< Previous(20) CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 www.itp.net Demes Strouthos, ESET Middle East. Credence Security, a leading regional distributor of specialised solutions in cybersecurity, forensics, governance, risk and compliance, has announced that it has signed a distribution agreement with ZeroFOX, the leading provider of digital risk protection services. As the partnership launches, Credence Security will engage with new and existing partners to drive sales of ZeroFOX solutions to enterprises particularly in the BFSI, Government, Media & Entertainment, Real Estate, Retail and Telecoms sectors. For its part, ZeroFOX will invest in upskilling and training regional partners, offer marketing and sales support and weekly threat advisories for customers and prospects. STARLINK ENHANCES IAM PORTFOLIO WITH SAILPOINT PARTNERSHIP ZeroFOX’s digital risk protection solutions add critical capabilities to Credence Security’s cybersecurity and digital forensics portfolio The partnership is aimed at driving business efficiency with a robust Identity Management strategy StarLink has announced a partnership with SailPoint for distribution in the Middle East and Turkey. The joint objective is to help organisations drive business efficiency with a robust Identity Management strategy. SailPoint delivers an innovative approach to securing access across enterprises with the SailPoint Predictive Identity platform, which is powered by AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. SailPoint provides enterprise identity governance solutions, tackling with ease the most complex business challenges that global organisations face today as they chart their digital transformation journey. The two companies, through this robust collaboration, will aim to empower enterprises in the region with advanced capabilities to help accelerate their business while delivering adaptive security, continuous compliance, and improved business efficiency. “The impact of cybersecurity breaches is astounding, which calls for a Zero Trust approach. What customers need today ESET INCREASES REGIONAL FOOTPRINT WITH SCOPE MIDDLE EAST PARTNERSHIP is a strong AI-driven identity strategy that can enable efficient access without compromising on security or compliance. StarLink’s solutions portfolio consists of very strong technologies within its Access Control domain and our alliance with SailPoint will further strengthen our offerings as it complements with many of the Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions,” said Nidal Othman, co-founder and managing director, StarLink. Nidal Othman, StarLink. ESET has entered into a distribution partnership with UAE-based value added distributor SCOPE Middle East to distribute a wide range of ESET cybersecurity products and solution across the region. “We are delighted to partner with the pioneers in cybersecurity, ESET, who have been leading the industry for over 30 years now and boosting award winning products every year, said Fadi AbuEkab, CEO and Founder, SCOPE Middle East. “ESET is among those cybersecurity vendors which have been recognised by independent agencies like Gartner, Radicati and Forrester amongst others for its technical capabilities year after year.” Demes Strouthos, General Manager, ESET Middle East, said “SCOPE Middle East with its extensive channel relationships and growing customer base, particularly in the SMB and enterprise market will represent an excellent opportunity to showcase ESET’s endpoint security, cloud sandboxing, threat intelligence and other cybersecurity solutions to its partners and customers.” ESET along with SCOPE Middle East will provide sales and technical training to its channel partners on regular basis to ensure that its channel is abreast with latest technologies and solutions, thereby, enhancing their competitive edge in the market to explore new opportunities. CREDENCE SECURITY, ZEROFOX PARTNER TO PROTECT ORGANISATIONS’ DIGITAL ESTATES “A robust digital-first security strategy includes a comprehensive approach that supports the entire digital risk lifecycle — detect, analyse, disrupt, and optimise. Unlike legacy vendors, ZeroFOX delivers an AI-driven, integrated solution that provides security teams with the capabilities they need to secure their public attack surface,” said Garreth Scott, managing director, Credence Security. “Over the last few years, we have built a strong portfolio of cybersecurity and digital forensics solutions. Partnering with ZeroFOX, gives us a critical complementary solution that will allow us to expand our capabilities and offer regional organisations a suite of solutions to protect their most critical digital assets.” As part of the agreement, ESET and Scope ME will also provide sales and technical training to its channel partners FRONT LINE(22) CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 www.itp.net Mindware has announced the distribution agreement with HTC. As per the agreement, Mindware will now offer HTC’s complete portfolio of VIVE Enterprise virtual reality (VR) solutions across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). HTC VIVE Enterprise solutions are built around enabling businesses of all sizes to enhance their creativity, accelerate training, strengthen collaboration, and engage their customers. They combine great hardware with versatile software and deliver an exceptional overall experience. Businesses have different requirements – some require best-in-class software and hardware, room-scale tracking, and multiple users in the same environment. Others seek convenience, portability, and a more affordable entry point to VR. HTC’s wide range of products cater to every need. Nicholas Argyrides, General Manager – Gulf at Mindware, said, “Today, VR is able to eliminate traditional physical barriers and provides incredibly immersive experiences. Organisations across different industries are Epicor Software Corporation has introduced enhanced support for its reseller network to successfully offer customers new cloud- based enterprise and SaaS solutions, while making the transition away from on-premise solutions a viable option. Epicor has designed a new cloud commercial model for its International Channel Partner Program, which creates a solid annuity-based revenue stream, to nurture partnerships that support business growth. Partners who maintain relationships with clients and grow revenues will be rewarded with continued margins beyond the first three years of selling the MINDWARE, HTC PARTNER TO ACCEL- ERATE ENTERPRISE VR EPICOR ANNOUNCES NEW INTERNA- TIONAL CHANNEL CLOUD PROGRAMME The new programme will help encourage resellers to embrace new offerings, such as cloud, and grow their businesses further gradually discovering new and interesting use cases and application areas, such as training, industrial design and architecture, scientific visualisation, virtual events and entertainment, to name a few. With VR gaining popularity in the MENA region, we believe that there is an enormous amount of potential for HTC’s best-in-class technology that will usher in a new age for the enterprise. We are excited about our newest partnership and look forward to introducing our innovative solutions to the region through our channel ecosystem.” HTC and Mindware will work together to develop a strong partner ecosystem based on a specially designed partner program – REED (Recruit, Enable, Engage & Deliver). Mindware will now offer HTC’s complete portfolio of VIVE Enterprise VR solutions The distributor and vendor will work closely together to develop and enable the regional channel community BlueTech has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Autodesk for North, West and Central Africa. Under the agreement, BlueTech will be responsible for developing, creating and enabling the right partner ecosystem for Autodesk that can design, promote, sell, implement and deploy successful digital transformation solutions for end customers. Toni Azzi, General Manager, BlueTech Holding, said, “Autodesk is a global leader in design and make software for architecture, engineering, construction, media and entertainment, and manufacturing industries. We believe that there is huge potential for the company’s solutions in the African market as enterprises in the region evolve towards complete digitisation.” BlueTech will have an active engagement with Autodesk to ensure alignment on the go-to-market strategy. The distributor and vendor will work closely together to develop and enable the regional channel community. Partner recruitment events will be held frequently such as partner summits, roadshows, roundtables and bootcamps, as well as partner enablement and technical training workshops. Training will also be provided to end-customers to help them derive maximum benefit from the implementations. AUTODESK SIGNS BLUETECH AS DISTRIBUTOR FOR AFRICAN MARKET Nicholas Argyrides, Mindware. Toni Azzi, BlueTech Holding. product. This will help encourage resellers to embrace new offerings, such as cloud, and grow their businesses further by responding effectively to customer demands. Paul Flannery, VP of International Channel Sales at Epicor, said, “With many companies now relying on cloud solutions to automate processes and drive efficiencies, the new Epicor International Channel Cloud Program is empowering partners to move in the direction the market is heading. Our new cloud partner offering will help to make migration to cloud a profitable model for our international partners and enable them to not only survive—but flourish in today’s challenging marketplace.” FRONT LINE(23) www.itp.net CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 A recent Gartner forecast highlighted that by 2022, 40% of global midsize and larger organisations will use Identity & Access Management (IAM) capabilities delivered as software as a service (SaaS) to fulfill most of their needs — up from 5% in 2018. In order to support this growing market, CyberKnight has announced a distribution partnership with Ilantus, a veteran in the IAM space with over two decades of extensive experience and deep insight into the domain. Compact Identity, the flagship product offering of Ilantus, is the first complete Identity Management product on the market, recognised by KuppingerCole as an Innovation Leader in their Leadership Compass for IDaaS Access Management 2019. It is a comprehensive solution that combines Access Management (SSO, MFA and Password Management), Privileged Access Management (PAM), Identity Governance & Administration(IGA), all in one platform, that can be deployed on-premise, or in the cloud. Avinash Advani, Founder & CEO, CyberKnight Technologies, said, “IAM is critical to ensure Gigamon has announced a distribution agreement with Redington Value, a value-added technology distributor of leading solutions in security across the Middle East and Africa region. Under this new agreement, Redington Value will act as a key Gigamon distributor with local presence in countries in Middle East and Africa. “To build on our success in the region and further extend our reach across the entire Middle East and Africa region, we are delighted to have partnered with Redington Gulf,” said Vijay Babber, Senior Channel Manager at Gigamon MEA. “With their strong relationships across our eco-system play, and their strength in multi cloud environments, Redington will CYBERKNIGHT BECOMES ILANTUS’ MIDDLE EAST DISTRIBUTOR GIGAMON ANNOUNCES REDINGTON VALUE AS DISTRIBUTOR FOR MEA Redington Value will act as a key Gigamon distributor with local presence in countries across the region that the right users have access to the right information at the right time. Many regional organisations have struggled historically to deploy IAM successfully due to the multitude of siloed components required from different vendors, leading to complex integration and a negative impact on user experience. With Ilantus’ unified approach, customers can now restrict access to critical information, manage passwords effectively, provide seamless authentication, support digital transformation and cloud adoption, all while providing centralised visibility through real-time reporting and analytics.” The partnership seeks to strengthen user identity security, bolster privileged access and prevent data breaches The Cognito platform provides 360-degree visibility into hidden threats in cloud, IoT and data centres Network threat detection and response (NDR) firm Vectra AI has announced the expansion of its distribution channel in the Middle East by partnering with Exclusive Networks. Powered by AI, the Cognito platform from Vectra automatically detects and prioritises cyber-attacker behaviours in real time while empowering threat hunters to perform conclusive incident investigations. The Cognito platform provides 360-degree visibility into hidden threats in cloud, data centre, internet-of- things (IoT), and enterprise infrastructures, leaving attackers with nowhere to hide. “It’s critical to address security vulnerabilities in the cloud, as well as the current shortage of skilled security analysts,” said Nathan Clements, general manager of Exclusive Networks Middle East. “Adding Vectra to our portfolio lets us give our partners a world-class NDR solution that automates cyber-attack detection and response, speeds-up incident investigations, and improves threat hunting.” “We are pleased and confident that this important partnership with Exclusive Networks in the Middle East will accelerate our market leadership, expand our channel partnerships, and help organisations reduce their business risk while improving cybersecurity efficiencies,” said Willem Hendrickx, vice president of international sales, Vectra. VECTRA TAPS EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS AS MIDDLE EAST DISTRIBUTOR Avinash Advani, CyberKnight Technologies. Willem Hendrickx, vice president of international sales, Vectra. help facilitate the distribution of Gigamon solutions to a wide reach of Channel Partners throughout the Middle East and Africa.” Sayantan Dev, President at Redington Value, said, “Many organisations now want to have visibility on the network traffic. Customers today are overwhelmed by managing multiple security solutions. Gigamon has been the leader over the years in providing great visibility to the network traffic with GigaSecure. By entering into a strategic partnership with Gigamon, we can further simplify how our customers protect their networks and make it easier for our partners to deliver unparalleled data-in-motion visibility into public, private and hybrid environments in the region. FRONT LINESalah, who has 32 years of experience operating within the region’s technology sector, will help organisations across the NALE region adapt and thrive amid fast-changing market dynamics and global challenges by embracing future workforce solutions, modern applications and cloud. Prior to joining VMware, Amr held multiple roles at companies including Microsoft, Apple, Citrix and Sun Microsystems. Amr has strong experience leading partner management, enterprise sales, commercial, and mid- market teams. He is particularly skilled at building high- performance teams and trusted strategic relationships with partners and customers based on clear, achievable business plans. Salah, who is based in Egypt in his new role, reports to Ahmed Auda, Managing Director, METNA, and is responsible for leading a team of highly skilled strategic sales executives. Amr Salah said, “I’m thrilled to join VMware at this important time. Organisations in this region have an unparalleled opportunity to grow, develop and serve their customers better by adopting the right digital and cloud technologies. In doing so they will also help elevate the NALE region, helping to boost the economy and provide more opportunities for young people.” The announcement is line with the global player’s commitment to further optimise Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and collaborative work on ecosystems to empower the Middle East’s digital transformation. With extensive experience within the information and communications technology (ICT) sector within the region, Akar will drive the growth and development of the Cloud and AI Business Group, while contributing to the Middle East’s continued digitisation initiatives and AI computing power. “It is an honour to be part of the leadership team of Huawei’s newest business group,” said Akar. “This is an exciting opportunity to contribute towards the Middle East’s ongoing digitisation efforts. By integrating Huawei cloud and AI solutions with 5G and next-gen connectivity solutions, we can realise a better-connected world, in which we can deliver comprehensive digital transformation industry use cases. The adoption of Huawei’s global programs throughout the region will contribute towards increased ICT competitiveness, while supporting communities by cultivating local ICT talents – all of which will contribute towards a more digitally-enabled society.” In this role, Corini will be responsible for the strategy and execution of Mimecast’s global channel programme. Mimecast is dedicated to ensuring its partner community is supported, engaged and armed for success and the appointment of Corini will help unify and strengthen its commitment to the channel. “Mimecast leans on partners as strategic advisors to help expand our global business. As we plan to grow in the enterprise market, Mimecast’s technology partners, systems integrators and reseller community will be pivotal to that success,” said Corini. “Exponential growth can be achieved when everyone is aligned and working towards the same set of goals. Mimecast’s culture is infused with so much drive to make the world a more resilient place. I look forward to leveraging my experience building and growing successful channel partner programmes to further Mimecast’s footprint in the Enterprise, Commercial, SMB and MSP markets.” Corini brings more than 20 years of experience building and managing technology relationships, as well as the teams responsible for driving joint sales within the Channel Partner community. As the Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales, Corini will oversee the strategy and execution of Mimecast’s global channel programme and will work closely with the teams to ensure alignment and maximise the value for partners. PEOPLE Channel Middle East brings you a roundup of comings and goings in the regional IT channel VMware has announced the appointment of Amr Salah as regional director for North Africa and Levant (NALE) with immediate effect. Huawei has announced that Omar Akar will join the leadership team of the Middle East division of its new Cloud and AI Business Group MIMECAST NAMES NEW SVP FOR GLOBAL CHANNEL SALES VMWARE APPOINTS NEW REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR NORTH AFRICA AND LEVANT HUAWEI APPOINTS NEW VP AND MD FOR CLOUD AND AI BUSINESS GROUP IN Mimecast Limited has appointed Jonathan Corini as the new senior vice president of Global Channel Sales To contribute or feature a new appointment, please contact sarah.rizvi@itp.com (24) CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 www.itp.net Jonathan Corini joins Mimecast as the new senior vice president of Global Channel Sales. Omar Akar will joins Huawei as the regional vice president and managing director. VMware announces the appointment of Amr Salah as regional director for North Africa and Levant.(25) www.itp.net CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 Fortinet has appointed Shane Grennan as its regional channel director for Enterprise and Alliance partners in the Middle East. Grennan will report to Alain Penel, regional vice president for the Middle East. In this role, Grennan will direct and oversee Fortinet’s 3000+ partners and alliance community in the region. He is responsible for setting the vision and strategy for Fortinet’s engagement with its largest regional, GSI, OT and Cloud partners in the region and ensuring the execution of this strategy. “I am excited to join Fortinet at a time when channel partners play a key role in helping organisations maintain business continuity,” said Grennan. “Fortinet believes that simplicity in cybersecurity can help deliver maximum benefits and we strive to bring that to customers with our partners using the Fortinet Security Fabric. My top priority is to work together with partners to understand their focus and help them transform with Fortinet at a new level. This direction will help deliver a better customer transformation experience and enhance Fortinet’s overall solution and service offering.” Grennan will direct and oversee Fortinet’s 3000+ partners and alliance community in the region. Citrix has appointed Amir Sohrabi as area vice president, Emerging Markets. With over two decades of experience in sales management, business development, strategic planning and marketing, Sohrabi will drive the acceleration to cloud of customer environments in the region enabling both business continuity and digital transformation to new work models, including remote working. He reports directly to Sherif Seddik, senior vice president and managing director Citrix EMEA, and will be based in Dubai. “It is an exciting time to join Citrix,” said Amir Sohrabi, Area Vice President, Emerging Markets at Citrix. “Citrix delivers people-centric solutions that power a better way to work and enables customers and partners to transform their business in an era where work is increasingly digital and virtual. To be productive, we all need a seamless and secure user experience across different devices and platforms. I am looking forward to helping Citrix customers across Emerging Markets build and implement innovative cloud and digital strategies.” Before joining Citrix, Sohrabi most recently served as both COO and Head of Digital Transformation for Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa regions at SAS. EXCLUSIVE NETWORKS ANNOUNCES NEW CEO Exclusive Networks has announced the appointment of Jesper Trolle as CEO with immediate effect. CITRIX APPOINTS NEW AREA VP FOR EMERGING MARKETS Sohrabi will drive the acceleration to cloud oin the region enabling both business continuity and digital transformation to new work models Trolle joins Exclusive from ECS Arrow Electronics, where he is currently president of the Americas, and will be responsible for driving the next phase of growth at the company and upscaling the business. Trolle takes over from Olivier Breittmayer who becomes a non-executive Board member of Exclusive. The move is part of a planned succession strategy and Trolle will work alongside Breittmayer for the next three months to ensure a smooth transition. “Opportunities like this do not come around that often, but in distribution, Exclusive is at the top of the list if they do,” said Trolle. “I’m delighted to be joining such a successful company with a strong reputation for innovation and exceptional growth. Exclusive is renowned for its disruptive approach and relentless focus on value creation for its partners. When given the opportunity to become a part of the Exclusive family and next phase of its journey, it was an easy and fast decision to make. He added, “My job is clear: turn the global presence into a cybersecurity infrastructure powerhouse, at scale and speed, and it is a challenge I relish, feel qualified to do and very much look forward to.” FORTINET APPOINTS NEW REGIONAL CHANNEL DIRECTOR FOR THE MIDDLE EAST Grennan will report to Alain Penel, Fortinet’s regional vice president for the Middle East. Trolle joins Exclusive from ECS Arrow Electronics where he will be driving the next phase of growth. Citrix appoints Amir Sohrabi as area vice president, Emerging Markets.(26) CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 www.itp.net We sat down with Saad Ouchkir, the Head of Customer Engineering META at Google Cloud to discuss how the conversation around cloud security has shifted towards data encryption and understand how regional privacy regulations apply to an organisation’s compliance requirements W HAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF ACCELER ATED CLOUD ADOPTION? HOW CAN IT IMPACT ANY ORGANISATION’S EXISTING SECURITY STR ATEGY? Saad Ouchkir: While organisations have been turning to public cloud for cost saving and the agility offered by managed services on public cloud platforms, we see more organisations considering public cloud for its security capabilities. In fact these organisations are realising that the economies of scale allow cloud providers to invest more in people and processes to help deliver a secure infrastructure. Organisations can build a robust security posture by leveraging security capabilities that are available natively on their cloud platform of choice and building their own security processes on top of it to make sure that they offer the best security for their customers. CLOUDS ARE SECURE: ARE YOU USING THEM SECURELY? applications, it’s very important to educate both security administrators and end users on the importance of security. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO ENHANCE CLOUD SECURITY FOR MISSION CRITICAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS? SO: When using public cloud for your mission critical business applications you benefit from a robust infrastructure and reliable SLAs that boost the performance. When it comes to security, there are things that you need to pay attention to: Your data must be encrypted all the time, at rest when the data is stored on the disks and in transit when data is transferred. At Google Cloud we have introduced Confidential Computing which allows our customers to encrypt the data even while it’s being processed. As more business applications are hosted in the cloud, it’s very important to shift access controls from the HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS AVOID COMMON SECURIT Y MISTAK ES WHEN THEY MOVE TO THE CLOUD? SO: It’s very important to understand the shared responsibility model that’s offered by cloud providers. While these providers offer state of the art security for the underlying infrastructure that their customers are using, it’s the customer’s responsibility to use security features and best practices offered by their cloud providers to secure their data. To give you an example: Cloud providers offer identity and access management capabilities as well as multi- factor authentication to secure access to the data stored on their infrastructure and allow their customers to control who has access to what, but if the customer doesn’t use these capabilities they might put their data at risk. With working from home becoming the new norm and the ubiquity of SaaS (27) www.itp.net CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 Saad Ouchkir, the Head of Customer Engineering META at Google Cloud. network perimeter to individual users and devices using the zero trust security model. We’ve been using that model for years internally at Google and we recently made our implementation of zero trust available to our customers allowing their employees and contractors to access mission critical business applications remotely without the need for a traditional VPN. PLEASE HIGHLIGHT THE K EY COMPLIANCE CHALLENGES WHEN OPER ATING IN THE CLOUD. SO: When moving to the cloud organisations have the double challenge of protecting sensitive applications while achieving and maintaining compliance with regulatory and industrial requirements. For this reason, it’s important to choose a cloud vendor that undergoes several independent third-party audits on a regular basis to provide compliance with key international standards. Regulations such as GDPR place significant emphasis on enterprises knowing how their data is being processed, who has access to data, and how security incidents will be managed. For this reason we have dedicated teams of engineers and compliance experts at Google Cloud who support our customers in meeting their regulatory compliance and risk management obligations. One of the requirements that some regulated companies in our region have to comply with is the requirement to host customer data in-country. At Google Cloud we have designed a hybrid cloud technology called Anthos that allows our customers to benefit from the agility of cloud native technology while storing customer data on premise. We’ve partnered with Moro Hub, fast growing cloud service provider and one of Digital DEWA companies, to host workloads in their Tier-III Green Data Centre in Dubai using Anthos. SECURING CLOUD IS A PRIORIT Y FOR BOTH CLOUD-NATIVES AND THOSE EMBA RK ING ON THEIR CLOUD JOURNEY. HOW WILL THEIR CLOUD SECURIT Y STR ATEGY BE SIMIL A R OR DIFFERENT? FURTHER, WHAT DOES THIS STR ATEGY LOOK LIK E? SO: Cloud native companies have the advantage of starting with a clean slate. They don’t have legacy systems that they need to maintain. This allows them to use cloud native technologies with built-in security features. This doesn’t mean that other companies can’t make use of the cloud in a secure way. At Google Cloud we make sure to meet our customers where they are. We run assessments to understand their current state and we help them throughout their cloud journey. We designed a Cloud Adoption Framework to help our customers move to the cloud with confidence. It articulates around three components: People, Processes and Technology and focuses on key capabilities that organisations need to develop in order to succeed in their cloud adoption. Two of these capabilities that I find essential are upskilling IT staff and building a secure landing zone for their applications in the cloud. A RE THERE SECURIT Y GAPS IN CLOUD PL ATFORMS THAT CYBER AT TACK ERS MAY LEVER AGE? SO: Cloud providers put a lot of effort into building state-of-the-art data centres and the most sophisticated security systems and processes. At Google, security is part of our culture, all employees receive ongoing security training throughout their Google careers. Our dedicated security team includes some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and network security. We specifically built a full-time team, known as Project Zero that aims to prevent targeted attacks by reporting bugs to software vendors. The shift to remote work has created an opportunity for cyber attackers to target users through increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks that try to steal their passwords. For this reason we encourage our customers to use phishing-resistant physical two- factor authentication devices like security keys that use public key cryptography to verify a user’s identity. HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS ENSURE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RIGHT SECURIT Y A RCHITECTURE TO WITHSTAND SUCH AT TACKS? SO: A n organisation’s security posture is only as strong as its weakest link. As we work with our customers, we help them tailor a security solution that covers multiple aspects: Technology of course, but also their processes and people, increasing awareness of phishing, and helping the users to identif y such attacks is important. We also encourage our customers to make the use of anti- phishing two-factor authentication devices compulsory for all their users. And when designing their remote applications access, we encourage them to shift their access controls from the network perimeter to the use of “zero- trust” paradigm where no network device is trusted by default, even if it’s connected to the corporate network. Follow us on Twitter: @GoogleCloud_ ME Learn more about Google Cloud’s security solutions: cloud.google.com/security (28) CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 www.itp.net Organisations that are transformed with digital workflows will be better enabled to move forward in a post-Cov- id-19 work environment, and do so more efficiently, productively and safe- ly. Digital transformation is a priority for investment, but the right strategy is essential to make an impact. Build resilience into the organisation and expect the unexpected. Re-analyse your organisation’s enter- prise architecture. Plan your 2021 transformation with a focus on custom- er journeys, experiences and require- ments. Businesses must leverage data analytics to supplement the analysis of data internet of things solutions pro- duce and process. Self-service industri- al analytics is another vital area that businesses must adopt moving forward given that it helps enterprises harness data and drive business futures. HARNESS THE POWER OF HUMAN CENTRIC COMMUNICATION RESILIENCE IS VITAL Chris Pope, VP Innovation, ServiceNow Rami Kichli – VP, Gulf and Levant, Software AG The Covid-19 pandemic took everyone by surprise. If the world was uncertain about how technological advancements will impact their businesses in the past, they are more so now. As we slowly tread towards 2021, we had a tête-à-tête with top technologists to get their take on how businesses can prepare for the unknowns of 2021 Digital Transformation is accelerating at phenomenal speed and is in need of fast, easy and cost efficient solutions. It is all about keeping your business agile and cash-flow healthy, while transitioning into the new digital era. This year, channel partners that diver- sified their products and solutions were able to manage the disruption caused by this pandemic. DIVERSIFY YOUR PRODUCT OFFERINGS Mario, general manager, VAD Technologies(29) www.itp.net CHANNEL MIDDLE EAST_DECEMBER 2020 Build a cloud security plan. Making haphazard, quick decisions to solve an immediate problem may only exacer- bate delayed progress to an end goal, while costing more money and time in the long run. Develop cloud security skills. Continue to invest incrementally. No great plan can be accomplished overnight, but will take many small steps down a long road. Avoid analysis paralysis by starting with just one step to move your organisation forward, then the next step will appear. CONTINUE TO INVEST INCREMENTALLY Frank Kim, fellow instructor, SANS Institute To thrive in this new normal world, dig- ital transformation has become a busi- ness imperative. Data is at the heart of all transformation and so to succeed businesses will need to embrace a cloud model and modernise their IT infrastructure to be prepared to deliver a seamless cloud experience to users. Organisations must look at integrating AI to speed up data movement, get fast- er and better results and, eliminate bottlenecks at each source - from the edge, core and the cloud. DATA IS AT THE HEART OF ALL TRANSFORMATION Fadi Kanafani, managing director ME, NetApp Intelligent technologies and as-a-service models will dictate the future. IoT, machine learning, AI and automation technologies will shape the future of cloud technologies. We will see increased adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. Organisations across the region are prioritising digital transformation man- dates. This means business leaders will have to invest significantly in digital as well as security solutions to protect their critical infrastructure and data from evolving threats. With the busi- ness landscape becoming more auto- mated and software-led, the risk quo- tient has also drastically risen for cus- tomers. The next phase of security will see more automation in empowering businesses to simplify and yet strength- en their security postures. Organisations have to constantly pre- vent, detect and respond to threats, so innovative intelligent technologies that combine machine learning and AI strengths will be the need of the hour. bankruptcy. However, there remains hope for SMEs. The approach to tackle such problems is to build sophisticat- ed, multi-featured intelligent SaaS busi- ness applications to focus on some of the most significant pain points faced by SMEs like ambiguity in decision making, low talent acquisition and unguided marketing strategies. INVEST IN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES Sakkeer Hussain, director, Sales and Marketing, D-Link Middle East In the wake of the rapid digital transfor- mation that large firms are going through, catching up and competing becomes a severe problem for a large segment of enterprises, the SMEs. Larger organisations have it easy. SMEs are the backbone of all economies world- wide but are still facing severe business problems in decision-making which is becoming a growing concern. Moreover, wrong decision making proved to be the cause of 60% of SMEs SELECT YOUR TECHNOLOGY PARTNER WITH CARE Osama Mortada, co-founder and CEO, CorporateStack As IT teams adopt more cloud native services to meet the digital demands of their users, the chal- lenge to refactor applications and design new features at scale becomes increasingly challenging due to a lack of holistic visibility and business context across the multiple environments. Organisations will require perfor- mance monitoring solutions that close the visibility gap and allow users to connect traditional systems with cloud native services, all in the context of business outcomes. PRIORITISE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE David Noël, regional vice president, Southern Europe, Middle East & Africa, AppDynamicsNext >