including Alaris Info Input Solution

Naji Kazak, General Manager – Middle East, Africa, Turkey & Russia at Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business said,“The Alaris Middle East Partner Conference is our flagship partner event in the region and presents our company with an opportunity to connect with our key partners to share the latest product updates and insights into our future strategy. It also gives us a chance to understand our partner’s pain points and address them. The event agenda and networking opportunities provide the insight and content our partners need to build a comprehensive plan to successfully grow their business with Alaris products.”

As part of the event, Alaris organized a desert safari which was a thrilling first-time experience for many of the partners. The company also hosted a gala dinner to commemorate the end of the event. 

“It’s clear that the team at Alaris is committed to their partners’ success and expect that same level of commitment in return. The interactive training sessions during the partner conference ensured that we remained focused so the company’s message was properly received – no “death by PowerPoint” here!! It was a most informative event, while still keeping the crowd involved. It’s a pleasure to work with a vendor that gives back as much as they receive. A BIG thank you to Alaris on the huge success of the Summit. Their efforts made every partner feel welcome and part of the Alaris family,” said Bren Miscia, Managing Director, ScanServ (Pty) Ltd.

4C Sets Up Marketing Consultancy Practice to Give Middle East Marketeers a Decisive Digital Edge

Company has appointed Salesforce veteran, Ali Saeed to lead the new division as Marketing Cloud Practice Lead for the Middle East and North Africa


Digitalization is undoubtably a key trend in the Middle East as is evidenced by the fact that today, internet penetration in the region stands at 67.2%, compared to the global average of just 56.6%[1]. Recognizing that this high degree of connectivity is changing consumer behaviours and placing new digital marketing demands on regional businesses, 4C, the customer-obsessed digital transformation consultancy, today announced the establishment of a dedicated Marketing Consultancy practice. The new division will be headed by Ali Saeed who joins 4C as Marketing Cloud Practice Lead for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Ali will be responsible for building the high performing professional services unit, specialized in delivering a range of marketing automation services. He will report directly to Jake Callaway, Managing Director, MENA at 4C who said, “There is a monumental shift in market dynamics in recent years, influenced largely by ease of access to digital services and smart devices. Whether it’s in the B2C or B2B space, hyper-personalized customer experiences are taking precedence. Backed by the benefit of having a well-established Marketing Cloud practice in the United Kingdom, 4C is ready to replicate this successful model and deliver an incredibly valuable and relevant offering to our Middle East customers.”

While 4C’s digital marketing consultancy services can help organizations across all verticals deliver next-level customer experiences, Ali and his team intend to initially focus on the travel, hospitality, entertainment, retail, automotive, energy, and financial sectors. As the largest independent Salesforce Platinum Partner in EMEA, 4C’s new practice will extensively leverage the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform to enable businesses to deliver relevant, personalized journeys for their customers across channels and devices – enabling marketers to deliver the right messages to the right people via the right channel.

Ali said, “Digital marketing in the Middle East is still in its nascent stages but this is changing rapidly – driven not by businesses but rather by consumer preferences. There is a tremendous first-mover advantage for those businesses that adapt their marketing models to successfully engage the new breed of tech-savvy, digital-first customers. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the ideal platform to empower this evolution, and as the clear regional expert in this domain, 4C is ready to be the long-term partner in helping businesses efficiently and effectively navigate this transformation.”Ali has over 12 years of experience in the Digital Marketing industry. Prior to joining 4C, he spent eight years working with Salesforce in London as a Marketing Cloud Solutions Architect & Solution Engineer. Ali has delivered successful Marketing Cloud projects for companies such as Ticketmaster, Sony PlayStation and other leading brands in the aviation, retail and software sectors. Most recently, he led the successful implementation of the Marketing Cloud platform for the iconic Atlantis, The Palm Resort in Dubai. 


Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Nutanix Announce General Availability of GreenLake and ProLiant DX Solutions

HPE GreenLake for Nutanix and ProLiant DX Solutions Increase Business Agility, Lower Costs and Provide Greater Choice for Customers

Hewlett Packard Enterprise(HPE) and Nutanix(NASDAQ: NTNX) today announced the general availability of HPE’s integrated hybrid cloud as a service (aaS) offering, HPE GreenLake for Nutanix, and the HPE ProLiant DX solution. Today’s news delivers on the partnership announced between the two companies in April, through which HPE and Nutanix are providing customers and partners greater freedom of choice for building their hybrid cloud strategy.

“Hybrid cloud today offers a strategic advantage for organisations by granting them the flexibility to store data where they want it, maintain the level of control they desire and scale workloads more efficiently, to provide the level of service their customers expect,” said Pradeep Kumar, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Pointnext Services. “Through our combined offering with Nutanix, we’re helping customers deliver cloud capabilities with greater agility, flexibility, control and choice, so that they can focus on driving digital initiatives that allow them to innovate and move their business forward.”

“Companies around the world know that hybrid cloud is the ideal IT model and they need solutions that make it easier to deploy,” said Monica Kumar, Senior Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing of Nutanix. “Our goal is to make the underlying cloud infrastructure invisible so leaders can focus on what matters most to their businesses: their applications. By partnering with HPE, we’re paving pathways for more enterprises to easily find the right hybrid cloud solution and focus on what moves the needle to scale.”

The HPE GreenLake solution leverages Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud OS software, including its built-in AHV hypervisor, to deliver a fully HPE-managed private cloud that dramatically lowers total cost of ownership and accelerates time to value, while allowing customers to pay for the service based on actual consumption. With HPE GreenLake, businesses can design IT solutions with their chosen technologies and consume them easily, reduce CapEx up to 30 percent due to reduced overprovisioning, increase IT resource utilisation by 40 percent by lowering the support load on IT operations staff, and as a result speed time to value for their critical IT projects.[1]The as a service solution is now available to order across the 50+ countries where HPE GreenLake is offered. The HPE GreenLake for Nutanix offering will be initially focused on simplifying customer deployments of End User Computing initiatives, databases and private clouds.

The HPE ProLiant DX solution is built on HPE ProLiant and Apollo servers with Nutanix software pre-installed and shipped from HPE factories. HPE ProLiant DX brings together industry-leading Nutanix software and server technology into a turnkey solution, enabling enterprises to accelerate the adoption of modernised datacenter architectures.

HPE and Nutanix showcased their combined offerings at the Nutanix .NEXT Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 8-10, 2019. As part of its platinum sponsorship at .NEXT, HPE lead several presentations and other engagement activities with joint customers and partners at the conference.

For more information, please go to www.nutanix.com/hpe and www.hpe.com/greenlake.

Customer and Partner Quotes

“Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software running on HPE ProLiant systems has proven to be an easy-to-deploy, flexible and reliable solution for my IT team,” said Herman Brown, CIO for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. “Since putting it into production, my team has been able to focus more time bringing online new applications and services and much less time managing underlying infrastructure.”

“As a partner of both HPE and Nutanix, PQR has been waiting for the day that the Nutanix proposition and the HPE proposition would come together. Now that it has, we are especially pleased to see that the joint proposition is also available as a service through HPE GreenLake,” said Marco Lesmeister. Commercial Director of PQR. “PQR as a company is always looking for a simple and understandable offering to our customers. In taking the responsibility to manage all of the IT infrastructure for our customers and then bill them on a usage basis, the GreenLake proposition gives us the opportunity to do just that. We can scale up and down easily, without any financial risks for PQR or our customers.”

“We are very excited about the partnership between HPE and Nutanix. The combination of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software and HPE hardware results in a highly scalable and easily upgradeable solution for our customers,” said Jon Lankert, Principal Partner with Summit Partners LLC. “The opportunity to sell Nutanix software with HPE technology as a service through HPE GreenLake has been very good for our business. With this partnership, our customers receive the benefits of HPE with Nutanix, while just paying for what they use each month with no payment upfront.”


[1]The Total Economic Impact of HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity, Forrester, May 2018

7 Myths About Network Management and Security in a Digital World

By: Ashraf Sheet, regional director, Middle East and Africa at Infoblox

In today’s digitally driven, 24/7 world, how well you thrive as a business depends, more than ever, on your network. It’s the central nervous system that drives business innovation, customer satisfaction, and market expansion. It’s no overstatement to say that your network is one of your most valuable business assets. But how well do you understand the challenges it’s up against in an ever-shifting landscape of rising customer expectations, massive device proliferation, increased virtualization, cloud adoption, the Internet of Things, and evolving threats? It’s time to get real.

Myth 1: Data center management tools optimize application deployment speeds.

Reality:You can fully optimize application deployment speeds in the data center only by automating core network services.

If you believe your current data center management tools can serve up apps as fast as your business requires, you may be guilty of wishful thinking. Truth is, most data centers are built on legacy technology, which can leave you at a serious disadvantage when it comes to providing your business with the digital agility it needs to compete in today’s hyper-connected world. 

Conventional management tools were designed to support more static assets, not to roll out enterprise apps on demand or provision hundreds and thousands of virtual machines in the blink of an eye. These days, to optimize data center performance, you must first automate the core network services that make connectivity possible across virtual, physical, and cloud environments. These services include DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (IPAM), otherwise known as DDI. 

Myth 2: Your current policies and procedures can eliminate shadow IT

Reality:Shadow IT is here to stay, but with automation and actionable insight you can bring it into the light.

Shadow IT, the use of technology solutions without the knowledge or support of IT, is on the rise. It has become pervasive for the simple reason that business users need new tools and solutions faster than IT can provide them. The consumerization of IT is in full swing. Powerful cloud-powered business apps are coming online every day. It’s folly to assume you can put the genie back in the bottle by simply ramping up your enforcement efforts using your existing procedures and network management tools. 

The reality is, when business users reach for the latest cloud app without approval, they’re not out to sabotage your security or compliance. They just want to do their jobs as quickly and effectively as possible. Rather than fight shadow IT, your enterprise would be wise to find ways to identify its presence, and then embrace it, safely and efficiently.

Myth 3:Manual processes are an unavoidable part of collecting data for compliance.

Reality: Your network can help you meet your compliance obligations— automatically

For most companies, gathering data for compliance is an unending burden that entails endless cycles of manual effort. Given the disjointed toolsets that most IT departments rely on to perform compliance tasks, manual effort just comes with the territory. Unfortunately, manual compliance processes carry steep costs, and not just in terms of staff time. They introduce errors and consume vital resources. They make it difficult to manage in-scope data and stay ahead of regulatory change. They also complicate the task of rooting out instances of non-compliance quickly and determining corrective action, leaving your organization vulnerable to security threats and regulatory violations.

There are network platforms today that automate data gathering and policy enforcement so that organizations can take command of its compliance efforts while freeing staff to focus on core business objectives.

Myth 4: Of the many security issues your network faces, DNS is important, but not a top priority.

Reality: DNS is the #1 attack pathway into your network

More than ninety percent of malware uses DNS to communicate with command and control (C&C) servers, steal data, or redirect traffic to malicious sites. DNS is a top attack pathway for several reasons. First, it plays a unique role in connectivity. Every device, every virtual machine relies on DNS to connect to your network. In addition, the open nature of the protocol makes it a ripe target. Lastly, and most importantly, conventional network security measures such as firewalls and intrusion protection systems do not understand DNS. As a consequence, cybercriminals exploit DNS specifically to infect devices, propagate malware, and exfiltrate data because they know it’s vulnerable. And their DNS-based tactics are evolving at breakneck speed.

Myth 5: Organizations should hold off on IoT initiatives until security improves

Reality: You can safely deploy IoT in many scenarios by shoring up DNS defences

Achief pathway for attacks against IoT devices is, you guessed it, DNS. IoT increases DNS-based attack surfaces by orders of magnitude. For example, as more and more data is exchanged through smart grids, the more damage security breaches can cause. The prospect of hackers gaining entry to connected systems prevents many companies from launching game changing IoT deployments in the near term. By securing DNS, however, companies can move forward with many IoT scenarios right now.

Myth 6: Security teams have enough information to prioritize security issues effectively

Reality: Security teams are so inundated with information that they don’t know which threats to act on first and why

Even the best-equipped security teams struggle to identify genuine threats in the gushing torrent of threat data coursing through their systems. Without knowing which threats are most urgent and can cause the most damage, security personnel waste valuable time and resources chasing down the wrong issues. In addition, most IT departments rely on a collection of point solutions and management tools for security. These systems are poorly integrated and can’t provide visibility into distributed network assets. They also often involve a high degree of manual processing, which further slows threat identification and remediation.

Myth 7: Organizations can automatically track the activation and compliance of new devices

Reality: Organizations lack a comprehensive view of newly activated devices

It’s tempting to believe that conventional network management systems can keep you informed when new devices join your network. After all, that information is vital to effective network management. Regrettably, getting that information is increasingly challenging for most organizations. The reason why is the same as with many other aspects of network administration— disparate tools and disjointed data siloes hinder the ability to track new devices and ensure their compliance. 

The task is becoming even more daunting as the number of connected devices continues to soar, a trend that will escalate manyfold as the Internet of Things ramps into high gear. The bottom line is that organizations have no efficient way of knowing when new devices are added and if they meet the latest standards. 

When you lack a comprehensive view and contextual information about devices, your network remains vulnerable to security risks, unplanned outages, traffic spikes, and slow performance.

Etisalat Digital & SonicWall Partnership Delivers Network Security to SMBs

SonicWall today announced that Etisalat Digital has productized SonicWall technology in its ‘Business QuickStart (BQS)’ broadband bundle for SMBs, offering telco-grade network security with a zero-touch installation feature. The industry pioneers’ combined efforts have resulted in protecting thousands of SMBs as they work to address the increasing demand for proven security solutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other regions supported by the Etisalat Group.

“Security is no longer a luxury but a necessity that business owners must have in place,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “We set out to partner with a company that is as equally dedicated to providing growing businesses with the capability to protect themselves against even the most elusive of threats and have found that in Etisalat Digital. Working together, we are changing the way business owners in the Middle East meet their security needs.”

Etisalat Digital is offering the SonicWall next-generation firewall with Comprehensive Gateway Security Suitewhich provides advanced protection and access to the SonicWall Capture Security Center, a scalable cloud security management system, provides visibility and control across platforms through a single-pane-of-glass while simultaneously delivering threat intelligence and analytics.“In today’s landscape it is imperative that businesses have holistic security programs where modern day threats are detected and appropriate defense mechanisms are enforced,” said Kamran Ahsan, Senior Director of Security Solutions at Etisalat Digital. “Our partnership with SonicWall offers such defenses at the network level for SMBs in a cost-effective bundle. Security should not be viewed as a financial burden especially to SMBs which have been a prime target of sophisticated attacks for quite a while.” 



Aruba Honours Outstanding Partners Across Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Channel Awards

Regional channel partners gather to celebrate achievements at prestigious awards ceremony

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, hosted its annual Channel Awards ceremony at The H Hotel in Dubai, during the recently concluded GITEX Technology Week, to recognize and honour the achievements of its distributor and reseller partners in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. The gala dinner was well attended by channel executives from across the region.

Aruba recognized 3 distributors and 17 reseller partners for their exemplary performance across several vertical and growth categories.

“The Aruba awards commemorate and acknowledge the role our partners play in driving the company’s development and ‘customer-first customer-last’ mantra. We are committed to helping our partners grow their business and are proud to recognize those that have attained exceptional results. I would like to commend all of this year’s winners for their accomplishments in their respective fields,” said Osama AlHaj-Issa, Regional Channel Director, Middle East, Turkey & Africa at HPE Aruba. 

Categories and winners of the 2019 Aruba Channel Awards include:

Award CategoryWinner
Competitive Win of the YearGBC
Growth Partner of the YearGlobal Technologies for Trading and Contracting 
Marketing Partner of the YearAlpha Data
System Integrator Partner of the YearMDS Computers
SMB Business Partner of the YearAsir Bilgisayar 
Public Sector Partner of the YearSTCS
Education Partner of the Year  Click ITS 
BFSI Partner of the YearNeoGenesis Technical Solutions 
Enterprise Partner of the YearAdvanced Micro Technologies Co
Hospitality Partner of the YearPrecedence
Cloud Partner of the Year Al Futtaim
Emerging partner of the YearAl Moammar Information Systems LLC
Security Partner of the YearBARQ Systems 
Modern Workplace Partner of the YearTurcom Teknoloji
Customer Service Partner of the YearArti Ve Arti Teknoloji 
Growth Distributor of the YearMAS Egypt
Value Distributor of the YearRedington
SMB Distributor of the YearLogicom
International Hospitality SIIntertouch
Ecosystem PartnerAislelabs

Nutanix Announces New IT Automation for Private Clouds

Nutanix and ServiceNow Team to Deliver Self-Service for Automating Common IT Workflows

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, announced today that the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform is integrated with the ServiceNow IT Operations Management solution to automate critical private cloud workflows. With this integration, ServiceNow customers can not only discover Nutanix HCI environments automatically, but also gain access to Nutanix-powered IT services and get direct notification of critical incidents related to Nutanix HCI in their private clouds.

Automating the mundane tasks of IT is essential to facilitating and accelerating digital transformation in enterprises. By automating the most requested services and workflows, IT teams can reduce time spent on servicing incidents and issues and focus on offering a public cloud-like experience within the data centre, competitive differentiation and strategic planning. 

In a new survey[1]of 2,650 IT decision-makers around the world by Vanson Bourne, commissioned by Nutanix, nearly all (98%) said that automation of IT operations is important to their organisation, with 56% saying it was “extremely important.” In addition, according to Gartner: “By 2022, intelligent infrastructure will add infrastructure machine learning, analytics and artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) as software to 60% of HCI and composable integrated systems.”[2]

Integration with the ServiceNow IT Operations Management solution enables Nutanix customers to: 

  • Automatically discover Nutanix private cloud environments with ServiceNow ITOM Discovery capability, giving IT operators end-to-end visibility of Nutanix assets, including HCI clusters, individual hosts, virtual machine (VM) instances, storage pools and dozens more configuration parameters and application-centric metrics.
  • Deliver self-service capabilities to ServiceNow users so they can quickly provision, manage and scale applications via Nutanix Calm blueprints, which are published as service catalogue items in the Now Platform. The Nutanix Calm plug-in is available through the ServiceNow Store
  • Better manage Nutanix-based private cloud operations via integration with Nutanix’s X-Play automation engine built into Prism Pro. With a new X-Play action for ServiceNow, IT managers can leverage ServiceNow ITSM service to notify their team of incidents and alerts in their Nutanix-powered private cloud environment, such as when a host loses power, or a server is running out of capacity.

“Automation is the key to harnessing the power and flexibility of private cloud, removing mundane tasks so IT can focus on competitive differentiation through the use of the latest innovations, while future-proofing their infrastructure investment,” said Rajiv Mirani, Chief Technical Officer of Cloud Platforms at Nutanix. “By integrating Nutanix software with ServiceNow’s leading digital workflow solutions, we are making it easier to deliver end-to-end automation of infrastructure and application workflows so that private cloud can deliver the same simplicity and flexibility as public cloud services.”

“IT leaders are increasingly demanding more automation across their cloud infrastructures so they can focus on higher-level, strategic drivers of their digital transformation,” said Jeff Hausman, Vice President and General Manager of IT Operations Management at ServiceNow. “Leveraging ServiceNow IT Operations Management to establish visibility into the Nutanix environment will allow customers to better manage their overall operations footprint, proactively remediate issues and protect the efficiency and resiliency of their IT investments.” 

Availability

Nutanix integration with ServiceNow is available today, through platform discovery for Acropolisand a fully integrated pluginin the ServiceNow Store for Nutanix Calm.  


[1]Nutanix commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey IT decision-makers about where they are running their business applications today, where they plan to run them in the future, challenges in setting up their cloud environments and how their cloud initiatives stack up against other IT projects and priorities. The survey resulted in approximately 2,650 respondents in 24 countries from multiple industries, business sizes and geographies in the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) regions. A full survey report will be made available later in the calendar year. 

[2]Gartner, How to Migrate From Legacy Infrastructure to HCI and Integrated Systems, Hiroko Aoyama, March, 2019

HPE (Aruba) Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure for Fourteenth Year

Ranked First in Five of Six Use Cases in Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that in Gartner Inc.’s latest “Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure” report, HPE (Aruba) has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant for the fourteenth yearand has received the highest score in five out of six use cases within the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, a companion report to the Magic Quadrant.

Read complimentary copies of the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities reports here: https://connect.arubanetworks.com/GartnerMQ2019

https://connect.arubanetworks.com/GartnerCC2019

The 2019 “Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure” marks the eighth time that Gartner has combined wired and wireless LAN infrastructure into one report. Each year, Aruba has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant. Prior to that, Aruba was also positioned as a Leader six years running in the Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure (2006-2011).

In the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner continues, as it has previously, to evaluate vendors based on two primary criteria: completeness of vision and ability to execute. The report includes a summary of each vendor, as well as an assessment of each vendor’s strengths and cautions.

In the companion piece to the Magic Quadrant, the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, Gartner evaluated vendor effectiveness in addressing an organization’s needs in six key use cases: Unified wired and WLAN access, WLAN-only refresh/new build, Wired-only access refresh/new build, Remote branch office with corporate HQ, Performance stringent applications and Hands-off netops. Aruba received the highest scores in five of six of these use cases, and in the sixth – Wired-only access refresh/new build – was rated second.

“We’re gratified to see once again Gartner’s recognition of HPE (Aruba) as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, as well as the highest ranking in five of six use cases within the accompanying Criticial Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure,” said Chris Kozup, chief marketing officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “We believe our continued philosophy of Customer First, Customer Last, coupled with a stellar product portfolio that addresses the mobile, cloud and IoT challenges our customers face, has positioned us for continued success and recognition in the networking industry.”

Mindware launches Microsoft Azure Marketplace: A seamless partner experience enabling their journey to the cloud

Mindware, one of the leading Value Added Distributors (VAD’s) in the Middle East and Africa, announced the launch of its new cloud Marketplace today. Offering superior transactional experience to the channel community as well as a wide variety of cloud solutions and services, the Mindware Marketplace will increase cloud adoption for partners and their customers. The new Marketplace which is hosted on Microsoft Azure, will, in addition to making cloud services purchase easy and intuitive, offer Mindware’s regional partners the ability to set up and manage their own “white labeled storefront”, thereby offering cloud solutions directly to end-customers. 

Vijay Kumar, CTO and cloud Director at Mindware said, “There has been an acceleration in cloud adoption in the region as a result of major cloud service providers such as Microsoft establishing physical data centers in the Middle East. Organizations are more comfortable with consuming these services now that data sovereignty and security matters are no longer a concern. As a leading regional distributor and in line with our ‘partner experience first’ philosophy, we realized the need to offer a feature-rich platform to enable our partners to develop their capabilities and offerings and to take their business to the next level.”

“We’re transforming the way our partners define their growth, and we’re helping them drive digital transformation in their customers’ businesses. Mindware is a great example of how partners are differentiating themselves today and recognizing the changing digital technology to solve problems utilizing cloud computing. There is a huge opportunity around cloud migration and together with our partners, our goal is to help our customers find the right solution at the right time,” said Karim Hanafy, Microsoft Area Services Partners Lead, One Commercial Partner – Middle East & Africa.

The new marketplace, which can be custom-branded by partners, has several new and enhanced capabilities including a robust and customizable billing engine, which allows partners to easily automate ordering and billing the entire Microsoft portfolio including Office 365, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft ESD. Partners can monitor and control their customers’ Microsoft Azure consumption with automated provisioning of cloud services and utilization-based billing. 

The Marketplace will allow partners to deliver hosted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings via the platform. The interface is intuitive and helps partners to place orders faster and it offers recommendations when products are being purchased to provide an optimized solution. 

Mindware has more than 2 decades of product, technical and licensing expertise as an Authorised Microsoft Distributor and collaborates with qualified cloud consultants throughout the region. 

“Mindware is delighted to announce the launch of its new Marketplace. With Microsoft, being one of our strategic partners in our cloud journey, this new Marketplace, built on Azure, allows our partners to be more productive and profitable. In addition to the platform, Mindware is launching various joint solutions with Microsoft, including Mindware Secure and Connected Workplace® – a novel cloud solutions approach based on Microsoft 365 that will enable resellers to provide customers with an “all-inclusive” migration, productivity, device management and collaboration solution.”-Philippe Jarre, CEO, Mindware