EMC sees “amazing” response to cloud, big data

60 MinsShow dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre | AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -7pm

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Whilst some may believe the adoption figures of cloud remain low in the Middle East, EMC says it has seen an “amazing” response to its related solutions.

“The response to our big data and cloud solutions has in general been amazing over the last couple of months. In the last few months I was pleasantly surprised that so many of our customers have bought in to our strategy and have started speaking to us about building a cloud and big data strategy,” said Mohammed Amin, Senior VP and Regional Manager for Turkey, Emerging Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe (excluding Russia).

EMC is one of the main pioneers of cloud and credits itself as properly introducing it to the Middle East region a few years ago.

“Cloud has been around for 10 or 12 years, but nobody started talking about it until around three years ago when EMC started talking about it and the reason for that is because before that the security industry was not mature enough,” Amin said.

“Right now I would say the security industry has matured and most of the hacking that happens nowadays is because of human error, not the technology itself. So there is a fair amount of trust in the cloud right now, but you do still find customers with reservations. Also, many companies think a higher percentage of their data is sensitive than it actually is. Studies have found that normally no more than 10 or 15% of enterprise data is sensitive,” he added.

Amin said cloud is a necessary

technology because of the information explosion and the inability for traditional storage devices to hold the amount of data as it grows.

“Information is exploding and in the next eight years we’re going to see information grow by 65 zetabytes, the IT profession is going to grow 1.5 times and the whole disks industry to store this information will grow four times. So we need a different way of doing business and that’s why we’re helping our customers to form a big data and cloud strategy,” he said.

Last year GITEX for EMC was all about introducing the region to the topic and gaining trust in the technology.

“This year is much better because we are seeing more trust in the cloud. In the next five or so years IT will become a utility where you pay as you use - that is the whole idea of the cloud - and the customer has started to understand that this year. That

Mohammed Amin, Senior VP and Regional Manager for Turkey, Emerging Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe

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EMC sees “amazing” response to cloud, big data

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Etisalat rolls out patient management solutionEtisalat ICT Solutions, in partnership with Attinad Software, one of Etisalat’s mobility partners, has developed a tablet and smartphone based patient management solution for Friends of Cancer Patients Association (FOCP).

The new Mobile Health Patient management solution has been developed in line with Etisalat’s strategy to leverage on the advancements of mobile technology to improve the quality of healthcare through real time, collaborative clinical information sharing.

The Patient Record Management Solution including tablets, Applications and connectivity will enables easy patient registration, examination and record management. The solution will also help FOCP to conduct dynamic surveys using the application, then analyse the survey response through

graphical dash boards. Commenting on the m-health app,

Abdelaziz Taryam, General Manager of Etisalat - Northern Emirates said, “Mobile technology can promote quality healthcare by providing relevant information and timely advice. At Etisalat, we believe that it is critical for telecom leaders to harness the benefits that mobile technology can bring to healthcare, in both sociological and economic terms. Mobile Patient Records Management is one such application designed to

keep the medical industry at their optimum productivity.”

He added, “We are excited to introduce this solution for the Friends of Cancer Patients Association helping them manage patient records more effectively through digitized data collection, analytics and report generation.”

The solution runs on Samsung Tab II handled by FOCP staff. It consists of intuitive digital and simple forms for patient registration and examination, thereby eliminating stationary costs. FOCP administration can create new users and groups, allowing for easy search of a patient by name or by a unique ID created as part of registration. They can export and mail the past medical data to different persons or groups for easy transfer. Patients can also use the same console to log in to see their own history.

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is the major difference. Even if people don’t accept the cloud they understand that they must still be looking into it, but this year we have seen a much higher acceptance,” he said.

He added that he is very pleased with EMC’s role in GITEX this year and the response it has seen.

“If you do all the right work before GITEX in getting the right message across, then it will be a great event for you because the customer can actually touch what they’ve been hearing about over the last however many months. This year I think GITEX is a big as ever – there are even more people and the quality of activities are better so I’m very pleased with our presence in GITEX this year.”

GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 HIGHLIGHTS

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Escalation of cyber warfare is a call for actionEugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, named international cooperation and advanced technology as the key requirements to survive the age of cyber-warfare. In his keynote speech at the ITU Telecom World 2012 conference, being held alongside GITEX Technology Week in Dubai from the 14th until the 18th of October 2012, Kaspersky highlighted the dangers of the cyber-arms race and showcased Kaspersky Lab’s approach to protecting vulnerable industrial systems.

“In the long run, cyber-warfare is where all parties lose: attackers, victims and even uninvolved observers. Unlike traditional weapons, tools used in cyber-warfare are very easy to clone and reprogram by adversaries. The most important move to survive in this environment is the development and deployment of a new, advanced security paradigm for the most critical infrastructure.”

in the course of his presentation, Kaspersky highlighted key facts such as the fact that traditional malware has already had notable side effects on critical infrastructure and pointed out that events like the 2003 blackout in U.S. and Canada were results of both a software failure and an inability to monitor the real state of energy systems.

Kaspersky added that the

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ongoing escalation of the cyber-arms race increases this problem with sophisticated threats such as Stuxnet, Duqu, Gauss and Flame as well as the targeted miniFlame tool being discovered over the last two years.

In his keynote address, Kaspersky described the essential measures to protect industrial control systems. A new, secure unit to obtain trusted workflow information is the first step towards an efficient protection against cyber-warfare. In response to

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab

such challenges, Kaspersky Lab is working on a Secure Operating System, which will serve as the trusted node for Industrial Control Systems.

“We can’t let cyber-warfare stall human progress, as it threatens not only governments and businesses, but regular people as well,” commented Eugene Kaspersky after the event. “Our first priority is to make sure that cyber threats will not affect critical infrastructure. This goal has to be understood and embraced by all involved parties, on an international level.”

StorIT partners up with EmulexStorIT has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Emulex during this year’s edition of the GITEX Technology Week 2012. The new partnership is expected to address the increasing demand for high performance kits in virtualisation installations.

Under the terms of the agreement, StorIT will distribute Emulex solutions across the Middle East region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. StorIT’s established channel base combined with their strategic initiatives can help Emulex in its move to expand its reach while at the same time reinforce its presence in the region. With the newly signed partnership, Emulex now joins StorIT’s leading portfolio of vendors, which includes EMC, Quantum, Mellanox, Moonwalk and QLogic.

“We are very excited with the potential opportunities that this new partnership presents for both StorIT and Emulex,” said Bobby Joseph, CEO, StorIT. “This new partnership proves to be both timely and strategic as the Middle East has expressed a demand for experts that can assess and meet the growing demand for server, networks and storage device solutions.”

Equipped for a digital future

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Dubai is no stranger to having to proactively adjust its approach to expanding technologies. With the integration of ICT in schools on the rise worldwide, Dubai has acted by equipping institutions with the tools needed to reach international standards.

Earlier in the year, HH Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice-president and Prime Minister of UAE and ruler of Dubai, launched a new smart learning initiative that aims to transform classrooms as well as integrate teachers, students, parents and administrators into a single e-platform. The Dh1 billion ‘Mohammad Bin Rashid Smart Learning Initiative’ is part of the UAE Vision 2021 and will be introduced in four stages over five years.

Last year saw the debut of BETT Middle East, the regional edition of the world’s leading education sector exhibition and conference, which was endorsed by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC). Present at the event were over 100 exhibitors whose innovative e-learning solutions promise to drive the evolution of the smart school.

“Equipped with vast ICT facilities, smart schools create more innovative and creative teaching lessons towards achieving the technology-literate and knowledge-based society,” says Sufian Dweik, regional manager, MENA Brocade Communications.

“And with the proliferation of modern smart devices, the education sector is ripe for change. The old ‘one size fits all’ classroom paradigm of a teacher lecturing to a classroom full of students cannot hope to compete with the ways that today’s digital natives learn on their own. Schools at all levels are racing to capture the interest and imagination of students by bringing the innovations of e-learning technologies and applications into the classroom and the curriculum.”

The educational technology revolution is providing a three

pronged answer to this question. The first is making sure that students have access to the wealth of information available on demand via the internet. The second is challenging them with a wide array of innovative new e-learning applications. Last, but definitely not least, is reaching them through the high-speed communications networks that connect students both in and out of the classroom.

Delivery of bandwidth-intensive e-learning applications such as streaming video and multimedia is a challenge for virtually every school. Multiple single-purpose technologies are cost-prohibitive. A technology that can be leveraged for multiple uses costs less and provides agility to respond to growing and emerging needs. The answer lies in the deployment of a high-performance campus network.

Although most schools have existing wired systems that still provide value, as e-learning needs grow to include new applications, leveraging one IP network to provide connectivity for multiple uses will prove more cost-effective than adding additional wired networks. More and more, institutions are turning to outdoor wireless broadband networks and indoor wireless LANs as more cost-effective alternatives to wired expansion as the

education technology revolution takes hold. These wireless environments can be used simultaneously for data and file transfer, automated testing, video learning, video security, voice calls, and inventory management.

Dweik adds, “wireless solutions are also faster and easier to deploy, and simpler to manage, than wired solutions; and only wireless technology enables the mobile access that is crucial for the delivery of anywhere, anytime learning on- or off-campus. With these solutions, each classroom is enriched with data, video, and voice connectivity, while the same network provides connectivity to technical and support staff so that students’ activities are coordinated, and supplies and facilities are fully prepared”.

Next generation, high performance campus networks help schools extend the school day by enabling students to safely and securely access the schools’ learning tools and other education-appropriate materials available on the Internet. This enables them to work collaboratively with peers and to interact with faculty from anywhere on campus. In many cases, they can also access the network from home and from within the community.

Schools can also leverage their campus networks to help increase operations efficiency. Universities

can use their networks to deliver powerful security solutions, including remote video surveillance. Wireless networks that connect the campus both indoors and outdoors are ideal solutions for increased security for people and things. High-speed network infrastructures can be exceptionally valuable by integrating existing and new video, access control, and asset management solutions into a more proactive, intelligent campus-wide security system managed at a centralised command center. Such a security system would be easy to use, making monitoring simpler and more effective through built-in intelligence and automatic alerting mechanisms. The end result would be enhanced situational awareness and a faster, more effective response.

The modern campus network offers the benefit of better management. It enables administrators to manage their entire access switching layer as if it were a single device, from initial deployment to ongoing configuration, software upgrades and monitoring. Single-point management in effect dramatically reduces the cost and time required to manage the campus network lifecycle. It also improves compliance by ensuring consistent policy among all access layer ports, and increases network availability by reducing human error, which is the number one cause of network downtime.

The advantage of the modern campus network lies in its ability to deliver maximum performance and uptime while paving the way for emerging applications such as BYOD, rich video, virtual desktop environments and unified communications for increased collaboration. This technology also allows administrators to monitor and manage a single network from a single command center, helping to increase campus safety and security, network availability, and performance consistency.

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