ArabWeeks

• Mathematical modeling and contextual insights represent the next major advancement in intent-based networking revolution
• Waves of software innovation fuel evolution of networking portfolio toward subscription-led model
• Cisco delivers an industry leading end-to-end intent-based networking portfolio, which spans the data center, campus, branch and edge

Saudi Arabia, Riyadh —January 31, 2018—Cisco today announced powerful assurance innovations across its intent-based networking portfolio that will help IT teams shift from reactive to proactive. It will address the 43 percent of time IT spends troubleshooting, while making IT operations more proactive, agile and automated. The software innovations represent significant advancements in mathematical modeling and contextual insights, accelerating Cisco’s strategy to reinvent the network for the digital era.

Over the past few years, the explosion of devices, adoption of cloud, and exponential growth of security threats have challenged current approaches for building and managing networks. Cisco’s vision is to create a network that anticipates operational issues, stops security threats in their tracks, and continues to learn, adapt and protect. To realize this, Cisco is driving the intent-based networking revolution by transforming the entire network, from the data center and campus, to the branch and edge.

Today, Cisco is introducing its second wave of intent-based networking innovation, with powerful assurance products spanning the networking portfolio.

• In the data center, the Cisco Network Assurance Engine uses continuous verification of the entire network to help keep business running as intended, even as the network changes dynamically.
• In campus and branch networks, Cisco DNA Center Assurance is delivering a new level of insight and visibility to dramatically reduce the time and money IT spends troubleshooting across wired and wireless environments.
• And, for customers with distributed IT operations, the new Cisco Meraki Wireless Health reduces mean time to remediate wireless issues with rich analytics and insights.

“The network has never been more critical to business success,” said David Goeckeler, executive vice president, Networking and Security Business at Cisco. “We’re reinventing the network ground up to deliver a secure and intelligent platform for digital business. Today, we are taking another major step toward that ambitious goal with intent-based networking innovations designed to deliver contextual insights and assurance that will help transform IT from reactive to proactive.”

Cisco’s intent-based networking portfolio represents a fundamental shift away from the manual and time-intensive methods by which networks are traditionally managed. These intent-based networks capture and translate business intent into network policies, and activate them across the infrastructure. With the introduction of assurance capabilities, they can now continuously verify the network is operating as intended.

Customers globally are embracing intent-based networking. Nearly 200 customers are in early field trails with the new assurance technologies, including Robert Bosch GmbH, REWE Group, Houston Methodist Hospital and Scotiabank. More than 1,100 customers are deploying the recently announced Catalyst 9000 Series switches, with 150 running DNA Center pilots. In the data center, Cisco has more than 14,500 Nexus 9000 customers, with a 45 percent ACI attach rate.

Innovation Spanning Data Center and Enterprise Networking

Today, Cisco is introducing three powerful new assurance products that further demonstrate how intent-based networking systems move at the speed of digital business.

In the data center network, Cisco is enabling always-on assurance through the Cisco Network Assurance Engine. By combining mathematically accurate models of the network with more than 30 years of codified domain knowledge, Cisco provides IT teams the ability to instantly pinpoint why and when the network is not acting as intended, then offer suggestions on how to address the issue. This comprehensive view into their network helps enable IT teams to:

• Predict the Impact of Changes: Make changes to the network faster and with more confidence, catching human configuration errors before they cause problems.
• Continuously Verify Network Behavior: Proactively eliminate network outages and vulnerabilities by continuously analyzing the state of the entire network.
• Assure Security Policy and Compliance: Reduce risk by assuring that security policies are being applied consistently across the network, and ensure policies are compliant with business requirements—every minute of every day.

With ACI and Tetration, Cisco provides the ability to translate application intent and activate those policies across the network. Now, with the Network Assurance Engine, Cisco is delivering the final element of intent-based networking – the assurance of intent.

In the campus and branch, Cisco is enabling ‘everything as a sensor’ and aggregating intelligence from the network, application, client and things to help provide IT with full context. These capabilities will dramatically reduce the 43 percent of time that IT spends troubleshooting and improve the experience for employees and customers.

Cisco DNA Center Assurance provides a 360-degree contextual view that connects all the relationships of who, what, where, when, how. Spanning wired and wireless environments, it delivers a complete picture of what is happening between users and applications with real-time, historical and predictive capabilities. DNA Center Assurance helps IT teams address three major issues:

With Cisco Meraki Wireless Health, IT also gains visibility and rich analytics to troubleshoot wireless issues faster and deliver a better user experience. Cisco Meraki uses a cloud-managed IT model to automate operations, simplifying the complexity of IT. Now, Meraki Wireless Health allows IT teams to quickly identify wireless anomalies, find poorly performing access point and clients, and provide actionable insights to improve the wireless experience.

Powered by network analytics and rich contextual data, Cisco Services offers new services to help customers streamline the deployment of the new assurance solutions. From advisory and implementation, through optimization and managed services, Cisco and its partners are helping customers accelerate their journey to truly intent-based networks.

“Regional businesses are having to cope with increased technological complexity, lower budgets and the onslaught of increased security threats and at the same time continuously transforming their IT infrastructure into an agile and scalable one,” explained David Meads, Vice President – Middle East & Africa, Cisco. “With corporate margins under pressure, network management together with proactive and timely attention to network bottlenecks is non-negotiable for organizations that are digitally transforming. Cisco’s latest suite of Assurance products will help our customers achieve a higher level of automation with increased certainty, allowing them to confidently move at a faster pace without compromising security policies.

Availability

• The Cisco Network Assurance Engine is available now, initially for Cisco ACI customers, with a free, 30-day, no-commitment trial. Customers can purchase it via software subscription.
• Cisco DNA Center Assurance is available now. Customers can purchase it via the Cisco ONE subscription offer for networking.
• Cisco Meraki Wireless Health is expected to be available in early 2018. It will be included with the standard subscription for Meraki Wireless Access Points.

Saudi Customs recognized Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia as a member of its Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) Program. Huawei, the leading global ICT solutions provider, is the first technology company to receive the accreditation, demonstrating Saudi Customs’ commitment to facilitating global trade with leading private sector companies.

Saudi Customs presented Huawei with an Accreditation Certificate in the presence of HE Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al Haqbani, Director General of Saudi Customs, and Mr. Dennis Zhang, CEO of Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia. The AEO trade facilitation program promotes partnerships between Saudi Customs and the private sector in order to enable smoother border and customs processes, encourage investment and support the growth of the national economy.

HE Ahmed Al-Haqbani, Director General of Saudi Customs, said: “We are witnessing today a concrete example of our partnership with the private sector, with the accreditation of a number of our partners in the customs community as Authorised Economic Operators. The AEO Program aims to strengthen and consolidate the partnership between Saudi Customs and all its partners in the public and private sectors, and enhance effective co-operation between them, in line with the Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program 2020. This step will speed up the customs clearance process and facilitate trade between the Kingdom and the world, which will contribute to promoting the growth of the national economy.”

Al-Haqbani added: “We are working to enhance the quality of Saudi Customs’ services by finding scientific solutions – based on sustainability and innovation – that fulfill the requirements of this critical sector for the Kingdom’s booming economy. Consequently, Saudi Customs presents you with the AEO Program, which was developed in accordance with the WCO SAFE Framework of Standards for securing and facilitating trade, and in line with the Saudi Customs Strategic Plan and the GCC Common Customs Law and its regulations. The program will provide trade facilitation advantages to businesses that have secure supply chains and comply with the required standards.”

Mr. Dennis Zhang, CEO of Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia, said: “The Authorized Economic Operator Program is widely acknowledged as a key driver for a solid Customs-business partnership and transparent and predictable trading environment which promotes economic prosperity worldwide. As a global company operating across 170 countries and regions, trade and customs compliance is a top priority for Huawei. For this reason we are proud to be the first company in the ICT sector to receive this certificate in Saudi Arabia.”

Accredited AEOs enjoy a package of trade facilitation benefits. One of the significant benefits is the priority of inspection and use of non-intrusive inspection equipment whenever physical examination is required. Zhang commended the Customs department for implementing best practices, removing trade barriers and increasing the participation of the private sector in the customs process.

“Huawei is committed to acting as a friend and ally to the Saudi government as it embarks on a journey of economic transformation outlined in its Vision 2030,” Zhang added. “We believe that the AEO will facilitate local organizations’ access to world-class ICT products and solutions, which will in turn accelerate digital transformation in the Kingdom and contribute to the achievement of national plans and projects through sharing expertise and knowledge and developing the latest solutions and technological innovations.”

Huawei has been awarded AEO certificates in 18 countries and regions including China, the United States,Canada, Hungary ,Malaysia, Turkey and other countries. This is in line with the company’s constant efforts to achieve excellence and leadership through the application of best international practices.

Huawei became a member of the World Customs Organization’s Private Sector Consultative Group (PSCG) in June 2016, contributing its expertise to establishing best practices for facilitating international trade.

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today unveiled its annual report into the state of digital workspace technologies and their impact on businesses, which reveals that in Saudi Arabia, empowered employees,  those who are granted greater access to the applications they prefer and need to do their job, are almost 5 times more likely to report gains in their productivity and spending 19 percent less time on manual processes.

The research, conducted in association with Forbes Insights in September 2017 amongst 2,158 CIOs and end-users of businesses across 16 countries around the world (including 1,107 in 10 countries in EMEA), highlights how CIOs are recognising the performance power of digital technologies and applications in the hands of their employees. These empowered employees in Saudi Arabia specifically, say they twice as likely to say applications are very important in accelerating decision making compared to traditional* employees (100 percent to 50 percent).

This empowerment, according to the findings, has a direct influence on the performance of the business; with the majority of all CIOs in EMEA (89 percent) believing that revenue can increase by five percent over three years when employees are empowered.

It is also enabling employees in Saudi Arabia to increase collaboration across the workforce (an increase by 14 percent against traditional employees) and, in a clear sign that they are at the heart of this app-centric digital revolution, are procuring their own applications to use at work – in EMEA, one in five business apps being brought to the company by the employee themselves.

“Across the EMEA region, and especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the most profound business shifts has been employees using enterprise applications to perform their roles smartly,” comments Henri van der Vaeren, Vice President, Southern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, VMware. “Saudi organizations that empower employees are outpacing the average EMEA organization in terms of accelerated decision-making, increased productivity, and reduced time spent on manual processes.”

Cabin staff of Lufthansa Cargo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and international air cargo company, use an electronic flight bag (EFB) system when on board planes, giving them fast and easy access to aeronautical charts, airport information, route information, weather reports, and much more. “The mobile devices enable us to quickly provide employees with updates, new apps and new approaches, saving the company money,” said Sven Gartz, Captain and Head of Flight Ops IT. at Lufthansa Cargo.

Cultural change required Giving employees access to highly accessible employee-centric applications, used for knowledge sharing, collaborating with colleagues, or project management is essential to effective and successful digital transformation. Only with this powerful combination of employee initiative and management trust, will organisations be able to create a culture where digital transformation starts to have a real impact on the business.

In Saudi Arabia, empowered employees are just as likely to rate their employers as leaders in digital transformation compared to other employees (29 percent vs. 30 percent), and are almost five times more likely to report that their company has been made a more desirable place to work (71 percent to 15 percent).

“Employees across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are well-connected, but often organizations are not providing them with the right applications at the right time to perform their job more effectively,” said Ahmed Auda, Managing Director – Middle East and North Africa, VMware. “As Saudi organizations look to digitally transform, in line with Saudi Vision 2030, CIOs need to enable employees with business applications that can make them more effective, collaborative, and happier. These applications need to be secure, adaptable to changing business needs, and scalable.”

Additional Resources

• View and download the Forbes Insight Report: The Impact of the Digital Workforce, October 2017
• View and download the report infographic
• Visit the VMware End-User Computing blog to learn more about VMware’s Digital Workspace platform, VMware Workspace ONE™
• View and download the VMware 2015 State of Business Mobility Report and 2016 State of the Digital Workspace Report
• Follow VMware on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter