LEAP was held against the backdrop of rapid digital transformation in Saudi society, in line with Vision 2030 goals. The country aims to become one of the world’s top 20 tech economies using digital to create a more diverse economy.

Steven Yi, president of Huawei Middle East, said, “as the host of LEAP, Saudi Arabia’s digitization roadmap exemplifies the transformative role of technology across all sectors of the society. The Kingdom has put digitization on the fast track and is now amongst the global pioneers in deploying new generations of ICT solutions. LEAP has served as an important international forum to build consensus and deepen collaboration in areas that will create new economic and social value for all.”

Under the theme of “Dive into Digital”, Huawei’s exhibition at LEAP demonstrated the end-to-end capabilities, with representation from its enterprise, carrier, and consumer business groups, as well as its cloud and digital power business units.

The Huawei Digital Power business focused on the intersection between digital and power electronics technologies to help create zero-carbon ICT infrastructure in the Middle East and to support zero-carbon electricity generation in line with recent national sustainability commitments.

The Huawei Cloud Oasis Program was launched during the Cloud Summit held virtually this year in September. The annual event connected business leaders and Huawei partners.

Eric Wan, VP of Cloud Marketing, Ecosystem & Partner Development at Huawei Middle East, said: “Since launching Huawei Cloud, we have sought to nurture a localized, innovative cloud ecosystem in all the markets where we operate. The Huawei Cloud Oasis Program will thus provide truly unique and rewarding offerings to local businesses.”

An official release of the company stated, “The Huawei Cloud Oasis Program has set a target to assist 3,000 experts in the region, support over 1,500 consulting and technical partners, and empower more than 100 SMEs to develop their cloud capabilities.” The latest investment includes USD7.5 million being allocated for partner development, over USD2.5 million to be put behind credits and other cloud resources, and more than USD4.5 million in marketing support for program projects.

Currently, Huawei Cloud has more than 220 services available, with 18 global and one local data center providing these services.

Shipments of mobile robotics will grow from 4 million in 2012 to 25.4 million in 2020. The fastest growing sector in this expansion is predicted to be logistics, with unit shipments of logistics-related robotics increasing from 1,400 in 2012 to 95,000 in 2020. The largest absolute growth will be in personal and household robotics, growing from four million in 2012 to 25 million in 2020.

“As robots get inexorably smarter with advances in Artificial Intelligence and know more about the world around them through access to the Internet of Things and Big Data, they will make more informed decisions and be able to adapt to the environments they inhabit. This in turn will lead to richer human-machine collaboration – driving massive gains in productivity, safer workplaces, and better lives,” said Paul Clarke, CTO at the United Kingdom-based Ocado, the world’s largest online-only grocery retailer.

Paul Clarke will headline GITEX’s Retail Wednesday, an all-day conference on how innovations are transforming e-commerce, brand engagement, and the retail supply chain.

He will present on “Harnessing the Power of Technology Tsunamis to Disrupt the Future of Online Grocery Retail and Beyond,” on how Ocado has scaled and sustained e-commerce by harnessing the power of innovative technologies.

Ocado ships over 200,000 weekly orders in the UK thanks to its automated warehouses, the latest of which will have thousands of robots fetching their customers’ groceries. Ocado is currently partnering with several European Union universities to develop the SecondHand humanoid robot, which aims for factory deployment by 2020.

“Humanoid robots with advanced artificial intelligence are set to be a major leap forward in complementing people and enhancing efficiency in the workplace, especially in high-risk and fast-paced environments. As the Middle East’s push for innovation continues, the region is primed to be a centre of having robots transform the workplace. Lessons learnt in retail could be extended to other verticals such as healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, and construction,” added Paul Clarke.

With more workplace automation, companies will be able to replace up to 10 workers with one robot, driving down costs by as much as 60 per cent, according to Frost & Sullivan.

The European Federation of Robotics, a non-profit organization that aims to promote, strengthen, and protect the robotics industry worldwide, predicts the Middle East will see strong take-up of robotics across businesses, especially in industrial and manufacturing.

“Robots increasingly have the artificial intelligence to carry out tasks based on their own decisions, enhancing efficiency and safety. We are on the brink of a major breakthrough in human-machine technology advancement, and the GCC and UAE have the ambition and early adoption mind-set to be global leaders in using robotics to transform daily lives,” said Simon Andersen, CIO at the European Federation of Robotics.

Robotics, Drones, and 3D Printing Drive Innovation

Robotics, along with drones and 3D printing, are three inter-related technologies that are rapidly decreasing in cost, advancing in sophistication, and driving innovation.

With mid-range 3D printers advancing in quality, there is strong industry take-up – from rapid prototyping in industrial manufacturing, to healthcare with hearing aids and dental braces. Globally, 3D printers and services will grow more than six-fold, from USD 2.5 billion in 2013 to USD 16.2 billion in 2018, according to a recent analysis by consultants PwC.

3D printing is making major waves in the retail sector – with industry analysts Gartner predicting at least seven of the top 10 retailers in the world using 3D printing. John Vary, Innovation Manager at UK department store John Lewis, will present at GITEX on how the company’s in-house Room Y innovation hub has prototyped 3D-printed products.

Drones are seeing strong take-up across a wide range of industry verticals – especially in monitoring sites and delivering goods across long distances, and present a global commercial value of USD 127 billion, according to a recent report by consultants PWC. The three strongest markets are infrastructure, agriculture, and transport, with infrastructure worth USD 45 billion across monitoring, conducting maintenance, and checking inventory.

In the energy field, oil and gas leaders from Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations, Dolphin Energy, Emirates National Oil Company, and Takreer will discuss at GITEX Conferences on how drones and sensors can make energy sites safer and better monitored.

Bringing drones innovations to the Middle East, many of the world’s largest and most advanced drones manufacturers will showcase their latest drones at GITEX – including leading Chinese drones manufacturers Ehang, Prodrone, and Yuneec.

GITEX Startup Movement Supports Innovators

The new GITEX Startup Movement will support global startups experimenting in robotics, drones, and 3D printing in securing funding and reaching new markets and audiences.

UAE startup DigiRobotics, which launched CafeBot and CarBot driverless car at last year’s GITEX, will return to showcase the first virtual reality robotic simulator, 3D printing by a seven-axis robot, unmanned vehicles, and the UAE’s first 3D-printed humanoid robot.

“Following the vision of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and the Future Strategy of UAE, DigiRobotics Technologies is seeing a surge of interest in robotics across 3D printing, humanoid robots for personal assistance, and unmanned vehicles and industrial robotics in the oil and gas, manufacturing, construction, and logistics sectors, especially for repetitive and dangerous tasks,” said Bilal Al Hattab, Managing Director of DigiRobotics.

At GITEX, DigiRobotics will join robotics innovators such as China-based Alpula, which specialises in child-friendly humanoid robots; The Hi-Tech, which says it has 90 per cent market share of India’s industrial and warehousing robotics; InSystems Automation from Germany, which creates robots ranging from industrial machines to 3D scanners; and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement, which promotes a wide range of robots.

Fuelling the next generation of startups will be GITEX Startup Movement’s global incubators and accelerators – such as STC’s InspireU and BADIR Programme for Science and Technology, Dubai Technology and Entrepreneurship Centre in the UAE, Oasis500 from Jordan, and the Japan External Trade Organisation.

At the Middle East centre of robotics, drones, and 3D printing innovation is the UAE, with government initiatives leading the way. Dubai recently opened the world’s first 3D printed office building, and the Dubai 3D Printing Strategy aims to make the city a global hub by 2030. Numerous government agencies are using drones to monitor security, utilities, and roads. The UAE will also host the World Future Sports Games 2017 for robotics.

“The UAE has shown how to imagine the future on a grand scale. GITEX Technology Week 2016’s theme of ‘Reimagining Realities’ will encompass how robotics, drones, and 3D printing manufacturers, early adopters, experts, and futurists see the world changing in the near future, in a place where new ideas are especially welcomed,” said Trixie LohMirmand, Senior Vice-President, Exhibitions and Events Management, Dubai World Trade Centre.

To experience the latest innovations in robotics, drones, and 3D printing, register for GITEX Technology Week 2016 at www.gitex.com. The event will run from 16-20 October 2016 at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

Jason rejoins Epson having spent three years as Regional Sales Director for Giesecke and Devrient based in Dubai. He, initially, joined Epson in 1997 as a business unit manager for the Australian business systems division, and later moved to Epson Europe in 2006 where he became responsible for the development and support of system devices in the Nordics, Middle East and Africa. After that he was appointed as Director of Business Systems for Epson Europe where he was responsible for the development and implementation of strategy for business systems products across EMEA.

“I am excited to be back in Epson at a time when Epson Middle East is on a strong growth path. Our focus is to enhance our regional structure, continue to develop our partner network and increase our product and services portfolio to further build on our market leadership. I look forward to working with the entire Middle East team to achieve this,” says Whiley.

Jacky’s required a high-end integrated ERP solution to further elevate its standard of accurate and efficient business transactions across its subsidiaries.

“For 46 years, Jacky’s has expanded from a mail-order business to retail and corporate divisions in the region. To ensure an increase in overall operational efficiency, we have decided to consolidate our business operations across Jacky’s Retail and Jacky’s Business Solutions,” said Ashish Panjabi, COO of Jacky’s Group of Companies. “Rolling out SAP Business One for SAP HANA enables us to integrate all areas of the two subsidiaries, provide insights within different departments and boost customer satisfaction through better control over costs and enhanced profitability.”

SAP Business One works from one central database and manages all core business operations across sales, finance, purchases, inventory and delivery functions. The solution provides Jacky’s Group a precise accurate management system to overlook its retail and corporate divisions in an efficient manner.

“Jacky’s has always been at the forefront of the retail sector and takes pride in offering best customer experience. Through SAP Business One for SAP HANA, Jacky’s will be able to run smarter analytics applications, implement faster business processes and simplify data infrastructures within its subsidiaries. The SAP Business One ERP allows Jacky’s field teams easier access to business information at their convenience,” said Prashant Kulshrestha, Managing Director, WMS Middle East.

Among the key benefits that SAP Business One for SAP HANA will provide Jacky’s Group are more accurate reporting, efficient warehouse management, swifter deliveries and shorter lead times. The solution also offers easier access to real-time business data for more informed decision making and proactive management of stocks and timely customer deliveries that significantly increases customer loyalty. In addition, the SAP Business One implementation will also include a customer relationship management (CRM) and service module for Jacky’s Business Solutions. Jacky’s Retail will benefit from a new point of sale (POS) system which will be integrated with SAP Business One. A new e-commerce platform will also be integrated with the new solution later in the year.

Mimecast’s cloud services deliver comprehensive email risk management in one-fully integrated subscription service. It reduces the risk, complexity and cost associated with on premise email management whilst providing business email continuity throughout the cloud adoption journey. Mimecast’s best-of-breed services protect the emails of millions of users worldwide against targeted attacks, data leaks, malware and spam. Securing customers’ mailboxes is a core focus for Mimecast and being a cloud based business ensures that they are able to quickly and easily evolve their security services, like Targeted Threat Protection, to counter spear phishing and whaling cyberattacks.

‘’We are thrilled to introduce Mimecast to complement and complete our existing product portfolio specializing in the Information Security domain. The Bulwark and Mimecast partnership will ensure that customers receive secure and compliant email archives and continuity cloud services and highly confidential business information. With a highly trained and competitive team of sales, marketing and technical experts we aspire to deliver fast, consistent and value-added services to our customers in the region’ ’says Mr. Jose Thomas Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies.

Mimecast is a recognized leader in information email archiving. The company was named a
‘’Leader’’ in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving.
Mr. Brandon Bekker, Managing Director, Mimecast MEA, says: ’This partnership is meaningful to both Mimecast and Bulwark. By joining forces, we can deliver a complete and comprehensive value added proposition to the Middle East region. Our aim is to grow our reach across different verticals and market segments in this region, and we look to achieve this through a focused go-to-market strategy with Bulwark.”

With a new disaster recovery mode that allows the configuration of multiple failover directory servers at remote sites, Security Center 5.5 allows customers to implement more elaborate disaster recovery plans for their security platform. In the event of a disaster, failover servers at geographically disparate location can immediately take control and ensure organizations continue to have access to their security platform and protect their people and assets.

Offering a powerful yet efficient user experience remains a paramount driver for Security Center development. In this latest release, map-centric monitoring offers enhanced, fluid map scaling for zooming effortlessly in and out of maps—from floorplans to satellite imagery—along with the option to geo-reference dynamic objects on a map with actual geographic coordinates for greater awareness, and add new map layers. With map layering, operators can add or remove details from a map in real-time to narrow or broaden visualization of a site. To further simplify alarm management, Security Center 5.5 features alarm grouping and filtering so that operators can group alarms visually by type, state, or priority, as well as handle entire collections of alarms, such as acknowledging or forwarding an entire group.

As part of a continuous effort to grow its ecosystem of technology partners and facilitate integration to Security Center, Genetec offers two flavors of its Software Development Kit (SDK). The Basic SDK is a freely-available package used to connect to Security Center and access configuration information, events and alarms in real-time, as well as make changes or add new tasks to the monitoring client app. A simplified online enrollment and acceptance process, that is largely automated, gives users quick access. An advanced SDK package offers all the elements of the Basic SDK with access to additional tools required by more complex integrations, and is available through Genetec certified channel partners.

Building on the advanced cybersecurity measures introduced in Security Center 5.4, and the company’s ongoing commitment to ‘Security of Security’, version 5.5 offers a ‘hardened’ protocol that protects against potential hacking and non-authorized internal access. When users request to access video feeds, new authentication and authorization steps are in place to protect video data and privacy. By default, only secured media stream requests are accepted, ensuring the app or person making the request is authenticated to avoid any unauthorized requests. Token-based authentication is applied for authorizing and authenticating RTSP video requests, TLS encryption for securely transmitting these user authentication tokens, and RTSP over TLS for another level of video stream encryption while in transit.

Security Center 5.5 also offers users the ability to finely manage exported or saved content, such as video clips and snapshots, which facilitates modifications prior to sharing inside or outside an organization. Examples include the blurring and masking of snapshots to protect privacy, editing saved video clips to remove either sensitive or less valuable content and then re-exporting the final clips, adding new bookmarks to better qualify a recorded scene, and more. Sharing is made simpler by exporting video to the widely used MP4 format so as to leverage common off-the-shelf video players and eliminate the need for proprietary video players.

Security Center 5.5 also features new access control capabilities to improve organizational security, protect sensitive information, and increase customers’ choice of access control hardware.

Through the support of the latest firmware running on the Synergis Cloud Link appliance alongside Mercury Security controllers, organizations are able to extend the reach of their security platform with Allegion Schlage AD-300 Hardwired and AD-400 Wireless electronic locks. Organizations can also unify controller-based and electronic lock-based security systems in the process for a more inclusive approach to access control.

Security Center 5.5 introduces Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communications between Synergis Cloud Link appliances enabling global IO linking and global antipassback. Even when connectivity to the server is unavailable, Synergis Cloud Link appliances have the intelligence to share information across the network, like inputs triggering outputs across appliances and by extending the functionality of antipassback to areas managed by multiple appliances. This added flexibility enables users to move away from relying on constant connection to the server that improves overall security.

For greater protection of confidential and sensitive data, additional means of encrypting communications have been implemented between the Synergis Cloud Link appliance and the server along with numerous industry-leading Genetec access control hardware partners, including Mercury Security (EP controllers) and Assa Abloy (IP locks). The primary goal is to ensure secure communications throughout a customer’s entire access control infrastructure.

“We have partnered with Tenable, the leaders in continuous monitoring and vulnerability management for over a year now,” said, Firosh Ummer, managing director for EMEA at Paladion. “The gold status will allow us to offer comprehensive security solutions which will enable enterprises in the Middle East to detect and assess vulnerabilities, eliminate blind spots, prioritize threats and reduce exposure and loss. It will also permit security teams to take decisive actions to protect from the latest threats in today’s complex threat landscape and challenging environments.”

Through this elevated partnership, Paladion will represent Tenable’s full suite of security solutions as a part of its portfolio of security solutions and services across the Middle East. Paladion enjoys over a decade of regional experience servicing top enterprises with offices in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The company assists its partners to improve business operations by leveraging a vast array of industry-wide experience, expertise in cutting-edge technology, and an extensive portfolio of security services.

“Paladion, with its strong global network and deep local experience, is a welcome addition to our Gold Partner network in the Middle East and we’re look forward to working closely with the team to deliver secure, vulnerability-free operations to enterprises,” said David Cummins, vice president EMEA, Tenable Network Security. “Paladion brings a wealth of information, knowledge, experience and skill-sets. We are confident that this partnership will go a long way toward helping customers in the region transform their security to successfully meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

Key findings in the survey include despite the cost of Flash technology decreasing, 40 percent of IT decision makers think it is too expensive to invest in. The apparent cost barrier is most prevalent amongst smaller businesses.

90 percent of respondents admitted there was a need for Flash within their businesses. IT decision makers from medium sized businesses are the strongest advocates of Flash, with 94 percent agreeing that ‘a lack of need for Flash solutions’ is not a barrier to Flash adoption.

IT decision makers revealed that one in five financial decision makers (22 percent) within enterprises do not have sufficient understanding of the benefits of Flash technology to make an investment. This barrier is most pronounced among larger enterprises, with almost one quarter of respondents stating financial decision makers do not know enough about Flash technology..

“For many businesses looking to digitally transform, the idea of an All-Flash data center has become a practical reality,” said Fadi Kanafani, Regional Director Middle East & Africa. “However, despite the introduction of new high capacity drives and downward pricing trends of Flash technologies, our research shows that there is still work to be done to educate business leaders on the true value of Flash. We are working to remove the barriers and risk to Flash adoption, so customers can realise the promise of an All-Flash data center, simply and cost-effectively.”

“The true benefit of Flash storage is less power, less cooling, less space and less moving parts in combination with higher performance,” explains Peter Wüst, NetApp Senior Director Emerging Solutions & Innovation Group EMEA. “Flash, together with NetApp software to manage data more efficiently between clouds in a scale-out fashion, enables the digital transformation.”

NetApp delivers one of the industry’s broadest portfolio of All-Flash arrays, providing customers with the scale, speed and data services required for the next-generation data center. The NetApp Flash portfolio helps customers achieve the best outcomes across priority deployment models including performance applications, virtualised infrastructure and cloud-like infrastructure.