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.

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.” 

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 Category	Winner
Competitive Win of the Year	GBC
Growth Partner of the Year	Global Technologies for Trading and Contracting
Marketing Partner of the Year	Alpha Data
System Integrator Partner of the Year	MDS Computers
SMB Business Partner of the Year	Asir Bilgisayar
Public Sector Partner of the Year	STCS
Education Partner of the Year	Click ITS
BFSI Partner of the Year	NeoGenesis Technical Solutions
Enterprise Partner of the Year	Advanced Micro Technologies Co
Hospitality Partner of the Year	Precedence
Cloud Partner of the Year	Al Futtaim
Emerging partner of the Year	Al Moammar Information Systems LLC
Security Partner of the Year	BARQ Systems
Modern Workplace Partner of the Year	Turcom Teknoloji
Customer Service Partner of the Year	Arti Ve Arti Teknoloji
Growth Distributor of the Year	MAS Egypt
Value Distributor of the Year	Redington
SMB Distributor of the Year	Logicom
International Hospitality SI	Intertouch
Ecosystem Partner	Aislelabs

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.  

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[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

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, 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

Abu Dhabi Municipality has overhauled its legacy networking infrastructure and deployed powerful new Wi-Fi 6 technology from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, that has laid the foundation for its Smart Digital Workplace initiative, which will transform digital experiences for employees, suppliers and citizens. 

Mr. Ahmad Al Hammadi, IT Manager at Abu Dhabi Municipality says, “We understand that the future of work will be defined by smart work experiences enabled by the right technologies. Our intention was to create a smart workplace that will enables creativity, collaboration, speed, and freedom. Our legacy networking infrastructure was a big hurdle in achieving this objective, with operational complexities and security issues, and hence we decided to work with HPE Aruba, a pioneer in the wireless networking space. They were one of the vendors capable of delivering a unique wireless ecosystem, thus acting as an overall solution provider for all our mobility needs.”

Aruba’s latest 802.11ax AI-powered WiFi 6 solutions were selected for the deployment across Abu Dhabi Municipality’s headquarters and 35 branches across the city. As defending against internal threats was a critical security requirement, the government agency automated security access control across its entire access network with Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager, and enforced the continuous analysis of Network Traffic and User and Entity Behaviour with the deployment of Machine Learning technologies provided by Aruba’s threat detection platform, Introspect. 

With a high speed, secure wireless infrastructure as the foundation, Abu Dhabi Municipality will introduce a number of new applications that will enable employees to utilize their smartphones to become more productive. One such application will allow employees to book meeting rooms on their smart devices. The implementation will benefit third party suppliers who visit the Municipality, who will now be able to connect securely and speedily to the new network and transact business without having to go through slow and lengthy authentication procedures. Citizens visiting the four customer happiness centres in Abu Dhabi will also experience gigabit speed browsing capabilities when connecting to the new wireless network. 

“We are proud to have been able to play a role in Abu Dhabi Municipality’s digital transformation journey by delivering a robust wireless ecosystem, incorporating high-speed connectivity, secure access, BYOD support and centralized monitoring and management in a single solution. We hope to be able to continue this partnership as the Municipality’s digital aspirations evolve in the future,” concludes Gamal Emara, country manager – UAE at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. 

Value Added Distributor to unveil new technical sales and service unit as well as end-to-end desktop and application virtualization infrastructure solution 

Mindware, one of the leading regional IT Value-Added Distributors, has announced its participation under the theme ‘Embark on a Customer Journey’ at GITEX Technology Week taking place between 06 -10 October 2019 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The highlight of the company’s participation this year is the launch of a new ‘Solutions Unit’ comprising of Pre-sales and Services teams focusing on infrastructure, security and cloud solutions. The company will also unveil an end-to-end desktop and application virtualization infrastructure solution, that resellers can offer their customers, that is flexible, reliable, scalable and easy to deploy. 

Mostafa Kabel, Solutions Unit Manager at Mindware said, “Technological mix and complexity in the ever-changing IT landscape require successful implementation of IT solutions which are critical to customer business success. Mindware helps its partners achieve this with its newly formed Solutions team, which includes a pool of exceptional technical subject-matter experts capable of addressing technology concerns, simplifying technology and deploying it efficiently in complex IT infrastructures, cyber security and cloud environments.”

The collective experience of the Solutions team covers all areas of IT such as strategic consulting, designing, planning, deploying, implementing and technical trainings.

The Pre-sales Unit will comprise of technical engineers with the highest levels of training and certification in relevant vendor technologies. There will be two separate teams – one focused on datacenter & infrastructure solutions and the other on security. The teams will add value to partners by helping them qualify leads, conduct proof of concepts (PoC) and close projects. 

The Solutions Unit will focus on three areas – professional services, cloud services and training. The professional services team will assist partners in designing and implementing the best possible solution, if required, at the customer’s premises. The cloud offerings include areas such as Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and BackUp, cloud security, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Mindware training services reflect the latest practices and procedures which help in increasing the value to customer environments. The company is an Authorized Training Center (ATC) with fully certified and authorized trainers who offer specialist knowledge reinforced by extensive practical experience. 

GITEX is also the launchpad for Mindware’s new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) bundle – an end-to-end solution stack comprising best of breed technologies including infrastructure-servers by Dell Technologies, security by RSA, virtualization software by Citrix and a choice of Wyse and OptiPlex client endpoints. The solution stack has been fully optimized and validated for interoperability and offers customers cost savings of up to 39% as compared to traditional solutions. Mindware’s services bundle includes consulting, deployment, support & management and training.