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

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Service2Media, the global provider of Advanced App Solutions, is celebrating the opening of its Dubai office during GITEX and aims to further penetrate into one of the world’s fastest emerging and investment ready app services markets. Headed by Geert Kolthof, CEO and Lisette Sens, Vice President-Sales and co-founder of Service2Media, the Dubai office will focus on supporting existing clients such as CNN, Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Media Company, including building an attractive new market presence in the Middle East market, strengthening Service2Media’s position in the region. Service2Media’s efforts in Middle East will be led by Khaldoon Mereb as the regional sales manager. He has an extensive experience in the technology market in the UAE.

LTE training WHAT’S INSIDE

The next big IT thing?

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Etisalat Academy, a major provider of training and development solutions in the Middle East, has introduced the first certified LTE programme in the Middle East in partnership with Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies at GITEX.According to representatives of the

two companies, the programme is aimed to developing a local pool of skilled and certified professionals who understand all the elements surrounding the commercialisation, operation, maintenance, planning and optimisation of LTE .

VENDOR FOCUS

IBM study reveals growing challenges for CMOs in this digital era

How to deal with a PR disasterBad PR is a reality for all businesses at some point or the other.

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With millions of users already onboard and a flood of interest from small businesses to giant corporations, revenue for desktop virtualisation is expected to jump to USD 65 billion in under two years, according to Gartner.

UAE-based Zero Technologies’ recently launched ‘zero client’ is a new type of server-based computer system, offering a viable alternative to the traditional PC. Incorporating technology developed by the US pioneer in the field, Pano Logic, the system only requires a traditional keyboard, a mouse and a display unit and enables consumers to access and store data on a central server located anywhere in the world.

“The sharp increase in customer interest is the result of a striking surge in demand. People are becoming more aware of trends in the market, and with desktop virtualization, they are realizing that they can vastly improve their desktop management capabilities and reduce energy wastage,” said Sherif Hamed, Founder and CEO, Zero Technologies.

“Zero Technologies’ pioneering work in this area will establish the Middle East as a major player in the computing market. Customers will be able to operate more efficiently, flexibly, and reliably, making desktop virtualisation an extremely attractive alternative to any desktop PC currently available.”

According to Gartner the desktop virtualisation market will accelerate through 2013 to reach 49 million units with revenue share growing to around 40% of the worldwide professional PC market.

It estimates that approximately 15% of current worldwide traditional professional desktop PCs will migrate to desktop virtualisation by 2014, equal to about 66 million connected devices.

By taking the need for things like virus protection, firewalls, and software updates out of the equation, the benefits of ‘zero client’ are immediately apparent. Computing infrastructure and maintenance costs are also dramatically reduced and energy consumption is slashed by 95%when compared to a PC.

The next big IT thing?4 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

David Brennan, GM, Etisalat Academy believes that the LTE certification program will give industry professionals “access to the right expertise and resources needed to leverage a robust 4G LTE telecom infrastructure”.

The programme, based on Huawei’s platform, ranges across lecture sessions and e-learning modules in addition to practical sessions.

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) confirms that 174 firm commercial LTE network deployments are in progress or planned in 64 countries, including 28 networks that have commercially launched. A further 63 operators in 21 additional countries are engaged in LTE technology trials, tests or studies.

The Etisalat Group has already announced the launch of the two most recent commercial networks in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and many other countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia are planning to introduce 4G mobile broadband technology in 2012 and beyond.

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IBM study reveals growing challenges for CMOs in a digital eraA new IBM study of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers from 64 countries and 19 industries reveals that the majority of the world’s top marketing executives recognise a critical and permanent shift occurring in the way they engage with their customers, but question whether their marketing organisations are prepared to manage the change.

At the same time, the research shows that the measures used to evaluate marketing are changing. Nearly two-thirds of CMOs think return on marketing investment will be the primary measure of the marketing function’s effectiveness by 2015, the survey found. But even among the most successful enterprises, half of all CMOs feel insufficiently prepared to provide hard numbers.

And most of these executives – responsible for the integrated marketing of their organisation’s products, services and brand reputations – said they lack significant influence in key areas such as product development, pricing and selection of sales channels.

The IBM study found that while 82% of CMOs said they plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years, only 26% are currently tracking blogs, 42% are tracking third party reviews and 48% are tracking consumer reviews to help shape their marketing strategies.

“The inflection point created by social media represents a permanent change in the nature of customer relationships,” said Carolyn Heller Baird, CRM research lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value and the global director of the study. “Approximately 90% of all the real-time information being created today is unstructured data. CMOs who successfully harness this new source of insight will be in a strong position to increase revenues, reinvent their customer relationships and build new brand value.”

Customers are sharing their experiences widely online, giving

them more control and influence over brands. This shift in the balance of power from organisations to their customers requires new marketing approaches, tools and skills in order to stay competitive, analysts believed.

CMOs are aware of this changing landscape, but are struggling to respond. More than 50% of CMOs think they are underprepared to manage key market forces – from social media to greater customer collaboration and influence – indicating that they will have to make fundamental changes to traditional methods of brand and product marketing.

Baird likened marketers who underestimate the impact of social media to those who were slow to view the Internet as a new and powerful platform for commerce. Marketers who establish a culture receptive to deriving insight from social media will

be far better prepared to anticipate future shifts in markets and technology, according to him.

While they identify customer intimacy as a top priority, and recognised the impact of real-time data supplementing traditional methods of channel marketing and gathering market feedback, most CMOs said they remain mired in 20th century approaches. 80% or more of the CMOs surveyed are still focusing primarily on traditional sources of information such as market research and competitive benchmarking, and 68% rely on sales campaign analysis to make strategic decisions.

Today’s CMOs have to cover more ground than ever before. They have to manage more data from disparate sources, understand and engage with

more empowered customers, adopt and adapt to more sophisticated tools and technologies – while being more financially accountable to their organisations.

In fact, 63% of CMOs believed that return on investment (ROI) on marketing spend will be the most important measure of their success by 2015. However, only 44% feel fully prepared to be held accountable for marketing ROI.

Most CMOs have not traditionally

been expected to provide hard financial evidence of their ROI. But given the current economic volatility and pressure to be profitable, organisations can no longer afford to write a blank check for their marketing initiatives. CMOs recognise they now need to quantify the value they bring to the business, be it from investing in advertising, new technologies or any other activity.

This increasing emphasis on ROI also reflects the scrutiny the marketing function is currently attracting, itself a reflection of the function’s growing prominence, analysts said. Today’s CMOs are in much the same position as chief financial officers (CFOs) were a decade ago, when the CFO’s role was evolving from guardian of the purse strings to strategic business adviser, IBM researchers added.

When asked which attributes they will need to be personally successful over the next three to five years, only 28% said technological competence, 25% said social media expertise and 16% said financial acumen.

Longside the latest N9 handset featuring Near Field Communications (NFC) handset technologies as seen by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai on hios visiot to GITEX, Nokia has shown its dedication to the developer community in both the UAE and the region through a series of activities and competitions at this year’s GITEX.

Following on from the success of its Ramadan application campaign that saw over one million downloads from around the region during the holy month, Nokia has amplified its developer strategy to encourage app developers to partner with Nokia and give them the expert counsel, and financial support they require to bring fantastic app ideas to fruition. As part of these initiatives, Nokia will be conducting free of charge developer training workshop on its apps development frame work with a focus on its newly launched Nokia N9 smartphone and the latest Near Field Communications (NFC) offering.

Praveen Prabhakaran, Marketing Solutions Manager, Nokia Lower Gulf, said: “With the application and developer ecosystem expanding at such a rate, Nokia is keen to ensure young and burgeoning talent is given the best chance to succeed in this dynamic environment.”

VENDOR FOCUS

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Paramount – The regional leader in Information Security

www.paramountassure.com

Suite 102, Building No 1, Dubai Internet City

P.O Box 25703,Dubai, UAETel: 971-4-3918600

Email: puja@pcsuae.com

www.maxxcomgulf.com

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

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

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How to deal with a PR disaster

No business, big or small, is immune to some form of bad PR at some point during their existence; it’s the way of life, it’s part of growing up – like your first crush or the clothes that your mum insisted on making you wear for all family photographs, much to your embarrassment.

But, just like with those experiences, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the business has done something wrong or made a bad choice of PR partner or some poor decisions; it may just have been the target of a disgruntled ex-employee with an axe to grind or, at the other end of the scale, be a victim of leaked confidential information through unforeseen circumstances. Media, wherever you are in the world, will be keen to cover your company’s embarrassing moment as, more often than not, bad news gets more column inches!

So now that you have come to terms with the inevitability of varying degrees of bad PR in the future, the best and most effective approach is to focus on how you will handle this and, even better, turn it around, use it to your advantage or neutralise it. (Just think about that awful outfit and the wonders of Photoshop, or tell everyone it was all the rage that year.)

What ifEvery company needs to have a

crisis management plan in place to deal with any possible scenarios – all potential “what ifs” should to be covered.

You will need to deal with the situation or issue head on rather than go into denial. No comment means getting nowhere, except into even more hot water. When you are seen to be facing up to your issues, remorseful, accepting of the facts and dealing with what went wrong, you will be looked upon with respect; in fact people who may have never wanted

to buy your products, use your services or visit your premises may become your best customers!

To ignore what’s going on, to bury your organisation’s head in the sand or, even worse, refuse to deal with the media who, at first, criticised you is the worst possible path as it will inevitably send the wrong signal to people who will then come up with their own conclusions, whether you are innocent or not. Remember, in this new and exciting digital age we are on show all the time and people can talk about us all the time and do this in very public domains.

Monitor closely what is being said about your company on the Internet as, after all, it’s a 24/7 medium that the whole world has access to. This is pretty straightforward and you can use a wide range of tools that monitor and report every time you are mentioned.

Engage with your audience and the media and rebuild, refresh or renew your relationship with them through different platforms including social media. You need to be seen as approachable and not hiding anything. A company going through a crisis, big or small, should ensure that its key spokespeople are on standby, have a grasp of the entire picture

and know how to convey the key messaging in a factual and informative manner – honestly, openly and, when necessary, with humility.

Whatever you do, make sure that anything you communicate or commit to, you deliver on as otherwise you will be the victim of even worse publicity. It’s like those photos of you in cringe-worthy outfits – they may not be flattering, but they are of you, so deal with it and make the best of it.

Good luck...

Bad PR is a reality for all businesses at some point or the other. The genius is in how you face up to it and turn it around, says Sawsan Ghanem, MD, Active Public Relations & Marketing Communications Consultancy.

Sawsan Ghanem is the Joint Managing Director of Active PR. She has lived in the Middle East region for the greater part of her life. Sawsan lived and studied in the UK for a few years where she gained her BSc in Chemistry & Management from Kings College, London University and MA in International Business, from Webster Graduate School (London Campus). She began her career in PR over 14 years ago and founded Active PR in 2003 along with Louay Al Samarrai. Sawsan has in-depth experience in strategic PR campaigns, media relations, creative thinking, crisis management and more.

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“The solution is simple; users must take their security into their own hands by being smart and safe when they are connected. As cybercriminals work on new and varied methods to target victims it is of fundamental importance that users in the UAE protect themselves with a cautious approach to online activity and comprehensive security solutions for all devices they might use to access the Internet.”

Getting accessLogin People, the Digital DNA technology software editor, which provides innovative access control solutions to private and public networks, has appeared at GITEX.

The company supplies an innovative strong authentication solution in order to secure the access of users to public and private networks such as Extranet, VPN SSL, Web-based mail, etc. The technology allows users to authenticate themselves with “what they know” (a PIN code) and “what they own” (their own equipment such as their computer, smartphone or USB key). The user chooses the equipment he wishes to use for

authentication. Login People provides a technological answer to the weakness of the “Login / Password” and solves the issues related to identity theft, password sharing and personal or sensitive data theft on every network. The company is looking for integrators and resellers in the field of strong authentication for banking industry, healthcare industry and B2B Internet services.

VENDOR FOCUSIndian company Shyam Networks, which manufactures networking, telecoms and security equipment, is preparing to launch a base in the UAE.

The company already has offices in the region which are based in Algeria, Morocco and South Africa. According to Ravi Ailawadhi, CEO of Shyam Networks the UAE is an important location for the company and the soon to be opened office may just become the head quarters for the company’s Middle East and Africa operations.

Ailawadhi mentioned that mentioned that the office should be open by April 2012 and Shyam may also open a local manufacturing unit later.

“Let us see how the business grows. If it lets us sustain local manufacturing, I will be the first person to go for it,” he stated.

While at GITEX, the company is highlighting its point to point, point to multi-point, security and surveillance products as well as Wi-Fi offload.

my GITEX

“We are a distribution company for IT hardware and accessories and are here to showcase new products in each brand we represent at GITEX. This time, we have had a quality crowd visit our stand which is good for business. We were not expecting such a huge response and I would say it has improved since last year. GITEX is great because it is a platform for us to meet different customers and partners from various countries in a single place.”

Ramesh Belani, MD, Maxtouch

TE Data uses IXIA to validate mpls network and services throughout Egypt and JordanCALABASAS, CA, (Oct 13, 2011) – Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), a leading, global provider of converged network testing solutions, today announced its Egyptian partner Medsciences was awarded the contract to supply 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) IP test solutions to TE Data – the data communications and Internet arm Telecom Egypt. TE Data uses Ixia’s IxNetwork and IxLoad to validate the performance of its MPLS control plan, and ensures services are not impaired when transported over the MPLS network. TE Data recently extended the Ixia solution to include 10GE emulation capability for testing 10GE MPLS in the network core.

“We needed a solution that can emulate the control and data plane as comprehensively as possible, and we need comprehensive local support in Egypt. This is vital if we are to achieve world-class customer quality of service (QoS). Our customers

are crucial to the revenue and profitability of our IP services, and in a competitive environment such as Egypt, it’s important we identify problems with new infrastructure before we release it to our customers,” said Tamer Gad Allah, TE Data’s Managing Director.

TE Data – a comprehensive telecommunications provider offering world-class data services to individuals, enterprises, ISPs, content providers, and mobile operators – has a reputation for launching the right service in the right market at the right time. TE Data maintains a reputation of providing reliable, robust, and outage-free service to its customers. In order to achieve this goal, TE Data needs to ensure as the network and services evolve, that they are thoroughly tested during deployment to ensure any issues are identified before release to the mass market.

“The MEA region is going through

explosive growth in the delivery of IP-based, value-added services. Successfully deploying and delivering services requires comprehensive verification tools to test new infrastructure and services before they are deployed, while continuously monitoring both QoS and QoE. Ixia’s solutions assist service providers such as TE Data in proactively validating their networks and services both pre- and post- deployment,” said Chris Mlynarczyk, general manager of Ixia Middle East Africa. “Delivering high quality data services is the bread and butter of service providers in the region. Ixia’s test solutions are specifically designed to help service providers emulate end-to-end IP/MPLS control plane and multiplay services, across multiple IP interfaces, from 100MB to 100GE. In so doing, we help to reduce the time to deploy new infrastructure and services for our service provider customers.”

Tamim Taufiq, Head of Consumer Sales MENA, Symantec.

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