View
217
Download
0
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
1/48
www.wokwom.om | Iu 144 | M 2
PLUS:
Reality check fo R unified communications
state unionof the
SPeciaLfocUSIt trends
In healthcare
DiSaSTeR RecoVeRY |ViRTUaL DeSKToPS|WiReLeSS LaN |feMToceLLS | MWc
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
2/48
TAKE THE OMNISWITCH 10K CHALLENGEDiscover the performance and see
how it outplays the competition at:
www.omniswitch10kchallenge.com
ALCATEL-LUCENTS NEW OMNISWITCH 10K
IS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN, OFFERING:
> LESS COST
> LESS COMPLEXITY
> LESS COMPROMISE
WERE
CHANGINGTHE GAMEWITH
A CLASS-
LEADINGDATASWITCH
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
3/48
24
32
COVER STORY
oCOMMENT
04 a iff b
NEWS UPDATE
06 Zi i fmo i sui
08 sv kp bouig bk i Q4
12 Juip pfog cio wi QFbi
16 Fmo poym mo
oub i 12 mo
IN ACTION
18 dubi siio Oi auoiy up iz og y mi i
w dr i ik o u
Fc fbi.
EVENT REPORT
20 a bv w wo a ouup of MobiWo cog
FEATURE
28 I fy zo30 hy iu
32 tow Gigbi Wi-Fi iv
TEST
38 Mioof bf up sym c wi
w mou
NEW PRODUCTS
40 a gui o om of w pou
i mk
LAYER 8
42 a w fi fo oig
State of the union:Reality check for unified
communications
IssUe 144 | March 2011
Quick Finder
Pag 6-22
Zain, Alcatel-Lucent, Druva, EMC, Qualcomm, Global
Knowledge, Etisalat, Juniper, Cisco, du, Ericsson, Riverbed,
Alpha Data, Avaya, STME, DSOA, Ciena, HP Networking
Pag 23-44
FVC, NEC, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, Symantec, eHosting
DataFort, BT Global Services, Brocade, Zebra Technologies, F5,
Blue Coat, HP, Siemon, HTC
28
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
4/48www.newkwdme.m4 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
EDitorial
A different beat
Jvn ThnkppnSenior Editorjeevan@cpidubai.com
PublisherDominic De Sousa
COONadeem Hood
Commercial DirectorRichard Judd
richard@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9126
CMO
Kimon Alexandroukimon@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9149
EDITORIAL
Dave Reederdave@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9106
Senior EditorJeevan Thankappan
jeevan@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9109
ADVERTISING
Group Sales ManagerRajashree R Kumar
raj@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9131
CIO PROGRAMMES
CIO Programmes and Events LeadKavitha Rajasekhar
kavitha@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9132
Strategic Marketing Services LeadSreejith Nambiar
sreejith@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9133
MARKETING AND CIRCULATION
Database and Circulation ManagerRajeesh M
rajeesh@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9147
PRODUCTION AND DESIGN
Production ManagerJames P Tharian
james@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9146
DesignerFroilan A. Cosgafa IV
froilan@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9107
DIGITALwww.cpilive.net
www.networkworldme.comwww.cpidubai.com
WebmasterTristan Troy Maagma
troy@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9141
Web DesignerJerus King Bation
jerus@cpidubai.com+971 4 440 9143
Web DeveloperElizabeth Reyes
eliz@cpidubai.com
Published by
1013 Centre Road, New Castle County,Wilmington, Delaware, USA
Head OfficePO Box 13700
Dubai, UAE
Tel: +971 4 440 9100Fax: +971 4 447 2409
Printed by
Printwell Printing Press LLC
Regional partner of
Copyright 2011 CPIAll rights reserved
While the publishers have made every effort to ensurethe accuracy of all information in this magazine, they
will not be held responsible for any errors therein.
LTE, more tablets,more apps. That pretty much sums
up this years Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona.
This bellwether event for the mobile industry is a good
place to be in if you want to gauge the mood and get an
insight into whats in store. If the trends visible at this
years event are anything to go by, 2011 is going to be a
pivotal year in the history of mobile communications. LTE
is already here, a bit earlier than expected, with many
commercial deployments underway all over the world,
including Etisalat in the UAE. Many operators in the
region are already trialling the technology and making
their networks LTE ready. However, I dont expect any commercial roll outs to happen
this year, as most regional operators are looking to maximise their 3G assets before
moving to the next-generation. Besides, the eco-system around LTE in terms of
devices is not available in the market yet. Spectrum issues could also throw a spanner
in the works, delaying the deployment. But, what is for sure is that LTE is just a
question of when, as it offers many compelling reasons for operators, and represents
a complete paradigm shift a huge shift in focus from voice to data. The portended
data explosion is going to force many to re-evaluate their current business models, and
come up with innovative marketing and billing strategies. With data tipped to overtake
voice big time, many would be left with no choice but to move from the existing
flat-fee structure to a volume-based billing model, not to mention other significant
changes in the back-end as LTE is built completely around IP. Will that be the only
change? I guess the most important change as move to the advanced mobile standard
is something very fundamental while network coverage makes the difference between
winners and losers in the market now, tomorrow it is going to be all about who will
provide more data at a lower cost. Are you ready for that?
NoT YoUR coPY?I youd like to receive your own copy oNWME every month. Just log on and requesta subscription:www.networkworldme.com
PUB
LICA
TION
LIC
ENS
EDB
YTH
EIN
TER
NAT
IONA
LM
EDIA
PRO
DUC
TIO
NZO
NE,
DUB
AITE
CHN
OLO
GY
AND
MED
IAF
REE
ZON
EAU
THO
RITY
www.networkworldme.com | Issue 144 | March2011
PLUS:
REALITYCHECKFORUNIFIEDCOMMUNICATIONS
STATE UNIONofthe
SPECIALFOCUSITTRENDS
INHEALTHCARE
DISASTER RECOVERY|VIRTUALDESKTOPS|WIRELESSLAN|FEMTOCELLS| MWC
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
5/48
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
6/48www.newkwdme.m6 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
Through this project, the mobile operator
can experience first-hand how small
cells effectively address its three main
challenges: fill mobile coverage holes,
increase the networks capacity to deal
with mounting mobile data traffic and
create new, value-added services in a
rapid, cost-effective way.
Zain is the first mobile operator in
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to trial
Femto-based small cells, which clearly
positions us as an innovator in the
mobile broadband space, said Dr, Saad
Al Barrak CEO and Managing Director of
Zain KSA, Zain. Partnering with Alcatel-
Lucent, we want to assess how small
cells can help us provide 5-bar mobile
coverage to our residential and business
customers even in circumstances
where this has traditionally been a
challenge, such as in in-building and
rural environments.
Zain has been looking for ways to
increase the coverage of its network
without having to invest in expensive
macro site deployments. Additionally,
next to covering white zones, Zain wants
to continuously improve its customers
Zain trials femtocells in Saudi
trUE Fact
706,000is the number o server units shipped out in the irst quarter o2010 in Europe, the Middle East and Arica. This represents anincrease o 4.4 percent rom the same period last year. Serverrevenue totalled $ 4.3 billion in the ourth quarter o 2010, agrowth o 10.4 percent rom the same quarter last year.
Source: Gartner
The Qtel Group announced a commercial
agreement with Skype, whereby its
mobile broadband subsidiary wi-tribe, will
promote Skype and its related products
over wi-tribes networks in Jordan and the
Philippines; two key markets for wi-tribe.
Under the agreement, wi-tribe; a provider
of wireless broadband Internet, will enable
customers in the respective markets
to easily download Skype software and
connect with their family and friends.
Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Qtel,
commented: The Qtel Groups strategy for
innovation is driven by the needs of ourcustomers, and enabled by partnerships
Qtel Group partnerswith Skype
quality of experience - offering them the
best-on-the-market mobile data plans
with the highest availability and fastest
access speeds, as well as the latest and
coolest services.
As part of this project, we are
providing Zain with our proven small
cells product portfolio which is being
commercially deployed around the
world, said Adolfo Hernandez, president
of Alcatel-Lucents activities in EMEA..
Alcatel-Lucents small cells are plug-and-
play and enable the creation and delivery
of a new wide range of value-added
services through the use of application
programming interfaces (APIs) - such as
location, presence and security.
with like-minded companies. We recognise
the changes taking place in the market and
the increasing customer demand for rich
communications solutions, and so have
decided to partner with Skype - one of thepioneers in the industry. This is a first-of-its-
kind in our Middle East region and we look
forward to working closely with Skype to
deliver the best possible customer experience.
Skype had 145 million average monthly
connected users for the three months
ended 31 December 2010 and according
to TeleGeography in January 2011, Skype-
to-Skype calling minutes in 2010 were
equivalent to approximately 20% of total
global international PSTN and Skype-
to-Skype calling minutes. With todays
partnership announcement, more users in
the Middle-Eastern and Asian regions will
enjoy easy accessibility to popular Skype
features such as free Skype-to-Skype calls,
instant messaging, low cost calls to landlines
and mobiles as well as the recently launchedGroup Video Calling.
Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Qtel
Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by Zain KSA for the first small cells trial in Saudi
Arabia, which is expected to augment the mobile service experience.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
7/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Your complete source for performance and value!
Office No. Q4252, Saif Z one, P.O. Box 121456, SharjaUAE . Tel +971 6 557 9397, Fax: +971 6 557 9398, Email: info @multinetf ze.com
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
8/48www.newkwdme.m8 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
Druva, a company that sells enterprise
backup software, has announced Druva
inSync 4.1 Enterprise, an application that the
company claims to offer near-instantaneous
automated backups of laptops.An additional tool, included with the 4.1
release, also allows iPads and iPhones to be
backed up over a corporate network.
The inSync application also offers one-click
restores of any file or backup volume and uses
block-level data deduplication for backups and
restores, according to Borja Rosales, EMEA
Director of Druva.
Rosales said his companys application can
be installed by users in less than 20 minutes
with a five-step procedure and its client-triggered
EMC has introduced a free Community
Edition of the its high-performance,
massively parallel Greenplum Database for
research and development projects. The
company said that the new Greenplum
Database CE offering includes free
analytic algorithms and data mining tools.
This is a product designed to
get people started developing on our
products and on open source technology,
Luke Lonergan, CTO of EMCs Data
Computing Products Division. Its free
for research and development. If they
go production and want support, then
they have to pay license fee, which is per
terabyte or PC core.
The Greenplum Database CE business
analytics tools allow users to view, modify
and enhance included demo data files.
The Community Edition can be
downloaded as a pre-configured VMWare
virtual appliance for use on laptops
and desktops, or as a set of packages
for deployment on user machines. Allusers are free to participate in new
Greenplum Community Forums to get
support, collaborate, post ideas, and test
enhancements developed by various users
independently, Lonergan said.
Greenplum CE users can also take
advantage of the products open-source
analytic algorithm library, MADlib, to
give them data mining and machine-
learning methods for structured and
unstructured data.
Druva goes live with inSync
EMC releasesfree edition ofGreenplum
Worldwide server revenue and unit
shipments continued a yearlong recovery in
the fourth quarter of 2010, but growth is
likely to slow this year, research company
Gartner said.
Revenue for all types of servers grew 16.4
percent from a year earlier, while the number
of servers delivered grew 6.5 percent in the
quarter, Gartner said. The company cited the
replacement of x86 servers that companies
had held on to through the global recession
in 2009, as well as the introduction of the
Nehalem family of processors from Intel and
new Opteron chips from AMD late in 2009.
Gartner believes the replacement of x86
servers following the economic downturn has
Server sales kept bouncingback in Q4: Gartnerpassed its peak and will slow this year.
IBM led the industry in revenue for the
quarter, with a US$5.2 billion in sales, or
35.5 percent of the market. Sales of System
X and mainframe System Z platforms helped
IBM during the quarter, with the System
Z line showing a 68.3 percent increase in
revenue, according to Gartner.
HP came in behind IBM for revenue,
with 30.4 percent of the market, but led in
unit shipments for the quarter, delivering
767,026 servers or 32.2 percent of the
total. Dell was the second-biggest vendor by
shipments in the quarter, with 515,274 or
21.6 percent of the industry total. Dell was
also the third-biggest company in revenue.
Oracle suffered a 40.8 percent drop in
shipments and a 16.2 percent decline in
server revenue from last years fourth quarter,
when its server business was still owned
by Sun Microsystems. Cisco Systems, in
its first full year of shipping servers after
the introduction of its Unified Computing
System in 2009, earned a market share in
the low single digits, Gartner said.
backup architecture enables high levels of
scalability and security. The inSync application
also incorporates smart bandwidth throttling
through its Octopus WAN Optimisation
Engine, which automatically prioritises networksand schedules backup bandwidth as a percentage
of overall network bandwidth. The WAN
optimiser chooses the optimal packet size and
opens up as many as eight parallel connections
at the same time.
Druva inSync 4.1 runs on Windows or
Linux commodity servers. The servers can
be configured with solid-state drives (SSDs)
to enable a hyper cache feature, which
will increase backup performance as much
as six-fold.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
9/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Poor printing quality, risks of failure, leaks, you certainly
would not want your business to look that bad. Only HP
Original Cartridges can guarantee perfect prints and
smooth printing.
So look for the following when buying new cartridges for
your printer:
a sealed packaging an intact Security label (where present)
a certied HP Supplier
and be suspicious of too good to be true offers
Say it best with Original HP Supplies.hp.com/go/anticounterfeit
F m fma vwww.hp.cm/m
All you Are doing by not using HPoriginAl CArtridges is entering
A dAnger zone.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
10/48www.newkwdme.m10 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
Qualcomm has announced its quad-core
Snapdragon chipset designed to meet the
requirements of next generation tablets
and computing devices. The new quad-
core APQ8064 is the flagship chipset in the
new family of Snapdragon chipsets and is
based on the new micro-architecture code
named Krait. With the purpose of being
built for mobile devices, this 28nm micro-
architecture will redefine performance,
achieving speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core
and minimizing power consumption and
heat generation to enable new, thin and
light form factors.
The Snapdragon APQ8064 chip
will be designed to enable the next
generation of converged computing and
entertainment devices. These devices will
have significantly higher performance
requirements, including support for
larger screen sizes and resolutions,
more complex operating systems, multi-
tasking, multi-channel audio, HD gaming
and stereoscopic 3D (S3D) photo and
video capture and playback, as well as
output in full HD to 1080P flat panel
displays over HDMI.
While performance requirements have
been increasing, battery technology and
capacity have struggled to develop at
the same pace. To meet this challenge,
Qualcomm created its next generation
architecture and integrated four new,
low-power CPU cores and its advanced
Adreno graphics into the APQ8064,
enabling it to offer twelve times the
available performance as well as 75
percent lower power than the first
generation of Snapdragon processors.
The combination of advanced processors
and multimedia technology will provide
tablets and mobile computing devices
with unsurpassed performance, battery
life, low thermal dissipation and the
broadest set of connectivity options
available in the industry.
Etisalat has inked an agreement with
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE:
ALU) for a planned deployment of the
Middle Easts first and widest Long Term
Evolution (LTE) network in the UAE.Using Alcatel-Lucents end-to-end
solution, Etisalat will deploy the first
commercial LTE network in the Middle
East within the first quarter of 2011.
On the occasion, Mohammad Omran,
Chairman of Etisalat commented: As
the regions leading-edge telecom service
provider, this is a significant milestone
for our corporation and we are proud to
be the Middle Easts first and widest LTE
IT and business skills training provider
Global Knowledge has appointed Anders
Norregaard as its Managing Director
for UAE & Gulf. Anders joins Global
Knowledge MEA from Global Knowledge
Europe where he started his service with
Global Knowledge in October 2008 as
Managing Director for Denmark; During
that time, Anders drove the Danish
business to one of its most successful
periods in recent times. Before joining
Global Knowledge, he spent 5 years as a
sales director for Arrow ECS in Denmark
The worlds largest value added IT
distributor. Anders who is 36 years
old - has a total of 12 years experience in
the IT industry mainly focused on Value
added distribution.
Etisalat rolls outLTE network
GlobalKnowledgenames new MD
Qualcomm debuts quad-coreSnapdragon for next-gen tablets
network, thereby fulfilling our promise
to continuously deliver superlative
communication experiences to our
customers every step of the way.
Over the last year weve witnessed a
200% growth in data roaming traffic. Due
to the smartphone boom in the UAE, as is
globally, our customers continue to crave
for higher speeds and better connectivity.
There is an exploding demand for new
technologies and large bandwidth to
support and enable the surging data
traffic, said Marwan Zawaydeh, Etisalat.
We are confident that this advanced
next-generation network from Alcatel-
Lucent will meet our customers needs for
innovative mobile broadband services.
LTE can accommodate multimedia
applications such as video conferencing,
high definition content transmission and
high speed video downloads from social
networks, giving Etisalats customers
faster mobile broadband.Alcatel-Lucent will provide Etisalat with
a complete end-to-end High Leverage
Network solution including LTE base
stations (eNodeBs), all-IP wireless Evolved
Packet Core (EPC), a converged end-
to-end network management solution
and a range of professional services
including project management, planning,
installation, commissioning
and integration.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
11/48
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
12/48www.newkwdme.m12 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
The UAE-based SI Alpha Data has
been certified as a Platinum Business
Partner with Avaya, a leading global
provider of B2B communications
networks and services.
The Platinum certification is the
highest Avaya offers and is an industry-
recognised designation indicating that
Alpha has met the rigorous technical-competency criteria that ensure the
delivery of best-in-class customer
service and support.
Alpha Data already provides Avaya
communications systems and services
to both government and private
enterprises in the UAE with services
that include design, implementation
and technical support to the client
business.
As part of the new 5 year managed
servicesagreement, Ericsson will augment
dus IT applications and deliver application
development and maintenance for dus IT
application landscape.
Fahad Al Hassawi, Chief Human
Resources and Shared Services Officer, du,
says: We have grown rapidly as a company
ever since we launched operations. To
maintain the momentum and build on it
we have chosen Ericsson to partner us in
the field of IT Application Development.
Under the terms of the contract,
Ericsson will develop and maintain
applications for about 35 platforms and
technologies, including upgrading and
consolidation of dus software applications
domains, transformation of operations
and enterprise support systems and
managed services.
Riverbed has added a level service
dashboard designed to give business
executives a high-level view of how
well applications are performing on
the network.
With its WAN optimisation analytics
platform Cascade 9.0, executives candrill down see if there are performance
problems that need immediate attention
or build a historical view of their network
to plan upgrades, the company says.
At the same time, the Riverbed has
upgraded the RiOS operating system
for its Steelhead WAN optimisation
appliances. RiOS 6.5 includes
application-specific optimisation for
Microsoft Outlook Anywhere and
Alpha Data goesplatinum with Avaya
Juniper leapfrogs Cisco withQFabric data centreJuniper Networks has unveiled the
results of $100 million in research and
development: a new architecture for data
centre infrastructure called QFabric,
formerly code-named Project Stratus. The
company says QFabric will boost data
centre throughput 10-fold and be able to
scale 12 times larger than conventional
architectures while cutting costs for
infrastructure and operations. Analysts
and beta users say they are impressed.
Four years in the making, QFabric
promises to flatten data centre
architecture from two or three layers to
one, drastically reducing the number
of devices needed to build a data-centre
network.
The new architecture creates what
is logically a single data centre switch
overseen by a management platform that
gives one view of the fabric. QFabric is
supported by three devices the director
management platform, the interconnect
switching fabric and the node, which
handles ingress and egress ports.
In making the announcement, the
company showed three products to support
QFabric QF Director, QF Internconnect
chassis and the QFX3500 node.
The performance improvements that
QFabric claims would put Juniper ahead
of Cisco and HP for performance, says
Rob Whiteley, an analyst with Forrester
Research. Brocade comes the closest as
a competitor for a data centre fabric, he
says, and it remains to be seen how the
two will stack up. There are no full-fabric
deployments of either yet, he says.
Du partners withEricsson
Riverbed upgradesWAN optimisationplatform
SMB v2. The new version also includes
optimization for SSL certificate traffic for
client machines and for protocols used
by satellites.
The software makes it easier to
configure QoS settings on Steelheads for
customers who choose to use it rather
than QoS on their routers. Customers
rank their applications in importance,
categorize each site by the bandwidth of
their WAN connections and set minimum
and maximum use for classes of activity.The QoS employs the hierarchical fair
services curves algorithm.
The devices now take latency into
consideration when determining how
to handle individual applications. For
example, if imposing deduplication on
traffic would introduce excessive latency
that would actually increase the time
it takes for traffic to arrive, the device
would skip it.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
13/48
25th April 2011
The Westin, Dubai
RECOGNISING THE MIDDLE EASTS
NETWORKING CHAMPIONS
www.networkworldme.com/nwmeawards2011
SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
14/48www.newkwdme.m14 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
15/48
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
16/48www.newkwdme.m16 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
Femtocells deployments more
than double in 12 months
Informa Telecoms & Media has issued its
latest femtocell market status report which
revealed that deployments have more than
doubled in the past 12 months. The report
found that although residential services
represent the overwhelming majority of
femtocell deployments, the market has also
started to see particularly strong growth
in the enterprise sector. Almost a third of
femtocell deployments now include enterprise
offerings, contrasting strongly with the
situation 12 months ago when there were
no non-residential deployments. It also
highlighted the importance of the the first
urban and rural rollouts over this period.
In total there are now 19 femtocell
deployments globally compared with nine
at Mobile World Congress 2010. These
include six enterprise offerings, two urban
deployments from Vodafone Qatar and
Telefonica Spain as well as an outdoor ruralservice from SoftBank in Japan. These
demonstrate that operator interest is not
limited to residential services alone. Non-
residential femtocell services focus on the
high-value enterprise market, public places
such as metropolitan environments where
they provide a capacity boost, and rural areas
where network coverage has traditionally
been uneconomical.
Furthermore, the past quarter has
also seen important progress in femtocell
technology. In addition to more powerful
models that cover larger areas, new low power
USB-connected femtocell designs promise
to open up new service opportunities for
operators. The second femtocell plugfest
also took place, indicating that the industry
is close to seeing widespread standardised
femtocell deployments.
While residential femtocell deployments
continue to grow we are seeing changes in the
market as a whole with operators realising
the technology can extend to the enterprise,
rural and urban markets. Enterprise offerings
are rapidly becoming a standard component
of all femtocell deployments. Beyond this,
operators have already started to embrace
urban femtocells to overcome the coverage
challenge, and outdoor designs for rural
markets which could also revolutionise
developing markets too, said Dimitris
Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at InformaTelecoms & Media.
Informa Telecoms & Media expects the
femtocell market to experience significant
growth over the next few years, reaching
just under 49 million femtocell access
points (FAP) in the market by 2014 with
114 million mobile users accessing mobile
networks through femtocells during that year.
Healthy growth is anticipated throughout
the forecast period with femtocell unit sales
reaching 25 million in 2014 alone.
GOOD BAD UGLY
E-commerce booms in SaudiA new Arab Advisors Group survey of Saudi
Arabias Internet users revealed that around
39% of the adult Internet users in the country
buy products and pay for services online
through e-commerce services. Electronics are the
most popular products bought online, followed by
software, while airline tickets booking and hotel
reservations are the top services paid for online.A new major survey of the Internet users in Saudi
Arabia was concluded by the Arab Advisors Group in
January 2011. The survey revealed that around 39%
of adult Internet users in Saudi Arabia buy products
and pay for services online. The Arab Advisors Group
conservatively estimates the number of these users
to be around 3.1 million which is around 12% of thetotal population in Saudi Arabia. These e-commerce
users have spent an estimated US$ 3 billion onbuying products and paying for services through
e-commerce transactions in 2010.
Iranian cyber army strikes againThe pro-Iran hacktivist group that defaced the
Baidu and Twitter Web sites a year ago has hit
another target: the U.S. Government's Voice of
America news site.
Voice of America was knocked offline temporarily
after hackers were able to change the organization's
DNS (Domain Name System) settings, redirecting Web
traffic hitting Voice of America sites to another site
controlled by the hackers.Breaking into domain name registration accounts
and redirecting Web sites is a favorite tactic of
the Cyber Army, and it has pulled off this attack
numerous times in recent years. The group posted
similar messages in the Twitter and Baidu incidents.
Night Dragon stalks oil and gasThe recent news reports on the Stuxnet virus
have helped highlight the importance of security
in process industries like oil and gas. Recently,
McAfee released a reportdescribing coordinated
covert and targeted cyber-attacks on the oil and gas
industry which they attribute to Chinese hackers. Unlike aStuxnet type virus which threatens to disrupt processes,the McAfee report uncovered attempts to hack into
commercially sensitive data for competitive intelligence
- attempts which McAfee has named "Night Dragon".
Security is a top priority for the oil and gas industry. In
fact, security is often cited by oil and gas companies as
a barrier to outsourcing or sending data outside of the
company firewalls. Oil and gas companies hold data suchas detailed well logs and production figures close, while
being more willing to outsource management of other
types of data. In this case, it is not exactly clear exactly
what data was the target.
BAD
UGLY
GOOD
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
17/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
du, the UAEs integrated telecom service
provider, has converged its fixed and mobile
IP transport networks using the Cisco CRS
Carrier Routing System. This will enable
FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) on dus
network to meet the demand for high-
end broadband services and makes the
company unique in its ability to rapidly
deploy new high-bandwidth mobile
applications and data packages. Cisco and
du have collaborated previously to develop
a portfolio of data and mobility services
in the UAE. This new phase of network
development will allow du to improve the
speed, flexibility and scalability of mobile-
based services to its customers.
This is one of the first regional FMC
projects where all the fixed and mobile
services run on the same IP network with
mobile (signaling and bearer), mobile data,
residential internet, business internet,
residential voice, enterprise voice,
international voice, layer 2 VPNs, layer 3
VPNs and video running on a single IP/MPLS
core powered by Cisco. This collaboration
between Cisco and du also paves the way for
future mobile applications and services to
dus customers in the UAE. By consolidating
cores, du is able to offer its customers in
the UAE a more scalable platform to deliver
future services at a higher quality. The
reduction in core equipment and moving to
latest technology also reduces dus energy
consumption and reduce carbon footprint.
Du enters FMC world
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
18/48www.newkwdme.m18 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
MobilY DEPloYs
100G NEtWorK
Saudi Arabian mobile operatorMobily, in partnership with Ciena,has activated what is said to be the
frst commercial 100 Gigabit per second(Gb/s) network in the Middle East. Thisregional frst, deployed within the Riyadhmetropolitan area, is an extension oMobilys nationwide network.
Mobily, which owns more than 40 percento Saudi Arabias mobile market, recentlyannounced its selection o optical transportand switching platorms, Carrier Ethernetsolutions, as well as management and
maintenance services rom Ciena allaimed at supporting high-bandwidthservices. The 100G coherent servicedelivered on Cienas ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platorm the industrys frstcommercially available system equippedwith coherent 100G optics is key to thatarchitecture. Mobilys new 100G capabilitiesgive the operator the ability to quickly andeasily add network capacity in the crucialmetropolitan area o Riyadh.
This 100G deployment demonstratesour ongoing ocus on innovation, aimed atbringing leading edge technology oering
to our customers, said Abdul Aziz AlTamami, Chie Operations Ofcer, Mobily.The demand or bandwidth coming romSaudi businesses is growing steadily, andapplications like video, teleconerencingand cloud computing are uelling asignifcant portion o this growth. Byembracing Cienas 100G coherenttechnology, we are capable o ulfllingthe needs o even the most demanding oour customers, while uture-proofng ournetwork or the years to come.
Cienas 100G coherent technology willallow or a total throughput o 8.8 Terabits
o data per second on Mobilys network,carried over 88 optical channels on a singlestrand o optical fber.
Cienas ActivFlex 6500 platormequipped with coherent 100G optics hasbeen operating in live networks sinceDec 2009 and provides a simple upgradepath rom existing 10G and 40G networks increasing the amount o bandwidthexisting networks can carry by as muchas tenold with minimal networkchanges and investment to cost-eectivelymaximise trafc transport.
an unprecedented evolution. We have
chosen STME to implement and update
our systems with the most efficient
technology and solutions because
of their sound understanding of the
integrated free zone park.
The project was deployed by STME.
We have created a high-performance,high-throughput, scalable solution
that delivers optimum value to the
IT investments of DSO. Data security
is paramount for DSO considering
the nature of its business, which
is why we have deployed a best-
of-breed integrated solution for
storage, backup, disaster recovery,
and archiving of their email and file
server, added Ahmed Galal, Sales &
Marketing Director, STME.
By using Symantec Storage
Foundation, solutions such as
high availability for critical
servers with remote failover, archiving
and enhanced backup were also offered.
The new solutions has successfully
eliminated a Single Point of Failure,
simplified IT administration, reducedoperational costs, and accelerated vital
IT processes such as the recovery of files
on Network-Attached Storage after user-
initiated file deletions.
Abdulsalam Bastaki, Vice-President
of IT at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority,
said: It is essential for us at Dubai
Silicon Oasis to make sure that
our systems are in line with all ICT
developments, especially at a time when
the technology sector is witnessing
An arrayof capabilities
Dubai Silicon Oasis has set up a centralised storage
array at the Main Site as well as a disaster recovery(DR) site linked to a redundant Fiber Channel Fabric
inn: Dsoa
L-R: Abdulsalam Bastaki, Vice-President of IT at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority and Ahmed Galal, Sales & Marketing Director, STME
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
19/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Why is CommVault positioned as a leader inthe 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise
Disk-Based Backup /RecoveryReport?*
The 13,500 customers worldwide who trust us to solve their data management challenges
could answer this question or you 13,500 dierent ways.
But i you dont have time to poll them, get the ull Gartner
report and more at commvault.com/ITLeaders . Or, to set
up a personal conversation about how we can help you, call
our middle east ofce in Dubai at +971 4 3753491.
1207 Al Thuraya Tower 2nPO Box 502224nDubai UAE
Headquarters : 2 Crescent PlacenOceanport, NJ 07757
Regional Ofces: EuropenMiddle East & AricanAsia-PacifcnLatin America & CaribbeannCanadanIndianOceania
www.commvault.com
1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, the CV logo, Solving Forward, and Simpana are trademarks or registered trademarks o CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands,products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property o and used to identiy the products or services o their respective owners. All specifcations are subject to change without notice.
Backup & Recovery > Archive > VM Protection > Deduplication > Snapshot Management > eDiscovery
*The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation o a marketplace at and or a specifc time period. It
depicts Gartners analysis o how certain vendors measure against criteria or that marketplace, as defned by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in theMagic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meantto be a specifc guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties o merchantability or ftness or a particular purpose.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
20/48
Mobile broadband and LTE hoggedthe limelight at this years Mobile
World Congress in Barcelona
A bravenew world
The industry seems to have learned
itslessons from 3G, which was
beset with problems when it came
out ten years ago, and is now focusing on
robustness and quality of service in the 4G.
Though these are early days for LTE, the
mobile industry is bullish about the next-
generation, which is all about data.
At the show, mobile gear manufacturer
Ericsson presented its vision of the world
in 2020. Called Networked Society, it
envisions a world with 50 billion devices
with microprocessors connected to
network, many of them wirelessly. Buoyed
by a high demand for mobile broadband
solutions, the Swedish giant is betting on
a world where all microprocessors that
not connected today will be connected,
resulting in the number of connections in
tens of billions.
We have deployed networks all overthe world. Next 20 years will see those
networks being used in ways never
imagined, with a huge impact on people,
enterprise organisation and society in
general. We believe three components will
make the difference in a networked society
mobility, broadband and cloud, said
Hans Vestberg, President and CEO.
Ericssons vision is one of machine
to machine (M2M) communication,
which means we can actually start using
even |mobile world congress
www.newkwdme.m20 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
21/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
machines in a way that they talk to each
other and this is a major change relative
to how we have been communicating
in the past. The technology enablers for
this universally connected world are
broadband ubiquity and the declining cost
of connected devices, he added.
Vestbergs talk on machine to
machine networking ecosystems included
descriptions and examples of smart
networks, smart services and smart cities.
Ericsson says 5.3 billion people are
connected worldwide today, which is
expected to reach 7-8 billion by 2015.
Broadband penetration has, of course,
been the most important factor for
operators around the world. Every 1000
new mobile broadband subscriptions
generate 80 new jobs, which is why
governments need to think about
broadband infrastructure. We expect one
billion people to have mobile broadband
subscriptions this years, which can
reach up to five billion by 2016; the data
consumption will be 25 percent higher,
with video accounting for the major chunk
of traffic, said Vestberg.
Ericsson says 500 million smartphones
are already on networks and by 2016 there
will be as much data on smartphones as
PCs, and more data capacity on networks
than voice.
To support M2M communications and
hook up operators to cloud, Ericsson has
launched Device Connection Platform at
the show, which makes it possible to create
tailored connectivity and price plans for
M2M services. Ericsson provides a complete
service that the operators can adjust toserve its enterprise customers needs,
including a self-service interface, flexible
billing, charging and connectivity plans
for all devices connected to the network.
Since machine to machine applications
can communicate using any existing IP
protocol they can be accessed and share
data via internet. In addition, the operators
customer will be able to manage their
subscriptions and devices in real time.
In tune with the shift from host-to-host
connections to a focus on connections
from users to networks and vice versa,
Ericsson is expanding its IP networking
portfolio, with several new solutions to be
rolled out during 2011. At the show, it has
taken the wraps off its first solution in the
portfolio Smart Service Router, which
the company says will form the basis of
the new mobile core network needed in
4G/LTE networks.
Though the show this year was
all about LTE, which is expected to
come early, Ericsson says HSPA will
continue to evolve in parallel to LTE.
The manufacturer has demonstrated
multi-carrier HSPA with 168Mbps on
the downlink and 24Mbps on the uplink
using a prototype consumer device and
commercial network equipment. This is
said to be a world record for the highest
HSPA speed achieved on commercial
network equipment.
To reach 168M bps, Ericsson used
a number of radio tricks, including
antenna technology MIMO (Multiple-Input
Multiple-Output) and sending data over
several channels at the same time. MIMO
uses multiple antennas in the base station
and on the device to increase speeds.
Besides HSPA at 168M bps, Ericsson
has also demonstrated HSPA with 42M bps
using a single channel and 84M bps using
two channels. Operators already offer
HSPA at 42M bps, but they have to use
two channels. By only using one channel
aided by MIMO, operators can be much
more efficient with their valuable radio
spectrum, Ericsson said.
Today, 79 commercial HSPA networks
offer download speeds of 21M bps. Add to
that 13 commercial HSPA networks that
can offer up to 42M bps, and five operators
that have committed to HSPA at 84M bps,
according to the latest statistics from the
Global mobile Suppliers Association.
Another major area of push for
Ericsson is manager services, which
accounts for 10 percent of the net sales for
the company. Its services organisation now
boasts of 45000 professional and has won
54 managed services contract in 2010.
Though the showthis year wasall about LTE,
which is expected to comeearly, Ericsson says HSPAwill continue to evolve inparallel to LTE.
EricssoN airssMallEr MobilEbasE statioNs
Ericsson has joined the move towardsusing smaller mobile base stations,
launching Ericsson Air (antennaintegrated radio), which aims to reduce
power consumption while expandingcoverage to more areas.
For mobile subscribers, the Air basestations can open the door to coverage
where there was none beore, such asin street and indoor environments that
are hard to reach with traditional base
stations, according to Jan Hglund, vicepresident and deputy head o product
area IP and broadband at EricssonsNetworks unit.
The Air base stations integrate theantenna unit into the radio unit. The frst
generation o the product will put thebaseband unit, which handles the data
and call processing, into a separate box.But in the uture it will also be integrated
into the main unit, according to Ericsson.The Air base stations can be used in
2G, 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution)
networks, and will come in dierentsizes. The smallest ones will be the
size o a one-liter milk carton, and cancover an area with a cell radius o up to
about 100 meters, according to ChristianHedelin, head o radio product marketing
at Ericssons Networks unit.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
22/48
We organised a CIO roundtable in Kuwait to discussthe changing paradigm in networking in the contexto emerging technologies, which yielded some goodadvice on network transormation
Changing the rules
B
olstered by 3Com acquisition
anda new go-to-market
moniker, HP Networking has set
its sights on Cisco in networking battle.
Against this backdrop, the company in
association with Network World Middle
East organised a roundtable discussion
in Kuwait to debate the changing rules
of networking and how HP Networking
is enabling customers to build next-gen
infrastructure.
The current networking paradigm
saps resources from IT innovation and
perpetuates a siloed approach to IT.
Networks are too complex, inflexibleand costly. In addition, the boundaries
between the network and data centre
infrastructure limit IT agility and leave
critical resources underutilized.
With the acquisition of 3Com, HP
is bringing an end to this inefficient
model, enabling convergence that
accelerates business growth at a lower
total cost of ownership. We have
solutions that span from edge of the
network to the heart of the data centre,
said Khaled Ibrahim El Desouky, Pre Sales
Technical Consultant, HP Networking.
He said customers are looking
for ways to break from business
limitations imposed by the networking
paradigm that has been dominated by
a single vendor. We are delivering a
common platform, single operating
system, and single pane of glass
management. We are offering open
industry standards and market-driven
innovation, with security solutions
and intelligence integrated into the
secure network fabric.
Desouky also explained the reasonswhy HP Networking is emerging as a
credible alternative in the networking
market. Customers are telling us that
one of the reasons why the cost of
managing and deploying networking
infrastructure hadnt changed over
the years was because a competitor
that held a majority position in the
market just kept adding, adding, adding
more features without lowering their
cost, and many of these features were
features the customer never used. We
will deploy for you exactly what you
need, and then were going to translate
that to you in business value that you
wont get anywhere else.
He claimed what differentiates
HP networking from a technology
standpoint is the intelligence that
its brings to the table, which enable
customers to deploy the network fabric
and network architecture in much
simpler ways, that will open up new
opportunities for business growth. We
have got one management solution end
to end. Weve got Intelligent Resilient
Framework technology, which allows
you to do clustering performance and
leading-edge bandwidth access.
This was followed by a presentation
by Arun George, Technical Sales Manager,
HP TippingPoint on the some of the
burning issues around virtualisaiton
security, where the threats are new and
the traditional security tools dont cut
it anymore.
To address the unique
requirements of the virtualised data
center, we are offering TippingPoint
Secure Virtualisation Framework
(SVF), which is designed specifically
for implementing best-of-breed
threat protection for the virtualized
infrastructure. We are extending our
threat research capabilities, breadth
of protection, ease-of-use, and
automation capabilities to include
virtual infrastructure.
HP TippingPoint is also offering
active theat blocking, which filters
and detect malicious traffic and stop it
before it can compromise or damage the
virtualised data centre infrastructure orits data assets.
The roundtable was attended by
Farhan Baboojee, Sr. Regional Manager
IT Ops, Agility; Imran Saleh, IT Special
Consultant, PACE; Fahad Almenayes,
Executive Management Technical
Support and System Operations, Al Ahli
Bank of Kuwait; Ahmed Helal, Manager-
IT, Al Muzaini Exchange; and Rehman
Shaik, Senior Technical Support
Engineer, Al Shaya.
www.newkwdme.m22 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
even |networking
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
23/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Home User
PacksS.M.B. Packs Available
FREE+
+97143939222 +97143936222
Partners Inquiries Are Welcomed.
Contact : +971 55 227 8622
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
24/48
While many businesses
tightenedtheir IT budgets
during the recent recession,
a growing number of organisations
are deploying unified communications
solutions integrated voice, data,
messaging, conferencing and
collaboration services over converged
networks as confidence creeps back
and budgets expand. The driver?
Return on investment.
For the uninitiated, UC solutions
quickly increase an organisations
productivity and reduce operating
costs. UC not only provides more
reliable and cross-functional
communication, but also increases
resilience against network disruptions.
In addition, UC enhances the sense of
belonging and affinity amongst remote
or mobile workers.
However, getting to a UC platform
takes careful thought and planning.
Definitions of unified
communications are as plentiful as the
companies that provide the component
technologies. As such, there is no such
thing as one-size-fits-all. However,
there are several broad ways to
approach UC on a single platform.
feue |unifed communications
Reality check fo R unified communications
state unionof the
www.newkwdme.m24 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
25/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Many businesses are pursuing
either rich media or telephony-centric
approaches to implementation, while
others are focusing on e-mail- or
instant messaging-centric approaches.
Admittedly, the array of available
technologies, combined with their
unique implications, make selecting a
UC solution a complex undertaking.
There are many things to consider
when deciding what is right for your
company, including the nature of your
organisations work and its physical
structure.
One of the most obvious concerns
has to be bandwidth optimisation.
Since UC involves real time voice
and video, CIOs need to have a
closer look at their bandwidth
and their prioritisation in terms
of services and traffic. The second
is the local ISP infrastructure and
regulations and what these cover. If
the communications system covers
several branches across the region,
then the local WAN links and basic
infrastructure needs to be set up
to handle the traffic that these
applications can (and will) generate,
says Dharmendra Parmar, GM
Marketing, FVC.
Frits Neyndorff, MD of NEC
Unified Solutions, says in addition to
the infrastructure concerns such as
bandwidth, one of the key challenges
for companies is changing user habits
and processes among the staff andproviding the right level of skills and
training to ensure that they make the
most optimal use of the solutions.
Another common area of concern
is how will it affect network security?
Some of the most common concerns
companies have is security, reliability
and user adoption. Network security in
UC is not any different from having a
voice or data infrastructure. Network
security in UC is all about user
privileges and access, says Mohammed
Areff, MD Gulf & Pakistan, Avaya.
Many of the obstacles faced in UC
implementations stem from at least
one of the following:
1. Rushed discovery phase its
easier to address challenges prior
to implementation, so this phase
should carefully assess all potential
applications and systems that link to
the communications platform or may
be affected by the change in traffic2. Assumption that equipment/
applications can be transferred as is
from existing systems it is important
to clarify this before investing.
3. Lack of stakeholder involvement
in the process since UC is not an
IT-only decision, youll only capture
the maximum benefit if you secure
the users input during the discovery,
planning, and implementation process.
4. Failure to establish a goal and stick
to it this is where UC solutions can
become needlessly complicated, leading
to unanticipated costs.
Identify the weakest link in the chain
If your network is not strong enough
to handle an increase in traffic from
UC, you will not get the results you
are expecting. Review your current
business and network environments,
assess current and future needs, and
incorporate them into a scope of
work for design and implementation.
For most companies, unifying
communications is not a one-size-
fits-all, packaged solution. It is a
phased process, leading to an end goal
that meets business/organisational
communication goals. What is best
for your company is a network andsolution set that stays up and running
when the weakest link is at or near
maximum capacity.
Finally, remember that training
your associates on the maintenance
and use of the UC components is
essential. Begin preparing them for
implementation during installation
and configuration. Again, your goal is
to launch a reliable operating system
without disrupting business as usual.
If your network isnot strong enoughto handle an
increase in traffic from UC,you will not get the resultsyou are expecting.
Frits Neyndorff, MD of NEC Unified Solutions
Dharmendra Parmar, GM Marketing, FVC
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
26/48www.newkwdme.m26 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011 www.newkwdme.m
feue |unifed communications
Once viewed as a luxury that only
large organisations with hefty IT
budgets could afford, UC solutions are
now within reach of organisations of
all sizes, including many small and
midsize businesses (SMBs).
At this stage of time and after
few years of penetration in the
enterprises, UC is within the reach
of any organization. The level of UC
penetration might differ as some
organisations may focus on mobility,
others on voice, video and web
conferencing, says Wael Abdulal,
Collaboration Manager, Cisco UAE.
Microsoft, which has recently
launched its Lync server, says users will
no longer need to invest in expensive
hardware to adopt UC. In fact, you
dont need to even own any hardware
if you opt for the cloud based or
partner hosted version of Microsofts
UC solution. Owning hardware/IT
infrastructure is one of the key blockers
for small organizations while we offer a
comprehensive enterprise solutions for
some of our large customers. We have
references to support UC for business
from 5 seats to 100K seats, says Yasir
Khokhar,Information Worker Business
Group lead, Microsoft Gulf.
Parmar from FVC adds that as UC
leverages voice, video, social media
and other communications into a more
converged platform, there is a wider
range of solutions available to suit thebudgets and needs of organisations,
whatever the size. Organisations can
start with a simple solution using
voice/text messaging, and scale all
the way to conference room video
conferencing solutions.
Payback time
While the goals of UC are admirable, it
is not always easy to sell management
on the idea of a revamped,
companywide communications
system. However, once management
understands the benefits of UC, they
may realise it is just the kind of
enhancement they are looking for.
Well, its true that some of the
benefits of UC are not very easy to
measure. It also depends on the size andthe extent of how the systems are used.
Some of the clear, measurable areas
are productivity, in terms of increased
communication and collaboration,
access to resources that would normally
be out of reach, and time savings and
costs in terms of travel especially at
executive levels, says Parmar.
Areff from Avaya adds that
enhanced productivity, employee
retention, cost reductions from staff
travel are just some of the factors
that CIOs could consider while cost
justifying a UC system.
Another option is to look at a hosted
UC system, which offers incredible cost
savings when compared to in-house,
thanks in large part to eliminating
the need for hardware, software and
licenses. Alongside the reduced need
for hardware and software, staffing
costs can also be easily manager, as a
hosted solution doesnt require a large
team of internal experts to deal with
upgrades or maintenance.
This would depend on the needs of
the organisation and where security can
play a very key role in deciding what
kind of systems to deploy. On-premise
deployment does have the advantage ofenhanced control, but hosted systems
give these organisations the possibility
of more flexibility, says Neyndorff.
While unified communications is a
complicated field with many potential
challenges, it can undoubtedly help
transform an organisation, and result
in attractive operating efficiencies. The
facts speak for themselves UC is on
the rise as an innovative way to change
the way your company does business.
While the goalsof UC areadmirable, it is
not always easy to sell
management on the idea ofa revamped, companywidecommunications system.
Mohammed Areff, MD Gul f & Paki stan, Avaya Wael Abdulal , Col laborati on Manager, Cis co UAE
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
27/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
Under the patronage of H.E. Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori, UAE Minister of Economy
The Middle Easts Leading
Enterprise Communications
Exhibition & Conference
Delivering Enterprise Decision makers:
Government Oil & Gas Public Sector Healthcare Banking & Finance
Construction Retail Manufacturing Hospitality & more...
16 - 18 May 2011Abu DhabiNationalExhibition Centre
www.mecomexpo.com
For sponsorship and space booking, contact the MECOM team on +971 4 3365161 or mecom@iirme.com
Organised byResearch Partner
Media Partner
Online Media PartnerPublishing Partner
Silver Sponsor Associate Sponsor Gold Media Sponsor Gold Media PartnerDiamond Media Partnerd Sponsor
Featuring
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
28/48
feue |disaster recovery
applications dont get a second chance, and
those that fail to reduce their operational
expenses may suffer the same fate. All
these factors driving the prioritisation of
business continuity and disaster recovery
as top priority, says Ahmed Hassan, AreaTechnical Manager, NetApp Middle East.
Wouter Vancoppenol, Regional Sales
Director of Double-Take (now part of
Vision Solutions), adds another perspective:
Business continuity is an increasing
concern for enterprises locally - they are
following the same company growth and
user demand curves that we have seen
in other regions. This requirement for
services to be available at all times is a
pressing one, and means that companies
28 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011 www.newkwdme.m
In thesafety zone
With the outages costing dearly, businesscontinuity and disaster recovery are
emerging as top priorities or regionalbusinesses. Here is what you need to
know to plan right
Anthony Harrison, Senior Principal Solution Specialist Storage and Server Management, Symantec
Businesses
are generally
confidentabout
the resilience of their IT
systems until disaster strikes
and disruptions ensue. Most f the
businesses in the region have experiences
significant network disruptions during
the last 12 month, either in the form of
political turmoil, power loss, hardware
failures or a loss of telecom servicesto facilities. Most of these disruptions
could have been reduced or avoided by
implemented by implementing a more
comprehensive business continuity and
disaster recovery plan.
To compensate for the unexpected
and account for the unpreventable,
prudent organisations utilize business
continuity products and services plans
to keep their enterprises up and running
in emergencies, and implement disaster
recovery
plans and
programs
against the
possibility that a
computer, server, office
or entire building becomes
unusable as a result of a
catastrophe.
Business continuity and disaster
recovery technologies are becoming
less expensive and easier to use, in part
because they are being integrated into
larger IT systems, and also because theyre
increasingly taking advantage of aspects of
cloud computing and virtualisation. There
are many factors that driving this as a toptechnology priority for organisations in
the Middle East.
Enterprises today are facing the
perfect storm. Challenging economic
times are compelling businesses to achieve
even greater levels of cost savings and
operational efficiency. Yet business-critical
applications still require vital data to be
protected and available to meet increasing
service-level demands. The majority of
businesses that fail to protect their critical
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
29/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
are looking at developing how their
business can survive through a disaster
through investing in high availability
and / or disaster recovery planning and
solutions.
He points out at the industries in the
region that have been successful especially
banking and finance has seen a huge
demand for business continuity as more
services are rolled out via the internet to
online users. Internet banking requires
that systems are available around the clock,
which has made investment in continuity
part of a wider company strategy. Other
industries like has seen the same business
driver - customers are more demanding,
and they wont accept downtime.
It is important for CIOs to make a
distinction between business continuity and
disaster recovery, which are often thought
of as the same thing. Disaster recovery is
about re-establishing IT services in the faceof large-scale hardware failure or sabotage,
facilities failure and/or regional natural
disaster. Disaster-recovery capabilities are
measured by the amount of time it takes
to re-establish services and the amount of
data loss. Business continuity is the ability
to continue operations with little or no
downtime in some of these scenarios.
These two different perspectives on
the same core problem how do I deal
with an event that is unlikely to happen
but could be big enough to threaten my
business? Disaster recovery has tended to
be viewed as data replication, and business
continuity extends that idea to include the
servers, their configuration, the office space
and equipment and indeed the complete
business process, says Anthony Harrison,
Senior Principal Solution Specialist
Storage and Server Management, Symantec.
He cites the example of a telco, for
which DR could include the system that
houses all of their call data records so they
do not lose track of their primary revenue
source, but business continuity would
include the application to generate the
bills at the end of that month, the printers
to print the completed statements and
the people to send them in the post to
ensure that the companys cash flow is
not impacted.
Mohamed Rizvi, Manager- InformationSecurity and Advisory Services at eHosting
DataFort, defines DR as an arrangement
related to the preparation for recovery or
continuation of technology infrastructure,
which is critical to an organisation during
a disaster. It is a sub-set of business
continuity and focuses on IT systems that
support business functions.
While many regional businesses believe
they are prepared for an unplanned
network disruption, many are not and yet
the most common causes of IT outages are
addressable by having a well-defined DR
plan in place. What should companies keep
in mind while formulating a plan? The
main requirement should be to determine
the value of data and infrastructure you are
trying to protect with DR. Understanding
the value is key to determining the funding
an organization would put forward for
their DR strategy, says Tareque Choudhury,
Head of Security Practice and Professional
Services MEA, BT Global Services
Harrison from Symantec says that taking
the simplistic view of just copy the data
offsite and well worry about the rest later
represents a very high cost in terms of
duplicated storage requirements (usually of
the same model of high-end array), because
there is no appreciation of the business
value of the data. We always advise a
more granular approach to understand
the business value both of the data and the
applications that access it.
According to Vancoppenol, the first
step is to understand what your critical
applications are- that the business relies
on in order to be profitable. These are
the first that should be protected, either
through deploying high availability or
disaster recovery solutions. The second is
to know what platforms you are running:
even smaller organisations tend to have a
mix of different server hardware in place,
which makes planning how to protect
the applications running on those servers
potentially more difficult. Look at how to
protect these multiple platforms with one
tool, rather than having different productsfor each one. This is a more cost-effective
approach, and secondly it makes it easier
to spot any potential gaps in the DR plan,
he adds.
With the cost of downtime going up,
sometimes even battening businesses down,
the pressure on IT organisations is now
more than ever to ensure their DR plan is
ready to go and unfailingly reliable. Think
you are ready about just about anything?
Think again.
Mohamed Rizvi, Manager- Information Securityand Advisory Services at eHosting DataFort
Tareque Choudhury, Head of Security Practice andProfessional Services MEA, BT Global Services
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
30/48www.newkwdme.m30 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
feue |healthcare
Healthcare in Middle East is going digital, which bringsboth tremendous opportunities and security risks
Healthy attitude
Healthcare information technology
is expected to play a major role
in meeting the demand for
care, quality, and safety, while bridging
the gap to affordability. Healthcare
providers and players in the Middle East
are faced with the challenge of making
transformative changes to care delivery
and business models to respond to the
changing technology landscape , which
is essential to achieve cost savings and
efficiency goals.
The healthcare industry in general
is conservative when it comes to
technology - after all, patient care is at
stake. However, in recent years healthcare
has accelerated adoption of technology
compared to other industries as a way to
deliver high quality care while keeping
costs in line, says Ali Ahmar, Regional
Sales Manager, Brocade Communications
Today, theres the widespread
migration from paper- and film-basedto electronic medical/ health records,
adoption of wireless technologies for
medical monitoring as well as bedside
care delivery, increased use and capability
of medical imaging (PACS, CT, MRI, etc.)
technology, unified communications,
and high availability/ disaster recovery
solutions are the current technology
trends, he adds.
Perhaps, the biggest disruptive
technology transformation in the industry
is the move towards electronic health
records (EHRs). Electronic records not only
allow general practitioners and specialists
to document and easily share patient
information; they also help support
evidence-based medicine. That allows
physicians to treat patients using best
practices derived from the systematic,
scientific study of standard treatments.
Given the huge upfront costs involved,
some industry experts believe a software-
as-a-service (SaaS) EHR model would
be the most cost-effective and least
complicated deployment for medical
practices, clinics and hospitals unable
to afford in-house IT equipment. Under
a SaaS model, EHR applications such
as physician-order-entry systems are
hosted on servers in a vendor facility
and hospitals would access those systems
through a secure Internet portal or via
a virtual private network. That way, the
health care facility would not need todeploy hardware and software in its data
centre or hire the IT staffers needed to
support and maintain an EHR system.
Health goes mobile
Smartphones, tablet PCs and other
wireless devices are poised to play a
greater role in health care as doctors and
patients embrace the mobile Internet.
Smartphones allow doctors to check
e-mail, use mobile applications and surf
the Web, and also lead to collaboration
between physicians and patients.
In fact, a recent research report
suggests that smartphone apps are set to
become the killer health care product asa research report projects that some 500
million people will be using them within
five years.
According to the Global Mobile Health
Market Report 2010-2015 compiled by
research2guidance, more than a third
of 1.4 billion smartphone users in 2015
will be running some kind of mobile
healthcare application.
Mobile health (mHealth) applications
allow doctors to monitor patients, no
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
31/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
matter where they are, in real time. The
emergence of consumer health electronics
devices like portable ECG machines, blood
pressure monitors and weight scales can
help physicians seamlessly capture andtransmit patient information from home,
work or from the road.
According to a report released by
Accenture earlier this year, the rise
of inexpensive Internet connectivity
along with the development of smaller,
cheaper and smarter health electronic
devices should help health care workers
deliver better, more efficient health care
to patients.
Wireless technology, specifically
the adoption of 802.11n is one of the
most transformational technologies in
healthcare. With the proliferation of
medical monitoring devices as well as
the broad adoption of PDAs, tablet PCs
and smart phones, wireless technology is
enabling healthcare providers to monitor
and deliver care whenever and wherever
needed. Mobile devices free from wired
terminals and combined with wireless
access have become extremely important
to healthcare providers giving them
ready access to patient information and
the ability to diagnose and treat patients
more quickly, regardless of their physical
location in the hospital complex: wards,
clinics, special-care units and so on,
says Ahmar.
RFID is also set to play a crucialrole, according to Wael Hasan,
Territory Manager Middle East,
Zebra Technologies. The use of RFID
in healthcare is vital to minimizing
errors in patient treatment and revising
process that were previously very
time consuming. When talking about
solutions for the Middle East, integration
is definitely a buzz word for the market.
The fact is that patient histories
especially those dating back to the
pre-computer eraare incredibly time
consuming to review if not recorded
digitally. In areas like medication
administration, additional time and costs
are incurred as some facilities still rely on
centralized networks which can only be
accessed from the pharmacy floor or the
back office. These bulky and immobile
systems of the past are becoming
exponentially more difficult to manage.
From staff ID cards to mobile printers
and patient wristbands, the combination
of RFID technologies becoming available
in the Middle East presents incredible
opportunities for healthcare providers,
he adds.
The rapidly changing technology
landscape in the healthcare sector,
especially the transition to EHRs, isstressing existing networks. Industry
experts point out a medical-grade
network that can guarantee continuous
high performance is the need of the hour.
At the same time, high performance
needs to be matched with high security.
Confidential patient information is
among the most sensitive data that exists,
and, in most jurisdictions, is subject
to a host of legislative and regulatory
controls, sums up Ahmar.
Ali Ahmar, Regional Sales Manager, Brocade CommunicationsWael Hasan, Territory Manager MiddleEast, Zebra Technologies
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
32/48www.newkwdme.m32 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
Todays existing state-o-the art wireless LAN canachieve 300 Mbps using 802.11n with two spatialstreams. Future developments will deliver three-and our-stream speeds o up to 600 Mbps. Butthe 802.11 working group has set its sights on amore ambitious milestone: 1 Gbps throughput.
Toward a Gigabit
Wi-Fi nirvanaA
fter considering several
approaches for getting
to gigabit speeds, the
802.11 WG settled on two related
approaches, and formed two task
groups to produce future gigabit
standards: 802.11ac and 802.11ad.
While both groups share the same
goal, the approaches taken are
ehupde
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
33/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
different because the groups have
fundamentally different purposes.
Fundamentally, all wireless LAN
standards depend on access to radio
spectrum. 802.11ac will be designed
for use at frequencies under 6 GHz,
which in practice refers to the
existing radio spectrum available
today in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands
used by 802.11a/b/g/n. Therefore, an
important component of the work
in Task Group AC will be to design
backward-compatibility mechanisms
to peacefully coexist with existing
networks.
Higher data rates in 802.11ac
are supported by a set of familiar
techniques. Once again, the speed
will be supported by well-understood
OFDM techniques, another bump
up in the size of radio channels,
and MIMO. Advances in both chip
manufacturing technology and
processing power have also made it
possible to use more sensitive coding
techniques that depend on finer
distinctions in the received signal
as well as more aggressive error
correction codes that use fewer check
bits for the same amount of data.
Wider radio channels support
higher speeds. Just as 802.11n
provided a leap in speed by doubling
channel width from 20 MHz to 40
MHz, 802.11ac provides a bump inthroughput with still-wider 80 MHz
channels. At 80 MHz, channel layout
once again becomes a challenge,
even in the relatively expansive 5
GHz spectrum. Manufacturers will
need to adapt automatic radio tuning
capabilities to offer higher-bandwidth
channels only where necessary to
conserve spectrum.
Increasing data rates through
efficiency is an important goal of
every new 802.11 standard. One
common measure of efficiency is the
number of megabits transmitted per
megahertz of spectrum (Mbps/MHz).
802.11 began life at 0.1 Mbps/MHz,
and current 802.11n standards have
pushed that figure to 7.5 Mbps/MHz.
Several efficiency enhancements are
on the drawing board for 802.11ac,
and the most interesting of these is
multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO).
MU-MIMO builds on the
beamforming capabilities of 802.11n
and enables the simultaneous
transmission of different data frames
to different clients. Correctly using
MU-MIMO requires that vendors
develop spatial awareness of
clients and sophisticated queuing
systems that can take advantage of
opportunities to transmit to multiple
clients when conditions are right.
802.11ad has the same gigabit
goal, but is intended for use with
new spectrum around 60 GHz to
use. Range will be shorter, but the
spectrum is cleaner because many
fewer devices use it today. The open
spectral band is large enough that
the current 802.11ad draft supports
nearly 7 Gbps throughput.
The higher data rates of
802.11ac and 802.11ad will have
far-reaching influences into other
areas of the protocol. CCMP, theexisting encryption protocol first
The higher datarates of 802.11acand 802.11ad
will have far-reachinginfluences into other areasof the protocol.
standardized in 802.11i, requires
two AES encryption operations for
every 16 bytes of data. To encrypt a
1,500-byte frame requires roughly
200 AES encryption operations. To
make matters worse, CCMP is based
on a chained mode of operation
that requires in-order processing of
the 16-byte chunks because chained
cryptographic modes require the
output of one stage to be used as the
input to the next. Many engineers
within the 802.11 working group
expect that the high data rates of
802.11ac and 802.11ad will be too
high for CCMP.
Fortunately, a solution is readily
available in the form of the Galois/
Counter Mode Protocol (GCMP),
which has been incorporated into
the 802.11ad draft. GCMP uses the
same AES cryptographic engine,
but embeds it into a more efficient
framework. Compared with CCMP,
GCMP requires only half the number
of encryption operations, and, more
importantly, is not chained so that
GCMP cryptographic acceleration can
be applied to an entire transmitted
frame in parallel. The downside of
the adoption of GCMP is that it is a
new protocol and will only become
available in new radio chips that
support it, and an entire generation
of centralized cryptographicequipment, such as the security
processors in WLAN controllers, will
become obsolete.
As with every jump in speed that
has occurred in Wi-Fi, 802.11ac and
802.11ad present challenges for the
network administrator. The move
to gigabit Wi-Fi is needed to keep
up with demand for Wi-Fi network
capacity and enable Wi-Fi to remain
the technology of choice at the edge.
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
34/48
feue |VDI
Cost-saving technologies remain a priority or IT in 2011 and virtual desktopinrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one o the
technologies at the top o the list.
Best practices formaximising VDI success
on network performance, understanding
the difference between LAN, WAN and
VPN activity is critical to project success.
How VDI affects the network
VDI pilots often stall when employees start
accessing their desktops via WAN, VPN
With VDI, IT administrators
can managedesktops and
applications from a centralized
location, eliminating the need to physically
touch and update every single desktop.
This, in turn, enables faster provisioning
and deployment - a framework that is
especially attractive for rapidly expanding
computing environments. End users also
benefit, gaining the ability to seamlessly
access critical applications from any
location with a myriad of devices.
So whats the catch? Why do VDI pilots
fail? As the computing landscape has
changed, so have user expectations. With
mobile and ubiquitous computing fast
becoming the norm for most corporations,
end users dont tolerate availability or
performance problems. In fact, end user
satisfaction has been identified as the No.1
factor in determining success of any VDI
pilot/proof of concept (POC). If the plan
includes thousands of desktops, ensuring
the first hundred users happiness is criticalto satisfying the next hundred, and so on.
The network is key to VDI satisfaction,
being the conduit by which the virtual
desktop continuously feeds the VDI
client desktop activity. This video feed
paints the monitors screen via a desktop
presentation protocol, such as PCoIP, ICA
or RDP. When the visual display depends
www.newkwdme.m34 Newk Wd Mdde E March 2011
8/6/2019 Network World Middle East - March 2011
35/48March 2011Newk Wd Mdde E
and other lower speed links. On the LAN,
contention
Recommended