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32

COVER STORY

contents COMMENT04 a different beat

NEWS UPDATE06 Zain trials femtocells in saudi

08 server sales kept bouncing back in Q4

12 Juniper leapfrogs cisco with QFabric

data centre

16 Femtocells deployments more than

double in 12 months

IN ACTION18 dubai silicon Oasis authority has set up a

centralized storage array at the main sites

as well as dr sire linked to a redundant

Fc fabric.

EVENT REPORT20 a brave new world – a roundup of Mobile

World congress

FEATURE28 In the safety zone

30 healthy attitude

32 toward a Gigabit Wi-Fi nirvana

TEST 38 Microsoft beefs up system center with

new module

NEW PRODUCTS40 a guide to some of the new products

in the market

LAYER 842 all the news that’s fit for nothing

State of the union:Reality check for unified

communications

IssUe 144 | March 2011

Quick FinderPage 6-22Zain, Alcatel-Lucent, Druva, EMC, Qualcomm, Global Knowledge, Etisalat, Juniper, Cisco, du, Ericsson, Riverbed, Alpha Data, Avaya, STME, DSOA, Ciena, HP Networking

Page 23-44FVC, NEC, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, Symantec, eHosting DataFort, BT Global Services, Brocade, Zebra Technologies, F5, Blue Coat, HP, Siemon, HTC

28

www.networkworldme.com4 Network World Middle East March 2011

EDitorial

A different beat

Jeevan ThankappanSenior [email protected]

PublisherDominic De Sousa

COONadeem Hood

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[email protected] +971 4 440 9126

CMOKimon Alexandrou


EDITORIAL

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Senior EditorJeevan Thankappan


ADVERTISING

Group Sales ManagerRajashree R Kumar


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MARKETING AND CIRCULATION

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PRODUCTION AND DESIGN

Production ManagerJames P Tharian


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Published by

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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.

LTE, more tablets,more apps. That pretty much sums

up this year’s Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona.

This bellwether event for the mobile industry is a good

place to be in if you want to gauge the mood and get an

insight into what’s in store. If the trends visible at this

year’s event are anything to go by, 2011 is going to be a

pivotal year in the history of mobile communications. LTE

is already here, a bit earlier than expected, with many

commercial deployments underway all over the world,

including Etisalat in the UAE. Many operators in the

region are already trialling the technology and making

their networks LTE ready. However, I don’t expect any commercial roll outs to happen

this year, as most regional operators are looking to maximise their 3G assets before

moving to the next-generation. Besides, the eco-system around LTE in terms of

devices is not available in the market yet. Spectrum issues could also throw a spanner

in the works, delaying the deployment. But, what is for sure is that LTE is just a

question of when, as it offers many compelling reasons for operators, and represents

a complete paradigm shift – a huge shift in focus from voice to data. The portended

data explosion is going to force many to re-evaluate their current business models, and

come up with innovative marketing and billing strategies. With data tipped to overtake

voice big time, many would be left with no choice but to move from the existing

flat-fee structure to a volume-based billing model, not to mention other significant

changes in the back-end as LTE is built completely around IP. Will that be the only

change? I guess the most important change as move to the advanced mobile standard

is something very fundamental – while network coverage makes the difference between

winners and losers in the market now, tomorrow it is going to be all about who will

provide more data at a lower cost. Are you ready for that?

NoT YoUR coPY?If you’d like to receive your own copy of NWME every month. Just log on and request a subscription: www.networkworldme.com

PUBL

ICAT

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ENSE

D B

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IA P

ROD

UCTI

ON

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DUB

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www.networkworldme.com | Issue 144 | March 2011

PLUS:

REALITY CHECK FOR UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

STATE UNIONof the

SPECIALFOCUSIT TRENDS

IN HEALTHCARE

DISASTER RECOVERY | VIRTUAL DESKTOPS | WIRELESS LAN | FEMTOCELLS | MWC


bits

Through this project, the mobile operator

can experience first-hand how small

cells effectively address its three main

challenges: fill mobile coverage holes,

increase the network’s capacity to deal

with mounting mobile data traffic and

create new, value-added services in a

rapid, cost-effective way.

“Zain is the first mobile operator in

the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to trial

Femto-based small cells, which clearly

positions us as an innovator in the

mobile broadband space,” said Dr, Saad

Al Barrak CEO and Managing Director of

Zain KSA, Zain. “Partnering with Alcatel-

Lucent, we want to assess how small

cells can help us provide 5-bar mobile

coverage to our residential and business

customers – even in circumstances

where this has traditionally been a

challenge, such as in in-building and

rural environments.”

Zain has been looking for ways to

increase the coverage of its network

without having to invest in expensive

macro site deployments. Additionally,

next to covering white zones, Zain wants

to continuously improve its customers’

Zain trials femtocells in Saudi

trUE Fact

706,000is the number of server units shipped out in the first quarter of 2010 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This represents an increase of 4.4 percent from the same period last year. Server revenue totalled $ 4.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, a growth of 10.4 percent from the same quarter last year.

Source: Gartner

The Qtel Group announced a commercial

agreement with Skype, whereby its

mobile broadband subsidiary wi-tribe, will

promote Skype and its related products

over wi-tribe’s networks in Jordan and the

Philippines; two key markets for wi-tribe.

Under the agreement, wi-tribe; a provider

of wireless broadband Internet, will enable

customers in the respective markets

to easily download Skype software and

connect with their family and friends.

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Qtel,

commented: “The Qtel Group’s strategy for

innovation is driven by the needs of our

customers, and enabled by partnerships

Qtel Group partners with Skype

quality of experience - offering them the

best-on-the-market mobile data plans

with the highest availability and fastest

access speeds, as well as the latest and

coolest services.

“As part of this project, we are

providing Zain with our proven small

cells product portfolio which is being

commercially deployed around the

world,” said Adolfo Hernandez, president

of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in EMEA..

“Alcatel-Lucent’s small cells are plug-and-

play and enable the creation and delivery

of a new wide range of value-added

services through the use of application

programming interfaces (APIs) - such as

location, presence and security.

with like-minded companies. We recognise

the changes taking place in the market and

the increasing customer demand for rich

communications solutions, and so have

decided to partner with Skype - one of the

pioneers in the industry. This is a first-of-its-

kind in our Middle East region and we look

forward to working closely with Skype to

deliver the best possible customer experience.”

Skype had 145 million average monthly

connected users for the three months

ended 31 December 2010 and according

to TeleGeography in January 2011, Skype-

to-Skype calling minutes in 2010 were

equivalent to approximately 20% of total

global international PSTN and Skype-

to-Skype calling minutes. With today’s

partnership announcement, more users in

the Middle-Eastern and Asian regions will

enjoy easy accessibility to popular Skype

features such as free Skype-to-Skype calls,

instant messaging, low cost calls to landlines

and mobiles as well as the recently launched

Group Video Calling.

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Qtel

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by Zain KSA for the first small cells trial in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to augment the mobile service experience.

Your complete source for performance and value!

Office No. Q4−252, Saif Zone, P.O. Box 121456, Sharja−UAE. Tel +971 6 557 9397, Fax: +971 6 557 9398, Email: [email protected]

March 2011 Network World Middle East 7

Your complete source for performance and value!

Office No. Q4−252, Saif Zone, P.O. Box 121456, Sharja−UAE. Tel +971 6 557 9397, Fax: +971 6 557 9398, Email: [email protected]


Druva, a company that sells enterprise

backup software, has announced Druva

inSync 4.1 Enterprise, an application that the

company claims to offer near-instantaneous

automated backups of laptops.

An additional tool, included with the 4.1

release, also allows iPads and iPhones to be

backed up over a corporate network.

The inSync application also offers one-click

restores of any file or backup volume and uses

block-level data deduplication for backups and

restores, according to Borja Rosales, EMEA

Director of Druva.

Rosales said his company’s application can

be installed by users in less than 20 minutes

with a five-step procedure and its client-triggered

EMC has introduced a free Community

Edition of the its high-performance,

massively parallel Greenplum Database for

research and development projects. The

company said that the new Greenplum

Database CE offering includes free

analytic algorithms and data mining tools.

“This is a product designed to

get people started developing on our

products and on open source technology,”

Luke Lonergan, CTO of EMC’s Data

Computing Products Division. “It’s free

for research and development. If they

go production and want support, then

they have to pay license fee, which is per

terabyte or PC core.”

The Greenplum Database CE business

analytics tools allow users to view, modify

and enhance included demo data files.

The Community Edition can be

downloaded as a pre-configured VMWare

virtual appliance for use on laptops

and desktops, or as a set of packages

for deployment on user machines. All

users are free to participate in new

Greenplum Community Forums to get

support, collaborate, post ideas, and test

enhancements developed by various users

independently, Lonergan said.

Greenplum CE users can also take

advantage of the product’s open-source

analytic algorithm library, MADlib, to

give them data mining and machine-

learning methods for structured and

unstructured data.

Druva goes live with inSync

EMC releases free edition of Greenplum

Worldwide server revenue and unit

shipments continued a yearlong recovery in

the fourth quarter of 2010, but growth is

likely to slow this year, research company

Gartner said.

Revenue for all types of servers grew 16.4

percent from a year earlier, while the number

of servers delivered grew 6.5 percent in the

quarter, Gartner said. The company cited the

replacement of x86 servers that companies

had held on to through the global recession

in 2009, as well as the introduction of the

Nehalem family of processors from Intel and

new Opteron chips from AMD late in 2009.

Gartner believes the replacement of x86

servers following the economic downturn has

Server sales kept bouncing back in Q4: Gartner

passed its peak and will slow this year.

IBM led the industry in revenue for the

quarter, with a US$5.2 billion in sales, or

35.5 percent of the market. Sales of System

X and mainframe System Z platforms helped

IBM during the quarter, with the System

Z line showing a 68.3 percent increase in

revenue, according to Gartner.

HP came in behind IBM for revenue,

with 30.4 percent of the market, but led in

unit shipments for the quarter, delivering

767,026 servers or 32.2 percent of the

total. Dell was the second-biggest vendor by

shipments in the quarter, with 515,274 or

21.6 percent of the industry total. Dell was

also the third-biggest company in revenue.

Oracle suffered a 40.8 percent drop in

shipments and a 16.2 percent decline in

server revenue from last year’s fourth quarter,

when its server business was still owned

by Sun Microsystems. Cisco Systems, in

its first full year of shipping servers after

the introduction of its Unified Computing

System in 2009, earned a market share in

the low single digits, Gartner said.

backup architecture enables high levels of

scalability and security. The inSync application

also incorporates “smart bandwidth” throttling

through its Octopus WAN Optimisation

Engine, which automatically prioritises networks

and schedules backup bandwidth as a percentage

of overall network bandwidth. The WAN

optimiser chooses the optimal packet size and

opens up as many as eight parallel connections

at the same time.

Druva inSync 4.1 runs on Windows or

Linux commodity servers. The servers can

be configured with solid-state drives (SSDs)

to enable a “hyper cache” feature, which

will increase backup performance as much

as six-fold.

bits

Poor printing quality, risks of failure, leaks, you certainly would not want your business to look that bad. Only HP Original Cartridges can guarantee perfect prints and smooth printing.

So look for the following when buying new cartridges for your printer:

• a sealed packaging • an intact Security label (where present) • a certified HP Supplier • and be suspicious of “too good to be true” offers

Say it best with Original HP Supplies. hp.com/go/anticounterfeit

For more information visit www.hp.com/me

All you Are doing by not using HP originAl CArtridges is entering A dAnger zone.


Poor printing quality, risks of failure, leaks, you certainly would not want your business to look that bad. Only HP Original Cartridges can guarantee perfect prints and smooth printing.

So look for the following when buying new cartridges for your printer:

• a sealed packaging • an intact Security label (where present) • a certified HP Supplier • and be suspicious of “too good to be true” offers

Say it best with Original HP Supplies. hp.com/go/anticounterfeit

For more information visit www.hp.com/me

All you Are doing by not using HP originAl CArtridges is entering A dAnger zone.


bits

Qualcomm has announced its quad-core

Snapdragon chipset designed to meet the

requirements of next generation tablets

and computing devices. The new quad-

core APQ8064 is the flagship chipset in the

new family of Snapdragon chipsets and is

based on the new micro-architecture code

named “Krait.” With the purpose of being

built for mobile devices, this 28nm micro-

architecture will redefine performance,

achieving speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core

and minimizing power consumption and

heat generation to enable new, thin and

light form factors.

The Snapdragon APQ8064 chip

will be designed to enable the next

generation of converged computing and

entertainment devices. These devices will

have significantly higher performance

requirements, including support for

larger screen sizes and resolutions,

more complex operating systems, multi-

tasking, multi-channel audio, HD gaming

and stereoscopic 3D (S3D) photo and

video capture and playback, as well as

output in full HD to 1080P flat panel

displays over HDMI.

While performance requirements have

been increasing, battery technology and

capacity have struggled to develop at

the same pace. To meet this challenge,

Qualcomm created its next generation

architecture and integrated four new,

low-power CPU cores and its advanced

Adreno graphics into the APQ8064,

enabling it to offer twelve times the

available performance as well as 75

percent lower power than the first

generation of Snapdragon processors.

The combination of advanced processors

and multimedia technology will provide

tablets and mobile computing devices

with unsurpassed performance, battery

life, low thermal dissipation and the

broadest set of connectivity options

available in the industry.

Etisalat has inked an agreement with

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE:

ALU) for a planned deployment of the

Middle East’s first and widest Long Term

Evolution (LTE) network in the UAE.

Using Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end

solution, Etisalat will deploy the first

commercial LTE network in the Middle

East within the first quarter of 2011.

On the occasion, Mohammad Omran,

Chairman of Etisalat commented: “As

the region’s leading-edge telecom service

provider, this is a significant milestone

for our corporation and we are proud to

be the Middle East’s first and widest LTE

IT and business skills training provider

Global Knowledge has appointed Anders

Norregaard as its Managing Director

for UAE & Gulf. Anders joins Global

Knowledge MEA from Global Knowledge

Europe where he started his service with

Global Knowledge in October 2008 as

Managing Director for Denmark; During

that time, Anders drove the Danish

business to one of its most successful

periods in recent times. Before joining

Global Knowledge, he spent 5 years as a

sales director for Arrow ECS in Denmark

– The world’s largest value added IT

distributor. Anders – who is 36 years

old - has a total of 12 years experience in

the IT industry mainly focused on Value

added distribution.

Etisalat rolls out LTE network

Global Knowledge names new MD

Qualcomm debuts quad-core Snapdragon for next-gen tablets

network, thereby fulfilling our promise

to continuously deliver superlative

communication experiences to our

customers every step of the way.”

“Over the last year we’ve witnessed a

200% growth in data roaming traffic. Due

to the smartphone boom in the UAE, as is

globally, our customers continue to crave

for higher speeds and better connectivity.

There is an exploding demand for new

technologies and large bandwidth to

support and enable the surging data

traffic”, said Marwan Zawaydeh, Etisalat.

“We are confident that this advanced

next-generation network from Alcatel-

Lucent will meet our customers’ needs for

innovative mobile broadband services.”

LTE can accommodate multimedia

applications such as video conferencing,

high definition content transmission and

high speed video downloads from social

networks, giving Etisalat’s customers

faster mobile broadband.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide Etisalat with

a complete end-to-end High Leverage

Network solution – including LTE base

stations (eNodeBs), all-IP wireless Evolved

Packet Core (EPC), a converged end-

to-end network management solution

and a range of professional services

including project management, planning,

installation, commissioning

and integration.


bits

The UAE-based SI Alpha Data has

been certified as a “Platinum Business

Partner” with Avaya, a leading global

provider of B2B communications

networks and services.

The ‘Platinum’ certification is the

highest Avaya offers and is an industry-

recognised designation indicating that

Alpha has met the rigorous technical-

competency criteria that ensure the

delivery of best-in-class customer

service and support.

Alpha Data already provides Avaya

communications systems and services

to both government and private

enterprises in the UAE with services

that include design, implementation

and technical support to the client

business.

As part of the new 5 year managed

services agreement, Ericsson will augment

du’s IT applications and deliver application

development and maintenance for du’s IT

application landscape.

Fahad Al Hassawi, Chief Human

Resources and Shared Services Officer, du,

says: “We have grown rapidly as a company

ever since we launched operations. To

maintain the momentum and build on it

we have chosen Ericsson to partner us in

the field of IT Application Development.”

Under the terms of the contract,

Ericsson will develop and maintain

applications for about 35 platforms and

technologies, including upgrading and

consolidation of du’s software applications

domains, transformation of operations

and enterprise support systems and

managed services.

Riverbed has added a level service

dashboard designed to give business

executives a high-level view of how

well applications are performing on

the network.

With its WAN optimisation analytics

platform Cascade 9.0, executives can

drill down see if there are performance

problems that need immediate attention

or build a historical view of their network

to plan upgrades, the company says.

At the same time, the Riverbed has

upgraded the RiOS operating system

for its Steelhead WAN optimisation

appliances. RiOS 6.5 includes

application-specific optimisation for

Microsoft Outlook Anywhere and

Alpha Data goes platinum with Avaya

Juniper leapfrogs Cisco with QFabric data centreJuniper Networks has unveiled the

results of $100 million in research and

development: a new architecture for data

centre infrastructure called QFabric,

formerly code-named Project Stratus. The

company says QFabric will boost data

centre throughput 10-fold and be able to

scale 12 times larger than conventional

architectures while cutting costs for

infrastructure and operations. Analysts

and beta users say they are impressed.

Four years in the making, QFabric

promises to flatten data centre

architecture from two or three layers to

one, drastically reducing the number

of devices needed to build a data-centre

network.

The new architecture creates what

is logically a single data centre switch

overseen by a management platform that

gives one view of the fabric. QFabric is

supported by three devices – the director

management platform, the interconnect

switching fabric and the node, which

handles ingress and egress ports.

In making the announcement, the

company showed three products to support

QFabric – QF Director, QF Internconnect

chassis and the QFX3500 node.

The performance improvements that

QFabric claims would put Juniper ahead

of Cisco and HP for performance, says

Rob Whiteley, an analyst with Forrester

Research. Brocade comes the closest as

a competitor for a data centre fabric, he

says, and it remains to be seen how the

two will stack up. There are no full-fabric

deployments of either yet, he says.

Du partners with Ericsson

Riverbed upgrades WAN optimisation platform

SMB v2. The new version also includes

optimization for SSL certificate traffic for

client machines and for protocols used

by satellites.

The software makes it easier to

configure QoS settings on Steelheads for

customers who choose to use it rather

than QoS on their routers. Customers

rank their applications in importance,

categorize each site by the bandwidth of

their WAN connections and set minimum

and maximum use for classes of activity.

The QoS employs the hierarchical fair

services curves algorithm.

The devices now take latency into

consideration when determining how

to handle individual applications. For

example, if imposing deduplication on

traffic would introduce excessive latency

that would actually increase the time

it takes for traffic to arrive, the device

would skip it.

25th April 2011The Westin, Dubai

RECOGNISING THE MIDDLE EAST’SNETWORKING CHAMPIONS

www.networkworldme.com/nwmeawards2011

SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS


Femtocells deployments more than double in 12 months

bitsbits

Informa Telecoms & Media has issued its

latest femtocell market status report which

revealed that deployments have more than

doubled in the past 12 months. The report

found that although residential services

represent the overwhelming majority of

femtocell deployments, the market has also

started to see particularly strong growth

in the enterprise sector. Almost a third of

femtocell deployments now include enterprise

offerings, contrasting strongly with the

situation 12 months ago when there were

no non-residential deployments. It also

highlighted the importance of the the first

urban and rural rollouts over this period.

In total there are now 19 femtocell

deployments globally compared with nine

at Mobile World Congress 2010. These

include six enterprise offerings, two urban

deployments from Vodafone Qatar and

Telefonica Spain as well as an outdoor rural

service from SoftBank in Japan. These

demonstrate that operator interest is not

limited to residential services alone. Non-

residential femtocell services focus on the

high-value enterprise market, public places

such as metropolitan environments where

they provide a capacity boost, and rural areas

where network coverage has traditionally

been uneconomical.

Furthermore, the past quarter has

also seen important progress in femtocell

technology. In addition to more powerful

models that cover larger areas, new low power

USB-connected femtocell designs promise

to open up new service opportunities for

operators. The second femtocell plugfest

also took place, indicating that the industry

is close to seeing widespread standardised

femtocell deployments.

“While residential femtocell deployments

continue to grow we are seeing changes in the

market as a whole with operators realising

the technology can extend to the enterprise,

rural and urban markets. Enterprise offerings

are rapidly becoming a standard component

of all femtocell deployments. Beyond this,

operators have already started to embrace

urban femtocells to overcome the coverage

challenge, and outdoor designs for rural

markets which could also revolutionise

developing markets too,” said Dimitris

Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at Informa

Telecoms & Media.

Informa Telecoms & Media expects the

femtocell market to experience significant

growth over the next few years, reaching

just under 49 million femtocell access

points (FAP) in the market by 2014 with

114 million mobile users accessing mobile

networks through femtocells during that year.

Healthy growth is anticipated throughout

the forecast period with femtocell unit sales

reaching 25 million in 2014 alone.

GOOD BAD UGLY

E-commerce booms in SaudiA new Arab Advisors Group survey of Saudi Arabia’s Internet users revealed that around 39% of the adult Internet users in the country

buy products and pay for services online through e-commerce services. Electronics are the most popular products bought online, followed by software, while airline tickets booking and hotel reservations are the top services paid for online.

A new major survey of the Internet users in Saudi Arabia was concluded by the Arab Advisors Group in January 2011. The survey revealed that around 39% of adult Internet users in Saudi Arabia buy products and pay for services online. The Arab Advisors Group conservatively estimates the number of these users to be around 3.1 million which is around 12% of the total population in Saudi Arabia. These e-commerce users have spent an estimated US$ 3 billion on buying products and paying for services through e-commerce transactions in 2010.

Iranian cyber army strikes againThe pro-Iran hacktivist group that defaced the Baidu and Twitter Web sites a year ago has hit another target: the U.S. Government's Voice of

America news site.Voice of America was knocked offline temporarily

after hackers were able to change the organization's DNS (Domain Name System) settings, redirecting Web traffic hitting Voice of America sites to another site controlled by the hackers.

Breaking into domain name registration accounts and redirecting Web sites is a favorite tactic of the Cyber Army, and it has pulled off this attack numerous times in recent years. The group posted similar messages in the Twitter and Baidu incidents.

Night Dragon stalks oil and gasThe recent news reports on the Stuxnet virus have helped highlight the importance of security in process industries like oil and gas. Recently,

McAfee released a reportdescribing coordinated covert and targeted cyber-attacks on the oil and gas industry which they attribute to Chinese hackers. Unlike a Stuxnet type virus which threatens to disrupt processes, the McAfee report uncovered attempts to hack into commercially sensitive data for competitive intelligence - attempts which McAfee has named "Night Dragon". Security is a top priority for the oil and gas industry. In fact, security is often cited by oil and gas companies as a barrier to outsourcing or sending data outside of the company firewalls. Oil and gas companies hold data such as detailed well logs and production figures close, while being more willing to outsource management of other types of data. In this case, it is not exactly clear exactly what data was the target.

BAD

UGLY

GOOD


du, the UAE’s integrated telecom service

provider, has converged its fixed and mobile

IP transport networks using the Cisco CRS

Carrier Routing System. This will enable

FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) on du’s

network to meet the demand for high-

end broadband services and makes the

company unique in its ability to rapidly

deploy new high-bandwidth mobile

applications and data packages. Cisco and

du have collaborated previously to develop

a portfolio of data and mobility services

in the UAE. This new phase of network

development will allow du to improve the

speed, flexibility and scalability of mobile-

based services to its customers.

This is one of the first regional FMC

projects where all the fixed and mobile

services run on the same IP network with

mobile (signaling and bearer), mobile data,

residential internet, business internet,

residential voice, enterprise voice,

international voice, layer 2 VPNs, layer 3

VPNs and video running on a single IP/MPLS

core powered by Cisco. This collaboration

between Cisco and du also paves the way for

future mobile applications and services to

du’s customers in the UAE. By consolidating

cores, du is able to offer its customers in

the UAE a more scalable platform to deliver

future services at a higher quality. The

reduction in core equipment and moving to

latest technology also reduces du’s energy

consumption and reduce carbon footprint.

Du enters FMC world

Network Performance Management SoftwareTrusted by over a million administrators worldwide

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MobilY DEPloYs100G NEtWorK

Saudi Arabian mobile operator Mobily, in partnership with Ciena, has activated what is said to be the

first commercial 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) network in the Middle East. This regional first, deployed within the Riyadh metropolitan area, is an extension of Mobily’s nationwide network.

Mobily, which owns more than 40 percent of Saudi Arabia’s mobile market, recently announced its selection of optical transport and switching platforms, Carrier Ethernet solutions, as well as management and maintenance services from Ciena – all aimed at supporting high-bandwidth services. The 100G coherent service delivered on Ciena’s ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform – the industry’s first commercially available system equipped with coherent 100G optics – is key to that architecture. Mobily’s new 100G capabilities give the operator the ability to quickly and easily add network capacity in the crucial metropolitan area of Riyadh.

“This 100G deployment demonstrates our ongoing focus on innovation, aimed at bringing leading edge technology offering to our customers,” said Abdul Aziz Al Tamami, Chief Operations Officer, Mobily. “The demand for bandwidth coming from Saudi businesses is growing steadily, and applications like video, teleconferencing and cloud computing are fuelling a significant portion of this growth. By embracing Ciena’s 100G coherent technology, we are capable of fulfilling the needs of even the most demanding of our customers, while future-proofing our network for the years to come.”

Ciena’s 100G coherent technology will allow for a total throughput of 8.8 Terabits of data per second on Mobily’s network, carried over 88 optical channels on a single strand of optical fiber.

Ciena’s ActivFlex 6500 platform equipped with coherent 100G optics has been operating in live networks since Dec 2009 and provides a simple upgrade path from existing 10G and 40G networks – increasing the amount of bandwidth existing networks can carry by as much as tenfold – with minimal network changes and investment to cost-effectively maximise traffic transport.

an unprecedented evolution. We have

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technology and solutions because

of their sound understanding of the

integrated free zone park.”

The project was deployed by STME.

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storage, backup, disaster recovery,

and archiving of their email and file

server,” added Ahmed Galal, Sales &

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By using Symantec Storage

Foundation, solutions such as

high availability for critical

servers with remote failover, archiving

and enhanced backup were also offered.

The new solutions has successfully

eliminated a Single Point of Failure,

simplified IT administration, reduced

operational costs, and accelerated vital

IT processes such as the recovery of files

on Network-Attached Storage after user-

initiated file deletions.

Abdulsalam Bastaki, Vice-President

of IT at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority,

said: “It is essential for us at Dubai

Silicon Oasis to make sure that

our systems are in line with all ICT

developments, especially at a time when

the technology sector is witnessing

An array of capabilities

Dubai Silicon Oasis has set up a centralised storage array at the Main Site as well as a disaster recovery (DR) site linked to a redundant Fiber Channel Fabric

in action: Dsoa

L-R: Abdulsalam Bastaki, Vice-President of IT at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority and Ahmed Galal, Sales & Marketing Director, STME

Why is CommVault positioned as a leader in the 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup /Recovery” Report?*

The 13,500 customers worldwide who trust us to solve their data management challenges

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our middle east office in Dubai at +971 4 3753491.

1207 Al Thuraya Tower 2 n PO Box 502224 n Dubai UAEHeadquarters: 2 Crescent Place n Oceanport, NJ 07757 Regional Offices: Europe n Middle East & Africa n Asia-Pacific n Latin America & Caribbean n Canada n India n Oceania www.commvault.com

©1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, the “CV” logo, Solving Forward, and Simpana are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.

Backup & Recovery > Archive > VM Protection > Deduplication > Snapshot Management > eDiscovery

* The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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Why is CommVault positioned as a leader in the 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup /Recovery” Report?*

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could answer this question for you 13,500 different ways.

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report and more at commvault.com/ITLeaders. Or, to set

up a personal conversation about how we can help you, call

our middle east office in Dubai at +971 4 3753491.

1207 Al Thuraya Tower 2 n PO Box 502224 n Dubai UAEHeadquarters: 2 Crescent Place n Oceanport, NJ 07757 Regional Offices: Europe n Middle East & Africa n Asia-Pacific n Latin America & Caribbean n Canada n India n Oceania www.commvault.com

©1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, the “CV” logo, Solving Forward, and Simpana are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.

Backup & Recovery > Archive > VM Protection > Deduplication > Snapshot Management > eDiscovery

* The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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Mobile broadband and LTE hogged the limelight at this year’s Mobile

World Congress in Barcelona

A brave new world

The industry seems to have learned

its lessons from 3G, which was

beset with problems when it came

out ten years ago, and is now focusing on

robustness and quality of service in the 4G.

Though these are early days for LTE, the

mobile industry is bullish about the next-

generation, which is all about data.

At the show, mobile gear manufacturer

Ericsson presented its vision of the world

in 2020. Called Networked Society, it

envisions a world with 50 billion devices

with microprocessors connected to

network, many of them wirelessly. Buoyed

by a high demand for mobile broadband

solutions, the Swedish giant is betting on

a world where all microprocessors that

not connected today will be connected,

resulting in the number of connections in

tens of billions.

“We have deployed networks all over

the world. Next 20 years will see those

networks being used in ways never

imagined, with a huge impact on people,

enterprise organisation and society in

general. We believe three components will

make the difference in a networked society

– mobility, broadband and cloud,” said

Hans Vestberg, President and CEO.

Ericsson’s vision is one of machine

to machine (M2M) communication,

which means we can actually start using

event | mobile world congress



machines in a way that they talk to each

other and this is a major change relative

to how we have been communicating

in the past. The technology enablers for

this universally connected world are

broadband ubiquity and the declining cost

of connected devices, he added.

Vestberg’s talk on machine to

machine networking ecosystems included

descriptions and examples of smart

networks, smart services and smart cities.

Ericsson says 5.3 billion people are

connected worldwide today, which is

expected to reach 7-8 billion by 2015.

“Broadband penetration has, of course,

been the most important factor for

operators around the world. Every 1000

new mobile broadband subscriptions

generate 80 new jobs, which is why

governments need to think about

broadband infrastructure. We expect one

billion people to have mobile broadband

subscriptions this years, which can

reach up to five billion by 2016; the data

consumption will be 25 percent higher,

with video accounting for the major chunk

of traffic,” said Vestberg.

Ericsson says 500 million smartphones

are already on networks and by 2016 there

will be as much data on smartphones as

PCs, and more data capacity on networks

than voice.

To support M2M communications and

hook up operators to cloud, Ericsson has

launched Device Connection Platform at

the show, which makes it possible to create

tailored connectivity and price plans for

M2M services. Ericsson provides a complete

service that the operators can adjust to

serve its enterprise customers’ needs,

including a self-service interface, flexible

billing, charging and connectivity plans

for all devices connected to the network.

Since machine to machine applications

can communicate using any existing IP

protocol they can be accessed and share

data via internet. In addition, the operator’s

customer will be able to manage their

subscriptions and devices in real time.

In tune with the shift from host-to-host

connections to a focus on connections

from users to networks and vice versa,

Ericsson is expanding its IP networking

portfolio, with several new solutions to be

rolled out during 2011. At the show, it has

taken the wraps off its first solution in the

portfolio – Smart Service Router, which

the company says will form the basis of

the new mobile core network needed in

4G/LTE networks.

Though the show this year was

all about LTE, which is expected to

come early, Ericsson says HSPA will

continue to evolve in parallel to LTE.

The manufacturer has demonstrated

multi-carrier HSPA with 168Mbps on

the downlink and 24Mbps on the uplink

using a prototype consumer device and

commercial network equipment. This is

said to be a world record for the highest

HSPA speed achieved on commercial

network equipment.

To reach 168M bps, Ericsson used

a number of radio tricks, including

antenna technology MIMO (Multiple-Input

Multiple-Output) and sending data over

several channels at the same time. MIMO

uses multiple antennas in the base station

and on the device to increase speeds.

Besides HSPA at 168M bps, Ericsson

has also demonstrated HSPA with 42M bps

using a single channel and 84M bps using

two channels. Operators already offer

HSPA at 42M bps, but they have to use

two channels. By only using one channel

aided by MIMO, operators can “be much

more efficient with their valuable radio

spectrum”, Ericsson said.

Today, 79 commercial HSPA networks

offer download speeds of 21M bps. Add to

that 13 commercial HSPA networks that

can offer up to 42M bps, and five operators

that have committed to HSPA at 84M bps,

according to the latest statistics from the

Global mobile Suppliers Association.

Another major area of push for

Ericsson is manager services, which

accounts for 10 percent of the net sales for

the company. Its services organisation now

boasts of 45000 professional and has won

54 managed services contract in 2010.

Though the show this year was all about LTE,

which is expected to come early, Ericsson says HSPA will continue to evolve in parallel to LTE.

EricssoN airs sMallEr MobilEbasE statioNs

Ericsson has joined the move towards using smaller mobile base stations, launching Ericsson Air (antenna integrated radio), which aims to reduce power consumption while expanding coverage to more areas.

For mobile subscribers, the Air base stations can open the door to coverage where there was none before, such as in street and indoor environments that are hard to reach with traditional base stations, according to Jan Häglund, vice president and deputy head of product area IP and broadband at Ericsson’s Networks unit.

The Air base stations integrate the antenna unit into the radio unit. The first generation of the product will put the baseband unit, which handles the data and call processing, into a separate box. But in the future it will also be integrated into the main unit, according to Ericsson.

The Air base stations can be used in 2G, 3G and LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks, and will come in different sizes. The smallest ones will be the size of a one-liter milk carton, and can cover an area with a cell radius of up to about 100 meters, according to Christian Hedelin, head of radio product marketing at Ericsson’s Networks unit.

We organised a CIO roundtable in Kuwait to discuss the changing paradigm in networking in the context of emerging technologies, which yielded some good advice on network transformation

Changing the rules

Bolstered by 3Com acquisition

and a new go-to-market

moniker, HP Networking has set

its sights on Cisco in networking battle.

Against this backdrop, the company in

association with Network World Middle

East organised a roundtable discussion

in Kuwait to debate the changing rules

of networking and how HP Networking

is enabling customers to build next-gen

infrastructure.

The current networking paradigm

saps resources from IT innovation and

perpetuates a siloed approach to IT.

Networks are too complex, inflexible

and costly. In addition, the boundaries

between the network and data centre

infrastructure limit IT agility and leave

critical resources underutilized.

“With the acquisition of 3Com, HP

is bringing an end to this inefficient

model, enabling convergence that

accelerates business growth at a lower

total cost of ownership. We have

solutions that span from edge of the

network to the heart of the data centre,”

said Khaled Ibrahim El Desouky, Pre Sales

Technical Consultant, HP Networking.

He said customers are looking

for ways to break from business

limitations imposed by the networking

paradigm that has been dominated by

a single vendor. “We are delivering a

common platform, single operating

system, and single pane of glass

management. We are offering open

industry standards and market-driven

innovation, with security solutions

and intelligence integrated into the

secure network fabric.”

Desouky also explained the reasons

why HP Networking is emerging as a

credible alternative in the networking

market. “Customers are telling us that

one of the reasons why the cost of

managing and deploying networking

infrastructure hadn’t changed over

the years was because a competitor

that held a majority position in the

market just kept adding, adding, adding

more features without lowering their

cost, and many of these features were

features the customer never used. We

will deploy for you exactly what you

need, and then we’re going to translate

that to you in business value that you

won’t get anywhere else.”

He claimed what differentiates

HP networking from a technology

standpoint is the intelligence that

its brings to the table, which enable

customers to deploy the network fabric

and network architecture in much

simpler ways, that will open up new

opportunities for business growth. “We

have got one management solution end

to end. We’ve got Intelligent Resilient

Framework technology, which allows

you to do clustering performance and

leading-edge bandwidth access.”

This was followed by a presentation

by Arun George, Technical Sales Manager,

HP TippingPoint on the some of the

burning issues around virtualisaiton

security, where the threats are new and

the traditional security tools don’t cut

it anymore.

“To address the unique

requirements of the virtualised data

center, we are offering TippingPoint

Secure Virtualisation Framework

(SVF), which is designed specifically

for implementing best-of-breed

threat protection for the virtualized

infrastructure. We are extending our

threat research capabilities, breadth

of protection, ease-of-use, and

automation capabilities to include

virtual infrastructure.”

HP TippingPoint is also offering

active theat blocking, which filters

and detect malicious traffic and stop it

before it can compromise or damage the

virtualised data centre infrastructure or

its data assets.

The roundtable was attended by

Farhan Baboojee, Sr. Regional Manager

– IT Ops, Agility; Imran Saleh, IT Special

Consultant, PACE; Fahad Almenayes,

Executive Management – Technical

Support and System Operations, Al Ahli

Bank of Kuwait; Ahmed Helal, Manager-

IT, Al Muzaini Exchange; and Rehman

Shaik, Senior Technical Support

Engineer, Al Shaya.


event | networking


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While many businesses

tightened their IT budgets

during the recent recession,

a growing number of organisations

are deploying unified communications

solutions – integrated voice, data,

messaging, conferencing and

collaboration services over converged

networks – as confidence creeps back

and budgets expand. The driver?

Return on investment.

For the uninitiated, UC solutions

quickly increase an organisation’s

productivity and reduce operating

costs. UC not only provides more

reliable and cross-functional

communication, but also increases

resilience against network disruptions.

In addition, UC enhances the sense of

belonging and affinity amongst remote

or mobile workers.

However, getting to a UC platform

takes careful thought and planning.

Definitions of “unified

communications” are as plentiful as the

companies that provide the component

technologies. As such, there is no such

thing as one-size-fits-all. However,

there are several broad ways to

approach UC on a single platform.

feature | unified communications

Reality check foR unified communications

state unionof the



Many businesses are pursuing

either rich media or telephony-centric

approaches to implementation, while

others are focusing on e-mail- or

instant messaging-centric approaches.

Admittedly, the array of available

technologies, combined with their

unique implications, make selecting a

UC solution a complex undertaking.

There are many things to consider

when deciding what is right for your

company, including the nature of your

organisation’s work and its physical

structure.

“One of the most obvious concerns

has to be bandwidth optimisation.

Since UC involves real time voice

and video, CIOs need to have a

closer look at their bandwidth

and their prioritisation in terms

of services and traffic. The second

is the local ISP infrastructure and

regulations and what these cover. If

the communications system covers

several branches across the region,

then the local WAN links and basic

infrastructure needs to be set up

to handle the traffic that these

applications can (and will) generate,”

says Dharmendra Parmar, GM

Marketing, FVC.

Frits Neyndorff, MD of NEC

Unified Solutions, says in addition to

the infrastructure concerns such as

bandwidth, one of the key challenges

for companies is changing user habits

and processes among the staff and

providing the right level of skills and

training to ensure that they make the

most optimal use of the solutions.

Another common area of concern

is how will it affect network security?

“Some of the most common concerns

companies have is security, reliability

and user adoption. Network security in

UC is not any different from having a

voice or data infrastructure. Network

security in UC is all about user

privileges and access,” says Mohammed

Areff, MD – Gulf & Pakistan, Avaya.

Many of the obstacles faced in UC

implementations stem from at least

one of the following:

1. Rushed discovery phase – it’s

easier to address challenges prior

to implementation, so this phase

should carefully assess all potential

applications and systems that link to

the communications platform or may

be affected by the change in traffic

2. Assumption that equipment/

applications can be transferred “as is”

from existing systems – it is important

to clarify this before investing.

3. Lack of stakeholder involvement

in the process – since UC is not an

IT-only decision, you’ll only capture

the maximum benefit if you secure

the users’ input during the discovery,

planning, and implementation process.

4. Failure to establish a goal and stick

to it – this is where UC solutions can

become needlessly complicated, leading

to unanticipated costs.

Identify the weakest link in the chain

If your network is not strong enough

to handle an increase in traffic from

UC, you will not get the results you

are expecting. Review your current

business and network environments,

assess current and future needs, and

incorporate them into a scope of

work for design and implementation.

For most companies, unifying

communications is not a one-size-

fits-all, packaged solution. It is a

phased process, leading to an end goal

that meets business/organisational

communication goals. What is best

for your company is a network and

solution set that stays up and running

when the weakest link is at or near

maximum capacity.

Finally, remember that training

your associates on the maintenance

and use of the UC components is

essential. Begin preparing them for

implementation during installation

and configuration. Again, your goal is

to launch a reliable operating system

without disrupting business as usual.

If your network is not strong enough to handle an

increase in traffic from UC, you will not get the results you are expecting.

Frits Neyndorff, MD of NEC Unified Solutions

Dharmendra Parmar, GM Marketing, FVC

www.networkworldme.com26 Network World Middle East March 2011 www.networkworldme.com

feature | unified communications

Once viewed as a luxury that only

large organisations with hefty IT

budgets could afford, UC solutions are

now within reach of organisations of

all sizes, including many small and

midsize businesses (SMBs).

“At this stage of time and after

few years of penetration in the

enterprises, UC is within the reach

of any organization. The level of UC

penetration might differ as some

organisations may focus on mobility,

others on voice, video and web

conferencing,” says Wael Abdulal,

Collaboration Manager, Cisco UAE.

Microsoft, which has recently

launched its Lync server, says users will

no longer need to invest in expensive

hardware to adopt UC. “In fact, you

don’t need to even own any hardware

if you opt for the cloud based or

partner hosted version of Microsoft’s

UC solution. Owning hardware/IT

infrastructure is one of the key blockers

for small organizations while we offer a

comprehensive enterprise solutions for

some of our large customers. We have

references to support UC for business

from 5 seats to 100K seats,” says Yasir

Khokhar,Information Worker Business

Group lead, Microsoft Gulf.

Parmar from FVC adds that as UC

leverages voice, video, social media

and other communications into a more

converged platform, there is a wider

range of solutions available to suit the

budgets and needs of organisations,

whatever the size. “Organisations can

start with a simple solution using

voice/text messaging, and scale all

the way to conference room video

conferencing solutions.”

Payback time

While the goals of UC are admirable, it

is not always easy to sell management

on the idea of a revamped,

companywide communications

system. However, once management

understands the benefits of UC, they

may realise it is just the kind of

enhancement they are looking for.

“Well, it’s true that some of the

benefits of UC are not very easy to

measure. It also depends on the size and

the extent of how the systems are used.

Some of the clear, measurable areas

are productivity, in terms of increased

communication and collaboration,

access to resources that would normally

be out of reach, and time savings and

costs in terms of travel especially at

executive levels,” says Parmar.

Areff from Avaya adds that

enhanced productivity, employee

retention, cost reductions from staff

travel are just some of the factors

that CIOs could consider while cost

justifying a UC system.

Another option is to look at a hosted

UC system, which offers incredible cost

savings when compared to in-house,

thanks in large part to eliminating

the need for hardware, software and

licenses. Alongside the reduced need

for hardware and software, staffing

costs can also be easily manager, as a

hosted solution doesn’t require a large

team of internal experts to deal with

upgrades or maintenance.

“This would depend on the needs of

the organisation and where security can

play a very key role in deciding what

kind of systems to deploy. On-premise

deployment does have the advantage of

enhanced control, but hosted systems

give these organisations the possibility

of more flexibility,” says Neyndorff.

While unified communications is a

complicated field with many potential

challenges, it can undoubtedly help

transform an organisation, and result

in attractive operating efficiencies. The

facts speak for themselves – UC is on

the rise as an innovative way to change

the way your company does business.

While the goals of UC are admirable, it is

not always easy to sell management on the idea of a revamped, companywide communications system.

Mohammed Areff, MD – Gulf & Pakistan, Avaya Wael Abdulal, Collaboration Manager, Cisco UAE

Under the patronage of H.E. Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori, UAE Minister of Economy

The Middle East’s Leading Enterprise Communications Exhibition & Conference

Delivering Enterprise Decision makers:

• Government • Oil & Gas • Public Sector• Healthcare • Banking & Finance • Construction • Retail • Manufacturing• Hospitality & more...

16 - 18 May 2011Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre

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For sponsorship and space booking, contact the MECOM team on +971 4 3365161 or [email protected]

Organised by Research Partner

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Featuring


Under the patronage of H.E. Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori, UAE Minister of Economy

The Middle East’s Leading Enterprise Communications Exhibition & Conference

Delivering Enterprise Decision makers:

• Government • Oil & Gas • Public Sector• Healthcare • Banking & Finance • Construction • Retail • Manufacturing• Hospitality & more...

16 - 18 May 2011Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre

www.mecomexpo.com

For sponsorship and space booking, contact the MECOM team on +971 4 3365161 or [email protected]

Organised by Research Partner

Media Partner

Online Media Partner Publishing Partner

Silver Sponsor Associate Sponsor Gold Media Sponsor Gold Media PartnerDiamond Media PartnerGold Sponsor

Featuring

feature | disaster recovery

applications don’t get a second chance, and

those that fail to reduce their operational

expenses may suffer the same fate. All

these factors driving the prioritisation of

business continuity and disaster recovery

as top priority,” says Ahmed Hassan, Area

Technical Manager, NetApp Middle East.

Wouter Vancoppenol, Regional Sales

Director of Double-Take (now part of

Vision Solutions), adds another perspective:

“Business continuity is an increasing

concern for enterprises locally - they are

following the same company growth and

user demand curves that we have seen

in other regions. This requirement for

services to be available at all times is a

pressing one, and means that companies

28 Network World Middle East March 2011 www.networkworldme.com

feature | disaster recoverydisaster recoverydisaster recovery

In the safety zone

With the outages costing dearly, business continuity and disaster recovery are

emerging as top priorities for regional businesses. Here is what you need to

know to plan right

Anthony Harrison, Senior Principal Solution Specialist – Storage and Server Management, Symantec

Businesses

are generally

confident about

the resilience of their IT

systems – until disaster strikes

and disruptions ensue. Most f the

businesses in the region have experiences

significant network disruptions during

the last 12 month, either in the form of

political turmoil, power loss, hardware

failures or a loss of telecom services

to facilities. Most of these disruptions

could have been reduced or avoided by

implemented by implementing a more

comprehensive business continuity and

disaster recovery plan.

To compensate for the unexpected

and account for the unpreventable,

prudent organisations utilize business

continuity products and services plans

to keep their enterprises up and running

in emergencies, and implement disaster

recovery

plans and

programs

against the

possibility that a

computer, server, office

or entire building becomes

unusable as a result of a

catastrophe.

Business continuity and disaster

recovery technologies are becoming

less expensive and easier to use, in part

because they are being integrated into

larger IT systems, and also because they’re

increasingly taking advantage of aspects of

cloud computing and virtualisation. There

are many factors that driving this as a top

technology priority for organisations in

the Middle East.

“Enterprises today are facing the

perfect storm. Challenging economic

times are compelling businesses to achieve

even greater levels of cost savings and

operational efficiency. Yet business-critical

applications still require vital data to be

protected and available to meet increasing

service-level demands. The majority of

businesses that fail to protect their critical


are looking at developing how their

business can survive through a disaster

through investing in high availability

and / or disaster recovery planning and

solutions.

He points out at the industries in the

region that have been successful especially

banking and finance has seen a huge

demand for business continuity as more

services are rolled out via the internet to

online users. “Internet banking requires

that systems are available around the clock,

which has made investment in continuity

part of a wider company strategy. Other

industries like has seen the same business

driver - customers are more demanding,

and they won’t accept downtime.”

It is important for CIOs to make a

distinction between business continuity and

disaster recovery, which are often thought

of as the same thing. Disaster recovery is

about re-establishing IT services in the face

of large-scale hardware failure or sabotage,

facilities failure and/or regional natural

disaster. Disaster-recovery capabilities are

measured by the amount of time it takes

to re-establish services and the amount of

data loss. Business continuity is the ability

to continue operations with little or no

downtime in some of these scenarios.

“These two different perspectives on

the same core problem – how do I deal

with an event that is unlikely to happen

but could be big enough to threaten my

business? Disaster recovery has tended to

be viewed as data replication, and business

continuity extends that idea to include the

servers, their configuration, the office space

and equipment and indeed the complete

business process,” says Anthony Harrison,

Senior Principal Solution Specialist –

Storage and Server Management, Symantec.

He cites the example of a telco, for

which DR could include the system that

houses all of their call data records so they

do not lose track of their primary revenue

source, but business continuity would

include the application to generate the

bills at the end of that month, the printers

to print the completed statements and

the people to send them in the post to

ensure that the company’s cash flow is

not impacted.

Mohamed Rizvi, Manager- Information

Security and Advisory Services at eHosting

DataFort, defines DR as an arrangement

related to the preparation for recovery or

continuation of technology infrastructure,

which is critical to an organisation during

a disaster. “It is a sub-set of business

continuity and focuses on IT systems that

support business functions.”

While many regional businesses believe

they are prepared for an unplanned

network disruption, many are not – and yet

the most common causes of IT outages are

addressable by having a well-defined DR

plan in place. What should companies keep

in mind while formulating a plan? “The

main requirement should be to determine

the value of data and infrastructure you are

trying to protect with DR. Understanding

the value is key to determining the funding

an organization would put forward for

their DR strategy,” says Tareque Choudhury,

Head of Security Practice and Professional

Services MEA, BT Global Services

Harrison from Symantec says that taking

the simplistic view of “just copy the data

offsite and we’ll worry about the rest later”

represents a very high cost in terms of

duplicated storage requirements (usually of

the same model of high-end array), because

there is no appreciation of the business

value of the data. “We always advise a

more granular approach to understand

the business value both of the data and the

applications that access it.”

According to Vancoppenol, the first

step is to understand what your critical

applications are- that the business relies

on in order to be profitable. These are

the first that should be protected, either

through deploying high availability or

disaster recovery solutions. The second is

to know what platforms you are running:

even smaller organisations tend to have a

mix of different server hardware in place,

which makes planning how to protect

the applications running on those servers

potentially more difficult. Look at how to

protect these multiple platforms with one

tool, rather than having different products

for each one. This is a more cost-effective

approach, and secondly it makes it easier

to spot any potential gaps in the DR plan,

he adds.

With the cost of downtime going up,

sometimes even battening businesses down,

the pressure on IT organisations is now

more than ever to ensure their DR plan is

ready to go and unfailingly reliable. Think

you are ready about just about anything?

Think again.

Mohamed Rizvi, Manager- Information Security and Advisory Services at eHosting DataFort

Tareque Choudhury, Head of Security Practice and Professional Services MEA, BT Global Services


feature | healthcare

Healthcare in Middle East is going digital, which brings both tremendous opportunities and security risks

Healthy attitude

Healthcare information technology

is expected to play a major role

in meeting the demand for

care, quality, and safety, while bridging

the gap to affordability. Healthcare

providers and players in the Middle East

are faced with the challenge of making

transformative changes to care delivery

and business models to respond to the

changing technology landscape , which

is essential to achieve cost savings and

efficiency goals.

“The healthcare industry in general

is conservative when it comes to

technology - after all, patient care is at

stake. However, in recent years healthcare

has accelerated adoption of technology

compared to other industries as a way to

deliver high quality care while keeping

costs in line,” says Ali Ahmar, Regional

Sales Manager, Brocade Communications

Today, there’s the widespread

migration from paper- and film-based

to electronic medical/ health records,

adoption of wireless technologies for

medical monitoring as well as bedside

care delivery, increased use and capability

of medical imaging (PACS, CT, MRI, etc.)

technology, unified communications,

and high availability/ disaster recovery

solutions are the current technology

trends, he adds.

Perhaps, the biggest disruptive

technology transformation in the industry

is the move towards electronic health

records (EHRs). Electronic records not only

allow general practitioners and specialists

to document and easily share patient

information; they also help support

“evidence-based” medicine. That allows

physicians to treat patients using best

practices derived from the systematic,

scientific study of standard treatments.

Given the huge upfront costs involved,

some industry experts believe a software-

as-a-service (SaaS) EHR model would

be the most cost-effective and least

complicated deployment for medical

practices, clinics and hospitals unable

to afford in-house IT equipment. Under

a SaaS model, EHR applications such

as physician-order-entry systems are

hosted on servers in a vendor facility

and hospitals would access those systems

through a secure Internet portal or via

a virtual private network. That way, the

health care facility would not need to

deploy hardware and software in its data

centre or hire the IT staffers needed to

support and maintain an EHR system.

Health goes mobile

Smartphones, tablet PCs and other

wireless devices are poised to play a

greater role in health care as doctors and

patients embrace the mobile Internet.

Smartphones allow doctors to check

e-mail, use mobile applications and surf

the Web, and also lead to collaboration

between physicians and patients.

In fact, a recent research report

suggests that smartphone apps are set to

become the killer health care product as

a research report projects that some 500

million people will be using them within

five years.

According to the Global Mobile Health

Market Report 2010-2015 compiled by

research2guidance, more than a third

of 1.4 billion smartphone users in 2015

will be running some kind of mobile

healthcare application.

Mobile health (mHealth) applications

allow doctors to monitor patients, no


matter where they are, in real time. The

emergence of consumer health electronics

devices like portable ECG machines, blood

pressure monitors and weight scales can

help physicians seamlessly capture and

transmit patient information from home,

work or from the road.

According to a report released by

Accenture earlier this year, the rise

of inexpensive Internet connectivity

along with the development of smaller,

cheaper and “smarter” health electronic

devices should help health care workers

deliver better, more efficient health care

to patients.

“Wireless technology, specifically

the adoption of 802.11n is one of the

most transformational technologies in

healthcare. With the proliferation of

medical monitoring devices as well as

the broad adoption of PDAs, tablet PCs

and smart phones, wireless technology is

enabling healthcare providers to monitor

and deliver care whenever and wherever

needed. Mobile devices free from wired

terminals and combined with wireless

access have become extremely important

to healthcare providers giving them

ready access to patient information and

the ability to diagnose and treat patients

more quickly, regardless of their physical

location in the hospital complex: wards,

clinics, special-care units and so on,”

says Ahmar.

RFID is also set to play a crucial

role, according to Wael Hasan,

Territory Manager – Middle East,

Zebra Technologies. The use of RFID

in healthcare is vital to minimizing

errors in patient treatment and revising

process that were previously very

time consuming. When talking about

solutions for the Middle East, integration

is definitely a buzz word for the market.

“The fact is that patient histories—

especially those dating back to the

pre-computer era—are incredibly time

consuming to review if not recorded

digitally. In areas like medication

administration, additional time and costs

are incurred as some facilities still rely on

centralized networks which can only be

accessed from the pharmacy floor or the

back office. These bulky and immobile

systems of the past are becoming

exponentially more difficult to manage.

From staff ID cards to mobile printers

and patient wristbands, the combination

of RFID technologies becoming available

in the Middle East presents incredible

opportunities for healthcare providers,”

he adds.

The rapidly changing technology

landscape in the healthcare sector,

especially the transition to EHRs, is

stressing existing networks. Industry

experts point out a medical-grade

network that can guarantee continuous

high performance is the need of the hour.

“At the same time, high performance

needs to be matched with high security.

Confidential patient information is

among the most sensitive data that exists,

and, in most jurisdictions, is subject

to a host of legislative and regulatory

controls,” sums up Ahmar.

Ali Ahmar, Regional Sales Manager, Brocade CommunicationsWael Hasan, Territory Manager – Middle East, Zebra Technologies


Today’s existing state-of-the art wireless LAN can achieve 300 Mbps using 802.11n with two spatial streams. Future developments will deliver three- and four-stream speeds of up to 600 Mbps. But the 802.11 working group has set its sights on a more ambitious milestone: 1 Gbps throughput.

Toward a Gigabit Wi-Fi nirvana

After considering several

approaches for getting

to gigabit speeds, the

802.11 WG settled on two related

approaches, and formed two task

groups to produce future gigabit

standards: 802.11ac and 802.11ad.

While both groups share the same

goal, the approaches taken are

techupdate


different because the groups have

fundamentally different purposes.

Fundamentally, all wireless LAN

standards depend on access to radio

spectrum. 802.11ac will be designed

for use at frequencies under 6 GHz,

which in practice refers to the

existing radio spectrum available

today in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands

used by 802.11a/b/g/n. Therefore, an

important component of the work

in Task Group AC will be to design

backward-compatibility mechanisms

to peacefully coexist with existing

networks.

Higher data rates in 802.11ac

are supported by a set of familiar

techniques. Once again, the speed

will be supported by well-understood

OFDM techniques, another bump

up in the size of radio channels,

and MIMO. Advances in both chip

manufacturing technology and

processing power have also made it

possible to use more sensitive coding

techniques that depend on finer

distinctions in the received signal

as well as more aggressive error

correction codes that use fewer check

bits for the same amount of data.

Wider radio channels support

higher speeds. Just as 802.11n

provided a leap in speed by doubling

channel width from 20 MHz to 40

MHz, 802.11ac provides a bump in

throughput with still-wider 80 MHz

channels. At 80 MHz, channel layout

once again becomes a challenge,

even in the relatively expansive 5

GHz spectrum. Manufacturers will

need to adapt automatic radio tuning

capabilities to offer higher-bandwidth

channels only where necessary to

conserve spectrum.

Increasing data rates through

efficiency is an important goal of

every new 802.11 standard. One

common measure of efficiency is the

number of megabits transmitted per

megahertz of spectrum (Mbps/MHz).

802.11 began life at 0.1 Mbps/MHz,

and current 802.11n standards have

pushed that figure to 7.5 Mbps/MHz.

Several efficiency enhancements are

on the drawing board for 802.11ac,

and the most interesting of these is

multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO).

MU-MIMO builds on the

beamforming capabilities of 802.11n

and enables the simultaneous

transmission of different data frames

to different clients. Correctly using

MU-MIMO requires that vendors

develop spatial awareness of

clients and sophisticated queuing

systems that can take advantage of

opportunities to transmit to multiple

clients when conditions are right.

802.11ad has the same gigabit

goal, but is intended for use with

new spectrum around 60 GHz to

use. Range will be shorter, but the

spectrum is “cleaner” because many

fewer devices use it today. The open

spectral band is large enough that

the current 802.11ad draft supports

nearly 7 Gbps throughput.

The higher data rates of

802.11ac and 802.11ad will have

far-reaching influences into other

areas of the protocol. CCMP, the

existing encryption protocol first

The higher data rates of 802.11ac and 802.11ad

will have far-reaching influences into other areas of the protocol.

standardized in 802.11i, requires

two AES encryption operations for

every 16 bytes of data. To encrypt a

1,500-byte frame requires roughly

200 AES encryption operations. To

make matters worse, CCMP is based

on a “chained” mode of operation

that requires in-order processing of

the 16-byte chunks because chained

cryptographic modes require the

output of one stage to be used as the

input to the next. Many engineers

within the 802.11 working group

expect that the high data rates of

802.11ac and 802.11ad will be too

high for CCMP.

Fortunately, a solution is readily

available in the form of the Galois/

Counter Mode Protocol (GCMP),

which has been incorporated into

the 802.11ad draft. GCMP uses the

same AES cryptographic engine,

but embeds it into a more efficient

framework. Compared with CCMP,

GCMP requires only half the number

of encryption operations, and, more

importantly, is not chained so that

GCMP cryptographic acceleration can

be applied to an entire transmitted

frame in parallel. The downside of

the adoption of GCMP is that it is a

new protocol and will only become

available in new radio chips that

support it, and an entire generation

of centralized cryptographic

equipment, such as the security

processors in WLAN controllers, will

become obsolete.

As with every jump in speed that

has occurred in Wi-Fi, 802.11ac and

802.11ad present challenges for the

network administrator. The move

to gigabit Wi-Fi is needed to keep

up with demand for Wi-Fi network

capacity and enable Wi-Fi to remain

the technology of choice at the edge.

feature | VDI

Cost-saving technologies remain a priority for IT in 2011 and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one of the

technologies at the top of the list.

Best practices for maximising VDI success

on network performance, understanding

the difference between LAN, WAN and

VPN activity is critical to project success.

How VDI affects the network

VDI pilots often stall when employees start

accessing their desktops via WAN, VPN

With VDI, IT administrators

can manage desktops and

applications from a centralized

location, eliminating the need to physically

touch and update every single desktop.

This, in turn, enables faster provisioning

and deployment - a framework that is

especially attractive for rapidly expanding

computing environments. End users also

benefit, gaining the ability to seamlessly

access critical applications from any

location with a myriad of devices.

So what’s the catch? Why do VDI pilots

fail? As the computing landscape has

changed, so have user expectations. With

mobile and ubiquitous computing fast

becoming the norm for most corporations,

end users don’t tolerate availability or

performance problems. In fact, end user

satisfaction has been identified as the No.1

factor in determining success of any VDI

pilot/proof of concept (POC). If the plan

includes thousands of desktops, ensuring

the first hundred users’ happiness is critical

to satisfying the next hundred, and so on.

The network is key to VDI satisfaction,

being the conduit by which the virtual

desktop continuously feeds the VDI

client desktop activity. This video feed

“paints” the monitor’s screen via a desktop

presentation protocol, such as PCoIP, ICA

or RDP. When the visual display depends



and other lower speed links. On the LAN,

contention is usually a non-issue, so pilots

that only involve LAN links can create a

false sense of accomplishment. If the VDI

team has not taken a baseline on WAN

and VPN links to see what headroom is

available for VDI traffic, there may not be

enough resources for even a small pilot.

When looking at bandwidth, be sure to

account for peak utilization and not just

average use. If there are legitimate spikes

of activity expected across the links, there

must be room for those peaks once VDI has

been added, or non-VDI users will complain.

Armed with this information, you

can work with the VDI vendors to

adjust protocol parameters to ensure

performance within the available

headroom. These parameters include

things like screen resolution, audio

quality, USB redirection, and other user

experience settings.

Once configured, it is important to

monitor the infrastructure continuously

for sudden bursts in network load that

drown out VDI users across the WAN. Over

the course of the VDI pilot deployment,

these optimizations will provide a stable

baseline from which to extrapolate full

deployment feasibility.

Real-time visibility is required

The network, shared storage, connection

brokers, desktop hosts, application

virtualizationservers, Active Directory

servers, DHCP servers, security gateways,

etc. must all work seamlessly for the

successful delivery of a VDI desktop.

The performance, availability and

constraints of each infrastructure

component impacts the quality of the

end user experience. For example, when

desktop logins are slow, it might be a

connection broker problem due to a

“login storm,” but it might also be a

lengthy anti-virus update that needs to be

scheduled to run after login. A sufficiently

granular performance management

solution is the only way to peer into these

critical seconds.

current performance against the

historical response time thresholds. If

anything changes, administrators will be

immediately notified. If the storage latency

for a key host serving up VDI desktops

has jumped to 80 milliseconds, several

minutes is far too long to wait. Traditional

threshold crossing events should be

bolstered by recordings or other contextual

data so that VI administrators, network

engineers, and storage administrators can

collaborate on a common interface.

Give power to the users

When evaluating VDI management tools,

special consideration should be given

to solutions that directly capture user

experience. If users can trigger a DVR

recording of their activity when problems

occur, administrators can capture the

real-time load on the infrastructure, for

example CPU, memory, storage and the

activity in and out of the desktop. This rich

information eliminates the impossible task

of trying to “re-create” the problem. Load

balancers, dynamic cluster rebalancing

algorithms, and on-demand resource

schedulers ensure that this morning’s

infrastructure configuration will be

entirely different in the afternoon when

they log back in.

A recording like this gives users a

simple and proactive way to immediately

communicate with IT as soon as they

encounter performance problems —

instead of learning about them a day later

during a status meeting. By giving users

a “visual trouble ticket,” the service desk

also benefits because it has immediate,

actionable user information.

With some analysts calling 2011 the

year of VDI, it’s well worth taking the

time to understand the new management

criteria essential to succeeding with VDI.

By ensuring that your infrastructure

performance management system is up to

the task for a VDI initiative, you can meet

and exceed user expectations, increase

overall business productivity and improve

operational efficiencies.

Once configured, it is important to monitor the

infrastructure continuously for sudden bursts in network load that drown out VDI users across the WAN.

The many moving parts in a VDI

ecosystem demand an accurate, timely

and comprehensive picture, or reactive

management will be the sad reality.

Performance problems can’t be re-created

from historical logs and/or disparate

reports from a small subset of the virtual

desktop infrastructure components. A

real-time system allows you to navigate

through the infrastructure and drill

down to where the issue is happening

even while it is occurring. Administrators

should look for a single dashboard that

covers all the components - whether

physical or virtual - so that they are not

blind-sided by the fluctuations common

in complex IT systems.

Response time, also known as latency,

has a direct and immediate impact on

end-user experience. Virtual desktop

performance is highly sensitive to sudden

shifts in storage latency as well as network

latency across the WAN. If latency

shifts aren’t measured in real-time, VDI

administrators will have their phones

ringing off the hook with user complaints

while the lights in their virtualization

management systems are still green.

This puzzling situation occurs because

most management solutions poll for data

every 5 to 15 minutes, often averaging

the data over large intervals as well. A

30-second latency hit is invisible on these

intervals, but the user still complains or

chalks it up to “poor IT support.”

That is why it is essential to have a

real-time system continuously analyzing

the infrastructure and comparing


Gunning for data centre control

interview | F5

F5 CEO McAdam on battling Cisco, becoming arms dealer for public cloud

F5 is described as an application

delivery vendor, but that term is

nebulous to some folks and it

doesn’t really convey all of the things

that you do. You cover everything from

application acceleration, wide-area

network (WAN) optimisation, security,

policy and more. Can you crystallize F5’s

mission and what sets it apart from other

infrastructure companies?

We see our products as occupying the

strategic control points within data centers.

We see all the traffic that’s going between

applications and between servers. Because

of these strategic control points, we can


network. What is it that you can do that a

Cisco can’t?

Well, in fact, they are not really at a

number of control points. I mentioned

earlier about being application fluent. To be

application fluent, you really need this full

proxy architecture and it needs to be sitting

very close to the application. Cisco actually

doesn’t have that technical approach.

They focus more on load balancing and

just effectively managing the traffic. They

do Layer 7 [switching], which means that

they can open up the packets and make

strategic decisions based on that. But it’s

very limited. Also a lot of their thrust is to

sell the Layer 4-7 solution on the switch

or on the router. From their perspective

that’s pretty good because it means they

can add value to that [device], but it’s not

the right place in the network. You really

need to be after the firewall, just before the

application is ready to take the data so that

you can encrypt the data, so that you can

massage it. They don’t really have what we

would call strategic control. Switches and

routers can be defined as strategic control

points, but not at the application-fluent

level.

What’s changing in the competitive

landscape today?

There’s not been a significant change over

the last few years. If you go back three years

ago, Cisco - in particular - was much more

competitive against us. But we have gained

significantly in market share. The best

way, in my opinion, to look at the market

is to look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

That shows you all the competitors and

the only sort of technology competitor we

have is Citrix, from when they acquired

the NetScaler solution. But we think

from a feature point of view and from a

performance point of view that we’ve

really got them outclassed as well. We’ve

enjoyed a situation over the last two

or three years where we’ve had a big

technology advantage and not much

competition. Hence the 90+% win rate I

was talking about.

We poll our customers on a quarterly basis and

we typically see scores of 9.2 to 9.6 out of 10. That’s very high.

do simple things like, historically, load

balancing or encrypting the traffic. But then

it gets much more sophisticated where we

can basically provision applications and

servers, we can look at the performance of

specific applications. Our customers can use

our products to change or add functionality

without having to change thousands of

pieces of software and different programs.

We’ve got this opportunity because of the

way data centers have been architected

and are being architected, which is this

whole concept of consolidated data centers,

typically using virtualization technology

without a product sitting in a data center

effectively controlling traffic between the

apps and between the servers and between

the network.

Talk about those control points. Did you

identify them as an opportunity early on or

is this a position in the infrastructure that

you evolved to support?

We started off with load balancing then we

added encryption. In 2004, we came out

with full proxy architecture. The reason

that’s important is that we can actually

sit at the strategic control point and the

application isn’t aware that we’re there,

the user isn’t aware. That gets you a lot of

power. Also, we can be very application

fluent. We can understand what’s

happening at a pretty granular level within

the applications, whether it’s Microsoft

SharePoint or Oracle apps. Over the last few

years we’ve been building more application

fluency into the product. Three years ago if

you were using our products, you may have

had to deal with a whitepaper that would

say, ‘OK if you’re running SharePoint, this

is what you do to improve the performance

of SharePoint’. You read the whitepaper,

you made some changes to our software.

Now we have application templates for

specific types of solutions, and we’ve got

a significant number of those actually.

These templates [are supported] within

the operating system and you tweak the

parameters to optimize [the applications],

to make them more secure, to make them

go faster.

I want to talk about how you compete

against companies like Cisco. When you

win, why do you win? And when you lose,

why do you lose?

I’ll do the ‘lose’ first because it’s an easy

one, it’s a very small proportion of the time

we lose. We’ve actually been publishing

our win rate against the competition. It’s

typically in the low- to mid-90% win rate.

Typically when we lose against Cisco it will

be because of politics, to use the phrase

used by our sales force. Cisco is a great

company that’s got a lot of loyalty within

the customer base, and some customers

basically decide they want to do one-

stop shopping. When we win is when

customers are looking at functionality

and performance. For example, I’ve talked

about application templates. Nobody

else has got that capability. I mentioned

the example of SharePoint. We have the

capability of increasing the performance

of that by as much as 10 times. The short

answer is that we win at a technology level.

We have faster technology and much more

feature-rich technology. I mentioned the

full proxy architecture, there’s nobody

that’s really got anything comparable to

that in the marketplace. Also, we’ve got

a tremendous service organization. Our

customer [satisfaction] levels are world

class. We poll our customers on a quarterly

basis and we typically see scores of 9.2

to 9.6 out of 10. That’s very high. We’ve

developed a world-class sales distribution

channel as well as service channel as well as

having the technology leadership.

So Cisco obviously is at a number of

the same control points you are in the


Service Manager delivers workflow and incident response, plus self-service help desk for end users

Microsoft beefs up System Center with new module

test

(CMDB) that receives input from

Service Manager workflows, and, more

importantly, from Ops Manager and

Config Manager via ‘connectors’.

The flow of data from Ops Manager

and Config Manager is usually one-way;

they generally update the CMDB, and

register their state into Service Manager,

not the reverse.

Armed with configuration information

and alerts from Ops Manager, Service

Manager can trigger action items and

workflow activities.

When we triggered rudimentary alerts,

like disk-full warnings, the alerts popped

up almost instantly, as Ops Manager

informed Service Manager that the disk

was getting full. Ops Manager has triggers

that fit MS Exchange, SQL Server, and

other server-based applications, and also

knows a lot about Active Directory data,

along with server-based states.

Configuration Manager manages

software deployments and configuration

details for WindowsServers, clients, and

mobile devices. Its role for Service Manager

is packaging, delivery, and application

inventory/asset knowledge as a software

and configuration fulfillment manager.

The devil of details

Service Manager takes configuration,

operations and Active Directory data

and stores it in the CMDB. When we

installed Service Manager, we found

the “connector” APIs were available

immediately, and transferring already

large stores of information from Config

Manager and Ops Manager shouldn’t take

long over local networks.

The Configuration Manager and

Operations Manager connectors are a one-

way street, meaning that Service Manager

doesn’t in turn, update these two module’s

databases. Workflow in Service Manager

spawns actions, which are in turn able to

be marked as completed.

If we made a software delivery from

Manager. Without these two modules as

input sources, Service Manager is a pretty

handicapped component, which made us

wonder why, as these three modules are so

heavily intertwined, they’re sold separately.

The upside, however, is that they work well

together. They don’t mandate Microsoft

infrastructure exclusively, although the

joining of non-Microsoft apps, operating

systems, and infrastructure is no easy task.

What it does

At the heart of Service Manager is an

MS SQL Server database, called the

Configuration Management Database

Service Manager 2010 is the new

workflow and incident response

module that’s been added to

the Microsoft System Center suite of

management applications. Conceptually,

it’s a process control application with two

faces: a management console for network

managers to perform workflow operations,

and a Web-based help desk Self Service

Portal for end users.

Service Manager 2010 needs to be

purchased separately, but is heavily

dependent on two other Microsoft System

Center modules, Operations Manager

(Formerly ‘MOM’) and Configuration


a simulated user request, we could

make part of the action contingent on

Configuration Manager having observed

the installation on the user’s machine.

The Service Manager help desk

function allows Active Directory users

to fill in Web forms for service, help

or downloads. On the home Web page

for the Service Manager Self Service

Portal, administrators can place systems

information notes, like servers known

to be out or applications unavailable.

Another part of the page allows users to

search pre-selected knowledgebase articles

on administratively-designated topics.

Users can make requests for software

on the Self-Service Portal, and be

presented “automagically” with the desired

product(s), or perhaps spawn an approval

process that brings in Service Manager

admins prior to the software package

being delivered by Configuration Manager.

On the console side, a library

of applications can be selected for

distribution, each with conditions placed

on the workflow. These conditions can be

a compatibility check, and perhaps a signal

from Configuration Manager that all’s

been delivered, or stipulation processes if

the software can’t be installed for some

reason within a set period of time. The

action items remained open as processes

until the details of that set were satisfied.

It’s all very orderly.

What happens as a side effect is

that Service Manager becomes a “best

practices” task master for network

admins who respond to the tasks, and in

that process, document what they’ve done

for archiving or compliance purposes.

The “best practice,” actually the

implemented task procedure, is a

function of a Service Map defined in

Service Manager. The Service Map can

have information manually entered, or be

an imported ‘trigger’ from Ops Manager.

The source of the trigger message might

also be e-mail, Self-Service Portal, or a

systems message (like those found in

TaskManager). Priorities can be assigned

for events spawned by the trigger, so that

urgent details are attended to first.

The trigger can be prioritised as

critical, warning, or informational. Once

the trigger’s conditions are met, the

network admin will see the alert inside of

the Service Manager Console.

Context for the alert (who, where

and what from the CMDB regarding the

alert) can be drilled down to provide

an administrator information needed

to deal with fixing the problem that

spawned the alert.

In practice, Ops Manager alerts

typically took about a minute to reach

the Systems Manager Console. Having the

context of the alert available usually made

short work of getting the information

needed to fix the alert. However, while

a full chain of information is available

about the alert, admins unfamiliar with

the context of the application may have

difficulty assessing what steps might be

necessary to fix a problem, and there can

still be a lot of detective work needed to

fix random problems.

Upsides

The systematic approach represented

by Service Manager was easy for us to

configure; installing connecting pipes

to Ops and Configuration Manager was

equally simple. Service Manager uses IIS to

host its Self Service Portal/SSP application,

which was also simple to configure. User

choices on the SSP are understandable, and

software downloads available via the page

were immediate or required approvals as

we had configured them.

Ops Manager alerts, while not

instantaneous, arrived assuredly and the

administrative steps that we mapped

were dealt with as though in a script.

The steps weren’t finger-snapping fast,

but good enough. Another module, Data

Protection Manager or its equivalent, is

recommended because an outage of any of

the components (console, CMDB, or other

modules) represents a break in the chain

that must be quickly be remade if help

desk production is to continue.

Downsides

For most of this to work, one needs to

have employed a fully Windows based

Active Directory network. While Ops

Manager has connections and some

monitoring for other operating systems,

it’s not nearly as rich in management and

alerting expertise as it is for Windows,

especially Windows clients. Even one Mac

or Linux box creates a significant amount

of obstacle and exception handling,

using Service Manager as a helpdesk

remediation system.

Microsoft shops won’t mind this,

but any organisation with a reasonably

heterogeneous domain will want to

eschew the really rich feature set of

controls offered by Service Manager as

they’ll need a separate-but-equal set of

applications to deal with non-Windows

devices. Once an organization has

wrapped their help/service capabilities

around the Service Manager product,

the work needed to add non-Windows

products is a huge hurdle, excluding

organizations from wanting to even think

about adding other operating system

components unless parallel functionality

can be found in them.

Service Manager takes configuration,

operations and Active Directory data and stores it in the CMDB.

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


HP TouchPad

Blue coat systems has rolled out a new software release for its Blue coat cacheFlow appliances. this update enables cacheFlow appliances to provide 50

percent bandwidth savings for general Web traffic and even greater bandwidth savings for dedicated large file and video caching. For mission-critical service provider deployments, this release delivers greater manageability, resiliency and scalability to support rapidly growing demand for new, rich media Web content.

Utilizing next-generation caching technology, Blue coat cacheFlow appliances scale content delivery to meet burgeoning subscriber demands. cacheFlow appliances also

provide a “shock absorber” to address traffic spikes that occur when Web sites and content become popular over a very short period of time, such as major news, sporting or political events. to provide specialized caching rules in a dynamic, automated fashion as Web content changes, the new software release provides tighter integration between cacheFlow appliances and the Blue coat cachePulse service, a cloud-based service that automatically delivers optimized caching rules and instructions to the appliances.

the new, one-click software upgrade is immediately available for download by customers currently under an existing support contract. the dc power option for cacheFlow appliances is also now available through an add-on hardware upgrade kit that can be purchased separately.

the tablet landscape just got a bit more crowded: hP has taken the wraps off its touchPad.

the specs for the touchPad are competitive, but only the processor--a dual-core 1.2-GhzQualcomm snapdragon--catches attention. Beyond that, the specs sound fairly familiar: a 9.7-inch 1024 by 768 pixel display (less than the android 3.0-based 1280 by 800 Motorola Xoom), 16GB or 32GB of storage, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. the unit’s dimensions feel fairly standard, too--0.54-inches thick, which puts it about the same or a sliver thicker than the apple iPad and Motorola Xoom. It also weighs 1.6 pounds, same as Xoom, but 0.1-pounds more than the iPad.

the touchPad is slated for release in summer, in a Wi-Fi version; 3G and 4G versions will come thereafter. Pricing was not announced today, which is to be expected given a release date that’s months out. But the question of how the pricing will align with market-leader apple’s iPad still remains.

Blue coat enhances cacheflow

toolshed tools & gadgets


34428-GTW Barter-Batch 01-Network World ME.pdf 1 1/31/11 11:59 AM


Siemon debuts 4-post rack system

siemon has introduced its VersaPOd 4-Post rack, a new, adjustable-depth, 4-post rack system. rapidly deployable, the VersaPOd 4-Post rack integrates with

the same high density, space saving, Zero-U vertical patching and cable management as offered with siemon’s VersaPOd data centre cabinet.

VersaPOd 4-Post rack can be assembled on site in less than 20 minutes to provide a stable platform for mounting extended depth active equipment and efficiently managing high-density cabling in both data centres and telecommunications rooms.

the VersaPOd 4-Post rack’s headers, 45U vertical rails and depth adjustment brackets all feature symmetrical designs to eliminate orientation errors during assembly. this design also self-squares the rack, saving valuable installation time. VersaPOd 4-Post rack is compatible with siemon’s Zero U vertical patch panels (VPP) for support of copper and fibre patching, providing up to 24U of Zero-U vertical patching space between each set of bayed racks, or 16U along both sides of a single rack.

htc has released its first tablet, the htc Flyer. With a seven-inch display, 1.5Ghz processor and high-speed hsPa+ wireless capabilities, the htc Flyer combines natural touch and pen interaction.

htc also announced htc Watch, a new connected video service that will debut on htc Flyer tablet, and will collaborate with Onlive, Inc. to launch the first

cloud-based mobile gaming service on a tablet. touch interaction lights up the htc Flyer

tablet experience, but it also offers a pen experience. With the new htc scribe technology on the htc Flyer tablet, people can rediscover the natural act of writing. htc scribe technology introduces a wave of integrated digital ink innovations that make it easy and natural to take notes, sign contracts, draw pictures, or even write on a web page or photo.

HTc flyer

For sponsorship opportunities at the Reseller Middle East Awards 2011

For nomination enquiries please contact:

Richard JuddTel: +971 55 772 1519

Email: [email protected]

please contact:

Rajashree R KumarTel: +971 50 173 9987


Manda BandaTel: +971 50 437 1354


Merle CarrascoTel: +971 50 922 5866


AWARDS2011

For more information please visit:

www.resellerme.com/awards2011For more information please visit:For more information please visit:

SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS NOW

The Westin, Dubai10 May 2011 M Mth

on

at


For sponsorship opportunities at the Reseller Middle East Awards 2011

For nomination enquiries please contact:

Richard JuddTel: +971 55 772 1519


please contact:

Rajashree R KumarTel: +971 50 173 9987


Manda BandaTel: +971 50 437 1354


Merle CarrascoTel: +971 50 922 5866


AWARDS2011

For more information please visit:

www.resellerme.com/awards2011For more information please visit:For more information please visit:

SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS NOW

The Westin, Dubai10 May 2011 M Mth

on

at


The master competition masters at X Prize Foundation are at it

again. The group announced the 29 international teams that will compete for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, the competition to put a robot on the moon by 2015.

To win the money, a privately-funded team must successfully place a robot on the Moon’s surface that explores at

least 500 meters and transmits high definition video and images back to Earth. The first team to do so will claim a $20 million Grand Prize, while the second team will earn a $5 million.

Teams are also eligible to win a $1 million award for stimulating diversity in the field of space exploration and as much as $4 million in bonus prizes for accomplishing additional technical tasks such as moving ten times as far, surviving the frigid lunar night, or visiting the site of a previous lunar mission, according to the X Prize folks.

internet crime high

layer 8

Want your own, sort of, personal submarine?

The FBI’s 10th annual Internet

crime report finds that complaints and money losses are at an almost all-time high with non-delivery of payment or merchandise, scams impersonating the FBI and identity theft leading to top 10 online complaint parade.

The report, which is issued through the FBI’s partner, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the National White

Collar Crime Center (NW3C) found that in 2010, IC3 received 303,809 complaints of Internet crime, the second-highest total in IC3’s 10-year history. IC3 also reached a major milestone this year when it received its two-millionth complaint. On average, the group receives and processes 25,000 complaints per month.

Raonhaje Ego Semi Sub can help you explore undersea worlds without all that nasty diving.

You can tell by the name it’s not exactly a real submarine. The Ego Compact Semi Submarine promises to offer you and a friend an unbelievable view of the undersea world but it’s not actually submerging and neither running silent nor deeplike real submarines of yore.

Weighing in at about 7,700 lbs the two-person Raonhaje Ego pretty much looks a little like a catamaran boat with a glass (acrylic actually) cockpit hanging down in between the hulls. The 10-ft Ego is battery powered and can run for about eight hours at cruising speed, according to the company. Once down inside the submerged cockpit, an operator can direct the boat with a steering wheel and accelerator, like a car, whilst peering out into the vast murkiness.

is iT skills gap keeping companies from hiring? X Prize $30 million private

race to the moon is onThere is a disconnect between students getting high tech degrees

and what employers are looking for in those graduates.Employers agree that colleges and universities need to

provide their students with the essential skills required to run IT departments, yet only eight percent of hiring managers would rate IT graduates hired as “well trained, ready to go,” according to a survey of 376 organizations that are members of the IBM user group Share and Database Trends and Applications subscribers.

The study found nearly four out of 10 respondents report that their IT hires are not sufficiently preparedto perform jobs within their companies, and another 44% say, at a minimum, that there are noticeable gaps in their skills.

This skills gap apparently doesn’t doesn’t stop organizations from hiring professionals with little, if any previous experience. The survey found that nearly half of companies responding to the survey hire new IT employees straight out of school. Two-thirds of organizations do require at least some college intern experience among their hires, according to the study.

Corporate Ad_20.5x27.5 9/1/10 2:51 PM Page 1

W W W . A E R O H I V E . C O M

AAerohive™

© 2010 Aerohive Networks, Inc. Aerohive and the Aerohive logo are trademarks of Aerohive Networks, Inc. All other company or product namesmay be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

SOME FEARS CAN’T BE EXPLAINED. OTHERS ARE PERFECTLY REASONABLE.

Each time you add an access point in a controller-based WLAN environment, you can become subject to the “controller tax” -- that extra charge you didn’t factor into adding more APs for coverage or mission-critical apps like voice. And one fateful day you’ll add one too many APs and you’ll have to foot the bill for a whole new controller – two, if you want redundancy. Kind of makes you nervous just thinking about it, really.

WANT A BETTER WAY TO BUILD A WIRELESS NETWORK? ELIMINATE THE CONTROLLER.Aerohive’s controller-less WLAN architecture provides an innovative alternative to costly and complex controller-based solutions. Aerohive access points organize them-selves into groups, or “hives,” that cooperate to share

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EXPLAINING WHY YOUNEED $20,000 FORCONTROLLERSTO SUPPORTONE MORETHIN AP.

information, enabling functions like fast layer 2/layer 3 roaming, coordinated RF management, security, and mesh networking, all without the botlenecks posed by controllers. There is no need to add expensive controllers at every location, because the APs share the information they need. There is no need to engage in controller capacity planning, because you can simply add APs when and where they’re needed. So you not only save money, but your WLAN is ready for mission-critical apps like voice-over-WLAN. No controller means you have total control. And that means you have nothing to fear.

Learn more about the economic benefits of Aerohive's unique approach. Download the whitepaper at www.aerohive.com/economics.

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