His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council for Dubai Government, officially opened GITEX Technology Week today, marking the 32nd anniversary of one of the world’s top three international Information and Communication Technology (ICT) events. GITEX Technology Week 2012 runs from October 14-18 under the theme “Where Technology Means Business”.

Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed opens 32nd GITEX Technology Week

60 MinsShow dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre | AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -6pm

WHAT’S INSIDE

Security technologies still lagging in MENA

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Cloud cuts Habtoor’s costs by 50%

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influential edition yet. Over 130,000 industry professionals and more than 3,500 suppliers from 144 countries across five continents are expected throughout the week. More than half of the total exhibiting companies are international, with countries like Algeria, Denmark, Malaysia and New Zealand debuting at the show. This year GITEX’s focus extends to Africa and it has seen an increase in exhibitors from African countries including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

Over 80% of leading global ICT brands, featuring C-level executives representing ICT budgets of over USD50 billion, are attending GITEX this year. The exhibitors and speakers list is packed with industry heavyweights such as Cisco, Dell, Du, Etisalat, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard, Huawei, Kaspersky, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, RIM, Samsung, SAP and Symantec. Notable new exhibitors include Chinese telecommunications equipment company ZTE, Saudi Telecom Company, Sage, Vocalcom and African IT distributors Mitsumi.

Helal Saeed Almarri, Chief Executive Officer, Dubai World Trade Centre said, “We are honoured that His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council for Dubai Government, has

His Highness Sheikh Hamdan was accompanied by His Highness Sheikh Maktoum Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai on the tour of the GITEX Technology Week opening, along with several other dignitaries and Helal Saeed Almarri, Chief Executive Officer of event organiser Dubai World Trade Centre.

Thousands of trade and business visitors streamed through DWTC’s doors within the first hours of what is expected to be GITEX’s most globally

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Actifio is set to unveil its Virtual Data Pipeline (VDP) technology at GITEX, a unique solution to the rising concerns over exponential data growth, according to Ash Ashutosh, Founder, CEO, Actifio.

The company claims that the copy data management framework solution is aimed towards a new category of data management, dubbed Protection & Availability Storage (PAS), and can enable companies to recover anything instantly for up to 90% less than what they are currently paying.

“By virtualising the management of copy data, Actifio stops the data explosion and replaces the complexity with a single golden copy of everything in production, and tracks changes to it over time,” said Ashutosh.

“The result is a single, simple, elegant system that lets customers save up to 95% storage, 70% bandwidth and 65% licensing costs.”

Ashutosh believes that exponential data will continue to hamper Middle East businesses unless they properly prepare by future proofing their IT departments.

“Managing data growth efficiently will continue to be a key topic for IT decision makers in the upcoming years and more and more

companies will struggle to cope with this through legacy systems. To position competitively for future growth, the time is now to consider the new class, cost efficient Protection and Availability Storage [PAS] solutions.”

Ashutosh claims that companies are embracing Actifio solutions and are coping with cost and complexity management as a result. The company’s new “state-of-the-art” solutions will be on show at GITEX this week, which Ashutosh says is addressing the core of the data explosion by separating production data from myriads of copies which are currently produced by legacy point tools.

“Companies are dealing with an incredible complexity and costs to manage this growth. Legacy point tools are usually creating, moving and storing copy after copy of everything in production, Actifio’s solutions avoid that.”

4 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Actifio to tackle data growth with ‘state-of-the-art’ technology

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Ash Ashutosh, Founder, CEO, Actifio

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opened the 32nd edition of GITEX Technology Week. GITEX is the region’s unrivalled platform for industry players to capitalise on the steady growth of the region’s ICT market as global and regional investors look to the lucrative emerging markets such as the Middle East Africa (MEA) for business and opportunities. This year GITEX once again establishes its role as the regional industry authority to bolster investment, technology and innovation while identifying the drivers that will shape future growth in the ICT sector.”

Adding to the stature of GITEX this year is the strategic co-location of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom World 2012, the leading platform for high-level networking, strategic debate and knowledge-sharing for the global ICT community, which takes place for the first time in Dubai alongside GITEX Technology Week.

InfoComm MEA returns to the region this week following its successful regional debut alongside GITEX Technology Week last year.

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Adoption of security technologies still lagging, says Comguard

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Comguard believes that the adoption of new, across-board security technologies in the Middle East is lagging behind other regions, claiming that IT security is a “misused topic” in the MENA area.

However, Ajay Singh, CEO, Comguard, has said that the Middle East is reactive to such trends, and that with the right advice, businesses will begin to seek capable solutions.

“There is a good awareness of security issues, but adoption of newer technologies across – board is still lagging behind. With consistent reports in regards to threats relaying to Advanced

The enterprise IT management vendor ManageEngine, which is participating at GITEX for the sixth year, plans to showcase its wide range of products, make some important announcements, offer customers a sneak preview of

VAD and act as vendor‘s direct presence in the region as well as being deeply technical we can educate the partner to position the solution.”

Singh states that Comguard’s belief in great partnerships being driven by true commitment, has resulted in long standing partnerships with leading network and security vendors which sets it apart.

“Representatives from Kaspersky, SafeNet, BeyondTrust, WildPackets, WinMagic, Entuity, Altai, Airlive, Clavister, Psion and Infor are all present with Comguard at our Stand @ Hall 1 A1-A20, and are available to interact with the

Persistent Threat (APT)/ Malware, Comguard’s Technology Experts can advise advice solutions to large enterprises to minimise such security risks,” he said.

Singh claims that the main job for Comguard at GITEX this week is to stay ahead of the curve and provide the right platform for the latest technological solutions to the MENA region.

“We have several consultants who are deeply technical, to support our partners starting from top line presentations to having solutions implemented on behalf of partners in case the requirement arises. We are a full house as a

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ManageEngine displays its wide array of products

upcoming products and meet with customers and partners at the Middle East’s largest ICT exhibition.

“ManageEngine has been at GITEX for six successful years and is still counting. During GITEX, we look forward to meeting a lot of

prospective customers as well as forging potential partnerships,” says Nirmal Kumar Manoharan, Director - ManageEngine.

“GITEX has been a very promising platform for showcasing our products regionally as well as globally. The response that we have had over the years has been very overwhelming and we believe it would be fair to say GITEX has been a launch pad for several of our product releases / updates,” he adds.

ManageEngine delivers real-time IT management tools that empower an IT team to meet an organization’s need for real-time services and support. Worldwide, more than 60,000 established and emerging enterprises — including more than 60 percent of the Fortune 500 — rely on ManageEngine products to ensure the optimal performance

of their critical IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, applications, desktops and more.

Being the most looked forward to ICT event in Middle East, GITEX comes with its own benefits in leveraging the company’s brand identity and product visibility.

This year at GITEX, ManageEngine intends to showcase a comprehensive array of products to its regional visitors as well as from across the globe. “We intend to provide a sneak peek into the Release Candidate version of our Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product and the new addition of Mobile Device Management (MDM) capability to its Systems Management product along with few other exciting new announcements,” Manoharan explains.

ManageEngine would without a doubt boast a very busy booth with enthusiastic customers and prospects who would attend technical demo by the product experts themselves and rendezvous with ManageEngine executives.

visitors throughout GITEX,” said Singh.

“Our stand is abuzz with the latest security offerings from acclaimed vendors. Our experts will advise you on how to secure your infrastructure with leading edge technology,” he concluded.

Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO, Comguard

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Habtoor Hotels cuts costs by 50% with cloud

Habtoor Hotels became a pioneer for cloud when it outsourced its email hosting and security to Google Apps and subsequently cut its costs by 50%.

The hotel group, which has been operating in the region for around 30 years, origionally used a combination between Symantec and a local Linux POP3 server and hosted the whole email server in its head office.

“We also had Exchange server for people with Blackberry’s to sync with their devices,” said Mahmoud

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Kamal, Group IT Manager, Habtoor Hotels. “It was rather expensive. Maintaining just an 8mb Etisalat line was costing us around AED200,000 or more every year. So cost cutting was one reason we wanted to change to Google Apps.”

Asides from cost cutting, the other major reason for outsourcing Habtoor’s email hosting and security was the excessive spam and junk email it suffered with.

“Regardless of how powerful your offline spam controller and firewalls are – spammers are very

“Having a powerful online spam control system was the other key reason why we went with Google Apps. Our users received a very large amount of spam daily and that raised fears of us being hacked through illegal sources. We also had insufficient bandwidth to manage our email and communications despite having a leased line for our email server,” he added.

The decision to opt for Postini’s online spam control has paid dividends for Habtoor, with the amount of spam drastically reduced.

“The spam control of the partner of Google in that area, which is Postini, is marvellous. The average spam on the old system was anywhere between 50 and 100 per day. It doesn’t matter what stand alone spam controller you use, it does not physically work. Postini reduced spam down to just two or three per day, which was a great success for us,” Kamal said.

It was this success with Postini that was a major factor in Habtoor’s decision to opt for Google Apps, which was implemented through Google’s authorised Middle East partner, FVC.

A year after the Google Apps implementation, Microsoft called Habtoor with an offer for its SkyDrive service that undercut what Habtoor was paying Google.

clever. No matter how clever the policeman is, the thief will always be one step ahead. Even in our business, all the spam control systems are physically updating their software systems but you don’t get the true power of online scanning. We had a Symantec spam control but it was not online,” Kamal said.

The decision Habtoor had to make was whether to go for a local spam and local system or to go for a cloud implementation, in which it would opt for Google Apps and Postini.

“In the end it was simple. If you have three or four million using an email or spam control system and out of these millions of people there are 100 who report spam from one sender in half an hour, this email address will become blocked and blacklisted in the second hour on the system. That means the hacker will only succeed by hurting those people and the rest won’t feel it,” Kamal said.

“The decision Habtoor had to make was whether to go for a local spam and local system or to go for a cloud implementation, in which it would opt for Google Apps and Postini.”

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Zebra shows its stripesWhat are your company’s key products and services?Zebra Technologies offers technologies that give a digital voice to an organisation’s assets, people and transactions, enabling organisations to unlock greater business value. The company’s extensive portfolio of marking and printing technologies, including RFID and real-time location solutions, illuminates mission-critical information to help customers take smarter business actions.

What benefits do your products and services bring to regional customers?Zebra has consistently performed well in the Middle East showing noticeable growth in recent years. We work with a broad range of customers across different vertical sectors including retail, healthcare, manufacturing, government, hospitality, transport and logistics.

At Zebra, we believe that if a business can see more, they can do more. Depending on your business needs, we can offer a range of specialised asset tracking products and solutions to suit different verticals markets and business situations.

Why is your company exhibiting at GITEX Technology Week?We are very excited to showcase our new range of printing products and location solutions to businesses in the Middle East. Over the past few years, we have put in a lot of effort and investment in our innovations to make sure we keep up to date to meet the changing customer requirements.

With businesses now operating in the digital space, they require the right technology platforms and systems that support their physical assets, and allow critical data to be more readily available anywhere, any time.

Zebra can help businesses achieve their goals, by providing

the systems and processes in place to meet business needs quick and easily, whether it is price change labelling in a retail store, tracking blood samples and patient details in a hospital, or ensuring the safe and timely delivery of mechanical parts during the assembly of a new vehicle.

What does your company hope to achieve by appearing at GITEX Technology Week?Zebra has been exhibiting at GITEX for a number of years and our experience has been very positive. This is a great opportunity for us to meet with our existing and new partners and customers at the show.

We see a lot of potential in the Middle East region and have invested a significant amount of resource to grow our team here as part our EMEA business strategy.

This is a good chance to us to introduce the team to the market and explore new opportunities.

With a stronger team structure, we now offer an improved customer experience and with dedicated personnel who work with our partners and customers by country, by vertical across the whole region to deliver a more personalised and tailored approach.

What are your company’s main recent achievements in the Middle East market?We have achieved strong growth in the Middle East region over the past year, building on continued and new opportunities in key vertical sectors including retail, government, healthcare, transport and logistics. We have dedicated personnel covering each of the key markets and have seen more customer wins across the region as a result of this more personalised approach.

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Thierry Vasseur, Regional Sales Director, Zebra Technologies

Digital security firm Entrust today announced plans to expand its Middle East presence with the opening of a new office in Dubai Internet City.

The decision came after Entrust observes a wide adoption of its solutions in the Middle East, including counting five of the top six financial institutions in the GCC as its customers.

Earlier this year, Entrust’s Arabic soft token was deployed in two of the largest financial institutions in the GCC, with more than six million total users in the region.

“With the tremendous growth the UAE has experienced, establishing a local presence is a major priority to support Entrust’s current and future customers,” said Bill Connor, CEO and President, Entrust. “We already have a significant presence in the region and are committed to supporting our partners, including the Emirates ID Authority and Samba Bank, as well as numerous other governments, financial institutions and enterprises in the region.”

Entrust is exhibiting at GITEX for the sixth year running. Its new office is scheduled to open by the end of 2012.

“As the Middle East continues to become a technology hub, Entrust and our software authentication platform will advance to continually meet evolving security needs, “Connor said. “Adding a physical presence with our expanded and tailored security solutions allows us to be increasingly aligned with the direction of the regional economy.

Entrust is exhibiting at stand B1-47.

Entrust sets up shop in Dubai

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