60 MinsShow dates: 9-13 October 2011, Dubai World Trade Centre | AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 10am - 5pm

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Heading to the cloud

Strategic ICT Partner Technology Partners

Etisalat has signed a strategic MoU with the Ministry of Environment and Water (MoEW) to provide telecom infrastructure and ICT solutions, signed by Abdelrahim Mohammed Alhammadi, Assistant Undersecretary for supporting services, from MoEW and Abdulla Ebrahim Al Ahmed, Senior VP, Business Solutions from Etisalat. During the signing ceremony, Etisalat and MoEW also launched an interactive iPhone and iPad application for MoEW developed by Etisalat partner Flagship Projects.

Etisalat will provide MOEW with required telecom infrastructure and ICT solutions, as well as technical consultancy to support and develop MOEW strategic projects and cooperate with MOEW for network evaluation, infrastructure development, data centre solutions, application development and holistic ICT solutions.

Mr. Abdelrahim Mohammed Alhammadi, Assistant Undersecretary for supporting services mentioned that the MOU is an important step for the ministry to achieve its strategic vision to ensure that all administrative services are implemented with efficiency, transparency and on time. The MOU also reinforces MOEW’s commitment to employ the latest technology towards the ministry’s efforts to increase its employees’ productivity, facilitate efficient public services, and provide the best facilities and to save time and effort by adopting technically advanced ICT solutions.

Al Ahmed said, “This is also a clear indication of the depth of technology that we can offer today which encompasses not just our traditional telecom services but also complex e-Government implementation and ICT services.”

VENDOR FOCUS Etisalat signs MOU with MoEW

AMD back in race with Intel

WAN optimisation has grown from a way to squeeze more out of corporate bandwidth to an enabler of data centre consolidation and now is helping move those data centres into the cloud.

“Over the last three years, Aptec and its subsidiaries have embarked on a major transformation. The goal was to establish the company as the major provider of IT solutions and services that can add value to an enterprise or business of any size. The solutions span a range of complementary products from world class and specialist manufacturers and software companies along with the necessary training or consulting expertise. Today, the Aptec Group is the leading Value Added Distributor across the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and CIS regions with offices in 11 countries.”Dr Ali Baghdadi, CEO, Aptec Group.

IMC unveils PoE media convertors

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AMD back in race with Intel

Advanced Micro Devices is looking to get back into the race with Intel with the introduction of its eight-core desktop chip and its new Bulldozer architecture.

The chip manufacturer unveiled yesterday its FX family of CPUs , which includes the first eight-core desktop processor - the first chips to be released with AMD’s Bulldozer architecture.

“AMD has historically been about total performance and not thought to be competitive on power efficiency,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “Bulldozer is a ground up redesign aimed to put AMD back in the race for power efficiency and specifically notebook computers.”

This move puts AMD back in the hunt with Intel , a rival that had pulled ahead of AMD in the computer chip

market over the last several years. While Intel innovated and moved ahead, AMD had been continually trailing far behind. According to Mercury Research, AMD’s share of the microprocessor market grew to 19.4% in the second quarter, up from 17.8% in the same quarter last year. Intel’s share was 79.9%. However, AMD is beginning to regain its footing.

“AMD had given the lead for performance to Intel prior to this and seemed to focus on the mainstream market,” added Enderle. “The FX is designed to challenge Intel on the performance lead, as well as showcase relative energy efficiency. AMD has reengaged in full competition with Intel and continues on their strategy of being the more affordable solution. This helps put them back in the game, very affordable, very powerful, and they are marketing it.”

The FX family of chips are geared to act as high-performance parts for gamers and high-end systems. The chips are based on the new Bulldozer architecture, which AMD touts as providing a speed boost of more than

75% of UAE consumers use original ink

50% compared with its predecessors.Dan Olds, an analyst with The

Gabriel Consulting Group, said the power boost and the extra cores offer a lot for high-end computer users. “In a general sense, more cores is better for most users. These chips offer consumers more cores for the dollar than anything on the market today. AMD is offering up to eight-cores running at 3.6 GHz for a retail price of $250, which is quite a value.”

However, Olds notes that while AMD’s new chips get the company back in the mix, they’re “not Sandy Bridge killers” and AMD still has a lot of catching up to do. “While AMD gets to parity with Intel’s Core i5 processors, it’s still bested by the higher-end Intel Core i7 chips in terms of performance. I think PC vendors will take a hard look at these chips for mid-range and lower-end systems where margins are tight, but volumes are lower for the enthusiast market. They’ll need to be priced very competitively for AMD to make any headway in this space, since these new processors don’t give them a significant performance advantage.”

According to Epson Middle East, nearly 75% of consumers in the UAE use only original printing ink cartridges, making the UAE the country with the lowest level of counterfeit ink use in the region. Epson attributes the stringent laws passed by the UAE Government against the sale of counterfeit products as the fundamental reason for the higher adoption of original ink in the country.

Ahmad Qasem, Channel Sales Manager, Epson Middle East, said, “The GCC market in general has a

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IMC Networks has expanded its Power over Ethernet (PoE) media converter product line with the new PoE and PoE+ Giga-MiniMcs, which are displayed at GITEX. Designed using the IEEE 802.3af (15.4W of power) and 802.3at (25.5W of power) PoE standards, the new products support all PoE compatible peripheral devices.

“The growing market demand to power PoE-based devices is more prevalent now than ever, prompting IMC Networks to introduce new and improved PoE and PoE+ media converters. The latest devices require more power sourcing than standard PoE and as a result, we are able to

meet these demands today and in the future with new product introductions,”

states DAVID ZAVESKI, Senior Sales Engineer at IMC Networks.

The IMC PoE and PoE+ Gigabit Ethernet media converters are classified as Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE), providing up to two PSE 10/100/1000Base-T copper ports and one SFP uplink port. These products are ideal for the FTTD market where PoE phones require power sourcing or in building security applications where reach must extend beyond 100 meters. The PoE and PoE+ Giga-MiniMc products provide a low cost, space-saving Gigabit solution and include advanced features such as Power Reset and VLAN tags.

Waseela makes its debut

IMC unveils PoE media convertors

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“Waseela’s strategy since its establishment has been to become a regional hub for advanced engineering competencies in order to bridge and localise the delivery of the latest telecom technologies and services to our region.”

VENDOR FOCUS

Cloud contact centreSilah Gulf (Silah), a multi-award winning contact centre and business process outsourcing (BPO) company, has launched Contact Centre On-Demand for its GCC-based clients. Available for the first time in the Middle East, based on state-of-the-art cloud computing technology this latest Silah solution should transform the way companies provide technology for their contact centres and office workers.

This solution offers substantial savings for companies who wish to use leading-edge contact centre services without investing in the necessary technology and infrastructure, thus significantly reducing capital and operating costs. Silah will provide customized user interfaces, performance monitoring systems, advanced security measures for data storage and improved accessibility as a part of the service. Companies can now enjoy the benefits of a multi-million dollar technology

Waseela for Technology Consultations (Waseela) is exhibiting for the first time at GITEX, showcasing and introducing regional firsts of the latest in telecom products and solutions.

Jordan-based Waseela offers both advanced broadband wireless solutions and advanced managed

excess of $100 billion by 2014 globally. “Cloud computing is the latest

innovation in the IT sector today and by jumping on-board early we hope to be a key innovator in this growing field,”said Joe Tawfik, CEO, Silah. “We hope to differentiate ourselves from our competition as a company that accesses the best technology available to help our clients increase profits.”

Joanne O’Flynn, Technology Manager at Silah, commented on the new technology solution, “Pay-as-you-go technology solutions are becoming mandatory for a company wanting to show high return on investment. We plan on rolling out Call Routing, Workforce Management, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Knowledge Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management and Application Development and Management products in the upcoming months. A basic telephony solution will also be offered for office workers. The underlying core technology for our on-demand solution is Cisco.”

low level of usage of counterfeit inks compared to countries like Egypt, Iran and some other global markets. The UAE market in particular has been exemplary with regard to the use of original ink, which reflects the

government’s strong commitment to eliminate counterfeiting. Nevertheless there is a continuous need to educate end-users and resellers about the hazards of using counterfeit ink, and also about ways to distinguish between

75% of UAE consumers use original ink original and counterfeit ink cartridges.”Epson points out that the risks and

consequences of using counterfeit ink can range from sub-standard and illegible prints; reduced page yield; damage to printer; and invalidation of warranty to leaking cartridges; increased long-term costs; paper

wastage; and environmental pollution.“If the print quality is inconsistent,

if the cartridges are delivered in poor quality packaging, if the number of printouts from the cartridge is very low, or the print cartridge fails, this could mean that the product is not original,” Qasem added.

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Dr Samer Taha, CEO and Founder, Waseela

Joanne O’Flynn, Technology Manager, Silah

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solution for a fraction of their original cost. In the first year alone companies can make up to 90% saving, the company claims.

According to IDC estimates, public cloud products and services market currently stands at around $16 billion and set to grow to USD56 billion by 2014. And AMI Partners estimates that SME cloud spending to be in the

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Home monitoring goes mobile

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laptops.pdf 10/5/2011 12:09:11 PM

The technology continues its main function - making response times faster over WAN links - but now through software that runs on virtual machines it is becoming practical for use in public and private clouds where virtual environments rule. A few years ago, WAN optimisation was locked within hardware appliances, but that is no longer the case.

Virtualised versions of the old hardware appliances make it possible to deploy optimisation within public cloud provider networks, meaning cloud-based applications respond better. It also means data can be sent in less time to cloud storage facilities where it occupies less disk space (and so costs less) and is secure because it is encrypted.

Most of the major WAN optimisation vendors in the market now offer virtual versions of their appliances. A case in point is

Riverbed which offers a virtualised version of its Steelhead appliance. “Virtual Steelhead is an important product in our portfolio and is deployed globally by many customers who wish to implement

Heading to the cloud

DEWA gets Smart

WAN optimisation has grown from a way to squeeze more out of corporate bandwidth to an enabler of data centre consolidation and now is helping move those data centres into the cloud.

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Publisher Dominic De Sousa, COO Nadeem Hood, Managing Director Richard Judd, Sales Director Rajashree R Kumar, Editorial Director Dave Reeder Senior Editors Sathya Mira Ashok, Jeevan Thankappan, Arun Shankar Circulation Manager Rajeesh M, Production Manager James Tharian, Art Director Kamil Roxas, Designers Analou Balbero, Froilan Cosgafa IV, Glenn Roxas, Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy Magma

Web Developers Jerus King Bation, Erik Briones, Jefferson De Joya, Louie Alma, Jay Colina

Diego Arrabal, Regional Director of F5 Networks.

OPINION

Samsung Electronics and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) have established an exclusive partnership which allows customers to utilise and benefit from DEWA services through a tailored application on Samsung Smart TVs .

DEWA is the first company in the region to develop a utility application for Samsung’s Smart TV range, the company said.

Through the newly developed application, customers can check and pay their bills, find out more about the latest DEWA news and

events, find out information and locations of customer service centers, find the location of more than 200 payment centres and request a new connection at a later stage. The service will be available on all Samsung Smart TVs by the end of November.

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, said: “This step will, definitely enable DEWA’s customers to use this TV to pay their electricity and water bills, as well as all the other e-services delivered by DEWA.”

telecom services to operators and international vendors in the Middle East region with a focus on latest 4G technologies.

Among Waseela’s focus at the show is network optimisation. This includes the latest radio optimisation and benchmarking tools from one of

the leading international suppliers of 3G, WiMAX and 4G optimisation tools. The development and integration team at Waseela is also showcasing its latest developments for the Wireless Real-Time Location Services (WRTLS) solution, the first in-house R&D efforts carried out by Waseela.

Waseela makes its debut4 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

Riverbed WAN optimisation technology on a hardware platform of their choosing, rather than using the highly optimised Steelhead appliance hardware platforms. Typically such customers would have highly virtualised environments, space limitations or specialised physical hardware requirements,” says Paul Sherry, Regional Director - Middle East, Riverbed.

F5, another major vendor, has recently announced virtual editions of all of its appliances, except WebAccelerator. “For F5, some the benefits of our virtual editions lie in their ability to extend the F5 platform from proprietary data centres to cloud environments.  Using them in conjunction with our BIG-IP hardware platforms means customers have the ability to scale quickly and support applications as resources are needed,” says Diego

Arrabal, Regional Director of F5 Networks.

Blue Coat Systems says the virtual version of MACH5 enables companies to get the full value of its turnkey hardware appliances in software form running in a virtual VMware environment on an industry-standard server. “Both our virtual appliance and our turnkey hardware appliance provide acceleration for remote

access to email, files and enterprise applications, as well as optimisation for live and on-demand video, one-sided acceleration for applications in the public cloud and acceleration for Web applications and back-up/storage,” says Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA Marketing, Blue Coat.

Software only WAN optimisation seems to be the growing trend, as virtual optimisers are more flexible than the hardware appliances that are limited by the memory and processing power of the hardware. “The virtualisation of services provides many benefits, not the least of which is the ease and flexibility of deployment, and use in private and public cloud computing environments. Virtualisation removes the dependency upon directly associated hardware platforms and provides users with flexible

and scalable options regarding the provision of services,” says Sherry.

Hawthorne adds another perspective: “Running the solution virtualised enables companies to also run other applications or services on the same platform in a branch office or data centre. For example, a company could run our WAN optimisation solution along with Windows Server to provide print serving, authentication and file services. In addition, companies can run specialised applications needed for that particular office or geographic region. Companies can take advantage of the best price/performance using industry-standard servers.”

While most vendors agree that virtual versions of their products are important, the basic functions the products perform to optimise traffic are the vendors’ bread and butter. Silver Peak’s CTO and founder David Hughes divides WAN optimisation techniques into three buckets: network memory, network acceleration and loss. Memory includes de-duplication and compression of traffic, acceleration minimises the effects of latency by keeping WAN pipes full, and loss deals with preventing retransmission of lost packets through forward error correction. Acceleration also includes application-specific optimisation for chatty protocols such as CIFS, Hughes says. But application optimisation isn’t something Silver Peak focuses on.

Riverbed does, though, and boasts a long list of applications and protocols for which it has written specific optimisation code. By understanding an application, the WAN optimisation software can anticipate what it will call for next and pre-fetch, and can proxy responses locally to keep chatty back-and-forth off the WAN wire.

In addition to the focus on cloud, WAN optimisation vendors are keen on optimising traffic from

mobile devices -- mainly laptops -- back to corporate sites and data centers that support WAN optimisation controllers. Individual users can speed up interactions with applications and data without having to visit a corporate site.

Vendors are looking closely at extending this capability to tablets and smart phones, with Circadence introducing a client for Android devices. Other vendors have considered the possibility of such clients but have reservations.

Most agree that phones and tablets have the resources to support WAN optimisation, but are less certain that businesses want it - and if they do, what operating system they would want it for.

“The market feasibility needs to be resolved,” Hughes says. “It’s not clear there is a sufficient critical mass of critical applications on smart phones and tablets.” If an

optimisation client were written for smart phones and tablets, it’s unclear whether it would have all the features of an appliance or the current client for laptops, he says. “That’s a good question that’s yet to be resolved.”

He suggests that WAN optimisation for mobile phones and other handhelds be left to the makers of the devices. “In that ecosystem there’s not a lot of room for extra innovation to be layered on top of them. It’s not an attractive market.”

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While most vendors agree that virtual versions of their products are important, the basic functions the products perform to optimise traffic are the vendors’ bread and butter.

Software only WAN optimisation seems to be the growing trend, as virtual optimisers are more flexible than the hardware appliances that are limited by the memory and processing power of the hardware.

Paul Sherry, Regional Director - Middle East, Riverbed.

Nigel Hawthorn, VP of EMEA Marketing, Blue Coat.