< Previousin occupancy and ambient light sensors that can alter the light over the course of the day also help increase employee pro- ductivity. Intelligent Buildings can also reduce energy and water consumption. The convergence of networks that comes with creating intelligent building networks means IT and facilities man- agement teams need to work together in entirely new ways. Rethinking basic infrastructure is essential. What’s more, historically, field bus components and IT have always been regarded as two separate entities. However, when mak- ing a building ‘smart,’ it is vital that all platforms and components can com- municate in a unified manner and act as an integrated whole. That requires a common language and an integrated approach to structured cabling and What is Building Intelligence? An Intelligent Building relies on technology to create an environ- ment that is safer, more productive and easier to manage efficiently and cost-effectively. According to the Chartered Institution of Build- ing Services Engineers (CIBSE) “Intelligent Buildings help building owners, property managers and occupants realise their goals in the areas of costs, lifetime energy man- agement, wellbeing, convenience, safety, long term flexibility and marketability to achieve buildings which have high social, environ- mental and economic values.” Which benefits can Intelligent Buildings bring? Fast and reliable internet connec- tions and optimised controlling heating, ventilation, aircon and lighting make a vital contribution to employee wellbeing and happiness. Smart buildings help ensure occu- pants’ safety with connected alarm systems and IP cameras. Further- more, PoE allows the introduction of smart LED lighting powered over the network connection. Current LED systems can save up to 80% energy compared to legacy lighting systems. Introducing sensors makes lighting and space usage even more efficient. Smart lighting with built- Got something to say? If you have any comments to make on this issue, please e-mail: david.ndichu@itp.com Arafat Yousef Build a smart foundation with FTTO How will smart buildings help solve the challenges of today and tomorrow? Arafat Yousef, managing director, Middle East & Africa, Nexans Cabling Solutions explains devices. By introducing a cross- platform, fully integrated ‘central nervous system’ in a building, or even between buildings, invest- ment and operational costs can be reduced and implementation and maintenance can be simplified. Why choose fibre-to-the-office? (FTTO)? This solution combines the benefits of both copper and fibre to provide a future-proof solution with high bandwidth and minimum energy use. FTTO is especially suitable for Intelligent Building environments as they feature a high number of ports in large buildings or across multiple buildings. The system not only supports standard point-to- point topologies but also cascading of systems. Design can be flexibly based on project requirements. Re- dundancy can be designed-in at the access level in a cost-effective way by linking each network path. Still, FTTO can provide significant cost benefits in situations where large areas need to be covered or building usage requirements impose specific restrictions. With no energy- hungry floor distributors and techni- cal service rooms and support for energy-saving features, FTTO could be considered the most sustainable solution for energy saving. Arafat Yousef, MD, Middle East & Africa, Nexans. // BYLINE / ARAFAT YOUSEF // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 20 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / JANUARY 2020 /IOT SPECIAL REPORT CONNECTING THE WORLD, ONE SENSOR AT A TIME INTERNET OF THINGS January 2020It seems all the IoT projections over the last decade have been leading to this year. For the last five years, at least, there have been numerous research articles and pundits view about how many billions of devices will be con- nected to the internet by the year 2020. The year 2020 has almost become a magical number. Whatever the magic number is, we can realistically expect billions of con- nected Things by the end of the year. There are numerous reasons for optimism in IoT this year in the Middle East. Let’s start with 5G. 5G is the foundation for realising the full potential of IoT. 5G’s unique combination of high-speed connec- tivity, very low latency, and ubiqui- tous coverage will support all kinds of IoT applications where real-time decision making is critical, such as connected cars. 5G will also enable IoT to scale. 5G can send data to and from as many as a million devices per square kilometre, compared to 100,000 devices per square kilometre using today’s 4G networks. Most GCC countries have already rolled out commercial 5G services, and combined with progressive national policies on advanced technologies such as IoT, should see regional public and private organisations emerge among global front-runners in IoT. The second reason why we are buoy- ant on IoT prospects in the region is the increased investment in cloud services. Over the past three years, all the major global cloud players have set up shop in the GCC. IoT and cloud are a perfect union. IoT devices generate an intense amount of data, which could overwhelm many in-house datacentres. The almost infi- nite capacity of the cloud makes it ideal to pass all the data from all these sen- sors and processed there in aggregate. Further, the processing and analytics of sensor data can only really be done in the cloud. That said, not all data should go to the cloud. Micro datacentres strategi- cally placed at the edge can reliably process some of the data locally. Com- panies like Schneider Electric offer solutions such as the Micro Data Centre (DC) Xpress, which enable a faster, easier and more cost-effective way to build and deploy micro datacentres at the network edge. Leading IT vendors are now heav- ily invested in IoT. VMware Pulse IoT Centre, launched this year, is an end to end IoT platform. The company now offers a device edge solution that includes IoT endpoint devices such as gateways and sensors and acts as an aggregation point for the data that comes from these things and a decou- pling point to ensure they are connect- ed to secure endpoints. Many municipalities in the region have committed to implement smart city projects. IoT offers new opportu- nities for cities to use data to manage traffic, cut pollution, make better use of infrastructure and keep citizens safe. BUSINESS ENABLER The relatively minimal IoT deploy- ments have so far been regarded as a cost centre-expect IoT to emerge as a EDITOR’S NOTE In the thick of Things THE TRUSTED SOURCE FOR NET- WORK NEWS AND ANALYSIS CONNECT WITH MORE THAN 30,000+ INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS significant business enabler this year, allowing organisations to design and implement new, potentially disruptive business models. The value of IoT is in the insights you can derive from the data collected by sensors. Emerging examples show how businesses can leverage this IoT business model. For example, energy efficiency devices installed in buildings to monitor their energy consumption not only benefit the building owner, but utilities can pay to receive aggregated data from thousands of buildings. // SPECIAL REPORT / EDITOR’S NOTE // JANUARY 2020 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 23// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /Organisations in the Middle East, both public and private, are turning to internet of things to streamline business processes, save costs and provide supe- rior customer service. Gartner forecasts that the enterprise and automotive internet of things (IoT) market will grow to 5.8 billion endpoints in 2020, a 21% increase from 2019. By the end of 2019, 4.8 billion endpoints are ex- pected to be in use, up 21.5% from 2018. Major IT vendors are waking up to the IoT opportunity. WebNMS, a division of Zoho, provides IoT solutions for smart cities and facili- ties and energy management. WebNMS foray into IoT was a natural progression from its network manage- ment legacy, which involved managing connected IP-based systems. Eventually, the ecosystem shifted into connected things, leading WebNMS’ parent com- pany Zoho to produce solutions to oper- ate the connected machine to machine systems, explains Karen Ravindranath, director, WebNMS. One of WebNMS’s major regional de- ployments was an loT smart lighting project that helped Muscat in Oman re- duce OpEx by 40% thanks to centralised control and automation of its city street lighting infrastructure. SMART LIGHTING The project comprised an urban light- ing network consisting of 2090 light- ing poles managed using the WebNMS Smart Lighting Solution. The city manages an expansive street lighting infrastructure, distributed across a wide geographic region. Previ- According to Gartner, utilities will be the highest user of IoT endpoints, total- ling 1.17 billion endpoints in 2019, and increasing by 17% in 2020 to reach 1.37 billion endpoints. “Electricity smart metering, both resi- dential and commercial will boost the adoption of IoT among utilities,” says Peter Middleton, senior research direc- tor at Gartner. “Physical security, where building intruder detection and indoor surveillance use cases will drive volume, will be the second-largest user of IoT endpoints in 2020.” CONNECTED CARS According to the research firm, the two use cases that will produce the most endpoint electronics revenue in 2020 will be consumer connected cars and networkable printing and photocopy- ing, totalling $72 billion and $38 billion, respectively. Connected vehicles will IoT turns infrastructure into hubs of innovation ously, switching lights on and off was controlled through an electronic/me- chanical timer setting in the switching panel. However, there was no provision for managing and monitoring the entire lighting network centrally. Resetting the schedule, if and when required, involved manual intervention at each panel. With the WebNMS platform, the mu- nicipality has been able to centralise the control of the entire lighting infrastruc- ture at its control centre. Engineers can also identify and pinpoint malfunction or failure in luminaries and feeder pan- els via a central interface. “The entire process is automated and the schedules are set a year ahead. Those commands are automatically pushed to the feeder panel so nobody needs to visit a feeder panel,” Ravindranath says. During the consultation for the pro- ject, the company and its partners could easily define the ROI based on projected energy usage. The smart lighting system also led to reduced energy costs through need-based lighting. “We were also able to increase the lifespan of luminaries and reduce operational costs by unifying vis- ibility and control. Before that, operation teams had to visit a location to identify a malfunction physically. Now they can pinpoint the exact point of failure prob- lem from the control room,” explains Ravindranath. WebNMS has further invested in IoT solutions for utilities for water manage- ment. Water is a very precious commodity in this region, and the company provides products deployed at pumping stations to control the flow and analyse the water pumping system. The company also of- fers smart energy metering solutions. Cities turn to connected infrastructure to transform urban centres // SPECIAL REPORT / MARKET FOCUS // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 24 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / JANUARY 2020 /With bandwidth very expensive, it makes economic sense to push as much compute capabilities to the edge. “We provide a computing agent that sits very close to the edge. “The WebNMS agent has analytics capabilities and can take certain corrective actions at the edge based on already predetermined models or rules. Only the data that has to go to the datacentre is transferred. And be- cause we can store data at the edge, an unfortunate incident such as loss of con- nectivity will not result in loss of data,” Ravindranath explains. “From the control server, we can send commands to the edge and execute cer- tain control actions to the equipment,” she adds. Other cities in the region and beyond are pursuing smart city strategies. “We can replicate the Oman use case, with a proven ROI, to other cities in the region,” Ravindranath says. Electricity smart metering will boost the adoption of IoT among utilities, says Middleton. It is easy to replicate existing use cases, with a proven ROI, to other cities, says Ravindranath. IoT endpoint market by segment, 2018-2020, worldwide (installed base, billions of units) Segment201820192020 Utilities0.981.171.37 Government0.400.530.70 Building Automation0.230.310.44 Physical Security0.830.951.09 Manufacturing & Natural Resources0.330.400.49 Automotive0.270.360.47 Healthcare Providers0.210.280.36 Retail & Wholesale Trade0.290.360.44 Information0.370.370.37 Transportation0.060.070.08 Total3.964.815.81 retain a significant portion of the total endpoint electronics spending resulting from increasing electronics complexity and manufacturers implementing con- nectivity in a higher percentage of their vehicle production moving forward. While printers and photocopiers will contribute significant expenditure in 2020, the market will decline slowly and other use cases such as indoor surveil- lance will rise as governments focus on public safety. // SPECIAL REPORT / MARKET FOCUS // JANUARY 2020 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 25// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /VMware, the company that revolution- ised the data centre, wants to transform another sector, IoT. VMware earlier this year launched an end to end IoT platform, the VMware Pulse IoT Centre, a secure edge infra- structure and IoT device management solution for both IT and OT organisations. According to Lakshmi Mandyam, VP product management edge/IoT at VM- ware, VMware recognised an opportu- nity in the market to extend its proven infrastructure management tenets to the edge. “The core of our business is in the data centre space and cloud. Increasingly, however, we see, at the edge, some of those same requirements of being able to run any application on any device, and yet have the flexibility to run workloads on the cloud,” says Mandyam. A recent analyst report states that 75% of all enterprise data is coming from the edge. Historically, organisations have not necessarily been able to extract data and the value from these edge installations to drive business outcomes. However, operational technology (OT) and other physical assets are becoming a vital business asset to the overall organiza- tion. “Businesses are therefore looking at how the data they collect from these installations can be used to make impor- tant business decisions,” says Mandyam. OT teams are today increasingly reli- ant on IT to deliver services, such as how to extract data from IoT devices and de- liver that to a datacentre for analysis. “OT organisations are trying to trans- EDGE Edge and IoT use cases require connec- tivity from the device edge and compute edge, back and forth to the cloud and datacentre environments. VMware Net- work Edge Solutions connect virtualisa- tion, compute, IoT, cloud, datacentre at the edge of the enterprise where these processes reside. “Historically, organi- sations would send data to a central data centre to be processed. Now we see a par- adigm shift where the compute is coming towards the data,” says Mandyam. All Things considered form themselves from being reactive to being proactive through real-time deci- sion making,” says Mandyam. This reality is why there’s an infra- structure build-up happening at the edge, and where modern infrastructure management techniques are increas- ingly required, says Mandyam. “More importantly, in their efforts to manage these Things, organisations are looking for a vendor-neutral device manage- ment platform. This is where VMware has excelled in developing an independ- ent platform that helps enterprises de- ploy an enterprise-class IoT framework through which they can manage various use cases,” she adds. VMware Pulse IoT Centre onboards, manages, monitors and secures edge and IoT devices and enables IT and OT to have control of their IoT implemen- tations from the edge to the cloud. The platform has a client software executing on the Thing, a Pulse agent that’s sitting on the gateway, and finally, a central compute point where the management console sits. From this management con- sole, operators can undertake such tasks such as push down software updates or execute a command on the IoT device. Organisations are looking for a vendor-neutral device manage- ment platform, says Mandyam. Historically, organisations would send data to a central datacentre to be processed. Now we see a paradigm shift where the compute is coming towards the data.” VMware takes aim at IoT with and end-to-end edge and device management platform // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 26 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / JANUARY 2020 / // SPECIAL REPORT / KNOWLEDGE PARTNERSome of these installations can have thousands of sensors collecting data. “What OT/IT teams need is a local ag- gregation point such as a gateway that is monitoring and collecting this data which they send to a local compute node,” Mandyam says. In the region, Saudi Investment Bank is using the VMware Pulse IoT Centre to manage not only the visibility and man- agement of sensors within their data centres but also tapping into the same platform to provide better customer ex- periences at their retail branches. One example is monitoring the temperature in ATMs to make sure that they’re al- ways operational in challenging envi- ronmental conditions. CLOUD The choice of whether organisations want to run their IoT management plat- form on-premise or on the cloud will depend on their requirements. In a small factory, for example, it would not be worthwhile to monitor and manage their small number of sen- sors on-premise. In such situations, cloud provides a far better solution. VMware delivers the management in- frastructure capability to be able to do that, says Mandyam. On the other hand, a giant manufac- turing plant will have a very complex in- frastructure with thousands of sensors collecting gigabits of data. In such situ- ations, it makes little sense to burst all that data into the cloud. “An on-premise data centre is much more efficient to en- sure real-time decisions. They cannot afford for that data to be transported to the cloud, processed and then brought back,” Mandyam observes. Organisations are also being chal- lenged by a large number of BYOD de- vices connecting to the network. VM- ware launched the Workspace ONE platform to help organisations manage all these devices. Workspace ONE IoT integrates ac- cess control, application management and multi-platform endpoint manage- ment and is available as a cloud service or for on-premises deployment. The platform is built upon VMware Air- Watch Technology that delivers and manages apps on any device. SECURITY Thousands of devices are now exposed to the internet, which increases the threat levels to corporate networks. In a lot of IoT use cases, devices are installed with their default factory settings, which leaves them very vulnerable. “There are a lot of concerns within organisations about how they can en- sure that these devices are compliant to the company’s IT policies and security requirements, make sure the right se- curity updates and patches are pushed to these devices and finally guarantee that these devices haven’t been tam- pered with. We enable those capabili- ties down to the connected device with our management infrastructure plat- form,” says Mandyam. Managing the millions of connected devices and the infrastructure that runs them is a complex undertaking. VMware is simplifying this process, says Mandyam. Take the example of an oil and gas operation. To update sensors on an offshore rig meant sending out a technician to this remote location, an expensive undertaking by any meas- ure. With the VMware monitoring and management capability across the or- ganisation, these updates can efficient- ly be completed remotely from a central location, says Mandyam. The ubiquity of software-defined data centre (SDDC) makes it easier to integrate the VMware platform into normal workflows. “The management console sits on an SDDC, while the agent sits on the gateway. We are a flex- ible platform that can work with vari- ous architectures,” says Mandyam. // JANUARY 2020 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 27// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM / // SPECIAL REPORT / KNOWLEDGE PARTNERThe Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to trans- form all areas of the econo- my. But few industries stand to benefit more in a connected world than the healthcare industry. Consider how a hospital current- ly operates – running on a network of machines that are continually monitoring, measuring and analys- ing, dealing with hundreds of people walking in and out of its doors daily, and on high alert around the clock. This is the ideal environment for smart, connected devices with greater autonomous, predictive and analyti- cal capability. Turning a siloed device-driven en- vironment into a connected one has the potential to enhance existing operations considerably: improving speed, efficiency and reliability, and ultimately enabling better patient care and experiences. It is little won- der then that US hospitals are already estimated to have as many as 10 to 15 IoT devices per bed, according to re- search by Zingbox. Unfortunately, the security consid- erations of all this connectivity are significant, with implications for both patient data and care. Reports have shown that up to 89% of healthcare organisations that have adopted an IoT strategy have expe- rienced an IoT-related data breach, while patient records are some of the most sought-after by hackers (fetch- ing up to $250 on the black market ac- cording to Trustwave). So what more can hospitals do to anticipate the risks of future connec- Why a smart hospital needs to look after its network tivity? And how can they set up their networks to fight back? ANTICIPATING AND OVERCOMING IOT RISKS For any network manager responding to these questions, the starting point is recognising the vulnerabilities that are inherent in large networks of con- nected devices. With every component offering a potential point of failure or entry to a would-be attacker, the more devices a hospital brings in, the higher the risk of a significant data breach. But it is not just patient data that could be at risk in a worst-case scenario – far more worrying are the implica- tions for patient care. A device that has the autonomy to measure and deliver drug doses, for example, could suffer from a software glitch, or be taken over Gamal Emara, Country Manager, UAE at Aruba, an HPE company, on how medical institutions can protect and secure connected equipment Hospitals are the ideal environment for smart, connected devices with autonomous, predictive and analytical capabilities. by a malicious attacker. Meanwhile, during an episode of unexpected down- time, a device that isn’t critical to life – such as an MRI scanner – could gain preferential access to one that is, like a heart monitor. These may be extreme scenarios, but they are something for which every hospital and healthcare provider must prepare. And guarding against them means addressing a critical source of IoT vulnerability: network visibility. SECURE, VISIBLE, AND UNDER CONTROL Protecting a network that houses IoT devices at scale is a challenging task at the best of times. Still, it can only be achieved if everything – down to the last sensor – is individually logged, se- cured and monitored. Without a system // WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM /// 28 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / JANUARY 2020 / // SPECIAL REPORT / TECHNOLOGYthat allows everything to be “finger- printed” in this way and then managed accordingly, vulnerabilities emerge that can be exploited. As the volume and so- phistication of IoT devices in hospitals increases, this is only becoming more of a mammoth task for network managers. Traditional approaches for profiling aren’t suitable for many IoT devices, rendering them indistinguishable and generic. And yet, the ability to discrimi- nate between devices is vital. Consider how you would react to an issue with an automated insulin delivery system ver- sus one with the smart sensors in the hospital carpark. Critical-care devices that need to run continuously can’t be treated the same way as those which can be disconnected if required. Luckily, there is a solution for this lack of visibility – and that comes in the form of an increasing array of AI and machine learning solutions, like Aruba’s ClearPass Device, that are being created to ensure every device connected to the abled caregiving. Doctors will only be able to look after the patients if network managers use the right tools to care for the hospital. So, isn’t it about time you run a proper diagnosis of your network security? Emara: Protecting a network that houses IoT devices at scale is a challenging task. network can be monitored with the ap- propriate depth. Running on a purpose- built cloud platform, ClearPass deploys a range of machine learning models to differentiate between devices with similar IT attributes and build detailed, behavioural-based profiles for any that are connected to the network. PUTTING THE SPOTLIGHT ON NETWORK SECURITY When the future of healthcare is dis- cussed, the spotlight is understandably focused on clinicians, patients and de- vices. But as smart hospitals become a reality, attention will increasingly shift to the less visible role of the network se- curity manager. This brings with it great responsibil- ity, but also the opportunity to play a vital role in the ongoing revolution of today’s healthcare system. In the age of IoT, continued progress will rely as much on adequate security as it does on hardware innovations and digitally-en- // JANUARY 2020 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 29// WWW.NETWORKMIDDLEEAST.COM / // SPECIAL REPORT / TECHNOLOGYNext >