< PreviousBEN MACK Editor, Communications Middle East & Africa Tel: +971 4 444 3120 Email: ben.mack@itp.com FOR NOMINATION ENQUIRIES: ANDREW COVER Group Sales Manager, Communications Middle East & Africa Tel: +971 4 444 3502 Email: andrew.cover@itp.com FOR SPONSORSHIP ENQUIRIES: BRIAN MCNAMARA Marketing & Events Manager Tel: +971 4 444 3846 Email: brian.mcnamara@itp.com FOR ANY OTHER INFORMATION: CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST TELECOMS INDUSTRY For more information please visit www.commsmea.com/awards or contact one of our team today. SAVE THE DATE WEDNESDAY 6TH NOVEMBER 2019 Dubai, UAE www.commsmea.com/awards #CommsMEAAwards www.commsmea.com/awards #CommsMEAAwardsFor cloud gazers in the region, the last few years have been some of the exciting yet. The region has truly emerged as a battleground for the major global cloud providers. What started as a trickle a few years ago has since turned into a roar as cloud major pour money into the region, setting up ex- pansive regional datacentres to cater to a growing regional customer base. The GCC in particular made its digi- tal ambitions known a long time ago, with major national Visions underlined by advanced technological pursuits. With governments in the region taking the lead, enterprises have followed and the region is by all means and purposes a leader in key technological spheres. This environment has proved too promising for the global cloud providers to ignore. What has followed has been a flurry of announcements of cloud data- centre opening all over the region. Most of the cloud service providers already had a customer base-opening up facilities in the region accomplishes two things: reduces latency for im- proved app performance for existing customers while attracting potentially new clientele who have been required to remain on-premise due to the strong data residency laws in the region. SAP became the first multi-national business applications provider to go live with cloud datacentres in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In the UAE, the SAP cloud datacentre is the centrepiece of its 5-year USD 200 million UAE investment plan, which also includes a Co-Innovation Lab in the country. In February, Oracle announced its first data centre in the UAE was up and running. Located in Abu Dhabi, the data centre offers public cloud applications services to customers in the UAE and wider Middle East. It is also expected to support faster adoption of Oracle Cloud in the country and the region. Three years before that, Alibaba Cloud announced the launch of a data centre in Dubai operated by YVOLV, a joint venture between Alibaba Cloud and Meraas Holdings. The company, backed by the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, offers a portfolio of cloud services with a focus on afford- able and secure cloud computing in the Middle East. Two years ago, AWS announced its Middle East infrastructure Region in Bahrain to serve the entire Mid- dle East, supporting organizations to accelerate cloud adoption. The AWS Middle East Region consists of three Availability Zones which comprises of one or usually more separate datacentres, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity, housed in separate facilities. AWS also maintains two AWS Direct Connect locations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that make it easy for custom- ers to establish a dedicated private network connection between AWS and their datacentre, office, or coloca- tion environment. AWS also has two Amazon CloudFront Edge Locations in the UAE. The latest to join the regional cloud bandwagon is Microsoft, which recently launched two new cloud da- tacentres in the United Arab Emirates. EDITOR’S NOTE How the region emerged as a new cloud front THE TRUSTED SOURCE FOR NET- WORK NEWS AND ANALYSIS CONNECT WITH MORE THAN 30,000+ INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS The new datacentres (known as cloud regions) in Abu Dhabi and Dubai join Microsoft’s global cloud infrastruc- ture and will provide local businesses with access to cloud services while maintaining data residency and com- pliance requirements. Advanced technologies such as blockchain and AI will primarily run on cloud-so the availability of these facilities locally will enable regional businesses stay ahead of digital revolution. The future looks bright. // SPECIAL REPORT / EDITOR’S NOTE // AUGUST 2019 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 21// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /The region aspires to be at the forefront of the global digital revolution now underway, that is driven by artificial intelli- gence (AI), IoT and blockchain and other advanced platforms. These technologies, however, require extensive compute power as well as vast storage space. AI, for instance, has to be trained using large amounts of struc- tured and unstructured data. Recent investments in local datacen- tres by global cloud providers in the re- gion should help regional organisations pursue their digital efforts while comply- ing with data residency laws. Microsoft recently launched two new cloud datacentres in the United Arab Emirates. The new cloud regions (as they are referred to) in Abu Dhabi and business group lead for Cloud and Enter- prise, Microsoft Gulf. “For our customers, we are delivering ‘global reach with local presence’. Since they are connected to a global network, our customers can either use UAE data centres, or other data centres in the US, Europe, or Asia depending on what meets their business requirements,” says Ozyucel. The new UAE locations will also de- liver better performance for applications to Middle East customers and partners through the Microsoft cloud platform Azure., an expanding set of cloud servic- es, offering computing, networking, da- tabases, analytics, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) services. The Microsoft investment also avails Microsoft Office 365 locally through the new cloud regions in the UAE. BI tools Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, will be available from the cloud regions in the UAE by the end of 2019. INFRASTRUCTURE REGION Two years ago before that, AWS launched AWS Middle East infrastructure Region in Bahrain to serve regional businesses. The AWS Middle East Region consists of three Availability Zones (also known as ASs). ASs consist of one or usually more separate data centres, each with redun- dant power, networking, and connectiv- ity, housed in separate facilities. These ASs provide customers with the ability to operate production applications and da- tabases which are more highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable than would be possible from a single datacentre, says Vinod Krishnan, head of MENA, AWS. AWS has two AWS Direct Connect locations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that make it easy for customers The digital revolution will run on the cloud Global cloud providers expand Middle East presence Dubai join Microsoft’s global cloud in- frastructure network to provide organi- sations, enterprises and developers in the UAE with access to scalable, and highly available cloud services while fulfilling data residency, security and compliance requirements. The two data centres are connected to Microsoft’s global network global foot- print, which now numbers a total of 54 regions, explains Necip Ozyucel, regional Since they are connected to a global network, our customers can either use UAE data centres, or other data centres in the US, Europe, or Asia.” // SPECIAL REPORT / MARKET FOCUS // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 22 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2019 /ture and AWS, so our customers can easily use AWS as a seamless extension to their existing infrastructure investments. We’ve built a set of hybrid architecture function- ality to enable customers to do everything from integrating networking, security and access control to powering automated workload migrations, and controlling AWS from their on-premises infrastructure management tools,” says Krishnan. Hybrid cloud is the reality, says Ozyu- cel. “Customers can still use their own data centres, move some of their applica- tions or start new applications on Azure either in UAE data centres or other data centres, he adds. We are delivering ‘global reach with local presence’, says Microsoft’s Ozyucel. The number one reason customers choose to move to the cloud is the agility and the speed, says Krishnan. to establish a dedicated private network connection between AWS and their data- centre, office, or colocation environment. AWS also has two Amazon CloudFront Edge locations in the UAE, providing faster content delivery and added cyber- security protection. Customers in the region have em- braced cloud like few others. Between them, the two cloud providers count some of the most prominent businesses in the region as customers, a figure that will only expand with the new facilities. SKILLS SHORTAGE The global IT skills shortage is real and is acute for cloud technologies. AWS has made its Training and Cer- tification programs available to custom- ers to help them in their cloud journeys and has also grown its regional training team, says Krishnan. “We see significant growth in the number of AWS certifi- cations, and it’s not just growth in the volume of certificates, but also a steady growth in higher-level Professional cer- tifications,” he adds. The Microsoft Cloud Society, on the other hand, has trained over 150,000 IT professionals in the Middle East and Africa. Customers will further benefit from the increased availabil- ity and performance of cloud services delivered from the UAE to help realize the business benefits of cloud and up- skill them in migrating and managing their cloud infrastructures. “Half of all enterprises in the region have already adopted Azure and Office 365. The availability of the facilities lo- cally should help those in the other half that wish to migrate, without having to worry about data residency concerns,” says Ozyucel. Although cost is almost always the conversation starter as far as moving to the cloud is concerned, the number one reason customers choose to move to the cloud is the agility and the speed that they get in the cloud, says Krishnan. “This agility is not only the ability to spin up thousands of servers in minutes as opposed to 10 to 18 weeks it takes for most on-premises companies to spin up servers, it is also about giving customers a plethora of infrastructure services at their fingertips to get from idea to imple- mentation in several orders of magnitude faster than they could before,” he adds. HYBRID CLOUD In the fullness of time, the vast majority of companies will run almost all of their IT workloads in the cloud. In the mean- time, it pays to embrace hybrid infra- structure for those still on the fence. “We see our role in hybrid as working with and for our customers to develop inte- grations between their existing infrastruc- Network Middle East Special Reports a monthly deep dive into the topics that matter to network and security managers Topics: • Physical Security • IT Management • Enterprise Networking • IT Training • Network Security • Wireless • DC Infrastructure • Cloud Services • Storage and Backup • Applications Delivery • Internet Security • Unified Communications // SPECIAL REPORT / MARKET FOCUS // AUGUST 2019 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 23// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /Over the last few years, the Middle East has emerged as a battleground for major global cloud providers. SAP was the first multi-national busi- ness applications provider to go live and onboard customers onto its cloud data centres in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In the UAE, SAP cloud data centre is the centrepiece of the company’s 5-year USD 200 million UAE investment plan, which also includes a Co-Innovation Lab in the country, which links with high- tech clusters around the globe to provide opportunities to foster innovations with local ecosystems. In Saudi Arabia, the cloud data centre is part of the wider Digital Hub, which includes: an open digital platform sup- porting entrepreneurship, co-innovation with customers, partners, and the wider ecosystem to leverage cloud to solve cus- tomer pain points, and localisation to support Saudi Vision 2030’s digital trans- formation journey. SAP has also embarked on training ini- tiatives, with its Training and Develop- ment Institute and Next-Gen initiative training young people in digital skills across the region. “SAP has already successfully onboard- ed customers on to our UAE and KSA data centres,” says Marita Mitschein, senior vice president, digital skills, SAP South Europe, Africa and Middle East, and managing director of the SAP Train- ing and Development Institute. “In our discussions with our custom- ers from our six largest industries in the as the talent management suite SAP Suc- cessFactors, the digital business network of SAP Ariba, and the new customer ex- perience suite SAP C/4HANA on the cloud data centres, says Mitschein. “We will continue to roll-out further offerings as they become available in the cloud,” she adds. The setting up these cloud datacentre is driven by rapid expansion in the adop- tion of cloud in the region. SAP rides regional cloud wave Middle East and Africa region -- oil and gas, utilities, public sector, retail, pas- senger travel and leisure, and banking – many are developing digital transfor- mation agendas to move their operations on to the cloud, from digital oilfields to new levels of e-services in Smart Cities,” Mitschein adds. Across the UAE and KSA, organisa- tions are already running SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA business applications, as well SAP cloud data centre is the centrepiece of the company’s 5-year USD 200 million UAE investment plan. Many are developing digital transformation agendas to move their operations on to the cloud, from digital oilfields to new levels of e-services in Smart Cities.” First major global applications vendor with in-region cloud datacentres gains impetus // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 24 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2019 / // SPECIAL REPORT / KNOWLEDGE PARTNERAccording to recent YouGov surveys of 502 UAE-based IT decision-makers and 306 KSA-based IT decision-makers, 88% in the UAE and 59% in Saudi Arabia will increase their cloud spend in 2019. “We are seeing strong interest and continued acceleration of Middle East organisations adopting cloud service,” says Mitschein. “Our UAE and KSA cloud data centres are open to any organisation in-country, in the Middle East, or even worldwide. As a result, we also see interest from be- yond the UAE and Saudi Arabia for run- ning operations on our data centres,” Mitschein adds. CLOUD MIGRATION Migrating workloads to cloud platforms can be a daunting task for even the most digital-savvy business. Mitschein says SAP’s Channel Part- ner Program plays a key role in enabling public and private sector organisations across the Middle East and North Africa migrate to the cloud. “Organisations first should consider their business objec- tives, then develop their digital transfor- mation agendas, then decide which cloud environment is best for their business.” Mitschein says the Middle East and North Africa is a fast-evolving region for the SAP Global Alliance PartnerEdge Program. “Showing the strength of our Channel Partner Program, in 2018, SAP MENA channel partners contributed to 61% of our SME market and 25% of to- tal business. Our partners can also lever- age new online and on-demand partner training on cloud solutions and imple- mentations and help their customers to succeed,” she adds. Cost remains the major driver for busi- nesses in the UAE that are moving to the cloud, cited by 90% of UAE-based IT de- Organisations also benefit from real-time insights on their operations and can scale up their IT infrastructure as they grow. cision-makers and 62% of Saudi Arabia- based IT decision-makers surveyed by YouGov researchers. Beyond cost, organisations also benefit from real-time insights on their opera- tions, can scale up their IT infrastructure as they grow their business, and meet data regulations such as GDPR when they migrate to the cloud, says Mitschein. Middle East IT teams are increasingly led by Millennials who have the knowl- edge and the appetite to adopt the lat- est technology innovations, Mitschein observes. “Among IT decision-makers surveyed by YouGov, 76% in the UAE and 83% in Saudi Arabia agree that the cloud is important for integrating future tech- nologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and the Internet of Things.” HYBRID CLOUD Hybrid cloud is increasingly preferred over 100% public cloud or exclusively private cloud. Mitschein says SAP supports custom- ers in whichever environment best meets their business needs whether on-prem- ise, on its cloud data centres, or in hybrid cloud models. “Hybrid cloud is definitely an attrac- tive option for our customers across the Middle East and North Africa. Many UAE and KSA organisations are choosing to run many of their applications on our cloud data centres, but keep their most sensitive data on their own on-premise data centres,” Mitschein says. Across MENA, SAP has also launched Partner Managed Cloud and HANA En- terprise Cloud partnerships to support organisations in their (sometimes com- plex) digital journeys. Cloud, in whichever flavour, has a bright short, medium and long-term fu- ture in the region. In the Middle East region, 83% of UAE-based IT decision-makers and 66% of Saudi-based IT decision-makers say their organisations plan to be fully or partially on the cloud in 2019, according to the YouGov survey. // AUGUST 2019 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 25// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM / // SPECIAL REPORT / KNOWLEDGE PARTNERThe big three of cloud providers AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have hogged the “cloud wars” headlines in the recent past. And for good reason. With big-name customers and virtu- ally unlimited resources dedicated to in- novation and expansion, it’s no surprise these vendors almost always get the first look when enterprises begin to consider cloud services. In such a slanted environment, it’s easy to forget that there’s life beyond the big three. Todd Matters, chief architect and co- founder of RackWare, a hybrid cloud management platform, says enterprises can’t count smaller providers out when developing their cloud migration plan because there still are viable Tier 2 com- For example, there are certain cloud providers that focus on healthcare, and they’ve done a lot to ensure they are HIPAA-compliant. There are also ser- vice providers that are focused on retail and are looking at PCI and various com- pliance issues and security issues that revolve around private data. “There’s a level of specialty that the smaller players provide versus the “Big 3”, says Sunkara. LAND GRAB AWS, Azure, and Google are compet- ing in a major land grab right now. They are going after every single vertical, but whether they can focus on a particular one or provide the necessary level of se- curity, availability and reliability is still a question mark, says Sunkara. Beyond the cloud turf wars panies that provide great services. “Be- cause enterprises must focus on their application when migrating and devel- oping their cloud strategies, everybody should have a multiple provider strategy. Nobody is going to want to rely on just a single vendor,” says Matters. “And, choosing one or two boutique providers to meet some demanding ap- plication needs makes a lot more sense,” he adds. There are plenty of companies that would be better off looking at both the small players and the bigger players when developing their cloud migration plan, Sash Sunkara, CEO and co-founder at RackWare says. This is because there are a lot of Tier 2 and Tier 3 players that are focused on specific verticals, he adds. Businesses should consider smaller cloud providers for a more differentiated offering // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 26 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2019 / // SPECIAL REPORT / TECHNOLOGY “We’ve seen outages and issues with the large cloud providers so smaller players who can focus on and put more resources into their solution for a par- ticular audience may make more sense than just going with the “Big 3”. It really depends on your application and your needs,” says Sunkara. AWS and Microsoft specifically have announced major investments in opening up datacentres in the Middle East region. With the major providers dominating the cloud landscape, literally and figura- tively, the average enterprise would be hard-pressed to identify any of the small- er players. Matters says businesses eager to ex- plore further afield can lean on their ex- isting partners such as service providers to point them in the right direction. “Most enterprises have service com- panies that they work with, either ISVs or MSPs, and using those vendors to help find those very competent Tier 2’s makes a lot of sense,” he says. Whether the Big 3 can focus on a particular vertical or provide the necessary levels of security, availability and reliability is still a question mark.” PARTNERSHIPS The “Big 3” themselves could gain a leg up over their equally illustrious rivals by partnering with smaller players. Matters points to the recent an- nouncement of a partnership between Microsoft (Azure) and Oracle Cloud. “The cloud providers are playing to their strengths right now. For exam- ple, Microsoft has its own software and by partnering with Oracle Cloud infra- structure, they can be more competitive in the industry without really threaten- ing their core cloud business. “In turn, Oracle has an opportunity to increase their revenue by providing services where they are the dominant leader,” he says. Because they can be mutually ben- eficial, we will see similar partnerships moving forward, Matters reckons. “This competition is always good for custom- ers. It will continue to drive down pric- es, increase innovation and solve real problems for enterprises,” he concludes. // AUGUST 2019 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 27// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM / // SPECIAL REPORT / TECHNOLOGYSMART TECH IS REVOLUTIONISING DATACENTRE ENERGY CONSUMPTION, ONE BYTE AT A TIME ENERGY SMARTENERGY SMART // INSIGHT / ENERGY SMART // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 28 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2019 /We will eventually see data centres as the biggest enablers of human efficiency, saving energy and reducing effort.” EHAB KANARY, VICE PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, COMMSCOPE some efficiencies have resulted from the ability to micro-manage the cooling and compute assets within the data centre, says Kanary. “Having an operation be- ing enabled with accurate data points can only help in the drive towards in- creased efficiency,” he observes. Augmented reality (AR) technology is also evolving rapidly and is using data here’s no disput- ing the fact that the average da- tacentre today is many times more energy-efficient than a decade ago. The main concern today is datacentre sprawl where hyperscale data centres, driven by our increasingly digital world, would as a collective whole reverse the gains gained by the reduction in energy consumption in individual facilities. Power consumption, and the source of that power, is becoming an increas- ingly important issue for the datacen- tre industry as a whole, observes Ehab Kanary, vice president of enterprise, Middle East and Africa, CommScope. Currently, 3% of all electricity consump- tion globally goes to data centres – and the number is only set to grow, accord- ing to CB Insights. Mass efficiencies in data centre elec- tricity consumption really began with virtualisation, which effectively allowed servers to multitask. Virtualisation has greatly improved the utilisation of available computing infrastructure, observes Ashraf Yehia, managing director, Eaton Middle East. “This has resulted in a significant reduc- tion of no-load losses and wastage of en- ergy from an electrical energy consump- tion perspective. The rewards of server virtualisation, cloud orchestration and converged infrastructure have made the technologies increasingly attractive to IT managers, evidenced by its wide- spread adoption across virtually all busi- ness sectors,” says Yehia. Another (albeit accidental) contribu- tor to this economy is the use of the many modern applications. Google Maps has made our jour- neys much more efficient; video confer- encing has saved millions of miles that could have otherwise been spent on the road; the same applies for efficient sup- ply chains, just-in-time manufacturing, etc. “It is quite probable that if we quan- tify the energy efficiency that results from datacentre applications, it would be more than the energy consumed by those same data centres,” says Kanary. However, the biggest step towards efficiency is probably the advent of largescale cloud computing. “Cloud providers provide a hyper-efficient en- vironment of just-in-time compute en- vironments that can be reconfigured on-the-fly, maximising the utilisation of the assets within the data centre and thereby providing the lowest energy consumption per unit of compute on the planet,” explains Kanary. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Emerging technologies will only ad- vance this technology-driven energy ef- ficiency theme. The vast increase in connected de- vices, referred to as the Internet of Things, will undoubtedly generate vast amounts of data which will allow IT managers to micromanage their envi- ronment, thereby reducing energy us- age, says Kanary. “Taking a building as an example, using IoT data, we can already improve efficiency by only lighting, cooling, or heating the areas occupied. In the fu- ture, data from autonomous cars will en- able us to better plan traffic movements, reducing journey times and energy con- sumption,” he adds. However, it is artificial intelligence (AI) that will allow the use of data com- ing from those connected devices to determine the most efficient use of the resources available. “IoT and AI are opportunities to gather, analyse, and use data. Due to the sheer size of some datacentre op- erations, there can be a lot of data that can be collected and analysed from the physical network. This data can be uti- lised to help build better and more effi- cient operating models for the data cen- tre that can enable operating systems to react quickly depending on the current, or planned, workload. We are already seeing the benefit of IoT devices in data centres, and indeed T // INSIGHT / ENERGY SMART // AUGUST 2019 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 29// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /Next >