Q&A with Christian Alvarez

What should channel partners do to remain relevant and successful in a Hybrid Multicloud World?

We see customers’ reliance on and expectations for enterprise cloud capabilities intensifying. Many are building the future of their businesses on hybrid multi-cloud IT operations, which blend private and public cloud services. This paradigm shift in customer expectations and cloud acceleration is leading prudent service providers into new partnerships.

Christian Alvarez, Senior VP – Worldwide Channels

You can’t do it alone. Scaling a business and sustaining profitability requires working on creating partnerships that give customers a simpler way to drive their digital transformation. That involves consulting, design, new products, integration, customization, and 24×7 support. Partnerships can provide the expertise needed to promote, sell, design, integrate, customize, deploy and support new applications on-premises, in the public cloud, or hybrid cloud architectures.

That’s what’s behind the Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program. It helps providers pursue partnerships that can improve customer experiences, competitiveness, and profitability. There’s no minimum commitment or cost to service providers to join the program, which allows carriers of all sizes to participate.

How have you updated your channel program to align with modern-day trends?

“Channel Autonomy” is one of our key objectives when it comes to our channel program. We wish to empower our channel ecosystem so that they can independently drive our business with minimal involvement from our sales team. We want to train them and make them true champions of Nutanix and in this way the partner and distribution community will be a true extension of our company. 

Q&A with Adam Tarbox

What are some of your immediate priorities in your role?

The key priority at the moment is on building on the existing deep relationships we have with partners.

We are also focusing our efforts on being even easier to do business with by investing in the simplification and automation of our processes to allow partners to transact faster. Another area of focus is enabling each partner’s differentiation with a platform that enables partners to build not only traditional deployment services but also stand-up new practice areas. When it comes to DevOps or AI, this can provide sources of competitive differentiation as well as faster time to market of new offerings.

Christian Alvarez, Senior VP – Worldwide Channels

What is Nutanix’s mission or goal in EMEA?

Our mission in EMEA is the same as our overall corporate mission which is to ‘Delight customers with a simple, open, hybrid, and multi-cloud software platform with rich data services to build, run, and manage any application’. Our vision is to “Make clouds invisible, freeing customers to focus on their business outcomes.”

What are some of the main challenges facing you and the business today?

The past year has brought many changes to the channel partner ecosystem and subscription and consumption are on everyone’s mind. This is creating uncertainty for the channel ecosystem as it looks for new ways to sustain profitability. Many vendors have announced that they are moving towards subscription but haven’t provided insight to partners on what this means aside from some new incentives. As many vendors have taken renewals ‘direct’ – we have not and will not, we have always and will continue to be committed to the channel and our distribution partners.

By Fadi Kanafani, Managing Director

How does NetApp become a trusted partner for enterprises that chose cloud solutions?

NetApp is a cloud-led, data-centric organization supported by a global team of cloud storage specialists. We offer unmatched control, insight, simplicity, protection, and efficiency for applications in the cloud. We collaborate with the world’s leading cloud providers -AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to deliver native solutions in their cloud and offer our customers the best value. NetApp offers customers simplicity in moving their data from whichever platform to the cloud – be it private cloud, on-premise, hybrid, or public cloud, and the flexibility in managing their applications and data spread across different environments without the complexity. We help our customers manage their entire cloud environment and data consistently no matter where it lives.

Fadi Kanafani

What sorts of simplicity does NetApp include in data management through its cloud platforms?

We help customers implement the best cloud storage solutions as part of the data fabric, so businesses can manage their data holistically – no matter where it resides. NetApp offers the public cloud data storage solution that includes a complete, integrated set of data management features to protect and secure customer data, assure business continuity, simplify compliance, preserve integrity, and control access. Our analytics platform – NetApp Cloud Insights and Cloud Data Sense- provides customers with actionable intelligence across their entire IT infrastructure – on-premises and in the public cloud.

The NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is our cloud-based service available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud that delivers advanced data management for file and block workloads. It helps businesses optimize cloud storage costs and increases application performance while enhancing data protection, security, and compliance. It is self-managed through NetApp Cloud Manager, our single-pane management console for all of the ONTAP instances deployed across hybrid cloud infrastructure.

By Walid Issa, Senior Manager, PreSales and Solutions Engineers – Middle East and Africa

Speak about the partnership with major cloud-space providers. How does NetApp make it beneficial for its customers?

NetApp is uniquely positioned in the market with our long-term collaboration with public cloud providers helping deliver outstanding performance and maximum portability. We provide a portfolio of services for running applications in these clouds that reduce cloud costs by up to 90%. Our platform enables customers to run enterprise applications such as SAP, Oracle, SQL, and high-performance compute jobs – for example, in oil and gas exploration and genomics.

Walis Issa

In a partnership spanning nearly 20 years with Microsoft, we have jointly delivered innovative products that help organizations manage their data anywhere. Azure NetApp Files gives businesses world-class data management with the performance, simplicity, and cost savings you need to migrate your most challenging workloads to Azure.

Through our partnership with Google Cloud, we provide customers with agility, scalability, and security—all the critical elements to drive our customers’ digital transformation needs. NetApp integrated data services simplify how businesses migrate, run, and manage critical workloads on Google Cloud. It gives businesses the power to harness Google’s advanced analytics capabilities to help solve their toughest challenges while saving up to 70% on cloud storage costs

Our partnership with AWS goes back nearly a decade. We have shared a determined focus to help our customers build solutions, reduce costs, and innovate faster in the cloud. With NetApp’s data management capabilities integrated with the scale of AWS, businesses can migrate, build, and manage more cloud at less cost.

Tell us about the opportunities in front of small and large enterprises in the digital transformation era

The need to adapt and change direction quickly is a core principle of a digital business. Enterprise businesses would look to technology as a source of competitive differentiation in terms of improving their customer experience, automating some customer functions, and their call centers. And therefore, from a cloud perspective, they would want to combine public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises resources to gain the agility it needs for a competitive advantage.

Keep in mind that successful digital transformation relies on the intelligent use of data, Enterprise businesses can leverage data to improve the security of their products and services, and to expand customer engagement. They can also use artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (DL) to realize operational insights and improvements, drive decision making, ensure compliance, improve customer experience, and reduce operational costs.

Briefly compare between private and public cloud in the aspect of enterprise business

Public cloud is the on-demand availability of IT resources such as computers, storage, and infrastructure over the internet via a third-party provider or what is known today as cloud providers or hyperscalers. The private cloud is an internal equivalent to the public cloud. This is driven by the ability to easily consume and modify resource allocation through a self-service method that requires little interaction with users’ internal IT teams. Contrary to popular belief, private clouds aren’t only deployed on-premises. Private clouds might be owned by one organization and managed by another organization like local service providers in a different physical location.

Note that not everything belongs in a public cloud or a private cloud which is why so many forward-thinking companies are choosing a hybrid mixture of cloud services. Hybrid clouds offer the benefits of both public and private clouds and take advantage of existing architecture in a data center.

By Maya Zakhour, Channel Director – Middle East & Africa, Italy and Spain

How do you feel about being a known representation of women in the tech world? What advice do you have for women who aspire for a big and bold career in the tech industry? 

Maya Zakhour

To be recognized as a technology industry influencer is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication to my job and my constant journey of learning and adapting. But this journey doesn’t just end here – I use this recognition to encourage other young women to consider a career in technology, as the options here are endless. Building a career in technology is hard work and some women may feel reluctant to enter technology careers because they are afraid, they do not have enough technical knowledge. However, having curiosity, not technological background, is the top reason one will succeed in the tech industry. You start from the ground and build your way up – no matter what field of technology you choose.

I strongly believe that curiosity will inspire you to identify the problems and dig out the root causes. Careers in technology are not just about acquiring technical knowledge, but about demonstrating leadership and mentorship.

How Dell helps small, medium, and large enterprises with digital transformation?

Digital transformation is a top priority for businesses in the Middle East as organizations, both large and small, that continue to leverage the latest technologies to drive innovation and growth.

Regional businesses have transformed the way they consume and deploy software infrastructure and applications. This includes a growing demand for cloud technologies, with a focus on hybrid models, which enable businesses to adapt and grow in today’s data-driven, location-independent era. This shift was noted in Dell’s Digital Transformation Index study, where 80 percent of global businesses accelerated their digital transformation plans, with 79 percent reinventing their business model due to disruption caused by the pandemic. In the region, the study showed that 90 percent of organizations in UAE and Saudi Arabia, fast-tracked their digital transformation programs in 2020.

Murray Irvine, Senior Director, Data Centre Compute and Solutions – MERAT, Dell

In this critical time of change, Dell Technologies’ end-to-end product and services enable customers to create remote workforces, secure critical data, and scale without disruption.  It works closely with small, medium, and large enterprises to address pressing business challenges with its world-class, end-to-end services, and solutions that span the cloud, data center, and the edge.

Tell us how cloud-based infrastructure and platforms offered by Dell help businesses grow, improve flexibility, and increase profitability?

Dell Technologies Cloud is a suite of cloud solutions that provide a consistent operating model for easier management of public, private, and edge cloud resources. Reports cite that over 50% of infrastructure will be deployed at the edge by 2023, which illustrates the value of multi-cloud to manage all environments consistently. It provides organizations with convenient and on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources including servers, storage, applications, networks, and other computing services.

Rather than acquiring, installing, and maintaining computing technology on-premises, with the Dell Technologies Cloud services, organizations can quickly add capacity without incurring capital expense while significantly increasing agility and scalability. It allows organizations to simplify operations, improve cloud economics, eliminate operational silos and manage hybrid cloud infrastructure with ease.

Furthermore, the solutions combine cost-effective, scalable, and resilient data storage with native public cloud services to deliver the best of both worlds for the cloud. These solutions are ideal for deploying demanding, data-intensive applications on multiple public clouds. The services are fully-managed by Dell Technologies, thereby freeing an organizations’ valuable resources to run their business rather than managing the infrastructure.

Kindly articulate hybrid cloud and differentiate it from multi-cloud services from a business perspective

Hybrid cloud environments are composed of two or more public or private cloud infrastructures that are connected by standardized technology for orchestrating workloads across clouds, enabling cloud resources to work together to manage cloud servers, storage, and networking resources.

Multi-cloud computing on the other hand refers to the use of multiple cloud services rather than relying on a single cloud service provider. A multi-cloud environment typically uses two or more public cloud services (provided by third-party providers). Multi-cloud environments may also include a private cloud, which involves cloud technology that resides within a company’s own data center.

As opposed to multi-cloud environments where each cloud has its own set of tools and processes, a hybrid cloud with a consistent management experience provides a common set of tools, significantly reducing the cost and complexity of managing hybrid cloud environments.  Enterprises today are transitioning from multi-cloud strategies to hybrid cloud environments to extract more benefit from their cloud investments.

Speak about the collaborations that Dell have made to strengthen its cloud deployment and support services

Our partners are at the forefront of solving customers’ most pressing cloud challenges and we’re focused on continuing to build this ecosystem for the benefit of our customers. They play an instrumental role in instilling the possibility of what can be achieved while guiding customers through a data-centric and insights-driven roadmap.

Businesses understand that having the right partner to collaborate in today’s fast-paced environment is truly a competitive advantage. We enable enterprises to seamlessly extend the hybrid cloud experience to partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and more than 4,200 additional cloud partners.

Discuss the scope of cloud-based infrastructure and related solutions in the post-pandemic era

Hybrid cloud is proving to be a significant gamechanger as organizations look to unify their environments and get superior flexibility, scale, agility, innovation, and a consumption model that aligns with their business needs.

This includes incorporating a mix of on-premises data centers to public clouds and the emerging edge —allowing them to have greater control of their workloads, data, and cloud journey. By 2022, IDC predicts that over 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a cloud mix to meet their needs, with 2021 being a defining year for the multi-cloud.

The increased interest in hybrid cloud is driven mainly by cloud edge computing. As enterprises turn to cloud edge computing to better manage and process the vast amount of data being generated by edge devices, they seek more hybrid cloud architecture solutions to help them streamline their operations. This shift will drive momentum for hybrid cloud operating models that extend out to the edge, beyond the traditional data center. As adoption increases, we will see more organizations taking up as-a-service models for the cloud, spanning Infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas), Platform-as-a-service (Paas), and Software-as-a-service (SaaS) to leverage the benefits cloud offers.

This presents a real opportunity for customers to increase investments in distributed technology infrastructure. In particular, ensuring that the tech infrastructure they invest in is simpler and faster to deploy. Dell Technologies enables organizations to unlock better outcomes by building on tools and skill set that provide a consistent experience across hybrid cloud environments.

COVER STORY

The cover story explores the broad spectrum of cloud computing and its business prospects in the Middle East.

Cloud computing occupies a significant position among emerging technologies for over a couple of years. To improve efficiency, reduce cost, and mitigate data security risks, businesses have started moving to the cloud. Simultaneously, solutions providers developed cloud-based software solutions for their enterprise customers and facilitate digital transformation, backup, recovery, and restoration. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, and SAP have established their name in the market as hyperscale providers in tandem with the growth of cloud business.

Even though cloud vertical has portrayed stunning growth naturally, the pandemic has redefined its popularity and potential further ahead. Both, cloud service and solution providers, found business scopes leveraging the increased demand for featuring business continuity during and after the pandemic.

The large enterprises and traditional businesses weren’t cloud agnostic in the pre-pandemic era as they trusted in-site data security with local data centers and private cloud. When their workforce had shifted to home and (or) remote locations due to lockdowns, these enterprises had to choose multiple applications and software agents to safeguard their data from cyberattacks or infiltrations and run the business. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) had faced tougher times because of their conservative approach towards digital transformation and modern technologies. The period was challenging for businesses that have heavily invested in infrastructure.

The Spectrum of Cloud Services

Microsoft claims, “cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters – the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure.” Besides these merits, enterprises seemingly kept the agility, accessibility, pricing, and security features as key determiners to choose appropriate cloud services.

Most cloud service providers – including hyperscale and regional providers, kept themselves intact to those qualities and are offering service to SMEs and large enterprises either directly or via partner networks. Cloud-based software solution providers also play a vital role to bring enterprises into the cloud landscape. Most of their solutions help companies migrate to the cloud and they support multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud approaches.

Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

The shared public cloud has been offered to enterprise customers by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, and others. Although the cloud has been shared across organizations, they claim to be offering utmost data security and flexibility. The public cloud services provide enterprises with high elasticity to scale with flexible pricing options. Plus, enterprises don’t need to bear the maintenance cost of infrastructure if they choose the public cloud. Considering cost and efficiency, public cloud services are suitable for small and medium-sized businesses as they don’t have to invest in on-premise infrastructure.

The enterprises that need to follow strong local data regulations and compliance choose to go for on-premise data centers or local third-party data centers and private cloud. The private cloud also has the elasticity to scale besides dedicated and secure space for data.

Hybrid options relatively hold neutral standards in the cloud space. The organizations that have to follow local regulations, in terms of data security and privacy laws, would likely choose hybrid cloud services. So, they get to store data and apps in a local cloud and use the public cloud for data backup. In case of any compromise reported, they can protect and avoid potential loss if the backup has been taken to a public cloud.

Encryption, Backup, Recovery, and Restoration Services

Cyberattacks are observed with ultimate importance as much as physical attacks across the world as the trend of these offensive maneuvers to computer systems of enterprises started to impact the economic and political stability of nations. Financial, legal, healthcare, mission-critical, and personally identifiable information and government records have to be protected with superior importance. Unfortunately, computer systems that protect these are the primary targets in cyberattacks e.g., ransomware attacks.

Computer and networking systems can be vulnerable due to programming mistakes, excess usage of software or networking agents, lack of updates, and so on. If cybercriminals exploit such compromises, an enterprise will have to pay for a huge loss. The crucial role of cloud service providers comes in monitoring and maintaining these systems – including backup, encryption, recovery, and restore.

Backup as a Service (BaaS) is one of the business opportunities utilized by solution providers, today. Whichever enterprises need a routine inspection on their software ecosystem would seek help from these solution providers. Typically, these solution providers introduce a cloud-based software agent for enterprises that gives end-to-end support including backup, encryption, security, and recovery.

Middle East’s Big Cloud Tech Opportunity

The post-pandemic era seeds a big opportunity for all modern technologies across the Middle East region. Cloud adoption is widespread as companies desire to enhance options of business continuity, work flexibility, customer engagement, and profitability. Policy and regulatory support from various governments enlarge the operational space for both hyperscale and regional providers. SMEs and large enterprises alike are rushing towards modern computing and investing time and resources to train their workforce to adopt the latest solutions. The hybrid model will continue to stay and emerging technologies, which facilitate business success beyond challenges would attain further credibility; cloud computing is certainly one of them!

With this release, HCP gains a 400 percent increase in usable storage per cluster, 67 percent more storage node capacity via 10TB drives, a 55 percent increase in objects per node and simplified software licensing so customers can achieve over 5x lower storage costs than public cloud, which leads to over 60% TCO savings than public cloud for enterprise use cases.

“Once again, we’ve raised the bar for object storage with our uniquely integrated Hitachi Content Platform portfolio. Hitachi Content Platform provides the ideal ecosystem to support customers’ existing content-centric applications and newer cloud use cases and workloads simultaneously. It also provides a central way for customers to securely incorporate hybrid cloud storage on their terms to react faster to change and to optimize costs.” — Peter Sjoberg, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud and Mobility, Hitachi Data Systems

The HCP portfolio is a unique end-to-end solution that eliminates silos; promotes collaboration; enables governance and compliance; provides safeguards for sensitive data; automates management in private, hybrid and multicloud environments; and surfaces insights through sophisticated search and analytics. The HCP portfolio includes Hitachi Content Platform for software-defined object storage; HCP Anywhere for file synchronization and sharing and data protection capabilities; Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI), an elastic-scale cloud file gateway; and Hitachi Content Intelligence, where rapid insights emerge from your data.