Network World Middle East

www.networkworldme.com | Issue 147 | June 2011

HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU WITH

THE ISSUE OF SECURITY IN A VIRTUALISED

ENVIRONMENT?

PUBL

ICAT

ION

LIC

ENSE

D B

Y TH

E IN

TERN

ATIO

NAL

MED

IA P

ROD

UCTI

ON

ZO

NE,

DUB

AI T

ECHN

OLO

GY A

ND

MED

IA F

REE

ZON

E AU

THO

RITY

PLUS: GREEN IT | CLOUD COMPUTING | DATA CENTRE | VIRTUALISATION | IP SURVEILLANCE

ULTIMATE UC EXPERIENCEFROM THE ULTIMATE UC LEADER—POLYCOM. It’s the latest buzz. Polycom is the world leader in Unified Communications. That’s because only Polycom

offers a total communications solution—one that will work for you today and grow with you as your

business evolves. It’s because our products are best-in-class and backed by Polycom’s history as an

industry innovator. Oh, and we’re the only provider of collaboration solutions built on open, standards-

based architecture.

Increase your productivity even as you reduce your costs and lower your carbon footprint with Polycom.

Transform your business. theartofconversation.com

©2

01

0 P

olycom, Inc.

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

Polycom - Start UC.pdf 1 3/31/2011 11:54:29 AM

22

28

COVER STORY

contents COMMENT04 Each to their own

BITS06 GlobalFoundries to construct Abu Dhabi

plant next year

07 Intel gears up for growth

08 du completes LTE trial

10 Ericsson launches eco-friendly mobile

site in Egypt

TREND ANALYSIS14 Brocade fleshes out cloud strategy

IN ACTION16 In prime health: Sheikh Khalifa Medical City

is a case in point as to how UC and

collaboration can help save money, streamline

productivity and enhance customer service

18 Ready for crisis: SHUUA Capital has made its

IT systems resilient by putting in place a DR

plan to counter business disruptions

FEATURE26 Watch your business: The advent and rise

of high-definition video surveillance

28 The green mandate: Energy efficiency is no

longer an afterthought – it is a key

consideration for any IT manager

EVENT REPORT30 Cloud Leadership Forum: Advancing cloud

adoption

INTERVIEW40 Dealing with risk: Paramount Computer

System CEO on the some of the burning

issues related to security

TEST 46 Force10 data centre switch delivers

impressive performance

NEW PRODUCTS48 A guide to some of the new products

in the market

LAYER 850 All the news that’s fit for nothing

Virtualisation securityHow concerned are you with the security of

your virtualised environment?

ISSUE 147 | JUNE 2011

Quick Finder

Page 6-26GlobalFoundries, HP, Cisco, Intel, Huawei, Ericsson, EMC, Injazat Data Systems, Brocade, HP TippingPoint, Trend Micro, VMware, helpAG, Sony Professional Solutions, Axis Communications

Page 26-52Cisco, Juniper Networks, Commvault, 3i Infotech, Paramount Computer Systems, Brocade, Force10, APC, EMC, RSA, Blue Coat, Sony, HP, Sophos

14

www.networkworldme.com4 Network World Middle East June 2011

EDITORIAL

Each to their own

Jeevan ThankappanSenior [email protected]

PublisherDominic De Sousa

COONadeem Hood

Commercial DirectorRichard Judd

[email protected] +971 4 440 9126

Sales DirectorRaz Islam


EDITORIAL

Dave [email protected] +971 4 440 9106

Senior EditorJeevan Thankappan


ADVERTISING

Group Sales ManagerRajashree R Kumar


Sales ManagerSean Rutherford


CIO PROGRAMMES

CIO Programmes and Events LeadKavitha Rajasekhar


MARKETING AND CIRCULATION

Database and Circulation ManagerRajeesh M


PRODUCTION AND DESIGN

Production ManagerJames P Tharian


DesignerFroilan A. Cosgafa IV


DIGITALwww.networkworldme.com

Digital Services ManagerTristan Troy Maagma

Web DevelopersJerus King Bation

Erik BrionesJefferson de Joya

Louie Alma


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 byPrintwell Printing Press LLC

Regional partner of

© Copyright 2011 CPIAll rights reserved

While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they

will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

Has cloud computing reached its absolute peak in terms of

hype? The topic makes for animated discussions at technology

seminars these days and the hype seems to have reached a

crescendo, making it really difficult to separate fact from

fiction. You know it’s trouble when a technology has more

than 20 definitions and means different things to different

people. A month back, I’d the opportunity to talk to some of

the high-profile CIOs from the region at a summit in Doha

about cloud and whether it is really on their list of priorities

this year. Despite all the hype and hoopla, CIOs look askance

at this new technology, which promises to revolutionise the

way we deliver and consume IT resources. There are many reasons why they are skeptical

and said an emphatic no to the public cloud model. Not many are comfortable with the

idea of sending their sensitive data beyond national boundaries and many cloud service

providers still seem to be clueless about security. Regulatory issues, which are unique to

the region, further compound the problem. Some of them who have put some applications

on the cloud were even forced to take it back in-house because it didn’t work out really

well. As one CIO told me, it costs around $55-60 for hosting e-mail on cloud but the

same would cost around $45 if provisioned internally. I guess the biggest stumbling block

to public cloud at the moment is the lack of economies of scale. Having said that, I must

hasten to add that private cloud is indeed gaining traction in the region thanks to the

onslaught of virtualisation into data centres. But the real question is there any single

vendor out there who can provide all the software required to build a private cloud, which

entails virtualisation spanning across servers, storage and networks, with a great deal of

automation and orchestration. I am afraid the answer would be ‘no’, though vendors are

increasingly creating their own definitions of private cloud to fit their product sets. So, are

you ready for the bumpy ride?

NOT YOUR COPY?If you’d like to receive your own copy of NWME every month. Just log on and request a subscription: www.networkworldme.com

www.networkworldme.com | Issue 147 | June 2011

HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU WITH THE ISSUE OF SECURITY IN A VIRTUALISED ENVIRONMENT?

PUBL

ICAT

ION

LIC

ENSE

D B

Y TH

E IN

TERN

ATIO

NAL

MED

IA P

ROD

UCTI

ON

ZO

NE,

DUB

AI T

ECHN

OLO

GY A

ND

MED

IA F

REE

ZON

E AU

THO

RITY

PLUS: GREEN IT | CLOUD COMPUTING | DATA CENTRE | VIRTUALISATION | IP SURVEILLANCE

Schneider Electric makes the connections

> Cooling

> Power

> Management

> Rack Systems> Physical Security

> Services

Maximum efficiency and availability from rack to row to room to building Making the connection between IT and facilitiesWith today’s technology challenges, Schneider Electric™ understands that data centres must be viewed as interconnected environments—from rack to row to room to building. We call this integration the data centre physical infrastructure, or DCPI. The only clear path to the highest availability and maximum efficiency, DCPI comprises power, cooling, physical security, and rack systems and is monitored and managed via software solutions and professional services.

Making the connection between efficiency and availabilityToday, maximized energy efficiency and guaranteed availability must work hand in hand. So Schneider Electric offers integrated cooling strategies across the DCPI. This hybrid approach delivers true energy savings—but never at the expense of availability. And we further optimize availability and efficiency with an integrated software platform that enables end-to-end monitoring and management of all DCPI domains. This holistic solution provides visibility and interoperability across the DCPI.

Making the connection with key industry partnersData centres can’t be built without constant communication and coordination with vendors and other key players. Only Schneider Electric has the consulting and services network, personal relationships, and real-world experience to give you the single point of contact you need to take your integrated data centre from envisioned to online.

Integrated architectures forActive Energy Management™> Power The power domain connects it all – from

generators to UPS units to PDUs – for cross-vendor interoperability.

> Cooling Our highly effi cient integrated solutions combine chillers, perimeter cooling, hot aisle containment, and row-based options to maximize effi ciency and guarantee availability.

> Physical Security Our single-pane view includes access control and surveillance across one or multiple facilities.

> Rack Systems Interconnected, any-IT vendor-compatible rack enclosures, accessories, and air containment solutions support HD processing needs.

> Services Schneider Electric professional services provide one point of contact for data centre planning, building, and operation.

> Management Our exclusive integrated software architecture removes management ‘silos’ for greater energy awareness and effi ciency and higher availability across the entire DCPI.

Try online for the next 30 days for FREE and get a chance to WIN a Lenovo® all-in-one touch screen PC!

Visit www.apc.com/promo Key Code 89343t Call +9714-7099690 (Arabic) / +9714-7099691 (English) • Fax +9714-7099650

©2011 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric, APC, and Active Energy Management are trademarks owned by Schneider Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. APC Middle East, PO Box - 53852, Dubai, United Arab Emirates • 998-2598_GB


bits

Chip manufacturing firm GlobalFoundries

will begin construction of a new

manufacturing plant in Abu Dhabi next

year. Production of chips in the Abu Dhabi

plant will begin in 2015, said Advanced

Technology Investment Company (ATIC),

a part of the Abu Dhabi government’s

Mubadala Development investment arm, in

an e-mailed statement.

Earlier, GlobalFoundries has announced

its intention to open a plant in Abu Dhabi

in the United Arab Emirates, but had not

given a date when it would break ground.

The company has said that market demand

will determine what types of chips to

produce at the plant.

GlobalFoundries is the third largest pure-

TRUE FACT

15%

of enterprises will adopt layered fraud prevention techniques for their internal systems to compensate for weaknesses inherent in using only authentication methods by 2014.Source: Gartner

HP has unveiled products supporting a

new architecture that attempts to unify

enterprise data centre, campus and branch

networks under a common and consistent

operating environment.

HP’s FlexNetwork architecture

is a network-specific subset of HP’s

Converged Infrastructure plan, a

strategy to create virtual pools of server,

storage and networking resources to

run business operations. FlexNetwork

is focused on the network piece of the

Converged Infrastructure.

The FlexNetwork architecture proposes

implementing protocols consistently across

HP counters Cisco with new switches, architecture

all networked devices

throughout an enterprise.

It also proposes consistent

management, securityand

access policies across that

infrastructure.

With the plan, HP

is looking to disrupt

Cisco’s Borderless

Networks strategy, which

essentially proposes

the same thing: Use Cisco equipment

and protocols across all areas of the

enterprise network to gain consistency in

performance and management.

HP, though, claims to adhere more tightly

to standards and multivendor acceptance,

and admonishes competitors like Cisco

for being proprietary and resistant to

multivendor support. HP also claims these

GlobalFoundries to construct Abu Dhabi plant next year

competitors propose different

technologies at different

points in the enterprise

network -- campus data

centre, for example -- which

makes it difficult and costly to

roll out new applications and

services.

“Customers are

looking for vzendors

driving a systemic

change in networking to eliminate

complexity, improve agility and increase

performance,” said Samer Zein, Director

of Networking, HP Middle East. “HP’s new

modular campus switches outperform

Cisco’s in-class products head-to-head in

each category, while HP’s single-pane-of-

glass management tool alone does what it

takes Cisco 30 different tools to do.”

play chip maker by revenue, and owns

factories in the Germany and Singapore.

The company will spend $5.4 billion this

year to expand its factory in New York

state, and is looking to pump in billions

of additional dollars on other factories to

expand manufacturing capacity to meet

the growing demand for chips used in

computing products such as PCs, tablets

and smartphones.

GlobalFoundries began operations

in 2009 when Advanced Micro Devices’

manufacturing arm was spun off.

AMD retains a minority stake in

GlobalFoundries. Speculation about a fab

in Abu Dhabi began in late 2007 when

Mubadala bought an 8.1% stake in AMD for

$622 million.

Samer Zein, Director of Networking, HP Middle East

June 2011 Network World Middle East 7

Intel says its addressable market in

the GCC is growing by three times and

the processor company is realigning its

resources to capture lion’s share of the

market by 2015.

“We are looking an organic growth of

30% year on year and we are trying to

form an integrated marketing approach

by meshing together our channel partners

with our sales force to cash in on the

opportunities in the region,” says Nassir

Nauthoa, GM-Gulf Countries, Intel.

Intel is also eyeing opportunities in

the enterprise market bolstered by its

acquisitions of security company McAfee

and Infineon’s wireless division. During

the first quarter, the company’s server

business has exceeded expectations, and

it has started shipping new Xeon E-series

server chips based on the Sandy Bridge

architecture in April.

Nauthoa says Intel is also bullish about

the opportunities in the cloud computing

space. “We have launched our Cloud 2015

Vision, which has three key elements –

federated, automated and client-aware.

We also have a Cloud Builder programme,

featuring 20 of the world’s leading hardware

and software makers who will commit

resources to spur innovation and make

clouds easier to deploy, use and share.”

Another area of focus would be its Tri-

Gate 3D Transistor technology, which the

company says could make PCs, smartphones

and tablets faster and more power-efficient.

The new chip technology, using the latest

22-nanometer manufacturing technology,

replaces flat, two-dimensional streams of

transistors with a 3D structure. A flat, two-

dimensional planar gate is replaced with

a thin, three-dimensional fin that rises up

vertically from the silicon substrate. The

new chips will start shipping by the end of

this year, says Nauthoa.

Huawei won two awards in recognition

of the company’s achievements in LTE

commercialization and product solutions

at the LTE World Summit 2011. The awards

are: “Significant Progress for a Commercial

Launch of LTE by a Vendor” and “Best LTE

Network Elements”.

As of May 2011, Huawei has deployed

over 100 SingleRAN commercial networks,

which are capable of evolving into LTE,

and of those that have deployed SingleRAN

networks, more than 40 operators have

announced the launch or the imminent

launch of distinct LTE services.

The Ministry of Information and

Communications Technology

announced the signing of a

strategic memorandum of

understanding (MoU) with HP

Jordan to develop common

programs and share expertise

and practices to offer state-of-the

art integrated technologies for

the government organisations

in addition to supporting

professional IT education and

assist in fostering innovation and

entrepreneurship in related fields.

As part of the MoU, HP will

share its expertise with MoICT as

it relates to becoming an Instant-

On Enterprise, an organization

that embeds technology into

everything it does in order to

better address the growing

needs of organisations and

citizens. The joint collaboration

will also explore the potential

development of new areas

in technology to benefit the

education, government and

private sectors, and create jobs/

opportunities for SMEs and

entrepreneurship in the country.

HP launched its fully-

owned subsidiary in Jordan

in January 2010 and has since

made significant progress and

contribution through its social

investment programmes. As part

of an agreement signed with the

Government of Jordan, HP has

created a regional Competency

Centre that has hired university

graduates over a period of one

year to provide technology

services to the wider Middle

East, Mediterranean & Africa

(MEMA) region.

Huawei wins LTE awards

HP inks pact with Jordan ministry

In 2010, Huawei’s LTE eNodeB

shipment was ranked number one in the

world, and Huawei won the “Significant

Progress for a Commercial Launch

of LTE by a Vendor” award at the LTE

Summit 2011, which recognised Huawei’s

endeavors and achievements in the

commercial rollout of LTE.

Huawei’s SingleRAN 5-Band 3-Mode

1-Cabinet solution (BTS 3900L), which

won the “Best LTE Network Elements”

award, leverages a sole cabinet to

support up to three technologies across

five frequency bands, allowing for the

coexistence and interoperability of

GSM/UMTS/LTE networks to make true

convergence a reality and to minimise

costs for operators.

Intel gears up for growth

Nassir Nauthoa, GM-Gulf Countries, Intel


CNET Training has established a route

to achieve professional registration with

The Institution of Engineering and

Technology (The IET) for suitable delegates

who complete its training courses. These

delegates will be provided extra support

by The IET in their preparation to

apply for sought-after global professional

qualifications such as Chartered Engineer

du has completed its first pilot on Long

Term Evolution (LTE) on its mobile

network supporting mobile broadband

speeds upto 150 Mbps. The pilot was

conducted in April 2011. Commercial

launch of LTE services is slated for the

second half of 2011.

This move follows closely on the heels of

du’s launch of the latest 42 Mbps mobile

broadband services, currently the fastest in

the country, after having recently upgraded

its network to next-generation DC-HSPA+

technology. This initiative is part of du’s

long-term initiative to constantly develop

and bring unmatched user experiences to

the telecom sector.

The company collaborates with well-

known telecom solutions providers and

is conducting pilots with technology

and network partners to evaluate the

different LTE solutions and their

du completes LTE trial

compatibility on its network. During

the pilot, du’s network team successfully

completed the first LTE call on its

network achieving mobile broadband

speeds of upto 150 Mbps download and

50 Mbps upload speeds.

bits

CNet teams up with the IET

(CEng), Incorporated Engineer (IEng),

ICTTech and EngTech.

Those attending and successfully

completing CNet’s Certified Data Centre

Design Professional (CDCDP), Certified

Data Centre Management Professional

(CDCMP) or Certified Data Centre

Technician (CDCT) training courses will

have the opportunity to submit their CV,

via CNET to establish their personal route

towards professional registration. This is

in addition to the existing BTEC Level

5 Professional Award qualifications for

CDCDP and CDCMP and the Level 3

BTEC Advanced Award for CDCT awarded,

which support their programme of continual

professional development.

Keith Richardson, Area Manager at the

IET added, “Professional registration with

The IET is an important milestone in

the career of any engineer or technologist.

It demonstrates their proven knowledge,

understanding and competence. In

particular, registration shows peers

“Mobile broadband is increasingly

gaining traction and we are proud to be one

of the early operators in the world to begin

trials of LTE – arguably one of the most

cutting-edge telecom technologies, also

referred to as 4G. At du, we are constantly

exploring new opportunities and pushing

the boundaries, so that our customers

benefit from some of the most innovative

services available in the world,” said Farid

Faraidooni, Chief Commercial Officer, du.

“Technology evolves continuously and

today we are excited about LTE and

what it can do to enhance the broadband

experience of our customers. We are

committed to bring the latest technology to

the UAE and be among the early adopters

of the latest advances in communication

technologies. We are in the process of

selecting and cooperating with the right

partners, to enable our customers to be

among the first users of LTE in the world,”

added Hatem Bamatraf, Senior Vice

President, Network Development, du.

and employers that the engineer has

demonstrated a strong commitment to

professional standards and a professional

approach to their work.”

Andrew Stevens, CNet Training’s

Managing Director adds, “We are

thrilled at the popularity of our data

centre programmes and have delivered

them quite literally across the globe.

Our development team is constantly

working to ensure that the Global Data

Centre Education Framework reflects

the very latest technological advances,

creating add-on modules such as the

latest for energy efficiency. We also try

to ensure that the framework provides

delegates with even more opportunities,

and our collaboration with The IET is

the perfect example. It is fantastic news

for CNet data centre delegates who can

now gain extra support in obtaining yet

another industry and internationally

recognised qualification to their

professional portfolio.”

Andrew Stevens, CNet Training’s Managing Director


C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

nest ad for print.pdf 6/2/11 4:19:15 PM


bits

Injazat signs deal with MOE The UAE Ministry of Education

(MOE) and Injazat Data Systems, the

UAE’s leading IT services company,

have signed a technical support

agreement covering the provision

of IT Helpdesk Support services to

the Ministry’s Bureaus in Dubai and

Abu Dhabi as well as the educational

districts and public schools of Dubai

and the Northern Emirates.

Under the terms of the

agreement, Injazat will deliver

support services for the Ministry

Headquarters in Abu Dhabi and

Dubai, MOE depositories and

branches, offices in the educational

districts and training centres, as well

as all 421 public schools in Dubai

and the Northern Emirates.

The services will be provided

at all levels and in various fields

including technical support, anti-

viruses, periodic maintenance for

computers, local network services

for future schools and assistance

to the Ministry’s e-service staff.

Only authorised persons including

Ministry employees in Dubai and

Abu Dhabi, office employees in

educational districts and training

centers, and three designated

employees in every public school

may contact the IT Helpdesk

Support office.

EMC has unveiled a purpose-built

appliance for processing both structured

and unstructured data sets for business

analytics tasks.

EMC has also announced the availability

of two new business intelligence software

products -- the Hadoop-based EMC

Greenplum HD Community and Enterprise

Editions -- at its EMC World user conference.

Service contracts for both software

products includes installation, training and

global technical support. The Greenplum

HD Community Edition is a fully-certified

downloadable free software stack. The

software is based on Hadoop, an Apache data

management software, and is optimised to run

on virtual machines.

Greenplum HD Enterprise Edition is

tailored for corporate data centres, with

capabilities like fault tolerance through

EMC unveils Hadoop appliance, BI software

automated node failure detection and

notification, multi-site management and data

management features such as snapshots and

wide area replication.

It also offers simple data loading from

databases and access via a native Network

File System (NFS) interface. Along

with its new software products, EMC

introduced an updated Greenplum Data

Computing Appliance that runs Hadoop

for easy installation of the business

intelligence technology.

The new Greenplum HD Data Computing

Appliance is built on top of Intel X86 servers

and it uses both a structured database built

by Greenplum, which EMC acquired last

year and the Apache open-source version of

Hadoop. The older version of the appliance is

based on Sun Fire x64-based servers.

EMC claims its version of Hadoop

delivers two to five times the performance

over the standard packaged versions of

Apache Hadoop.

the telecommunications landscape with

its innovative technology and designs.

Around the world our colleagues are actively

engaged in addressing global sustainability

and corporate responsibility needs at the local

level, working together with local stakeholders

to create solutions that benefit communication

for all, a low-carbon economy and reduced

environmental impact,” said Carlo Alloni,

Ericsson’s President of North East Africa.

“Through innovations such as the Ericsson

Tower Tube, we hope to lead the transition

to a low-carbon economy and decrease CO2

emissions regionally and globally.”

Ericsson developed this technology to allow

for faster and more cost-effective operations

in which feeders are no longer required.

All equipment is safely encapsulated at the

top of the tower where Radio Base Stations

Ericsson has launched its air-cooled

sustainable Tower Tube technology in

Egypt, a new environmentally friendly

solution replacing the traditional mobile

sites. The Tower Tube technology will

support local operators in their efforts to

reduce costs and provide them with more

energy-efficient solutions while offering

creative and pleasing design.

The Tower Tubes use air flow inside the

tube to cool equipment located at the top

of the tower, therefore, the reduced energy

expenditure means that the environmental

impact of a Tower Tube is significantly less

than a traditional site. In addition, the

towers take up less space on the ground,

saving land space and further reducing

costs for local operators.

“Ericsson has always strived to redefine

(RBS) are

strategically

positioned and

elevated to

reduce

feeder loss

and operation

costs while also

improving operators’

coverage and capacity of reach.

Ericsson launches eco-friendly mobile site in Egypt

828516510414363 355334321310

Your Reliable Technology Partner

Steady Growth

www.mds.ae

www.networkworldme.com12 Network World Middle East June 2011 www.networkworldme.com

bitsGOOD BAD

Server sales upWorldwide server shipments in the first quarter of 2011 increased 8.5 percent year on year, while revenue increased

17.3 percent, according to a Gartner report. Total server revenue for the period was US$12.6 billion and worldwide shipments were 2.3 million, Gartner said.

The top five server makers worldwide showed sales increases except

for Fujitsu. U.S. vendors claimed four of the five top spots. In order, they are Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu and Oracle.

Inside data theft costs Bank of America $10m

A Bank of America insider who sold customer data to criminals cost the bank at least US$10 million in losses. Bank of America

began notifying customers of the incident recently, but is not providing many details of the case which is still under

investigation. The theft, "involved a now former associate who provided customer information to people outside the bank, who then used the information to commit fraud against our customers," said Bank of America spokeswoman Colleen Haggerty, in an email message.

New Sony hack nabs user dataAnother day, another hack attack against Sony.More than 2000 users of Sony Ericsson's

Canadian Website are impacted by the latest hack attack to hit a battle worn Sony. According to Sony hackers made off with e-mail addresses, passwords and phone numbers–but no credit card details. Sony has now shut down the affected site.

Around 1000 of the stolen records from the Sony Canadian Website are already online, posted by Idahc, a "Lebanese grey-hat hacker". Sony Ericsson is joint mobile phone venture between Sony and Ericsson.

BAD

UGLY

GOODCisco has announced that it will invest

$10 million to seed a sustainable model of

job-creation and economic development

in Jordan. The venture capital investment

will be targeted at small businesses that

provide innovative products, services and

solutions. Cisco also intends to engage

in a multi-stakeholder collaboration to

encourage further investment into the

Jordanian economy from local, regional

and global organisations.

The information and

communications technology (ICT) sector

in Jordan has witnessed significant

growth, going from just 50 companies

in 2002 to more than 450 today. ICT now

comprises more than 14 percent of the

country’s GDP. Cisco is also strategically

partnering with the government of

Jordan to provide thought leadership in

ICT-enabled healthcare solutions. The

kingdom was ranked number one in

the region and fifth in the world as a

medical tourism hub by the World Bank

in 2008.

Cisco to invest $10M in JordanCisco is actively working throughout

MENA to support job creation and

economic growth by building ICT skills

and talent within the workforce as well as

providing greater access to capital and to

educational opportunities. Developing and

addressing the growing skills gap, as well as

creating entrepreneurs and leaders of the

future, is at the forefront of Cisco’s mission

for the MENA region. Cisco has several

initiatives in the region to facilitate this,

including the Cisco Networking Academy.

The Networking Academy is present in

19 countries in the MENA region currently

boasting 70,000 active students 36 percent

of whom are women. The program has

trained 177,000 students since inception.

Today there are 1,800 active instructors and

850 active academies in MENA. In Jordan

there are 21 academies with 50 instructors.

More than 7,600 students have been trained

since the program’s inception of whom 31

percent are women — this represents a 26

percent increase of Networking Academy

students in Jordan year on year.

Marius Haas, who led Hewlett-Packard’s

networking business through the 3Com

acquisition that made it a broader competitor

to Cisco Systems, is leaving the company for

Networking chief Haas leaving HP

investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Haas’ last day will be June 1, and a search

for his replacement is already under way, HP

said in a prepared statement. Bethany Mayer,

vice president of worldwide marketing and

alliances for Enterprise Servers, Storage and

Networking, will become the acting head of

the networking business.

Haas’ departure caps a period of

significant expansion for the HP Networking

Division but also comes after several other

management changes that took place in the

wake of Leo Apotheker’s arrival as CEO.

Last month, HP appointed Martin Homlish,

Apotheker’s former colleague at SAP, as

executive vice president and chief marketing

officer. The company also recently named

Thomas Hogan as the sales, marketing and

strategy chief for its enterprise business and

appointed new regional directors for Asia

Pacific, the Americas and EMEA (Europe,

Middle East and Africa).

Marius Haas

UGLY


Brocade has unveiled its plan for migrating customers to distributed, virtualised, cloud-based data centres,

along with products supporting that plan

Brocade fleshes out cloud strategy

Brocade’s new CloudPlex

framework defines the

components from Brocade

and its partners that are required to

get to what Brocade calls the “Virtual

Enterprise.” Last summer, the company

introduced its Brocade One architecture

that started Brocade down the road of

virtualising data centres. Brocade One

was broader, however, encompassing the

“anywhere access to anything” direction;

CloudPlex attempts to show people how

to get there.

All major switching vendors are

pushing cloud computing visions

and architectures. CloudPlex and its

associated products will go up against

Cisco’s Nexus/FabricPath, Juniper’s

recently unveiled QFabric, Arista’s 7000

series switches and Extensible Operating

System, Avaya’s VENA, Alcatel-Lucent’s

“Application Fluent” switches,

and platforms and proposals from

Enterasys, Extreme and Force10.

The differentiator for Brocade, as

always, is the emphasis on storage

connectivity and resiliency, and

backward compatibility.

Some of the components of

CloudPlex are available today while

others are in development or on

Brocade’s roadmap. The currently

available components are:

• Networks comprised of Ethernet

fabrics and Fibre Channel fabrics

as the CloudPlex foundation. These

would be Brocade’s VDX Ethernet

switches and Fibre Channel SAN

switches, including new 16Gbps SAN

products.

• Multiprotocol fabric adapters for

simplified server I/O consolidation;

Brocade CNAs.

• Application delivery products

-- Brocade ServerIron -- necessary

for balancing network traffic across

trend analysis | brocade


distributed data centres.

Planned components include:

• Integrated, tested and validated

bundles of server, virtualisation,

networking and storage products called

Brocade Virtual Compute Blocks. Brocade

said it will enable its systems partners

and integrators to deliver Virtual

Compute Blocks in pre-bundled, pre-

racked configurations, and supported by

Brocade partners.

• A new platform capable of supporting

a number of IP, SAN and mainframe

extension technologies including virtual

private LAN services (VPLS), Fibre

Channel over IP (FCIP) and FICON.

• An extension of Brocade’s Fabric

ID technology called “Cloud IDs”

that enables isolation and mobility of

VMs for native multi-tenancy cloud

environments.

• A framework for management,

provisioning and integration designed

to promote multi-vendor and system-

to-system interoperability specifically

for cloud environments. These include

Brocade products supporting OpenStack

software for storage, compute and

software-defined networking capabilities

enabled through OpenFlow.

Openness through OpenFlow and

OpenStack may be another differentiator for

Brocade and CloudPlex, some analysts say.

“It’s designed to be much more open,”

says Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group.

“They’re trying to follow the line of

standards. They’re open much more than

anyone in the industry.”

Brocade hopes to open up new sales

opportunities with its newly launched

16Gbps Fibre Channel products it is

also unveiling today. The products are

designed to help enterprises migrate

to private clouds under the CloudPlex

architecture, and include the DCX 8510

Fibre Channel SAN backbone switch

and ancillary switch, adapter and

management products.

The DCX 8510 takes Brocade’s

installed Fibre Channel SAN base -- the

company had a 54% share of the $929

million modular SAN switch market

in 2010, according to Dell’Oro Group

-- from 8Gbps Fibre Channel to 16G.

In addition to doubling the speed, the

switch improves bandwidth utilisation,

supports encryption and enhances

diagnostics, Brocade says.

The DCX 8510 is available in eight-slot

or four-slot chassis models supporting

up to 384 ports of 16 Gbps at line-rate

speeds and 8.2Tbps of chassis bandwidth,

Brocade says. Energy consumption is 0.27

watts/Gbps.

Brocade is also rolling out the 6510

switch, which is designed for server

and desktop virtualisation. It’s a 1RU

device that can be expanded from 24

ports to 48 10G ports, delivering up to

768 Gbps aggregate throughput and

0.14 watts/Gbps.

For servers themselves, Brocade

unveiled the 1860 Fabric Adapter.

The 1860 supports Fibre Channel,

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

and Ethernet connectivity on a single

adapter to consolidate connections

to the LAN and SAN. It supports both

16Gbps for Fibre Channel and 10G

Ethernet connectivity to switches.

For managing the private cloud,

Brocade will roll out Network Advisor

11.1. This release of Brocade’s LAN

and SAN management software

provides improved server adapter

and VM management capabilities,

as well as tighter integration with

wired and wireless Ethernet, and

The differentiator for Brocade, as always, is the emphasis on storage connectivity and resiliency,

and backward compatibility.

SAN environments for cloud-type

interaction with resources.

Network Advisor 11.1 also

features tighter integration with

third-party storage resource

management and data centre

orchestration applications, such as the

EMC Resource Management Suite and

the HP Virtual Connect Enterprise and

Storage Provisioning Managers.

Lastly, Brocade added a new release

of its Fabric OS operating system

to the new hardware. Fabric OS 7.0

offers features designed specifically

to help optimise fabric behaviour

and application performance in

virtualisation and cloud architectures.

Brocade has enhanced congestion

notification and performance

monitoring in the new release.

The new products will be available

later this quarter. Pricing is up to

Brocade OEMs, the company says.

For the public cloud, meanwhile,

Brocade extended and enhanced its

product line for service providers. A two-

port 100G Ethernet module for the MLX

router -- announced last year -- is now

shipping. Brocade will also add an eight-

port 10G blade to the MLX to enable the

router to support 256 wire-speed 10G

ports for cloud service offerings. The

card uses 45% less power than previous

10G cards for the MLX, Brocade says.

Also the company’s NetIron CER edge

router now has software that allows it

to support three times as many IPv4 and

twice as many IPv6 routes as previous

versions, while enhancing MPLS scalability.

Brocade also rolled out a new

managed services switch for the

customer premises. The Brocade 6910

extends wire-speed cloud-based Ethernet

services to the “last mile.” Target

applications for the switch are metro

access for enterprise customers, mobile

backhaul for cellular 4G/LTE, public

safety networks and managed customer

premises devices for the enterprise.


in action: SKMC

Sheikh Khalifa Medical City is a case in point as to how Unified Communications and collaboration can

help save money, streamline productivity and enhance customer service

In prime health

Sheikh Khalifa Medical City,

managed by Cleveland Clinic,

serves as the flagship institution

for SEHA’s (Abu Dhabi Health Services

Comapny) healthcare system. It is

governed by its commitment to practice

modern medicine to the same high

standards as the best medical facilities in

the world. SKMC’s comprehensive health

care services cater to the needs and

priorities of the Abu Dhabi community,

ensuring not only optimal levels of

patient care and satisfaction but also

promoting general health and well-being

through education and awareness.

Sheikh Khalifa Medical City consists of a

568 bed Acute Care Hospital, 14 Outpatient

Specialty Clinics and a Blood Bank, all

accredited by Joint Commission International

(JCI). Additionally, SKMC manages a 125

bed Behavioral Sciences Pavilion, six Family

Medicine Clinics, two Urgent Care Centres

and two Dental Centres located within the

city of Abu Dhabi.

Last year, SKMC was faced with

the need to accommodate growth in

the communication infrastructure for

the enterprise, and also address issues

related to unreliable communications

infrastructure at remote sites. In

addition, the hospital’s IT organisation

was faced with the challenge of

supporting the mobile workforce as

mobility is key to both clinical and support

services. “We had to re-visit a number

of workflows and see if technology can

enhance and streamline it for better

efficiencies,” says Ahmed Yahya.

SKMC implemented a combination

technologies and integration solutions to

achieve these goals. This included Cisco

Unified Communications suite, IP contact

centre, meeting place express for web

and bridge calling, ARC operators console

technology for routing and queuing, SMS

gateway for follow up text messaging/paging

and Nevotek XML and integration services.

“We see innovation being achieved

by integrating multiple systems in the

enterprise to enhance internal processes,

customer satisfaction, data quality, and

accurate data for better decision support

systems. In our case, we integrated the call

centre and main switch board with the

HIS (health care information systems) to

display specific data related to patients for

that area,” says Ahmed Yahya, Director of

IT, SKMC.

Internal call centre

and the main switchboard were

integrated with the hospital’s computer

systems that displayed staff names,

their departments and badge numbers

for faster data entry and routing. “Data

quality was key, as getting both staff data

from Oracle HR and basic information

about patients from Cerner HIS was

critical for success,” says Yahya.

As an operational hospital, the

implementation of the new system

required a structured approach to the

migration from the old Nortel system

to the new system. It had to provide

a commercially proven IP-based

telephony solution that delivered all the

features, reliability and high availability


Ahmed Yahya, Director of IT, SKMC

The implementation of the UC solution has had a significant impact on the productivity of SKMC, and led to huge

reductions in cost.

traditionally

found in

“legacy” TDM

solutions, with

the flexibility of next-

generation IP-enabled services

and applications. Due to the criticality of

the voice traffic, the network needed to be

structured with significant resilience and

redundancy to prevent network outages,

thus the network validation infrastructure

was in scope.

“As result of the planning and

discussions of requirements, we had

multi path redundancies built in every

consolidated network point along with

system failover to critical communication

components. Anticipated growth was also

factored in,” says Yahya.

The implementation of the UC solution

has had a significant impact on the

productivity of

SKMC, and led to

huge reductions

in cost. All sites

including remote

sites are part

of one dialling

plan which

has resulted in

reduced time

to call and cost.

Integration of

systems resulted

in faster routing

and identification

of callers, which

enabled the

hospital to do more work less staff and

also reduced delays in locating and

communicating with other staff members.

Local dial plans across the enterprise

have also resulted in reduction of cost.

“We also eliminated 13 PRI lines at remote

sites. We expect the increase of customer

satisfaction both external and internal

should result in better productivity

efficiencies and volume to the hospital.

SMS patient reminders prior to visit have

resulted in a reduction in our no-show

rates, thus more slots are used for patients

and more staff productivity.”

Better communication devices and

mobility have a tangible impact on SKMC

users. As a result of intelligent routing

and workflow, SKMC is now able to

deliver a more friendly customer service

and data sharing and integration was

enabler in various areas whether its call

flows or system interfaces.

“We believe efficient communications

will result in less

time spent on the

road, meetings, and

paperwork. The less

of these means less

energy waste and tree

conservation,” says Yahya.

• Patient device and service provisioning upon check-in/check-out was achieved with integrating with HIS. • Call Centre integration with HIS to provide better patient experience such as special insurance and VIP routing), and key patient information presented to agent/operator upon incoming calls leading to enhanced customer satisfaction.• Automatic staff billing and cost posting via Oracle integration.• Integrated computer systems with various communication and data sources such as corporate directory, wireless handsets, presence, email calendaring, and one number reach leading to enhanced internal communications.• Various call flows, both clinical and administrative to enhance internal workflows and operations.

Other enhancements achieved were site cost savings, savings from voice bridging, reduction in lost/abandoned calls, faster routing, revised dial plans for targeted broadcastings/calling. SMS integration and automatic patient schedule reminder notifications which resulted in reduction of no-show rates, and enhanced reporting for better analysis.

The UC pay off


in action: DR

SHUAA Capital has made its IT systems resilient by making sure that it has a DR plan to counter

business disruptions

Ready for crisis

A confluence of factors –

challenging economic climate,

greater storage demands, and

natural disasters – is spurring regional

enterprises to address the issues of disaster

recovery and business continuity.

The Dubai-based investment bank

SHUAA Capital has recently done a

complete business impact analysis and

has taken concrete steps from planning

a business case to completing the 24/7

availability tests in the face of large scale

hardware failure or sabotage, facilities

failure or regional natural disaster.

Evaluating its critical application, systems

and network capacity, the firm started work

on a DR for business-IT infrastructure.

“Conventional backup systems and

disaster recovery plans involve data shipping

to recovery site. However in the event of a

disaster, restoring is a cumbersome process.

Keeping in mind with our requirements,

we procured and deployed the best of breed

online network storage as solid foundation

along with DR software solution for all

critical business applications,”

says Sadiq Panjwani, VP –

Head of IT Systems.

SHUAA’s BIA objective was

also to provide reasonable

application performance

for users accessing the

systems running on DR

site. Considering these

requirements, the following

components were included in

the design architecture:

Online Storage (SAN):

With performance being a

key factor for any business

application (Trading activity in our case),

traditional DAS systems do not provide

the level of performance required by

transactional applications; hence we

deployed SAN storage not only for

production systems but also for secondary/

tertiary standby servers in the recovery site.

Server Virtualisation: Agility and

hardware freedom leading to reduced

costs for generally this kind of a project

with unrealised gains is a great blessing

in disguise for all IT industry. This has

been achieved only by virtue of Server

virtualisation technology. SHUAA built

the scalable DR infrastructure based

on virtualisation allowing maximum

utilisation of available resources while

managing direct costs on infrastructure.

WAN Optimiser: A critical component of

the Project with reference to performance

delivery is the WAN optimiser installed

on the production and recovery Site. The

WAN Optimiser serves a dual purpose in the

environment; it allows SHUAA to replicate

and keep in excess of over 5TB of production

data in sync between the two sites.

IP-Connect WAN Link: As lot of data

travels between production and recovery

site, the firm deployed high speed WAN

link using MPLS technology that provides

us low latency and high response time,

which further accelerates data transfer and

application performance for all business

users across the organisation.

In addition to real time failover

capability for our critical applications, we

also replaced our traditional tape backup

system with a state of the art single instance

BRS (backup and recovery) system that

utilises de- duplication technology with

replication to recovery (DR) site.

This new system through de duplication

technology backs up only new data bytes,

hence allowing us to rapidly complete

backup of our entire server set well within

the available time frame. By utilising

industry acknowledged technology and

high class systems, SHUAA was able to

successfully achieve set objectives within the

stipulated time frame of just over two years.

Panjwani says the DR project has

directly translated into enhanced

business efficiencies. “Real Time Failover

to secondary (within the same site) and

tertiary (in DR / Recovery site) standby

server infrastructure allowed us real time

failover with Recovery Time Objective

(RTO) varying between 1 to 3mins – the

later depending on the underlying

application and associated services while

maintaining the near real-time Recovery

Point Objective (RPO). “

Also, server maintenance window has

shrunk drastically, as users can be moved

to secondary standby server, whereby the

production server is serviced within office

hours without any overtime consumption

on IT out of office hours / weekends.

“With high performance iSCSI network

online storage, we are able to achieve

maximum performance for the services

failing over to the recovery site, hence

allowing users acceptable performance to

critical business services, even in a disaster

state,” add Panjwani.

Sadiq Panjwani, VP – Head of IT Systems, SHUAA Capital


D a t a C e n t r e S o l u t i o n s

8VersaPOD Data Centre Solution

Pre-terminatedTrunking Cable

Assemblies

8

MTP™ Plug & Play Fibre

8

8

MapIT™ G2 IntelligentInfrastructure

Management (IIM)

CONNECTING THE WORLD TO A HIGHER STANDARD

W W W . S I E M O N . C O M

AD_NtkWrld_ME_A 6/6/11 9:11 AM Page 1


in action: meydan

Meydan City, Dubai, uses IP convergence to create ultimate 21st century horse racing experience

Galloping ahead

Meydan City is Dubai’s new

iconic sporting, business,

and lifestyle destination. The

complex includes a world-class grandstand,

a 60,000-capacity racecourse, the Dubai

Racing Club and Emirates Racing Authority

offices, a luxurious five star hotel, exquisite

fine-dining restaurants,

covered car parking for

8600 vehicles, the Meydan

Museum and Gallery, and

an IMAX Theater.

Aligned with the

vision of His Highness

Sheikh Mohammed bin

Rashid Al Maktoum,

Meydan City aims to

create not just the

ultimate venue for

horse racing, but also

an integrated city that is sustainable,

environmentally responsible, and capable

of positioning Dubai at the center of the

competitive global business stage.

To realise these ambitions, the

management company Meydan

encapsulated a new way of thinking about

how major development projects can be

transformed through intelligent, converged

IP networking.

“Using the network as a platform, our

plan was to maximise operational efficiency

by converging voice, data, and building

management systems,” says Wassim Hamwi,

CIO for Meydan. “The second step was to

look at how this investment could be reused

to provide richer, fulfilling experiences for

people visiting the city.”

Meydan has created a technology

blueprint for delivering 21st century

sports and entertainment services. The

solution uses Cisco Borderless Networks

Architecture, customised to support the

Cisco vision of a Connected Stadium.

Implemented as the new foundation

for the 2010 Dubai World Cup, this fully

converged infrastructure supports data,

voice (using 1550 Cisco IP phones and

Unified Contact Center Enterprise for

helpdesk and ticket sales),

video, security, wireless

(comprising 3200 Cisco

Access Points), building

management, and physical

security for the grandstand

and the Meydan Hotel.

Guests can enjoy

free use of unified

communications,

wireless Internet access,

interactive TV, and video

on demand services at

both the hotel and the grandstand. Each

hotel room has two plasma screens and

is serviced with the utmost efficiency.

Staff use IP phones to report any broken

items or faults, and order replacement

stock. This data is automatically sent to

the hotel management system and can be

actioned immediately.

This experience of luxurious efficiency

continues at the racecourse, where

visitors can enjoy the big race build-

up and catch all the action on four

channels and over 450 plasma screens.

These programs, the first of their kind

to be produced in high definition,

are simultaneously streamed over the

network to TV broadcasters and major

sports channels. And, with ubiquitous

wireless access, the media and press

can dispatch reports with ease, helping

ensure the venue receives all the public

relations and publicity that it deserves.

The National Industrialisation Company, also known as TASNEE, is the second largest

petrochemical producer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. IT and communications play an important role in supporting these operations by enabling effective collaboration between product development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, and distribution teams.

However, aging telephony systems and networks were struggling to keep pace with a rapidly changing and expanding business. This IT model was also becoming difficult and expensive to manage. The company would often have to spend money on extra cabling and rely on third parties to manage services, such as voice and video conferencing.

Therefore, as well as improving communications and access to information for mobile workers, the company needed a new model that would help accelerate growth and the adoption of new technologies. TASNEE’s vision was to create a borderless organization, where employees could see each other’s real-time contact status, set up a virtual meeting, and share their workspace, regardless of the user’s device or location.

TASNEE has used Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing to procure a broad range of Cisco Unified Communications applications and services on a pay-per-user basis. This integrated suite of solutions includes Cisco IP Telephony, Unity Unified Messaging, Unified Presence, IP Communicator, Mobile Communicator, and Contact Center Express.

This highly collaborative environment makes full use of the company’s internal network. For example, with Unified MeetingPlace Express employees can set up and attend voice, video, and Web conferences quickly and easily. These virtual meetings can be used to share and edit documents, demonstrate products, deliver compelling presentations, or to support training programs. Unity Unified Messaging has streamlined communications further still by enabling email, voice, and fax messages to be accessed from a single inbox, anytime, anywhere.

Improving agility

Wassim Hamwi, Chief Information Officer, Meydan

Network Performance Management SoftwareTrusted by over a million administrators worldwide

ManageEnginePowering IT ahead

ManageEngine

Customer speaks:

“…We“…We have been using OpManager for several years now to monitor hundreds of devices and thousands of ports. The application has allowed us to be proactive to problems before end users notice, along with being a troubleshooting tool to bring faster resolution to issues when they arise…”

Senior Network Engineerat one of Maine's largest healthcare providersat one of Maine's largest healthcare providers

Scott Heckman

w w w . m a n a g e e n g i n e . c o m / n p m

www.manageengine.com/npm

Our Network Performance Management includes:Automatic L2/ L3 Network Mapping | Network devices health and performance monitoring | WAN and VoIP performance monitoring

Network Traffic Analysis | Network Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring | Network Change and Configuration Management | EventLog, Syslog and SNMP Trap monitoring | Server Virtualization monitoring – VMware/ Hyper-V | Indepth Application Performance Monitoring

90% of the features of the Big 4 at 10% of the price

90:10 [email protected]

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to gain 100% visibility into yournetwork performance even as the IT budget is shrinking?

Try ManageEngine!Download the free 30 days trial now

Get better visibility on your network

performance; resolve problems before

your end users spot it. - ManageEngine OpManager

Awards:

Eas

y to

use

Pow

erfu

l

Af

ford

able

Malicious hypervisors.

Subversive virtual

machines. Live migration

impersonators. Welcome to the world

of virtualisation, where the threats

are new and the traditional security

tools such as firewalls and intrusion-

prevention systems don’t cut it

anymore.

Unfortunately, at many enterprises,

security strategies haven’t kept pace

with the move to virtualisation. For

their part, IT pros tend to look at it

this way: Since physical and virtual

servers run the same Linux and

Virtual blind spotHow concerned are you with the issue of security in a virtualised environment?

Windows operating systems on the

same hardware, then security for the

former is adequate for the latter. This

could be fatal.

“Many companies that have

embarked on virtualisation haven’t

contemplated about the security

ramifications yet. All those threats

in the physical world are relevant in

the virtual world too and it can be

ten times worse because your virtual

desktops and servers are hosted in

the data centre,” says Chris Moore,

Regional GM, Trend Micro.

Industry experts say the general

awareness level of issues related to

virtual security isn’t quite where we

need it to be. “Awareness is definitely

lagging behind. One of the major

reasons for this is that information

security isn’t initially involved in the

virtualisation projects. It is quite easy

to get overwhelmed by the business

benefits of virtualization and forget

to evaluate the security risks involved

in a virtualisation project,” says Arun

George, Technical Sales Manager, HP

TippingPoint.

Agrees Nicolai Solling, Director

of Technology Services from help AG

feature | virtual security


Middle East: “As for the many projects

we’ve been involved in, the focus has

mostly been on taking a lot of servers

and systems and consolidating into

one piece of hardware thereby saving

on operational costs of a data centre

environment. So far we haven’t seen

a great focus on security within the

virtual environment. One of the

reasons for this is probably the fact

that even in the existing data centre

the security segmentation within

the data centre is fairly limited and

security focus in most designs has

been to segment and control user

traffic going into the data centre but

not necessarily controlling the traffic

within the data centre.”

Another issue is that IT

needs to figure out what to

do about the network blind

spot that virtualisation

creates, as none of the

network-based firewalls or

IPS in the physical world

can see the traffic being

switched between two

virtual machines in the

same box.

“Our existing security

architectures come from

decades of practice in

deploying physical systems

– we’ve got rack switches

that interconnect the servers

on the rack, end of row

switches that interconnect

the racks and core switches

that interconnect everything.

Network and security management

has been built around this three-tier

architecture,” points out Deepak Narain,

Senior Technology Consultant, VMware.

In an elastic virtual environment,

where a single server could host many

different kinds of services, or a virtual

machine can hop around from rack to

rack, this architecture won’t be able to

keep up. And, you’ve got a new layer

of networking to factor in – the virtual

switch. “I could implement multiple

virtual data centres inside a physical

data centre – and it all may be in the

same rack, possibly even the same

server,” adds Narain.

As a result the network is flattening

and the definition of the network

perimeter has changed. Unless

security tools are enhanced to become

virtualisation aware – in many cases,

they need to become virtual machines

themselves – they will not be able to

provide the same level of functionality

in the cloud as they do today.

Many enterprises haven’t focused

on virtual server security because

their virtualisation deployments are

immature. When virtual servers are

just used for test and development

purposes or for running non-critical,

low-priority applications, security

doesn’t much matter.

But that changes as a virtualisation

layer moves into the production

environment to host mission-critical

applications. The deeper entrenched

virtualisation becomes, the greater

the need to deploy security technology

specifically aimed at protecting the

virtual infrastructure.

Chris Moore, Regional GM, Trend Micro

As for the many projects we’ve been involved in, the focus has mostly been on taking a lot of servers and systems and

consolidating into one piece of hardware.

Deepak Narain, Senior Technology Consultant, VMware



The new reality

How do you protect your VMs and traffic

between them? Do you need to think

of a security posture that is similar

to the physical environment? Experts

believe running IPS or a copy of anti-

virus in the hypervisor would defeat

the whole purpose of this layer being

very thin and hardened. The whole

idea behind virtualisation is flexibility

and companies have to strike a balance

between usability and security.

“The challenge around security

in a virtualised world is slightly

different than the physical world.

Most customer are looking to take

advantage of the virtualised world and

not necessarily overload the system

with heavy-duty protection. However,

like any environment, be it physical

or virtualised , security controls are

a must , and the traditional

solution should have the ability

to integrate with this new era

of technology,” says Essam

Ahmed, Regional Presales

Manager MENA, McAffee.

Security vendors on

their part have stepped up

to take the bull by horns.

These include start-ups such

as Altor Networks, Apani,

as well as well-established

security vendors. Besides HP

TippingPoint, this latter group

includes CA Technologies,

for security functions

such as access control and

log management; Juniper

Networks, which has a strategic

alliance with Altor; IBM for

IPS; and Trend Micro, which

We are delivering some of the traditional network security services as virtual machines

themselves.

acquired virtual security

start-up Third Brigade.

For its part,

virtualisation leader

VMware has taken many

security controls and pushed them into

the virtualisation layer via its vShield

family. “We are delivering some of the

traditional network security services

as virtual machines themselves, or

partnering with the security vendors

and providing them the right APIs to

hook into the virtualization layer to

provide the same – and often even

better - guarantees that they can in the

physical world,” says Narain.

While evaluating virtual security

products, IT manages are advised

to select those that are optimised

to run inside the virtualisation

environment and have been integrated

into virtualisation frameworks from

Microsoft, VMware and Xen-based

virtualisation vendors.

“From a security strategy point of

view, IT managers should include steps

to protect both physical and

virtualised data centres in a

compliant, secured and controlled

manner. The security vision should

be to maintain the same security

policy in the physical data centre

as well as in the virtualised data

centre,” says George.

Just as virtualisation enabled

massive cost savings and

efficiency gains, it is a real

game-changer when it comes to

security. Contrary to the popular

belief, virtualisation is not

inherently insecure, but it gets

deployed insecurely today. But

this problem will go away over

the next three to four years as

IT staffs, vendors, the tools and

skills mature.

Arun George, Technical Sales Manager, HP TippingPoint

feature | virtual secturity

Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services, Help AG Middle East



Watch your business

The advent and rise of high-definition video surveillance

Using IP cameras, video management

software (VMS) running on industry-

standard servers and network-area storage

systems, you can maximise the value of

your investment in network infrastructure

and standardise on servers across your

enterprise, enabling efficiencies in training,

administration and support.

Other benefits include the ability to

access remote locations via your LAN or

WAN and centralise security monitoring

instead of stationing guards at each site.

High-resolution IP cameras can even

integrate with other building systems such

as fire alarm and access control systems and

come armed with advanced video analytics

that

can alert

security staff

in real-time to unusual

activity. However, it may

not be for everyone, and is

ideal for expansive, greenfield

applications that require

a large number of cameras. For

example, if you have a distributed

organisation with hundreds of smaller

sites spanning a large geographic area,

coaxial cable and networked video recorders

might make more sense for recording

video at relatively low frame rates. An all-IP

configuration, however, may be the most

cost-effective solution if you need very high

resolution video or the intelligence available

from advanced video analytic applications.

While high-definition is becoming pretty

much the norm in the TV market, the

video surveillance market is also following

suit. “It is well known that HD standard

was designed to enhance the TV viewing

experience by producing ’life-like’ visual

experiences. This technology revolution

from the consumer world has made it

to the professional worlds as well, and it

would make sense to invest in deploying

HD in video surveillance, to capture flawless

footage of moving people and objects. The

image resolution of traditional security

analogue cameras was based on NTSC/PAL

TV standards which were primarily designed

for SD resolution only,” says to Hidenori

Taguchi, Head of Marketing B2B Products &

Solutions, Sony Professional Solutions.

Baraa Al Akkad, Regional Manager

of Axis Communications, adds that the

possibility of clearer, sharper images is a

For many companies in the region,

IP video surveillance has become the

security solution of choice thanks

to the latest advances in compression

technology and declining prices for IP

cameras. The converged world of voice,

video and data has officially arrived.

There are many factors driving the

adoption. All-IP video security leverages

your investment in network infrastructure,

and is simpler, more elegant and accessible

to users across the enterprise. In many

cases, it also is more cost-effective than a

conventional video surveillance system

with analogue cameras and digital video

recorders.

feature | IP surveillancein association with


long sought quality in the surveillance

industry, especially in applications

where objects are moving or accurate

identification is vital. “A network camera

that complies with any of the given HDTV

standards (SMPTE 296M and SMPTE

274M, which are defined by the Society of

Motion Picture and Television Engineers) is

guaranteed to provide a certain resolution,

frame rate and color fidelity, thereby

ensuring video quality at all times.”

Potential concerns about the impact

of all this high-resolution video on the

corporate network is addressed by modern

IP video solutions. Advanced compression

technologies, such as H.264, reduce

bandwidth and storage requirements

considerably.

For network security users, HD video

signals are transmitted through H.264

which is the best compression available

for IP security industry today, without

jeopardising on the quality of the images.

MPEG-4 requires approximately one-third

of the bandwidth used by JPEG whereas

H.264 requires just one-fifth, which is a

40% saving between standard MPEG-4 and

H.264. “ Better compression means that the

stored files will take up much lesser room

on servers and hence saving a significant

sum in network storage requirements,”

says Taguchi.

H.264 has already been introduced in

new electronic gadgets such as mobile

phones and digital video players, and

has gained fast acceptance by end

users. Service providers such as on-line

video storage and telecommunications

companies are also beginning to adopt

H.264. “In the video surveillance industry,

H.264 will most likely find the quickest

traction in applications where there are

demands for high frame rates and high

resolution, such as in the surveillance of

highways or airports,” says Akkad.

Administrators can also configure an IP

video system to capture and store video at

a lower frame rate and then bump up that

frame rate automatically on alarm. Taking

advantage of intelligent features available

with most systems allows you to transmit

video only upon a specific event, such

as motion detected in an office building

after normal business hours. In addition,

some video surveillance systems let you

set bandwidth usage, limiting the video

streaming along the network to a fixed bit

rate to ensure core business data is never

compromised. Finally, bandwidth usage

can be managed through the selection of

IP cameras and encoders with internal

SDHC flash memory cards that enable video

capture at the network’s edge.

Though IP is making rapid strides in

the surveillance world, threatening to

replace legacy CCTV systems, it has its own

share of challenges, the most important

one being the lack of expertise. System

installers and designers lack familiarity and

don’t have enough expertise in deploying

infrastructure for these kind of video

surveillance systems. Vendors, for their, part

say they are addressing this issue by training

their partners.

“There are various experts in system

installation and design in the region.

Sony Professional takes pride in the

fact that our partners are trained to

provide solutions that fit the customer’s

requirements,” says Taguchi.

Even if all these kinks are ironed out, the

convergence of voice, video and data won’t

happen overnight. The investment in legacy

CCTV systems and the resources involved

in replacing them will, in many cases,

dictate a phased migration to hybrid video

configurations that can serve as a bridge to

the inevitable all-IP future.

To determine the best path to IP video

for your organisation, take the same

approach you would with any technology

infrastructure. Develop a long-term road

map with a phased implementation that

takes into account your surveillance

infrastructure, future video requirements

and budgetary realities. You can have the

best of both worlds, but not without the

proper due diligence. Do your research,

conduct a thorough trial and evaluation

and, by all means, ask for references.

in association with

Baraa Al Akkad, Regional Manager of Axis Communications


Modern energy

efficient

technologies

are becoming the norm,

and most businesses

understand that

implementing

“green IT” helps the

environment and the

bottom line. But many

IT professionals lack

a tool that is critical

to understanding the

full impact of energy

efficient practices.

According to the Energy

Efficient IT Report from

CDW, 27% of IT managers

never see their department’s share

of the energy bill. Without that

information, IT may have a difficult

time seeing the value and impact of

their energy efficient efforts and policies.

Most important, they may have a harder

time making the business case for more

energy efficient investments.

Industry experts say it doesn’t

necessarily have to cost you more to do the

right thing. Savings can offset costs, which

they can do by concentrating on effort to go

lean (consolidating data centres and apps

and virtualising servers and storage), and

getting more efficient (using more efficient

servers, adopting new data centre designs

and measuring power usage more closely,

among other things).

“IT managers should consider an

energy efficient IT with lower costs, space

and higher energy savings, and focus on

feature | green IT

The green mandateEnergy efficiency is no longer an afterthought – it is a key

consideration for any IT manager

the benefits gained from them.

Successful businesses care

not only about driving

profitability, but making

sure they operate in a

socially responsible

way,” says Tarek Abbas,

Systems Engineering

Director –MENA,

Juniper Networks.

Hani Nofal,

Regional Manager,

Cisco UAE, echoes a

similar opinion: “CIOs

today are central to

the drive for greener IT

and greener business. As

IT has grown in importance

and scale, the CIO has become

responsible for a progressively

larger share of enterprise energy

costs. The IT group therefore needs

to become a centre for innovation to

reduce the carbon footprint. First, CIOs

need to ensure that complex, power-hungry

IT systems become more environmentally

sustainable by promoting energy efficiency

across the board. Then he or she can begin

to empower the enterprise to cut emissions

by using the IT system’s capabilities to

enable new practices across the business as

a whole.”

Network as the platform

Energy-related costs account for around

12% of overall data centre expenditure, but

firms are continuing to struggle to cap this

spending, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Gartner said energy costs are the fastest

rising cost in the data centre. It says that


power and cooling cost problems are

likely to worsen during the next few years,

as organisations grow their technology

infrastructure as they emerge from a

recessionary period.

Hundreds of thousands of KWh are

being consumed by the use of memory

components in servers today. By adopting

more energy-efficient components in

optimised server architectures, such

as lower voltage DRAMs and advanced

solid-state drives (SSDs), data centres can

drastically reduce power consumption

and associated energy costs. Realising the

need for greater energy efficiency, server

manufacturers have been optimising their

architecture including the use of power-

saving “green” memory alternatives.

Cisco’s Nofal believes IT managers can

also utilise the network to play a major role

in delivering an affordable green solutions

by allowing IT operations and facilities

to measure and fine-tune power usage to

realise significant cost savings.

“An example of how the network

can play that role is a cost-effective and

affordable solution called Cisco EnergyWise.

This technology focuses on reducing power

utilisation on all devices connected to a

Cisco network ranging from Power over

Ethernet (PoE) devices such as IP phones

and wireless access points to integration

with IP-enabled building and lighting

controllers,” he says.

It uses an intelligent network-based

approach, allowing IT and building facilities

operations to understand, optimise, and

control power across an entire corporate

infrastructure, potentially affecting any

powered device.

Abbas says companies are already

looking at various ways to use more

power-efficient network devices, and

Juniper has been innovating to address

such requirements. “With Juniper’s Virtual

Chassis technology, 10 Juniper Networks

EX4200 line of Ethernet switches can be

interconnected and managed as a single

logical device the EX Series Switches

occupy up to 80 percent less space and

consume up to 53 percent less power than

Hundreds of thousands of KWh are being consumed by the use of memorycomponents in servers today.

competing solutions offering similar port

densities. Virtual Chassis technology enables

customers to add capacity as needed,

maximising network utility while helping

to eliminate unnecessary space, energy, and

cooling consumption.”

Should companies deploy more

power-efficient core switches and use

the network as a platform to manage

and reduce energy use? Absolutely. The

network is the platform for green business

practices. At the infrastructure level, how

effectively the network supports business

applications while decreasing the total

cost of ownership is the key. “Power

efficiency at the individual device level is

less important than the infrastructure level,

because customers are looking

for a network platform

through which to conduct

business operations, improve

productivity and generate

profit. Certainly, individual

devices, including but not

limited to core switches, should be energy

efficient, however, they should also work to

help ensure further green benefits through

service integration, application enablement,

and system longevity,” says Nofal.

Tarek Abbas, Systems Engineering Director –MENA, Juniper Networks.

Hani Nofal, Regional Manager, Cisco UAE

Deploy more power-efficient core switches

Replace edge and workgroup switches with more power-efficient switches

Use the network as a platform to manage and reduce energy use

Adopt 10GB Ethernet, Infiniband technologies

Reduce SAN infrastructure by implementing Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

Move to top-of-rack models for access layer switching

Energy-reducing practices

30 Network World Middle East June 2011

In a market that is seeing a glut of cloud events, what’s

made the CPI Cloud Leadership Forum different? Our

approach, hands down. Let’s go straight to the point.

We’ve all had enough of hearing about the hype surrounding

the cloud; the FUD (fear, doubt and uncertainty) concepts and

the endless debates on how it could potentially transform the

business. So we literally decided to pop the questions. So what

are companies in this market really doing with the cloud and

what it offers?

Having brought together over 100 attendees and top

executives from our sponsors Etisalat, EMC and MDS, the event

came armed with clear local survey data that sets the direction

of what the industry can expect to see. So what is the real

attitude towards the game-changing proponents of the cloud?

Unlike popular opinion on trying to sort the hype,

respondents to our survey said they were already looking to

EVENT REPORT

Keeping your head above the clouds

Technology PartnersIn association with:Produced by:

ADVANCING CLOUD ADOPTION

CLOUD

FORUMLEADERSHIP

Abdulla Hashim, Senior Vice President- ICT, Etisalat delivers the opening address

Presentation: Securing the CloudChristian Hewitt, Technology Consultant, RSA, The Security Division of EMC


learn about the cloud technologies and

services that could help their company

possibly right away. Although we don’t

have extensive deployments, what the

survey found was a clear change in

mindset that there is a need to transform

business models and an understanding

that the cloud model will gradually grow

to encompass all commodity IT services.

This also gives IT the chance to look at

shifting internal resources onto higher

value activities. Of particular interest is the

opportunity to access pure play software-as-

a-service options.

The business driver most certainly hinges

on enabling agility and what better way to

achieve that than using technology. Quite

expectedly, IT departments are still in the

driver seat with most pressure to transform

business using cloud-based models coming

from CIOs and senior IT staff. But security

concerns and the possibly lack of education

in this space remains a major barrier to

adoption and vendors in this space would

do well to invest in this area.

While we prefer to let you go through

the analysis in

detail and learn

from the experts

we have presenting,

let me leave you

with a question.

Going forward,

what effect will this

transformation of

the way companies

acquire and consume

compute resources

have on longstanding relationships

between traditional IT vendors and their

customers? As with all technology models,

even the cloud is a means to the end and

not the end itself. It is time you integrate

this ,model into your vendor strategy.

Examine, debate and then decide!

Presentation: Monetising the CloudMarc Salingardes, EMC Cloud Service Provider Alliance Director

Presentation: Cloud Computing TrendsKevin White, Consulting and Research Director UAE, Ovum

Presentation: OS for the CloudDeepak Narain is the Regional

Presales Manager for VMware in the Middle East & North Africa

Presentation: Virtualised data centre presentationJitendra Kapoor, Specialist – eHosting /PM, Etisalat

PANEL DISCUSSION: Migration Strategies(L to R) Marc Salingardes, EMC Cloud Service Provider Alliance Director; Sadiq PanjwaniVP – Head of Systems, SHUAA Capital; Jitendra Kapoor, Specialist – eHosting /PM, Etisalat

PANEL DISCUSSION: Will the Cloud change IT as we know it?(L to R) Fawaz Alhallab, District Manager - Abu Dhabi, EMC; Ahmad M. Almulla, Vice President, Information Technology, Dubai Aluminium Company Limited (“DUBAL”); Ramesh Krishna Bhandari, Business Development Specialist – Business Solutions, Central Marketing, Etisalat

Presentation: All Cloud Models Are Not the SameRamesh Krishna Bhandari, Business Development Specialist – Business Solutions, Central Marketing, Etisalat


ExclusiVE suRVEy

Number of Users in the Organisation Primary Goal in Attending Cloud Leadership Forum Is

How would you describe your current cloud efforts?

Where is the greatest pressure coming from to assess the cloud model and services?

What is your gut feeling about cloud right now?

What is the greatest economic benefit you see in the cloud model?

As a run-up to the first Cloud Leadership Forum, CPI conducted an exclusive survey with 130 IT and Business Decision makers from the UAE on key drivers towards cloud adoption. The survey also looked to understand what nature of services and

solutions are likely to be under adoption in the current environment. Here are the findings:

Cloud Leadership Forum


What is your top motivator for adopting cloud computing? Who do you expect to get the bulk of your cloud services from?

Are you planning changes/upgrades to your network infrastructure to better support cloud?

What percentage of your IT services do you currently source from public sectors?

What is the biggest barrier to cloud adoption?


I was shocked to hear recently that

an established telecoms company

had lost revenue because its billing

system wasn’t backed up and that

another company had opted not to

include important data in its normal

backup routine in a bid to save money.

Unfortunately, in both cases, these fatal

mistakes weren’t spotted until it was too

late, and then heads rolled. Over a decade

into the new millennium, why are people

still losing their jobs and organisations still

losing money because backups have failed?

Excuses, Excuses

Some argue that the cause for any short

fall is that data centres have become more

business critical and complex in equal

measures. Others suggest that the problem

lies in looking at backup policies and

systems in isolation, thereby storing up

trouble and cost down the line. The most

Backup to the futureIf you don’t have a solid backup strategy, get one, advises

Steve Bailey, Regional Operations Director, CommVault

common reasons for backup failure in my

opinion is a mix of insufficient planning,

research, automation, training, and

inappropriate spending.

The problems arising out of a lack of

planning and research often have their

roots in over-worked teams and organic

growth. Constant fire-fighting drives point

solution purchases which feed a vicious

circle – more point products take more

time to manage. The knock-on effect

essentially leaves IT management teams

with a complex set of tools that are difficult

or impossible to automate, and this in turn

puts pressure on human processes that are

wide open to error.

Even when time is set aside to research

appropriate solutions, it is often focused

on detail rather than the bigger picture.

Backup needs to be seen as part of a wider

data management strategy that draws a

direct link between data protection and

data value. Taking a blended approach to

backup -where snaps, replication and tiered

storage all play their part - may sound like

a recommendation for point products but

it isn’t.

Integrate to Automate

It’s widely accepted that automation can

dramatically reduce human error, so the

benefits of using software to manage

hardware protection operations, such as

snapshots, and to integrate this capability

with traditional backup and dedupe should

be clear.

All this may sound complicated and

expensive but appropriate spending is

the key. Although budgets are tight and

getting tighter, lack of investment in

effective backup and recovery only serves

to limit the insurance net it provides for

valuable company information. Allocating

significant funds to store snapshots for

a year on all tier one disk may seem

like a good idea but it won’t prove to

be cost effective – believe me, I know of

organisations that have tried it as a knee-

jerk reaction to data loss. The sad thing is

that a modest investment in some software

and training would have been much more

effective.

Ultimately the technology for effective

data protection is available and doesn’t cost

as much as you may fear. Neglect backup

at your peril. Your livelihood may depend

on it.

About the author:

Steve is the Regional Operations Director at

CommVault covering the Emerging Markets

region (Middle East, India, Russia/CIS,

Eastern and South Eastern Europe). Steve’s

responsibilities cover the presales and

professional services functions in addition to

CommVault channel development, education

and growth across the Emerging Region.

He has been with CommVault for a little

over 10 years and has worked in many

functions, both regional and at an EMEA

level, most recently heading up CommVault’s

EMEA Product Management function.

opinion | backup


With manufacturing and commercial

facilities throughout the world, we

are the global partner to many of

the world’s leading companies.

TE Connectivity. We’re in it.

GLOBAL REACH

TE Connectivity – previously known

as Tyco Electronics, incorporating

AMP NETCONNECT and ADC KRONE

portfolios. Greater product choice

with outstanding service.

SMARTER, FASTER, & BETTER.

www.ampnetconnect.com/mea www.adckrone.com www.te.com


SMEs and SMBs heavily rely on

such knowledge to stay afloat

in today’s competitive market

scenario. Companies seeking to streamline

operations often invest in ERP solutions.

Although such tools gather data from

various functions of the organisation, it

is difficult to get meaningful deductions

from statistics without analysis. Effective

Business Intelligence is vital for even mid-

sized organisations and not only large

companies. Most BI solutions are incapable

of utilising the ERP database. Also, investing

in a BI application can be costly and not

all SMBs/SMEs are willing to make the

investment. In order to tap into this unmet

demand, IT solution providers now provide

BI tools as an add-on to ERP solutions. With

such options quickly becoming available,

organisations too are awakening to the idea

of integrating ERP and BI to get optimum

results when it comes to compiling data and

deriving reports.

Why integrate?

ERP solutions enable organisations to

integrate cross functional activities from

sales and purchase, HR, management,

operations and more. Transactions in all

departments are recorded and linked to

a consolidated data base where they are

stored. Business Intelligence is the analytical

tool that gathers, stores and evaluates

data to provide reports that facilitate the

decision making process. ERP leads to ease

of operations while BI primarily assists

management and business strategies. By

working in tandem with each other, ERP

solutions incorporate data from all over the

organisation where as BI applications can

use this consolidated data to provide a more

comprehensive analysis.

Most often than not BI tools are mistaken

to be just providing an MIS reporting,

so many think why is it required to have

such a tool when an ERP gives reporting

capabilities. The real reason is that BI

actually is a layer over the information layer

of ERP which then allows the decision maker

or user to get data across various functions

and put some norms in reporting layer of

the BI tool. By doing this, the user not only

gets to look at current statistics in a holistic

manner but also gives them analysis of what

future analysis could mean based on certain

rules defined by the user for his own specific

business. This allows true business decision

making over and above the normal reporting

that ERP would give. Hence an integrated

ERP with BI is an ideal way to derive effective

analysis of data for effective decision making.

SMEs and SMBs face a tough task

adhering to IT budgets and always look to

gain optimum value from their investments.

While many organisations may invest

in ERP and BI tools, using them as stand

alone applications does not yield benefits

to their full potential, purely coming from

integration issues of using 2 separate

applications. Many claim that integration is

not an issue but in the practical scenarios

there are many issues that arrive due to

this reason leading to data loss which is

critical for decision making. More often than

not when ERP and BI are used separately,

business decision makers have to sort

through a lot of data from both sources

in order to derive conclusions. This is can

not only be time consuming but also runs

a high risk of errors and oversights due to

integration issues that might come up for

different products.A combined application

having both ERP and BI capabilities is a more

cost effective option when compared to

individual purchasing of these applications,

making them affordable to even low end

SMBs and SMEs.

In the fast paced nature of markets today,

quick and accurate decision making can

make or break an organisation. Integration

of these solutions automates the collection,

storing, retrieval and sorting of relevant data

and finally analysing of such data to provide

meaningful and applicable reports. Decision

makers need to have a bare minimum

interaction with technology and can have

reports that they understand and put to good

use. As these reports are available ad-hoc,

precious time is saved to pull out real-time,

accurate information as and when required,

further enabling effective decisions.

SMBs and SMEs need to make quick

and effective decisions if hey are to survive

in modern markets among cut through

competition. With an integrated ERP-BI

solution, they are assured of a cost effective

option towards smooth operations and

efficient decision making.

When ERP and BI combine

Knowing exactly where your business stands at any given point in time can be crucial for effective decision making, says Ashish Dass,

Head of MENA, 3i Infotech

opinion | BI


Q1. Can the warranty on AEG be extended to 36 Months free of cost?

Q3. AEG Protect C & C.R is a Tower & Rack Mountable UPS uses double conversion to give pure sine way output .

A. PC’s /Workstation/ Telephone SystemsB. TrainsC. Printers

Q2. AEG Protect A is used for ...

A. True B. False

A. YesB. No

Visit http://www.networkworldme.com to answer the above quest ions and win Edi f ier Speak ers

• Double conversation UPS technology• Automatic bypass• Communication slot for expansion cards• n+x technology for redundancy or increase power (C.6000 & C.10000)• Also "S version" with stronger battery charger available• 36 months warranty on UPS and battery after registration

ANSWER THE SIMPLE QUESTIONS & WIN YOURSELF EXCITING PRIZES

CLICK &WIN Switch off every risk.

Switch on the UPS from AEG!

• Offline UPS technology

• 4 outlets, 3 of them UPS buffered

• USB and RS232 communication interfaces

• Surge protection for TV-SAT, phone, fax and modem

• 36 months warranty on UPS and battery after registration

AUTHORIZED VALUE ADDED DISTRIBUTOR

Te l : + 9 7 1 4 3 9 3 6 4 4 6 , Fa x : + 9 7 1 4 3 9 3 5 9 9 3Mob: +971 50457 3968, Email: [email protected]

Register your UPS within the first 2 months after purchase and get the warranty on UPS & battery extended to 36 months for free. Please fill out the form including the UPS data and your contact details. After validation you will receive a confirmation mail from us. Only with this confirmation

mail you will have a binding claim on the 36 months warranty.

PROTECT C/C.R

PROTECT A


NWME: There’s a lot of

confusion about cloud

computing. What can you

say to clarify what’s happening

there?

You get 15 to 20 different definitions,

depending on who you talk to. I

would say I have a private cloud

in my data centre today. It’s highly

virtualised, it basically abstracts the

application away from the operating

system, we’ve got a storage area

network. From an asset utilisation

standpoint, I have a cloud.

It’s a business decision. Let me give

an example: From a virtualisation

standpoint, when we talk about

my business-facing applications,

most of them are VMware. From

an engineering standpoint, all my

engineers have used Xen. In the

old architecture, we couldn’t mix

these things together. With today’s

architecture, we can. I’ll call it the

cloud, because we have shared storage

underneath it [and] we use the same server

base. So we’ve built something that solves

our business needs. And I think that’s the

real issue.

Everybody today that I talk to is

struggling with proper asset utilisation.

So this big thing comes out called the

cloud, and you don’t have to worry

about it: It’s elastic, it allows you to put

applications anywhere. It sounds great,

and then the higher you go up in the

C suite, executives all like to talk about

it. They ask, why do you have to buy all

these assets? Why don’t you just buy a

interview | brocade

Long path to cloudBrocade CEO Michael Klayko says Fibre Channel is

here to stay but Brocade has no “religion” for it

service level and get that from somebody

else, and just utilise it like a utility? It

sounds like utopia. We have 40 different

applications that we buy from somebody

else, and that run our company. We have

our own infrastructure, also. We look

at it from a business standpoint: Can I

get it from somebody else, utilise their

infrastructure and utilize their offering

faster, more economically and more

efficiently than I can do it myself? To me,

it’s math. I don’t get emotional about it,

and my IT guys, now I’ve got them not

getting emotional about it. And I think

most businesses, when you really get to

the core of it, are like that.

Everybody knows how to build a private

cloud now. All the tools are getting there,

and it’s all hinged around virtualisation.

[Then] there is the element of public clouds

and the benefit of public clouds. The secret

sauce that we’re trying to get to is, how

you merge those two. If you’re a retailer,

and four months of the year, your volume

goes [up], you have to buy your

infrastructure for the peak volume.

What if you only had to buy it for the

average volume you’re in the rest of

the year, and then just went outside

during those four months? To me,

that’s a real business application.

Today, you can’t really do that ...

because nobody wants to allow you

to have that infrastructure sharing

out there until you have a long-term

contract. It’s not truly elastic, because

they want you to use it and then

stay there. The technologies we have

announced, for example, this Cloud ID

technology, will allow that elasticity.

This is going to take a decade.

Guys that I deal with in the largest

data centres in the world, we’re

talking about things that they’re

implementing three years from

now. That three-year architecture is

going to last for another five, seven

or ten years.

NWME: As a CEO, what lessons

do you take from what has been

happening at Cisco?

Focus. I’ve known John for a long time, and

he’s a big company, he has to grow and so

forth, For me, I have trouble keeping track

of the product lines that I currently have,

and all I am is a networking company. So

I think anybody just needs to focus. If you

look at any company that’s been successful,

that’s what they’ve done. We haven’t varied

our strategy. I get accused of being very

boring and actually not being able to make

PowerPoints, because my strategy slides

haven’t changed in six years.

June 2011 Network World Middle East 39EMC2, EMC, RSA, the EMC logo, the RSA logo, and where information lives are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. © Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.


NWME: Managing security

complexity is the number

one obstacle that enterprises

face today. What are your tips for IT

managers struggling to keep up with

the evolving landscape?

Firstly, it is expedient to maintain a

good balance between the investments in

security people, process and technology.

Secondly, for security technologies, one

should establish a strategic plan and a

tactical plan. In the strategic plan, minimise

the vendor footprint while focusing only on

the big brand vendors. In the tactical plan,

focus on small niche emerging security

interview | paramount

Dealing with riskParamount Computer Systems is the leading regional

provider of technology and computer system services for securing the information security assets of enterprises. We spoke to Premchand Kurup, CEO of Pramount, on

some of the burning issues around security

start ups . In essence, consider

the best of suite strategy for the

strategic plan while taking the

best of breed approach for the

tactical plan .

Ideally, 70 % of the

organisation’s security technology

budget should go towards the

strategic plan while 30% should

be spent on the tactical plan.

NWME: How can

companies meet the

security challenges of

new opportunities such as

cloud, social networking

and mobility?

With regards to the cloud, since it

is still evolving in the Gulf region,

at the initial stages it would be

expedient to negotiate a service

level agreement for security with the cloud

service provider. So, you transfer the risk

onto the service provider.

Social Networking from the corporate

network is fraught with Risks—malware

infections, identity theft, data leakage and

corporate reputation damage among others.

Customers need to redefine Internet Use

Policy in the wake of web 2.0; implement

latest technologies for antimalware, email

and web security and also implement

browsing quota management to control

bandwidth utilisation.

Mobile device productivity comes at

a price: increased security risk. Mobile

applications create yet another path

into corporate networks which could

allow them to propagate malicious code;

sensitive data stored on mobile devices

could be stolen, leading to data breaches,

compliance violations and embarrassing

public disclosure. Customers need to

consider implementation of device firewalls,

encryption, strong authentication, antivirus,

data leak prevention and application

whitelisting, among others. Also,device

remote locking, data wiping and backup/

restore need to be considered as lost devices

pose the greatest security threat.

The business value of mobile devices

can be derived only when IT creates an

enterprise class device management and

security strategy built around well defined

IT practices.

NWME: How do you rate the state of

information security, compliance and

governance in the region?

We have miles to go before we sleep. Our

belief is that considerable effort must be

made in enhancing the knowledge and

skill set of people in IT security. There is a

significant gap at the moment, as well as

inadequacy in terms of number of skilled

people. Security awareness at the C- level

and across the organisation needs to be

enhanced too.

Nevertheless, certain government

initiatives such as the creation of aeCert

and ADSIC in Abu Dhabi are a significant

step in the right direction. In fact, ADSIC

is the first security compliance body in

the UAE.

NWME: Is funding a major

constraint for IT executives when

it comes to existing and emerging

security threats?

Security budgets could be fixed as

percentage of the IT budget as is done in

mature organisations in the west . If this is

done in a disciplined manner, year on year,

the security posture of organisations will

be improved.

Premchand Kurup, CEO, Paramount


Dirty little secrets of virtualisationHow can you ensure the stability of your data centre while at the same time taking maximum advantage of the flexibility of virtualisation?

The virtualised

data centre has

accelerated the pace

of operational change.

Virtual machines

are reconfigured,

computing loads

are moved, and

applications are

scaled up and

down rapidly.

We know that

with rapid rates

of change come

high levels of

mistakes; analysts

estimate that 60%

to 80% of data centre

problems are caused by

management mistakes.

Virtualisation promises

to improve data centre

operations and indeed it does.

Server consolidation has great

benefits. The ability to migrate

loads without stopping

them greatly eases hardware

management. The ability to

deploy new virtual machines

in a fraction of the time of

a physical machine makes

application development and

deployment more rapid and

effective.

techupdate


However, the advantages of

virtualisation bring some associated

costs. The hypervisor adds another

level of complexity in the software

stack and imposes requirements on

the servers, the storage system, and

especially on the network. While the

hypervisor offers some automation

for simplifying operations of servers,

the environment around the virtual

cluster was impacted without being

made any simpler.

In a recent survey of Infoblox

customers, 70% reported that

virtualisation put more pressure on

their network operations. It’s easy to

see the source of this pressure. Every

virtualisation initiative is surrounded

by physical resources:

• Storage systems

• Users, workstations and partner

networks

• Load balancers and security devices

• Remote peer servers

• Physical unvirtualised servers

• Competitive hypervisors that are not

compatible

• Private clouds, laboratory systems

and other specialised clusters

The boundary between each of

these elements and the virtualised

environment is a place where

operational mistakes can be made.

Both sides of the boundary matter;

the hypervisor’s configuration

may be incorrect, or the external

environment may be misconfigured.

When a performance problem arises,

information from both sides of the

boundary must be integrated to find

the solution.

When new applications are

deployed, both sides must be

validated in advance. Mistakes and

inconsistencies will show up in

three different ways: in application

performance issues; in delays

in operational procedures; or in


RESELLER AD

For more information please visit:www.resellerme.com/awards2011

For nomination enquiries please contact:

Richard JuddTel: +971 55 772 1519

Email: [email protected]

For sponsorship opportunities please contact:

Rajashree R KumarTel: +971 50 173 9987


Arun ShankarTel: +971 50 141 3662


Merle CarrascoTel: +971 50 922 5866


Sunday, 12th June 2011The Westin, Dubai, UAE

Platinum Partner

Survey Partner

Silver Partners

Innovation Perfection Quality

Gold Partners

Networking Partner

Raffle Partner

Presents

AWARDS & CONFERENCE 2011


inefficient operations that eat up staff

time. Each data centre will have its

own pattern; here are some examples:

Application performance becomes

poor or inconsistent

• Port and network access parameters

can be mismatched. There are many

parameters that impact performance,

including port duplex, network QOS

settings, firewall access lists and more.

• Rogue devices may be

attached to the network,

with incorrect IP numbers

or incorrect protocol

settings that disturb

production devices.

• Configurations that

“drift” from best practice,

whenever manual

procedures are followed

incorrectly or when

standards are incomplete.

The result can be old

and new devices with

very different settings,

producing erratic

performance.

Requests for changes take too long

• When a virtual server will be

migrated for updates or maintenance,

its destination must have the right

network settings. Manual setup adds

delay, especially when compared to

the near-instant speed of a virtual hot-

migration.

• When a disaster recovery site

is created, tested or updated, its

network settings must be verified

to match the master site. Manual

verification adds delay.

• When new servers are added to scale

up a load-balanced system, several

devices may need carefully sequenced

updates, including the physical switch,

firewall and load balancer. Manual

configuration adds delay, which is

often much longer than the time it

takes to spin up a new virtual server.

Staff wastes time in routine operations

• Daily tasks like IP address

assignment must be coordinated.

Mistakes can be hard to track down in

a constantly changing environment.

• Troubleshooting problems often

involves correlating logs and

alerts from multiple sources. With

virtualised systems, there’s often a

gap between the physical and virtual

systems where data must be matched

by hand.

• If an unauthorised person performs

a move or change, time can be wasted

rechecking the work (or even worse,

fixing mistakes).

• Auditing and compliance reporting

are a regular headache, and virtual

systems can add complexity.

In a virtualised

data centre, the

changes are more

complex, and they

occur more often

thanks to the

flexibility of virtual

machines. Mistakes

become more costly, and they may

occur more frequently.

But there is a way to master the

complexity and minimise the mistakes,

and it doesn’t require a complete

infrastructure overhaul. The answer

is augmenting existing infrastructure

with automation.

If a configuration management

platform can be embedded in the data

centre network, and if it

can perform automated

procedures, all of the issues

above can be addressed.

An automated platform

can be filled with “gold

standard” configurations for

all elements on the virtual

system boundary. Deviations

from those standards,

whether from rogue devices

or drifting configurations,

can be prevented, isolated

or repaired. The gold

configurations can be

applied in a single step,

resulting in quick and consistent

response to requested changes.

Troubleshooting can be accelerated

when data from physical systems is

correlated with data from virtual

ones. Authorisation and delegation

rules can block unapproved changes

and audit approved ones.

Automation is needed in the

network around the hypervisor to

realise the full benefits of virtual

systems. A network resident data-

centre-wide platform for management

and automation can minimise error,

promote flexibility and cut the

hidden costs of virtualisation.

Automation is needed in the network around the hypervisor to realise the full benefits of virtual systems. A network resident data-centre-

wide platform for management and automation can minimise error, promote flexibility and cut the hidden costs of

virtualisation.

This primer was contributed by Infoblox, an industry leading developer of network infrastructure automation and control solutions. Infoblox’s unique technologies, including the Infoblox Grid – a real-time, data distribution technology – increases network availability and control, while automating time-consuming manual tasks associated with network infrastructure services like domain name resolution (DNS), IP address management (IPAM), network change and configuration management (NCCM) and network discovery, among others.

techupdate


Corning® ClearCurve® multimode fibre can withstand tight

bends and challenging cabling routes with significantly less

signal loss than traditional multimode fibre.

No more worries about tight bends due to challenged

installations, fibre caught in cabinet doors or cable ties that

are pulled too tight. It is now possible to bend cables to

significantly tighter bend radii without fear of impacting

the performance of your optical fiber system.

For more information on ClearCurve fibre, visit www.corning.com/cablesystems/emea

BEND THE RULES

Corning Cable SystemsDubai Internet City, Bulding No:17, Ground Floor, Office 52Dubai - UAETel : +97144843400 Fax: +97144579215email: [email protected]

Distributed by:MultiNet Communications FZE – UAE, Qatar, Oman, BahrainPO Box 121456, SAIF Zone Q4-252Sharjah-UAEPhone : +9716 5579 397Fax: +9716 5579 398 Email: [email protected]

Hardware Solutions Builders Co. Ltd. (HASOUB) - KSAAl Kharaije Business Center, Al Madina RoadZip code:P.O.Box 122136, Jeddah 21332, KSA.Telephone:(966) 2-692-7761/2/3Fax:(966)2-2841293Email: [email protected]


High port density, high throughput, and very low latency are bedrock requirements in the data centre,

and Force10’s new S4810 top-of-rack switch delivers on all three counts

Force10 data centre switch delivers

impressive performance

mode. This is one of the first store-and-

forward switches we’ve tested to break the

microsecond barrier.

We expected average latency to be lower

still with the S4810 configured as a cut-

through device, but that wasn’t always the

case. For frame sizes of 256 bytes and larger,

cut-through latency was significantly higher

than the equivalent test in store-and-forward

mode. Further, cut-through latency increased

with frame length.

Usually cut-through devices usually have

two properties: They tend to be very fast

(since they start forwarding a frame before

it’s fully received, unlike store-and-forward

devices which wait until the entire frame is

cached before switching it) and they have

roughly the same average latency regardless

of frame length.

With the S4810, these properties better

described the store-and-forward results than

cut-through ones.

This is partially explained by a

characteristic of the Broadcom 56845

application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)

used in the S4810. According to Force10,

the chip still acts in store-and-forward mode

for frames shorter than 624 bytes, even

when set for cut-through operation. This

could explain higher cut-through latency

for medium-length frames (say, between 256

and 624 bytes) but it’s still puzzling why cut-

through latency would be higher for longer

frames. The testing RFCs require different

Significantly, the switch does not yet

support some key data centre protocols,

according to a features questionnaire

completed by Force10. These include the

data centre bridging extensions (DCBX);

IEEE 802.1Qbb priority-based flow control

(PFC); 802.1Qau congestion notification;

and 802.1Qaz traffic shaping. Force10 says

these features are slated for third-quarter

2011 release.

Unicast performance

The S4810 put up solid numbers when it

comes to basic unicast traffic handling. It

delivers line-rate throughput, regardless

of unicast frame size. Better still for

delay-sensitive applications, the S4810

offers sub-microsecond average latency

when configured in store-and-forward

The S4810 is a 1U top-of-rack switch

with multiple interface options.

It has 48 SFP+ ports for 1G/10G

Ethernet (we tested it with 48 10G Ethernet

transceivers) and four QSFP+ ports for 40G

uplinks. With 10GBase-SR transceivers, the

switch drew 202 watts when idle and 219

watts with its data plane fully loaded.

The switch runs the Force10 Operating

System (FTOS), which includes a

command-line interface (CLI) that’s nearly

a clone of Cisco’s IOS. Experienced Cisco

users will have no trouble configuring

and managing this switch.

Although we tested the switch as a layer-2

data centre device, it also supports layer-

3 features, including major IPv4 routing

protocols and static routing of IPv6 traffic,

via a software upgrade.

test


measurement methods for store-and-forward

and cut-through latency, and we checked

and rechecked results to verify we’d used the

appropriate methods for each. Force10 and

other labs also have confirmed this behavior.

Given the latency results, we’d

recommend leaving the switch in its

default store-and-forward mode. There’s a

performance advantage for doing so, and

users get the extra benefit of error checking

that store-and-forward operation provides.

Link aggregation fairness

The S4810 allows up to eight ports to be

combined into a link aggregation group

(LAG) and uses the link aggregation

control protocol (LACP) to dynamically

add and remove LAG members. We took

one LAG member offline, as might occur

in the event of a link or transceiver

failure, to see how the switch would

distribute that port’s traffic across

remaining members of the LAG.

Traffic distribution was not uniform in

this failover test. After we disabled a port,

the switch redistributed all of its traffic to

the first two ports in the LAG. On a lightly

loaded network this wouldn’t be a problem,

but it could result in oversubscription and

frame loss on a heavily loaded LAG. Still,

this is an improvement over LAG behavior

we saw on some switches in last year’s test,

where all traffic from a failed LAG port was

redistributed to just one other LAG member.

As a final test of unicast performance,

we checked the S4810 for “forward

pressure,” a mechanism some switches use

to avoid congestion by forwarding frames

illegally fast. The S4810 doesn’t have that

problem. Its clock is set to run at 40 parts

fOR MORE PRODUCT REVIEWS, LOG ON TO:www.networkworldme.com

per million (ppm) faster than Ethernet’s

theoretical line rate, but that’s well within

the 100-ppm tolerance allowed in the

Ethernet specification.

Multicast performance

We measured the S4810’s multicast

performance with tests of IGMP group

capacity; group join and leave times; and

throughput and latency. The first two of

these stress the switch’s control plane

via the switch’s software and CPU, while

throughput stresses the data plane via

the ASIC.

Using IGMP snooping, the switch

learned 3,000 multicast groups in our

capacity test. That’s higher than all but

one top-of-rack switch tested last year,

and a useful figure for trading and

videoconferencing applications that

require large number of multicast groups.

The switch’s join/leave times were

another story. With all receivers subscribed

to 989 multicast groups, the S4810 took an

average of 21.7 seconds to join each group

and 18.3 seconds to leave. That’s much

higher than most switches in last year’s test,

which also handled 989 groups. The S4810’s

maximum join and leave times were higher

still, at 49.8 and 53.7 seconds respectively.

These high IGMP processing times suggest an

overload of the switch’s CPU.

More evidence of an overload came in

a buffer-overflow message we saw when

running this test (and the group capacity test)

immediately after a switch reboot. The fact

that the switch did not display this message

on the second and subsequent test iterations

suggests an issue with initial loading of a

multicast software module into memory

when large group counts are involved.

Another issue we saw (on all iterations, not

just the first one) is that the switch’s CLI

erroneously reported the same port twice as

a member of a given multicast group.

Force10 said it replicated these results

in-house, and found much lower join and

leave times - of 1 second or less - when 100

groups were involved instead of nearly

1,000. The vendor also says it’s doing more

optimization work on this new platform.

The final set of multicast tests

examined switch throughput and latency,

again using 989 groups. In these tests, we

configured the Spirent TestCentre traffic

generator to transmit multicast traffic to

one port, and act as multicast subscribers

on the 47 remaining ports.

The switch offered line-rate throughput of

multicast traffic, with the exception of jumbo

frames. With these 9,216-byte frames, the

highest zero-loss rate was roughly equivalent

to around 98.5 percent of line rate. That’s

a bit of a surprise in that most data-centre

switches deliver line-rate throughput in all

cases, unicast and multicast alike. On the

other hand, jumbo frames are common

for unicast than multicast transport (think

backup and disaster-recovery applications);

thus, the multicast jumbo throughput result

probably isn’t a concern for most users.

Average and maximum multicast

latencies were roughly comparable to unicast

with the switch in store-and-forward mode.

For network managers whose foremost

switch requirements are high port density

and very low latency, the S4810 is a good fit.

The S4810 still has more work to do in the

areas of data centre features support and

multicast processing speeds. These involve

software fixes, and Force10 says they’re

already in the works. Hardware anomalies,

such as those involving MAC address learning

and link aggregation failover, are harder to

fix and may take longer to address.

Average and maximum multicast latencies were roughly comparable to unicast with the switch in store-and-

forward mode.


tools & gadgets

Brocade releases new networking solutions

Blue Coat unveils cloud computing solution

toolshed

Blue Coat Systems has introduced its CloudCaching Engine for its Blue Coat MACH5 WAN Optimisation appliances and Virtual Appliances to uniquely address the challenges and opportunities of public cloud-based applications. The CloudCaching Engine, an advanced asymmetric acceleration technology, breaks the barrier that has prevented traditional WAN optimisation solutions from optimising most applications based in the public cloud. The CloudCaching Engine enables businesses to more readily adopt cloud infrastructure to achieve operational savings. Through efficient use of the cloud, companies can also meet the increasingly complex challenges of evolving communication and collaboration and enhance business processes for the distributed enterprise.

Traditional WAN optimisation solutions are designed to accelerate file and e-mail traffic using a symmetric deployment of physical or virtual appliances in the branch office and data centre. a private cloud data center can accommodate a WAN optimization device symmetrically aligned with an appliance at the company’s office.

APC launches Galaxy 300

Brocade has announced the general availability of the two-port 100 GbE and eight-port 10 GbE (8×10G-X) blades for the Brocade MLX Series. These carrier-class blades help reduce operational expenditures and promote service provider expansion. The new 100 GbE blades cost just a fraction of competitive offerings, helping promote mass adoption of high-performance, scalable networking technology. When installed in the Brocade MLXe router, the 100 GbE performance can power a half-million high-definition video streams over a single managed connection. This provides more than twice the operational efficiency of competitors at a fraction of the cost, resulting in massive gains in profitability.

Brocade also introduced enhanced capabilities for the Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Series of compact 1U routers designed for high-performance Ethernet edge routing and MPLS applications. Newly introduced models of this router provide significant scalability enhancements to accommodate future growth of IPv4 and IPv6 route tables.

APC by Schneider Electric, has launched MGE Galaxy 300 UPS system. The Galaxy 300 provides a simplified and reliable solution for protecting small and medium businesses, commercial buildings and technical facilities. It offers reliable power protection and a robust and easy to install system at the best price to performance ratio.

Galaxy 300 is a 3-phase UPS product that is fully RoHS (Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances) compliant. The power efficiency rates up to 93%, some 5% higher than other UPS systems with similar features. This efficiency provides lower operational and cooling costs over the medium and long-term.

The UPS system uses a double conversion online topology which provides a regulated and reliable power supply. The Galaxy 300 offers up to 30 minutes of integrated battery back-up, internal mechanical bypass to provide higher levels of power availability. These features, combined with the compact design and easy installation meet all the key requirements of customers looking for a 3-phase UPS in the 10-40kVA power range.

The new APC MGE Galaxy 300 model includes a one year physical warranty with extended warranty options.


HP has announced additions to its desktop-to-data centre client virtualisation portfolio that offer users improved flexibility, security and productivity.

HP t5335z and t5565z Smart Clients, which the company claims, are first-of-their-kind, reprogrammable zero clients that can support a choice of Citrix-, Microsoft- or VMware-based infrastructures.

The HP Client Virtualisation Enterprise Reference Architecture with Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Hyper-V is a preconfigured and performance-optimised solution that simplifies customer integration and testing, while reducing risk for deployment. Combining compute, storage, networking and system management, the solution is tuned for client virtualisation efficiency for all enterprise users and includes options to scale up and out to meet changing customer requirements.

The new HP t5335z and t5565z Smart Clients deliver an unmatched combination of flexibility and affordability to the zero client market.

HP expands client virtualisation portfolio

Sophos bolsters enterprise product lines

Sophos has rolled out a number of new and enhanced enterprise product lines that together offer complete protection anywhere and on any device. The company’s new offering Sophos Mobile Control provides lightweight device protection on a broad range of popular mobile platforms, including Apple iPhones and iPads, Google Android, and Windows Mobile devices; Sophos SafeGuard Enterprise, which provides encryption and data

loss prevention (DLP) for desktops, laptops and removable media, now includes comprehensive management of all encryption options that fully supports hardware drives, including Opal, software-based encryption, and hardware encrypted USB; and enhancements to the latest version of Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection provide increased performance and protection features, keeping users and the network secure and data safe.

Sony has launched six new Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras including HD / Full-HD cameras from its SNC-EP and SNC-ER Series at IFSEC 2011. By doing so, Sony has bolstered its ability to offer customers a complete HD security solution, from initial image capture to playback, regardless of the recording scenario.

The SNC-EP Series is a range of network cameras with 340 degree rotation and excellent cost performance, while the SNC-ER Series network cameras have 360 degree endless rotation and are suited to monitoring applications for wide-area surveillance. Both series now feature three different models to cater to a diverse range of various customer needs. The line-up comprises models compatible with Full-HD (1080p) output, HD (720p) output, or SD output, respectively.

The SNC-EP580 and SNC-ER580 network cameras feature 20x optical zoom with Full-HD (1080p) resolution, while the SNC-EP550 and SNC-ER550 feature 28x optical zoom with HD (720p) resolution and the SNC-EP521 and SNC-ER521 cameras feature 36x optical zoom with SD resolution.

Sony rolls out new HD cameras


Google demos e-wallet

layer 8

China’s great firewall ‘father’ pelted with shoes

Google has showed off its Google Wallet app that it says will make your mobile phone a wallet for the ages.

Google showed off the app along with Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint which will let users tap and pay with a smartphone. The application uses near field communication (NFC) to communicate with point of sale devices or other payment equipment. Google’s Android system includes integrated NFC support.

From Google: “At first, Google Wallet will support both Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card, which you’ll be able to fund with almost any payment card. From the outset, you’ll be able to tap your phone to pay wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted. Google Wallet will also sync your Google Offers, which you’ll be able to redeem via NFC at participating SingleTap merchants, or by showing the barcode as you check out. Many merchants are working to integrate their offers and loyalty programmes with Google Wallet. In the beginning, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint. Over time, we plan on expanding support to more phones.

Somewhere George W. Bush might be laughing. The BBC and others are reporting that China officials are looking for a man

who allegedly threw an egg and shoes at the designer of the country’s Great Firewall technology.

According the BBC, the man known as the Father of the Great Firewall, Fang Binxing was giving a lecture at Wuhan University, Hubei province, when the alleged incident took place. The egg missed the target. The first shoe hit but the second shoe was blocked by a man and a woman, the BBC stated.

The Great Firewall blocks thousands of Websites and all manner of incoming and outgoing communication with China and Fang is reviled by many Chinese Web users for overseeing development of China’s system of internet censorship, the BBC noted.

What kind of cloud do you get for $6M?

Apple of my eye?

The US Air Force said today it would spend $6 million to set up a state-of-the-art cloud computing research centre at the

University of Illinois. The Air Force’s Assured Cloud Computing (ACC) Center, will focus on developing technology to ensure mission critical data can get through the cloud securelyand sometimes in the face of a cyberattack or other interference.

According to the Air Force, specific areas it is looking to develop include cloud monitoring, virtual machine design, formal protocol design, information and mission assurance. Additional expected areas of expertise include: estimation theory in local and global environments, theory for the design and analysis of communication protocols, and management of computational and communications resources.

Researchers with the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that

right. Not just American/English metaphors mind you but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers.

Why metaphors? “Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them,” IARPA says

In the end the program should produce a methodology, tools and techniques together with a prototype system that will identify metaphors that provide insight into cultural beliefs. It should also help build structured framework that organizes the metaphors associated with the various dimensions of an analytic problem and build a metaphor repository where all metaphors and related information are captured for future reference and access, IARPA stated.

AXIS P5534 PTZ Dome Network Camera: HDTV 720p, 18x optical zoom, H.264.

We have a different take on image quality.Image usability.

Image quality is always important, but the benefits that you get from video surveillance are really determined by how you will use the images. For overview monitoring or extreme detail? Perimeter protection or license plate recognition? Viewed, recorded or both? Is the image optimized for your end use?

We make your job easier, by focusing on image usability first. We share our experience and competence, and offer a comprehensive range of image-enhancing features – like remote zoom and focus, megapixel and HDTV – so you can benefit fully from the industry’s broadest portfolio of network video products.

And, to ensure that you have hands-on access to essential expertise in IP-surveillance system installation and support, we partner with more than 30,000 specialists worldwide. As the world leader in network video, we aim to help you make the most of your video surveillance capability.

Get the Axis picture. Stay one step ahead. Visit www.axis.com/imageusability

axis_ad_iq-mall_networldme_207x270_en_1106.indd 1 1/06/2011 11:22:31 AM

Documents

Network World Middle East