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Cont

ents

R. NarayanManaging Editor

Publisher: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sales Director: Alishan ZaidiSr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Business Development Manager: Mallika RegoSales Manager : Saad ZaidiSales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

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It is once again a good time to scan the global landscape and dig up information on which are some of the new brands emerging in some of the far lying regions that don’t as yet have a presence in the Middle East. In other words, it is good time to bring in new vendors into the marketplace that will open up the markets a bit more and also make possible higher earning of margins. Some distributors are indeed doing that.

Just when you thought that consolidation through buyouts of smaller companies by the large Technology powerhouses is the end game in the industry, there are more companies, specializing in niche and new areas around cloud computing, virtualization etc continuing to appear on the horizon. And when they are not competing with the areas that established brands tackle but rather address and plug the gaps that are left in a distributor’s portfolio, they are able to ally with some established distributors and in many instances with several upcoming value add distributors.

In an earlier write-up, I had mentioned that it would get tougher for newer VADs to make an impact as the differentiation in the VAD domain would be more in terms of the level of services offered that obviously takes time to fine tune. Newer VADs would need to travel along that learning curve, which would place them at a disadvantage. Plus, they wouldn’t have the muscle of the backbone infrastructure that established distributors have.

However, if some of the upcoming VADs are focusing on domains that aren’t still catered to and if they indeed make careful selections of solutions and brands that they bring to market, they will still have a relevant role to play. That is so because there is good room for solutions that are cost effective and effective across verticals.

Editorial

Making the market more competitive

Wave Tech Computers LLCP.O. Box: 3421, Sharjah, Toll Free [email protected], www.wavetechgroup.com

Cover Story

Pg 16 - The Datacentre evolution

News in Detail

Pg 10 - Outdated backup and recovery infrastructure still a hassle for Majority of BusinessesPg 12 - Kasperksy focuses on security for Virtualisation Point2point

Pg 24 - On the growth trajectory The Integrator speaks with Jai Mulani, Director – Sales & Solutions at IBT and he discusses some of the key domains of focus for the company

Techknow

Pg 14 - The appliance gambit Amer Chebaro, Sales Manager - Datacenter Appliances (Emerging Markets) at Symantec discusses the company’s focus

on Appliances in the following interview.

Pg 22 - Quality power Rahul Sikka, Sales Director, Power Quality Middle East at Eaton speaks to the Integrator about the trends in the

Datacentre business

Pg 26- A connectivity expert Hossam Bebawy, Regional Sales Manager at EnGenius speaks about the company’s

focus in the region

Insight

Pg 28 - Virtualization in the Midde East Sufian Dweik – Regional Manager, MENA, Brocade Communications discusses how the network infrastructure needs to be able to support the demands of virtualisation

Pg 30 - A need for Unified Storage Martyn Molnar, Managing Director - Middle East and Pakistan at NetApp discusses perspectives on the explosive growth of Big Data

Cont

ents

Wave Tech Computers LLCP.O. Box: 3421, Sharjah, Toll Free [email protected], www.wavetechgroup.com

The Integrator | June 20126

News Bytes

Dell and Red Hat have announced they have signed an agreement to produce Dell and Red Hat hardware/software solutions for IT manufacturers worldwide. Enabling fast time-to-market and considerable cost reductions, Dell OEM Solutions group, as part of its recently announced Dell OEM Partner Program, will offer flexible, integrated systems based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleware Solutions. Now manufacturers can customize Dell Precision and PowerEdge platforms and utilize the performance and reliability of Red Hat's offerings with approved terms and conditions.

"This newly announced extension of our successful ten-year collaboration means that Dell and Red Hat today can serve the most demanding builders of technology solutions,” said Dion Cornett, vice president, Strategic Alliances at Red Hat. “Appliance and application vendors leveraging the trusted brands and proven solutions of Dell and Red Hat, integrated into a cohesive and readily consumable offering, will enjoy compelling value."

HP is collaborating with F5, a leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), to offer solutions that converge application and network orchestration. The new solutions provide single-pane-of-glass management through HP Intelligent Management Center and offer clients the ability to meet the speed and agility requirements of the cloud era.

The new solutions are based on the integration of HP Virtual Application Networks technology, which virtualizes networks and automates configuration, and F5 ADN

technology, which does the same for application configuration.

“IT needs to move at the speed of the organization but legacy application, network and user configuration practices are barriers to achieving this necessary agility,” said Alaa Al Shimy, ESSN Director, HP Middle East. “Through HP Virtual Application Networks and our collaboration with F5, clients will be able to virtualize and automate the entire configuration process—from application to network to user—based on policy-driven management, enabling them to deploy applications to users in minutes."

Kaspersky Lab has successfully concluded its first IT Government Security Summit, under the support of the Central Agency of Information Technology (CAIT) of Kuwait. The event was held at the CAIT premises, and was attended by prominent representatives of the majority of the Kuwaiti governmental bodies. Kaspersky Lab executive committee attended the event, accompanied by a senior delegation of analysts and senior executives.

Tarek Kuzbari, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Middle East and Turkey said commenting on this event, “IT is indeed an honor for us to share our international and reliable security expertise and knowledge. With 864% growth in five years, Kaspersky Lab was recognized as one of the 500 fastest growing technology companies from 24 EMEA countries based on five-year average percentage revenue growth. This milestone is a testimony of its success, showing the strength of Kaspersky Lab’s products and solutions, and positioning it as a trust-worthy partner across governments and business in the Middle East region.”

Dell and Red Hat Collaborate for Embedded Solutions

HP and F5 Networks deliver automated, policy-based configuration

Kaspersky holds IT Government Security Summit in Kuwait

June 2012 | The Integrator 7

Virtual Bridges. and Gulf Business Machines (GBM) announced a partnership to deliver Virtual Bridges VERDE virtual desktop management and provisioning capabilities to organizations throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC, excepting Saudi Arabia) and Pakistan. Featuring online, offline and branch Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), VERDE is proven to help organizations reduce the cost and complexity of managing desktops, while minimizing security concerns and business risk.

GBM will remarket, distribute, resell and support Virtual Bridges products, including VERDE, the industry’s first VDI Gen2 solution. Designed for organizations that want to escape the constraints of physical computing, VERDE simplifies desktop management, improves security and increases business agility.

“As the leading VDI Gen2 solution, VERDE will help our customers reduce desktop total cost of ownership while increasing organizational agility, productivity and responsiveness,” said Cesare Cardone, CEO, GBM. “We are excited to partner with Virtual Bridges to bring this value to organizations in our region.”

EMC announced it has captured the #1 revenue market share position in Gartner’s recent report: “Market Share: Network Attached Storage/Unified Storage Market, Worldwide, 2011.” According to Gartner’s report, EMC revenue attributable to NAS/unified storage nearly doubled year-over-year to $2.8B, making it the fastest-growing NAS/unified storage vendor.

Overall, Gartner reports worldwide vendor revenues for the NAS /unified storage market increased 32.5% in 2011 compared with 2010, reaching $6.8 billion. The estimated pure NAS market grew 21.5% to $4.5 billion. The report also cites block storage vendors adding NAS capabilities to their SAN storage arrays with a unified management interface as a key growth driver for this market.

Additionally, the report discusses the hard-disk drive (HDD) shortage due to flooding in Thailand in October 2011. The report points to the significant impact on the low-end NAS market, noting that EMC is the only top-tier storage system vendor in the market. Other vendors were adversely affected due to their disk drive sales volumes being too low to form a strategic relationship with HDD suppliers, and low-end drives being more severely impacted by the flood than midrange or high-end drives.

HP’s Networking Unit gets a new Director

Virtual Bridges and GBM partner to deliver Virtual Desktop Solutions

Gartner names EMC leader in NAS / Unified Storage Revenue Market Share for 2011

HP Middle East has appointed Ammar Halabi as its new Middle East Director for its Networking Business Unit.

Halabi joins with extensive experience in cloud computing and data centres, much of which was garnered from his time with Cisco, where prior to joining HP he was Regional Manager for Data Centre, Virtualization and Cloud. Halabi replaces Samer Zein who has been promoted to Director of Software support, services and Education Business Unit in MEMA (Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa).

“We welcome Ammar to his new position, and believe his expertise and passion for the industry will suit our growing networking business,” said Alaa Al Shimy, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Director, HP Middle East. “Ammar’s long experience in the sector, , will enable HP to develop its business in the networking sector across the region.”


Jabra has appointed Westcon Middle East Ltd. as a distributor for the Middle East, Pakistan and North Africa regions. Under the agreement, Westcon Middle East Ltd. will distribute the entire suite of Jabra UC-optimized headsets through its strong reseller base to address rising enterprise market demand for Unified Communications (UC) solutions that include voice communications and collaboration.

“Jabra products are a natural extension to the group’s range of solutions and services for the high-growth markets of MENA region” said Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director, Westcon Middle East Group. “Jabra wireless headsets are the vital business tools that simplify connectivity and deliver productivity benefits to the end-users. From an organizational perspective, Jabra products ensure rapid return on the customers' UC investment.”

Westcon ME and Jabra sign partnership

Brocade focuses on Software-Defined Networks

Axis Communications strengthens its market leader position in network video and takes the number one position in the category of surveillance cameras. This is confirmed in the latest IMS Research report.

“The report confirms our own estimates of gained market shares last year, where we presented a growth of 33 percent,” says Ray Mauritsson, President & CEO, Axis Communications. “We further strengthened our position by continuing our strategy, which is based on the three cornerstones; launch of

innovative network video products, a well-developed partner network and global expansion.”

Axis says it continues to be ranked number one and is the recognized market leader in the category of network cameras. Even in the surveillance cameras category, including analog as well as network cameras, Axis has taken a global number one position, compared to number three in the previous IMS report. According to IMS Research, by 2016 network camera sales are forecast to account for approx. 60% of total worldwide surveillance camera sales, compared to approx. 40 percent in 2011.

Brocade has outlined its strategy for software-defined networking (SDN), a technology gaining broad support across network operators and enterprises on a global basis. In support of its SDN strategy, Brocade also announced that it has integrated hardware based OpenFlow support in the Brocade MLX Series of routers and related Brocade NetIron platforms, enabling customers to deploy SDN at wire-speed 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) performance.

OpenFlow is a protocol standardized by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and a key component of SDN. OpenFlow enables programmatic control of network infrastructures and rapid network service development and deployment. The strategy Brocade introduced today will guide the company’s SDN investments, marketing and partner relationships to deliver highly flexible, end-to-end networking solutions. The focus of these solutions will be on network virtualization, automation and simplification in large-scale data centers etc.

Axis Communications strengthens lead

News Bytes


News In-Detail

EMC Corporation announced results of ‘The Disaster Recovery Survey 2012: Middle East, Turkey and Morocco’, which found that 82% of companies surveyed in the region are not very confident that they can fully recover systems or data in the event of a disaster, and that 64% of all organizations lost data or suffered systems downtime in the last 12 months. Additionally, 37% of organizations claim they need at least one day or more to become fully operational again, and on average organizations suffered from two days of downtime. These findings highlight the need for backup transformation from antiquated technologies that are not suited for today’s data growth or availability expectations.Commissioned by EMC and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne, ‘The Disaster Recovery Survey 2012: Middle East, Turkey and Morocco’ looks at the maturity of backup and disaster recovery strategies in the region.

Said Akar, District Manager for South Gulf, EMC said, “Backup and recovery is one of the most important aspects of a business’ operations, yet it is all too often overlooked. EMC’s research is intended to highlight the consequences poor backup and

recovery planning can have on businesses in the Middle East, Turkey and Morocco. It is clear from these results that businesses need to be just as aware of the disruption that can be caused by everyday failures as well as by malicious activities and larger scale disasters.

Regardless of the causes of IT disruption, businesses need to be certain they have the right systems in place to react quickly and ensure their operations are not affected for long.”

The research shows that the main causes of data loss and systems downtime are the failure of internal IT systems and disruptions caused by malicious activity. The three most common causes of data loss and downtime are:1. Hardware failure: 55% 2. Software failure: 40% 3. Security breach: 36%

This compares to just 13% of respondents citing natural disasters as a cause of systems downtime or data loss. 29% of organizations increased their spending in backup and recovery after a disruption. On average, the research found that businesses across the region are spending on average 7.48% of their IT budgets on backup and recovery.The study identified that there are measureable business impacts from

systems downtime, with the top three cited as: 1. Loss of employee productivity: 43%2. Loss of customer confidence/ loyalty: 37%3. Loss of revenue: 28%

The research has also highlighted that businesses are not protecting valuable customer data, with only 23% having a disaster recovery plan in place for CRM applications. Businesses in the Middle East, Turkey and Morocco are also failing to take advantage of insurance premium benefits that a comprehensive disaster recovery plan can engender.

Outdated backup and recovery infrastructure still a hassle for Majority of Businesses

Said AkarDistrict Manager, South Gulf

EMC


News In-Detail

Virtualization has become a worldwide trend. According to a survey by Forrester Research , Inc., 85% of companies in Europe and North America have already implemented or are about to implement server virtualization. Research from Gartner also confirms virtualization technologies are spreading fast: by the end of 2012 about 50% of the load on x86 servers will be virtualized.

GCC companies are keeping up with their international peers, according to the results of a survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab in the run-up to the launch of its new corporate security solution for virtual environments. The survey revealed that 35% of companies in GCC polled are already using virtual servers and 26% intend to start using them within a year.

Companies in GCC mostly apply virtualization technologies to their databases, email and financial management applications.According to the survey, 71% of

the services which have been virtualized are business-critical.“Virtualization technologies are now at the peak of their development and have already reached sufficient maturity to allow companies to virtualize their most important business applications & servers, storing and processing their confidential data on virtual machines. This calls for high standards in both the performance and security of the virtual infrastructure. Traditional security

technologies are not always able to provide such a balance so we advise companies to pay attention to specific solutions specially designed for virtual environments,” said Vladimir Udalov, Senior Corporate Product Marketing Manager at Kaspersky Lab.

Despite the rapid growth of virtualization, 21% of the GCC IT specialists surveyed said that they had only basic knowledge in this area, sufficient to carry out daily duties but little more. However, the survey shows that GCC countries have been using virtualization technologies for just as long as the seemingly more experienced US and European markets: the average period here is almost two years, which matches global figures.

But if the advantages of Virtualisation are clear, the risks are less well known: virtual machines are still thought to be safer than physical ones. In reality, almost the opposite applies with practically all known cyberthreats existing in

virtual environments. According to Gartner , this complacency could mean that in 2012 60% of virtual servers will be less well protected than their physical predecessors. At the same time the amount of malware keeps growing at a startling speed: Kaspersky Lab detects up to 70,000 new threats every day and every 14th file downloaded from the Internet turns out to be infected.

Kaspersky Lab recently also

announced the launch of a special online project devoted to debunking notions and shattering myths about the security of virtual environments. The resource http://me.kaspersky.com/en/beready? provides access to latest information about what really threatens your virtual environment and how to stay secure.

The http://me.kaspersky.com/en/beready? portal is designed to help companies gain a better understanding of IT security problems in virtual environments and how they can protect against them. It ties in with the launch of Kaspersky Security for Virtualization, a brand new solution from Kaspersky Lab that will be released in April 2012. The portal will be updated over the coming months, giving users the chance to view the latest analytical materials, research articles and reports dedicated to protection for virtual environments.

Kasperksy focuses on security concerns of Virtualisation


TechKnow | Symantec

Discuss your appliance strategy vis-à-vis your software focusSymantec is historically a software company and so we will remain. But responding to our customers’ need for an easier and faster ways to support our technology, we bundled our software into an appliance form factor. We still sell software in the traditional manner, but we gave our customers another option of hardware form factor where a customer can take an appliance, roll it into a date centre and in 30 minutes start doing their first back-up. In the past, customers had to buy the appliance, buy the server and operating system from different companies, do the integration and then wait until everything was tuned. Now with everything pre-bundled and pre-installed, the time to operational deployment is very short.

The back-up appliance business began two years ago and we began reselling them 18 months ago. Since then, we have gone through several feature enhancements and added new features and functionalities. All the appliances have our ‘magic sauce’ included in the appliances, a combination of back-up and some storage modules

built into the box.

Do you see appliances as a growing trend when it comes to delivering software solutions to certain purposes and vertical segments?This is part of an emerging trend where software companies are either on their own or collaborating

with hardware manufacturers to come up with appliances or that are geared towards functionalities required within the date centre. It is part of the consolidation strategy with data protection and backup hardware and software components being united in appliance form factors.Are these appliances primarily

The appliance gambitSymantec’s appliance strategy began in 2010 with the release of the NetBackup 5000 series of deduplication appliances, and Symantec has continued to deliver new appliances across its data protection, storage management and security portfolio. Amer Chebaro, Sales Manager - Datacenter Appliances (Emerging Markets) at Symantec discusses the company’s focus on Appliances in the following interview.

Amer ChebaroSales Manager, Datacenter Appliances

Symantec


with hybrid operating systems like Unix, Linux and Windows within the firm.

What is the ROI for customers? How are upgrades taken care of?The appliance enable users to upgrade to advanced features seamlessly without further installation of hardware. A customer who bought an appliance two years ago is still benefitting from the upgrades because the entire hardware stack is from Symantec where we provide them with the hardware image which upgrades and updates as they are eligible for upgrades which they just install so he gets the benefits of the latest appliance just released in the market.

What are the back-up options in your appliances for virtual IT infrastructure?In the Middle East, virtualization is gaining ground and Symantec enables easy back up of virtual machines. We have been able to work with VMware and its Hyper V to offer virtualization capabilities straight out of the box. The customers are able to backup straight from virtual machines without going through proxy

systems. With support for VMware ESX and vSphere and Hyper-V, the Backup Exec 2012 V-Ray Edition is a backup and recovery solution to protect virtualized environments and. It features support for Windows and Linux virtual machines, included advanced integrated deduplication, and virtualized application protection. Like Backup Exec 2012, NetBackup 7.5 also includes Symantec's new V-Ray feature.

What are the drivers in the appliances strategy for your channel?We recently announce a new channel program. We have been reselling appliances for the past 18 months as part of data protection

partner specialization. But now we have seen the big business that appliances bring to our company in the MENA region, incidentally, one of the first markets we introduced the appliances. This new program will see us reward partners are focused on appliances by offering them rebates, preferential pricing and teaming with these partners to help them protect their margins on certain opportunities so they get a bigger return on their investments.

meant for the SMB or are they enterprise ready too?The primary base models are more suitable for SMBs. The appliance comes in different sizes from a small size capability which caters for customers with small amounts of date but still offers enterprise-grade functionalities of backup. The bigger companies can use up the bigger software capabilities to store large amounts of data.

The advantage with this is that the customer can start small and can then scale up to bigger capacity and higher throughput capacity and then can cater to requirements of big enterprises. It’s a pay as you grow kind of architecture.

You start with a basis ¬2U unit and then you can grow as you need and you can protect upto a petabyte of data as you grow. All this is done using a single back-up interface, a single point of support, a single point of management and with reduced overheads in IT administration.

Are there any more appliances coming up in other areas?We plan to launch a Back-up Exec appliance targeting SMBs. For the very small business, we are coming up with the Back up Exec appliance which offers a full back-up infrastructure in a box for small enterprises with just a few terrabytes of data. These small companies will primarily use Window machines. For larger sized customers, we offer Net backup which is primarily an enterprise business solution for customers

The advantage with this is that the customer can start small and can then scale up to bigger

capacity and higher throughput capacity and then can cater to requirements of big enterprises. It’s a

pay as you grow kind of architecture.


Cover Feature | Datacentre

In the past several years, the typical data centre has evolved with a focus on optimized designs that enable consolidation and efficiency in dealing with workload provisioning and better power savings. The availability of a variety of smart software management tools and next generation hardware appliances in almost all categories relevant to the Datacentre has meant the rapid modernization and consolidation of the datacenter.

“The data center is arguably the most active and critical segment of today's IT environment in terms of innovation, strategy, and investment. In particular, it is integral to key initiatives such as the migration of legacy IT infrastructures and architectures to a more flexible, agile cloud model

in its various forms—including public, private, and hybrid clouds. One of the key factors driving organizations to migrate to these new, more agile IT architectures is the need to better address the complexities associated with the widespread and accelerating adoption of server virtualization,” says Samer Ismair, MENA-Systems Engineer at Brocade.

With the transactional volumes of data growing, the role of the datacenter continues to grow. According to Olivier Delepine, VP UAE and Gulf countries, Schneider Electric-IT Business Unit, more and more data centers are being built in regions that offer the most profitability, which are increasingly the developing markets.

TheDatacentre evolution

TheDatacentre evolutionConsolidation is the key as more efficient datacenters are emerging in the virtualization era.

Samer IsmairSystem Engineer MENA

Brocade


Olivier says, “The role of the data center is continually increasing and developing in line with the booming demand for cost-effective solutions, speed and simplicity, complexity of greater heterogeneity and density, IT and facilities convergence, standardization, flexibility, modularity, and smart grid demand response. These fundamentals are fueling the growth in cloud-computing, co-location and outsourcing, consolidation, density and virtualization.”

There are major trends today influencing the Data Centre Strategy. It might be one or more of several aspects including power usage, cloud computing options consolidation, location etc.

Carlos Tannous, who heads Emitac Distribution’s Value Add Division says, “Under the umbrella of Green technologies and environmental awareness, Power Usage has emerged as the key element in designing efficient Data Centre. Blade servers trend helps to reduce the Footprint as well as cabling, Power, cooling and processor costs and the number of External Switches and components required. Many are also attracted by Cloud concepts to empower their IT strategies to consolidate, streamline and simplify.”

Further, according to him, implementing a converged voice-and-data network or simplifying connectivity within the data center as well as reducing the number of applications in use and reducing the number of Data Centre locations are other considerations. The upfront cost of the initiative itself is also a prime consideration. Besides, datacenters need to be

future ready.

Carlos adds, “The consolidation of multiple workloads onto fewer physical servers through the use of server virtualization software can change the dynamics of traffic flow within the data center network. Companies investing in data centre have to design a cabling and switching architecture that supports express change and accommodate transitions to 100 Gigabit Ethernet in the future. “

Advancements in virtualization have meant consolidation of the physical data center resources which translates to fewer servers and better resource utilization as well as larger and fewer data centers. “According to our research, regionally we recognize that companies are seeking to reduce costs and operating complexities by consolidating their data centers into fewer, larger facilities, resulting in increased data center size. This means that companies are consolidating within large data centers, therefore eliminating excess server capacity, replacing older servers with fewer higher-power servers and so on,” says Oliver.

While physically the numbers of servers may have reduced, the number of virtual server population

has gone up considerably. In the bargain, the capacity of the datacenter has multiplied considerably.

“The major trend that optimizes real estate is of course virtualization. The same 42U rack that used to house 32 servers + network, KVM and Serial switches today hosts hundreds of virtual servers with almost the same number of peripheral devices. Modern techniques of cable management have dramatically lowered their foot

According to our research, regionally we recognize that companies are seeking to reduce costs and

operating complexities by consolidating their data centers into fewer, larger facilities, resulting in

increased data center size.

Carlos TannousHead, Value Add Business, Emitac Distribution


print – inside the rack and along the isles – to the extent that each of the thousands of interconnected points is effectively being maintained and managed,” says Vipin Sharma, Vice President - EEMEA and India Sales

Server, storage, and network virtualization will be at the core of most datacenter buildouts during this era. Samer Ismair, MENA-Systems Engineer at Brocade says, “Virtualization combined with IT’s hopes for cloud computing will significantly influence the way organizations deploy and manage datacenter networks in today’s fast-paced, information-centric environment. Brocade believes that fabric-based network infrastructure

called Ethernet fabric will dominate the discussion for the foreseeable future because it is an advance that enables organizations to build agile, business-ready datacenters and overcome obstacles such as infrastructure complexity.”

Brocade claims to have a headstart in virtualized datacenter business with its string focus on Ethernet fabric. It has a Technology called Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) which is embedded into its switches for enabling next-generation virtual data center and private cloud computing initiatives.

Regional trendsEmitac’s Carlos argues that while the footprint of high density rack servers deployed in a data centre have considerably reduced with the existing technologies like consolidation and virtualization, the consolidation in the region isn’t happening at the desired pace.He elaborates, “Even though the

concept of consolidation is very clear from TCO perspective, but still we are seeing regional companies investing more and more in data centers without looking at the consolidation option. On the other hand, we have seen global entities that started consolidating and reducing the footprint of their data centers and keeping an option for disaster recovery and failover.”

According to Dell’s Basil, the role of the data center is starting to change in the Middle East as two of the main challenges faced in this region are the available power and telecommunications infrastructure and the weather. Many organizations in the Middle East are dealing with data center facilities that are running out of space, power, cooling or perhaps a combination of all three and, most importantly, they want to ensure that they can keep costs down while not compromising on performance. The region has also just undergone a phase of mergers and acquisitions which has left many organizations with too many servers, computer rooms and small data centers in various locations which must be consolidated.

Basil says, “Through data centre consolidation and virtualisation, organizations can save on cost, space, energy and staff without compromising on performance.

Dell sees the data center as the focal point and its network must be transformed into a streamlined, efficient, and policy-driven network that is responsive to changing applications and end-user demands.”

As the significance of the datacenter rises by the day, organisations have high expectations from data center

"Brocade believes that fabric-based network infrastructure called Ethernet fabric will dominate the discussion for the foreseeable future because

it is an advance that enables organizations to build agile, business-ready datacenters...”

Olivier DelepineVP, UAE &

Electric IT Business Unit



managers who have to include rapidly expanding volumes of data and a growing number of mission-critical applications, managing highly complex and wildly heterogeneous environments, meeting more challenging service level agreements (SLAs), and implementing a variety of emerging ‘green’ business initiatives.

“Data centers are expected to do more with less including fewer qualified staff and less than robust budgets. Reducing costs is another key objective for data center managers accompanied by improved service levels and responsiveness. At the same time, by leveraging various technologies and processes across this infrastructure, IT departments can better protect information and applications, enhance data center service levels, improve storage and server utilization, manage physical virtual environments and drive down capital and operational costs,” says Sachin Bhardwaj, Head of Marketing and Business Development, eHosting Datafort.

A need for new approachesCompanies in the region could do better with more time spent on planning the datacenter so that while going operational, there are far fewer issues to resolve and further the time to deployment is shorter.

Basil explains, “Modern data centers are definitely more efficient if they are set up while leveraging best practices in energy and space efficiency, reliability and security. Most projects I’ve seen in the region spend 20% of their project timeline in the planning stage and then 80% of the project is spent fire fighting and missing deadlines. With the

correct approach, customers can flip that dynamic on its head by spending 80% planning every last detail of the data center project so implementation is straightforward and is completed on budget and on time. The common denominator is achieving a high efficiency from a space, power, cooling, and performance perspective, reliability, and security.”

The provisioning of workload processing becomes more complex in virtualized environments. New approaches and tools are called for to deal with these challenges. As virtualization adoption increases, capacity planning is no longer about specifying server, storage, and network resources for each application workload, but rather deploying combinations of assets for hundreds and thousands of workloads at a time. Further, higher compute densities are exceeding power/cooling capacity of aging data centers, requiring new approaches to managing facilities. Indeed, a significant change is the increase in the density of computing equipment in the modern data centres. The high end new generation servers and storage devices include smaller circuits, multiple cores, blade servers, etc which in effect has meant higher power consumption and a greater need for cooling solutions. “In comparison, old servers occupy 3-4U size and power consumed was around 150 watts, while new servers occupy 1 U and consumes around 250 to 400 watts, showing that despite being energy efficient, power consumption has gone up. A decade ago, 1,000 to 3,000 watts per rack was typical but now, fully

populated 42 U racks easily draw in 6 kilowatts to 14 kilowatts,” says Vipin Sharma.

He adds, “Greater computing capacity has resulted in proportional increase in the need for effective cooling mechanisms. Heat is the enemy of an efficient datacenter as every KW of power consumption actively participates in the heat dissipation process. Racks drawing 6-14 KW can generate 15,000-30,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs) of heat. Considering this, every KW used by a server requires another KW for cooling, airflow, lighting in a data center.”

Adoption of the type of Cloud computing approach can also have a say in the scale of cooling

Sachin BhardwajHead of Marketing and Business Development

eHosting Datafort


requirements. If you have private cloud in house, it could need more cooling requirements whereas when using services of a public cloud provider, it could mean far less cooling requirements.

Big data is one of the major challenges that IT managers are coming face to face with. Rather than store more and more data in-house, they need to look at getting data hosted in the cloud. Adoption of cloud computing to a greater extent reduces the load on the datacenter in terms of appliances physically required and would mean provisioning as and when required from the cloud. Reducing single points of failure within a data center and making data access on demand seamless are the

objectives of a more efficient data centre. Basil adds, “Rapid growth is challenging the capacity, provisioning, management, and protection of data for many data centers. Storage growth is creating unprecedented challenges for IT and data center managers, including cost containment, technology obsolescence, and a myriad of new, innovative storage solutions.”

Further, there is a change in the metrics to look at Datacenter efficiencies. As a direct result of cloud computing, new monitoring and management tools have made the modern data center easier to control. Monitoring features are able to look at metrics such as workload balancing, server environmental statistics and even check for alerts and alarms. Working in a distributed environment settings has created the direct need for better management software.

APC’s Olivier says, “Energy efficiency is very high on the agenda for datacenter operators, as they look to re-visit their strategies and revise the fundamental metrics by which they measure the level of operational efficiency. In this respect we are seeing, and urging the shift toward using Data Centre Usage Effectiveness (DCUE) model instead of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency (DCIE) models."

Outsourced or co-location Data centres have been around for years but are gaining far more credibility than earlier.

Vipin Sharma,VP- EEMEA & india Sales,

Tripplite

eHosting Datafort's Sachin says, "Datacenters are more efficient in terms of better throughput and better network connectivity due to technological advances such as increased bandwidth capacities of operators, better latency, peering, as well as other IT technologies like virtualization, cloud computing which have helped DC Service Providers provide higher levels of redundancies and improved Service Levels as compared to a decade ago etc.

As the networking landscape changes, specialized, networking technologies need to be brought into the total modern data center architecture. Because of their superior infrastructural capabilities, there is far more assurance of security from outsourced third party professional data hosting centres than previously.

Oliver adds, “Additionally, we are also seeing interesting developments in cloud and co-location environments, as outsourcing hosting services often ensures greater control than in-house management, as data security at hosting companies is at a much higher level than internal standards.”

In summary, the Datacentre is pivotal to company strategies seeking more agile IT architectures in their quest for further growth. Companies of various sizes pursuing higher growth opportunities and leaning on their IT infrastructures to do so will look at getting their datacenter strategies right in light of the opportunities and the concerns.


The Integrator | June 201222 The Integrator | June 201222

TechKnow | EATON

Please discuss your solutions for the datacenter segmentEaton is a single -source solutions provider offering power distribution, power quality, heat management and monitoring products and solutions as well as project management services for large and small data centers. Eaton builds highly reliable, energy-efficient and environmental-friendly products and scalable solutions for any types of data centers. We are a global, trusted power management partner, supporting data centre projects from conception to completion with life-time services.

Wha are some of the major trends that are influencing the changes in the make-up of the datacenter?

Cloud-based software, platform and infrastructure solutions improve the efficiency and elasticity of IT operations. As a result, large numbers of businesses are tapping into public and private clouds today, and even greater numbers will join them in coming years. However, cloud computing subjects data centers to significant new pressures. Cloud infrastructures make extensive use of virtualization and higher powered servers including blade servers, technologies that dramatically increase rack-level

power and cooling requirements. Moreover, cloud data centers tend to be dynamic environments in which virtualized workloads migrate freely among physical hosts. That increases IT agility but can also result in blown circuits and other electrical problems that lead to service outages.

What are the likely solutions?To master these challenges, organizations should adopt technologies and techniques that increase the reliability and redundancy of their physical and virtual environments, including power and cooling systems.

These can range from modular power components and passive cooling schemes to data replication solutions and live

migration software. In addition, proper monitoring and control of physical and virtual systems will help organizations manage their infrastructure more easily. Together, such tools and strategies can help any company enjoy the power of cloud computing reliably and cost-effectively.

Is the role of the datacenter increasing by the day? Once, IT was just another important business resource. Today, IT is the business for many companies. Without it, most organizations

would be incapable of serving customers, collaborating with partners, developing new products or performing other basic business functions. As a result, data center availability has become an essential precondition to competitiveness and profitability.

Are modern datacenters more efficient? Technology experts and forward-looking CIOs have lately begun challenging some of the most settled principles of data center architecture and management. Such fresh new thinking is revolutionizing the way that data centers are built and operated, enabling organizations of every description to be both more efficient and more nimble.

Rahul SikkaSales Director

Power Quality, EATON

Quality powerEaton’s power quality portfolio encompasses a comprehensive offering of power management solutions from a single-source provider. Rahul Sikka, Sales Director, Power Quality Middle East at Eaton speaks to the Integrator about the trends in the Datacentre business


What are the domains where IBT functions? Since when is IBT operational?IBT is in business since 5 years now. We are speicialising in Enterprise IT Solutions and Services. Our Main Focus is into domains like Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Business Process Outsourcing. We have two Business Divisions in IBT. The Enterprise IT Solutions covers end to end IT Solutions like Networking, IP PBX, Unified

Communications, Data Center Solutions, & Disaster Recovery. The Professional Services includes domains like Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Business Process Outsourcing and SLA.

Is the IT infrastructure business a significantly growing business? Is this a focus area for you currently?IT Infrastructure business is purely dependent on Growth of Real-estate. When there are new offices

coming up and smaller companies are moving to bigger offices and bigger companies are moving to much bigger offices. And when companies are moving to new offices or companies are growing and expanding that time end to end IT Infrastructure is required to run their Business. But as we are all aware that Real-estate is really challenging market these days and due to this IT Infrastructure Business is not as growing as before 2008. However, 2012 looks

On the growth trajectoryOn the growth trajectoryIBT (Intelligent Business Technologies) is an end-to-end ICT solutions provider based in Dubai, UAE, providing Consultancy and Total Turn-Key Solutions. The Integrator speaks with Jai Mulani, Director – Sales & Solutions at IBT and he discusses some of the key domains of focus for the company.

Jai MulaniDirector Sales & Solutions

IBT

Point2point | IBT


more promising and growing in comparison to 2010 and 2011.

What are the growth opportunities for your company?In this challenging market, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Cloud Computing and Virtualization are the most exciting growth areas for us. All the three areas incidentally focus on helping customers drive down costs, a primary concern for them. In the BPO Business, customers hire a company to run and manage their IT Department so that they don't incur any admin costs on having their own IT Department and the complete end to end management of IT is done by the BPO companies like us, allowing the customer to entirely focus on their core business. This is an area we are making good progress. Virtualization and cloud computing are the two associated areas where we are focusing as well. In Virtualization, customers can have more number of servers and services in less number of Physical Servers. So management and administration costs decrease by at least 20% to 30%. And finally in Cloud Computing, customers can possibly have zero costs on their IT Management with almost no need for IT support staff in their local office. Their required IT applications are web-hosted by companies like us on subscription basis and we manage their IT networks and application availability on a regular basis.

What are the trends that are driving growth in the Datacenter market?Virtualization is one of the strong trends seen in the Datacentre. It helps customers to have multiple advantages including reduced

Infrastructure Costs, flexibility, scalability, redundancy, reliability, server consolidation as well as less complexity. Many data centers have already migrated and a fair number of companies are planning to migrate their Data Centers into the Virtual Environment. In the BPO Business, are you are looking to primarily provide IT support services to SMB sector clients or is it the enterprise that you are focusing on?BPO is part of the Professional Services Division in IBT. And in Professional Services Division we have SMB and Enterprise as Sub Divisions. So we are targeting SMB and Enterprise both segments for

Outsourcing very aggressively. The SMB companies are moving much faster towards BPO than the enterprise segment because today market is really challenging for all the industries. And especially SMB customers want to focus on their core business and activities. So we have seen a good number of companies in the SMB verticals migrating to BPO. As discussed earlier, there are several advantages realized by opting for BPO services and the cost being one of the standout advantages. What is the support infrastructure in place? How many offices do you have as of now? Discuss potential plans of

expansion and consolidation?We have oor Head Office on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai. We have 24 x 7 x 365 running call center in Karama for customers who are under our SLA and so we support them round the clock. We have an office in Abu Dhabi to provide quick support for our customers in Abu Dhabi, Mussafah etc.

We have recently stepped into Doha in Qatar and have aggressive plans and strategies to grow in Qatar as well. We have our Data Center in Canada where we host our customers Infrastructure on cloud.

Are there new Technology areas

you are looking at for expansion/ growth in the rest of the year ahead?We have solid strategies to be emerge stronger in BPO, Virtualization and Cloud Computing. And soon we will be the leading company in this region in this domain.

We have already finalized with a few larger enterprises that want to work with us and we are approaching more customers in the market. We are demonstrating to our customers the benefits they gain by working with IBT and intend to capture maximum market share for BPO, Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

"In this challenging market, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Cloud Computing and

Virtualization are the most exciting growth areas for us. All the three areas incidentally focus on helping customers drive down costs, a primary

concern for them."


Insight | EnGenius

Discuss your range of products and focusEngenius has a whole range of wireless communication products, from SOHO to indoor business class to outdoor long range. EnGenius is the pioneer of Long Range high power wireless solution provider in the telecommunication industry. We have high-performance business-class wireless networking products to address long range wireless needs. Our Routers, Access Points, Client Bridges and Adapters are designed with high-power transmitters and extremely sensitive

receivers to maximize coverage in large areas, offices, warehouses, and multi-story buildings. We bring the same quality and reliability of performance of our Business line up of products to our wireless routers and adapters for the home segment as well.

Who are your largest customer verticals? We have been strong in the hotel industry providing their wireless solutions, a sector that is booming in the region. We are pushing hospitality industry projects in Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. A strong growth segment is IIP based CCTV surveillance.We are also doing point-to-point links and we have products with a range of up to 25kms on a line of sight and speeds of 4mbps/sec. The public sector is also a very important business focus with encouraging results from schools, hospital and government projects. We work through our partner Prologix.

There is a lot of competition especially in the SOHO segment of the wireless connections

business which you got into rather belatedly. How do you look at your prospects in that context?Our focus has been traditionally in the business class area until two years ago when we got into the SOHO business. Our products offer a lot more features like our built-in repeaters and access point so customers do not need to purchase these products separately. The devices also come complete with cloud security applications.

Discuss your Middle East operations.Our Dubai operations are handled by Prologix through which we have recently signed sub-distributors like Al Otaiba Technology , Shah computers, Dataset computers. We are looking to replicate this model with partners in the Kingdom.

How has been the growth in business in the region?We have been growing well in spite of market challenges. In fact, we were able to achieve 80% of our growth targets last year. We hope to do an even better and realized at least 90% of our targets for this year.

A connectivity expertEnGenius is a manufacturer of long-range wireless communication network equipment . EnGenius features a complete product line for all wireless environments, from enterprise-class wireless communications systems which includes long-range cordless phones, wireless mesh networking for digital wireless network cities, to end-user wireless network products. Hossam Bebawy, Regional Sales Manager speaks about the company’s focus in the region

Hossam BebawyRegional Sales Manager

EnGenius


An organisation’s ability to enhance agility, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies hinges on building a powerful yet flexible IT infrastructure that gives employees the tools and information they need to react quickly to changing market conditions.

Many organizations in the Middle East are turning to virtualization technologies (creating a virtualized data centre) in an effort to build pools of flexible server and storage resources that can not only meet dynamic business requirements, but also help them consolidate resources, save on capital expenditure, reduce operational

Secondly, organisations are also finding it expensive to deploy new infrastructure that is flexible enough to deliver the benefits of virtualization, having invested heavily in building existing data centres. Added to which, interoperability issues make it hard to deploy a flexible infrastructure that is capable of supporting multiple platforms and protocols.

Then there is the complexity. Virtualized environments are inherently complicated, relying on the constant movement of resources to meet changing traffic levels. While virtualization certainly reduces the physical number of

hardware devices, the connections between servers, networking components, and storage become much more complex.

Having said all this, the most pressing issue facing data centre managers when considering the deployment of virtualization technologies is that of the network. Why? Let’s take, for example, the various forms of VDI – such as server-based, client-based, terminal services, and application streaming – which all pose different requirements of the network.

The weightiest and most common factors are typically those of latency,

Sufian Dweik – Regional Manager, MENA, Brocade Communications discusses how the network infrastructure needs to be able to support the demands of virtualisation.

costs – e.g. stats like “for every dirham/dollar spent on hardware, three are spent to support it”, and “virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can cut the cost of ownership by as much as 50 per cent, make this a highly compelling proposition – and improve management for their server and storage infrastructure.

This sounds great; the virtualized data centre delivers a plethora of benefits, but how can you successfully achieve this? There is a lot more to it than simply phoning a software vendor and asking for help.

The foundation layer – the network – plays a vital role in the virtual data

centre. Ignore this at your peril. The network infrastructure provides the performance, availability and mobility required in a virtual environment, but there are a myriad of challenges to overcome before conquering virtualization.

The first is performance: if organisations look at the data centre as a supply chain (each layer working in tandem to produce and deliver a product), they can start to understand that making the compute environment faster and more efficient doesn’t necessarily make the entire process of delivering information to end users faster and more efficient.

Virtualization in the Midde East

Sufian DweikRegional Manager, MENABrocade Communications

Insight | Brocade Communications


Insight | NetApp

Because computers are about working with and storing data, we should perhaps have anticipated from the advent of the personal computer in the mid-1970s that ‘big data’ would become an organisational issue sooner rather than later. After all, we’ve known enough to track the fact that the world’s technological per

Martyn Molnar, Managing Director - Middle East and Pakistan at NetApp discusses perspectives on how explosive growth of Big Data is making it imperative for organisations to plan to manage and leverage its data growth with specialist tools.

A need for unified storage

Martyn MolnarManaging Director, ME & Pakistan

NetApp

resilience, and availability. Most companies will go for server-based VDI, where the application data and operating system (OS) reside on a remote server in a data centre, providing high levels of data security. However, this also requires a network that is “always on”, along with levels of high bandwidth and low latency. A network that doesn’t deliver this essentially kills any virtualization strategy at birth….

Evolution is the keyIt’s clear that the network must evolve to support virtualization. It must be simple, scalable and resilient, and ready for the cloud (or ‘cloud-optimised’). Classical Ethernet topologies don’t offer this, so to achieve the virtual data centre organisations need to look to the future – look to Ethernet Fabric technology.

Over the decades, Ethernet has evolved as user demands have changes. With the rapid expansion of the IT industry into new areas, such as virtual machines and Cloud Computing, traditional Ethernet’s limitations (such as its loss-y nature) proved problematic. In time, like the evolution of the Walkman to the iPod and VCR to Blu-Ray, Ethernet has evolved into Ethernet Fabric, after more than three decades. Ethernet Fabrics, which represent the next step in the evolution of Ethernet solutions, are purpose-built for the new virtualized, cloud-optimised data centres.

Ethernet Fabric technology can deliver flatter networks, eliminating manual configuration while providing non-disruptive, scalable bandwidth within the fabric. In essence, they provide higher levels of performance, utilization, availability, and simplicity, while reducing operational cost. With the increased mobility that Ethernet Fabrics provide, companies can adequately prepare for a highly virtualized, cloud environment, continuing to power better efficiency in the data centre while driving down costs and maximising revenue. Ultimately allowing virtualization to extend out of the data centre and expand functionality all the way to the desktop.

Ethernet Fabrics represent the next step in the evolution of Ethernet solutions – they are purpose-built for the new virtualized, cloud-optimised data centres and need to be at the forefront of any strategy to introduce virtualization on a large scale if it is to deliver on its full IT and business potential.


capita capacity to store information has more or less doubled every 40 months since the 1980s. As of this year, the human race is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.

But, to be fair, it would have been impossible, 30 years ago, to predict just how data would be consumed and created. After all, there was no Internet then. No smartphones up- and downloading data, no radio frequency ID (RFID) tagging and tracking billions of products across international value chains, no social networks handling billions of photos, no global retailers processing billions of transactions every month etc

There was no way to know that all of this data used in so many different ways would become the axle on which the wheels of modern society would turn and, therefore, that we would need an altogether new approach to collecting, storing, managing, analysing, and transmitting data. That managing data through its entire lifecycle from creation to distribution would become not only a new IT discipline but a new business discipline with its own discrete requirements that would, in turn, create new business models and spawn entirely new markets based on what the analysis of all the data would tell us.

How could we foresee that every person and every organisation independently collecting, storing, analysing, and transmitting data would bring us collectively to ‘big data’ – and that it would demand that specialised hardware, software, and network facilities function

together to process vast data sets fast enough to, for instance, process the human genome in a week, instead of the ten years it took before big data technology was invented?

Perhaps the most vital thing we didn’t know is that ‘fast enough’ would be the crucial words. It’s not enough simply to have lots of data. People want answers rather than information. And they want it now. The essence of big data is that whatever information we want, no matter what its source, must be available in real or near real time.

And that creates a need to be able to efficiently manage three inter-related capabilities: analytics, bandwidth, and content.

Analytics is all about gaining insight, taking advantage of the digital universe, and turning data into high-quality information (answers) - providing deeper insights about the organisation to enable better decisions. That means processing information in a particular way.Bandwidth is about ensuring optimal performance for very fast workloads. The need is for high-bandwidth applications that include high-performance computing: the ability to perform complex analyses at extremely high speeds; high-performance video streaming for surveillance and mission planning; as video editing and play-out in media and entertainment – and, accessing information in the cloud.ontent is about boundless, secure, scalable, data storage so that enterprises can access as much data as they want. For small organisations, that

boundlessness might best be accessed via the cloud.All of which sounds expensive in a business environment in which cost reduction is profoundly necessary. How, then, does an organisation realise profit from its structured and unstructured big data assets, accelerate time to results with scalable bandwidth, unmatched density, proven reliability, and simple and efficient access to diverse data anytime, anywhere without ripping and replacing its current IT infrastructure? And, is there a way small and medium enterprises (SMEs), whose IT staff capabilities are usually extremely limited, can make affordable use of big data?

The answer lies in either using (through the cloud) or building your own big data capabilities on an end-to-end, unified storage system or data infrastructure rather than with individual servers, add-on software, and ad hoc pieces of infrastructure. Using a specialist brand that designs its products specifically with unified storage in mind, you should be able to install your data infrastructure once only and then expand organically as your needs grow.

This will allow you to acquire segment-leading efficiency, performance, and capability for a far lower total cost of ownership than is possible any other way. It also gives you a grip on future costs. You can make your participation in the big data society a pro-actively profitable and productive process if you approach it properly. The tools are there – and they’re very affordable.


Riverbed Technology announced new Steelhead models, the Steelhead 150 appliance and Virtual Steelhead 150, as part of its comprehensive wide area network (WAN) optimization product suite. Key benefits (Steelhead Appliances):• Cost-effective deployment – Appliance models that scale to meet thedeployment needs of any office

Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S7

eyetech

New Steelhead appliances

• Application acceleration – Accelerate the broadest range of applications thatare critical to business• Simplicity – Transparently deploy in minutes without changes to applications,

The Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S7 is a 2U dual socket rack server, optimized for all types of business applications by focusing on versatility and scalability that supports up to 16 harddisk drives, up to 7 PCIe Gen 3 cards and up to 768GB RAM. Thanks to top performance of the new Intel Xeon E5 product family and the available upgrade kits, the RX300 will also ensure the demands of tomorrow are met.

Key features:• Intel Xeon E5-2600 product family with up to 8 core processors and Turbo Boost 2.0 delivers increased performance of up to 80% compared to the previous generation• Optimized for business applications, cloud and virtualization • Expanded scalability of up to 24 DIMMs with 768 GB memory, up to 16 hard disk drives and 7 PCIe slots Gen3• New modular concept for the base unit as well as a choice for LAN controller, RAID controller and power supplies• Upgrade kits for hard disk drives, backup devices as well as LTO drives• Simplified power management with profiles for 'minimum power' and 'low-noise'• 2 hot-plug PSU with 94% efficiency (80Plus platinum)

HP extended its HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) portfolio with new servers that deliver increased performance, simplified maintenance and improved data center uptime. The expanded HP ProLiant Gen8 line-up includes new servers based on the latest AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors, Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family and Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 product family.

HP 's Intel based P ProLiant Gen8 servers with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product famy: • HP ProLiant DL360e Gen8, a rack-optimized one-rack-unit (1U) server that supports a range of small, mid-size and enterprise organizations.• HP ProLiant DL380e Gen8, a rack-optimized two-rack-unit (2U) design for data center applications. • HP ProLiant ML350e Gen8, an expandable two-processor (2P) tower for remote and branch office environments. • HP ProLiant BL420c Gen8, a blade server ideal for midmarket and cost-sensitive enterprise customer.

AMD based HP ProLiant Gen8 line-up:• HP ProLiant DL385p, a 2U performance-based rack server designed for virtualization, database and high performance computing workloads.• HP ProLiant BL465c Gen8, the first server blade with 2,000 cores per rack for virtualization, database and high-performance workloads.

HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers


NETGEAR ReadyDATA 5200

users, routers, or other IT infrastructure• Scalability – One of the most scalable acceleration solutions available on themarket, supporting thousands of users on one device

Key benefits (Virtual Steelhead

Appliance)• Fully virtualized data centers – Leverage your existing investment in virtualizationto manage Virtualized Steelhead appliances.• Space limited deployments – Deploy WAN optimization without the hardware

• Ruggedized environments – Seamlessly integrate into a ruggedized formfactor for military environments• Increase capacity on-demand – Scale capacity without requiring a forklift upgrade.

NETGEAR ReadyDATA 5200 is a new enterprise grade unified storage solution, priced and designed with SMB storage needs in mind. The base system is a 2RU rack mountable enclosure that supports 12 3.5” drives (36TB), and can scale to 60 drives (180TB) with two 4RU external disk arrays.

Key Features & benefits:• Instant provisioning and instant expansion• Unlimited data snapshots and Instant recovery • Real-time Block level replication (Managed from the cloud portal)

• De-dupe and compression• Support for 60 Drives of SAS, SATA and SSD• Hybrid volume support with SSD + SATA for performance and economy• Simple, web based user interface • RAID 0,1,5,6 and 10 support• Expandable beyond single chassis• One system for both SAN and NAS requirements• Data De-duplication and Compression

The KL1508Ai and KL1516Ai dual rail LCD KVM over IP switches are control units that enable secure access up to eight or 16 computers from a single KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) console. The units consist of an integrated 17” or 19” LCD monitor, keyboard and touchpad in a 1U rack-mountable retractable sliding housing. Catering to the needs of both local and

Altusen KL1508Ai- Cat 5 High-Density KVM over the Net.

remote staff, the KL1508Ai and KL1516Ai feature IP-based connectivity to monitor and access computers on an installation. Leveraging TCP/IP for its communications protocol, the KL1508Ai and KL1516Ai can be accessed from any computer on the LAN, WAN, or Internet .

Key Features:• High Port Density, Supports PS/2, USB, Sun Legacy,

and Serial Connectivity. • Multiplatform Support: Windows, Mac, Sun, Linux. • Video Quality: upto 1600x 1200 @60Hz at upto 40 meters and 1280x1024@75Hz at upto 50 meters. • Daisy Chain upto 31 additional units. • Upto 64 User Accounts- upto 32 users simultaneously share control. • Event Logging and Windows based Log Server support.

• UpgradeableFirmware and Advanced Security. • A dedicated USB port direct connects to a laptop for virtual VNC console operation. • One bus for Remote KVM Over IP access. • Port Share mode allows multiple users to gain access to server simultaneously. • Panel Array Mode.• Remote Authentication Support: RADIUS, LDAP, LDAPS and MS Active Directory. • Mouse Dynasync: Automatically synchronizes the local and remote mouse movements.


Stats & trends

Cisco announced findings from the Cisco IBSG Horizons Study of IT and business leaders that shows IT is accepting, and in some cases embracing, “bring your own device” (BYOD) as a reality in the enterprise. The study findings underscore that BYOD is here to stay, and managers are now acknowledging the need for a more holistic approach – one that is scalable and addresses mobility, security, virtualization and network policy management, in order to keep management costs in line while simultaneously providing optimal experiences where savings can be realized.

The study also shows some of the quantifiable benefits and complexities associated with allowing employees to use their own mobile devices on their employers’ networks. The study found most organizations are now enabling BYOD in the enterprise, with a staggering 95% of respondents saying their organizations permit employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace. This study also concluded that the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker is expected to reach 3.3 by 2014, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012. IT managers are balancing security and support concerns with the very real potential to reap cost and productivity benefits.

Key Survey FindingsMore IT and Business Leaders Saying Yes to BYOD95% of organizations allow employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace. o 84% of respondents not only allow employee-owned devices, but also provide some level of support.o 36% of surveyed enterprises provide full support for employee-owned devices. In other words, they will provide support for any device (smartphone, tablet,

laptop, etc.) the employee brings to the workplace.

Mobility and device use are on the rise: 78% of U.S. white-collar employees use a mobile device for work purposes, and 65% of white-collar workers require mobile connectivity to do their jobs. By 2014, the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker will reach 3.3, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012. o On average, mobility initiatives will consume 20% of IT budgets in 2014, compared to 17% in 2012.

Most IT leaders (76%) consider consumerization “somewhat” or “extremely” positive for their companies. o Among respondents, the top two perceived benefits of BYOD were improved employee productivity (more opportunities to collaborate) and greater job satisfaction.

Employees want to work their way: Employees are turning to BYOD because they want more control of their work experience:o 40% of respondents cited “device choice” as employees’ top BYOD priority (the ability to use their favorite device anywhere).o Employees’ second BYOD priority is the desire to perform personal activities at work, and work activities during personal time.o Employees also want to bring their own applications to work: 69% of respondents said that unapproved applications — especially social networks, cloud-based email, and instant messaging — are somewhat to much more prevalent today than two years ago.o Employees are willing to invest to improve their work experience. According to Cisco IBSG, the typical Cisco employee who chooses to use his or her own devices at work pays, on average, a $600 premium to do so.

Benefits of BYOD add up: The benefits of BYOD vary based on an employee’s role and work requirements. Cisco IBSG estimates that in the US for example, the annual benefits from BYOD range from $300 to $1,300 per employee, depending on the employee’s job role.

BYOD Does Bring Complexity: Security and IT Support• Security and IT support are the top BYOD challenges: • Device proliferation requires new policy, approach to control cost: According to Cisco IBSG analysis, only 14% of BYOD costs are hardware-related, highlighting the importance of choosing the right governance and support models to control these costs.

Cisco Study Reveals that IT Saying Yes To BYOD

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